The wharf out the window of our restraunt as we ate clam chowder from a bread bowl.

A bird on the roof at Alcatraz.

Butterfly at California Academy of Science Museum.

Here’s to spontaneity.

Here is a ten minute free write from our writing group:

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!’ – Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

Dark was the night as quotes from dead writers run vividly through my head. No ravens alight on the window sill. Frankly, no birds chirped or crickets rubbed. Dark and quiet at the top of the stairs. My journey too far come to be retreated. The white paint around the door, flaking and yellowed, more shadow than light. The porch light bulb flings illumination only a foot in either direction. I know from the walk up that the porch extends in at least 20 feet. The foot of light serving only to illuminate the contrast between what I can and cannot see, knowing that the not seeing far outweighs the seeing.

Emptiness lies heavy behind me. Do not look back. Do not give in to the urge. As an adult, I must not, could not, never would give into the desire to run the rest of the way to the door. Nevermore will this moment, this opportunity, lay before me. I ring the bell, muffled through a sturdy house, thick doors, made somehow more substantial with age. Wait. Wait with willful stillness. Fight or flight, raven? I am trembling as I anticipate what could come before me and, more importantly, what could come from behind. Wait. Wait, silently rehearsing my actions should, say, a zombie be lurking. Wait. Wait, pulling in my breath quietly, slowly, not letting it become raspy. Wait. Wait, the calm quietness on the outside of me only, not in.

As the door swings away from me, there is further moment of waiting as the interior of this familiar house in illuminated. The table to the left of the door pictures of young children emerges first. Pictures of my brothers and I at our family home.

Flashing through the wide open, sand blowing, anticipating the ring of Christmas in the desert. Shimmery and sweet driving to the Palms Casino, Dorothy by my side. Escape the only thing on our minds. “As you like it,” was all she said on our way out the door, running from our slow combustion. Combining sacrilege and treasured beauty as the mother Mary, green and fluid, shimmies on the dashboard. Lying quietly, no words have passed between us for the last 300 miles, not a peep, I stare off into the distance at far off mountain ranges. This is about looking out, never in, on our journey to the Palms. Christmas could never be as complete at home with our family eating pumpkin pie instead of devil’s food cake.

Images blur as I train my eyes to the road, backseat packed with only the bare necessities: underwear for two days, everything else can be bought when we arrive. We should possibly keep going to Mexico to trade in our few chips for pesos on the beach. Melted chocolate bars on the passenger side on our return from debauchery. Slip Knot loud on the radio, leather seats sticking to our thighs because the right skimpy outfits show just enough thigh. Enough thigh to lure in the one night stands, dripping with irony. Thigh enough to have our drinks bought. No need to make hotel reservations if enough skin shows at the Palms.

The first night was spent with business men, fat wives not giving them what they want at home. White bands of skin run their fingers round, conspicuous even in the dark. Paunches that show the life of blackberries and office meetings. Finally a corporate meeting they all can enjoy. Everything doesn’t actually stay in Vegas. It stays at home while you’re in Vegas. Three drinks more than any ordinary night, and they are putty. They hold cool drinks with ice ringing, cigarettes smoked, the smoke can be blamed on the casino, “Not my cigarette, honey.” Perfumes to be washed off. Our existence, a memory to be ferreted between them like blackmail. Not worried tonight about seldom washed bedspreads, we don’t bother to pull them down.

Sunday blooms, brightly uncomfortable, with varicose veins showing by break of day. We gather ourselves in the early morning as we run back to the car. My mascara smeared unforgivingly down my cheek, Dorothy a perfect reflection of my unwashed state. That beach in Mexico sounds like the best alternative. Home for us a willfully forgotten place, a place with few alternatives. Our choices lay ahead; there must be business men in Cabo, conferences to be had wherever we alight. Dorothy refuses, with a look passed between us, to soldier on. The car backs out of its spot. Pulls forward slowly, methodically, Dorothy and I both know our fate. She takes a left back on to the highway toward Taos and its hum. Toward home. The drive home filled with raucous laughter, giddy and chatting. Dorothy and I talking for the sake of talking. Our mutual plans, not being spoken of.

My father just smiles and says, “there was a leak from the third floor, Martha.”

He cannot corroborate my mother’s story. He actually cannot fathom my mother’s story. But, he knows now after years that she will tell the story. The story told as my grandmother tells her favorite granddaughter story.

“This,” she says “is India she is my favorite granddaughter.”

Then, without missing a beat, I say, in exactly the same words as always, “that is because I am your only granddaughter.”

Last, and with a smile toward me because we both know how it ends from untold telling. “If I had lots you’d still be my favorite, I just wouldn’t tell anybody.”

