Post-First-Snow/Variety Show

Music.

It's there, although it seems it isn't. The un-sound of the world around me in a snowstorm is unmistakable; as has been posited many a time, it's not a muffling, nor an absence of sound, but rather a constriction of wavelengths, the shortening & refining of the frequencies of certain elements: feet on snow, breath, the snow itself falling.

On a blizzard-y day, you can hear forever.

Roadtripping from island to island on the way to Bellingham last weekend, I stumbled on the track 'The Gloaming" by Radiohead. God, it's bass-heavy. I wanted to throw myself up against a speaker bank & let go; while I don't miss the scene at all, nor a lot of the people in it-at least the ones I knew when still going to house parties & raves & CD release parties, their glazed-over demeanors too much finally-there's something about bass-heavy music that's so primal I can't stay away from it. Ecstatic stasis: the rhythm & frequency of something matching a heartbeat, a breathing pattern, a circadian emotional rhythm equal to your own, whether you recognize it or not.

Some band who'd clearly idolized Everclear a little much in their adolescence played in Bellingham last weeked. They tried to cover Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man" 2 octaves too high, in a major key, with no banjo. Something in my inner ear shattered. Then we left the bar.

What frequency, what tonal compunction was it, I wonder, that brought me to you? That held me in place, head flung back, waiting? No matter. It's winter again. Everything is tuned down a half-step, its key shifted from minor to major, sleep & snow & flat light slowing everything to a pace we all match-here on the edge of this piece of land, ocean on three sides, parallel highways on the other.

There's a specific pitch to tires rotating over asphalt. A different one to your forehead on mine. Yet another to our voices-whether I should put them together, or split them into clefs, I'm not sure.

The wind is throwing snow from the cedars into the windows, across the roof: cymbal rush. I've settled into a beat here that I think I can sustain. I write letters. Poems. Sometimes I sing. These words are so far-flung, and so close to one another, like a chorus singing rounds: make new friends, but keep the old. One is...

One is ever a currency; a ha'penny for a tune, minstrel, bard.

All of a sudden?

Sometimes I wonder if, because I'm short of stature, my growth occurs in heart and mind, since it cannot in body; sometimes, it feels as if I'm catching up to myself, doing so in leaps and bounds, growth spurts of the spirit that I can't keep up with, and it lays me out, and builds me up.

This last weekend is an example of such growth, that, like the Grinch, my heart has swelled up to 20x its size. After a long and raucous 'family' dinner (for we've cobbled together a family here, of friends & fellow volunteers), and a decent night's sleep, nine of us trooped out to Tarboo Bay for some conservation work, consisting of pulling invasive English ivy from a location around the beach from the bay. The water was low when we arrived, and we picked our way through piles of driftwood stacked feet high, into our site.

The weather was clear but brisk, and the bay itself a wide, glittering stretch of water. Few houses lined it. Old pilings dotted the way out to sea. It smelled of mud and beach grass and pine. We worked. And while we worked we shouted. We hollered and cussed and hacked things with tools, pulling mats of ivy up by hand & stuffing them into burlap sacks. We talked nonsense: meatloaf pizza, the movie 'Deliverance', Bill Clinton, a record number of 'your mom' jokes, and 'that's what she said' one-liners. The wind blew in. Someone hacked up a stump. The stream bank was slick with mud. Someone else tried to run up it and failed. And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed.

Gut-constricting, leg-crossing, contorting laughter. At everything. At the names of plants, invasive or not. The girls at the boys' manly posturing with pruning shears & hoes. The boys at the girls' occasional shrieks of disgust. At the wind, the bay's nearby waves against the shore; at the gulls. At life.

It was backbreaking work, but. After only 2 hours, we all felt exhausted. The clouds had rolled in a bit & the wind was now whipping through the trees. Yet we detoured several times on the way home, tarrying in old-growth apple orchards, long abandoned, to shake down & pick up as many as we could. More laughter. Someone stepped in bear scat, prompting a lengthy discussion of shitting in the woods in its varying forms. Bags & bags & bags of apples. Blackberry brambles. Exhaustion.

