Dune

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sand_Dunes_National_Park_and_Preserve 

Part of the allure of the west for me was that I had never seen it before. It was true: the very first time I "saw" Colorado was the night we drove up to a hotel in Boulder, and it was the dark of a rather recently settled west, which meant there were almost no lights. I couldn't see a thing. I asked Dave once or twice while we were on the highway if we would be able to see the mountains at all, even in the dark, and he laughed at me, saying that the mountains were facing his direction and not my side of the van. Oh. The next morning gave me no better clues about the landscape, because a blizzard had hit the area overnight, blanketing everything in a deep white snow that sparkled painfully in the bright desert sun. "Welcome to Colorado!" He laughed at me as we dug out the old gray van (a.k.a."The Rat") from the light powdery snow. 

Acute altitude sickness left me light-headed, queasy, and then actively vomiting. He was better with that because it mimicked his hard drinking ways, and he flattered himself into thinking that it gave me a taste of the morning sickness from pregnancy that would surely come to us one day as "marrieds". It allowed him to briefly feel like he had the upper hand over me, because his troubles were far too serious for anyone to handle outside of expert medical care, and they had failed at that, too. I knew that if he was going to stick it through, a big move like this would either shake him loose from me or give him the ballast he needed to endure serious married life with a woman like me. 

It was, in fact, exactly what I told my friends and family back home. Suffice to say, Dave was less ripe for adventure than me. Incurable brain disorders will do that to a person. Still, he was sailing on the illusion of greatness, and this was a performance opportunity for him. "Yeah", he explained to me as we swiped snow from the van, "you'll feel sick for about a day or two, but once you acclimate, it'll go away." Nowadays, I could've looked that up on the Internet in 3.5 seconds, but back then he felt that it gave him the leverage he needed to lead like a man, because he'd visited his older sister on their parents dime when she lived out there on a gated golf course community. Great. Along with the factoid about us being a mile high, thus ended Dave's supreme intellectual reign about all things western. Really, that was it.

After Dave went home, I began dating a man who was much more independent (like me), because he was estranged from his child-abusing parents by necessity. It wasn't great, but at least we could get up-and-go early in the morning, without the 12 p.m. wake-up call and grueling hours of coffee and cigarettes that Dave's manic-depression needed for him to remain sitting upright. I didn't have to sit around waiting and babysitting a man-child who would never really be fully functioning without massive support from his too tight crew of incestuous locals who also never broke away from home to explore the world. Vacation badly at a Floridian tourist trap or consistently hit an "all-you-can-eat" cruise ship buffet, yes. Real travel? No. Can't do it.

But Kent could, so we did. After so many years trapped inside a series of dark smoky rooms at night with a bunch of uneducated drunks, I felt free to roam. He was a burly sort of permanent bachelor used to being on his own, and after the cloying co-dependence of David, I found his carefree attitude refreshing. At least I was on my own again. No more playing nursemaid to a sick man. It seemed like I got away from a really bad situation cleanly, in a powerful "no harm, no foul" play that had set me completely free of a family that had never really warmed up to me. In addition to my mobility, Kent also had a great appetite for food, unlike the pale hard-drinking chain-smoker I'd just left.

We ate our way through Denver with expensive dinner dates that left me two sizes bigger than normal, but given what I'd been through with a depressed angry alcoholic, I figured I could lose the weight later, in exchange for my name and my life back. Hard as it was at the time (Denver was suffering through a skinny tan fad brought on by Californian relocatees in the millions), I knew I could bounce back from it, and slowly I did. I had my own feelings to contend with, and during a visit from my mother, she was surprised at the strength of my returning appetite. I'd spent years eating poorly or not at all with Dave, given his weird schedule of habits, and it had left me wanting. I was shocked and afraid at the ferocity of my returning hunger that seemed to never dull, and the somnolence that constantly weighed down my limbs.

