Best of Wilder Coast: The Year of Magical Thinking

This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.

On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.

To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking.  Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.

And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.

My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive  five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bok choy.


And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking!   Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.

That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.

In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.

Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.


My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks.  Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.

As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.'  That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'

OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.

All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down  and the coffee was poured,  I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.

'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'

I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'

My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time.  My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.

Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year  was looking to be a very intriguing one.

My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.

The Curry

My brother in law, Brooks, has this great cookbook that he cooks out of nearly every night.

I don't use it because I already have a couple of recipes under my belt. I cook them from memory. Also I made them up. One is Black beans and 'stuff' served straight, the other is black beans and 'stuff' over quinoa.  I call it Mexican Mash 1 and Mexican Mash 2, and I eat them every day on an alternating schedule.

But then Brooks got an Ipad from his parents as a birthday present. He downloaded this app which is an interactive Mark Bittman cookbook with a picture of Mark himself on it. It was cool. Actually, it was baller. I started playing with it.

I found a recipe for a winter squash curry. It was easy and turned out to be such a success that I made it the very next day for my cousins. I had Lisa over the next night, and I made it for her, too. I served it to three different friends in four days. They all thought I was brilliant. They didn't know that it had taken over my life.

All of this cooking had me running back and forth to the grocery store, always for the same ingredients: onions, peas, squash, coconut milk, green beans and chard. I'd lap the produce section, then float towards checkout, making direct eye contact with my fellow shoppers. Have a look in my cart, I dared them. Just look at my vegetables. I am better than you.
 

 

For two weeks straight I made the curry every night. Then one day at work, I realized mid-chew that I couldn't swallow another bite of it. I was done. And instead of listening to my body, I soldiered through and took down what was already in my mouth. Then I put the lid back on the Tupperware, and put it back into my lunch bag. Then I threw up.

 

I knew I'd have to throw the rest of the curry out. But each day when I come home from work, I throw everything onto the floor and I run away. I run away to my bed, or to the bathroom, or to the fridge or the computer to check the Internet in case someone extraordinary has emailed me with some life changing news. I do this every day. So, that day, I threw my lunch bag on the floor and left it there. Then, because I am so busy and important, I forgot about it.

Five days later, I tripped over that bag where it was still sitting in the living room. I'd better tidy up, I thought. I picked up the bag. It was heavy. So I reached inside of it.

 

 

The curry. It lives.

Horrified, I put the curry on the kitchen counter and decided to deal with it later.

But that night I went climbing. I was out late, and when I got home I was very tired. I decided to deal with the curry on Monday.  Stop me if you see where this is going.

Monday

Tuesday, I began to really dread dealing with the curry. I thought about how it would smell when I removed the lid. Part of me just wanted to chuck the whole container,  which would be so easy, and so wrong. I really, really, really, really didn't want to deal with it. I decided to put it off till Wednesday.

Tuesday

But by Wednesday, I had literally forgotten all about it.

Wednesday

Thursday, I was also extremely busy.

Thursday

  And then, one day,  I got home and it was gone.

Brooks had dealt with it! He'd thrown it away! I was so happy!

 But later that night, I went to the fridge for a string cheese.

And guess what I found in the fridge.

It was the curry!

Brooks had put it in the fridge, thinking it was still good!

It was not over.  

The right thing to do, the grown up thing to do, would be to remove it from the fridge and dispose of it properly. But then I realized, you know, I could just leave it in there. It's only a matter of time before my sister happens upon it. Then, hungry and unknowing, she'll reheat it and try to eat it.

This could work.

Leave it in the fridge and wait for this all to play out. Or throw it out myself now and move on with my life. I wish I could say it was over. But it's a debate that rages on inside my head to this day.

The time my yoga teacher forgot to wear panties

This time last year, a brutal heat wave was mowing down the city of Seattle. Unaccustomed to anything besides temperate and neutral temperatures, (much like their personalities,) the town's inhabitants ran for cover. Every major and minor department store was sold out of fans and air conditioning units for all of July and August, all espresso served was strictly iced, and commerce more or less ground to a halt. (And I couldn't wear my Ariat Rodoebaby boots, it was too darn hot!)

Not a stranger to heat but not particularly comfortable with it, I did an admittedly strange thing. I opted to seal myself into a rubber floored room, where the temperature, set at a beastly 104, was only a few degrees warmer (and on a few scorching days, a few degrees cooler) than the streets outside. I had come across the kind of unbelievable coupon that you simply cannot turn down: ten hot yoga classes for a mere twenty dollars. Total! The studio, I Love Hot Yoga in the Greenlake neighborhood, was hosting a grand opening promotional, after which classes would be set at twenty five dollars a piece.

If you live in the United States, than you've heard of Hot Yoga. It's the obnoxious exercise craze in the same vein as yogalates, pilates, and plain old for-the-wimp-normal-temperature-yoga. Hot yoga makes you sweat so much that it has the power to radically reshape your body and knock out the deep seated toxins that chew on your kidneys. It's a panacea for those with chronic illnesses and a speedy (but not easy) highway to getting in shape. I was neither sick nor particularly out of shape, but I did have my face to consider.

I have a round face, something that strangers of all ages feel compelled to point out to me. "You look like my camp counselor," a little girl said to me the other day at the ice cream shop. "I am a camp counselor," I responded indulgently, leaning over to be at the level of the little girl, adorably dressed in polka dot stirrup pants and a rainbow patterned t-shirt. '"Yes," she said, flashing a sweet smile. "You have a circle face, just like her." I straightened up. Little girl just brought up my biggest insecurity about myself. And by the way little girl, polka dots and rainbows look stupid together. Choose one or the other.

The truth is, I'll never achieve that high cheekbone, doe eyed, mysterious look that I feel I should look like -being a writer and all. At least not until I lose a few pounds off these cheeks. Which was exactly what I planned to do at Hot Yoga. The fact that all of Seattle was slow-roasting just made it easier to sign up. Since I'd be suffering either way, I may as well get some good out of it.

What surprised me about my first session was how much I truly enjoyed it. I am chronically inflexible, but stretching is much easier when all your joints are piping hot. The yoga teacher was an attractive young man with an Australia accent, and the sheer volume of sweat that poured out of me was incredible. It ran in continuous rivers from my hands and forehead, saturating my brand new Whole Foods yoga mat. Because of the heat wave, I think he was a little concerned for our overall safety, and he treated us with extra compassion. We were allowed to drink water whenever and leave the room for a breath of fresh air as many times as we'd like. Each time the door swung open and shut, a heavenly gust of cool air swept through the room.

After the ninety minute class was up, I weighed myself on the scale in the studio's bathroom. My jaw dropped. I was two pounds lighter than I had been before the class. This was remarkable. In just nine more sessions, I could sweat my face off entirely! Ecstatic with achievement, I burst into the hot afternoon, feeling cool and elegant and toxin free.

Spurred by success, I enlisted my friend Kendra to sign up, and together we made a nice ritual out of it. An hour and a half of steam cleaning our insides, followed by cucumber sodas and a swim in Green Lake. We were both losing weight and, I must say, feeling really good.

And then, of course, things went south.

I was seven or eight visits into my ten pass visa when it happened. Kendra had to work so I went alone, and thank god, because if Kendra was present for what happened next, we would most certainly have lost our minds. Or at the very least, we would have made a huge scene in a very crowded yoga class, and public scenes are never as much fun in Seattle as they ought to be, owing to the bland nature of the natives.

I sat in the front row in my tiny little top, legs crossed, arms resting lightly on my knees, completely centered and ready to begin. Once the room was packed to capacity and all was quiet, the teacher walked in the door.

Because of the drop-in schedule, you never know which teacher you are going to wind up with. Which sadly meant I had never again seen the Aussie. The woman who walked in was one I'd never seen before, and she immediately brought a new, totalitarian feel to our normally mellow and democratic yoga class. "I will not be performing the positions, only explaining them." She said by way of introduction. "Therefore, it's no use to look at me, unless you find a pregnant lady enlightening."

