Thinking From the End on New Year's Eve

 "Erin," you might be saying to yourself, "what are you doing home on New Year's Eve in New York City?  The whole world is there, milling excitedly around Times Square, wearing those goofy glasses and blowing those annoying air horns!  Why aren't you there?"

The answer is quite simple:  I didn't feel like it.

After spending five days in Utah (days that included wrecking the rental car (ALWAYS buy rental insurance) when I slid on black ice at 50 mph, smashing into a cement embankment and ending in the muddy median, then driving through "snowmageddon 2010" with white knuckled concentration that ended with a stay at a local Motel 6 because of horrible road conditions), I took the red eye home, landed at JFK and watched the sun rise gloriously through the windows of the air train.  Rose and saffron fingers delicately graced the water towers surrounding the airport, and the air traffic control tower was resplendently bathed in the pink and orange only gracefully bestowed by the muted, naive light of the dawn.

Bad things tend to happen to me in clumps and always at the same time of year.  For about seven years in a row, the end of January into February, the end of July into August, the end of October, and the end of December were months I met with trepidation.  What grisly gift does the universe have for me this year?, I would wonder, and then would be met with a barely manageable personal catastrophe.  2009 was particularly bad; with a skin cancer scare, getting fired from a teaching job, and the excruciating end to a very poisonous, addicting and deprecating relationship.

Until 2010.

It took all of this year to find my legs again, to stand with my shoulders back and head high, to realize fully that I am more than the sum of my parts.

This is why I am excited about 2011.  I'm waiting for this year like I waited to turn 16!  All the doors that would FINALLY be open!  I could date!  I could drive!  I got one more hour added to my curfew!  

The World Book Encyclopedia (remember those?) dedicated January 1st to Janus, the God of gates, doors, and beginnings.  The month of January was named after Janus, who had two faces -- one looking forward and the other looking backward.  I like that.  I like it very much.  One face remembering where you've been, the other looking forward, unlocked gates, doors, and beginnings within easy reach.  All you have to do is grasp it and open it. 

Have you ever heard of the mystic's idea of  "Thinking from the End?"   Mike Dooley of Tut.com (note:  I am a member of the Tut Adventurer's Club.  They send me an email every day with affirmations that I read first thing in the morning) says this:  "Define what you want in terms of the end result. Don't worry about the hows, or even the course. KNOW that what you want is ALREADY yours in spirit, by divine LAW, just focus on the certainty of this ownership, understand it, claim it, and 'it will be on earth, as it is in heaven (spirit).'"  In an article, Visualization Alters the Brain, Dr. Hamilton's writes, "Your brain cannot tell the difference between something that's real and whether you are just imagining it."  Dr. Wayne Dyer says, "In order to float an idea into reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the inconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don't have. You'll then start floating your desires instead of sinking them."

I once had a tarot reader/astrologer (roll eyes and snigger here) that I needed to let things come to me.  To open my arms and let things in.  I'm a bit of a folded-arm kind of girl, truth be told.  I'm not exactly well-known for my wide-eyed, rose-colored view of the world.  But I do not know that this is a view that has served me very well. A good friend told me (don't worry, your identity is safe here) that I thought most people were "stupid until proven smart."  I'm very surprised when people do the right thing instead of the easy thing. My doses are more heavily weighted with the cynical and belief that people generally care for themselves at the expense of others.  This is what experience has taught me.  After my baby brother and his wife had their baby in August, I went to visit baby K.  I was in disbelief that my baby brother had a baby of his own and I had a little meltdown in the hospital hallway.  He pushed me against the wall and grabbed my face so that my lips puckered out like Joan Cusack's in Sixteen Candles (can't be a Hiatt unless the serious is tempered by the comedic).  My 25 year old Kevie Pie said to me "you need to let things in.  Stop pushing things away."

That's why I'm waiting for 2011 with the giddiness of passing my driver's test.  TUT says "give thanks that life is... just as it is (and that it's been... just as it's been). Because of it, you're now 'READY.'" 

Michelangelo said this about his Statue of David: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."  I may look at this blog in a year and think that I was off the mark, that my cynicism will be met again with the laser point accuracy I've come to expect, but I no longer think so.  In fact, I know so.  Happy New Year!

A Little Christmas Eve Fiction

She hadn't gotten far, only to the gas station two doors over.  At 11:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve the place was nearly abandoned, only the bored girl behind the counter with the big bangs and royal blue polyester smock, elbows resting on the counter with her chin resting in the palms of her hands within.  Christmas music from the local country music station plays low in the background.  The "ding" when she opens the door is much too cheery.  Camel lights, she says.  The girl pushes herself petulantly away from the counter and grunts softly as she reaches on tiptoe to reach the smokes.  $4.75 she says, blowing air upward from her clumsily painted lips, only the liner remaining, to move an invisible hair from her eye.  She takes the money from her wallet, and the girl in the blue smock says I've seen you.  You come in here with a dog.  A yappy dog.  Yeah.  I've seen you.  She pockets the smokes and holds out her hand for the change, 25 cents.  Yeah, I've been here.  That's not my dog.  The girl in the blue smock examines a painstakingly painted fingernail, puts her elbows back on the counter, then puts her chin back where it started.  Yeah, well, Merry Christmas. 

She slides in the snow in the parking lot, catches herself with her elbow on the hood of her car.  She sees the slip marks behind her, then pushes herself up and walks gingerly on unsteady legs.  She squeezes herself into the small space between steering wheel and seat.  Not much room with all her shit in the back.  She doesn't remember packing those suitcases and is not sure what's in them.  It'll all be sorted out later, she thinks, as the car's tires seem to be feeling the ground with preternatural fingers, searching for purchase on the unforgiving ground.

She drives to a restaurant closed for the holiday between her house and the gas station and the car slides to a stop.  The snow is not yet thick but the clouds hang bloated and low.  She maneuvers her way out of the car and leans against the door, one sneakered foot resting on the tire behind her.  She lights a cigarette and breathes. The gray exhalation and the cold of the air mingle and she is unsure which is clean.  Her house, her old house now, is right next door.  She can't see the windows but she is certain that the lights remain on, that ESPN is playing, that her presence is not missed.  She looks up and blinks back snow, feels something inside of her once torpid, now wildly turning. 

