Island of the Blue Dolphins

This time I actually have a good excuse for reading a kid's book. I was asked to lead a reading circle with some of my fourth grade girls. The book is called Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell and it chronicles the life of a indigenous girl named Karana, who in an effort to save her brother jumps from a moving ship and swims back to the island that her family and her entire tribe are leaving in order to escape from the Aleuts. She and her brother set about figuring out a way to survive alone as they wait for their family to return, but then her brother is attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs and she is stuck on the island alone....for years. (I'm not giving away too much, that happens close to the beginning of the book). What really got to me about this book, in addition to the nice clear style of narration and excellent imagery was the story of what she did to fill her days. Clearly there was no grocery store, so a lot of her time was spent gathering good. And as it was so lonely living in the village alone, she built herself another house and some weapons with which to hunt and to protect herself from the dogs. And while she does end up forming relationships with the other animals that she encounters, the most interesting relationship in the book is the one she has with herself.

Like all of us, Karana has a whole consciousness constructed by the culture and legends of her people, so that even when they aren't there she is still guided by what she learned before. She struggles with herself about whether or not she should make weapons as it was taught to her that women should never make weapons. She really has to find the answers within herself.

One thing I realized is how much time I spend with other people. When I think about my life, so much of my story surrounds my daily interactions with my friends, family, co-workers, and students. What would happen to me if all of that went away? Who would be there to celebrate my accomplishments with me, or comfort me in my failures? Who would validate my experiences or help me to process the lessons I'm constantly learning from the universe? What would life look like if you were all alone. Would it still be worth it?

I spend a lot of time alone, but even when I'm by myself the thoughts and energies of others stay with me. In the silence, my mind is super loud, always chattering about everything and anything. What captured my imagination was the idea of what life would be like without all the distractions. At first it would be really lonely, but then what would it be like to just be with yourself, to have only your own heart song to listen to. What would you learn? This has been a question very much on my mind lately, not because I plan on living on deserted island somewhere, but because I just started a spiritual practice class that is helping me to ease myself into meditation. I am preparing my mind and body to journey within.

Last week I kept a log of how I spent my week. I recorded how many minutes or hours I spent in prayer, studying spiritual texts, meditating, or providing acts of service. And it was pretty revealing. My teacher describes meditation as the second half of a conversation with God. Prayer is the time when you get to talk, but meditation is when you listen. I talk a lot, but my attention span for listening is embarrassingly low. What would I do if there was no one else to listen to but God? What would I learn? Who would I become? Just something on my mind.

Post Meditation Poem

Written after Spiritual Practice class....

I stare at the flame
breath
focus
in and out
of focus
feeling my many minds
splitting into their separate folds,
breath
in and out
of focus
and they are chattering
the noisy paper dolls
fashioned from my many moods
all dressed in lacy clothes.
They ring around me
drinking tea and telling my stories,
my lies
my truths
my every thought in between
like a shell of moving masks
bright and intricately painted,
all the versions of me,
but from my real face
with my real eyes
I watch the flame
breath in and out
focus
until it sears this shell away
and there is nothing left
to hide me
from
myself...

Why I shouldn't watch reality TV...

This weekend Coco and I went to Portland to gorge on good drinks and bad TV at my dad's house. I personally don't own a television and for whatever reason people have very strong responses to this...as if I am some elite anti-television guru who goes around shaming people for their guilty pleasure. Just to be clear my not having a TV is not some political statement or because I'm cheap or even because I loath and despise TV. Actually there is no real reason for it, I just don't. But I do watch TV, either online or at other people's houses, so don't worry my brain is just as rotten as the next person's.

