but goodbye is too good a word

so it's spring in arizona, and god forbid i stick around to see it through. above: indian paintbrush and phlox on the hermit trail, photo courtesy of james worden. daniella is on her way from zion, i picked up our rental car yesterday, and we're soon to be en route to albuquerque and then i'll go on to anchorage, if redoubt cooperates.
i have a drafted entry about volcanic eruptions and communication breakdown and how odd it is that, through twitter, i can get semi-hourly updates on redoubt's every tremor and ash plume, but can't seem to get a point across to another human for the life of me. i thought of the line from ann carson's autobiography of red: "there is a link between geology and character," and came to the conclusion that "elevated seismicity" and ash fall do not bring out my best qualities. but fortunately decided to keep that entry to myself.
back to the more immediate geology: hermit trail on friday with a larger group than should ever try to hike together, but a good time nonetheless.
(james again)
carisa, todd, gina, adam, mike, me, & james. 20+ attempts and in 2 shots all our feet were simultaneously off the ground.
--------------------------
and the next night, todd and charlie ensuring that i would be useless the next day. i'm too old for this, or out of practice...
today, sat in the sun outside macy's and listened to todd and bianca share stories about dealing with other people's poop, in the ICU and the colorado river, respectively. charlie left to go cook dinner for his girlfriend, because that's what he's doing these days and the general consensus seems to be that it's a good thing. i woke up this morning with a sore throat and fever, and have been alternately blaming geologic stress (personal and otherwise) and alcohol. i keep thinking of one my favorite poems, jane miller's "self-contained view: 'i am a woman,'"

(I said. I was drunk. I sat in a T-shirt and shorts and basked
in the illusion of time to myself. I had a great figure
in clothes where my small scars were hinted at. People watched
as they observe themselves sometimes, say, peeling an orange,
o isn't this sensual they think in an adult circumspect way.
Lips are popular. We groan into their part, that russet
brown, o o that russet that, ah. Once in South America
someone sreamed eat me in a respectable hotel lobby. Oh those
Spanish boys knew what she meant. In the elevator. I have to

prolong this because women like it that way. Only three men
have ever spoken to me about failure. Inside my hazel eyes,
blue and green flares shoot off, impossible to detect unless
you love me. And didn't everyone then: drinking warm Bordeaux,
I held their hands. So many insisted on being included so
who was I to renounce them. We make ourselves sick. I was
drunk when I arrived and am cold now. So little of me is
destructive. We make ourselves live.)

but thinking of poems like that doesn't really help anything, most of the time, so i focused, metaphorically, on "peeling an orange," and stopped by new frontiers in my rental chevy cobalt with california plates for echinacea and gan mao lin.
i do like this town.
"so i'll just say fare thee well."

"Throughout history, many Americans have longed to 'eliminate all barriers between goods and people.' to quote Herbert Hoover. The dream of defeating time and space through transport and communication, in fact, has had more followers in America than in any other country. This is ironic, for even as Americans have seen roads and gateways as avenues of freedom, they have also arranged them into a system meant to discipline that freedom--a trap as well as an escape. 4

4. "Roads have long been viewed as radical interventions, usually connecting cities (although today they connect suburb to suburb more than they do city to city or suburb to city). See Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations, p. 56:

It is the city that makes world-wide and conspicuous the self-conscious struggle to maintain a traditional ethos, as it is the city, in the first place, that traditional morality is attacked and broken down. The conflict on the religious or ethical level between city and country, urbanite and peasant, sophisticated mind and simple villager or tribesman, is an ancient and familiar theme...In the Mayan village of Chan Kom, to which my mind ever reverts in these connections, my good friend, a certain thoughtful villager, saw with dismay the coming of the highway that would bring the evils of the city to the peasant community his own leadership had built. Recoiling from the consequences he had not foreseen of an urbaization for which he had put forth great effort, he began to see the city as a source of moral evil. 'With the road will come drunkenness, idleness, vice,' he said."

