This is me writing a book review

Okay so Clan of the Cave Bear was interesting.  It's basically about this girl who's of our species, whose tribe all dies in an earthquake, who's found by a clan of Neanderthals who speak only in sign language, who don't cry or smile or laugh, who think she's hideous, who raise her as their own despite all the ways her frontal lobes cause her to act weird.

Here are the problems I had with this book:

1. The beginning was boring.  It was not unlike Anne of Green Gables, which starts with a whole chapter about an old woman named Marilla sewing a quilt and looking out the window.  HEY, I THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE ABOUT A REDHEAD LITTLE GIRL WHO WALKS ON ROOFTOPS.  ACCORDING TO THE COVER ART.  It eventually is.  But why, Lucy Maud Montgomery, would you start the book with the most boring chapter possible?  Oh, because Marilla totally has a bigger character arc than Anne does, because you could view her, actually, as being the protagonist because she undergoes a more drastic change than Anne - where Anne basically just matures, Marilla's cold dead heart comes back to life?  Okay then.

Anytime a book starts boringly (which is OFTEN), I think of Anne of Green Gables.  Clan of the Cave Bear is so boring at the beginning, and I was so unconvinced I was going to get into it, that I skipped to a page in the middle and started reading there. 

I told myself that if it seemed interesting I would go back and read the first part, but I never did because I never needed to.  People do this all the time with tv shows and movies.  It's really not that weird.  Same with compulsive re-reading.  People will watch a tv show episode for the 34th time, knowing it all by heart, and not think it's strange, and not feel guilty because there are so many tv show episodes out there in the world they haven't seen yet.  But those same people will tell you they don't re-read because there are too many books in the world and it just seems wrong.

Nabokov agrees with me that re-reading is the bomb:

“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”

I didn't mean to copy and paste his picture, but there you go.  I recently re-read the short story by Deborah Eisenberg, "Rosie Gets a Soul," about a recovering heroin addict who paints leaves and flowers on the bedroom walls of rich people, and enjoyed it immensely.  I am currently re-reading the novel Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams, which is the most aphoristic, perfect perfect, bizarre amazing novel I have ever read.  The plot means nothing to me.  The plot is obligatory.  The dialogue is... like if no one ever said anything boring, ever.  Instead of usually/always. 

2. Clan of the Cave Bear: the main character (whose name I already forget) (which was rough for me in school when an English teacher would give us a quiz to see who did the reading and I'd barely pass it or not pass it despite having done all the reading and having many opinions on it) (What is the name of the protagonist?: I don't know!  The Girl Whose Head We're In!  I don't need to know her name!  This is also how I am when a boyfriend tells me stories about his ex-girlfriends: I am interested but I can't remember them by name and instead always have to be like, "Wait, is she the one who shaved her arms?  Oh, well then is she the one who threw a hair dryer at you?")... uh... so, the main character.  She's a big-time Mary Sue.

From TV Tropes:

"She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.

She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal."

I mean as much as I relate to characters like this (HAR HAR) it gets old.  It makes it hard to take the book seriously.  The main character whose name I forget is not all that different, in degree of Mary Sue-dom, from the protagonist of the Twilight series.  (Not that I've read Twilight.  You know why I haven't?  Okay, there was once this library patron who checked out one of Obama's books, who called us to say she would return it only after she was done making the necessary changes to it.  Meaning, she was crossing things out and writing in the margins, because she disagreed with the book so strongly that she couldn't help herself.  As much as I think the library would benefit from having an unauthorized feminist critiqued copy of Twilight... my penmanship is too recognizable and I would be fired.)

3. Um, is this book racist?  The main character, the human among Neanderthals, has blue eyes and blonde hair and is tall.  She's Nordic, despite being from roughly the same area as the Neanderthals.  I mean it does say she comes from further north, which would be correct, evolution-wise, but she's from walking distance of the Neanderthals.  Not like, different-continent north.  I don't know.  It crossed my mind while I was reading that there was something a little prickly and uncomfortable about this white girl who's smarter than all the savages, but I ignored it.  Then when I was telling the plot of the novel to my friend her eyebrows met her hairline and she was like, "WHAT."  She thought it was racist and I was actually trying to make it sound not-racist because I wanted her to read it so we could discuss it.  I just googled "clan of the cave bear racist" and it appears other people have noticed it too.

SO.  HOW DID I LIKE THIS BOOK. 

