From Whence We Came, and the Leaving Behind of Things Irreplaceable

9/1/10-9/20/10

Tucson and Texas

From Whence We Came, and the Leaving Behind of Things Irreplaceable

9/5/10
(Starting the walk back up next week!! Look at older posts up to June for postings during the first half of the walk. )Yet another undocumented week has passed, vacation style, time slipped through my fingers with no regard to the details of the day. It was Thursday when we got here, the 2nd. Sasha had to get right to work, even after a 36 hour stretch of being awake. I was fortunate to be able to  nap in one of the rooms of the Journal house, and later in the day we walked over to the Simpson House, where we’d be staying for awhile. Our friends there so graciously agreed to put us up for about a week, until Sasha’s new place was ready. All this moving around the country has made me so grateful for a place to rest my head and put my things down. Here, we had a comfy room to ourselves, a bed to sleep in, and a live-in dog-sitter.

Bootlyg was so excited to find out that there was a grassy park nearby, where he could run and run and run, until sufficiently exercised.
  

9/6/10
6 am has a feel to it that no other time in the day has. Today marks 4 years. The day lives on in my memory, a vivid and incessantly recurring nightmare; I knew what had happened before any words of distress were uttered on the line from far away. Nevertheless, there was a cell phone on the desk, and a note that said "call your family right away."
No! I was not going to call. Nothing has to be real until you hear the words. It feels, at times, that a day in the universe became confused, miscataloged, an entire history having to be reconciled in a false and desperate jumble. Sometimes it feels like her entire being was a dream in my mind, a false memory; perhaps she never, really, existed at all. Exactly one year ago, I was in New Orleans, wondering if there would ever be a year that I’d forget the day. I still wonder. Today, the morning seemed the only real thing in the universe, the time before anybody is awake. It is, strangely, a lot like that day four years ago that my mom died. Like a dream. As though everybody in the world has vanished, and all that’s left is me.

 

All alone at the break of day I walk down the sidewalks, often unpaved and so characteristic of Tucson, that mark a period of my life that I will sorely miss when I leave here and walk into the unfamiliar.
I discovered "El Tiradito" Wishing Shrine, and I can see why it is deemed such a special place in the city. According to the plaque on display, El Tiradito commemorates a young man who died fighting for the love of a woman, and this unconsecrated grave is the only one like it of Catholic denomination in the US. People have been coming here for I don’t know how long, submitting their gifts and prayers, and depositing wishes written on slips of paper into cracks in the adobe wall. According to local folklore, if you light a candle and it burns through the night, your wish will come true. Well, I don’t have any wishes at the moment, I’m pretty content with what I’ve got.
 
The colors of the plant life in the desert are such that I have never seen, in magnificent contrast to the brown and grey of the land. I’ve complained before that Mother Nature created the thorns and the heat of the desert with a particular vengeance…
 
But she surely did have a good eye for color. The poppies here totally put our California State poppies to shame.
 

9/9/10
I met some kids from the No More Deaths mission in the desert, one giving the other a stick n’ poke; Fond memories of traveler kids across time and space come to mind. I’ve played witness to many a homemade tattoo, having been at times tempted to get one myself. The one below was inspired by a card made by a child, to be placed with survival gear in the desert. The message on the back of the card, and the part of the the tattoo covered in this photo, reads, Bien viaje, or good travels. Appropriately marking this message on his leg, my new friend has a forever testament to the humanitarian work he’s doing.  Whatever your views on the immigration laws, nobody should be denied humanitarian aid, and no human being should, in such practice, be degraded to the point of death. The No More Deaths website is headed with their motto, “Humanitarian aid is never a crime.” Some gruesome footage of the injuries and suffering of these walkers would convince even the hardest of heart of the merit of this work, along with the staggering statistic found at the top of the page: Deaths on AZ border since Oct. 1, 2009: 238
Give them some support today!






Thanks to the 4th ave Co op and 17th st Market, we’ve been eating really well. It also helps being in one place where we can keep our food, and having an awesome, spacious kitchen to cook in! We’ve had a few sushi nights, one of which saw the perfect duplication of the udon and avocado rolls they sell at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. I’ve also been super stoked about the variety of mochi and other Asian snacks.

 

And before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye to Tucson, yet again.

9/13/10
Under the freeway the air is a jumble of sounds. Framed perfectly by the looming overpass are the mountains in the distance. I see them through a cloud of exhaust that makes me sneeze. I can taste the faintest hint of blood in the fluid that drains down my throat; People aren’t meant to sit in places like this. Despite, I am filled with love as I sit here, love for all the world, waiting for just the right kindly soul to pick me up. Last night being my last in Tucson, I had a goodbye get-together at the Journal house. Over vegan pasta and chocolate cupcakes I shared one of those now rare moments of communion with friends. My life has come to be such that these moments are usually goodbyes. I laughed and loved, perhaps more than most do with people they scarcely know. But that doesn’t matter to me, every person is a treasure to me these days. Three people have stopped to offer me rides now, each prospect falling short of the state line. I’m tempted just to go, to cover some ground, to get out of here. But that’s not smart. I’m thinking of Sasha, and that he’s only a bus ride away, and that is temptation enough to throw my whole independent life down the drain to have the security of his arms. I’m thinking of the choking, paralyzing difficulty with which we utter “goodbye” when roads must unfold beneath our feet. And I remember the smell of magnolias, and watching the bees. I remember what enchantment can be found, just beneath the surface of the day when you are a lover.
 