Dang it. She's pregnant and she's smug about it. Steeeerike one. "You are not allowed to leave the room." She continued, sliding seamlessly into strike two. "Regrettably, the studio would not allow me to actually lock you in, but do be informed that if you choose to leave, you are not welcome back in. Your movement lets out the heat, but more importantly, it distracts the other patrons." She took a moment to let that settle in before hitting us with another. "We will take regular breaks for drinking, but other than that you are strongly discouraged from drinking during poses. This, too, provides a distraction."

And so we began. The teacher strolled the room in classic pregnant lady pose- hand rubbing her stomach in small circles. Her tight tank top and short Prana skirt were dark with huge patches of sweat. She told us to bend over, twist, reach, stretch, faster. Faster and faster. It felt more like an aerobics class in Hell than anything else. When at one point someone made a move for the door, she stopped the whole program. "If you wouldn't mind waiting till the end of class to leave..." she droned, "It's just that you'll really distract everyone by leaving."

As if the exercise and 104 degree temperature wasn't bad enough, now it was really uncomfortable in the rubber room.

Towards the end of class, she worked her way towards the front of the room and sat down, right in front of me, indicating that the cool down has begun. "The emphasis will now be on holding long poses to cool your inner kayarararmambamba," -something to that effect- "your core spirit." She leaned back against the mirror and spread out her her legs, as about to stretch her quads. "Now," she said, "Sit up with your legs crossed and face forward." I did what she told me.

And what do you know, for all her enlightenment, she had forgotten her panties.


No underpants. Sans panties. Without undergarment. Nothing. Just her little yoga skirt wide open, hands on her thighs, instructing us to "Look up now, and find a focal point." Oh god. Oh God! Where do I look? I understand that pregnant woman get all in touch with their bodies but this is absurd. She must know. I mean, there had to be a draft or something. Yet she appeared calmly oblivious as told the class, "You must look inward as you're doing this cooling exercise."

I don't seem to have a choice but to look inward.

"Deeply inward."

This is when my brain snapped into what the girls at camp Onaway would refer to as 'full on waterfront emergency mode.' Look up, look down, look at the mirror, look at the walls, just do not look forward," instructed my survival instinct. "No- wait- don't look at the mirror, you might inadvertently make eye contact with someone. You must Get Out. Escape. Escape Immediately."

But what about my yoga mat? I can't roll it up...?

"Leave it. Take only yourself. Escape."

So I rose, as inauspiciously as possible, and made a beeline for the door, making an effort not to slip on the sweat-coated floor. The door swung open, letting in a cool draft and the sound of a siren from outside. Miraculously, I managed to get out of the building and onto the curb before the hilarity in its purest form burst forth from within. It took a full ten minutes until I could catch my breath again.

When the class finally ended, I ducked back inside, peeled off my mat from the floor and went dashing down the street towards the lake, never to return.

Yes, it was the last time I attended a hot yoga class. Hot yoga, where certain spirits flow just a little too freely for my taste. I'm willing to bet I wasn't the only one who didn't use up all ten passes. I mean, they tell you right there on the forms that it's not "for the faint of heart."

No kidding.

A general announcement

As many of you know, I will be away at a job from June 23- July 30th with no access to my computer.

During this absence, my blog will be maintained and published by the common household objects in my home.

Thank you very much and I hope you look forward, as I do, to what they have to say.

-Melina Coogan
Author and Creator, Thewildercoast.com

announcement

This is what happens, every time the door opens. Every. Time.

Oh hey, didn't see you come in. That's weird, I usually see everything that goes on around here. Well, anyway, hi!. hi hi HI HI HI HI! I'm so glad you're here! Before you came in I was just quietly chewing on my fish chew. I think it's a trout. Not really sure. Hey- since you're here, do you have any interest in rubbing my tummy? I'll just- I'll just roll on my back for you. Oh- oh, you -wow. You are a total natural at this. I know we just met but I feel like I really connect with you, you know? You know? Hey, if it's cool with you I'm just going to roll my eyes back, maybe close them for a while....wow. So relaxed. This is what it's about, man! I - woah. WOAH. You just moved your foot. You just moved your foot! Were you aware of that? God, I was so totally zoning out till you did that. Hey, look, there's my fish chew! Boy, I love chewing that thing. Did I mention that when I get it right, the tongue sticks out? It's totally cool. Here, let me....let me just try and make that happen for you...gotta get up on my feet for this. Chew chew chew chew chew chew chew. Hey- woah! It squeaked! Did you hear that? Did you even HEAR that? Sometimes I forget that happens and then it's like- woah! Hey! Is this thing alive? Well, okay, I'm not making the tongue stick out...maybe do you want to try that tummy rub thing again? This time if you could just be really still, yeah, yeah, thanks. Perfect. Oh, wow, now I'm really happy and WOAH! WOAH! THE DOOR! THE DOOR JUST OPENED! IT DID I HEARD IT! Don't be alarmed but - Woah! I gotta GO I gotta go SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING. I gotta BARK I gotta Bark LOUD. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back or, you know- maybe I won't. The DOOR OPENED it could be ANYTHING!

This post dedicated to Abby Crahan's dog, Jack.

Alone

I thought it would hurt more than this, the restructuring. The way life bends to reform itself after its very frame has been altered. I thought the simple things I do for my own contentedness and comfort would begin to feel thin and transparent, as they stretch tight to cover the hole left by a sudden absence. I lost a good man from my life, and with him all my sketches for that particular future I had- briefly, but fiercely- set my heart on.

But it hasn't been that way, not even after the dust settled. Instead, all the different pieces of the day feel as if they had been shaped by a master craftsman, each serving its purpose and locking into the next, holding the season together.

I've been alone these last few days on the hill. Alone in the country, which is to say that, should I want, I could sit out in the field and watch the sun whirl above me up for a week straight without seeing another soul. (For anyone who is keeping record, I don't choose to do it this way.)

Sometime last night, the temperature dropped way, way beneath prediction, and I had to climb out of bed, shivering, and pull all the windows shut. All day long, the air held a trace of autumn's snap. It was a fluke which held no promise of lasting, but I could sense the plants were startled.

The cold was a welcome respite for me. I spent the day pleasantly alone, busy each moment with things that needed to get done. I felt not a whisper of the bitter side of solitude, but in the evening, I made a point to escape the big old house, should sadness seep in along with the cold drafts that appear like ghosts from the doors and window and out from between the wood slats of the floor.

I drove to a place in town that has a big open fire inside, and pint glasses of beer, and the sounds of people eating and drinking and talking.

The gray clouds that gathered thick overhead were tinged on their underbellies with a shade of magenta of unseasonable boldness, but they blew past or dissolved before the last bit of light had disappeared, leaving the sky a clean, electric blue. I ate a warm bowl of warm tomato and cheddar cheese soup, and in the circle of lamplight on my small table, read from a hardcover book of humor writing from The New Yorker.

If there is one hour has the potential to strike me with nostalgia and sadness, it is the time when evening melts into night, a time I've always considered designed for a person to come home to find the lights on, and dinner being cooked, and someone waiting for them. But at that moment, alone with the warmth of the flames from the big iron fireplace, I felt lucky. Lucky, and fed, and nothing else.

little Italian men and my first taste of obsession

It's a strange and funny thing to spend time with the people who knew you before you had fully mastered yourself. Back when you were in high school, or younger, just bits and pieces of a self waiting to be colored and trimmed and sewn together. I remember that time with vividness, when I swapped out one identity for the next with the regularity of movie stars changing their hair, or their husbands.