I liked it!  Despite the Mary Sue, despite the racism, despite the boring beginning... this summer I read an article in either Harper's or the New Yorker about the co-existence of humans and Neanderthals which I found fascinating.  This was like the fanfiction of that article.

While I was on the phone with my sister tonight, for some reason the topic of Leah and Rachel from Genesis came up (I really don't remember how), and we talked about how Leah's described as having weak/soft/tender eyes, which is an ambiguous description, and Jessica made me look it up in my Bible and then google it to find out what's up with that (conclusion: some people think it means she cried a lot because she was probably going to have to marry Esau, who was bad news; some people think it means she was near-sighted; some people think it means she was the opposite of "easy on the eyes," i.e., ugly; some people [mainly my sister and I] think it means her eyeballs were smushy and weird looking), and in the course of doing so I wondered if there is such a thing as Bible fanfic.  Is there?  I just googled it, and yes.  Of course there is.  First result: Jesus Goes to Hogwarts.  God bless the internet.

Earplugs vs Acceptance

In Alaska I slept all day because I worked all night.  The first half of the summer I wore earplugs to bed, assuming that people would be noisy outside my room during the day.  And they were.  My Bulgarian neighbors would sometimes sit outside my room with a laptop to Skype home, speaking perhaps overly loudly the way you do on a Bluetooth, not trusting technology to deliver your normal speaking voice.  Sometimes they talked to each other, loud unintelligible birds to my ears.  

My earplugs would fall out sometimes, or I would forget to put them in.  And the Bulgarians would wake me up.  If I let it make me (irrationally!) mad, I would have a hard time falling back to sleep.

If I thought of it like John Cage would, as music - if I accepted that the day holds a cacophony that does not concern itself with whether I sleep - I would wake up - then listen for a little while, calmly letting my mind wander - and slowly my thoughts would stop making sense - and I would fall back to sleep.  Acceptance: much better than jamming a little piece of rubber in the ear.

Carhartts

One night during my first few weeks in Alaska I went to the Teepee (smoky dive) with a man who kept talking about his Carhartts.  

I hadn't heard of Carhartts before but I noticed he kept touching his pants when he talked about them and put two and two together.  The way he was talking was the way women talk about Seven jeans, or True Religion jeans.  Like a brand that's really cool because it's supposed to look really good because it's expensive because the manufacturers put a lot of money into making sure they fit well.

I walked a little behind him after we got out of the car, before we walked into the bar, and checked them out.  They were just like, loose brown denim pants.  I didn't get it.

Over the summer I heard a couple other men talk about Carhartts in the same way.  "I've got my Carhartts on tonight," "Well I was wearing my Carhartts at the time," etc.  And I'd always look at their pants and see that they were not particularly flattering.  Loose denim in brown or dark green or grey.

I slowly came to understand that the value of Carhartts is that they're lined with flannel, so they're really warm.  That's why people in Alaska wear them.  Not because they're flattering.  I also slowly noticed that native Alaskans don't talk about them in the same showy way that seasonal or new Alaskans do.

Which is interesting, I think, which is why I decided to write this post even though it's not a real story.  That because I am from southern California, when I hear people talk about a brand of clothes in a showy way, my assumption is that they're a) expensive, b) flattering.  But in Alaska when men boast of their Carhartts, it's for neither reason.  Carhartts are cool because they signify sourdoughness.  Sourdoughdome.  Sourdoughity.  They signify that you're a real Alaskan.  Which has to do with warmth, not money or fit.

The First Thing I Did When I Got Home Was Scrub the LAX Off Me

Sunset in Talkeetna

Sunrise somewhere over Washington state

Annnnnd I'm home.

How I Celebrated My Last Morning At Work

When Ruth, the Minnesotan woman in her late 60s walked behind the front desk to pick up her cash drawer, as she does every morning, she said, "Yayyy!  There's a bank in here!"

I thought a second, then said, "Hell yeeeah!"

It's my last morning.  I can say the word "hell" to Ruth if I want.

(She replied with a light laugh and, "I was having nightmares this morning that it wouldn't be there.")

("And that Liz Taylor had no eyelids and was chasing me.")*

*JK guys, jk.

He's Seen It All

The man whose life is a complicated word problem of math came up to the front desk this morning and said, "So I told my wife the idea of me talking about my life into a mini-recorder and she thought it was really cool."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah.  Because you know, I have stories even from birth.  Like I was born at six months."

I frowned slightly.  "Really?"

"Yeah," he said.  "I was born without eyelids or fingernails."

