Certified: Science of Joy

I barely slept Friday night, and I had several nightmares. Someone was stalking people who were doing good works and trying to kill us.

Finally I got up and opened the blinds. No rat. Too bad. I'd been looking forward to seeing him again. The wren was there, though. Or another wren, inches from the window and looking straight at me, tail pointing straight up, looking like the half of a "W".

I had a frozen breakfast again. Something about microwaved food always tastes dead to me. We don't have a microwave at home, but I'm glad for them on the road. I figured a couple of days of microwaved food wasn't going to hurt me.

I took my sheets off the bed and cleaned up the room and bathroom. I had decided to leave a night early. After class I planned on driving home to see my sweetie.

I stepped out into another bright sunny day. It wasn't supposed to be as hot today as it had been yesterday. I looked at my google map and then I started on my journey to a park near the water where everyone from my integrative environmental science class was supposed to meet. After a couple of blocks, I couldn't follow the map any more: 45th street was closed. I was stumped. I had no idea which way to go. I pulled off the road and called Mario. He gave me instructions and off I went again.

The road that was supposed to take me through to the park turned into a different road. I drove around a neighborhood. Lost. I couldn't keep calling Mario. He didn't mind, but geez Louise, I felt like a big baby. I promised myself I would get a map of Seattle before the next residency.

Then I pulled off the side of the road, found my teacher's phone number, and I called her. She kept me on the phone and gave me instructions until I saw her in the near distance waving me toward them.

What a sweetie.

The rest of the class, about fifteen of them, stood in the shade of some trees. I parked the car in the bright sun. No trees in the parking lot. It was going to be a very sunny hot day. No clouds in sight.

The park had been a naval base until the seventies. Now the land had many uses with different venues, including several athletic fields and a wetlands project. We were there to explore the wetlands.

A couple people from my permaculture class said hello to me. That was a good start. I looked around as we waited. Huge brick buildings to the north of us. (I think it was north.) Must have been barracks. I hangar to the east of us. To the west stretched the various ball fields.

A bunch of us went into the hangar to use their restrooms. We had to walk down a long ugly hallway. Judging from this hallway, it didn't look like the place was in very good shape. I felt like I was one of the Ghost Hunters come to explore a haunted insane asylum. Near the bathrooms, a flea market filled a hangar.

I went back outdoors. I still wasn't very grounded, so my observation skills were shot. A nice breeze cooled down the day a bit.

Before long, we started our hike. We went around soccer practice fields where the grass was fake and plastic. I hoped underneath the fake grass wasn't concrete. That would hurt like hell.

Eventually we left the soccer fields behind and went by swales, some with water in them, some nearly dry. Before the base was built, the area had been a peat bog. But the bog was long ago destroyed and thousands of years of nature building the peat bog couldn't be replicated. Instead, they tore up the concrete and were now trying to build new wetlands. To me, the whole place had an artificial feel to it. But then I grew up at the edge of a marsh in Michigan. This was a new project and it hadn't had time to fill out.

I admire people who can look at a building, room, or a piece of land and be able to imagine what it could be like. I've never been very good at that. I hoped to develop those skills as I worked on my own designs, starting with the one in my permaculture class.

We gathered under a small pavilion with bleachers. The gardener for the wetlands and the head of one of the volunteer organizations talked to us about the long process of creating the wetlands.

As they talked, young crows called out all around us from the cottonwoods that surrounded us. I loved cottonwood trees. When I was sick many years ago, I used to walk to a cottonwood on state property near our house. It was so big I couldn't put my arms all the way around it. I had many long conversations with that cottonwood about the state of the world.

Then the state rented the land out to a rancher, and his cattle trampled the ground all around the tree, muddying the earth and making it difficult to get to the tree. I always wondered if the tree minded. Even now when I go hiking in that area, I stop and say hello to the tree. It's like visiting an old friend.

I saw a hummingbird whizzing here and there beyond the pavilion. On the path to the pavilion from the trail, an adult crow walked, lurching back and forth, reminding me of a bow-legged sheriff. "Hey, pardner, new in town?"

The breeze through the trees felt nice. I didn't really care what the speakers were saying. I just wanted to listen to the trees and birds and watch the interaction of the wildlife around us.

At one point, one of the students (who lived on a reservation near Seattle) told us that to his people, the cottonwood tree "is the tree of life and it never dies."

"If it falls down," he said, "other trees grow up from it. It never dies."

I thought he was talking about a nurse log. When a tree falls and dies in the forest, the log acts as nourishment for saplings to grow up from it. It's remarkable to walk through an old forest and see fifty year old trees growing up from the decomposing body of another tree. A visible testament to the cycle of life.