  

 




Everything is beautiful. Somehow there is a clarity in life that has eluded me until now. And if I had to die today, at least I’d have known the happiness that I’ve always longed for, never having imagined that it actually existed. In the earliest of hours this morning, my eyes protested the sight of the gaining twilight, and my soul pressed its retreat into sleep, where time goes away and precious hours are forever preserved in catatonic embrace. I wished I could stay right there in that spot forever, looking into Sasha’s eyes, now glassy with the beginnings of tears for the long separation that would soon follow.
Misanthropy is a common feeling among hitch-hikers who don’t get picked up. After what was probably an hour and a half, my restlessness began to get the better of me, driving me to feelings of resentment for every capricious driver passing me by, no care in the world while leaving me there in that blender of smells and noise. But finally, as is usually the case when my spirits get down on me, a friendly looking man drove past and motioned me to follow. This is the part where I always feel I look foolish, onlookers laughing to themselves as I chase down a truck that often looks as though it’s not going to stop—a mean trick. But sure enough, he pulled over on the entrance and it just so happened that Marty, that’s his name, was traveling the I-20 and not the I-10, through Pecos and Midland, all the way to Tyler. An almost impossible luck! We drove all day to get to Pecos, through the darkest of clouds, which seemed to hint at impending death; we agreed on environmental issues, that the state is fascist, and that voting nationally doesn’t have such a political impact as where you spend (or don’t spend) your money. Hitching has never scared me, in general. I’m with Anne Frank, I believe that people are good at heart; But somehow we are made to think that danger is lurking around every corner, and fearsome are the poor, those of color, and new ideas. Maybe we should all have a little more mercy on one another. With enough talking, I think people at the highest odds could learn to find some common beliefs, and walking through Texas, believe me, has been the test.
I found myself at the Christian Home where I stayed the first time I passed through Pecos. It was too late to knock on the door, so I just camped in the back yard, dreaming of the cozy interior I was missing.
 
The night passed, thankfully, without event, except for once being stalked by a cat. I laughed and went back to sleep. I awoke several times throughout the evening, ravished by flesh devouring mosquitoes, and finally at 5am by a light turning on inside. I stood up carefully, looking into the mesh-covered porch, and saw a lady with her back turned to me, fidgeting with a coffee maker. Why she was making coffee on the back porch, I couldn’t figure out, but I had bigger concerns at the moment. I thought for a minute as to how I’d greet her without causing heart attack, and then, as softly as I could, I said “good morning, I didn’t want to scare you but—” She turned around much faster than she looked like she’d be able to, especially considering the broken hip I learned about later. At this hour of the morning, her voice fits a great analogy I’m sorry that I already used for something else, though I don’t remember quite what it was—maybe the way an ex snored--and can’t say this particular property of sounding like a cinder block being dragged down asphalt by a metal chain is unique to her. But in any case, I was worried for a minute that coming to Pecos was a bad, bad mistake. “Who the HELL are you?” she rasped. I could feel the adrenaline building up as I tried to explain just that, as quickly and concisely as possible. “Well…I’m a friend of the house. Oh, and Maria! She let me stay here before, and I came here last night but it was too late, so I just camped in the back yard. I wanted to let you know I was here so that I wouldn’t frighten you when you came out.” “OK…but who ARE you?” she asked, sounding, in my opinion, a little too much like the caterpillar in Alice and Wonderland. (The old one, when they still knew how to make movies) I told her my name, knowing it would mean absolutely nothing to her, that being the reason I hadn’t used it to describe who I was in the first place. But it seemed to suit her, and she invited me in. I plopped down on the bed, feeling the anxieties of the day sink down into the soft, warm mattress, away from me and the world of dreams I’d soon be entering. 
I slept a good portion of the day, drained of energy by the trek, and of blood by the mosquitoes.
9/15/10 Today I met Mr. Winkles. I learned from him that society is an equal playing field, anybody who wants to work can. There is no surplus of whey or corn. JP Morgan is certainly not funding the food stamps program. Absurd! (I will agree with that, absurd!)  What the hell is the food pyramid? The USDA does not simply lie to people to get them to patronize certain industriess. His main news source? Fox News. I can’t even keep a straight face at that one.
By the way, I would highly encourage you to look into the food stamps thing further, as this situation is pretty much the definition of fascism.

AND

http://solari.com/blog/?p=3309

9/16/10
Oh my goodness! It’s hard to believe I’ll be going back to Midland tomorrow. I wonder what it will be like walking 20 miles a day again, after being sedentary all summer. I think the most I walked was 15 miles. The weather report is a little daunting too. Thunderstorms from Wednesday to Saturday. In the room the old lady and her dog are grumbling at each other. She just called him a snotbox. She came out to get him some water, and now she is making her way to the room, grumbling the whole way down the hall. He isn’t barking at her anymore, but by her tone I sense that he is being indecisive again. They seem to be meant for each other, and I like them. I miss Bootlyg the more I hear those two grumbling at each other.