"What."  I looked at him, astounded.  "You're the Liz Taylor of the lodge!"

Eight Interesting Facts About This Man I Work With

1. He has been married seven times.

2. He is 53 years old.

3. None of his marriages were less than four years long.

4. He has never had children.

5. His current marriage is in its ninth year.

6. His current wife married him when she was 45.

7. She had never been married.

8. He has broken every limb (arm, arm, leg, leg) at least four times.

---

I told him that I am coming back next summer and that I am going to write "at the very least an article or interview" about him.  He's lived all over, had a ton of different jobs, including security guard for famous people who came to this one casino in the 80s, cop, boxer. 

He agreed to this idea of me writing about him even though when he said seven marriages I exclaimed, "You're the Liz Taylor of the lodge!"  I think because he knows that being the Liz Taylor of anything is always the best possible situation.

([rushed whisper] "These have always brought me luck.")

People who are hardy are inherently interesting to me.  Hence my abiding love for the Little House series.  And Sweet Valley High.

They Do

Bartender Who's Perky: "You ladies are still awake?"

One of the two women on the couch in the lobby: "Do we need to leave?"

Bartender Who's Perky: "No, you're fine."

Bartender Who's Perky: [to me] "They're so cute."

Me: Nods unconvincingly, thinking about something else.

Bartender Who's Perky: "I'm all like, 'You ladies still awake?' and they're like, 'Why, do we need to leave,' and I'm like, 'No, you're fine.'"

Me: Nods again, smiles spacily.

---

This whole exchange is important insofar as it reminds me of this hairdresser I used to have who would do this:

Hairdresser: "Oops, I guess this brush is wet!  [pause]  I'm all, "Oops, I guess this brush is wet!'"

Weirdest tic I have ever heard, maybe?  Saying something mundane, then immediately afterward saying, "I'm all," and repeating the mundane thing.  I want to write a novel where a character does that every time she appears.

---

If you're wondering if I have taken some kind of medicine or drug tonight that makes everything seem interesting and worth writing posts about, I will let you in on a little secret.  I'm all, "I will let you in on a little secret."  It's coffee mixed with Swiss Miss.  The poor man's mocha.  The poor man's mescaline.  "Do poor men need mescaline?" you wonder.  "Or for that matter, mochas?" 

They do.

Mark and I Have a Lot in Common

Two guys walk past the front desk on their way upstairs. 

I overhear one of them say, "With like, some pickles," and my ears perk up.  I am hungry right now, and I love pickles. 

I listen with interest as he continues: "And like, a really good pepper on the side.  Like a roasted pepper.  That would be so good." 

The other guy agrees, a little uncomfortably.

Halfway up the stairs the guy who is craving pickles and peppers says, "I'm Mark, by the way," and the two men shake hands.

I laugh quietly to myself.  Dammit, I'm going to miss this job.

Depressing List of Things I Did Not Do This Summer

1. Go to Denali National Park.

Autumn, the Party Van

 

 

Northern Lights and the Blue Warrior

Mt. McKinley and Northern Lights... bleached because of the full moon, captured better by my eyeballs than by my Canon point and shoot.

The Blue Warrior

The Blue Warrior is made of pens, paper clips and duct tape.  His face is a piece of soap and his eyes are two matchstick heads.  Note the bow on his back, for firing flaming arrows (more matchsticks).  In his right hand he holds a magic staff.

Fran Lebowitz cont, cont

INTERVIEWER

This all sounds so difficult. Why do you do it? What does it give back?

LEBOWITZ

The rewards of any warrior. The word that best describes my feeling of having written is triumphant—triumphant on the level of Alexander the Great. Having overcome your worst fear, the thing you are most vulnerable to, that is the definition of heroic.

Also, it’s such a worthwhile human activity. The most.

Finally, no soldier ever came to me and said, You have to be a writer, but it was decided long ago that it was a given. So when I’m writing it’s the only time I feel all right. It’s the only time I feel justified. Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I’m supposed to be doing.

Fran Lebowitz cont.

INTERVIEWER

What did you do during those five years before you started writing the book?

LEBOWITZ

I sulked. Sulking is a big effort. So is not writing. I only realized that when I did start writing. When I started getting real work done, I realized how much easier it is to write than not to write. Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I’ve ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It’s very psychically wearing not to write—I mean if you’re supposed to be writing.

INTERVIEWER

Is that because the ideas come steaming along and you feel like you should put them down and you don’t?