We eventually went for a walk through the wetlands. The gardener talked. I couldn't hear what she said most of the time because I was far back. After a while, I didn't care what she was saying. It got hot, and she and the others stood out in the sun. I backed away and found shade whenever I could.

I kept wondering why we were out here on such a hot and sunny day. Shouldn't we have rescheduled this? Not be so tied to a timetable? Everyone was miserable.

We got off the trail and walked through tall grass. I kept hearing a red-winged blackbird. That sound always reminds me of home. The marsh started at the edge of our property out in the country near Brighton, Michigan. When you look out into a Michigan marsh, you typically see tall blond grasses and cattails, particularly near the transition between forest or field and marsh. And then like an amazingly beautiful black light with a spot of red are the red-winged blackbirds perched on the swaying cattails.

The gardener stopped to talk about something--I couldn't hear what--and someone asked about pesticides or "invasive" plants or something. I heard the gardener say they did sometimes use pesticides at the park. I thought, shit, have I been walking around somewhere they've used pesticides? (Later someone told me they'd seen signs warning of pesticide use. I had somehow missed them.)

Chemical pesticides are a line drawn in the sand for me. The amount of damage these chemicals do, along with chemical fertilizers, cannot be underestimated. Last time I checked 60% of the air in the United States was contaminated with pesticides. Up to 75% of homes may be permanently contaminated with pesticides (from termite treatments).

People and pets regularly bring pesticides into homes and buildings, even when the homeowner doesn't use pesticides, just from walking in the neighborhood past homes or lawns where these chemicals are used.

Many pesticides contain neurotoxins. This means it poisons the nervous system. Pesticides are most damaging to children and pets. (Because they are smaller and their systems run faster, so they get more into their systems quicker.)

In homes where chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used on the lawns, studies show that animals have dramatically higher incidences of cancer.

I could go on, but the research is so mindlessly depressing. Knowing what we know, why do people still use them? How did everyone get so sold on these harmful chemicals?

Over the last thirty years, I've heard every argument for using them. I don't buy any of them. If they worked so effectively, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE TO KEEP USING THEM.

So when I heard this park gardener used pesticides, I lost interest in her and in the park. I didn't want to be judgmental, but come on. Saying you use a little bit of pesticides is like saying you're a little bit pregnant. Or more accurately, it's like saying, "I'm only going to use a little neurotoxin."

We finally ended up at a small copse of trees. I could see inside darkness, coolness. The gardener let us go inside a few at a time. I was at the end of the group so I stepped into the shade and semidarkness and stayed for a bit with a couple of other people. A huge root grew above ground from one of the cottonwood tree. It lay on the ground like a downed tree. From this root grew several cottonwood saplings. Just like the man had said. I stood next to him and his friend and we marveled at the sight. The root was acting as a nurse tree. The cottonwood tree itself looked healthy, growing so close to another cottonwood that they looked like conjoined twins.

For the first time I felt connected to the place and to the few people who had stayed behind with me. I was sorry to leave this little nursery.

After a while, after hours of the heat and the sun and not being able to hear the speaker, I was ready to leave. I had to get my packing done and get out of my room during our hour lunch break.

I left the group a few minutes early and hurried back to the car. I got more directions from Mario. And I got lost several times. I finally ended up on the right track. I found a food co-op and went inside. I was wobbly from the sun and lack of food or water or something--hopefully not from pesticide poisoning--so I went back to my car and just drove to my room.

I got some food and took it into my room and stripped down again. I was so hot and sweaty. I felt depressed, tired, sad. Alone.

I put on clean clothes, loaded up my car, said goodbye to the place, and headed to school. I got lost. But instead of calling Mario, I just kept driving. Eventually I found the highway. It was packed with cars. It was Saturday. Where was everyone going? I made it to school. Parked in the shade and went into the building. It was hot and stuffy inside.

I asked someone at the desk if the AC was still broken. She said, "No, it's just a hot building."

I said, "I didn't sign up for that."

I was paying a lot of money for this experience. I expected the building to be in good working order.

I don't remember a lot of what we did that afternoon. It was hot. Everyone was uncomfortable. Was this how the world was going to end? Our brains fried from global warming?

We got into groups and talked about our experience at the park. I didn't want to start out this class or these relationships by being critical, and I told the teacher this. I hadn't been thrilled with our jaunt in the park. Since coming out West, my experience had been that people did not like hearing the truth if it sounded critical or what they called "negative." People generally wanted to pretend everything was great.

How could we make changes for the better if people didn't acknowledge the truth?

The teacher wanted me to tell my truth.

So when it came around for us to talk about our experiences, my group said that the park didn't seem like a true wetland. It was almost more like a tourist stop. A zoo for wetlands.