-William Leach, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life, p. 33

said she was a socialist and you a timid jack-a-dandy who never trusted fame

i had a fabulous week in the old pueblo, and back in flagstaff it's winter again, windy and sharp little snow daggers cutting through the air. i'm hoping my teva tan lines last till alaska, 2 weeks away (barring any volcanic eruptions and the like...oh, but wait...).
maya was on spring break, allowing for a rare escape from law school, and she blessed me with more quality maya time than i've gotten in years. we spent a night and most of 2 days in the patagonia area, hiked on the arizona trail near parker lake, and saw a flock (?) of wild turkeys, at least 20 of them, and they posed before waddling up the hillside away from us.
-----------------------------
i rode anna's bike around to my lunch and coffee and beer dates, romanticizing the time when that was all i did, imagining that it will be again soon, somewhere. spring seemed to be making its first promises to become summer this week, heat radiating from all directons and held in brick and concrete hours after sunset. welded bike racks piled with salvaged stickered bikes on 4th, wrinkled lizard-like topless old white men riding bikes trailing sun-bleached american flags and "don't tread on me" snake flags, the black flute player who rides his bike with no hands, who introduced himself when he told me on my way to yoga once in 2002 that i had a good walking rhythm, but i've forgotten. he always smiles, still, and still plays his flute. i've lost the instinct to always seek the shade, i think, and sought the sun like a lizard every chance i got.
callie and i closed cushman street bar, sitting on the patio mutually acknowledging the fact that, economic crisis or not, we will both end up doing something stupid like spending our last $12 dollars on mojitos and fancy cheeses (oh, but so worth it). lil matt gave me a prickly pear iced tea at revolutionary grounds and we talked drag kings and knitting. i visited A & K, and after i met all K's plants they showed me their new gay porn collections and we talked about rural queerness and horticulture. over lunch at la indita, lisa and i laughed at just how gay our otherwise straight lives had been during our respective bentley's eras, and she leaned across the table and whispered, "i mean, there's republicans where i work now."
friday night after a quick walk through the street fair with anna, where i bought some fabulous earrings made from old wooden nickels worth, at one time, a 10 cent cup of coffee in albuquerque, and recylced glass beads (this is another possibility for how my last few dollars might be spent), i went to josh and callie's for delicious vegan enchiladas, and after dinner we met dr. emily, who spent a month at denali last summer, and her husband nathan, for drinks and pie at cup, where i took (or rather, asked nathan and his freakishly long arms to take) one of the few pictures i remembered to take
and then headed east with jn, and i'm sure telling the whole story would violate the terms of agreement, but there was an interesting incident which involved trying to push his friend elizabeth's 1967 cadillac off of a rock onto which she'd somehow launched it in the wrong driveway off broadway, and i guess it wasn't really her car either. "is he really this patient?" she asked me as we threw ourselves at the hood and he tried to start the car, which she'd flooded before we arrived, and i thought about it, and said, "you know, i have no idea." then we abandoned the car and went to look at my india pictures, which is why she'd come over, or tried, in the first place, drove her home to a gated irrigated castle in the foothills. today i wrote 3 mediocre pages on the evening as a metaphor of sorts for something about age and fear, but i think i'll delete all but about 2 sentences. in the morning he drove me to phoenix, and i took the shuttle north.
---------------------------
and this, a sticker i bought at the street fair. hell yeah.

the next spring riot

this might be ridiculous and obsessive, but that's who i am. every new year's, everyone does those blog surveys with the dumb questions about what you've done and not done and songs that sum up the year, etc. i didn't do it this year because of india and all, but i wanted to, and i wanted to make some resolutions that might actually be kept; however, january 1st is not, generally speaking, a great time of year for me to make life changes in any real way. the vernal equinox, on the other hand, has some actual significance, marks renewal in a more legitimate way, and is as good a time as any for reflection. and so, here's a small portion of that same old new year's survey, on march 20th and all:

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
drove a shit-ton, from az to ak. filed for unemployment $$ (yay VICTOR!)

3. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
a calmer outlook on life. snow tires. my own blender. a job in november.

8. Where did most of your money go?
student loan payments and alaska gas. the india ticket, but that was credit, so, you know, not real money.

10. What song will always remind you of 2008?
"scattered leaves," be good tanyas
"coffee's cold," abigail washburn

12. What do you wish you'd done more of?
listened to the advice of my older lady friends. written in my journal instead of attempting to "talk about things." slept. yoga.

13. What do you wish you'd done less of?
stared at the rain and getting pissed off. eating MSG chips. attempting to "talk about things."

15. What was the best book you read?
middlesex, i think.

19. What was your favourite film of this year?
i'm answering only because i think it's amusing: i haven't actually seen a "theatre movie" since that tom hanks/afghanistan thing, dec. '07.
i netflixed the secret life of words, though, and omg amazing.

20. What did you do on your birthday?
had a fabulous morning, mostly in bed, breakfast at 3 pm, drove "home" to mona's, and the girls came over to see the sarah palin debate (oh, and that other guy...?) and drink a lot of wine. it was my first snowy birthday and probably my favorite to date.

22. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
alaskan cliche/thrift store junkie

23. What kept you sane?
was i? i hadn't noticed.

32.) What’s something you learned about yourself?
i harbor illusions that if you drink a lot, it'll stop raining. also, that i tend to try to simplify complicated situations by complicating them further, and then when that doesn't work, i try to blame it on the rain, and drink a lot, and that doesn't work either. so in short, i learned that i'm kind of a dumbass about certain things, and that i don't like it when it rains too much.

33.) What was your best month?
october was lovely.

34.) What pop culture event will you remember 2008 by?
tina fey as palin, on youtube.

35. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"don't you go looking so surprised, baby don't you look so stunned
didn't i tell you that a cold november'd come?
and deliver the leaves from green to red,
to blowing in the wind stone dead

well i never used to notice this awful quiet, mmm
and fall was just the calm before the next spring riot, mmm
of wildflowers and lunatic rivers -
sweat jumping off of the skin of love givers, mmm"

-"scattered leaves"

"some folks say times are hard
i just say, oh my lord"

"coffee's cold"

one wrong turn leads to the next

near elgin, az.

when the west was won, & paved

in 2003, when i was perhaps a little too optimistic about the power of a sharpie pen to change the world, i wrote the words "you're beautiful" on the inside of the door of the 3rd bathroom stall on the left in the ILC on the UA campus, theoretically to address issues of body image and self-esteem among college women. i found out on saturday that it's still there, accompanied by 2 "thanks!" in response, and 1 "i know!" this is the only grafitti in this bathroom.
after trying to find a ride through craigslist and facebook, failing (all of NAU seemed to be taking the shuttle to phx, negating that option as well; stupid spring break), giving up on my chance to attend the 1st tucson book festival, and moping around my parents' house, i came to tucson on friday with todd and ben, who drove here to bike up mt. lemmon on saturday, and fortunately saw fit to announce their plans to do so on facebook before leaving flag, giving me the chance to beg for space in the car. seeing the city through their eyes, as a new and interesting place, reawakened my lost affection for the old pueblo: the downtown skyline's 3 buildings taller than 2 stories welcoming you in from I-10, old adobe houses and welded bike racks on 4th ave, the scent of orange blossoms filling the night air. as we left la indita, a hobo holding 2 styrofoam boxes, one in each hand, said "hey, can you guys spare some change so i don't have to eat all this food?" "i like your style," todd said. the hobo shrugged.
i spent most of the weekend at the book festival, listening to readings and reconnecting with my writer-self, as well as making sure my former professors remember me well enough to write recommendation letters (they do), should the occasion arise (what?). caught up with alison at the poetry center reception saturday evening, and she gave me important names of important people, said not to get married and agreed that it's not worth leaving the west, even for the iowa writer's workshop (i'd said, "i'm not going to iowa, so don't suggest that"). i showed her how i hadn't written anything in my journal since arshinder's address the day we left india until her reading saturday morning and she said we've got to do something about that, and what i'd written was a line from her poem "salt": "can everything sacred be described by things and their emergence?"
had dinner at jessie's friend susan's house, a potluck full of beautiful and delicious food and the old tucson communist crowd, people i haven't seen or thought about for years. i said something inarticulate about alaskan unions (i don't know anything, i just have a t-shirt), and ate a lot of hummus. susan's house is filled with paintings by the last man she loved, who died in prison 2 months before the end of his 10 year sentence. she later learned from his mother that everything she'd known about him was a lie, and at 54 she said she's done with men for good. my favorite painting was of a pay phone on a brick wall outside a diner advertising beer and burgers, and cloudless blue sky.
maya joined me for readings yesterday by jimmy santiago baca, steve orlen, and jane miller (steve is writing lyrical poetry now). then we wandered to congress for drinks and to grill for tater tots and grilled cheese (but as many of you know, it's all about the tater tots). she'll be in DC working for the government soon, and i tried to sell her on the idea of first coming to AK to see the northern lights. she's stubborn as hell, but i think it'll happen.
and now, on anna's futon where i spent the night, sharing a room with her roommate's giant house bunny. i miss cute little tucson houses. i told alison i'd consider coming back here if it meant i could work with her but it would also be for the houses and the food.

. . .

So recklessly bold--foolish?--
to write so much about your lovers
when you're a long-time married man. Then I think,
what do I know?
About what to say
or not to say, what to tell, or not, to whom,
or when,

still.