Inside her jacket pocket her phone vibrates and there is hope...hope! that this could be the start of something different.  The screen flashes with the name of someone new; not the person hoped for, and her thumb hovers over the answer button for too long.  She stares at the possibility, now gone, and exhales gray smoke.  She raises her chin to see over the fence, to hear the voice, and wonders how long she will have to wait.  She grinds the cigarette out under her shoe and slides back into the car.  It is late but she has no idea where to go.  The keys swing back and forth, making gentle "tink" noises on the steering column.  The heat blasts on and the easy listening radio station plays 100 Hours of Christmas Music which she turns low.  The snow is thick and heavy now so she points the car south.

"Something More to Keep on Breathing For"

 About ten years ago I was totally obsessed with George Mallory.  Who is George Mallory?, you may ask.  Mr. Mallory was part of the third British expedition to try to summit Mt. Everest in 1924.  He and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine disappeared on that expedition and were last viewed about 100 meters from the summit.  No one knows if they were the first to reach the summit (they would have beat Edmund Hillary by 29 years) or if they died going up.  In 1999, a team from National Geographic discovered Mallory's remains bleached alabaster white by 75 years in the snow and sun.  His femur was broken and jutted from the other bones at an unnatural angle, the back of his red woolen sweater torn open to reveal a perfectly smooth, ivory colored back.  His name was painstakingly embroidered in his sweater. When asked before the expedition why he was going to climb Everest, he retorted "because it's there."

Other obsessions of mine have included Everett Reuss (he disappeared in the canyons of the Escalante of Utah in 1934), Chris McCandless (who died while living in the wilds of Alaska) toupees, and mullets (but that's for another blog).  My most recent fix has been on Aron Ralston, who amputated his own arm after having it pinned under a chockstone for 127 hours in a slot canyon outside of Moab, Utah.  

McCandless and Reuss probably have the most in common (although Ralston fits the description; he quit a lucrative job as an engineer to work at a bike/ski/climbing shop to free himself up for climbing adventures):  young men who gave up most of their possessions and professions to go out in the unknown wild and escape society and its expectations.  McCandless and Reuss perished.  Rather than being put off by these books, I wax romantic over the notion of turning off my cell phone, ditching my computer, make-up bag, and huge assortment of cute boots to put a few belongings in a backpack and hit the road.


I gobble up books by Edward Abbey, Jon Krakauer, Terry Tempest Williams and watch The Deadliest Catch and Man vs. Wild with great interest (you never know when you'll need to eat bugs or how to make flotation devices out of your jeans).   What these books bring very pointedly to my attention is this need, this human yearning to escape our societal constraints, test our limits, and get out of our heads.  Ralston mentions in his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place the notion of Deep Play.  The basic idea of deep play is that surviving dangerous circumstances that are beyond your control creates a very pleasurable feeling of relief. However, even though the voluntary acceptance of fatal, uncontrollable risk is a totally irrational act, it happens. Of course, according to deep play theories, the pleasure can only exist if the risk is real.  Jeremy Bentham, and 18th and 19th century philosopher, legal and social reformer defines "deep play" as a game with stakes so high that no rational person would engage in it.  


What I want to know is why have we, as a group of human beings, constructed a society that we are all trying in some measure to escape?  There are the extreme cases of people like Reuss and McCandless, but how many take refuge in a bottle of booze, fall into a hole of drug addiction or take up gambling, extreme video gaming, trading on the floor of the stock market, take mistresses, have multiple irresponsible love affairs or take on extreme religious views? What happens when the lovers get caught, the floor trader makes a billion one day and loses it the next, the guy playing roulette in Vegas wins the jackpot?  We crave, hope and live for that elusive "maybe," for the momentary relief we have from minutae. 
The Bravery sing, "So give me something to believe 'cause I am living just to breathe.  And I need something more to keep on breathing for, so give me something to believe."

I think that we are all desperately seeking escape!  We are banging on the prison walls with our tin cups, our ids screaming "Get me the fuck out of here!"  I have passed by many opportunities for fun because I have been afraid of something...I didn't want to look stupid, didn't want to push myself to a physical limit, and mostly because I didn't want to fail. 

What can I learn if I don't fail?  How will I know if I don't try?  I'm not saying that we all should go out and try to scale Everest, I mean,  my brand of danger is Aron Ralston's idea of a snore, but maybe I should try something "because it's there." Because it might be scary.  Because it could really be fun.

Becoming New York-y

It happened the first time in Flagstaff.  While waiting at a decidedly laid back coffee shop in a very chilled out, Grand Canyon town, I went to the counter and asked the Flagstaff version of a Brooklyn hipster (you know, tats, gauges in the ears, worn out t-shirt and Chuck Taylor's) if I could "please have a decaf soy latte and may I please have the receipt?"  He glanced up at me slowly with ill concealed disdain and said in a voice at a speed that any snail would envy, "um...yeah...I'm...getting...to...that..."  A little flustered at the the notion of being thought rude, I apologized and laughingly said, "I live in New York City.  Sometimes if you don't ask for a receipt they just throw it out and move to the person behind you, so sorry."  And without accepting my apology he offered an apology of his own:  "You live in New York?  I'M sorry." 

When my friend arrived at the coffee shop, I asked him, "do I seem a little big city?  Do I have that BIG CITY vibe?  Because I try to be conscientious about that, you know."  And it's true, I take pains to match the vibe of whatever city I'm in .

When I was a kid I wanted nothing  but to live in the big city and have some glamorous Broadway life and live in a midtown apartment the size of a shoebox.   I wanted to walk down busy city streets undaunted, looking not "in people's eyes but past them," so they would know that I was there but that I didn't notice them, that I was indeed too busy to give them eye contact.  I would conceal myself behind giant sunglasses and baseball caps pulled low.  Even if I wasn't a star, I was going to pretend.  And, most importantly, I didn't want anyone to know that I lived in a town that no one's ever heard of called Ogden and that for fun I used to throw peaches from our backyard tree at the neighbor's barn in the field behind our house (it was a long way to throw.  That "thunk" was always satisfying).