The height of the mountains didn't help, either, so even though Kent and I were free to roam around and travel, I often felt too tired to do so, in sharp contrast to the 10-mile hikes I could walk in the mountains back home, even when I was loaded down with a pack. Being considered "fat" and "tired" was new to me, though my status as an outcast for this divorce was not. There was always something about me that pushed the scared conformists away, saggy as they were with their own fears. But gradually my energy returned, and with it, new life. I began ditching the car so I could walk to work instead, and we had a new dog that needed as much walking as we could stand. We hit the mountains, avoiding the obvious tourist spots for the more down-to-earth open spaces that are free to the public. 

I could feel my blood moving again, and I knew I was on the way to recovering from this most recent ordeal. Still, some trips from that time period bring it all back to me, like the sluggishness that felt like I was wading through thick muddy water during our trip to the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado. As I walked through a desert that looks much smaller than it feels after you're in it, I felt a weight sucking me down, trying to pull me in, chaining me to the sand, forcing me to take slow heavy steps, and it was a good thing, too. The desert opens up like a surreal pop-up book after that first small hill, rapidly expanding into a large full-blown desert, and that's no place for a New York girl like me to break down. I come from the water. I come from a solid place I was destined to return. I wanted to make it back home.

Moose Dog

Me, my Mal, and my ex, in one tiny plane: Ted looked out the window for a few minutes (those are the Coloradan foothills receding into the distance in the photo above Ted's head-shot) and then he fell asleep for the whole trip.

My Alaskan Malamute was epic. He looked like a cross between a polar bear and a werewolf, and he could hunt. He burned through life like you should: at full throttle, and not injury-free. He was hit by a car running across a street towards a playground full of kids before he was fully grown, flung onto a sidewalk where he almost died, and then he made a complete recovery. His first trip away from home was on a little airplane, from the family farm in Oklahoma where he was born back to Colorado with my ex-boyfriend because, at the time, my boyfriend was logging hours towards a private pilot's license. I took Ted's second plane ride with him (with the same boyfriend), from Colorado to West Texas to see my dad and his family. Ted was supposed to be my "huggy bear" during the trip because I hate flying, but once we reached cruising altitude, he immediately fell asleep for the entire trip.

That's not all. Once we landed in the middle of nowhere, we took Ted around to see the sights. First, to my dad's house in the middle of "Nowhere", then to his ranch that's in the middle of "Absolute Nowhere". That night in the small cabin down on the ranch, we made a plan for the next day: we'd follow the wild boar tracks we found down by the stream by tracking the hoof prints in the mud, hopefully finding the big beast after many years of trying, because it was a notorious no-show on the ranch. So, the next day, I found myself with my dad, my youngest bro, my boyfriend, and my big Mal Ted on a trail during sunrise; them with guns in hand, and me with my dog.

Ted did not disappoint. He'd been a naturally gifted tracker since his early days, all on instinct. We took him hiking in the Colorado backwoods one afternoon, coming across a lone Moose in front of us. Ted was brilliant. At just seven months old and not fully grown, he immediately cut ahead of us by a few paces to block the large animal, then he walked slowly up to it, breaking away suddenly into the brush when it disappeared into the woods. We spent a few tense moments between us, wondering if he'd come back at all, or if we had to do a "search and rescue", but just as we said it, there he was crashing back through the bushes, smiling happily up at us. Yeah! You did it!!

For you, "Moose": http://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/LivingwithWildlifeMoose.aspx

After that, we dubbed him "Moose Man" or "Moose Dog": two more names of affection for an incredibly uncommon dog of many names, with many gifts. Back at the ranch, we waited in the pink sunlight, hidden among the thick sage brush for something to happen, and then it did. We heard some noises and some shuffling, without knowing what was moving around out there. Snow dogs take off like a shot if you don't rein them in, so I had my guy on a short leash, but once we got up from our spots to take a look around, I paid out the leash with plenty of slack for Ted to do his thing, which he did. 