I called it being "blissed out on life"-this curious & overwhelming feeling of satisfaction with the day, with the people around me, with the world. I feel smug, & sated, & overdone with the joy of all of this: apples & headwaters & laughing, with the revelation of being both small in a huge world, and big enough to take it all in.

I learn. Every day. My heart is expanding with thankfulness for what I'm taught. Today I learned to be forthright, firm & fair all at once. To wrangle back neediness in favor of love; the fallibility of what we become when we're shrewish & tired & want only to be comforted, when what we ought to do is give comfort instead. To accept my own distances-from myself as well as from others, the perspective gained by maintaining proximity: human beings can orbit each other, too, when they need to, & sometimes they must.

I'm taught that I'm capable of this-that I can take responsibility for what I'm good at, or bad at, or must be cognizant of. That this should not mean an argument, or hurt feelings, or a slight. That it simply means that I'm here, and present, and must therefore be willing to be fallible.

To be humbled.

I am. Because, as easy as it generally is to say the opposite, to dwell on a sliver in the skin, the chill instead of the warmth that comes after, it humbles me to give pause and then say that, irrefutably, my life is amazing. And more than that, that I am surrounded by stunning people who teach me something new every day-about them, about myself. About what it means to give, to teach & be taught. About laughing.

At everything. Every single day.

Poetry break!

This was inspired by an absolutely incredible day of, first, conservation work, and then, a little apple picking expedition with friends.

Apple-picking in Late Afternoon

And, when we’d come back—across cloud-gray piles

of driftwood, beach grass

laid flat by the tide, jeweled with tiny mussels—there

were apples

shook down from trees into hands

puckering mouths

unable to contain the shouting laughter

that had rung out all day

stringing together—the baritone and alto and high

we strange

seabirds, we gulls

and now, we grazers, joy-slaked

juvenile deer, rubber boots stamping out

our stakes: this patch of nettles, this old-growth

orchard—hills swept with wind

and with light—this

red-leafed spreading tree,

to which we can do little

but gasp, and paw, and exclaim—

look at it will you

just look

just look

"And that was no small thing, the pain you felt..."

This poem has been coming back to me time and time again all week long; or, rather, the final two lines of a poem-what I believe might be the most poignant sonnet I've ever read, written by a dear friend of mine.

We all agreed, on one day or the other this week, that it had been the hardest to date. I can't say for certain, beyond work woes, or being short on gas money, or just flat out being overwhelmed, why anyone else had such a rough time, but in a nutshell (a large one), here's mine:

As aforementioned by J-Sqwalles, one of our team members, I found a dog in Port Angeles. He was skinny, dirty, scared, hungry, and alone, and a golden retriever to boot. Who's NOT a huge sucker for golden retrievers? Seriously. After much coaxing and several pilfered chicken breasts, myself and my friends Marie, Elizabeth, Paige managed to get him into Elizabeth's car, and drive him to the Humane Society.

It was a bit of an ordeal, but after a quick exam and a scan, it was determined that he was not tagged nor microchipped, and as the HS was closing for the weekend, they advised that one of us take him home and care for him. We left Marie's phone number.

I christened him Persy, and after a bath, being made much of, and several metric tons of treats, he was doing much better. We played fetch. He came home to Port Townsend with me and slept on the bed. His tail filled out with brushing, and he came when I called him, even by this new name. I have had golden retrievers all my life-as my father's field dogs, who swam and hid and fetched dummies and ducks, as puppies from litters we donated to the Guide Dog organizations to train. My own last, most loved pet was a golden named Winston. Persy was no exception. I loved him immediately.

A week or so later, it came to rise that Persy DOES have an owner, a very nice lady named Lorraine who entrusted the care of her beloved dog to the wrong person, a person who tied him up outside alone and left him, and didn't bother to go looking for him when he got lost. Lorraine wanted to come pick Persy up immediately. It was Monday.

It was also on Monday that I walked into my 4th grade classroom, where I work with several very troubled and problem children. They are my 'boys'-a freckled, tousled, motley little crew who, no matter how many pencils they sharpen during class, or bathroom breaks they take, or loud noises they make, are still doing their best. They're doing the best they can. I was told that B., one of the students I'd been working with, was unexpectedly pulled out of school, and moved. His parents were perpetually late, or not in attendance at his conferences and plays and presentations. They were on welfare. B. has been sleeping on relatives' couches and floors for weeks. And now he was gone. All that progress was gone.