 

Outside it smells like lightning and the temperature is perfect. Coming back to the house from the library earlier, I got caught in a splendid drizzle, which was accompanied by eye-piercing lightning and heart-stopping thunder. The downpour I avoided left the streets submerged almost entirely, so getting home meant running in the center of the road, skirting reservoirs as cars sped past, passing me in the wrong lane to get by. I quickly said yes to the first ride offer, not discerning whatsoever this fellow’s character, and hopped into his truck as quickly as I was able. It was a short ride anyway. I landed in a couple of puddles wrong, but I should give myself more credit. How do you land in a puddle right? A foreshadowing of days to come. I greatly look forward to marching forward, through the day and into an evening spread out against an Eliot-esque sky, “like a patient etherised upon a table.” You should read some T.S. Eliot. Here, I’ll make it easy.
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

Love, Shay
ALL of the photos are now here:

The blog, which is just a running accumulation of these emails and journalings, is here:http://fakeplasticshay.blogspot.com/
Slow down. Live simply. Seek Wonder.
__________________________________________________________________________________
So! Onward!
I am an adventure traveler. I am not a tourist seeking a distraction from my discomforts and worries. I am a lover of life seeking to submerge myself in the world outside myself. The nature and quality of my experience are based on some questions:
-What do I want from the road?
-Why will I travel?
I want to see amazing things
I want to meet amazing people
I want to do a lot of walking
I want freedom
I want stories
I want to see and try new things
I want all of these things at the expense of taking risks and encountering uncertainty.
_____________________________________________________________________
These travels are neither for fundraiser nor for personal profit. I seek to live as minimally as possible while traveling, and in life in general. I rely primarily on the kindness of others, and upon the faith that everything I need I will find in one way or another. The immeasurable graciousness of others has kept me moving forward, day by day. Any help along the way is monumentally appreciated, as food and shelter are of the utmost uncertainty on this trip. Thank you to all who have contributed, big or small. It’s all big to me. If you would like to make a donation
for food you may do so by clicking here:
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/send_money
click the "personal" tab, send it to Fakeplasticshay@gmail.com,
specify your own amount as a gift, and help me get one day and one
city further!
As always, anything helps and is so very much appreciated!
If you'd like to send a letter of support, please contact me for location specifics for general delivery.
Thank you all so much!
Love, Shay

Life, through Turns Curious and Unending

7/22/10-9/1/10

Portland, San Francisco, Monterey

Life, Through Turns Curious and Unending

7/22/10

The flight to Portland was never-ending and miserable, my fears of which had been heightened by lengthy plane-horror stories last night between Donny and Sasha. Thanks, guys! Turbulence is scarcely the word for the terrifying jolts and drops we underwent. I spent a good deal of our layover throwing up, then filling my empty stomach with garbage fries. You know, fries that you get out of the garbage. But I threw those up somewhere over Montana. We finally touched down, and as I stumbled off the plane, spinning and falling into walls, I swore once more that I'd never fly again. No, really, this time really is the last time.

Waiting at the baggage claim was my dear friend Joey, who used to walk around the neighborhoods of Portland with me, petting every doggy and kitty we saw. He had come to rescue us from the airport, and after getting lost in the parking lot for an unusually long time, we wound down a ramp, deliberately designed to trouble airsick passengers, toward the place that was once home, or something like home anyway. Despite my intense urge to vomit, I was thrilled to be reunited with Joey. After a brief tour of his house, and by this time it was probably about 9:00, he took us back to the Bubonic House in North Portland. Not much has changed there. With a seemingly endless rotation of tenants, the house doesn't feel as much like home as it used to; then again, having had no personal space and sleeping patterns that were utterly determined by the whims of obscure late night patterns and irrational volume etc., I admit that it never really did. Tonight was no different. After cleaning off the couch in the basement, we were ousted to sleep on the couch upstairs, where everybody agreed it would be more quiet for us and where we could be out of the way. Or so we thought. After a couple of hours, the congregation moved to the living room, again, where we agreed we'd be out of the way. Not understanding our absolute exhaustion, my former roommates thought us insensitive for asking what we could do about getting some sleep. Go figure.

7/23/10

Tired doesn't even begin to describe the feeling in me this morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed to enjoy all that Portland has to offer, or at least as much as we could cover on foot in a day. The first order of business was breakfast, coordinating with my friend Justin on the way there. We chose Vita Cafe, one of my favorite places to eat in Portland, along with the Bye and Bye. As usual, Justin was late. But this is forgivable; to my great and happy surprise, Elizabeth waltzed in alongside with a huge grin on her face. After a round of introductions, we got down to business.  
As usual, I got my faux turkey Florentine--sautéed tofu cubes and faux turkey on a bed of spinach, smothered with vegan hollandaise sauce, all on top of an English muffin--and some coffee. Here's a picture of it from the road trip last year.

 
 
 
 
When we were through with breakfast, we moseyed down from the Northeast into the Southeast, making a stop at The Waypost on the way.

