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.

Turning Japanese

http://godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/Shobijin

I met Atusko as a transfer student to RISD, over the foundation summer session that's required for each and every student. No one gets a waiver, not even Picasso himself (and he probably would've been kicked out for being a total fucking dick who couldn't paint, anyway), because they do not accept studio credits from any school on Planet Earth (or famous artist, living or dead). She immediately didn't like me, but given her rather traditionally affluent Japanese upbringing, she chose to hide it in plain sight, which is really odd when you are exposing yourself in intimate studio classes everyday.

But, like any other generic wanna-be "art fag", she chose to do bitchy battle with me (mostly one-sided, because, honestly, I had no fucking clue what she was thinking most of the time, nor did I really care) by sublimating her lesbian energy towards me in strange and unusual ways. I didn't know she was bisexual until later on in the summer, when my gay fashion design friends finally told me, as we sat gossiping about her and all the other students. 

She was a total snob in crits, and overly sensitive. She cried a lot, which gave her very red eyes all summer long, and led to a series of drippy red paintings that were either about human blood or being gay and rolling around in period blood with her ex-girlfriend. We didn't really know, and besides that, it was total schlock shock value and really gross. I should be perfectly honest with you at this point: I have never had a lesbian friend. Ever. I've never met a gay woman who actually liked me enough to be a real friend to me.

Anyway, into this heady cocktail of insane competition and mind-blowing academics, she chose to betray another female student by being one of the weirdest assholes I've met to date, and that is hard to beat for a New Yorker, so it actually helped me to remember her over the years, when I would have forgotten her as just another rich Japanese girl with a typically short haircut that they liked in the 90s. Through her friendship with my friend from Minnesota (who would become a housemate and roommate with me for much longer than I ever wanted, but that's another great story or two), I could at least be around her without being a primary target, because my fag hag fashion friend diffused some of her gay anger at me, and life itself.

And so, unbeknown to her, I actually learned a lot about her by being part of a group, and listening to my new arty, wealthy friends speak. They thought they were extremely sophisticated, which was funny for me as a New Yorker. We'd trade stories about where we were from, and we were from all over the globe, in several different languages. I knew she loved her brother, and that she did the same weirdly passive-aggressive and oddly sexually hostile thing with him over his girlfriend, because in "Depressionville", it's okay to sabotage other people's relationships if you can justify it by claiming "jealously" (even if it's incestuous, which is very cool, hip, and strange). With her, it came about at a red-faced and drunk "goodbye" family dinner at a sushi joint, with lots of free-flowing sake. She showed me the pictures from their last visit, as we sat talking and smoking.

By the end of the summer, she tried to convince me that her zitty, greasy-haired, and dyed blonde roomie was as beautiful as a Supermodel, and that Pam's sister was just as gorgeous, too! "Look, MAAHHRIE!" She showed me some glossy mag of a skincare ad with two blue-eyed models: one blonde and one brunette, like the American sisters she was now lucky enough to know firsthand. "Here's PAHHM, and her seester!". Uh, okay. I didn't have the heart to unload my brief experiences with New York, photography, and modeling, which would have driven her madder anyway, so I just said "Yeah", briefly and noncommittally, and let it drop.

She must have sensed that I had some edge I wasn't divulging to her right away, because she nervously fretted around my summertime dorm room in an old house owned by the school, finally landing on my old cassette types, to scrutinize them and judge my musical tastes. Uh oh. This was also really bad dyke territory for me. Chicks could always tell I really knew music by my collection. And there it was: her dip-shit, passive-aggressive opening: "Ohhhh, MAAHHHrie..." she tsk-tsked over my tapes, "you must not like women!" She pulled out one cassette, "See? You have no music by women!!" It was a frightening thing for her to say aloud, because we were in a room full of just female artists, and every single one of them wanted to sabotage me without getting caught.

It was a great move, but unfortunately for her, I actually did have some female recording artists hidden into the mix, with serious tastes in punk rock, New Wave, Ska, R&B, Jazz, and the blues: genres classically difficult for American women to succeed in. I hit her with Exene Cervanka from the L.A. band "X" and Chrissie Hyde from "The Pretenders", but she clammed up coldly, narrowing her eyes at me viciously. Okay, fine. I also have ONLY BOYS in my family, Atsuko. Oh, right! She brightened up at the suggestion that led to her ripping apart her brother's girlfriend, hence the photos she busted out and passed around.

But it led us to better places conversationally, and the room once again opened up to other people wandering around the dorm, looking for something to do after summer studios quit for the day. A nice gay Mexican kid wandered in with his new redhead "bestie" from Long Island (they LOVED dishing over gossip mags and worshipped Linda Evangelista like she was a plastic mannequin), which spread the weirdo tension around the room more equitably. We got higher and drunker, which led me back to happier memories, too. She dropped an A-Bomb then that I never forgot, and it was the most charming thing I knew about her during our brief and tense acquaintance. 