Many of my old friends have come home for good, and we sit now at the cafe in town town and look back on ourselves in those younger days. We talk about the things we struggled over, the things we fought for and failed at, the things we admit now might not be worth repeating. We reflect not with remorse or embarrassment, but with humor, and fondness, as if our younger selves were merely little dolls who did outlandish things for the purpose of causing ourselves laughter and disbelief in later years.

I had dinner the other night with two of those friends Cass and Elissa- both writers- we closed the restaurant, drank a bucket's worth of two dollar margaritas, scribbled on the table and arrived at the conclusion that these stories we were sharing screamed out to be written down. Small stories, and at first glance insignificant, yet we've come to realize that what separated us in our adolescence are, like it or not, the very things that define who we've come to be.Growing up in someplace like rural Vermont, our stories revolved around the elaborate schemes we came up with to entertain ourselves. I lived (and live currently) in the middle of a land trust, miles away from anyone or anything except the three summer houses of any aunts and uncles, all vacant the majority of the year. Whenever my parents agreed to drive me and my sister into Quechee to get a candy bar at the Jiffy Mart, I would fall into fits of nearly epileptic glee.

I was not often lonely in the negative sense of the word, it's just that I was fully aware of the community that we were lacking- community in the classic, neat squares of front lawn where neighbor children play sense of the word. We're so far out that no one will actually claim us. Half of our dirt road is in West Harford, our mailing address is White River Junction, the closest town is Quechee, we went to school in Woodstock, and we're technically in North Pomfret. When it came time to plow our roads, they all dismissed us as belonging to somebody else.

From all of my unusual and creative endeavors, my arsenal against the many slow hours of childhood, this very small, admittedly peculiar detail stands out: my obsession with Nintendo. And my desperate attempt at compensation for there being no Nintendo.

We've never had television in my house in Vermont (movies, yes) and we certainly did not have any video games. The no TV I was at peace with, and had in fact already developed an attitude of slight superiority with regards to it. But as a ten year old, I was ready to mutiny on account of the video games. I fantasized about throwing myself on the stoop of any house that I knew had a Nintendo system, and begging for them to take me! Just take me in! Make me yours!

I was rabid for any device that could allow me to wile away in the hour in a gaming induced stupor: game boy, game gear, duck hunt, even Tetris would have been better than nothing. I blame my cousin Christopher, whose vast collection of electronic games was constantly replenished as new models came out. He exposed me to the stuff and then withheld: allowing me brief access during holidays at his summer house, and then bringing it all home with him when he left. I met Yoshi the green dino on their big screen TV one Christmas, and fell instantly in love. I dreamed about Yoshi. I dreamed about all of them: the Italians, the hedgehog, the ducks, the mismatched pieces of brick.

On a few occasions, I came close. So, so very close. Christopher promised me one summer to let me borrow his older version of Nintendo, but every time he visited, he had neglected to bring it. Such was my disappointment that that summer, I believe it permanently whittled away at my girlhood spirit.

Then there was that shining moment- one of the most ecstatic in remembrance- when the daughter of my mother's friend left her Game Gear at my house. They had just hit the road back to Boston after a long weekend, I walked into my bedroom, and there it was, lying alone on my bed. Feeling religious in my joy and gratitude, I lay down next to it, took it in my two hands, and turned the ON switch.

One of my most despondent moments was when, ten minutes later, they drove back to retrieve it. "Close one!" her dad said to my mom, jauntily. "Five more minutes, and we would have been too far to turn back!"

Crushing.

Fortunately, I was a do it yourself kind of kid. I could always be counted on to take matters into my own hands, even when it yielded pathetic results. One summer day when I was eleven I was woken by my own brilliant idea- of course! Why hadn't I thought of this before! I ran downstairs in my shortie pajamas, rolled out some butcher paper, and with colored pencils and intent focus, drew out the entire first level of Mario brothers. Green mushroom trees, puffy clouds, neat rows of brick boxes and question marks. Then I sketched a little Mario, cut him out, and bopped him along the drawn out landscape. I repeated this a few times, before it finally dawned on me how sad I was.

Still, A for effort.

Looking back on it, my not so super Mario world was the beginning of a long and illustrious career of faking it till I made it. Which is just another way of saying "make it work with what you got". Still others might call it "lying". I myself consider it a tool of immeasurable value, a combination of improv and resourcefulness. It's what makes one scrappy.

When I was sixteen, 8 months and one terrifying driver's ed class held in the vacant building next to the strip club away from getting my license, I hijacked the family Subaru. I drove it at twenty miles an hour towards the rope swing, a popular warm weather hang out that, at only six miles from my house, was practically in my backyard. (We live a long, long way from anywhere.) My hands sweating and my heart banging at the thrill of my own daring, I inched past the roadside swing. Thank you God, I remember thinking, because there on the riverbank stood John Maguire and some other popular boys, taking turns doing back flips off the rope. I put my elbow out the window, put the car in neutral as I had practiced, and said all casual, "Oh, heeey." Look at me, just driving past. Just driving, alone. No parents. Just driving. And they said "Oh, heeey," and nodded in appreciation. I drove past them. Then I drove home, mission completed.

I was also the girl who, for a few months in 10th grade, kept Visine and a lighter in her jacket pocket. Even though I had no need for them, as I never smoked pot. Ever. But I figured, hey, who has to know that? By then I knew that a suggestion of coolness was as valuable as coolness itself. And it worked. A friend of mine eventually put my jacket on, put his hand in the pockets and drew out my two props. "Heeeey!" he said knowingly, "I wonder what these are for!" I just shrugged and said, "Well, you know." Later that day I threw them in the trash, no longer needing their services.

I blame the success of these foils on any and all incidents of exaggeration or misrepresentation that have occurred since.

The truth is, I figured everyone had a little of this in them. A little resourceful A little scrappiness. A little do what you gotta do.

And then I moved out to Seattle, and my total and complete misjudgment became evident.

The coat rack

Lorenzo is, to the best of my knowledge, the most handsome man in all of Chile. He was raised in the valley of San Alfonso del Maipo, in a home hung on a hillside above the river. He and his three brothers served as our unofficial guides to the area, navigating us through the hydraulics of the Yesough and the Maipo, leading us to high altitude waterfalls and the bones of Pinochet's death camps. This past semester, he became the full time Spanish teacher at New River Academy.

During graduation dinner, the teachers -Tino, Lorenzo, Callie, Andy, Matt and I- headed to the porch for a momentary escape from the swarm of parents and students. As we passed through the decorated hallway, Lorenzo spotted an antique coat rack nestled into the corner. It was black wrought iron made from four thin, flat bars that joined at the base to creat its trunk, and then separated at the top like petals opening in all four directions, curling into spirals.

"Wait a meenute-" said Lorenzo in his thick, stacado Chilean accent. He stood studying the coat rack for a minute, and then removed his suit jacket. We were all dressed up for the occasion,
I had straightened my hair and let the girls paint smokey circles around my eyes and layer mascara on my eyelashes so that my cheeks tickled each time I blinked. We all watched as Lorenzo held up his coat in front of his face, measuring the distance of some space evident in his mind, but not ours. "Eet iz on my check leest of thzings to do in my life, to do thzees-" he said, and he tossed the coat across the width of the hallway towards the rack. It hit one of the curved arms and stuck, and under the momentum of its weight the rack wobbled sideways for a moment, as if it were making to fall over. In a moment that seemed unreasonably full of suspense and importance, we drew a collective breath. But at the apex of its unbalance, the rack swung instead back towards us and rested again on all four iron feet. The coat pendulumed sideways for a minute, and then hung still.

Looking satisfied, Lorenzo moved forward to take it back, and as he did he opened his hand, gripped an imaginary pencil with the other, and moved it against his palm in a check motion. "Check!" He said, with obvious triumph. Then he took the coat off the rack, threw it over his shoulders, and proceeded outside.