(1993)

-from "what to tell, still," gary snyder, danger on peaks

travel the way you say, the road don't like me

one week here and the flagstaff sluggishness has thoroughly set in. i'm indulging it this afternoon: lunch with kristin at cafe espress (since we last talked, we've both been to india and become somewhat interested in our academic "futures," and also started drinking milk, not unrelated to india), a surprise phone call from amy, who flew to lafayette from beirut for a conference and a haircut and called from the airport on her way back to what she now calls "home," and now, sitting at the "new" place at the monte V, which isn't new to anyone but me anymore (the benefits of poor short-term memory and showing up in town sporadically: everything seems new, even years after it actually is), with a glass of cheap shiraz (it's been a while since i drank wine alone in the middle of the afternoon), some articles on wilderness, naming, and indigeous peoples, and a window facing san francisco street, where i can watch the tourists with cameras around their necks reading about the historic babbitt building and the locals and their dogs getting coffee at late for the train. i just created a new "grownup" gmail address solely for the purpose of emailing UNM advisors about the MFA program, but i'm somewhat at a loss as to what to say, and afraid that it will somehow be apparent in my 2-sentence request for a meeting on april 6th that i'm drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon, though this is an MFA program so i guess that's somewhat expected. in short, i'm insecure and indecisive, and struggling with the desire for geographical monogamy (i did, however, score high on the "are you a real alaskan?" quiz (scroll down), and would have scored higher if not for my refusal to answer #7 on priciple. so i don't know if that means anything). kristin wants to study lions in africa, amy might spend the summer in eastern europe, and so far i haven't gotten past "Hello Prof. ___, I".
---------------------------------
so, from the prep reading for my upcoming NPS mini-job at denali:

"So what about roads into the Alaskan wilderness? Oleska (2002) relates:
To Europeans, a road is a social and economic pathway established by humans for their convenience, prosperity and pleasure. They have every right to carve a road anytime, as their needs and desires dictate. But for Native peoples, a road is a threat to the ecosystem that has nourished and sustained them for millennia. A road brings humans into an area they otherwise would ot have access to, and therefore noise, disruption and, potentially, the destruction of the plant and animal species. A road scatters the game, drives animals from their natural home, and destroys their habitat. And if the animals leave, those who depend on their self-offering cannot survive there any longer either...To city residents, roads may be a great blessing, the means by which you are linked to the rest of the world and to the frontier up to which the roads extend. But, if you live in a village, the idea of connecting your community to a city frightens and torments you. A road could mean the end of your culture and possibly your life."

-"Native People and Wilderness Values at Denali," Hollis Twitchell, International Journal of Wilderness, august 2005.
-----------------------------------
which of course got me thinking about ladakh, and the mixed blessing of roads everyone talks about in discussions of geographical and cultural isolation: the pros and cons of connection to the "outside world," the birth of a tourist industry and subsequent cultural assimilation (ladakhis and tibetans speaking hindi among themselves. restaurants serving israeli and continental food. punjabi dhabas on every street. but everyone has more money than they did before the roads were built--and in today's world, that matters).
when jessie and i arrived in leh, his cousin harpreet, who's stationed at the indian military base there, picked us up in an army jeep and gave us a tour of the town, and i imagined that as we sped down the main bazar, horn blaring, the locals glared at us with resentment, but i may have projected that reaction onto them. at what point does traditionalism become irrelevent? with how many major roadways can it co-exist?
---------------------------------
that said, i went to wupatki yesterday, and walked a couple miles down the little colorado river road, the shoulder scattered with old beer cans and cattle bones, before visiting ted at the visitor center and talking about intestinal parasites, facebook, and the problematics of slumdog millionaire (still haven't seen it, but that doesn't stop me from preaching about "poverty porn"). it was a beautiful day.
and my wine is gone, i sent some emails, and i just noticed that blogger is giving me the option to type in hindi. strange, since this computer hasn't left the US. hmm.

if i was your husband maybe i'd agree

although i'm finding the book a bit trite and reductive, this struck a chord, what with the california supreme court and my current obsession with obtaining dental insurance and all:

"why bother to make marriage compulsory when informal compulsions work so well that even gays--once such paragons of unregulated sexuality, once so contemptuous of whitebread hetero lifestyles--are now demanding state regulation too? what about just insisting that social resources and privileges not be allocated on the basis of marital status? no, let's demand regulation! (not that it's particularly easy to re-envision anything when these intersections of love and acquiescence are the very backbone of the modern self, when every iota of self-worth and identity hings on them, along with health benefits)."