And so it was on one of these TV watching binges, after Dad had gone to bed, that Coco and I came across "For the Love of Ray Jay". There is something both awful and addictive about reality TV. The awful part is self-evident. This show, starring "Ray Jay" who is at best a B grade celebrity whose major claim to fame is being Brandi's brother and having sung some mediocre r&b songs that make R Kelly's "Feeling on your booty" seem deep and meaningful. Coco and I came in on the season finale, where there were only 2 competitors left in the intense battle for "the love of Ray Jay". These two women, Unique and Cocktail....so named by Ray Jay himself, who at no time referred to them by their actual names, each took a different tact on wooing their prize. Unique was the classier of the two. She apparently took Ray Jay home to meet the fam...and then there was Cocktail who, after dinner, put on some special lingerie and actually did a pole dance on national television. I'm not sure if I was more disturbed by the fact that Ray Jay conveniently had a stripper pole located in the shower room of his bathroom or if I was just floored by the appalling objectifying premise of the show.

While I didn't have a real reason not to have a television before, I feel like watching even the small portion of this show (which is about as much as we could do before turning to Animal Planet)was more than enough reason to burn TVs in effigy. Yet still,like watching a car accident in slow motion...and knowing in advance the destruction about to ensue, I couldn't quite peel my eyes away so quickly. I became enthralled, both repulsed and morbidly curious to know what could possibly come next. While it didn't have quite the insane comic value of "Flavor of Love" (Public Enemy's Flavor Flav's bizarre reality show), there was something compelling about the tears welling up in both women's eyes as they waited for the verditct. Who would Ray Jay choose and why?

And that's when I had this scary thought that maybe there was something to this. I mean the power dynamics alone were kind of fascinating. Why did these women choose to enter this competition? For money? For fame? For the chance to be with someone they'd seen on TV? What makes someone willingly choose to compete? Though the show seemed totally cartoonishly fake and staged I had to wonder about its real world implications.In real life none of my girlfriends would ever degrade themselves so publicly for a man...or would they? Would I? It got me thinking about competition and the dating pool and the things we women put up with to get and keep a man.

It is a familiar situation to like someone and to want them to like you back, but at what cost? Ideally love is string free. You meet someone, you get a mutually good vibe and that perfect mix of fireworks and friendship build itself naturally into a relationship. But in the beginning there is always that precarious balance of wanting to maintain a good image in your new partner's eyes and wanting to be honest about who you really are. And this becomes even more complicated if one or both of you are also seeing other people. Then it becomes a competetion. How can you get that person to choose you and only you? Who do you have to be? What do you have to do? And how far are you willing to go without compromising your principals.Add to that the scarcity issue. In this beautiful emerald city there are theoretically 94 single men to every 100 single women...by my totally scientific calculation, you can knock off at least 30 single men from that figure on the basis of sexual orientation, whether or not they're in jail or if they are crazy, reclusive or totally socially awkward, so of those 64, if you are looking for a man of color in a specific age range...the numbers have just more than halved again.

So when I'm out and about and I see a good looking black man in my age group, who appears heterosexual, available and not scary, chances are there are about 50 other women in my immediate vicinity who would wrestle me to the ground if it meant dude would ask them out.

In the end Ray Jay chose Cocktail and in a bizarrely poignant speech, he let Unique know that while she was "all that" and he deeply cared for her, he was looking for someone who could meet him where he was at....someone who wouldn't ask him to change and could really fall for him and not just his potential. While clearly my first instinct was to make fun of his little speech, I couldn't because I was totally triggered, having heard that same speech first hand before. "I dig you, but you expect too much from me." "I could never be good enough to give you what you need"...but then here is this other girl who may or may not be as pretty, intelligent, or soulful, but who for better or worse just came and took your spot. Brutal. Maybe I shouldn't be watching TV. Or maybe I shouldn't think about it so hard...it is just reality after all.

A few perfect days

Just when the constant rain and cold and the craziness of little children was about to make me insane, I got the ultimate reprieve in the form of 2 weeks of SPRING BREAK! My break began with a lovely party at the home of a high school friend, where I drank a little too much and danced holes through my stockings and it was lovely and perfect and a great reminder that I am still on the right side of 30. Or more to the point that even when I reach the left side of 30 I might still have it in me to party like a rock star...(a classy rock star). The next day I leasurely gathered up my travel gear and caught a flight to San Fran to bestow belated b-day wishes on my girl Rexi.