He took us to a little hole in the ground where he paced around sniffing furiously, with some more movement. I put my disposable camera to the ground, taking a couple of blind shots of whatever was lying there underground. There was another dash of movement, and then we followed Ted to a small leafless tree in the desert brush. We finally figured out what Ted had so masterfully scented out in the clear, thin morning air. Sitting there between the highest tree limbs was a very large and totally freaked out porcupine, the largest spiny porcupine any of us had ever seen, and my dad had no idea they lived in the area, let alone his on his ranch-land. That was the awesome power of my "moose" dog; a fiercely bad-ass hunter, tracker, and scout. Where would we be without them? Nowhere.

http://bit.ly/1QHxEpa

  

This one's for you today, Betty. 
You burned through it brightly, girl!

http://www.koko.org/node/2172

Nightswimming

In art school, real fun was hard to come by. Chills were plentiful, along with fear, hope, and crippling doubt. Combined with your average rich kids' inability to sleep at night without a safety net of cushy money and psychiatrist-prescribed pharmaceuticals, it led to some insane freak-outs, as we dared each other to the dizzying heights that are brought on by frustration and rabid competition. They'd show up to classes exhausted, with shaved heads, and really dark, unhealthy circles under their eyes, with the requisite heavy-lidded baggage. I've never met a more dangerously fucked up group of people in my life. 

When Littleton, Colorado erupted into murder and suicide from the particular kind of violence that is a rich kids' ennui, I wasn't all that surprised. I'd be openly talking about the toxic combo of money and madness for years, to anyone who cared enough to listen. That my theories about white men with money congealed in reality, into my very worst fears about life, actually scared me to death.

It was into this mix that someone in our group mentioned an empty rock quarry as a potential swimming hole. I was desperate for cool water, as an East Coaster. Summertime just ain't right without the beach and swimming to me. I jumped at the chance. We snuck onto the grounds underneath a chain link fence, and past the "No Swimming!" signs, giving it the right amount of transgression for rebellious youth. Of course, my crazy Yankee housemate, with his backwoods working-class attitude and lust for rampantly unchecked athleticism, spurred us on to higher and higher jumps. It was thrilling and really fucking scary (Kudos, Riddell). I mastered cliffhanging from across the quarry, my toes gripping onto a narrow rocky ledge, but the other side of the pond was even worse because it was much, much higher than it seemed.

If you've never free-falled into 30-40 feet of cold murky water that hides its' depth, I can't really explain to you. I asked my friend questions about it while in the water, trying to steel my nerves for the jump. We listened to him talk about the sharp edges of rusty metal that lay on the bottom of the small lake, since it'd been a teenage fad to dump your car there and claim it as a total loss from theft on your insurance, back in rural 1970s Rhode Island. Yeah, okay. That's it, huh?

I climbed up the rocky ridge to the other side, and stood there for a little while, my crazy friend yelling at me encouragingly from the other side of the pond, taking his umpteenth leap into the depths below, from even smaller and more dangerous footholds. Shit. I have to do it. I'm no chickenshit, dude. I did it, and instantly regretted it. I saw sharp rocks quickly rising up to greet me, and thought (really thought) I'd just made the worst mistake of my life. I could hear Riddell yelling that I didn't jump far out enough to totally escape danger ("Oh, no! She didn't jump far enough out!!"), and then I gasped, hitting the water at an odd angle that smacked me in the ribs hard. I could tell he was as scared as I was, and for the first time in my life, I thought I might drown. The fall took all the wind out of my lungs. I screamed underwater, water rushing into my mouth that I had no choice but to gulp down.