The second time happened last week when I picked up a rental car to drive to a shoot in Connecticut.  The gentleman working behind the counter asked me for my driver's license, and the first response I get, no matter what state I rent a car in is, "Utah!"  He looked at me in what I thought was an appraising way and then said, "Wow, I thought you were one of those 5th Avenue girls.  I didn't think you'd be from the west." The third time came at an audition for a short film that I went to on Saturday.  They loved me.  Thought I was hilarious.  Didn't book me, of course, because when people gush effusiently, I never book.  Anyway, as I am making my way out the door the screenwriter says, "Where are you from?"  I told him Utah, and he said that I was the first person from somewhere else that he thought was from New York.

I've given this some thought:  I wear what I think are kind of western-y clothes.  It's not like I run around in fleece and Merrills, but you won't catch me dead wearing Burberry, Wellies, and the ubiquitous lady trench (gives me the shivers).  When I'm not working I'm probably wearing a skateboard cap and pigtails.  So I don't think it's something outward.  Clearly it's me.

Uh-oh.

It's always been a priority of mine to not become what is deemed by many to be a typical "New Yorker," you know, the pushy, rude, aggressive, impatient, demanding person you see in the movies.  I strive to be polite, gracious, and patient.  And yet just today as I was walking to Grand Central station (talk about a melange of the stereotypical New York; the bleary eyed travelers pushing their rolling suitcases, the homeless man reeking of ammonia taking furtive sips from a filthy water fountain, the uber busy business men walking purposefully with their attaches, the bored Upper East Side ladies sporting botox, Cleopatra-like make-up schemes and over-sized baubles, the guy wearing a track suit and baseball cap with a flattened bill selling his own poetry looking to make a quick buck), I found myself speed walking past the Euro tourists, muttering under my breath at the ladies walking in threes across the sidewalk pushing their babies in strollers, and cursing the mobs of people generally gawking in Times Square.

Have I become that New Yorker?

Perhaps my time here will teach me to savor the moments of slow-moving tranquility that I get while on a hiking trail.  Perhaps it will teach me to appreciate the joys of a mountain pass, or the challenges of driving in a blizzard.  I know that I often pine to drive a stick shift, to throw the car in gear and open the engine up on some vast desert road.

Or maybe it will teach me to ask for my latte at exactly 140 degrees while tapping my Jimmy Choos impatiently at a Fifth Avenue Starbucks while flipping through my Blackberry and listening to the latest podcast on NPR on my IPod.  But I really hope not.

The Court Jester Holds a Rally, Rally, Baby

I'm a total Gen Xer.  After looking on Wiki to define what they believe a GenXer is, I saw this:

In the 1991 book Generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe call this generation the "13th Generation" and define the birth years as 1961 to 1981.  According to the authors, Generation X is "the 13th generation" to be familiar with the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin Franklin). The label was also chosen because, according to their generational theory, it is considered a "Reactive" or "Nomad" generation, composed of those who were children during a spiritual awakening.  Older generations generally have negative perceptions of Reactive generations—whose members tend to be pragmatic and perceptive, savvy but amoral, more focused on money than on art. 

Hmmm...let's look up "Nomad Generation:"
Nomad generations are born during an Awakening, a time of social ideals and spiritual agendas, when young adults are passionately attacking the established institutional order. Nomads grow up as under-protected children during this Awakening, come of age as alienated, post-Awakening adults, become pragmatic midlife leaders during a Crisis, and age into resilient post-Crisis elders. Due to this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their fast-paced, alienated rising-adult years and their midlife years of pragmatic leadership. They are shrewd realists who preferred individualistic, pragmatic solutions to problems.

 We grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, came home from school to the news that Ronald Reagan had been shot, that the Berlin Wall had fallen, that we were running out of oil, that the bankers were running amok with our money (the early 1980's recession and Black Monday in1987), and the savings and loan crisis, instilling "a sense of economic uncertainty and reduced expectation of long-term fidelity between employers and employees."  I was in my 7th grade science class when I saw on TV, over and over, The Space Shuttle exploding into a million pieces.

We started college having to do our research papers using the Dewey Decimal system in the library, wrote our papers on typewriters (double-spaced, please).  I was pleased as punch and felt smugly superior when my parents were the first on the block to have both a VHS players AND cable TV, and happily made fun of everyone listening to Bon Jovi and Motley Crue while I was snug in my room kissing posters of Michael Jackson, whose posters were replaced by Billy Idol, Robert Smith, U2, and Duran Duran.  I traded in my peg-legged pants and side ponytails for Doc Martens and flannel shirts as the Duran Duran posters came down and I swapped out my Sinead O'Connor tapes for Pearl Jam CDs.  I actively hated rap music, Vanilla Ice, and made fun of anyone who wore Guess or Girbaud jeans and braided belts (although I secretly wanted a braided belt).  I remember MTV when they played actual videos.


"Compared with previous generations, Generation X represents a more heterogeneous generation, exhibiting great variety. They are diverse in such aspects as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.  Often the children of divorced parents, change is more the rule for the people of Generation X than the exception.
 

^{No wonder Tea Partiers hate us.} 


Tea Party supporters are mainly white and slightly more likely to be male, married, older than 45, more conservative than the general population, and likely to be more wealthy and have more education.  Polls have shown that they are significantly more likely to be registered Republican, have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party and an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party. The Bloomberg News poll showed that 40% are 55 or older, 79% are white, 61% are men and 44% identify as "born-again Christians."

Hmmm....so if they're over 45 they are most likely Baby Boomers...and this is what Wiki has to say about that (this has been edited by me, btw, so judge away, although I am really trying to be even-handed):

In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence^.  As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.  One of the features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before them.  The Boomers also tend to view the world through the lense of "traditional values."  The term can also refer to an intention to preserve ancient or traditional customs and values against anything deemed "innovation."   It is generally fair to say that usually traditional values tend, by definition, toward conservativism and that they often, but not always, accept some form of patriarchy as normative.  The usage of "traditional values" can in some cases imply that said values, in being traditional, are better than values that are non-traditional.  However, in other cases "traditional values" can simply imply a matter of identity ("it's who we are") without seeking or addressing any notion of absolute values of "good" or "bad". 

As I think about who I was standing shoulder to shoulder with at the rally,  I would have to say that it included at least one lesbian couple, an older woman in her 70's, a mom with her teenage son, another mom with an extremely well-behaved child in a stroller, a bunch of college kids, and some young men dressed up like the Village People.  But I would also say that the majority of the people there were GenXers like me.


