Life is Like Running

Diary Entry, August 24, 2004

Life is so much nicer when each day is lived with grace and generosity and joy. But doing that, actually DOING that? It's fucking hard.Life is kind of like running. There's a downhill part. When you're running downhill, breath comes easier, muscles relax, and you get hopeful that maybe you can run an extra two miles today. Inspiration hits.Of course, then you have to go uphill. Breathing is harder, gravity works against you, and you're focused on just making it to the top. The key, the challenge, the opportunity, is to hold onto that inspiration you plucked out of the air on your downhill run; and on your jogs uphill - no matter how long the hill - to realize that the landscape will shift again.

Seven Years Ago

November 19, 2002

I think about going to a bar alone. Dancing close to someone and for a while feeling as if I belong somewhere. Sex without love - I don't like it. Because my heart is too mushy for it. I get hooked. Relationships end. Maybe sex is the safest form of connection. It has to end, and when it ends, you orgasm. When relationships end, you want to kill yourself.

Story fer ya

There once was a beautiful young woman who had five sons. She was afraid to clean her house, because she knew if she scrubbed the floors and the windows and the walls and vacuumed, the house would immediately get dirty again, and her work would be for nothing. For eighteen years, she did not clean the house, and it became so dirty that social services came and took away her boys, which is what she wanted all along, but she was sad it took eighteen years to happen. When they were gone, she scrubbed and dusted and polished like it was an orgasm.

The end. This was fiction, by the way.

Music Mondays

For Annie, who's ready for a break from her small town.


Every last one, route one, rural heart's
Got a story to tell
Every grandma, in-law, ex-girlfriend
Maybe knows it just a little too well
Whether you're late for church
Or you're stuck in jail
Hey, word's gonna get around
Everybody dies famous in a small town

Let's go on down to the quick stop
Wear your yellow shades and
I'll put on my tight jeans
And we'll just spend the weekend burnin' rubber
And we'll let 'em point and stare in disbelief'

Famous in a Small Town, Miranda Lambert

My friends from high school
Married their high school boyfriends
Moved into houses in the same ZIP codes
Where their parents live
But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

I hit the highway in a pink RV with stars on the ceiling
Lived like a gypsy
Six strong hands on the steering wheel
I've been a long time gone now
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
But I've always found my way somehow
By taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
I met the queen of whatever
Drank with the Irish and smoked with the hippies
Moved with the shakers
Wouldn't kiss all the asses that they told me to

No I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

It's been two long years now
Since the top of the world came crashing down
And I'm getting' it back on the road now
But I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
The long
The long way around

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself
But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow
Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

The Long Way Around, The Dixie Chicks

Workin' 9 to 5,
What a way to make a living.

9 to 5, Dolly Parton

Friday Fiction

Twelve rows of corn. That's all I have in the field behind my house. I lost my wedding ring in the corn. I was on my back looking through neon green corn leaves to the blue sky. The sky had me wondering...it was completely empty and I stared for several minutes and got dizzy. My head was somewhere else and I must have played with my ring too much. It's gone and now I'm sifting through the dirt looking for the diamond glint.

There's a callus on my palm directly underneath my ring finger. I rub the callus over and over with my thumb and get on my knees and get dirt in my fingernails.

He'll be home soon.

My favorite quote ever. So far this week.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions." ~ Rilke

My favorite quotes ever so far this week

She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Why did it seem so tricky, so difficult, to lead simultaneously a romantic
life and a fully conscious one? - Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home
from Hot Climates

Mountain Drive

Went for a drive with The Kid to Rocky Mountain National Park today. Admission was free because they're trying to boost local tourism. Aside from a screaming tantrum on Trail Ridge Road that scared the hell out of the marmots, we had a pleasant time. The Old Man works weekends, so he didn't come.

This is the view of Long's Peak from Highway 7, very close to my old district, where I used to work when I was a game warden. It reminded me how much fun it was to work outside half the time, and how much I miss the freedom of driving around in the mountains.

Here's Long's Peak. I heard from a crazy friend who hiked it that you have to start the hike at 2:00 or 3:00 am just to finish before the thunderstorms hit.

The last time I drove from Allenspark to Lyons I was in my work truck, pregnant. I'd have had my

shotgun

rifle

ticket book

statute books

zip ties

tool box

seizure tags

extra five gallons of gas

ATV ramps and

a winch.

I was probably coming home from a bear call. It might have been one of those nights when I was exhausted and almost falling asleep at the wheel. I was probably wondering how I would have a baby and be a game warden at the same time.

Driving through the mountains today reminded me of who I am, how hard I worked for my career goals, and made me miss the rather kick-ass wildlife law enforcement career.

The Kid in his carseat talked to himself about

excavators

big mountains

go that way now

and always about

Going On Bear Hunts.