LEBOWITZ

Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I’m not writing I feel like a criminal. Actually, I suppose that’s probably an outmoded phrase, because I don’t think criminals feel like criminals anymore. I feel like criminals used to feel when they felt guilty about being criminals, when they regretted their crimes. It’s horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It’s much more relaxing actually to work. Although I might not strike you as languid, I’m much more relaxed than when I wasn’t writing. I’m much cheerier, I’m definitely much happier.

Fran Lebowitz

"It turns out it’s not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work. I just hate to work, period. I am profoundly slothful. Practically inert. I have no energy. I never have. I just have no desire to be productive. Now that I realize I don’t hate to write, that I just hate to work, it makes writing easier."

Talkeetna

Haunted Foliage

Foraker, Hunter, McKinley

Alaska Dandelions

Sometimes when a bird and a plant love each other very much...

Sometimes when a dragon and a fly love each other very much...

In the neighborhood I lived in in San Francisco, people would throw trash in the mailbox.  It was eventually removed. 

As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset I am in paradise

Balance Always Only

Overthinking doesn't cancel out thoughtlessness.

Just So We're Clear

Craptacular doesn't mean spectacularly crappy; it means crappily spectacular.

Drunk Notes

Girl I Came to the Bar with: I'm so drunk.

Me [jealous]: Really?  I'm not drunk at ALL.

Girl: Really?  We should do another shot of tequila then.

Me: Yeah!

Repeat this conversation until I have had four shots of tequila and still don't "feel drunk"

Basketball Fishing

I cast a fishing rod for the first time today.  At dusk, on a balcony, in the rain.  Aimed for the basketball hoop across the gravel road.  I'd been sitting there for awhile, near the two guys who invented Basketball-Fishing, reading a book of poems my friend sent me, glancing up every time I heard the whir of the line.  Then finally one of them made it.  We all laughed, delighted.  Then finally I said, "All right, let me try."  I didn't make it into the hoop but I got damn close.  

I gave the fishing pole back and watched as one of them got the hook stuck in the wooden beam above our heads.  He bit it, broke it, retied it, and was about to cast again when an old man who works in maintenance, whose room we were in front of, opened his door and came outside, also holding a fishing pole.  

The two guys scattered.  One shut the music off and disappeared into his room, another took the fishing pole downstairs to the common room.  Zoom, gone.  I sat there with my poetry book wondering if the old man had gotten them in trouble for playing this game before.  But the old man - he held a fishing pole too.  I watched him cast it off the balcony same as we'd been doing, only he didn't cast it across the road, but off to one side.  He looked over his shoulder at me.  "Gotta make sure this is working right."  

"You should aim for the basketball hoop," I offered.  He ignored me.

Fotos

Me and Susan

I've walked down these stairs barefoot... it hurt.

Bulgarian Translation

The Roadhouse

Here is how it is easiest to concentrate: in a roomful of people talking, without music.

Starbucks & Co are no good for it.  I have more than once asked a coffee shop employee if they'd mind turning the music down.  Usually they mind, and turn it down an imperceptible eighth of a notch to appease me.  I am not appeased.

A train is perfect.  No music, people talking, plus the regular rhythm of the tracks clacking.  And trains are comfortable. 

In Talkeetna, the Roadhouse is perfect.  It's the only eatery in town that does not play music, and there's a perfect din of people talking, and there are only a few large tables instead of a bunch of small ones, so the people talking are often talking to strangers, fellow travelers, so when one phrase or sentence leaps above the din like a fish it's usually unusual.

"Why'd you move to Alaska?"
"My mom got a wild hair up her ass.  I was fourteen."

Lasagna, burnt coffee, essays by Katherine Anne Porter: perfect morning.  Morning that is not a morning because I've been awake since midnight: maybe the best mismatch of internal and external clock. 

South Carolingians on vacay

Why yes, that is the Mexican Flag

The Roadhouse was built between 1914 and 1917

Excerpts from The Seamstress and the Wind

We'd nicknamed her "the pigeon," because of her nose and eyes; my mother was an expert at finding animal resemblances.

Talkeetna Wearing Thin

Yesterday I fell asleep at 1:30pm and woke up at midnight tonight.  Then I went to town with some people and saw a reggae band play at the brewery.  The room smelled like B.O.  I ordered an IPA. 