So, this Glenn Beck Tea Party stuff and this Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally is really, at its end point, just a fight between parents and their kids.  They want us, their kids, to get a good job, find a nice mate, settle down, have babies, and get that gold watch when we retire.  Problem is, that no longer exists.  And we're mad at you, Mom and Dad, for getting divorced then telling us how to run our lives.  So screw you, dudes, we say, and we put on our Walkman headphones and tune you out because unlike us, you challenge leaders with an intent to replace them, whereas we, Generation Xers, tend to ignore leaders.

 When I was growing up in CA, my mom sang with a patriotic singing group called The Grandland Singers.  She was their #1 soprano and sang for President Nixon.  God, family, and country were a very big deal in my growing-up experience.  I used to sing to all of their records and are the number one reason I can sing the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble, and know all of my 50 states in alphabetical order.  Anyway, patriotism has always been big in my family, and I have to say that I never felt terribly patriotic about anything until I stood at the Washington Mall, sardined in with about 215,000 other people.  Some troops came out to sing the National Anthem, and I put my hand over my heart and just felt grateful that I lived here, despite its many terrible flaws and injustices, that I, a single woman, can move about freely, that I have an education, that I can get on a plane, a train, a bus, see my friends, do my work, enjoy my life, and share ideas with people who are unafraid.  That felt really good.  It may not be my family's brand of patriotism, but it is mine.

That's why this rally was so heartening, so surprisingly moving, so naive and encouraging, so engaging.  We are standing together listening to COMEDIANS.  "In literature, the jester is symbolic of common sense and of honesty, notably in King Lear, the court jester is a character used for insight and advice on the part of the monarch, taking advantage of his license to mock and speak freely to dispense frank observations and highlight the folly of his monarch.  Only as the lowliest member of the court can the jester be the monarch's most useful adviser."

We are the jesters.  We are your disenchanted kids.  We see that the world is changing and we are okay with that.  As seminal Gen X band REM said, "It's the end of the world as we know it.  And I feel fine."

Detectives, Diet Sierra Mist, and Dumpster Diving

NYC:  This place can feel absolutely mad sometimes, with all the people asking for money, for food, for drugs.  I recognize the homeless in my neighborhood and the streets I frequent.  It seems like some are on the brink of lunacy and can be either easily placated or given to vitriolic eruptions.  My answer is always "no" when it comes to money, though if I have snacks I will sometimes give those away.

So honestly, it wasn't that unusual when a man approached me at 11:45 last Monday night.  I was talking on the phone to my friend outside the subway stop in my neighborhood; it's a tree-lined street and there are generally, at all times of day, people walking their dogs, leaving or entering the subway tunnel, chatting on their phones on their way to somewhere.  I was doing just that, chatting on my phone and leaning against a cement embankment, my gym bag, a bag of clothes that a friend had given me, and a bag of munchies on the ground beside me.  My purse hung on my left shoulder and I held my phone to my ear with my right shoulder as I reached in for a stick of gum. 

I think I need to find things that people do a little more bizarre, because when I saw out of the corner of my eye a man looking at me through the windows of an SUV, his arms overhead making something of a tent with a black windbreaker, I thought nothing of it.  I thought less of it when he came up and asked me if I had any money.  The windbreaker was draped over his head like a hoody.  I told him that no, I did not have any money and continued my conversation.  He mumbled something and I indicated my phone, ignoring him.  He then said, "show me your purse."  At that point things started to slow down in my mind; I noticed that he was clean-shaven and had a soft, baby-like face.  He stood about 5'8", probably weighed in at about 170, and had dark, wavy hair.  He was wearing  a wife beater but not ribbed, baggy blue jeans and sneakers. He spoke perfect English and didn't seem high or homeless.  His right hand, I noticed at last, was in his pocket.  He asked me again to show him my purse.  "I'm not going to show you my purse."  I tell my friend that I will call her later, hang up the phone but keep it in my hand.  He wants to see the inside of my purse.  I tell him no.  He tells me again, "show me your purse" and from his pocket comes a knife whose end glinted in the streetlamps, "or I'll kill you."  I felt my body lean toward my belongings on the ground for what was probably a millisecond but felt like a minute, and then I ran, ran with my purse securely under my left arm as fast as I could across the street and down the hill.  I didn't even look as I sprinted across Broadway, which was blessedly free of traffic.  I ran, panting, into my apartment where my roommate looked at me with startled eyes.  "You just called me," he said.  "Did you mean to call me?"

After pacing around a bit, I made a mental list of the things I had lost:  gym clothes, umbrella, brand new Kleen Kanteen water bottle, favorite Aldo boots, arm warmers (they're like leg warmers, but for your arms and matched the sweater I was wearing), and oh!  My journal!  His having access to my private thoughts smarts the most.  My roommate suggests that I call the police, who came promptly to my apartment and took a report. I retell the tale and they leave, but come back shortly thereafter.  They want me to come talk to the detectives.  It was 1:00 a.m.  It was important, they told me, because a woman had been robbed a couple of nights earlier in the same area but he followed her into her building.  The scenarios sounded similar, would I mind coming in?  I take my first ever ride in a NYPD squad car to the precinct, where I was immediately deflated, disappointed, and intrigued by the dilapidated, hard-worn surroundings of the precinct building.  Everything looks as if it is lit in blue lighting, harsh overhead stuff shining garishly on cracked tables strewn with styrofoam coffee cups.  I am led up a narrow flight of steep stairs to meet my detectives, who seat me in front of an ancient, sluggish computer and ask me to please, look at mug shots.

My precinct is 1 1/2 miles, the detectives tell me.  I give him the description of the man to narrow the search in the database, and up come the pictures.  HUNDREDS of them.  I go through them scrupulously and look at the clock. 2:00 a.m.  I sense my detective growing impatient, and he comes to the computer to widen the search.  I go through hundreds more, and see who I think might be the guy.  He takes the information then hands me a clipboard with photocopied mug shots and I look through the 2 inch stack.  3:00 a.m.  Then they suggest that we go back to the scene to see if he left any of my belongings.  My bags are gone but the Diet Sierra Mist I had been sipping and had left on the embankment remained untouched.  We then looked through bushes, garbage cans, and dumpsters but found nothing.  When I arrived home it was 4:00 a.m. I drove around with the detectives a couple of nights later hoping to see the man who attempted to rob me, but found nothing. 