Lorraine called again. Her aunt and uncle would be in Port Townsend that evening to pick Persy up. Persy, my now-beloved dog, who I hadn't slept without since I found him. B. was gone. Just a couple of days ago, we sat in my classroom eating Dum-Dums mystery flavored suckers and doing fractions. He was learning. He WANTED to learn.

My friends were stressed out, too. I'd been getting texts and calls all weekend. My best friend, my rock, is on the verge of a divorce. I had $20 to my name until payday.

Lorraine called again. She really is very sweet. She praised my care of Persy.

"I want to send you some money," she said, "for the vet bills and other things. And a reward, I'm just so grateful you found him!"

But I don't WANT a reward, lady! I want the dog! Can't you see how badly I want the dog?

"Ok, well, my aunt and uncle will be there to pick him up soon, I'll have them call you."

I had to leave the classroom. I went outside in the chilled sunshine, and sat on the back steps, and cried. Yes, I cried. What else was I supposed to do?

Lorraine's aunt and uncle showed up. Persy looked confused for a second as we loaded his box of treats, food and new toys into their truck. He wagged his tail first at me, and then (oh, the relief...), at them. They tied him up in the truck bed and drove away. I cried more when I saw him hang his head over the edge, looking back at me. I cried while I walked to the mail box. I cried when I got into bed at home.

And then this poem came back to me, perhaps in my sleep. Perhaps the next morning, which looked as sad as I felt-full of fog and misty rain:

"I wanted to give you not was but is.
Love, all I could build to give you is this"

It had always seemed to me so melancholy, until I thought of my parting conversation with Lorraine.

"Do you eat fish? Salmon? I just feel like I should send you something. I can't thank you enough."

About B. and his efforts and his serious little face over his math homework, and how instead of getting testy, he'd finally started to smile at me instead.

About all my friends. The new ones. The old ones. The ones I've yet to make. About how this is, indeed, a two-line testament to what we're all doing, in AmeriCorps, and in our daily lives.

We are not here to do what's "right"-should I have sent Persy back, not knowing if he'd be well taken care of? What about B.? How do I know what's right for him?

We're not here to do what's definitively "right", or to tell someone what's wrong. We're not here to do things by the book, nor to do whatever we want.

We come here, and we do our best. We do the best we can. We build our own this: our own little towers of heartache and compassion and pride, and we stand beside them, knowing that they still stand, no matter how crumpled, no matter not white nor picket.

We do what we're asked, and more. We do the best we can, always.

* from "Late Valentines" by Derick W. Burleson (Never Night, pub. Marick Press)

Little Hamlet By the Sea

I can't believe I live here...

It had never occurred to me that I might fall immediately in love with this new place, and yet it's happened. We're right on the water. The fog rolls in off the strait and covers everything at night. The atmosphere and sea-smell are similar to coastal Alaska, and there are gulls and seals and otters in the harbor. All weekend long I drifted around the docks looking at boats: trawlers, sloops, dories, dinghies, and long-liners, inlaid with hardwood or mother-of-pearl. Boats that people live on, handcrafted, that are a way to make a living but more than that, here, a way of life.

I've met so many people, and absorbed so much information in the last week and a half. There are 40 volunteers with the North Olympic Corps this year-more than they have ever had. And every single one of us brings something enlightening and new to the table. It was incredible to be welcomed to the job and this new place by an entire group of people who are cohesive, united in our differences perhaps more than our similarities. Whether it's at work, or sitting around at the local pub over beers at dusk, or wandering around town, I've been impressed upon by our backgrounds and stories, by how much everyone wants to be here, and how certain we all are of what we're doing here, and why.

It was difficult to leave Alaska, knowing that it's home, having thought that I'd never feel comfortable somewhere else. My sense of community was eroding, though, worn down by more frequent instances of violence in the city, by the feeling that something was missing, and not knowing what. I feel here like a child must when learning to walk: surrounded by things that are stunning, fragrant, delicious and now attainable. We are all embarking on the missions we set for ourselves out of altruism, preparing to work on improving the environment, housing, education, and the lives of children. There are festivals and live music and fruit trees laden with pickable things.