Then we went to the Fairview and I did not let myself get talked into doing a shot of salmon-flavored vodka.  (Those who did said it tasted like ham.  Their breath afterward smelled like ham.)  I drank a duck fart, howevs.  (Kahlua, Bailey's, Crown Royal.)  Then I ate a hot dog.  Everyone was standing around talking.  Conversations like wet matches.  I had woken up only two hours before so I didn't feel like getting drunk.  If I had gotten drunk I probably would have forced someone to tell me about their childhood, and then I wouldn't have been bored anymore. 

But imagine you woke up at 8:00am and by ten you drank a pint of beer, did a shot and ate a hot dog.  Why would you do all that in the morning?  Because you're an alcoholic.  Or in a rock band.  I'm neither.

So I went home.

If there is any good reason why I should not be chowing down gummy vitamins as if they are gummy bears, I do not know it. 

Playing

In Seward, my sister and I were standing near a playground while we waited for something.  We observed a boy and a girl whacking the low branches of a pine tree with tennis rackets.  Not saying anything, just hitting the tree as hard as they could. 

Then we saw a little girl grab a little boy by the arm and say, "You'll be my prisoner now!"  Another boy trotted up and said, "I'll save you!" and the prisoner said to him, through clenched teeth, "No.  I want to."

A Hospital for Money, or Something?

I don't care how many skylights they put in... I don't care if there's an ice skating rink, bowling alley, movie theater... I don't care if I'm people-watching in an MSG trance... I don't care if I found jeans and sunglasses... the mall ultimately always depresses me.

Delineation as Precursor to Change

"I don't know why I did it.  But today I can recognize that events back then were part of a life-long pattern in which thinking and doing have either come together or failed to come together - I think, I reach a conclusion, I turn the conclusion into a decision, and then I discover that acting on the decision is something else entirely, and that doing so may proceed from the decision, but then again it may not.  Often enough in my life I have done things I had not decided to do.  Something - whatever that may be - goes into action; "it" goes to the woman I don't want to see anymore, "it" makes the remark to the boss that costs me my head, "it" keeps on smoking although I have decided to quit, and then quits smoking just when I've accepted the fact that I'm a smoker and always will be.  I don't mean to say that thinking and reaching decisions have no influence on behavior.  But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided.  It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions."

--from The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

Moonlighting

Snide decal

We Hear It From the People of This Town

Next seasonal job I'm not working front desk.  I'll preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Dr. Good.

Conversations

"My sister won't eat salad with me, she refuses to, because she says I stab the lettuce too hard and it bugs her."

We laugh and she mimes stabbing at an angle, little jabs.

------

Overheard at the Roadhouse:

"I just want to show Abby the picture of the bachelor auction they have every year."

"They all have the clap," I don't say.  I take a giant bite of my lasagna instead.  They do, though.  The feds gave this town money to treat everyone for it for free because everyone sleeps with everyone in this tiny town and a bunch of them got it.

------

Someone playing shuffleboard says, "So close!"

Someone else says, "So close and yet so far."

A woman laughs insincerely. 

What is that from?  Why do people always say it?

If You've Got a Slumlord Try Fashioning a Blistering Onion Poultice

In some states it is a building code requirement that elevators be stocked with leeches, in case of fever and elevator malfunction. 

Foreigner-ism of the Week

"The weather is messy," meaning it's raining out.

Worrrrrrrrrd

"What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it."

--C.S. Lewis

Word

"For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain."

--Mary Oliver

Two Failed Alaska Puns

I'll ask her!  [With a NY accent: "Al ask uh!"]

Alas...
...ka.

I'm Sorry, Our Internet Is Lolcats Only

Guest: Where are the computers?

Me: Down the hallway there on your right-hand side.

Guest: And can I get emails on them, or just send emails?

Me: [Pause] You'll have the whole internet.  So you can do both.

Guest: [Smiles] Thanks!

What I Miss

Iris: [On training her puppy who likes to chew everything] We have like a stick that we wave in her general direction and she doesn't like that.
Me: [Laughing] A stick you wave in her general direction?
Iris: Yeah but then she chews it so we have to get a new one.
Me: I'm imagining you like lying on the couch waving a stick all lazy.
Iris: Like a conductor.  Yeah, like how does that affect her behavior.  'It's a magic stick.  We bought it online.'
Me: [Cracking up] You bought it online.

Kinks as Rorschach Test

Misheard lyric:

Am I / condemned / to be with you / in the daytime?

Actual lyric:

I'm not / content / to be with you / in the daytime

Anecdote vs Writing

"You get no points for the living, I tell my students. It isn’t enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means."