So, there we were twins, not like the circus of babies my mother describes, born to Martha from La Jara, Colorado in 1969. My mother, salty not psychedelic, named me India and my brother Boston, both equally obscure in my mother’s mind. Both places that she’s read about only in books. Reading through every book at the library.

As I fly in to meet my sweet Martha.  My mother who has been gone from La Jara since she was old enough to read and yet never stayed away for longer than a week’s vacation with dad. I know she only sees her dreams of far off places through me. Boston, still near by, only made it one county away. My mother, though, named me well. Since I was 16, had an abortion, and moved to LA. I have never stayed grounded. My mother’s ambition born through me fed through the waters of my birth.

“You lost your footing,” she says.
“No I was a goner, I was drowning.”
“You’re so dramatic.”

I suppose my days would not tick along as they do without a little make believe, a little drama. How do people live a life of sweet repose? I awoke this morning, the first day of the rest of my life. Sorry, I couldn’t help but adding that in. Ready to begin our lives together. Were my regrets just cold feet or could this be the perfect manifestation of my desires of this morning? To be gone, to wash out in the ocean to the other side of the world, to make my way through to the light and the dark, existing together, without border.

As my sister, Jan, zipped my dress, sufficiently understated for a lesbian wedding on the beach in Hawaii. Flowy, but not hippy-flowy more like sundress-in-the-Bahamas-flowy. White with sea foam green flowers trailing down the right side. Jan leaned in to my shoulder, covered only in thin strips of material and kissed it. “Are you ready for this, exciting day?” Her unexpected closeness, the brush of her lips on my shoulder brought the fears to the forefront. Tears, sprinkled with the mascara I just applied, roll only millimeters before I brush them away, concerned about preserving my make-up. I didn’t think these fears would lead to the drowning in the ocean that so nearly happened.

Jan hugged me, for a family so close, physical contact was unusual and unexpected. Rather than closing my eyes and surrendering, as it were, to the moment. My glance settled decisively out the window to the little courtyard. Refusing to acknowledge my outburst. Thinking of other less important things like my impending drowning.

Our beautiful Sweet Dreams house boat.  We thought that we wouldn’t be going back but it looks like we are buying back in.  I’m super excited about going back on our favorite vacation.  These are pictures that I love from Lake Powell.

Jordan going down the slide last year.

My attention is drawn to the imagined world beneath the escalator. I can imagine a vast underground cavern with stalactites and stalagmites between the cogs and gears running an unseen engine, grease dripping from the walls. Sometimes I can see no machinery at all, only the cavern with a stream running through to power us all to the top. It’s the unrelenting continuity of an escalator. I have ridden this escalator and each time the world I create expands to include an ever changing expression of what I believe at the time.

My attention is drawn down, I am sure that Natalie has never given a second thought to the world beneath her feet. Frankly, much of the world is beneath her feet. I see her looking outward and upward; twittering to and fro to catch the bees of gossip on the wind. She is light and she is air, so slight that her feet barely touch the ground. Her beautiful red pumps balance precariously on each of the escalator ridges. This is not a skill I have mastered.

In front and above us, unmoving, blocking Natalie’s forward momentum, is a mother and small child. She is grasping her son’s hand tightly while she holds: hand bag, carry on, stroller. A mule loaded down for the trip to grandma’s. My load is light; I never feel the need to pack more than the one pair of shoes I am wearing. My shoes are flexible and sensible, they can go anywhere with me on our trip.

Waiting as Natalie checked her luggage, and drew attention to us with complaints of increased security and charges for overweight bags. The petite desk clerk, Cheryl, is business-like with her efficiency. Strikingly short hair for a woman lets the viewer know she is a no-nonsense woman. Not caring, she’s been here before, heard these complaints. “Ma’am the weight limit is 50 pounds and two bags. It is our policy.”

Conceding, graciousness difficult at the best of times, Natalie fills out the address cards with her new address and ties it to the bag’s handle. This tag takes up residency with four other past addresses that have yet to be discarded. Addresses and homes are disposable when unwanted. Leaving garbage out front with memories at residences she’s already forgotten. Checking my carry-on gives me the freedom of carrying nothing down the gang plank and nothing to get stuck in the escalator carousel.

The mother unloads with great clashing and rolling. Losing bits and pieces of her portage as she maneuvers onto the second floor corridor. Business men rush past on either side of her, watching as the child screams. Indignant looks: how dare she ruin my vacation/business trip/holiday. We stop to help, I can’t not. I understand what it is to be a woman alone with responsibilities. Her look is suspicious but grateful when I hang her carry on off the back of the stroller and she loads in the little boy.

In this time, Natalie and I have shared no looks. No engaging, “we are friends” or “we know what the other is thinking” looks. Her thoughts are her own, she does not share them with glances and suggestions to come and enjoy her companionship. She is a light, she turns on and off at the flick of a switch, now no light is needed, no switch is flipped. We flow together, wordless after our time together.