Strangely, the whole time it was going on I knew somehow that I was safe.  Whatever force of good that exists in the universe was there, it seems.  And truthfully, if you're going to get mugged it was the best way to go:  there was the underwater quality of it, the casual and non-aggressive approach of the mugger, the streets free of traffic as I sprinted across them, the fortuitousness of having nothing of value in the bags that remained behind.  But, and there is a big but, I made mistakes:  I lingered outside of a subway stop talking on the phone.  I see people all day every day with their noses in their phones, and it makes us all easy targets.  I likely inflamed him by being flippant.  Also, if you are mugged and are on the phone don't hang up.  And scream.  Scream like hell to attract attention.  I was impervious to my vulnerability; a lone, smallish woman talking on her phone at night, laden with many bags.  I might as well have had a "rob me" sign tattooed on my forehead.

The next day (or I guess it was the same day) I had a go-see for Oprah Magazine.  A good friend of mine works for them in the book division, so I stopped by her desk to say hello.  As I told her the story of my day, she said, "You should write a screenplay or something.  That doesn't happen to anyone I know."  So I thought of the previous 24 hours:  waking up with no hot water, running out the door to a workday that ended with my boss reading one of his favorite poems, babysitting my favorite little man, getting mugged at knifepoint, dumpster diving with two hardened NY detectives, sleeping for what felt like minutes, back to work, having a conversation with Gayle King about real estate, and ending with a coffee with an old, wonderful friend, well, it did seem a little surreal.  And wonderful.  Harshly beautiful, loving and humbling.  Life can change instantaneously and open instincts that are long ensconced. 

So be safe, everyone.  Please.

Picking Few Words

My mother has told me in the past that my words are the harshest thing about me:  they are sharp and if not thought through carefully first, very acerbic.  People listen to me with "an emotional antenna," I've been told, so I'll tread carefully.  That's why I am going to use few words about this topic, but reading this article made my heart sink and stomach clench:  It is entitled "Apostle:  Same Sex Attraction Can Change."

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/50404210-78/church-lds-sex-conference.html.csp

I'm sure you've all heard of the recent suicide of a Rutgers freshman, who killed himself after discovering that his roommate had streamed online his make-out session with another man.  Bad timing, Brother Packer, very bad timing indeed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20018170-504083.html

So I went ahead and did some really cursory, quick reading on gay Mormons and suicide.  This is a link to a Mormon Matters.  A father discusses the suicide of his gay son:

http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/14/the-lds-church-homosexuality-and-suicide/

And this is a link to some very general statistics about suicide among the youth in the Mormon Church:

http://mormonstories.org/?p=85

When I saw Prop 8, the documentary on the Mormon Church's efforts to ban gay marriage in California, I cried through nearly the whole film.  It is an injustice, an effrontery to my sense of equality.  But what bothered me the most is that I grew up Mormon.  This is my culture.  A lot of my friends.  All of my family.  My family are not backwoods bigots. They are loving, kind, good people.

And yet, I sat in that theatre and sobbed.

It is too simple, too formulaic to say that a solution needs to be made.  But I don't care.  It is not acceptable to have young men shooting themselves in church parking lots because of their sexual orientation.

That's all.

P.S.  Special thanks to Kim B. for sharing his thoughts.  My eyes are newly opened.

Foot Tapping Restlessness

It happens every year around this time.  I see the ends of the leaves on the trees curling gently toward themselves as they prepare for their descent to the ground beneath them.  It is fall.  I hear reports from home of cool mornings tinged with the air of pending December.  The longer you walk on the trails, the greater the reward, as the blazing leaves make their descent down the mountainside.  I can smell the air, hear it as it moves purposefully through the Aspens, their long white trunks crowned with a million leaves of gold. 

Yes, I am restless.  At 9:30 p.m. I could feel my soul jumping out of its skin so I took it out for a spin.  A storm may be coming because the air here is restless, too, and the wind is pushing along the brown leaves already fallen.  I'm back and again in front of this computer, but walking frantically for an hour wasn't enough to clear my head.  I thought about grand, esoteric blog titles like "Hope vs. Reality:  Whose reality is real?" blahblahblah.  Who am I kidding?  I don't know the answer to any of that.   See, I went to a very disheartening dance call on Friday (well, the dance call was amazing.  The choreographer is incredibly talented and his combinations outstanding), but I was the disheartening part.  My reality right now is not matching my ambitions.  Within those ambitions is a whole microcosm of other people's expectations, i.e. directors, music directors, choreographers, producers, etc.  The business of pretend is indeed a harsh reality.  Through it all I feel a real sense of disconnection and powerlessness.

I read this today in The Essential Crazy Wisdom by Wes "Scoop" Nisker:  "Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky (Ojibway saying).

What I want and what are real are two very different things right now.  In all honesty, what I really want to do, what always, without exception brings me great joy, is to drive around with the windows down, my head hanging out like a dog on some vast highway in the west, nothing but asphalt in my rearview and truck stop coffee in the cup holder as I drive from one trailhead to the next.  Is there a job for that?


"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. " ~Kahlil Gibran.

Life in Books

I recently moved, back to where I started from actually, back into the warm and loving embrace of the home created by Tom and Shane, the sweetest, kindest, smartest, goofiest men you could ever hope to meet.  While packing, I realized that the majority of my belongings are books.  As my friend and I were hauling them down the 5th floor walk-up to load into his truck, I noted my straining biceps and thought to myself, "Hiatt, buy a Kindle."

Last night, I spent a good portion of my evening organizing these aforementioned books onto a bookshelf that has become decidedly too small.  When I lived here previously, about a year and a half ago, I had many books but couldn't fill the shelves.  I still had plenty of room for knickknack-y things to fill the empty spaces.  Not so now.  I put this squarely on the shoulders of my book club, the most well-read group of smart, opinionated, and beautiful women you'll ever hope to meet.  We read two books a month and meet faithfully every four to six weeks.  Hence, the burgeoning of my book collection and my wild vacillations about a kindle.