--from here

Try

On Wednesday night I played kickball.  The rule is, you have to be holding a beer in one hand at all times.  Kickball's played in the softball field in town.  This is one of the signs in the field. 

Interesting Approach, Nature

Baudelaire, Vegetables, Pleasure

"He who clings to Pleasure, that is, to the Present, makes me think of a man rolling down a slope who, in trying to grasp hold of some bushes, tears them up and carries them with him in his fall."

--Baudelaire

In Which I Imagine Terrorizing Foreigners for Not Liking Cat Power

Me: What are you listening to?
Janitor: Is Bulgarian pop.
Me: Can I listen?
Janitor: You will not like it.
Me: Maybe I will.

I look down at my iPod which is on shuffle and skip ahead til I find a song representative of my music, Cat Power covering Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".  I put my earbud in his ear and put his earbud in my ear.

GEL. In my HAIR.

Co-worker: I'm running so late.  I didn't even have time to wash my hair.

Me: It's okay.  A lot of people skip a day between washing their hair.

Co-worker: But I never do, so it's going to get super greasy.

Me: Just tell people you put gel in it.  If you see them staring.

This reminds me of a story my friend told me about her friend, who wore a purse to the mall that was missing one strap, and she was so self-conscious about it she said to anyone who looked at her, "It broke," apologetically, and no one knew what she was even talking about.

"There's gel in it."

"...What??"

All Y'all

Anyone is a cautionary tale.

The Amygdala Knows

As someone who moved from bustling metropolis Whittier, CA to rural Talkeetna, AK, this article interested me.  I'm having a better time in a town with two bars than I did during my year-and-a-half stay in San Francisco.

Solstice Sunset

Solstice Sunrise

But Without My Dogs, Weapons and Drugs, Who Am I?

The Fairview's rules.  I like the flower.

I Just Got Lucky

Guest: If, hypothetically, someone were to find four-leaf clovers on one of your trails, and they wanted some scotch tape to hypothetically press them in, would that person be able to get scotch tape here at the desk?

Me: If you bring me one.

Camping

In Sum

We were lazy people on an adventure, flirting with life but too shy to go all the way.
--A Fraction of the Whole, Steve Toltz

We All Carve RED SOX Into Our Bedroom Doors

The Bulgarian janitor says, "Americans love to travel, can't stay living in one place." 

This is his third summer in Talkeetna.  Because the Americans he's known are seasonal workers, he thinks all of us are Cher in Mermaids.  "Death is: dwelling on the past, or staying in one place too long."  Sitting in the bathtub with a drink, closing our eyes and pointing a soapy finger to a map to decide where we're running to next.

Knock Knock, Who's There, Amos

I realized my instinct not to kill mosquitos with my bare hands (paper towel! shoe!) was a handicap in the summerlong war against Them in My Room, biting me while I am asleep.  Stinging?  I just looked it up.  I guess they "string with their mouths."  

So I got rid of it, the instinct, and now I don't have to look away to find something to smash them with.  My aim is better and quicker.

I don't like to wipe them off the wall right away.  Grotesque tally marks.  Oh my gosh... I just realized that's why hunters put deer heads on their wall.  It's the same thing.  I can no longer judge them.  Let ye who has not left dead mosquito guts on their wall a few days cast the first stone. 

Bird River Cloud

Art tries to impress you; nature doesn't.

Then I Yawned

This morning I talked to a janitor from Bulgaria as he mopped past the front desk.  He has another job, as a busboy at a restaurant in town.  He told me that there's one day a week where he works 36 hours straight on only 3 hours of sleep. 

I was impressed.  I said, "You're not afraid of hard work."

"No," he agreed.  "Work is power.  More work, more power."

Thousands of Words

Boxcar

Work

 

Halo

Moted

 

There's Also a Mosquito Bite on My Middle Finger

"Where's my planner?  I need to look at a map of July," I thought accidentally, meaning calendar.

The mosquito bite on my wristbone right next to my watch is the worst one because when my watch bumps it it says, "That feels good.  Almost like you're scratching me.  You should scratch me, that would feel even better."  It has a whispery voice that my conscious mind doesn't notice right away, that my unconscious mind blindly obeys.  "Exercise and eat right," my mosquito bites don't whisper.  Could they breed mosquitoes to improve the demands of their poison?

Angela Ball Wrote a Book of Poems About Me

Things I Have Not Said to Guests Vol. 1

Guest: What time is check-out?

Me: You can check out any time you like... but you can never leave.