Some time later, as dessert was served, I sat down next to Lorenzo and informed him that I, too, had a check list, and that mine oscillated between the lofty- a completely sustainable existence- and the trivial- biting a tube of lipstick completely in half (accomplished, age 19, totally worth repeating). I inquire as to the rest of his list, and he replied with such fluidity that I really believed that somewhere, maybe under his bed in the Maipo valley or buried in a box beneath his family's mountain horse pasture, there existed a detailed, hand written list that he had meticulously created, written out again and again until it was complete, and then committed to memory.

"I will have four cheeldren," he said, " and write a booook, and be on thze world champi-ohn rafting team, and work for a seazon in Alaska on a fishing boat."

He asked on the contest of my list, and I rattled them off in a similar fashion- "Restore a farmhouse, write a boooook" (it was hard not to pick up his heavy, beautiful accent) "drive across the country, have three children." He nodded in appreciation. We kept talking, he ate his dessert, and I tried not to throw up.

********************************************************************************

The first time I met Lorenzo, I was tanned and strong and we were riding in the back of a pick up truck near the Argentinian border. The day after, I ripped out a page from a book of Pablo Neruda love sonnets, rolled it up and threw it into his hand. Then I turned my back on him and ran as fast as I could back to the car as he called "thzank you, thzank you", and then I drove to the airport and flew home.


The second time I saw him, 6 months later, I had just awoken from my night's sleep. I was staying in the tower room at his parent's house, and I emerged from the small room at the top of the stair case just as Lorenzo was walking past on the floor below. Feeling self conscious but pretty in a relaxed, tousle-haired way, I said "good morning" in Spanish, and then fell down the entire staircase.

All the way down.

Badly.

In front of Lorenzo.

Only Lorenzo.

*********************************************************************************

It's funny that we bother to make life lists at all, for all its manic unpredictability.

My Curse

I'm driving through the foggy dark of a mild spring night in West Virginia. Tino is in the passenger seat. We're talking so fast we haven't touched the radio. Behind us is the little house in Beckwith, the base for our strange little school. Across the hammocks, beds, couches, floors and porches, the kids are falling asleep for the night. Or so we presume. Teenagers have their own secret world, and when the lights go off, who knows. Who knows.

We are driving towards town, to some basement rafter's bar where Tino and I will drink beers and catch up on the months and miles between us. I haven't seen him since we said goodbye one early morning in Chile. He was half asleep, I hugged him in his wooden bunk and headed towards the Temuco aiport. We were both bruised by exhaustion. I was shaking with both sadness and relief to be leaving, deep in the fog brought on by one life quickly running out, and another poised to begin. Tino stayed behind, ran bigger waterfalls every day and fell in love with a Chilean girl named Canella.

Tino and I are both native New Englanders; we grew up with seperated by only a stretch of highway 91. We met in Chile as teachers for the school, I was 24 and he was 20. We've shared two long trips to Chile, two trips to Canada, two trips around the South East of the US. Sometimes our days together seem as if they could fit inside the space between heartbeats, other times, it seems like we shared half of our lives.

He is the kayaking, survivalist trained son of an herbologist and a Unitarian minister. He knows how to break hearts across the world, pose for a camera, and play the guitar. He's a lot of fun. And I miss him so much.
We drive down the road, high beams spotlighting the dilapidated houses on either side of us, roadside souvenirs of an area of the US that is dying. And then I see an animal in the road. At first I think it's just a shadow, but as we approach it, the lines darken and solidify into the shape of a heavy, grey and black body and a long, pointed nose. I hit the brakes and we are thrown forward. The animal freezes, then jumps up. It jumps up, as if to meet the underside of my car. Which it does. There is a thunk.

"Oh GOD!" I yell, taking my hands off the steering wheel and holding them out in front of me. "Oh my God oh my god ohmygod!!" Tino reaches over and grabs the wheel. "Oh man, you got him!" He shouts, laughing. "You got him!"

We continue driving this way, my foot on the gas peddle, Tino's hands on the wheel. I continue to say "ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!"

"If it's any consolation," Tino shouts over my hysteria, "you hit the ugliest animal I've ever seen." He was right. That long, pointed nose, that fat body, that grimmace. "What was it? What was it?" I ask.

He says, "I think it was a badger."

Eventually, I regain control of myself and the vehicle. We drive into town and sit at the basement bar, peeling the labels off of our bottles as we talk. On the way home, he points to a slouched figure on the yellow line, says "there's your animal!" and laughs.

Later on, I fall asleep listening to the girls late night whispered conversation, the raspy sounds of someone watching a movie, someone snoring. These are the sounds that used to drive me crazy as I tried to fall asleep after the long days. Now, I welcome them as I drift away, invite them to permeate my dreaming. I am so happy to be back in the secret, hushed symphony of a regular night at the school I love so much. The badger I killed, just a detail melted into all the other details, is forgotten.

Until yesterday. I am back home from West Virginia, back to my safe, square little house. I wake up late, as usual, and shuffle downstairs. I put something on the stove, flip through a magazine on the kitchen counter. And then I see it. Actually, I almost trip over it.

There is a skull on my carpet.

As far as skulls go, this is a particularly hideous one. This is not something to be mounted over the counter of a Phoenix, Arizona bar. This is not the stuff of porcelain white bone, sun bleached and anonymous. This is the skull of something that died recently, and viciously. There are bits of black and white fur clinging to the long, pointed nose. It's teeth, still filled with plant and animal decay, are twisted downward into a sneer that clearly says, I was killed before I should have died. This is the skull of a badger.

First I blame the dog. She's lying on her side in a puddle of sunlight, peaceful, and she's obviously annoyed when I wake her up in the rudest of manners. I yell and pretty much drop-kick her outside. I grab a hand towel and, which my eyes closed, pick up the skull, fingers in the eye sockets. I run through the house and toss it off the porch. It lands with a sickening thunk. A vaguely familiar thunk.

I go about washing my face and hands, violently scrubbing under my fingernails. I'm not a stickler for germs or cleanliness or any of that, but I feel as if I need to cleanse myself of any trace of that skull. It was not a friendly thing. I think of that time I was in San Alfonso del Maipo in Chile, and we drove up into the mountains and found one of Pinochet's death camps. "Do not touch anything, or bring anything home," said Lorenzo. "This is a bad place."
Then I quickly pack up my things, give one last shiver, and start the car. I go into town to write, listen to music, and forget. I take the dog with me.

When I return in the evening, the skull is back. On the carpet, in the same spot, with its gaping eye holes and grimacing, clenched mouth. The living room smells like a carcass.

This time, I can't blame the dog.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I've been cursed.

Oh my God, what was I thinking that day I turned 25, in the gloom of a Vermont mud season, when I decided to make this year my year of magical thinking? And why did I ever put it out there into the universe by writing this:

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom.

(?!)

Oh, that's right. Studded with the unexpected, rich in omens. Then that post goes and wins an award, and gets a lot of publicity, further pumping that extremely silly message into the world. I really thought magical thinking would mean more fireflies and sunsets and candlelight and train tracks and things just falling into place, la la la. Instead, it seems so far to be my year of dark magic, power animal digestion, skulls on the carpet, money magically disappearing. Not my intent whatsoever.

As I am writing this, my girlfriend Abby walks through the door into the cafe. Abby is one of my most precious discoveries since moving to Boone. Blond, beautiful and full of color, she laughs as she talks in such a way that she sounds just like a sweet, exotic bird.

I close my computer screen and give her the details of my weekend, including the story of my curse. I list to her the things that have gone wrong already since the skull befell me. Headaches, lost possessions, more money concerns. Trivial things, maybe, but this is just the beginning of my curse. Trivial things so far. (Duh duh DUH!)

"My year of magical thinking isn't going too well," I conclude, leaning back in my chair, only half joking. "I'd say it's going quite darkly."

"Don't worry," she says in her bird way. Although the story of the skull made her eyes get big and round, she tries her best to sound reassuring. "This is just life. Sometimes there are bumps in the road."