At first, I threw them haphazardly onto the shelves and busied myself with organizing the closet (another conquest, but that's for a blog that actually cares about closet organization).  When I returned to organize the shelves, I found that the task became more of a sudden remembrance of lives forgotten.  I picked up my extremely dog-eared, taped together copy of Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction, recommended to me by a good friend from high school that I really looked up to.  When she recommended the book (her mother, who was the only actual "hippie" I had ever met, had recommended the book to Ms.B., my friend.  I was fascinated with 60's counter-culture at the time and this book is emblamatic of sex, drugs, and wild imaginings, for which Tom Robbins is deliciously and dangerously eloquent) I took myself promptly to The Bookshelf, a used bookstore on Washington Boulevard in Ogden and bought a copy.  I took it to work, a golf course in North Ogden called The White Barn where I worked in the concession stand.  It was never terribly busy, so between selling beer by the can and cooking hot dogs, I would sit at the counter and read.  I discovered quite quickly that Tom Robbins spoke in an ambrosial tongue, so I went back to the Bookshelf and bought a used dictionary.  I then took that dictionary to work and looked up every single word I didn't know and put it to paper, writing all the words and their definitions painstakingly down in a way that only my 11th grade AP English teacher Mrs. Roper would have loved. 

My eyes were opened.  I learned from that book that "you can eat a sandwich while drowning." I learned from Still Life With Woodpecker that before the encroachment of humanities needs to have lights blazing at all hours, women menstruated on the behest of the moon.  For my 17th birthday I was in Jackson Hole with my family, and when my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday I dragged her into the nearest bookstore and asked her to buy for me his just released (at the time) compendium, Skinny Legs and All in hardback.  It sits on my shelf next to Another Roadside Attraction, Still Life with Woodpecker (my favorite Tom Robbins, because the heroine of that novel, Leigh Cheri has red hair, "as red and straight as ironed ketchup") and every other Tom Robbins book with the exception of his children's book B is for Beer (it has a beer fairy and is written in the whimsy that only Robbins can master).  I thought again of my high school friend Ms. B and all the naughty, sexy secrets I had learned from Mr. Robbins because she said to me, "read this book."  Ms. B, by the way, drove a Volkwagen Beetle in high school as did I.  Hers was red and named Bonanza Jellybean (one of the main characters from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).  Mine was blue and named Ringo.

I know, I wax nostalgic, but that is precisely the point:  When I see books by Tom Robbins, when I hold that small, softened-by-the-years copy of Another Roadside Attraction, I think of Ms.B, think of high school and how I broke my middle finger in the door of my VW bug, think of homecoming parades and letter sweaters; I smell autumn and feel a little chubby, freckled, and awkward again.  But I would open the books he wrote and read about men with limps and horribly crooked teeth, women with wild hair, huge thumbs, and the most vibrant names (Marx Marvelous, John Paul Ziller, Bernard Mickey Wrangle, Ellen Cherry Charles, Boomer Petway, to name a few).  I didn't feel quite as bizarrely unique as the brightness of my hair and Pollock-like spatterings of freckles led me to feel.

I also came upon a few books that I would rather forget, but I would not get rid of them, unpleasant memories of giver aside.  I love books. They tell me their secrets, fill my senses with the emanations of wood, forested dirt, wind moving through trees, and grittiness on the fingertips as you turn the page slowly so as to not even permit a sigh between words.  Books teach me their words and show me their hidden places and people; from philosophizing about the pyramid on a pack of Camels, to the Castles of Winterfell, to Gary Snyder as he walks up the mountainside, to Edward Abbey rolling cigarettes as he works as a fire outlook, to Scarlett O'Hara proclaiming "Tomorrow is another day." 

"Does the moon have a purpose?  Are redheads supernatural?  Who knows how to make love stay?  I am going to submit these question to the Remington SL3.  Like a war between magicians, it can last a long time, and even then the outcome may not be what it appears to be."  From Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.

So, I guess no kindle.

American Psycho? I Ain't Scared.

I finished reading American Psycho tonight.  I had a conversation with a friend of mine who works for a large firm, one mentioned in the book.  Let me preface this by saying that he is a genuinely nice guy.  Honestly.  He is Patrick Bateman's age with a Bateman-like pedigree, in fact, I heard him on the phone with a buddy of his, having a Bateman-esque conversation as they tossed various restaurants around to see where they could get a reservation.  Here's how it went down:
Me:  Hey, I'm reading American Psycho, have you read it?
Him:  Nah, but I hear it's really good.
Me:  Yeah, it's um...interesting.  It goes into great details about where everyone buys their clothes, what fancy tailor fixes them, where they're going to eat, stuff like that.  You know, it's about all you Wall Street types.
Him:  I don't think I'm very Wall Street.
Me:  Let me ask you a question.
Him:  Sure.
Me:  Where'd you get that shirt?
Him:  I had it handmade in Hong Kong.
Me:  Wrong answer.

One could argue that my friend is the "Economic Human," a theory that states that humans are "narrowly self-interested actors who have abilites to make judgments towards their subjectively defined ends."  This is in contrast to "Homo Reciprocans" whose name suggests some humans are motivated by the desire to be cooperative and improve their environment.  I personally know him to be the other (although he could be the Economic Human during his office hours), which brings me back to who?  Patrick Bateman.

Here's the thing.  We in the U.S. practice the neoclassical theory of economics which "maximises the role of the private business sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state."  Hand in hand with this is the notion of "neoliberalism," a "paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices that uses the languages of markets, consumer choice, transactional thinking (ahem), and individual autonomy (more on that later) to shift risks from governments and corporations and to extend MARKET LOGIC INTO THE REALM OF SOCIAL AND AFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS" (I added the caps).

No wonder Patrick Bateman went completely out his mind. One woman I met at the gym said that she worked for Random House when the book was published, and that people (primarily women's groups) were out on the streets protesting its publication. I'll say this:  his treatment of women is misogynistic, reprehensible, unforgivable, odious, and loathsome.  I think, especially in light of recent happenings on Wall Street that I know I don't need to remind anyone of that their treatment of us, you know, good old Main Street USA,  isn't much better.  Here's the deal:  the above theory takes the following factors into consideration.  This is a "value model:"

• desirability of certain sectors of the economy over others
• desirability of certain actors in the economy over other
• desirability of certain distributions of resources in the economy over others,
• constraints on choices or policy paths which might otherwise be made.