Wordless in a brutally loud place. The lights are loud, the linoleum tiles are loud, the people loud like the rushing of water through a faucet. As this rush of people draws us to our gate, we sit and wait. Any words now a dive that neither of us can recover from. Our trip home looms when finally the plane whisks, beats, chops us to our destination. No games to pass the time, I already know. I’ve been told that she does not play games on the plane; she falls fast asleep while I stare, eyes wide.

In the cab, Natalie flashes on like the bright light she can be. Talk turns to the mundane, discussions about how it has grown up since the last time we were here. New Wal Marts and Burger Kings. Chipper conversations, of change and progress. Natalie is bee-like, her feet never touching the ground. Flitting and flirting with anything bright and shiny. Never to stay and put down roots, roots that bind you to this place, this here and now.

This morning as I was readying for our trip

He walks. He is not the dark-coated man on a dusty road. But still he walks, he walks with determination. He has a goal unlike many who walk on these beautiful California streets. The sun here is warm and embracing, calling to it’s worshippers to come and enjoy. Not like the sun from where he has come from. Not burning and ravaging, singeing the hairs from his head. Withering him to the form he has now. Bleaching bones and reddening noses. The sun has made him half a man. As he walked beneath the searing sun the sinews and veins on his body grew as his flesh shrunk. His inner workings of bone, muscle, tendon becoming noticeable.

He is not noticeable here. Here with vegans and vagabonds, eyes pass over him without a second thought. When he was in Oklahoma, the eyes lingered. A woman, a fat woman, glanced at him with loving indignation. “How could anybody let themselves go like that? Not taking care of himself. No one taking care of him.” Not here on the sunny welcoming streets of California. Here he walks with the throngs on Venice beach. Skin and bone, no different from any of those he walks with.

Except his purpose. His purpose is dark but not his clothes. His clothes are pastel. He bought them here on the beach. Sleeveless light blue shirt with a surf board splashed across. His small arms no different than the vegans and the vagabonds. Not noticeable here. Orange shorts, the kind that are slit up the side and show off muscular thighs. His thighs are muscular, they’ve walked. They walk still, with his purpose to bring his gift to those he meets at his destination. His thighs are white, garish against the orange of his shorts. And strikingly different from the purple red of his face and forehead. These legs have walked but they haven’t been in these shorts for long.

But, he’s not noticeable to the passersby. Just a nobody who laid on the beach far too long. The sun has called all of them to bask and bathe in her warmth for one too many hours, too. These people understand. His shoes are the same as they’ve always been, possibly if anyone looked down at them they would notice the incongruity. He doesn’t notice, he walks, purposefully toward the house he can see in the distance. It has less walkers in front of it, further off the strip with the tourists and freaks.

The house, bright and lightly terra cotta. This house knows this pleasant embracing sun. It is a house with windows to call the sun into her. Not like the houses from where he came. The windows there are dark with grime to defend themselves against the scorch. This house sports flowers, bikes, and oh of course money. The understanding that all who see it is: this house is money. Its inhabitants are money, too. They are the very manifestation of money made real and concrete. They are noticeable here on Venice Beach outside of their own home. Noticeable for their brightness, only tanning sprays brighten their faces and arms. Not the warm embrace that their house clearly knows.

He walks toward this house with a malignant goal to match his malignant appearance. Not simple death to the inhabitants, but more. His purpose pulls him into its embrace, warming and soothing his burning face. Soothing his weary feet, soothing his muscles, tight and sinewy. He walks. Feet pounding pavement pocked with unwanted gum. Pushing to the right and left of men with more outrageous than his. T-Shirt stalls selling shirts more outrageous than his. Bums more sun burnt than him.

This purpose allows him to find himself at this front door. The sand and ocean and sun to his back. The door, he takes the time to notice is hand carved. The door begins to represent to him the money, the money his targets earned to buy this door, this wall of windows, this house. He rings the doorbell but doesn’t wait, he just walks in.

Around 20 minutes into this experience, I started to hallucinate, I would have thought that would take me longer too. But, my constitution has never been the greatest even at the best of times. I could see my mother in here, in this dark cave. It was odd knowing that you are hallucinating and not being able to make it stop. She lectured me about my poor choices. I’d heard that lecture before, of course. But now it seemed particularly relevant.

I replayed my fall into the crevasse over and over until I could view it on the cave wall like Plato’s allegory. What should I be learning from this experience? Nothing that Plato could teach, I suppose. So, the falling and being pinned in this cave was thoughtless on my part. Hiking in this new area, knowing that there were endless caves. I brought good equipment for spelunking, my head lamp, climbing shoes, hiking boots. But, as my mother would surely point out, I didn’t let anyone know my intentions or itinerary.