"Sometimes, you're right, I guess." I say. And then we both pause and say at the exact same moment, "and sometimes, those bumps turn out to be badgers." We're laughing and it's just so ridiculous. But then she leaves. And my coffee is cold. And I am left to sit here, staring at the computer screen, thinking. This is what I can conclude so far:

Sometimes there are bumps in the road. Sometimes, those bumps are badgers, and you kill them. Sometimes, those badgers exist in purgatory between the dead and the undead, and they haunt you and leave their mangled skulls on your carpet.

What next? I wonder.

And I do wonder.

The feeling of leaving, the feeling of staying put

I drive to the grocery store in the evening, needing only a few things. The store where I go is called the Food Lion, and it is not a very nice place, but it's close to home. As I step onto the parking lot I hear something, something I haven't heard for so long I have nearly forgotten it and the strange effect it always has on me. I freeze in place, body turned towards the sprawling, concrete building, and feel a familiar ache settle into my chest and curl inside the four chambers of my heart.

It is the sound of frogs, which means that winter is gone, and it also means I'm going to have a very small personal crisis. I always do when I hear frogs.

Some time in the past few days, the spring frogs emerged in wet places across the south, including the marsh between the Food Lion parking lot and highway 421 in Boone, North Carolina. Starting when the sun sets, they stand with their skinny legs anchored into the muck and cry their frog hearts out: that tranquil, sad, aquatic meeep meeep sound.

Ever since I was a kid, that warbly song has made me want to do funny things. It made me want to rise out of bed, pack a few of my possessions and start walking. This is before I could drive. After that, I wanted to pack up my car and drive and drive and drive. Maybe this is the effect that the full moon has on the rest of the population. Not me. The full moon causes insomnia and spontaneous photo shoots that never turn out as well as I hope. But not this.....this inexplicable blend of emotion, something like falling in love mixed with homesickness mixed with the desire to RUN and discover something completely brand new.

It feels like part of me is moored to the harbor and part of me is struggling towards open water. And it hurts.

The same strange thing would happen years later when, driving across the city at odd hours, I would catch a glimpse of apartments glowing with a strange bluish light. A television screen, or a dimly-watted light bulb, dismal hues that never found their way into my own house. The same ache of the childhood frogs would tug at my heart cavity. I would explain the feeling like this: there was something waiting for me- something I had to get, somewhere I had to be, and I had to go forward and find it, NOW. I remember once turning to my friend Miranda, we were driving on Aurora late in the evening, and doing my best to articulate it. "Do you ever feel that way," I concluded, "like maybe you're supposed to be somewhere else?" And she sighed, her hands on the wheel, and said, "maybe."

When I was little, I just felt it and fell asleep and trusted that in the morning, things would be right again. They always were, my mom would draw back the curtains, things would be cheerful and bright, and all those unnamed feelings scurried under the bed or blinked away in the sunshine.

These days, when it catches me- either by strange lights in strange houses or by peepers in marshes near grocery stores- I try like to hold onto that feeling, see it I can't squint my eyes and make out the details. What is it that I'm wanting so badly? What could I possibly feel homesick for before I've even found it?

From what I've gathered so far, it's some place, some life, where I completely belong, where the money I put into the bank doesn't mysteriously disappear. There are friends around a dinner table, something on the radio, and everyone says the things I think they should be saying. And I think I own the house. Yes, I definitely own the house. The word that sums everything up is permanence.

It doesn't make any sense. My childhood was the picture of permanence, everything in it's place, and still I felt it, like a shred of adulthood had fallen through the cracks and found me: a glimpse of things to be, where elements of life melt away when you're not looking, and answers don't exist to questions you haven't asked yet.

I stand there in the food lion parking lot, listening. On the highway, cars rush towards me as diamonds and fly away as rubies. I'm 25, I think. Is this where I thought I'd be.

I move through the halogen glow of the parking lot, and think, I'm going to buy lots and lots of food. I'm going to throw it in the car and take off. The dog and I will drive and drive and drive.
That's where you'll find me if you're looking for me. In Pennsylvania. Or Maryland. On the side of the interstate, asleep with the keys in the ignition. Just some number of hours and some number of miles away from that thing I'm looking for.

Ali Walsh Art

My year of magical thinking

This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.


On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.

To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking. Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.

And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.

My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bok choy.


And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking! Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.

That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.

In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.

Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.


My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks. Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.

As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.' That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'

OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.

All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down and the coffee was poured, I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.

'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'

I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'

My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time. My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.

Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year was looking to be a very intriguing one.

My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.

Perpetrator

Just the other morning, the police disrupted the idyllic main street coffee house in Montpelier, Vermont. They were after me. Of course.

If you have read this blog before, than you are already familiar with the scene of me working in a public location. Writing is always a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the challenge of avoiding the unsolicited comments and conversation of strangers that seem to befall me as if by magnetic attraction.

On this particular morning, Capitol Grounds was packed. The shrill blast of the milk steamer and conversations of customers blended into a cheerful, cacophonous white noise. I was typing, leaning forward in concentration and every so often rubbing my forehead with my right hand. Typical stuff.

And then the police came in and broke it all up.

Let the record show, counselor, that these events took place on the morning on March 10th, 2010. I had risen early and driven an hour up 89 to have breakfast with an old friend. She called to say she was going to be a little late, so I took the dogs on a quick walk before tying them in front of the diner. I ordered corned beef and hash. The two of us ate for approximately 51 minutes, and afterward I took the dogs for another little walk around town.

It was early spring in the capitol of our rural state, blue and calm and a warm 48 degrees in the sun. Montpelier is an eclectic town of local-food restaurants and book stores clustered around the gold-topped State House. I tied up the dogs in front of the cafe, ordered an Americano and opened up my laptop. From my seat at the window I could see the dogs, sunning themselves like seals and accepting the steady stream of attention offered by the people passing by.

I was halfway through my work when a policeman in his blue starched uniform entered the building. He was talking with the woman behind the counter, and I was unaware of his presence until he turned towards the cafe and announced, "Excuse me! Can I have every one's attention, please!"

The place fell silent. There must have been fifty people there, all looking this young, crew cut officer of the law. He was unusually short. He hooked his thumbs into his gun holster, leaned back on his heals and addressed the crowd. "Who is the owner of the two dogs tied up outside?"

I raised my hand. Fifty heads rotated in my direction.

You know that sudden, irrational guilt you feel when you see a police car on the interstate? You think, oh my God am I speeding? I'm speeding! Did I use my glove compartment to store illegal drugs again? Did I? I don't think I did? Oh god, maybe I did and I forgot? Logic goes out the Subaru window- this feeling is instinctual.

Well believe it or not, I have nearly kicked that instinct. I used to date a cop, and judging from the stories he used to tell me, he was very, very bad at his job. This guy could have had his own CHiPs-esque sitcom. Getting a glimpse of the more human, slam your thumb in the patrol car door and cry while giving a ticket side of the police force had negated my fear considerably.

Regardless, when this police officer outed me to the entire cafe as the perpetrator, I ran through a quick mental checklist. Had the dogs been barking? No. Had they made a mess of the sidewalk as Hometeam has been known to do on certain irritable banker's floors? No. Is it illegal to tie your dogs up on the street? It wasn't yesterday. Were they out there smoking a fat spliff? Were they?


"People are concerned," said the cop, still addressing the entire coffee shop. "There have been a few calls, people wondering if those dogs had been abandoned." Oh. Of course people suspected these two healthy, pure breed dogs were abandoned, at 1:00pm on this sunny day on that busy sidewalk.

"Well....they're not." I offered lamely. Everyone was looking from me to the cop to me again. The officer paused.

"Well, I just need- okay, you know what? I'm just going to go around and talk to you."