The Waypost, my favorite coffee shop in town, is a locally owned gem in Portland, with all the character you’d find on the Lower East side. With the ambient lighting and retro couches, I could lounge the day away, drinking Stumptown coffee prepared just right.  The Waypost also hosts live music, shows films, and holds interesting discussion forums. You can even catch a Sunday Brunch that rivals my own! And perhaps the best feature of this establishment, killer soup! An entire menu of healthy, reasonably priced food, all made in house, supplements the charm of this place. We came down in hopes of seeing the owner--my friend Michael, but to my great surprise he takes days off sometimes now. So we just shared a vegan sandwich and cookie, and met a nice kitty on the back patio.

Only a couple of blocks away is the School and Community Reuse Art Project, or SCRAP, where I used to volunteer. If I haven't described it before, this place is awesome! It's everything an artist could dream of in one building. Imagine walking into a huge warehouse, aisles full of art supplies of any type.

What can you find at SCRAP?

The SCRAP store, open to the public seven days a week, sells all kinds of reused materials for arts, crafts, and scrapbooking, plus school, office, and party supplies.  We also offer some new convenience items such as glues and brushes. The store changes everyday as we are accepting new donations constantly, you never know what you’re going to find!

Things you may find here include:

• yarn, fabric, and sewing notions
• paper of all colors and sizes
• items donated by local businesses and manufacturers
• colored pencils, chalk, pens and stamps
• greeting cards for every occasion
• wood in a variety of shapes and dimensions

Learn how to donate your materials!

How are the prices so low?

Because most of our stock is donated by individuals and businesses  we can keep prices low- usually at about one quarter of the retail cost. Every penny spent at the store goes back into supporting SCRAP’s mission.

New Materials at SCRAP

Lithography (printmaking)  ink – $2 per pound

Vinyl and vinyl banners – 50 cents to $6 each

Even more new and vintage fabric – $2 per yard

Ceramic molds – $3-$6 each

School Supplies (notebooks, binders, pens, pencils, etc.

Walking around Hawthorne, I found propped up against the wheel of a sparkly new Bianchi a tiny, downy little sparrow, completely unphased by all the busy sidewalk action. Sasha named her Abigail.

For such a small and vulnerable creature, sitting on the sidewalk is a complete defiance of instinct. She must have fallen out of a tree, been injured, and then been abandoned by mama bird. Luckily for her, I've been a mama bird to my own little one for 10 years now, and to many injured little ones since.

Not sure where to go with her, we wandered around Hawthorne some more looking for an appropriate temporary housing, like a box or something. She was completely unresponsive, not a good sign. With her being too small to eat anything solid, I was worried about how I'd get something in her belly. It just so happened that my cousin Rene and his partner Eric lived only a few blocks away, a fact I'd just come to find out earlier in the day. Rene was home, and he made a beautiful home for Abigail out of a used Wheat Thins box. She seemed happy enough there, with Sasha's handkerchief as padding for her hurt little foot. We mixed up some protein powder and water, force tipping it into her beak with a spoon. After a few drops, her voracity picked up, and she frustratedly bit at the spoon. She was able to swallow, all in all, about a spoonful that night, and I could tell she felt better already. I was no longer afraid she wouldn't make it through the night as I had been earlier.

Here, the days melt into one another, as time seems to do when you don’t catalog its events. I abandon the attempt at reporting events in the proper sequence. I have no idea what happened on which day, so. If there are some things that don’t make sense sequentially, your guess is as good as mine!

One of my favorite places in the city, the lovely Ira Keller Fountain. It’s a welcome oasis to the traveler weary from the summer sun. Bootlyg sits in my arms, terrified of the water. Children splash around me, shrieking in joyful, flailing fun. Out of all the public spaces in the country, the Ira Keller Fountain is probably the most pleasantly interactive. Unlike all too many public spaces, this fountain welcomes the public to splash around, befriending total strangers in the child-like bliss that comes out of a good water fight. From WalterLockley.com:

Like the Apollo program, the Ira Keller fountain in downtown Portland Oregon is an accomplishment from the 70's that we as a society could now barely manage. It's a loud and playfully interactive physical expression of civic values that today seem too liberal and humane to be true, and, in that wonderful sneaky ability of environments to set our social expectations, it perpetuates those values. Protecting this fountain has a practical social benefit.

In 1981's Process Architecture, Halprin described his intent this way:

In Portland I attempted to do two things: the first of these was to develop a long eight block sequence of open spaces, promenades, nodes of plazas and parks with a mix of public space and private space interwoven. Along this progression are a diversity of uses - housing, apartments, shops, restaurants, offices, auditorium. The space is choreographed for movement with nodes for quiet and contemplation, action and inaction, hard and soft, yin and yang. The second basic approach was to bring into the heart of downtown activities which related in a very real way to the environment of the Portland area - the Columbia River, the Cascade mountains, the streams, rivers and mountain meadows. These symbolic elements are very much a part of Portlanders' psyche…. Finally these places were for the first time designed to be used to be participatory - NOT just to look at - they say COME IN, not stay off

Below, the Lone Fir Cemetery and the Pied Cow during a late night venture for hummus and a Belgian beer.