-laura kipnis, against love.

time is water in a teapot

a week ago today, or yesterday in india, we were supposed to fly from leh to delhi and didn't (rizvi says, in her poorly edited book that i carried with me like gospel everywhere i went, that "the problem with flying in [to leh] is cultural as well as physical. ladakh is not only geographically remote, it is also remote in atmosphere, landscape and culture...to plunge straight into this strange milieau, by air from delhi...cannot but create a sense of unreality, a feeling that ladakh is somehow unconnected with the rest of the world." but nevertheless, due to seasonal restraints, that's how we did it). so on the plus side, an extra day of egg-veg chowmein and thukpa, calls of "ju-lay!" in the streets, the adhan from the mosque, in the center of town and surrounded by prayer flags, and the dry brown mountains in every directon. so we went back to ti-sei guest house from the airport, after waiting 3 hours for kingfisher to announce that the flight was cancelled, and ate punjabi breakfast--channa prantha--and later, filter coffee at the secret recipe bakery, where the singaporan (?) owner advertises "the only eggless cakes in leh, baked by a foreigner!"
tuesday morning, woke to snow and went back to the airport. a little community of foreign passport holders formed: i knit with a woman from kyrgyztstan, who, after seeing me knitting, asked the guards for access to her checked bag so she could get her own knitting, and created a security incident that would make the yarn harlot proud. we talked yak wool and gauge while jessie practiced his french with adrian, a french student studying engineering in delhi who still, at 7:30, had ambitions of getting to his exam at 2 pm. a german trekking guide i'd seen around town a couple times and decided, because it seemed as good a way as any to amuse myself while stuck indefinitely in the leh airport, to have a brief, giggly crush on, said he once had a girlfriend in wasilla and hiked in denali state park, but never got comfortable being around bears. i read his english emails as he typed next to me. then i realized i was being ridiculous and went to the bathroom 3 times, realized that was also ridiculous, and tried to just sit and knit like a normal person without a stupid crush driven by boredom and free association. a japanese computer engineer handed out strawberry chocolates, and i shared cashews, because it was at least 5 hours before the airline decided to feed us anything: finally, a paper napkin containing a smashed muffin, a slice of lemon bread, a white bread and white goo sandwich, and a chai in a plastic cup, melting from the heat. as we ate our rations, jessie said "hey erica, have you ever been to jail?"
it was about 4 pm when our flight finally took off, and as we climbed with no particular difficulty above the clouds covering the himalayas, i grumbled incoherently about how if this were anchorage a storm like that'd be nothing, dammit, and jessie said some nerdy shit about instrument flying.
and from that point on, it all seems like one journey: after a struggle to retrieve our confiscated batteries in the delhi ariport, a long taxi ride to the bus stand, where we ate samosas and decided to splurge on a deluxe bus, which jessie risked his life to buy, fighting through the chaotic mob at the ticketmaster's box. made it to chandigarh a day and a half late, with only one full day to get everything ready to leave for good, most of which i spent eating: pranthas and eggs for breakfast (i went out one last time to nanak sweets, sector 18, used my hindi numbers for to-go pranthas, then to the dairy stand, which had no milk, eggs, or dahi that morning, but remained open nonetheless, and then to the 2nd dairy stand), thali in sector 22, met arshinder for cake and coffee and a mushroom cheese pastry at nik baker (sector 35). she invited us to come with her to a rajasthani craft expo, and she bought stools with painted elephants for her new flat. and jessie and i went out for south indian one last time: pav baji and veg uttapam. and then we packed and cleaned the house.
walked back to the bus stand the next afternoon to catch the airport bus. (my backpack, i have since learned, with all my new books, weighed 44 pounds.) so, 6 hours on the bus, left delhi for amsterdam around 3 am, drank some little bottles of wine, fell in and out of sleep, and 48 hours, 3 movies, one scrap yarn hat, and several metal detectors and a passport stamp later, arrived in phoenix. the next morning, after a nice hotel in downtown phx (so quiet and calm!) that jessie got us for free, ok pizza that seemed like the most incredible food ever, making myself sick on complimentary pastries at breakfast, and a metro fare that equaled what would have bought at least 2 decent meals in india, back to the airport to catch the shuttle to flagstaff, which was, because it's flagstaff, driven by my 6th grade math teacher. she said she hopes she didn't destroy math for me. she says she's glad she retired from teaching and got this job. my mom hugged her before me when she picked us up, and that night she and jessie talked about god while i did dishes. jessie got a new car battery and we went to macy's before he left for tucson via albuquerque. today i went to the mall.
and so. there you have it.