He walked around to my seat, and I was aware of how sheepish and embarrassed he looked. I was fondly reminded of my ex boyfriend. "Sorry about that....so---uh...." he brought out a little notebook from his back pocket. "I just need some, uh, some information." I could tell he was ad-libbing. "What's your name?"

I gave it to him. He wrote it down.

"And what's your birthday?"

I gave it to him. He wrote it down. I wondered what he'd ask for next. "You know officer, those dogs haven't been out there that long." He scratched his head and looked down. "I know. I just, I'm just required to have a conversation with you. And okay, I did. Sorry about that. You have a good day." And he walked out.

I turned back to my computer, feeling the eyes of fifty strangers boring into me. What were they thinking? Did they want me to skulk out of there without making eye contact, load my neglected dogs into the back of my car and head for home, where surely there was a dirty toddler and a screaming infant neglected in a crib?

Actually, just the opposite. The rest of my understandably unproductive work day was punctuated by people interrupting me, RE: the dogs. "Hey- beautiful dogs you got there! What are those, shelties? Such well behaved dogs!" Their comments smacked of support and solidarity.

Alright people, I thought, as you were. Public humiliation is nothing new to me. This may have phased some, sure, but compared to other glaring moments in my life, like falling down an entire flight of stairs in front of Lorenzo, my former future husband in Chile, this occurrence did not register on the mortification scale. I thought it had been pretty funny. And totally ridiculous.

Eventually I packed up my laptop and headed for the counter to pay, where the barrista apologized profusely. "I suggested he go around to everyone and ask them if they owned the dogs," she explained, "but he said it would just be easier to announce it to everyone. I bet that was really embarrassing."

I have heard this about motherhood: the first time the baby throws up on you- not spits up but really bblllaaarrrghhhhssss- and your first concern is for the baby and not for yourself, then you know you're really a mother. That is the way I felt, not as a mother but as a writer. You know you're a writer when life throws up on you and your first thought is 'This will make really good material!'

I considered this as I untied the dogs. A man was approaching me on the sidewalk, punk looking with a swagger, over sized headphones over his ears. He was rapping out loud and spitting as he walked. And I thought, 'Yeah, come over here! Spit on my shoes! Tell me something crazy! This will make the perfect end to this story!'

But he didn't. He swaggered past without a second glance. And as I took my neglected, starving, totally unloved dogs for their third walk around town, I have to admit I was a little disappointed.

The sudden disappearance of the Seven Teacups

Right around two years ago in an Omaha zoo, a shark was born via immaculate conception. A baby shark had been born of a virgin! It came as quite a surprise to the zoo keepers, as Mama shark had been resoundingly celibate- she hadn't even been dating. There had been no shark companions of the male sort in the tank in recent memory.

The Zoo keepers called in a bevy of biologist who proclaimed the baby, if not a miracle per se, at least the product of an extremely rare occurrence and worthy of much observation and research. And then, in front of their eyes, the infant shark was stung by a sting ray and killed. Gone. Born of virgin and dead from a sting ray barb in a number of hours.

When I heard about this via an obscure news podcast, I immediately thought of a man named David Bosworth. David was my favorite professor in college- he was casual, he came to class in flannel, he was brilliant and also brilliantly mustached. But above all, David really liked me. He also really liked my writing, which did not help my popularity in Intermediate Short Story Writing 304. Students in creative writing programs are not famous for liking each other. And this particular class, to their credit, had the guts to really show it.

David introduced me to the idea of extended analogies-small stories and occurrences that can be related to life in a much broader sense. 'If you keep your eyes open,' he told us, leaning far back in his chair, 'you will find extended analogies everywhere. Pay attention to them.' On the last day of class, he handed out a photocopied news paper clipping. The story was of a man who filmed skydivers for a living. He would leap out of the plane with a video camera to record their terror and thrill. But this one time he had leaped without his parachute; he had simply forgotten it. And you can imagine what became of him. An extended analogy of literary ambition David had scrawled on the top of the page.

And so when I heard about the short lived second coming of a shark, I immediately recognized an extended analogy of life. The miraculous and the useless swimming side by side in the same tank. Killer!
This morning, an extended analogy that I was in no way emotionally equipped for fell out of the computer screen and into my lap. The earthquake that struck Chile on February 27th rattled the very foundation of the country. Houses collapsed sideways and enormous parades of boulders were unleashed from mountain sides. It did the same inside of me; it reconfigured my heart and my head as if they were flimsy wooden structures. I began to miss Chile in that searing, sucker punch to the gut kind of way. I miss the rivers, the students, the other teachers, our unusual and voracious lifestyle, the amiable, tenuous, incredibly intricate life we had constructed together.

Then today, I reached for my computer and read that the Siete Tazas are gone.

The Sieta Tazas (Spanish for Seven Teacups) were a string of perfect waterfalls on the Rio Claro, a dazzling necklace draped into a deep canyon of black volcanic rock, exceptionally clear and bubbling. For the country of Chile it was a source of pride and income as a profitable national park. For kayakers, it was heaven on earth, and so remote that only a precious few have made it there.

I spent a few weeks on the Rio Claro last fall with New River Academy, sailing off curling lips and passing dizzying days deep in the canyon, staring up at the sky. It was vivid, pristine, and very cold. We slept by the river in a wooden cabin without electricity, we ate well and drank hot chocolate boiled in huge tin kettles.

One day we got stuck inside of the canyon. Jammed together in a tiny eddy and faced with an unrunnable rapid, we realized we would have to climb out from within the deep vertical walls. We bit into roots, swallowed dirt and scraped for footholds against the cliff. The self rescue took hours, and that night we fell headfirst into our beds, fully aware of our lungs expanding in and out. Despite exhaustion I lay awake all night, feeling claustrophobic in the total dark, heart still crashing against my chest wall. The air tasted very thick. It would have been a gorgeous place to die, but it was an even more beautiful place to be living.

When the earthquake struck, it opened up a fissure in the earth that swallowed up the water that fed the Siete Tazas. Literally overnight, the river disappeared. The Siete Tazas is now a dry, black, empty vein split through the earth. The school is scattered throughout Chile, I am separate and far away, and that wild place we loved so much is now vacant, gone, abandoned.

***

Ever since that last year in college, I have searched for extended analogies the way I look for neglected quarters on the sidewalk. I find them sometimes in newspapers, or come across them on the radio or inside stories told by friends. They are a way of feeling that your isolated experience is part of something collective and universal. They are like little wiggling arrows on a big road map. And when insurance denies you and rows of zeros blink like eyeballs from your bank statement, you are alone and far away from your friends, you sleep late and lose little pieces of your mind over breakfast, any glimmer of direction is encouraging.

Usually I find them to be pretty amusing. Like the guy falling and the shark snared in his own tank- both bitingly ironic, and irony is funny. But when the earth opens up and swallows one of its most exquisite creations, it's not exactly funny. It is bizarre. And in terms of the analogies that could be drawn, it's potentially explosive, too dismal, with too much of an element of serious melodrama. I don't even want to touch it.

So I've decided I have to think about this the way an impartial scientist would. It is a matter of geology: tectonic, random, and definitely sad. But in terms of metaphors and figurative language, I think this time I will excuse myself from the table.

Famous in a Small Town

Bad day. My home town was mean to me and I, in turn, destroyed my home town. I will begin at the beginning.

The wedding is over and the bride and groom are sunning themselves in the Cayman Islands. I'm stuck here in Vermont for two weeks as I wait for my MRI, which is scheduled for the middle of the month. In case you have never seen Vermont in mud season, let me tell you that it is misery. The lustre and brilliance of winter has melted into shabbiness and filth, huge piles of snow crouch defiantly on the sidewalk, and the twisting tire tracks in the mud roads freeze into deep ruts in the evenings.

I decided to take both dogs, Hometeam and my parent's dog Latte, into town to run some errands. To begin with, it took me forever to get out of the house. Nothing new there. Then on the way out the door I ripped a giant hole in my jeans against the side of the barn.