Here's my problem with a "value model."  Whose values?  And who decides what is desirable?  And what are the "actors?"  Economic Man?  Or Reciprocus Man?  Clearly, our current society is based on Economic Man.  Ellis goes into great detail in  his book about where people buy their clothes, who tailored them, how to wear pocket squares and tie clips.  There is a particularly telling scene where Bateman nearly has an anxiety attack as he realizes that one of his pals has a better business card than him because it has a watermark.  As for individual autonomy, I think that is a laughable notion.  The Wall Streeters in the book may have the autonomy to purchase the things that they want, but those purchases are made in a never ending, tail chasing game of one upmanship.  In a funny scene with Bateman's ex-girlfriend, she points out that a very expensive painting that he paid $12,000 dollars for is hanging upside down.  As for "transactional thinking," one cannot possibly live an entire life happily based on the transactional approach.  At some point, one person will say, "that's not worth what I'm paying for it," whether that price is literal or figurative.

I'd like to talk for a second about the "hardbodies" that figure so prominently in the book.  In order to be a hardbody, one must be blonde with an amazing body, finely manicured, pedicured, and facialed (speaking of "hardbodies," Alison Poole, one of the characters in the book was created by a friend of Ellis, Jay McInerney who wrote the novel Story of My Life.  Poole is based on McInerney's ex-girlfriend and current n'er-do-well, Rielle Hunter --yeah, that one, who at 6 months pregnant made a sex tape with John Edwards -- while Edward's wife was home fighting breast cancer).  A hardbody must hire midgets to act as elves to serve food at your Christmas party, then whine incessantly about the quality of the Waldorf Salad that she didn't even make but had catered (as Bateman's fiance does). 

One of the reviews of the book that came out in 1991 said, and I'm paraphrasing, that American Psycho was like Silence of the Lambs if it had been told through the eyes of Buffalo Bill (remember him?  "It puts the lotion on its skin.").  The difference in Silence is that it is told through the eyes of a female protagonist.  None of the women in this book have the brains to hold a conversation, and they are nearly always drunk, high, or doped up on prescription drugs (which Bateman is as well).  Bateman is a complete misanthrope, showing no emotion toward anyone but himself. 

Riddle me this:  How many times have you walked through the tourist masses in Times Square and thought to yourself, "If that nasty lady wearing the floral shirt with the bad perm doesn't get walking fast I am going to knock her butt right over?"  Or, forget about NYC, how many times have you been in your car and been cut off and thought to yourself, "I am going to ram them with my car,"  or said to your child, friend, or sibling in a moment of frustration, "I am going to kill you!"  You don't do it, of course, because 99% of us are normal, thoughtful human beings, right?

What I think Ellis was showing is that if you took away your inhibitions and fear of breaking the law and any moral or religious repercussions, that you, too, might do something completely reprehensible.  And in our current Economic model, with the acquisition of goods and the market deciding values, with Wall Street fighting any common sense initiatives, i.e. The Volcker Rule, the only rule is to grab as much as you can and not get caught.

I don't think Bateman did any of it.  I think maybe he wanted to and very often thought about it, but ultimately was too worried about ruining his Armani suit.

Just a Walk

I've been told twice in as many days that I should write more, that my writing is "pithy" and "very masculine." (thank you for the compliment to my plucky co-worker, who also happens to be a published author (she is a contributing author to A Cup of Comfort for Mothers...check it out), and to KPS, and I respect their opinions very much). I suppose that explains my stalwart resistance to reading anything by Austen in my book club and why I keep trying to convince them to read Into the Wild (I would try for McCarthy but I'm certain the girls would resist.  Perhaps we can compromise with Steinbeck).  At any rate, I keep thinking to myself, "I don't have anything to write about." 

Sick of my roach infested gym, I opted to walk through the Cloisters in upper Manhattan instead.  I'm giving you a gift by sharing this place with you.  I used to live in the 190's, and I would either run or walk through the shaded trails pretty much every day in the summer.  In the fall, the main trail running through the lower half of the park (Fort Tryon) would be beautifully laden with golden leaves.   Sunlight peek-a-boos through openings in the leaves, and you can smell and practically feel the damp earth, so much thicker than the red rock sand and dirt I am accustomed to.

Walking for me is a very visceral experience.  Not the inert process of the treadmill, but the passing of space beneath my feet.  I like to hear the ground underneath my shoes, smell a flower if I'm so compelled, sneer at ogly men, taste the sweat on my lip. 

I decided to walk up Cabrini today, a tree-lined street a block or so away from the Hudson.  You are instantly transported to a part of New York City that feels serene; there are children riding about on scooters, parents pushing strollers, elderly couples walking down the sidewalk holding hands, and between the buildings, glimpses of the Hudson River and the Jersey Palisades on the other side.

I chose to walk at about 7:00 or so, and the sun was just making its descent into the horizon.  The river shimmered with gold.  I could suddenly smell leaves, water, grass, earth, and I inhaled deeply.  At the end of Fort Washington where the Cloisters begin, there is a flower garden.  This is where the present comes in.  There are many benches set up so one can sit and just admire the garden, the river, and the George Washington Bridge just to the south.  It is an extreme juxtaposition; where dirt meets steel, but both the bridge and the gardens are tended to by human hands.

My thoughts have a tendency to dwell in the ether, and I have been counseled in the past to do things that quite literally connect me with the earth.  There is no thinking forward, no rehashing the past, no wondering what is next when you are nose deep in the bud of a flower.

As I was walking, I thought to myself, "I could write about this!  I could tell people about Fort Tryon, the Cloisters, the beautiful flower garden, about how walking in this corner of Manhattan makes me, I will begrudgingly admit, really like it."  My loyalties, however, still lie in Southern Utah.  Didn't want you to think I turned all urban on you.

A NYC Wedding

I will preface this by saying that when it comes to love and marriage, I am (surprise) a cold-hearted cynic. I see a lot of relationships glued together by bills, children, taking their partner for granted, and a general sense of malaise. You know, why leave when you can stay home and put up with someone?

But last night, I saw something wonderful and beautiful, which made me wonder if love is not as cynical as I think it is. My good friend E married her longtime boyfriend, R. It was a charming ceremony, very intimate and warm. I have never attended a Jewish wedding, and I was captivated by the enthusiastic opera singing rabbi (if you're curious, just ask). Later, my girlfriends and I all laughed over dinner, danced with the band, and snuck off in gaggles to confer in the ladies room. E and R were their truest versions of themselves. It was like our well-crafted New York City facades had been pulled aside and we all watched them just beam.