I did drown a little bit, but years of swimming lessons really paid off. I bobbed up to the surface, letting out the remaining air in my lungs by yelling out from the pain of my fall. There was silence when I broke through the water. My friends had been bracing for a possible rescue dive. My housemate laughed right after I surfaced. I quickly explained to my friends in the water that I hurt myself by slamming down hard, and that's why I surfaced screaming. "Oh, shit....", as the ones with less experience drifted away from me in the water. I treaded water lightly by myself for awhile, watching other kids take jumps. I was fucking done for the day, man. It was one of those rare brush ups with mortality that I've had over the years that never really leave you.

But back up on the safety of the warm rocks, laying out and drying in the sun, we were happier than we'd been in awhile. So much so, we convinced each other to ride out there on a stifling warm summer night, a night so muggy, it begged for relief. I was a lot safer than my previous trip out there, because sharp rocks don't exactly look nicer under scant parking lot spotlights, but we were buoyed up by our nighttime adventure. Some of us descended into madness and never came back from its' gripping depths, like Greg and his sometime-love Crystal, with the long dark hair. He hugged her briefly on the rocks, in a rare warm embrace of the true boyfriend/girlfriend type, before she wriggled out of his grasp to escape to safer waters like the rippling blackness below.

He was routinely having nightmares, which he tried to capture on film in grainy black and white (and he did get it, as one student duly noted during a crit), the hauntings of madness combined with searing brilliance, hard work, and born-to-it-ness. He looked at me after she left his arms, trying to regroup from the sting of her leaving by shaking out his tight curls, opening his eyes really wide and saying to me shakily, "I've never felt this clean, you know. This water...." he trailed off, shivering in the night, ...."it just makes me feel so clean, you know? I've never felt this clean in my life!" I didn't understand, because quarries aren't exactly filled with pristine spring water, especially those right outside of a major urban area, so I quizzed him further, but to no avail. He repeated it, and I was baffled by it again.

On the ride home, we fell silent as a group, in our caravan of cheap, college-kid cars, watching the moon through open windows, a stark difference to the chatty excitement of our semi-drunk and raucous ride out there, because there ain't nothing' like the feeling of somnolence that comes over your limbs after a long day (or night) of swimming, like those times when your parents drove you back from a beach vacation during summer's off. I remember Greg mentioned the magical way that the moonlight had shimmered on our wet skin like diamonds, and the feeling that anything could happen (which it did, because we summoned it up out of the water for our creation), and that this was the one final, brief respite of summer session before we bore the full, crushing weight of the highest Ivy heights during a real semester, ill-prepared as we were with our small, hard, working class lives.

It was a lot to consider, you know? Take the time out this summer during your vacation to charge your batteries. You don't want the burn-out of an empty and used old battery that's about to be discarded by your respective industries, because when you let someone (or something ) use you like that, you don't ever get it back. And they just throw you away to get another one to feed off of creatively. You are their business; the beating, breathing heart of it. Remember that, through all the games and petty roles being played out in front of you daily, in some generic overly air conditioned office environment. Be unique. Be you. And persevere.

Cast Iron

Reflection in oil.

As my mom ages, so does her Multiple Sclerosis, which necessitates changes and adaptations in her tool usage. What was once an old stand-by becomes old, as it crosses over into unusable territory, given the advances of time upon her. And so it came to pass that she finally let go of a kitchen stable in our household, her old cast iron pan. Cool! Can I have it?, was the question I asked a few days later, when I realized it was now up for grabs. With severe handicaps, you learn to roll with the punches. It's given me a laisse-faire attitude that's whittled away the more hysteric components of my character, something I forget until an outsider comes into the picture, which often happens, sometimes with explosive effects, as it did one afternoon when a friend of mine who cleans off the cars in my mom's elderly development found out on a snowy day. He found her on the floor, talking to a LifeAlert operator over the phone line, and he, well, readers, lost his shit over it. I got a real shaky emotional VoiceMail, which I had to laugh at. 