Rexi and I have a unique friendship. We met in Spanish class in summer quarter right before we made the trip to Spain that changed both our lives. I was working the night shift for the box loaders and could barely keep my eyes open in that class, but still we managed to meet on break while running through the quad to get rice crispy treats. And from then on, though we are very different people, we forged a friendship that saw us through various adventures in Europe, back in the states and later through two years of being JETs in Japan. So I couldn't help but feel a special sense of rightness that we should reunite to party during yet another stage of our life.

Our first stop was her apartment which is at the top of a hill and up several narrow flights of stairs (like seemingly everywhere else I would go to in San Fran). We paused to catch up for a bit, then got dolled up and headed out for champagne and an 80s b-day party for one of her friends. It was a fun night, and funny because I ran into several of my Seattle friends out escaping the rain as well.

The next day I was set to meet up with Benji, another friend from a past life. We led a fabulous trip to Hokkaido together about 3 years ago and hadn't managed to see each other since. We decided to meet in Chrissy Fields by the water...but first Rexi and I hit up China Town for dimsun, then we hiked through the north shore stopping for Italian coffee and amaretto cookies. As we made out way down the marina, Benji called to say he was lost and would be an hour late, so we decided to hop an old fishing boat and take crusie in the bay. While we were waiting for the Captain to fill the boat, he regaled us with stories about living in San Fran and then pointed out the bush man.

At first I didn't see him. I only say what looked like a large fake plant, then I realized there was a man hidden behind the branches. We watched him curiously.

"He's a real son of a #%$*&," explained Captain Moore. "Watch him, he just stands over there and waits for people to walk by so he can scare the $#%& out of them. He gets paid too. You tourist give him money for that. He makes about 40 grand a year."
Captain Moore continued on to tell us that once the bush man had scared a man so badly that he bumped into his wife, who fell over and broke her arm. They sued him, but the jury decided he was innocent and so the scaring has continued and there are more than one bush man now, though every one claims to be the original.

As we made our way out into the water, the sun shining down on us, flanked by the Bay Bridge on one side and the Golden Gate Bridge on the other side, I had this moment of deep gratitude. It was a perfect day, warm and breezy and filled with wonder. As per usual Rexi had a attracted an admirer, so I ended up sitting next to her new friend's cousin, a gentleman stamped with gang tattooes, who kept a running comentary on every boat we passed citing how he would like a boat someday and how he would like to do this and that someday, someday, always someday. And I couldn't help think about the bushmen and the someday men and how we are all complicit in these systems of self denial. Either we are busy allowing the unknown to scare us, or lurking in the shadows trying to get the drop on someone else, or maybe we're just someday people...always too focused on the future to really live and enjoy the present. But in that moment I felt grounded, as though everything had been leading me to the singular revelation that I was very content to just sit in the sun with a good friend watching the seals and knowing that my highest good was infact unfolding in the right here and now and stretching infinitely outward towards the unknown.

I did get to meet up with Benji and it was lovely, as were my visits with SJ, a friend from grad school and the Chef, my long lost cousin who I hadn't seen in literally 20 years. I ate my way through the city, not feeling guilty for second given all the hills I walked and I did even get to go salsa dancing at Cocomo, and while I could (an have) gone on an on about the details, the point is that every moment was perfect. I didn't feel rushed or distressed. Even when I got lost and met crazy people, the sun was still shining and nothing seemed to be able to piss me off. I wish this weren't just a vacation though...what if I could be this way everyday all day? Then when I looked back on my life I could describe it as a series of perfect years. I'll work on that. My vacation continues...next stop...the cherry blossom festival in DC.