There’s nothing like an early breakfast! Here, my friend Davis shows off his tater-tot castle-building skills. Ketchup for finishing touches, and a vegan corndog.  

Later in the day, Sasha and I beckoned to the dumpster gods, and lo and behold! Vegan chocolate cake!

We joined another good cause this evening, teaming up with friends Justin and Patrick as photographers; hamming it up for the camera, we helped create a poster advertising “Rock Out to Walk Out,” a show benefitting Powell’s Books employees’ strike fund. Read more about it here.

 

I regret that my camera was dead this day. I got to spend it with one of my favorite people, my fellow vegan crafty awesome lady Kristin! Hot as it was, we had no choice but to find the nearest water. In her zipcar we hurtled across the St. John’s bridge on the outskirts of town, toward Sauvie Island. There’s no photo-cred on this one, I looked. But here’s the bridge, and thanks to whoever took the photo! Well, I haven’t been to all the bridges in the world, but I’d venture to say this is one of the nicest I’ve seen.

I remember a day back in winter, riding bikes with all the layers that could be mustered, sitting at a park with Kristin and Davis overlooking the Willamette River. Appropriately enough, the park is called Overlook Park. Here, my friends and I looked down at the water and all the train tracks, the mountains in the distance. For some reason, Davis was spitting bread crumbs everywhere and making a mess. I suppose he has a talent with food…?

 

Bikini-clad and ready for some swimming, Kristin and I enjoyed each other’s company as much as only long parted friends can appreciate one another. Spending a few good hours laying in the sand and swimming in the calm, cool water, I think we pretty much meshed out all our lives’ problems with each other’s help. As always, some creepy frat-type boys sat down near us, trying to get our attention with their beer-chugging skills and creative insults to one another. Fortunately, we were just about ready to go when they tried to join us.

They seemed disappointed. “Hey, where are you going? Don’t you know the party’s just getting started?” Haha, yeah…no…

Things are getting really confusing in my memory at the moment…so I’ll just move on to a different event.

After a bittersweet goodbye, we left Abigail in the hands of a trusted friend of a friend, and she was, hopefully, on her way to the birdie sanctuary where her wing could be splinted.

7/28/10

Portland flew by with all the chaos of a rushed visit. This morning followed the trend as we scrambled across town with all our things to meet up with our early morning, last minute ride. Somehow, we managed to make it on time: “Crazy efficient,” Sasha says. I'd attribute it more to bizarre happenstance than anything.

7/29/10
Over a cup of coffee, I slowly realize that San Francisco is mine, perhaps not to share with another. When last I shared my city with a lover, a bitter memory haunted me long after we parted, my solo excursions ruined by a ghost for sometime thereafter. This is my place to mope around, contemplating the very aloneness of life as the fog chills my lungs. Love and parting are on my mind right now. Sasha and I had a fight this morning, fleeing from one another without resolution, in the utmost of contempt and resignation. It's true, by the end of the day I could be in serious distress. For the past month, many things around me have come crashing down, leaving me in the wreckage. But for some reason, I feel alright. I'm listening to 80s music, remembering after too long without it that brown sugar is my favorite thing to put in coffee. Maybe I owe this irrational calm to the many times I've  survived the utter destruction of my life. A new stoicism replaces youthful volatility as I breathe slowly in and then out. Or maybe it's because I realize after many similar flights, I'm not such a good partner--or friend, or travel companion. I'm demanding, unreasonable, stubborn...and I rarely bathe on top of all this. Sure, these things aren't so obvious at arm's length, but come too close to my orbit and I'll devour you. Or, at least, that's how it seems at times, as I survey my octopus's garden of failed relationships and disgruntled ex-friends. Maybe all people feel this way sometimes, and the vague possibility of this makes me feel slightly less deranged. Maybe this is every person's dark secret, and maybe there's hope of fixing me yet. Or maybe, the more I think about it, I am just being overly dramatic for the sake of having something to write. Deep down I know things are OK between me and my companion. I’m not a horrible partner, and I haven’t completely ruined this relationship. It’s just a fight. By the end of the day I can’t imagine that we wouldn’t be absolutely relieved to see each other.Now it is late, but my day is far from over. Sasha and I realized the error of our ways, flinging into each other's arms upon reunion. But there's still an issue: between the two of us there isn't a friend who wouldn't be inconvenienced by our asking to stay. Dianna's in the midst of a big move, Sasha's friend has a guest already, everybody else I know has moved away or is an opportunist. And at the moment, I have nothing opportune to offer. I've no qualms about outdoor city sleeping, but the city is dangerous, and the night, cold. There are more crazy, belligerent, screaming, flailing homeless here than in any city I've been to, even, or maybe especially, in the shelters. This won't be the first time I wander all night to avoid being robbed or freezing to death. Trying to kill time, we went into Sparky's, a 24 hour diner that boasts all the appropriate greasy offerings.

Spilling all my remaining enthusiasm for the idea of staying up all night, my eyelids drooped down my face. We walked around forever, looking for a place to sleep.