I am taking my first steps. I am rushing headlong into the world, to make it the world I want it to be. Volunteers will be awarded exactly $11,800 in stipend/living allowance for an entire year. Most of us have applied for food stamps, heating assistance, and transportation assistance.

I have never been so rich.

You're a poem of mystery/You're the prayer inside me.

So I'm stubborn. Ruthlessly so. When it comes to taking someone's advice in regards to music or movies or which book to read, I tend to adamantly refuse to do so until weeks or months after the fact. The lines that title this blog are part of an Iron & Wine song; Iron & Wine being a band I flatly refused to listen to, simply because everyone and their dog seemed bent on telling me how good they were. How I'd probably never heard of them. I'm stubborn about taking advice. I'm stubborn about letting go.

I let go totally once. Three-quarters of the way up a mountain face, trying to run a line back down, dangling from a thin, green-barked tree. Hanging into a glacial waterfall.

To be fair, I didn't get hooked on a 'pure' Iron & Wine album, but rather a collaborative EP called "The In the Reins EP". Iron & Wine collaborated with a band called Calexico to produce the record, and it is this record's title track that's caught me thus: a low-toned string harmony behind a deceptively simple-sounding acoustic guitar. And then out of nowhere, a deep, strident voice that sings over the instrumental in Spanish.

The singer sounds like he's ready to give up, and yet, is still noble, and there's a nobility to that, too, isn't there? Being left standing alone and choosing not to follow what's moving away from you. I lost my line coming down the scree. I had no choice but to leave it. The sun was out.

Iron & Wine came to Anchorage last year. By the time I caught wind of it, the shows were both sold out. Back then I didn't really care. I wasn't aware of the EP that would knock my wind out. Of course, back then, I didn't know why I'd want it to, why I needed the strings and that noble Spanish verse. I didn't know that without them, I couldn't cry.

The sun was out but glacial runoff is never, never warm. It was either this, or go back up the mountain. And the tree was slick, so I let it go.

It terrifies me that it's all out there now, here, typefaced and silhouetted against, well, the Internet. As if by my own hand, by choosing to put it into words, I've already lost you. Oh, not entirely. You'll resurface someday, while I'm still chilled from this fall, from the lung-crushing weight of the plunge, legs shaking, chest contracted. You'll say hello, maybe. Maybe you'll ask how things are for me. You may very well say nothing at all.

Because that's how cold it is, how indescribably cold, that water. And I knew I could get out of it, and the heat still beat down on the top of my head, while above me the scree rattled: another runner coming down, someone else either very confident, or completely lost.

I'm stubborn, you see. Stubborn about letting go. Save for that one time, just once, up high on a mountain whose jagged scree and dusty, narrow trails cradled me. Save for the day we met, the day you walked out into the sun from the confines of a coffee shop and shook my hand.

Behind me the little tree snaps back into shape. In front of me, though I don't know it yet, you bend to pet my dog, the straighten again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding out for the sight of the trail again. Somewhere in the middle, I'm holding onto you.

But I knew this was it, didn't I? I knew the second I laid eyes on you that in one way or another, this would be it for me. I repeat this over and over and over, to anyone who asks. To some who don't.

I turn the first track of my first Iron & Wine album on again. And I run, now, years after cutting my shins & bruising my hands on the rocks on that mountain. Outside where it rains, where the rain makes tears and sweat taste like the grass that grows where river meets sea. And sometimes I find I can cry.

And most days, I find, one or two things drop, like my body from the cliff face, like a bird diving for moths. Most days, I find, I let a little more go.

Glen Alps/ Flat Top with Jason

On Tuesday I spent almost 5 hours hiking around a popular area outside Anchorage: Flat Top Peak. The weather was perfect, a sky so blue it seemed false. My friend Jason & I made it a point to climb the peak all the way to the top, which, strenuous though it is, provides a breathtaking view of the city, Cook Inlet, and the mountains surrounding the sea. The below pictures from the hike make me wonder how I can leave this place at all...