'Hey- relax!' you say, 'It's just pants! You could have easily gashed a hole through your leg!' In theory I agree with you, but having spent the morning reviewing my finances, I took a decidedly darker view of things. The way I see it, I own one pair of jeans- one- and based purely on my current income, I will not be able to afford another one until I am eligible for social security.

Now my pants provide the world with a window into my thigh, and things will be quite drafty south of my waist for a while.Then I got in a big fight with the woman at the bank.

I have a habit of picking up any lose change that I come across, and squirrelling it away in a
cheerful polka dotted tin. Some day after I find enough, I will put it into a high yielding online savings account, amass a few hundred thousand in interest, then write a charming book called "Spare Change" or "Spare Penny For Your Thoughts" or "The Wishing Well- How My Wishes Came True One Penny at a Time."

Today, after scouring the couch cushions, I had aggregated enough change to fill up the tin. So I was bringing it to the bank to be sorted and exchanged into bills, always a fun occurrence. At the bank outside of town, a nice white haired lady directed me to the other branch of the same bank, in the lovely stone building in the center of town. That branch had possession of a coin sorter machine, and they would be happy to help me.

I leashed the dogs up and headed for the other bank, where I happily explained that I'd been sent there to use the coin sorter. After a long ugly look, the large lady behind the counter, Diane, asked to see the coins. With a flourish, I presented her the polka dotted tin.

'This?' She asked, blinking at it. 'This is it?'

'Well, yes.' I felt deflated- this was an entire month's worth of coin hunting!

'And they sent you here? They could have counted this themselves at the other bank.'

'They said you had a coin counter here.'

'Well, we do but it's such a small amount it's going to be faster for me to just count these out by hand- Linda! LINDA- look!-' she held up my tin to someone in the back room. 'The other branch sent her here to count this!'

'Can't you just use the coin sorter?' I asked again.

'I am not going to bother. It will be faster this way'.

'Diane, please,' I said, 'Be reasonable, it's a coin counter, it's a machine, how could you possibly be faster-'

I was interrupted by the sound of coins hitting the counter as Diane poured out the tin. She shuffled the coins around with a single chubby finger and one by one began stacking up the pennies.

I just couldn't let this go. 'I'm sorry but- if there's a machine here, how could it possibly be easier to do it yourself? It's a machine!'

Diane did not look up at me. 'Because there are not enough coins to warrant using the machine.' She had taken on the tone of an irritated 2nd grade teacher.

'Yes but what difference does it make-

'It's easier for me to count it-

'But it's a machine! it's a COIN COUNTER! It COUNTS COINS that's what it does!'

'Listen' she hissed, learning forward. 'I'm not going to get up and go over there for this. I'd have to go and put the coins INTO the machine, and then take them OUT of the machine. This is much easier." (I'm not making this up).Next to us, an older man had handed over an envelope to the teller in the next window. She walked behind Diane, clicked on a small machine, poured in the coins with a satisfying jingle, and in two seconds returned to the counter. "Six dollars!" She said cheerfully, handing over the money.

Diane continued to slowly count out each coin. She had moved on to the nickels.

Finally, she was finished. "Ten dollars and thirty seven cents." She said, pronouncing every word carefully. She handed me the money.

At this point, I had declared Diane my enemy. I was about to open my mouth and tell her how ten dollars is A LOT OF MONEY TO SOME PEOPLE and you SHOULD NOT MAKE
PEOPLE FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. Do not judge me. Do not shame- but at that moment Hometeam urinated on the rug.

I don't know what was up with her, she's never done that in her life. And if no one had seen it, I would have whisked her out and not mentioned it. (I'm only being honest.) Unfortunately for me, a few customers in line had witnessed the crime and were looking at me expectantly. Knowing there was no bathroom in the bank, I yanked both dogs outside and tied them up in front of the restaurant next door.

I ran to the bathroom to grab some paper towels, and returned 20 seconds later to find Latte lying lose in the middle of the sidewalk, her leash dragging. Hometeam was gone. In an instant, I realized what I had done. Unknowingly, I had tied them up to one of those weird, tube-like cigarette holders with the base full of cigarettes. In my brief absence, the dogs had dragged it halfway down the sidewalk, where it had toppled over and broken in half. Hundreds of rain drenched cigarettes butts and red tobacco juice had spilled all the quaint corner of Main Street and Elm.

I found Hometeam two blocks away outside a ladies' clothing store drinking from a puddle. There was a middle aged man standing outside his car watching her. "Ohh..." he said to me as I ran up. "I was just waiting here because she looked like someone may have lost her"

"YEAH AND SHE'S A BAD DOG A VERY BAD DOG" I grabbed her and jerked on her leash. The man got in his car, but not before hitting me with a look reserved for bad dog owners and women who hit their children in the grocery store. And I would have BEEN one of those people if my dog were a child. And we were in a grocery store.

At this point, the mess I had planned to clean up at the bank had already dried into the carpet, so I just walked in, approached the counter and said to Dianne 'By the way, my dog peed on your carpet. Sorry.' As I walked out I was thinking 'DON'T YOU WISH YOU HAD JUST USED THE COIN SORTER NICE AND QUICK??'

I brought the dogs back to the car and tied them up on the meter. I reached into the trunk and grabbed a box of Bunny Grahams I have stashed for emergencies. In my frustration I ripped the bag open and the little bunny cookies flew everywhere, a tremendously exciting event for the dogs. At this point, my phone rang.

I wouldn't have bothered to answer it except I recognized the ringer as being a foreign number. It was my school, calling from Chile for the first time since the earthquake.

"Hello?" I asked. I heard the crackle of static. "HELLO?" A young, well dressed couple was approaching me on the sidewalk. I kept shouting at the phone. The dogs and I were taking up the entire sidewalk, and the couple had to sidle over the snowbank to get around me. The moment they passed, I heard a voice come through the other end of the phone line. "OH MY GOD CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" I shouted.

The couple swiveled their heads around, the man looked bemused but the woman shot me a dirty look. I covered the mouth piece and mouthed the words 'Earthquake! They were in the earthquake!!!' As they passed, her in her stylish red wool coat and he with smart suit jacket, I could see their pace quicken.

I could only imagine what I looked like to them, standing in a sea of bunny grahams and shouting into a phone, completely blocking the sidewalk with my unruly dogs. They turned the corner and I could picture the man saying soothingly to his wife, 'Oh, now, let' s just take pity on her. Did you see those torn jeans? She probably only has 10 dollars and thirty seven cents to her name.'

'Mmmmm' the woman replies, slipping a gloved hand through his arm. 'I wouldn't even bother to use my coin sorter for that amount.'

Someone else's 15 minutes of fame

I don't usually post youtube videos or anything random from the internet on thewildercoast, it's not that kind of blog. But as diehards will remember- I AUDITIONED FOR THIS COMMERCIAL! And for the record, I would have kicked this girl's skinny little butt. Sure, I'm not all sleek and waiflike and effortlessly pretty but at least I don't lilly-dip...on national TV!

Mistakes were made

Multiple Choice:
After following signs for the "spa/pool", this is what you come to. What do YOU think this is?

A. Small swimming pool
B. Hot tub
C. Decorative wishing fountain not intended for swimmers

WELL IT'S DAMN WELL NOT ANSWER B! Which I figured out only after I unwrapped my towel and gratefully lowered my tense, road weary body into the water:
"Hmmm, pretty luke for a hot tub- HEY, LOOK, WHAT'S WITH ALL THE MONEY IN HERE?"

Valentines 2010: The Carnage

For valentine's day dinner I decided to make homemade ravioli. I'm ambitious, determined, the embodiment of the can-do female spirit of the 2000's. WHY NOT! THE WORLD IS MINE!