I must have been talking about watching monster movies with my bros, when she cut in excitedly, to top me in the conversation: "Yes! I know what you mean, MAAHRIE. When I was leetle girl in Tokyo, I cried when I saw Godzilla on t.v. I ran to keetchen to mom, and ask her if Tokyo was burning and people die. 'No, Atsuko!', my mommy said. 'Look! Only on t.v. Eats not real!' And she pull back curtain in keetchain to show me city. Not burned! Tokyo okay!"

Hahaha! Awesome!! I didn't care that she hated me in what passed for "subtle" in Japan, or that each and every student in the room wanted to kill me and eat me (or sleep with me) to get ahead. I only knew that one other kid there that summer thought monster movies were great, and I could finally have a decent, well-informed conversation with another girl about my love for all things Mothra and Ghidorah. Finally! 

It was a first for me outside of my immediate family circle. So, for that brief respite, during that overwhelmingly hot and unairconditioned summer, I thank you, Atsuko, for finally being real with me, for a moment anyway, in a faraway land that must have been very scary for you, despite all of your family's money, connections, and prestige. "Look out, Atsuko! IT'S GODZILLA!!"

Jimmy O.D.

Years ago, I worked for a small Jewish family business in trouble. The two kids hated the business of publishing, which they tried to use for their "creative" endeavors, like screenwriting and music. It didn't work for them, because publishing is about books. And so, I was left with two spoiled "Manhattanites" who'd been told all their lives that they were gifted from their parents. Into this mess, I was charged with righting the ship of one of their Barnes and Noble imprints. It had been ditched into the gutter for being "crass" in comparison to the other Classic series of copyright-free works, which was a total joke. 

The bargain books were face-out on the shelf in every store in the nation, a fact that had become a traveling game for me. In each town, I'd look for my name on the jackets of titles I worked on, and wherever I went in America, there I was in book form, too. Because I broke my ass for two years to put it back into shape, I had a lot of pull in the company (and the industry), which gave me the power to make some tricky decisions, especially uncomfortable ones that included their family who drew income but produced no revenue. Their single daughter would sweep in from London to treat me like a Kinko's kid making copies for her, because she wanted to brag about her designer apartment that just got a write-up. Did I want to see it? They had tons of people in their lives like that, but such was the era of housewife decorators and artsy stay-at-home moms. You know the type.

When I finally conflicted artfully well with their small son over IT support (it'd been a handy weapon from Day 1 of my time), I knew I carried the whole history of desktop publishing and Mac computers with me. My enemy camp kept making petty remarks about Apple's business tactics and the inherent snobbery designers had about their corporate-sponsored trophy computers, neither of which I disputed. I pointed that out in several meetings with the enemy camp; a row of rich white men on one side, with me and my cowardly deaf mute designer on the other. She always backed out of speaking up in meetings by citing her deafness, which usually worked at stalling the machine, but not for me, because I have a deaf father. And so, when they finally realized that shutting out design and technology had dearly cost them their business edge, the son surprisingly decided it was time to finally pursue that music career full time, by touring and cutting a self-made CD, another type of business he knew I had under my belt, too.

Enter the scene one dramatic and showy character named Jimmy. The company admin gave him "advice" within my earshot about how to work me over as a client, by giving him "tips" like appealing to my Irish side and being charming, Yeah, Mick. Fooking do that. I liked Jimmy, as I typically do with my kind. He was smart, gifted, quick, and good with the older crowd who feared computers like they were boxes sent form Hell to deliberately torture them. Because he was older than me, he knew how to mock and demonize technology so that the older rich guy would cough up the dough. After all, Jimmy was a trained actor, as well as an IT guy, professional musician, lapsed Catholic, martial artist, and newly graduated fine artist.

He showed me pictures he took of his beautiful wife and classically Celtic sons: a striking "Black Irish" clan with bright blue eyes, fair skin, red lips, and dark dark hair. Yeah, I know. The boys were into Mohawk hair designs and boxing poses, which slayed me, but I wanted him to play me like a fiddle to get us what we needed, and he knew I knew the game cold. On one warm St. Pat's evening, I took the publisher's intern nephew on a long walk with me that spanned from the East 30's all the way down to Stone Street, to hear him play. It was loud brash standards (which embarrassed him a bit), but I could tell he was good. I wanted to show him support in lieu of his recent divorce, a shock that rocked him to the core.