And then I mentioned the pesticides.

People around the room began defending the gardener. "She doesn't have enough help so she has to do that." "Maybe she's only using them for a little while." "She's regulated. She has to do it." "She only uses a little bit." On and on.

I was surprised. We were in a program to bring about change, creative change and to figure out sustainable ways to be in the world; yet most of them seemed to have swallowed the "we must use pesticides" mantra hook, line, and sinker.

The teacher said, "Look at it from the viewpoint of the people who go to this place. My child sees that sign and I have to explain what a pesticide is and then she wants to touch the plant or the place and I have to tell her she can't because that's a neurotoxin." And a neurotoxin could fry her little brain and nervous system.

I said, "And this isn't about this particular gardener. I've been doing this work for thirty years and I've heard all of this before. What we need to be doing is looking at things from a different perspective. Imagine you are running these wetlands and chemical pesticides didn't even exist, what would you do? Re-envision choices and methods."

The teacher backed me up. It was the first time in decades, maybe ever, that I felt like someone in the know was on my side about the pesticide issue (besides Mario). Most people react about pesticides the same way all the students in the class did. The teacher very adroitly pointed out that there was no "little bit" that rendered pesticides harmless. By their very nature, they are harmful.

We were all supposed to team up to do an environmental project together. Since I lived so far away, I decided to do it alone. That separated me from the group again, but trying to coordinate a project like this from two hundred miles away seemed like too much work at this point.

I was glad I'd come. I felt like I'd made an ally. But I was ready to go home. While the other students talked about their projects, I left.

I was soon in my car heading for home.

I reflected on the weekend as I drove.

I was surprised how hard it had been. How isolated I'd felt. How strange the city felt.

I was also surprised to find out how much I already knew. Because I've felt like I've failed at so many causes (because I hadn't made any big changes), I figured I must not know very much. Or not enough.

And yet I did know a great deal. I already instinctively tried to garden and live my life in a very permaculture way--trying to build relationships and guilds, trying not to cause harm, trying to create sustainable abundance.

I had been viewing myself as a failure for so long that I wasn't able to see what extraordinary things I have done.

In my novel Jigsaw Woman, the inquisitor says to Keelie at one point, "One day you will be on your knees before me!" She says, "Never!" even though she knows he is right. She keeps standing up. She keeps doing the work. She keeps doing what she thinks is right for the greater good.

I do that. That is my great strength.

I fail and I try again.

I fail and I try again.

Maybe I don't even fail. Maybe it just doesn't work out the way I think it should.

I am flawed, but I don't let it stop me. I am ridden by my fears, but I am trying to learn to ride them.

Mario once said to me, "You feel like you're a failure because you haven't won the Nobel peace prize or something." He was exactly right. He just shakes his head. It would never occur to him that he could change the world or do anything so meaningful that someone would give him a Nobel peace prize. Or something like that.

When I was nineteen, I was suicidal. In fact, I tried to kill myself. Took a blade and tried to slice into the veins on my arm. Fortunately it hurt, so I didn't get very deep or very far. The scar is gone now, and I can't remember which arm it was. But I did it because I felt that I hadn't achieved enough. I was nineteen and I hadn't won a Pulitzer.

Plus I was living in a house with several other women who barely spoke to me. It was quite isolating.

I felt like I hadn't achieved enough. I wasn't good enough. I let all these opportunities for greatness slip away.

Afterward, when I didn't die, I moved into a little attic apartment in Ypsilanti by myself. I went for weeks barely saying a word to anyone, even though I was going to school and working. One night I dreamed a watery nymph (who looked like Carol Kane) came and made love to me. When I woke up, I knew I had started to heal. (Maybe she was the first Old Mermaid.)

I have always had high expectations for myself. I think when you are given much, much is expected. If I am so lucky to have this amazing life, I want to do whatever I can to give back.

Now as I drove away from Seattle, I thought it was pretty good that I had completed my first two residencies, even though it had been extremely physically uncomfortable and emotionally isolating.

I called nearly everyone in my family from the car. I don't usually use the telephone while driving. I did so now with both hands on the wheel and a bud in my ear. I couldn't get a hold of anyone except one brother-in-law. My sister was sleeping, so he and I talked for a long time.

I told him about my permaculture class. We talked about gardening. When he lived in Michigan, he'd made part of his yard into a garden. He remembered years ago when someone in Michigan had made their whole yard into a garden and his neighbors took him to court because they didn't like it. They all wanted the manicured lawns (which are an English invention--a way for the poor person to emulate the lord's manor). Fortunately the man won the court case and kept his food garden yard.