Will graciously offered to take me to Earth Fare, the uppity organic little grocery place that is normally FORBIDDEN to me and my, um, poverty. Will said I could choose anything I wanted for the meal. I ran around the store as if on roller skates, throwing a pineapple into the cart, throwing random pricey oniony things into the cart, throwing caution to the wind, throwing a tantrum when the dairy lady told us the ricotta was all sold out.

First stop was my house first to use my roommate's food processor. I made the filling out of caramelized onions and butternut squash, then I made the dough, listening to blues on NPR and feeling very capable and smug. If anyone had called me on the telephone I'm sure I would have picked it up with my suave voice and said, "Oh, just making dinner...homemade ravioli....mmhmm....no, no pasta maker, I don't believe in unnecessary gadgets....oh, it's nothing,really, I make everything from scratch...." Thank GOD nobody called me, so I didn't have the chance.

Then we packed it all up, louge-ed down the driveway, and drove to Will's house where the ravioli assembly began. We rolled it out, cut it out, and began to meticulously fill and seal each ravioli. I crimped each one down with a fork and they looked....they looked just like Ravioli! We were doing it! I remember feeling very masterful, very cool and collected.

It only took about 3 1/2 hours. Total! It was only 11pm when dinner was actually served- whatever! That's how the Europeans do it! But it was all worth it when we threw them into the pot of boiling water and five minutes later served up.....the most unsightly massacre of Italian culture ever to be served on a dinner plate.

DINNER'S READY!!!!!

Something went wrong. Something happened inside that boiling that pot that was....unholy. I really have no idea what happened.

Yes, I made it. And yes, we have to eat it. But look on the bright side- at least we're not prisoners of war! Happy Valentines day, baby!

falls apart, slowly...

Migraines are destroying me. Two weeks ago while cutting a grapefruit, an electric current cut through my head. It was the act of stabbing- the way my wrist and my arm tensed in quick jabs to cut through the fruit- that caused the sudden onslaught of pain.

The headache lasted for two weeks. It ebbed at times, and I was able to sit and write for a few hours, go to the food store, take the dog for a walk. These little things were huge triumphs for me. Other days I didn't get out of bed, knowing if I moved a muscle or tormented my eyes with sunlight, the headache would come rushing back full force.

Some people drive fast. Some people smoke things, drink things. Some people, like my roomate's boyfriend, chew up and swallow a glass cup (on a dare). They all turn out fine, but I- I can't get away with SLICING A GRAPEFRUIT.

When I wasn't alone, I spent most of my time with Will. I was a miserable person to be around- all distance and helplessness punctuated with sudden, urgent demands: Turn off the music, close the shades, help me get out of bed, I can't finish the dishes, shut the door. Stop talking, I'd say, I can't hear anything right now. And then, five minutes later when the pain mysteriously evaporated, I'd become agitated, animated, scared to death that I had pushed him away for good this time. Talk to me! I'd plead. Tell me what you're thinking! Let's go outside- let's do something together.

We'd agree to go outside for a walk. He'd go to the other room to get his coat, and when he came back I'd be flat again, curled into a crescent in the sheets, pain once again blossoming behind my right eye. Turn the light off- I'd tell him. Shut the door.

My brain on reality

Seriously. Does anyone else feel this way?

The last hoorah

I'm outside the city of Pucon, Chile, on my hands and knees on the dirt on the side of the road, fingernails digging into the dirt, throwing up. The tension in my skull is momentarily relieved. I can open my eyes without the evening sun gouging them. When I climb back into the car, Matt, Dave and Andy are silent. Someone rolls down their window.

I don't mind vomiting from a migraine. Besides providing a slight- albeit temporary- relief, I find it proves a certain point that is difficult to otherwise get across: just how cruel the pain inside your head really is. You can be curled up in fetal position on the couch, a sweatshirt tied around your eyes, hands clenching and unclenching in some sort of primal pain response. You can be crying, silently, and breathing in quick labored breath, or sitting in a cold shower with the lights off and your clothes on and still you get the same response: Headache? Do you want an Advil?

There you are, brain swelling until it bursts over and over, and someone offers you a pharmaceutical normally taken for muscle aches. It's is ludicrous. If you could, you would remove the sweatshirt and tell the person politely just how misguided they are. If you could, you'd ask them to go get you a hack saw so you could cut open the roof of your skull, give yourself a skylight into the brain, to relieve the pressure. You really would. But you can't talk, and you can't move.

But when you throw up, it's a new ball game. Your migraine thrusts itself rudely into the lives of others, comes out in the open. It's especially poignant when you are sharing a confined space with other people, such as a car, especially when you are driving back to another small cabin with a shared bathroom. Especially when your having to pull over and double over on the side of the road is making them late for something. Suddenly, they have to deal with your headache in a very real way. It's sort of satisfying.

Back at the our cabin, the 9 kids running around with sticks and a BB gun shooting at dogs, I walk with a scarf tied around my eyes to my bed, hands out in front of me, feeling along the walls. The kids want me to come play with them. I tell them no, as usual, that I'm not feeling well. As usual.

The modicum of relief allowed to me at the sacrifice of my dinner is gone. My head is filled with metal butterflies beating their barbed wings, banging around my skull looking for the way out. I can't help but buzz with bad metaphors. This thing in my head wants to be named, wants to be recognized. Just as I think the butterflies cannot beat their wings any faster, they open terrible mouths and sink their rows of shark teeth into my brain.

The butterflies are sharp and vicious- the stabbing, the fine bladed knife etching a story into my gray matter one letter at a time. But there is also another kind of pain, the dull, pulsing pressure. Picture a ball, the size of a baseball or a fist, rolling around the base of my skull. I tilt my head to the right, just the slightest bit to reposition on the pillow, and ball of pain rolls to the right, bangs to a stop. I turn my head to the left, it rolls heavy to the other side.

A parade of images is marching through my head. The dog I saw on the sidewalk today, blood seeping from a hole in its head. The dog wasn't exactly dead yet. It made the flies happy. There is sand in the sheets and the hot water is broken. Yesterday Andy washed his clothes with a stick in a bucket, later on I stood shivering in the same bucket throwing teacups of cold water over my hair. I think of stupid, irrelevant things. The bones in the chicken we were served at the Achibueno, the way I picked around them, the ligaments that we pulled out of our teeth. The time we ran out of gas on the highway and Dave, Andy and Matt ate from a bag of leftover turkey and bread, grease everywhere, using the hood of the car as a picnic blanket. I had lay in the grassy ditch near the highway, hungry, a headache swirling behind my eyes. I began to think, I'm losing my edge for this lifestyle.

The bloody crusade in my brain continues and I'm helpless. Tino opens the door a crack to check on me but I whimper for him to shut it, the slice of light seeping in unbearable. He goes away. I kept thinking about the girls, how they stayed home from the river one day to bake with me and I was late, I had forgotten all about it even though I had promised them. I think about the way my heart scurried like an animal in my chest the time I was stuck in an eddy about a huge, unrunable rapid in a canyon, how I spit with fear and cried.

I try to take control over my thoughts. I count the days until I go home- 7 days? 8? If I have to lie here in my bed until then, I will. I think about my home, clean sheets, evening light on snow. Everything clean, cold.

When it's dark enough, I take a sleeping pill. I wilt into a strange sleep. The headache lasts for three more days. On the final day, we throw a birthday party for Clay. We're at a hotel in Villarica, playing croquet and making ice cream. It's a lawn party. There is wine barrell hot tub, still cool, the water heated by a wood stove. I curl up in it, lay motionless under the water for three straight hours. By this time the water has warmed sufficiently. The kids join me and we're all having a good time.

By this time, of course, I've come to a realization. For a year I have been travelling with the school throughout Chile, Canada, the Southwestern USA. I'm so good at my job. I've been so happy. But I'm not up for it anymore. I don't feel good, ever. Something must be wrong with me, and I have to go home.