7/30/10
We awoke in violent convulsions, the misty cold air seeping into our joints. Actually, we probably didn't fall into a real sleep at any point anyway. Deliriously cold and almost imperceptibly damp, we stumbled out of the bushes and into the night, again in feeble pursuit of refuge. Though San Francisco is renowned for its staggering homelessness, it can hardly be construed as homeless friendly. The benches aren't friendly, the sprinklers aren't friendly, the cops aren't friendly. After what seemed like hours of pursuit, we settled into a garbage alcove under somebody's porch. We triggered a motion sensor light placed to deter sleeping there, and bathed in its halogen glow curled up in a rug we'd found on the sidewalk. In the end, I think it was the rug that saved our lives, since we'd left our sleeping bags at a friend's house. In the obscene hours of morning a crazy person mounted the steps overhead, again and again, peeking into the mail slot, muttering incoherently. I was too tired to care. If tonight was my night to be stabbed to death, at least I'd have had some rest.
The sunrise was our welcome chance to venture, though we had a short day to do so. 
The sun shines a spectacular shine today, and from Russian Hill, the world below stretches out forever before me.

   .
















We caught the train at about 5, and I , for once, was glad to leave the city. Dad came to pick us up; he was an hour late, and though he had good reason, I wouldn't have expected anything else.  At this point in my life, it doesn't bother me. That's just Dad. A new an improved version of himself, infinitely more considerate than ever before, he dropped us off at the house, and upon remembering that we wanted to go to the grocery store went out to find us tofu and soy milk at 11pm. He didn't remember where Safeway was, but he didn't come back until he'd found it.
7/31/10
The first true day of leisure we've had on this vacation. Dad had to go to work, but he left us with enough money to get lunch ingredients at the market. I utilized this free day to work on my quilt and some other mending projects. It seems like we ate all day. Dad took us down to Monterey and I laughed at the absurdity of the conversation he had with Sasha as he tried to explain an Iphone game. "I don't get it, they're all sparkly," Sasha said, sounding a trifle too concerned. "No, that's good, you have to get four of those in a row," he explained with an excited, borderline violent slash of the arm across the car, then opening his hand in an abrupt demonstration of explosion, "Then it blows up. Then you have this swirly ball thingy. And when that blows up, you get some other shit. I don't know, I haven't got that far."
We surprised Ruth by showing up to her art show at Youth Arts Collective, or as it's more familiarly known, YAC. This truly was a home-coming, her parents, our friends, and a dozen other people I know, all excited and surprised to see me. Everybody said how much they always look forward to reading my stories. I felt like a celebrity.

8/1/10
The sky is white.

8/2/10
Sigh. Coming back home, I'm reminded again that things and people change. When you leave a place, life goes on without you; new friendships grow, people leave, projects end. Sometimes everything appears different, and you wonder what your place is. You can stay and grow roots, but what do you have to come back to once you leave? I'm not suggesting that there isn’t anything—your friends most likely still love you, your family is supportive in their own way—but the dynamics between people change; It's uncertain and discomforting sometimes. I leave places so often I've come to wonder if I belong anywhere, or ever can. I find myself asking, "is there anybody who calls me best friend?" Sadly, I don’t know.
8/3/10
My legs turn to cement, defying the impulse to run, to chase the van that carries my love away. Our summer together is over. I fight the tears as I stand alone on the empty sidewalk, but kept inside they paralyze me. It’s time for Sasha to go back to work. The Earth First! crew has made their way down the coast, whisking him away to Tucson once again.
8/4/10
For the first time in 2 months, I woke up all alone. I nearly gave in to the temptation to stay in bed all day. Uninspired by the morning, all that ousted me was the all too vast emptiness of my bed. At  7:30 I dragged myself into the cold, white air, making the 5 mile trek to nowhere in particular. Hugging the coast line I stumbled through my loneliness, the sky and ocean coming together as one gray smear across the atmosphere. My hair is an unruly mass of waves and curls in the dewy air. I met up with Joshua and Roxanne. We did all the things there are to do in Monterey, which is get coffee and then do nothing.
8/5/10
We are on our way back to Monterey from the film screening in Big Sur. Ruth and I are in the back seat, and the night is pitch. We are winding through trees that I know are there, though I can't see them. A gleam of light from who knows where catches Ruth's face, and in this stolen glimpse I am struck with a painfully deep and nostalgic love. I am hoping nobody notices that I've begun to cry. I am thinking of last summer, remembering the impossibly wonderful things that are now behind us.
When you leave a place, all the people and things that tie you to it drift away, painfully slowly, but they are so many and going in so many directions. You stand there helplessly as the bits of your life diverge, irrecoverably from you, like photos floating away in fast water. You can leave a place, but you can never come back to it.
This is why loving people is so hard.
All I can see is the ending of things.
8/7/10
I went home last night for the first time in days and slept in my own bed. There's nothing quite like it. And the view from my bedroom window was absolutely unrivaled, the burning sky above the ocean showcasing an unbelievable brightness of colors just for me.

Walking outside this morning, I embrace the thick mist permeating my cold skin, and revel in the almost always white sky.

