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.  

The Mountain

The first two days here have been perfectly sunny and clear, which means that Mt. McKinley, confusingly nicknamed Denali (also the name of a national park, and an adjacent state park, and more than a few dogs) is in full view.

Which is special.  I heard someone say today there is a thirty percent chance of seeing the mountain in the summertime; then I heard someone else say, a few hours later, that only thirty people out of a hundred who visit the area are able to see the mountain.

Quit Beefing

Today I rode 22.5 miles on a tandem bike.  

Of Pig Slaughter and Airplanes

On the last of my three flights, from Seattle to Anchorage, I accidentally hit the leg of the guy sitting next to me with my purse.  "Oh sorry."

"Do you live in Alaska?"

It's known that Alaskan women have poor purse control.  "I don't.  I'm going for the first time, to work in Talkeetna.  Do you live there?"

We establish he has lived in Anchorage for nine years, and before that, Indiana.  He asks where I am from and I tell him the Los Angeles area.

"Oh, I lived in Southern California when I was a kid."

"Oh really, where?"

"La Habra."

I hit his arm and say, "No way!  I'm from Whittier!  I went to high school in La Habra!"

"Sonora?"

"Yes!"

His older brother went there in the late 70s.  The family moved away when this guy was still seven years old.

"Hey," he said, "Is there a slaughterhouse right by the school?"

I frowned.  "No... I don't think so.  Maybe there was in the 70s.  Why?"

"Because I remember going to my brother's high school one time and seeing a slaughterhouse there."

"Hmm.  Maybe it was a dream you had?"

He scratched his chin.  "Maybe."

"Well, they do have a farm with animals, for the kids in the Agriculture program.  They have like steers, and pigs, and lambs..."

He nods. 

"Oh!" I say suddenly.  "You know what?  They slaughter pigs right there at the school!  My friend was in Ag for three years and she saw it happen, where they'll like string it up and let out its blood and then chop it up... that's probably what you saw."

He was nodding this whole time.  "Yeah, that must be it.  It was really traumatic."

I should have shared that during my one-year stint in high school Agriculture I castrated a lamb, but I didn't think of it, and also it might be disturbing if the random woman on the airplane who keeps hitting you tells you a story about removing an animal's testes.

O life!