Items littered the backseat in a radius around The Kid:

wet little socks soaked from the river

muddy shoes

crumbs from a bacon egg and cheese McMuffin

empty water bottles

inside out sweater

a pink sippy cup with tooth grooves on the lid

crumbs from Gold Fish Crackers and

a small blue blanket with gnawed edges.

I wouldn't trade the toddler gear for all the game warden gear in the world.

Synesthesian Sage

Dreams never have music in them, do they?
The park bench dream fills my head though, fills my ears, fills my muscle and bone with sounds.
No music; just insect purr.
I'm barefoot walking one of the two clear hardpan tracks of the dirt road.

The park bench is black curved metal.
Ten feet from the road through tall grass there's the smooth bench warm in the sun.
No music; just raven wings.
Vibrations pulse, press, beat from life teeming in the sky in the trees in the grass in the ground.

Dreams carry smells (memory joggers) in them.
Sage is the smell is the sound of this dream, the sage I've crushed under my bare feet, the sage my feet swing over while I'm on the park bench in the sun, waiting.
It's the music.
Music carries the body - have you ever noticed? - draws the breath, holds the breath, makes the heart beat in cacophonous riotous totally irreverent rythyms, changes your mood.

He sits by me; the birds sound louder.
His hand in mine is a sliding fingertip stroke on steel guitar strings, but he says nothing.
The air is deafening.
We couldn't talk if we wanted to over the din and the sage.

Quote

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Henry David Thoreau

Music and Motion

Mountains cast shadows
from foothills
to farmland
to me and my car radio.
Forty five miles per hour
one window down
wind and sideways sun
in my fingers in my hair.

Music and motion marry
drum beats
guitar strings
whistling warm air
memories and melodies
hum so loud
my skin my bones vibrate.

Time After Time
I Had a Good Time
Fade Into You
Pictures of You
All I Want is You
Only You
I'm Here Without You.

More Than a Feeling
Better As a Memory
Chasing Cars
Forever.

Stopping and Thinking in Moab

Here's a quote from High Fidelity, one of my favorite books, by Nick Hornby:

It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.

And this one, from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, where Richard from Texas is telling Liz the way it is:

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so that you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful.

From Girl Power to Excavators

The Kid is obsessed with excavators. Apparently two going on three year olds have their obsessions too. Tonight when I was putting him to bed I asked him if he wanted to hear the "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" story. He said, "Excavator story." So I made one up. So here it is.

Once upon a time a little boy who lived in the yellow-blue-purple house neighborhood saw a BIG machine on his street.

It was yellow.
It was rumbly grumbly.
It had a long arm with a bucket.

The little boy walked down the street towards the BIG machine. He saw a puppy dog.

"Puppy dog, do you know the name of the BIG machine?"

The puppy dog drooled a little on the sidewalk. "I don't know, but the BIG machine is yellow, and I want to find out."

The little boy and the puppy dog walked down the street towards the BIG machine. They saw a kitty cat.

"Kitty cat, do you know the name of the BIG machine?"

The kitty cat sprawled on the sidewalk and did not look at them. "Yes, of course I do. But I'm not telling you."

"The machine is yellow," said the puppy dog.

"Of course it is," said the kitty cat. "Did you also know, slobber-face, that the machine is grumbly rumbly?"

The little boy and the puppy dog and the kitty cat walked down the street towards the BIG machine. They saw a little girl.

"Little girl, do you know the name of the BIG machine?"

The little girl kicked off her soccer cleats. "No, but it has a long arm with a big bucket. Let's get a closer look."

The little boy and the puppy dog and the kitty cat and the little girl with the bare feet walked down the street towards the BIG machine. They saw a tall man with a hard hat.

"Tall man, do you know the name of the BIG machine?" The little boy asked. "We know it is yellow, it is grumbly rumbly, and it has a long arm with a big bucket."

The tall man spread his arms high and said, "What is yellow and grumbly rumbly and has a long arm with a big bucket?"

The puppy dog drooled and the kitty cat swished her tail and the little girl squished a bug with her big toe and the little boy thought and thought. Then he knew! "It's an EXCAVATOR!"

"Right!" said the tall man. "The day is over and the excavator is done picking up dirt, picking up rocks, and picking up wood." The tall man put orange cones around the excavator and brushed the dirt off the metal bucket.

Just then, the little boy heard his mommy calling him for bedtime.

The tall man was sleepy.
The little girl was sleepy.
The kitty cat was sleepy.
The puppy dog was sleepy.
And the little boy was the sleepiest of all.

He ran home as the sun sank behind the mountains and the bicycles rolled into the garages, and he drank some milk, and he went to sleep.

Here's to Good Friends

I'm back from my trip and wanted to say thanks to my good friends who made the trip so meaningful. We had fun, we had long talks, we ate good food. I love you guys/gals.

Listen to "Where Everybody Knows your Name" the theme from Cheers, and you'll get the vibe I'm feeling.