I think about the day as it begins to unfold. I feel my feet with each step on the pavement and I think of the days to come. The world seems, for a rare moment, and offering of clarity and ripe opportunity. The streets are unusually populated for 9am, and my coffee shop  a chaotic tangle of bodies and sounds, and I remember now that it's Saturday. Walking or riding a bike anywhere is going to be hell today. I hate tourist season like any faithful resident of a beautiful place going to pieces with all the development and traffic. Their rental cars crowd the streets of my daily peaceful commute, their children terrorize the wildlife I'm trying to photograph, their McDonald's fries litter the beach and fatten the seagulls. They come and then go, leaving my home a visible wreckage, evermore creating a demand for fancy hotels and Imax theaters that used to be unique, historic buildings. Go home!

 

 

I miss walking down the beach with Sasha, rescuing the blue crabs that washed up in abundance on the shore. I'm reminded of the short story, "A Single Starfish" by Loren Eisley:

One day an old man was walking along the beach. It was low tide, and the sand was littered with thousands of stranded starfish that the water had carried in and then left behind. The man began walking very carefully so as not to step on any of the beautiful creatures. Since the animals still seemed to be alive, he considered picking some of them up and putting them back in the water, where they could resume their lives.

The man knew the starfish would die if left on the beach's dry sand but he reasoned that he could not possibly help them all, so he chose to do nothing and continued walking. Soon afterward, the man came upon a small child on the beach who was frantically throwing one starfish after another back into the sea. The old man stopped and asked the child, "What are you doing?"

"I'm saving the starfish," the child replied.

"Why waste your time?... There are so many you can't save them all so what does is matter?" argued the man.

Without hesitation, the child picked up another starfish and tossed the starfish back into the water... "It matters to this one," the child explained.

8/9/10
Eight Nine Ten. The date is forever emblazoned in my mind, scrawled upon endless forms which will determine my eligibility for temporary urban survival. Though I strictly avoid conventional means of eating and sleeping, I somehow manage to find myself in some bureau or other on rare, but not rare enough, occasion. This is life? For some, yes. Hours pass. 5 people ahead of me, though I've already seen 6 people called. People exit rooms, looking perhaps more dejected than when they'd entered. For some reason, maybe bureaucracy for its own sake, numbers have stopped being called after this fortunate 6th person, who, I might mention, should have been me. 30 minutes passed and I inquired about the wait of a man who could only tell me how many people were ahead, but not how long it would take, adding, quite unnecessarily, that he had no control over that. There were 2 people ahead of me, and he explained, almost visibly wincing at the absurdity of my dismay, how this made nothing less than absolute sense. I failed to see the light. Refusing to be reduced to a number, I convinced myself that there IS more to life than serialization, more than a system of numbers and paper exchange, more than the incessant routine of waking, working, eating, worrying about money, and sleeping, that, for many, fills the sad space between being born and dying. I don't have time to regret not living that life--I'm busy living and loving real life.
8/10/10
Summertime is made for catastrophe. Fortunately for me, catastrophe catapulted my love seaward. As it turns out, the van that the Earth First! crew acquired (when the bus broke down at last, completely,) wanted to stay in California. Blythe, as comedian George Lopez points out, is a place populated entirely by people whose cars broke down on the I-10. The crew really had to get back to Tucson to start work on the Journal, and  somebody had to stay behind with the van to get it fixed. Of course, the obscure part would take several days to arrive, which…well, it never did. So, tired of sitting, day after day, in a stuffy old van in the desert, Sasha found a ride back to Monterey, leaving the van with the mechanic who would fix it when the part arrived. Yay!
8/19/10
What a spectacular day! We piled in the car to go to the Big Sur International Film Screening, a favorite venture for the Food not Bombs crew last year, and an experience I would share with Sasha for the first time. We’d spent the whole day in Big Sur, drinking beer and skipping rocks in the river like old times. By the time we’d lost the sun, we were thoroughly ready for the films to start. It was chilly, and we were tired, so we decided to drive down to the Henry Miller Library and wait outside the gates in the car. Sasha went for a walk, and we still had about an hour until it started. He came back after a few minutes with an apparent discovery that I had to see. I half-complainingly said to him “It better be really awesome, because It’s really  cold and I was enjoying myself in the car.” He took my hand, and we walked on the gravel shoulder up the curve of the road, looking down at monumental redwoods, and beyond them, the just missed sunset. At a well known spot, he abruptly stopped, in fact, almost frightening me out of my serene gaze of the horizon. Surprised and unsure what “thing” I was supposed to be observing, I said “Well, we missed the sunset…I hope that’s not what you were trying to show me.” He then got down on his knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. To be honest, I’ve never seen marriage even as a remote possibility in my life, especially not before 30. But when I looked down at his face and into the sincerest of eyes, there was no question in my mind that this was the person I wanted to be with forever. Elated at my response, he jumped up and ran over to some bushes, excitedly explaining that he’d gotten some french fries from Nepenthe, a super fancy restaurant, and  and hid them there. We decided to momentarily break our vow of veganism for a celebratory slice of the best banana cream pie ever to wreak havoc on my intestines. And we spent an evening under the redwoods, watching foreign films on a silver screen in the dark, holding hands and inwardly celebrating our having found one another.
8/21/10
We're here in Carmel, after an all day walk from ghetto to golf course. We stopped in Pacific Grove, the small town I remember best for colorful Victorians and majestic Monarch butterflies so numerous as almost to be a pestilence, covering so completely any imaginable surface. From its calf-wrenching hills, we looked behind us to the serene sapphire ocean. 7 miles into the walk and feeling wonderful, I'm happy to be keeping myself in good walking shape. Through the trees of the famous 17 mile drive, we floated along, witness to so rare a pleasure as this fee drive.  Those few of us so inclined to walk, and many cyclists, enjoy a free entry. For the first time in my life I did not get kicked out of the heavily patrolled rolling green of Pebble Beach golf course, the gem of scenery at the end of our walk. I can't imagine why they were so nice to us, which is sad, because I can't imagine why they'd been so otherwise before. With the signs everywhere proclaiming the utter unwelcome of outsiders, it's a shame that such beautiful places in the world can be restricted to a few "special" people.
We arrived in Carmel with a few minutes of sparse sunlight remaining. We're going to camp out for the next couple of nights. Grandma has been in a state of constant agitation; she supplemented a recent conversation with Sasha about my waste of a life  and talent by doing something so stupid as traveling, spewing her discontent at various other things. I've long since stopped trying to please other people. There's always something. There always has been. I've surmounted the discouragement of my dreams, which once forced me into the corner of self-consciousness and blind conformity. Now I live for myself! As I fall asleep in a nook of cypress trees overlooking the white sand beach, a light mist settles on my face. The moonlight hits the crashing waves, casting a magical silver glow. I'm sad for those who won't know the satisfaction of free living, but I'm overjoyed to be here in this most perfect moment.
8/27/10
I finally finished the blog posting from Boston and New York. I've never been so frustrated with technology in my life! I'm so glad to have it done! I've had a few too many cups of coffee today. We've been at my Dad's since Tuesday night, and on Wednesday went to see him play in Moss Landing.