So, perhaps I saw the first blush of newly married love. But I think what I saw was their willingness to look beyond the antiquated notions of marriage and to make it the best version of love they know how to make.

Big thanks to E and R. I can only wish the utmost happiness to the Southern Belle and R the curmudgeon. You cast a ray of light into my opinions.

Gumption or Endurance?

I'm reading Gone with the Wind, and in the afterword, Margaret Mitchell says that the book is about people with "gumption." Hmmm....let's see what Webster's has to say about gumption:

1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.

2. Guts; spunk.

3. Common sense.

I am not, of course, Margaret Mitchell, but in my humble opinion (and I'm only halfway through the book right now, so I give you that caveat), this book is not about gumption but about endurance. Now, Scarlett O'Hara, one can argue, is full of gumption, as is Rhett Butler, but right now (and perhaps the characters will flesh out a bit later), they are caricatures of what Margaret Mitchell thinks a spunky southern Belle should be or what a scoundrel of a gentleman would be in the form of Rhett Butler. All book club pontificating aside, what this book has brought to my attention is the mores, customs, and delicacies of the South in that time period, especially for the women. But, I believe, sadly, that time has not changed things all that much. The overt customs are of course, much different, but the game playing remains much the same.

I am going to make a bold statement here, and please, feel free to disagree, but over the course of several books I have read recently (A Game of Thrones, Random Family, GWTW, and The Lonely Polygamist) what I have gleaned is this: Women are still looking to men as forms of currency. As meal tickets. As the answer to "happily ever after." Random Family pointed this out most beautifully as young women (let's tell the truth here, girls) in the Bronx scramble about madly and make themselves sexually available to pretty much anybody in order to give them a son (because if you can give him a son, you might move up the scale from "baby momma" to "wife" -- which is still not an actual wife -- but you get my drift). In GWTW's time, the women were courted by and married men they barely knew, and then, should the match not work, quietly suffered through a lifetime (and I bet the men were suffering, too) with someone they were not interested in even looking at, much less sleeping with. A Game of Thrones takes place in, I don't know, some medieval time when young girls were thrust into relationships with other families in order to build alliances, so I'll let that pass (but still, currency). The Lonely Polygamist shows that even four women cannot satisfy poor Golden Richards, who simply longs to pick who he wants to love instead of being forced by his church to pick women they think will "build the kingdom."

People will sometimes try to trick you into love. And my question is this: if you have to trick, cajole, demand, forget that you've been lied to, cuckolded, ignored, or abused, is this love? And is it gumption, or endurance, if you stay?

I look forward to the end of the book. Maybe it will be about gumption after all.

Cleaning House

I'm searching for something I can feel in control of. This ephemeral, fleeting world offers little condolence in this regard: I can't control who calls me in for auditions, I can't control, really, if I book the job or not, I can't control the train being late or rain, for example.

My world is full of things that let me have my hand on the wheel but refuses to let me steer (did I steal that from a Howard Jones song?). Just last night, I was sitting in a yogurt shop with Looks in the thick of Times Square. Little did we know that as we were eating and enjoying each other's company that a mere two blocks away, NYPD was closing down the streets and using a robotic arm to break into an SUV with a crude bomb inside. Looks said that Times Square was "mobbed," but Times Square is ALWAYS mobbed at 6:00 P.M. on a Saturday, especially when it's warm like it was yesterday. So now I have to add bombs to the list of things I have no control over.

It's not a new thought, and many books and movies have examined this very topic, but it made me stop and think about the things in action that we cannot see. Things at the particle level; glass molecules moving about, good and bad cells running through our bodies, cells that reproduce into cancer, or babies. Not to mention what is happening in the privacy of people's living rooms, on the street corners, in the board rooms.

So, in an effort to get a grasp on what I feel is becoming a steamrolling sense of malaise, I have decided to do a serious detoxification/cleansing regimen. I want to move through my days with a sense of purpose, a plan, other than the purpose and plans I have going now. The toy box that is my life needs to be turned upside down and scattered about, and if a change in my daily rituals and habits are the tools, then I can hardly wait. The mystics often ask themselves "how can I see this differently?" I am hoping, perhaps naively, that at the end of this personal cleaning, that I will perceive things differently.

47 Years

47 years is a long time to be married, and yet my parents have pulled it off with aplomb. February 8, 1963, is the day that my very young mother and slightly older father walked into the Santa Monica Temple and decided that they were going to be married, not just for time, but for time and all eternity, according the Mormon belief system.

I do not have enough words in my GRE studied vocabulary to describe the admiration I have for this. The years have not been easy to them, as they have navigated rough waters, 7 children, 10 grandchildren (two on the way), lay-offs, major moves, retirement, Pollock-like splatterings of health problems, great triumphs and I'm certain (though they would never tell us children) great disappointments.

Any lack has been filled in abundance with love and support, open hearts and what I'm sure must be an unbelievably strong belief in the minds of their children as they watch us stumble around in the dark from time to time, knowing that though we will most likely fall, they will be right there to help us up.

47 years of marriage is not something that I am likely to accomplish (YOU do the math), but their relationship has taught me something that perhaps was not intended: Love is a decision. One may be, at first, IN love. But that kind of love goes away. It will not stay. You must decide if what remains is something that you can spend the rest of your life cultivating. Or if love is a seed best not planted.

Happy Anniversary to the best mom and dad in the world. Thank you for having the courage to let me make my own mistakes and then for brushing me off when I finally get up.

Hiking Alone

I feel a bit like Gary Snyder today (and I am paraphrasing, and probably badly): the bend of the waist, the articulation of the knees, the in and out of ragged breath, the crunch of boots on ground.

Hiking. I know I wax romantic, and some of you, probably a lot of you, don't understand it or even want to. It's dirty, it's cold, it's hot, it's sweaty, it's exhausting, it's blister-inducing. You stand at the bottom of a hill and think, "no way am I walking up that thing." But then you do, one boot in front of the other and when you look behind you, you think, "I climbed that."

I love the austereness of it, which is probably why I prefer to hike alone. It seems sacred to me. From an online dictionary: "Austere usually implies a purposeful avoidance of luxury or ease." Maybe, to me, it seems as if you haven't earned it if the process wasn't difficult. I am leary of things that seem to come very easily. They rarely do.

When I am on the trail, I don't think about subway trains packed full of people, bills that are due, or any of the riff-raff periphery. I walk, I breathe.