Amazon Marketplace Found Poem

Good paperback.
Cover has creasing, curling, and scratching.
Spine is bumped, chipped, and creased.
Interior pages have creasing, curling, and tanning.

Prompt shipping guaranteed.

You're Fine

Something I noticed: Many of the women I work with, instead of saying, "It's okay," or "It's fine," when I apologize for something small - say - "You're fine."

Doubletake

Sign posted in the window of a flightseeing business... not the library.

Trees as Narcissus

Until today I felt guilty when I looked at a sunset or tree and thought, "That's as pretty as a painting."  How steeped in culture, how indoors, to look at nature and think it's almost as good as what's meant to represent it.

A Little Larkin

Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

In the Ladies' Room at the Fairview Inn

Day

The library here is so small they keep back issues of National Geographic, Mother Earth, Alaska, in the bathroom.  The bathroom is spotless.  I am charmed.

I'm sharing a kitchen with a lot of foreigners who are not Mexican.  My experience with foreigners who are not Mexican is limited.  When I awake at 1pm (remember, I'm Night Audit, so this isn't laziness but necessity), it seems someone is always preparing stewing beef in a baking pan with chunks of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, while grilling onions.  It puts me off my coffee and oatmeal.  If it were real butter...?  If Fabio didn't star in those commercials...?  If it was a better cut of meat...? maybe my stomach wouldn't turn.

On the way back from town I'm in the shuttle with some tourists from England.  The husband tells me the origin of the word posh: In the old days, on boats to India, the preferred way to travel was port on the way there, starboard home.  Because of the view, or the sun, or both.  Only the richest people in England travelled this way: Port Out, Starboard Home.  POSH.

I walk to the end of town, to the river, and sit on some rocks.  Birds fly around low, little delicate chirps, twitters.  I read once that birds chirp for only two reasons: to announce a food source, or to advertise willingness to mate.  I didn't like that.  It doesn't allow for the purely ornamental.

Once I asked my mom what would grow if you planted birdseed in the ground, and she answered immediately, "Little birds."

I stare at the water.  It's a deep, rich grey, a color itself, not the absence of it.  Black, white; hell, heaven; God, not-God... this grey is the wide, rich boundary between absolutes.  A rock that ripples.

In my head, Van Morrison sings, "Oh the water - oh oh the water - oh the water..."  I have my iPod in my pocket, could listen to the song now if I wanted to, but I don't.  It would be too loud and exact.  The Van Morrison in my head is the perfect volume and clarity, sun filtered through grey clouds.

I walk slow, back home, kicking my feet against the insides of my ankles, which are mosquito bitten.

My Friends and the Rapture

I texted several of my friends yesterday: "Tomorrow's the rapture.  What are you doing to celebrate/prepare?"

· Get drunk and read the left behind books.

· I am SO not making my bed.

· I am mayan so my rapture isn't til next year.  Ill celebrate with a drink nonetheless.

· Oh just listening to R.E.M.S song "its the end of the world as we know it"

· Im gonna eat 4 grams of shrooms.  Are u going to hump a glacier?

· I'm trying to experience all of the sins.

· Im working.  Sucks Im still a virgin.

· Praying for all those left behind.  Wait... you didn't get the evite?

· im not prepared for the end of the world.  im out of eggs

I Wrote This Entry On a Piece of Notebook Paper While Drinking Chuli Stout in Town

As with heaven, only certain people are chosen to be Night Audit clerks: you have to be either left-handed or transgendered, and like reading.

At the lodge where I worked last summer in Utah, the main Night Audit clerk was Linda, a Danny DeVito lookalike with a grey ponytail, who wore bright red nail polish and flowered shirts.  Technically/physically she was a man, but she preferred to be referred to as a woman.  I used to see her reading in the cafeteria all the time.

The Night Audit relief clerk there was (I think still is?) Rodney, a left-handed Native American man who had a bunch of intimidating philosophy books in his employee housing dorm room.  I borrowed one, never read it, gave it back.

The main Night Audit clerk here is a left-handed woman who has mentioned bringing a book with her to work.  And this lodge's newest Night Audit relief person is moi, a lefty who got herself a Matanuska-Susitna Borough library card today.

To those who would say it's arbitrary and unfair that only transgendered or left-handed readers get to go to heaven, I say: The ways of hotel front desk managers are not our ways.  