I didn't know how bad it was until he showed up at the job with a bagel and hysteric tears, which frightened me. I told him about my own brief brush up with a marriage I'd been suckered into, but I realized it was much worse for him. His wife had done herself up buff at the gym while he worked and played around, which couldn't have meant he spent much time at home, and the kind he did was questionable at best. You don't cry onto your client's keyboard without a really bad heartache, because I paid him every penny he was worth. 

When he broke down in front of me, I knew I could either save him or lose him in that very moment. And so I did what anyone like me would do: when he bitched about his weight gain, I caught his darting red eyes, locked in on him, and told him the truth flat-out. He was in danger of something a lot more serious than a brief spat with gluttony, and he knew what I meant, because he bowed his head down for a moment. I left to get coffee in the company kitchen, and let him collect himself. By the time I came back, he'd put on a brave front with a sheepish grin. He knew I'd never fire him, but he'd embarrassed himself at work, and that was a lapse I knew he didn't do often, because I worked under the same threats as he.

After St. Patrick's Day, I only saw him once. The struggling family outfit finally let me go to "clean house", after they'd tried to use every political card they had against me. He'd done me a right turn by getting me an interview at his day job. I wasn't suited for it as a lowbrow market and I knew it, but it was good PR for me, because it let the industry know I was shopping around. I heard him gossip to the art director of a splashy photo mag there that she'd seen my portfolio with CD's. He asked her quietly: "How did it look?". She said she caught one minor error about a tiny line of 5 point copyright info placed too close to the donut whole on one disc layout (I did all my own layouts and production), but that my music creds were solid and true. I did have a famous musician or two in my book, complete with logos, booklets, cases, and all. "Shit", he said under his breath. I could see them out of the corner of my eye in his office from my vantage point in the conference room, him at his desk with her standing over him. 

The interview was over, and the next time I heard anything about Jimmy was on Facebook, because he committed suicide that winter by taking a handful of sleeping pills while home alone in Woodstock, packing up his stuff during his first Christmas alone and without his family. He'd been gracious enough to post us a good-bye photo on Facebook, with a caption below his last self-portrait that read about how tired he was, and that was the last of it. Forever.

For Jimmy 

 http://www.silive.com/obituaries/index.ssf/2011/01/james_odonnell_55.html

Birdhouses: Indoor Decor

The little white birdhouse.

I bought this pretty little house years ago, when I took care of my bedridden mom, down for the count with a broken back. I had spent some of the money I got from a contractual buyout (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/09/sunday-paper.html) to spend a month nursing her through yet another fall, the result of MS and her own inability to cope with the disease. She was depressed, angry, and prone to violent fits. My brothers had warned me over the phone that she had gone seriously downhill before I flew back East: a normally intensely neat women with daily cleaning rituals, her apartment started to become cluttered, dirty, and messy.

Years ago I discovered Feng Shui (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui), and while I wasn't a mad devotee by any means, I bought a few books on the subject out of curiosity. Much of it is simply basic good design sense for any space: lots of light, green plants for color, oxygen, and good health, water features for relaxation, and mirrors to bounce around the light, to make small spaces feel bigger. The different centers of the eight-sided Bagua correspond to different areas of life; there's one corner for wealth, another for health, and so on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagua).

So, after nursing her physically and emotionally, I set about making her place warm and welcoming. First, I needed a lot of garbage bags. She had held onto papers that had the same year as my grandfather's death, which was never fully addressed in her mental health care routine successfully. I spent days going to her room to show her each and every piece of paper stuffed away into various nooks and crannies. She cursed me and fought me so viciously that finally, out of desperation and in exhaustion, I finally looked at her wearily and said "Look, honey, you can say whatever you want to me, but this process isn't going to stop. So do your worst. It won't change anything."

And like that, the spell was broken. I went to a crafts store soon after to begin bringing some cheer to her place. I created a little area of interest on top of a book case with a basket holding some fake ivy, and intertwining those branches, I stuck in these cheerful little birdhouses to add more interest. After I went back to Colorado, my mom thanked me for pulling her out of her downward spiral. She had gone to see a doctor who tested her for depression, and she had drawn a clock backwards, which is a positive sign of it. Her real recovery began, as so often happens when I am directly involved.

That time period taught me a lot about the power of beautifully decorated space, and how important design in the home is. It's where we spend most of our time. I hadn't really had a knack for interior design prior, because I never had the money or a place of my own to express myself, but once I came back to Brooklyn, my interest caught fire in earnest (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/01/joys-of-winter-comforts-of-home.html). This year, moving back home for my own reasons, my mom turned to me on the couch, and asked me, "What is that there?" Only the white birdhouse remained from my time nurturing her through that period. I took the little birdhouse away, into the other room, and there it now lives.

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/birdhouses-and-treehouses/