Perhaps it was only a farce of humility, but Dad said he wasn’t too impressed by his performance. Regardless, it was awesome. 
After a scintillating conversation about pinworms and dumpster diving, he was amped for some adventure. He practically begged us to let him tag along on our late night grocery procurement. Unfortunately for him, and for us, there were people still working near the dumpster. We went home empty-handed, and watched Frailty.

Yesterday was a pretty wonderful day. We ended it by watching the Shining and  a dumpster run,
which was mildly fruitful.











We spent another lazy day at Dad's house, mostly because he didn't feel like driving us back to Monterey. Fine by me! We went out for Thai with Tina and Dad, and they were both itching for an excursion after dinner (a couple glasses of wine upped the enthusiasm, I'm sure!) Our finds convinced them that they don't need to spend all that much on groceries anymore. Tina was more than excited at what we found, and happily took photos for the memory.

Bell peppers!

8/28/10

Tonight was the most prolific night of scavenging. Here’s what we found:
3 bags of kettle chips, 2 kinds
1 chocolate macaroon cake
2 tetra pak rice milks
9 sodas
...2 4-pack mango blueberry muffins
1 package tortellini
1 bag of pretzel nuggets
5 pack almonds
1 box cereal
half a watermelon
2 6 pack applesauce
2 dijon mustards
1 sparkling water
1 bottle of red wine
1 tub sundried tomato feta
1 package colby jack
2 cans pinto beans
1 can black beans
2 bags plantain chips
1 lb bar of dark chocolate
1/2 gallon half and half
1 tub hummus
1 jar cocktail sauce
1 bottle watermelon juice
1 bag frozen white corn
7 bananas
1 gallon sweet tea
TONS of flowers.
 

While I stuff my face with key lime pie, Sasha and Maddie make strange, excited faces for pita chips and licorice, respectively.  

8/31/10
August is over! This morning I wake up feeling like I got kicked in the ribs last night, all night. My limbs are cramped and sore, as though from having slept in a cramped, cold, hard place, with somebody who takes up a lot of space when they sleep…oh yes. That is because I slept on a ledge, under some bushes, the branches of which were digging into my ribs as Sasha rolled me into them all night. And it was cold. We got into San Francisco yesterday on the train from my Dad’s, spent the day walking around, and called it a night pretty early. We had lunch with Dianna today, and on the way back to her new place in Berkeley, which we are all still very excited about, and our propensity toward vehicular disaster made its way into the situation. The car stalled as we were driving away from the gas station, on a particularly busy street; Despite the hazard lights, everybody around blared their horns in utter belligerence, and we just happened to roll into an empty parking spot around the corner. Listening to the sound of the ignition, looking for the battery light, and feeling the rumble of the engine as it died, we put to use our all-too-well honed mechanic skills. We placed our bets, and it appeared our consensus matched with the opinion of the AAA guy who came to tow us away. Fuel pump!
9/1/10
With a 12 hour drive to Tucson ahead of us, the day couldn’t pass more slowly. Just as we came into the city, so we shall leave, with a somewhat last minute, haphazardly arranged Craigslist ride. We can’t leave until about 8pm, so by the time we reach our destination I’m sure our brains will be wiped clean. Goodbye for now, San Francisco. Until we meet again!