Here are some photos I took today that are unrelated to this post:

Mt McKinley

Skywater

Caterpillar Tree

Colors

Yeah

Walking to the River

I have gotten conflicting reports about swimming in the river at the end of town.  One person told me "It's cold enough to KILL YOU" and another person said, "If it gets into the 90s the sun will warm the water enough for swimming!" 

I guess those two statements don't conflict in fact, only in spirit.  I dipped my fingers in and it was cold enough that I was not tempted to change into my 1950s style red bathing suit, for a swim, even though it is a really cute bathing suit.  Another fun thing to do with a river though, besides swim in it, is stare at it while sitting on a sun-bleached log.  And watch birds dive-bomb fish.

Tiny triumphs of nature

Caterpillar tree

Birches

The Little Susitna River.  PJ Harvey lyric: "White sun scattered all over the sea"

Big chunk of leftover snow at the river

Rocks, sun, riverbed

Also, I moved.  I now live in a room by myself instead of a room with three other women, in an apartment with SEVEN OTHER WOMEN.  Yeah.  The night before last someone's snoring woke me up at 3am, and it sounded like she was gargling jet skis and ducks.  I know who it was, and she is very sweet, and I know that people can't help it if they snore. 

Instead of throwing a stuffed animal at her (which was my strategy with Jessica when we were kids - she'd wake up with a start and look over at me; I'd be lying there, eyes closed; she'd roll over out of the snoring position and fall back asleep) - which I actually might have, but I didn't bring any with me, they're all in the back windshield of my car, looking trapped and faded, so that people will stare at me on the freeway and wonder how my mind works - just kidding, haha, - are you even following this sentence anymore? - so yeah, INSTEAD OF throwing a stuffed animal at her, I got up and put earplugs in.  What I failed to anticipate is that I would not hear my alarm at 6:20am with earplugs in.  Ha.

I woke up to a scrambling noise and saw the arm of the girl in the bunk above me reaching down to the dresser, pushing buttons on my alarm clock at random.  I think I said "Oh shoot," except actually the other word, and turned it off.  I looked at my watch (instead of at the alarm clock) (for some reason) and realized it had been on for twenty minutes.  TWO ZERO.  Ha ha.  Sorry, guys!

I think part of the reason no one threw anything at me in all that time is that I have an iHome alarm clock that plays my iPod, and I had it set to play the album "Systems/Layers" by Rachel's, this classical band.  Better than beeping.  Although when I woke up it was playing the song "even/odd," which is the most frantic song on the album.  That is maybe why the girl in the top bunk (NOT the snorer, note) finally reached down to turn it off.

Here is the song, in case you want to close your eyes and pretend you are my roommate:

Uh, so yeah.  The snoring/alarm clock incident was the only one I had with them before moving out today.  They are all nice, and normal, and mature enough to share a space with a lot of people.  There is a girl who tends to be very anxious about when everybody plans to shower in the morning, and wants to know exactly what time people are going to do it.  For some reason (and I think this is unusual) everyone else is very casual, very "Whatever, we'll all shower, it'll be fine" about it.   Last night I told her, when asked what time I planned to shower in the morning, "I don't have to be at work til noon."  

"So okay, what time?" she persisted.  

"Once at seven,  and then again at eight.  I take two showers every morning, an hour apart, or else I don't feel clean."  I said this very seriously and she believed me and started trying to plan around me and I laughed maniacally and said Just kidding, I'm showering tonight.  

So maybe there would have been more incidents.  If I'd kept living there. Because I can't always stop myself from being hilarious.

But yeah.  I am out of there and in my own room because I am going to work two graveyard shifts a week at the Front Desk.  My bosses were concerned, initially: "Will you be able to stay awake?  Will you be okay not talking to anyone for eight hours?"  Oh!  Staying up all night and not talking to people are two of my best talents.  That's why I was asked not to enter the Miss America pageant.

My room is kind of huge.  It has a mini fridge, two twin beds, two closets, a good view.  I will be sharing a communal bathroom and kitchen now - the HR woman told me the two women's showers and two women's toilets downstairs in the common area are shared among 10 women.  That's fewer women-per-facility than before; however, I have to walk outside and downstairs to get to the bathroom.  But whatevs.  I have a little kingdom of silence for the next four months, in Alaska. 

Flightseeing, or: Travel Impotence

Travel Brain is the condition that makes everything more exciting and interesting when you are away from home.  I love Travel Brain.

Travel Impotence is the condition where you feel a weight or heaviness in the chest as a result of knowing you're supposed to feel more excited or happier, looking at something, than you do.