Hand-etched Makers Mark that reads: "Ware, Sidney, -0-"

My mom delivered a great shock to his far more delicate nervous system, dragging him backwards into heady emotional waters, like his mother's death, the condition of his own elderly ailing dad, and that of his mortality, late in the game as it is in our 40s. Potent fare for a sunny snowy afternoon, and not the $25 worth or car cleaning he was expecting. I had to text him through the dangerous shoals of his own emotional ineptitude, and at the end of our brief exchange, he understood far better who I am as a person, and just how well I handle extremes. It's why he cleans my mother's car along with his ten other odd jobs, and picked her up off the floor one snowy afternoon, while I sit here typing to you, dear readers. Now he absolutely knows this and that knowledge cannot be undone. It is forever, as is his understanding of the kinds of conditions I operate under. I do all this, and that, and I do it far far better than him.

Cured with oil in the oven, just like my mom and grandpa taught me to.

Which lead me back to another part of our conversation, that of an old cast iron pan. My Uncle Paul had given it to her, but she didn't exactly remember when, though to me, it represents her leaving the family household for that of her marriage, like the type of gift a young newlywed wife gets. I always remember having it around the house, and so I know it came before my arrival in 1969. We took a turn down memory lane, as she reminisced about him. He was the youngest of three boys: my grandfather in the middle, and my great uncle the oldest, a wild kind of raconteur who took a fabulous Colombian bride for his second marriage, and then took of to Bogota for several years with her and his young sons. I remember his passing, but not that of my Uncle Paul, though my family spoke of it infrequently.

A perfect tear-shaped handle.

 
You see, he died under tragic circumstances one rainy night on the George Washington Bridge, the victim of an accidental collision, as he struggled to change a tire on the shoulder-less side of the bridge in the evening, a father trying to help his family. He was in his 40s, and he was a fireman, and his wife and children watched him die as he was hit by oncoming traffic. Even though he died before I was born, I can tell just by these scant details, along with one extraordinary hand-crafted and wise bridal gift, that he was the kind of guy I would like; the kind of hero who picks up helpless handicapped women lying on the floor, any time of day or night, because that's exactly the type of person I am.

An ancient family legacy, in the guise of one humble cast iron pan.

Amen to you of the Corvus Clan on this day in winter,

to those of us who wear the twin symbols of the wolf 

and the raven, that which endures, survives, and thrives.

Welcome to this, that is our legacy.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans

In blessed memoriam of Paul Corbett. Long may he rest in peace.

Homecoming

Two doorways.

As I knew I would, I came home after many years away. They were good hard years of some fun, some heartache, some adventure, and some travel, with much added experience. I loved it, but it was time to go home, and I knew it. So one day, on the cusp of financial ruin, I gave in to what I knew to be true, cashed my last paycheck, packed what few bags I had left in the bare sublet room I slept in because the rest of my stuff was in storage, and moved to a spare room in my moms' apartment to weather the storm. It was rough seas all the way, but that's like any real passage of time: to stick with you it has to hurt a little bit and sometimes a lot, and so it did.

Lamplight at night.

But I'm here now, and very glad of it. I know this place like a seedling knows how to grow in soil ripe for the planting. I took to it and it has, in it's own turn, taken back to me. This is my territory and my kind of land, that of my ancestors, which stretches all the way up to Canada, and I plan to savor every bit of it, like the food here that feeds my soul, because I've been cooking and serving up versions of it with home ingredients all of my life, in preparation for this time period.

Blue light, yellow light.

Stay tuned for next week's feature that I alluded to last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/02/stay-tuned.html). I referred to it as obliquely and discreetly as I could, obliged as I was under certain legal circumstances with stringent conditions that had to be followed, lest I suffer the consequences that come from jumping the gun. I do not play a young man's game, my friends, and I am happy to report that particular storm has now passed, though I'm sure others will certainly follow suit, because our very human ups-and-downs are the stuff of life itself.

Curtain and window in mid-morning light.

"Bienvenue" to you, new to this here and now.
Welcome to the light that's always been.