Now, I see what I am going to have to do. I saw it on the Discovery Channel. I don’t think that guy was in complete darkness and long past simple hallucination, building entire cities of hallucination around him. I think that guy was out in the open with the glorious sun shining down. Birds chirping, cicadas scratching, wind blowing. Not like me stuck in a still, slithering silence. I know that any minute scorpions, bears, giants, or snakes are about to brush my unseen leg. Centimeters from my nose are eyes, behind my right ear breath. I know these and create them.

I have been trying hard to hallucinate something as benign as my mother’s complaints, to no avail. My happy place has long since gone. The worst is that when I fell from 20 feet I did not get myself stuck. No, oh no, stuck came with a small trip back in the deep cave when I was looking for water.

Now here I am with no one to help. Knowing that now is the time that I will have to do the Discovery Channel cut-the-arm-off-with-no-anesthesia-thing. The dude that cut his arm off did it with a dull knife. Mine is sharp but I’ve tried over and over, I can’t even seem to scratch myself, much less cut the whole damn thing off. I’m waiting for this perfect state of grace in which I have the power to do the unthinkable. When exactly does that come? When am I more than this terrified man dreaming of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. How do I gather the strength?

Well, I scratch, scratch, scratch at my arm above the elbow. I wonder if I should bring this to a close quickly. Inside my arm: muscles, tendons, nerves. Apparently nerves pop with white hot pain when you cut them. Maybe no thinking, just cutting. Well, no need to close my eyes, just cut here right below the elbow. It will be better than phantom snakes. In the long term. Right?

The parade went longer than we expected. We’d been sitting, whooping and having fun.  My kids were scuttling to capture the candy on the asphalt. Some of those kids are so aggressive. Do they not have a little extra candy at home? Thrown candy is so much more appealing. It was already 11:30, the sun was getting hotter and waving at every random group or club began to wear on me. “Homies for Jesus,” was the highlight of the parade. My son’s eyes light up at their bouncy hydraulic cars, he thought cars were only meant to go forward and back not up and down. Then, the princess of the Salinas Valley parade rides by deflated from the heat, ready for this to be over, too. I know that she must be near the end.

My eye is drawn down the line of the crowd. We all begin to gather our chairs and children. As I see the men, I change gears. I look over to see the disapproval in my sweetie’s eyes. She knows as well as I do who they are. Men in black suits, shocking for their bleakness in a crowd of summer revelers, begin to make their way toward us. All eyes in the crowd follow, like the flock that we are, the three tall men. Flashbacks to all the FBI, interrogation, and conspiracy theory movies I’ve ever watched. It’s 98 in the shade and I’ve just watched the plump princess ride on her palomino down Main Street. The oddity of these men sweeps me out of real time. The men move slowly through the crowd.

On the shoulders of a balding 20ish dad, sits a three year old, clutching viciously at his dad’s throat. His nose begins to drip, he is preoccupied in a way that only a child can be. Everyone in the crowd begins to be child-like with their uninhibited staring. In a moment everyone will stop, check their natural response and begin to look from the corner of their eyes instead of the front.

These men are completely appropriate, just not for this time and this place. They are dressed for somewhere other. The men’s sunglasses, identical in every way, glint and sparkle. Their suits differ, the last man’s suit is also a little sparkly with wear. The elbows and knees gleam like he only has one suit and it is repurposed with a new shirt and tie every day. They make their way parallel to the street through the crowd rather than making a shot behind the crowd. Instead, man number two begins to look straight at me as he walks. His suit, non-descript, not blue not black. The first man, though, draws the eye. His suit is expensive, a double breasted number with three buttons. It was tailored to fit his shoulders and waist. His hair cut is equally expensive, which means beautiful in an understated way. He stops first and looks at me, all business “Excuse me ma’am. We were sent to get you.” The voice does not match the suit, high and nasally with a whine. Shoulders wide and voice diminished.

They lead us behind the quickly dissipating mass of people. I know who they are, of course. I don’t want them here in the middle of my vacation. It must be serious to travel so far. My partner takes hold of the kids, she knows too. “Ma’am there has been a problem at the station. There is a helicopter waiting. Please come quickly and we will explain en route.” My self-importance begins to emerge and any thought about my ruined vacation vanishes on the way.

I am going back to Antarctica, my passion and my work. August in southern Colorado never seemed so inviting with the future knowledge of bitter cold. My partner’s disappointment registers on her face, she knows that this is not a quick trip. She knows that we will drop her home and she will not see me for weeks. A single parent again. I make my decision, quickly, we’ve known what it will be since we saw them making their way unceremoniously toward me in the crowd.

In the air, the well dressed man briefs me over the headphones. The briefing is short but anything but sweet. This problem needs my immediate attention.