I told my brother in law that if people turned their lawns into food gardens, we could probably end global warming over night. Do that and overthrow the corporatocracy and we'd be laughing.

I talked about all the social and environmental good a food garden instead of a lawn would do, and my brother in law said, "It's just a lot of fun."

I thought, oh yeah, I gotta remember the fun part.

By this time I was about an hour from home. The sun had started to set and the light was golden all around me. I breathed deeply as I looked at the sun on the trees. I was nearing home.

I told my brother in law that the battery was almost out on the phone. "I better get going," I said. "I love you."

"You, too, kiddo," he said.

I hung up and turned on the radio. I sang to some rock 'n roll song as I drove. I felt peaceful and happy.

Soon I was heading East down the gorge. I grinned when I saw Mount Hood. Home, home, home. The mountain was encircled by pink clouds. For some reason it reminded me of the rings of Saturn.

The road curved, the mountain disappeared from view, the trees grew up on either side of me. I felt joy rising in my bones. I was nearly home. I felt a lump in my throat. I loved the Columbia River Gorge. I loved the huge regal stone faces on the south side of the gorge. I loved Beacon Rock on the north side, the inner remnant of a long ago volcano. It felt like a beacon for home, every time I saw it, resting on the edge of the Columbia River. "This way home, Kim; this way home."

At Cape Horn, above the gorge, the river faded away into the east, with Beacon Rock, the trees, and rock faces all becoming almost blue, like silhouettes in a Japanese painting.

Coming down the hill, I was driving too fast. A sheriff's deputy stopped me. She must have seen I was tired. Or something. I apologized and said, "I'm just coming back from Seattle and trying to get home to my husband."

She let me go with a warning.

And then I was home. There was our little yellow rented house. The daisies were drooping from the heat. The poppies were all closed up. The white morning glories had started twisting up the poppies, choking them. The edges of some of the blue hydrangea blossoms were scorched brown from the heat and sun.

Mario came down the steps with his arms open. We hugged.

I was so glad and grateful to be home.

Late that night, my brother in law had a brain bleed. My sister rushed him to the hospital where they immediately did brain surgery.

After I got the news, I kept thinking of my last conversation with him and hoped it would not be my last conversation with him. All that I had endured that weekend--which was fairly minor compared to so many things--seemed trivial. All I cared about now was that my brother in law was all right. That my sister was all right.

And I wanted to remember to have fun, to be joyful.

That's what my brother in law had said about it all. "It's just fun."

Perhaps that was the best kind of environmental science: the science of joy.

I could learn to be a scientist for joy. And then when my brother was well, I'd show him what he had started. That would put a smile on his face.

Read more here...

Certified: The Slacker, the Rat, & Other Friends

(Mario read this and said the experience sounded horrible. I hope everyone realizes upon reading this that I'm not criticizing anyone I met; I am writing about how I experienced the day. I'm sure as time goes on, my views will soften. I do not do well when I'm hot.

I actually believe this course will be amazing! For those of you who've regularly read my blog, you know that I'm sometimes very frank about what I'm feeling about myself and the situations I get myself into. I write about this because I'm interested in processes and how we get from here to there.)

I drove to Seattle for my first residency during a heat wave. A roadside sign in Vancouver flashed a smog alert. "Please reduce driving," it said. Damn. Here I was learning more about sustainability and permaculture, and I was driving during a smog alert.

I couldn't reasonably go back home. That would mean I'd have to quit my classes, so I kept driving. I sang out the Celtic fath fith, to protect me, the car, and everyone else and I headed north.

Like me, the AC in our car doesn't do well on really hot days, and today was no exception. It was a long four and a half hour drive. Traffic was slow off and on, and I was hot and sweaty and crossing my fingers the car didn't overheat.

I got to Seattle around 3:30. Headed into the university district. I was desperate to get inside someplace cool.

I parked the car in the sunny lot by the three story house. I had made arrangements to stay in the apartment of a religious organization. They kept reasonably priced rooms all over the country for travelers as part of their community service. I wasn't religious, and they didn't care.

I got out of my hot car and stepped into stifling heat. City heat is different from country heat, it seems to me. At least in the country you can find a tree or at least a spot of ground to cool your soles. Or so I romanticized as I hurried to the entrance to my new abode. I looked for the key where the hostess told me it would be.

It wasn't there.

I looked again even though I couldn't have missed it. I knocked on the door. No one answered.

What was I going to do now? I had food in the car that needed refrigeration. I needed refrigeration. Where could I go? I didn't know this city.

As I've said before, I have no real sense of Seattle. I had only been to the city a few times. Maybe ten times altogether? I never got a good sense of it. We didn't go more often because the traffic was notoriously awful. It could take four hours to go two hundred miles or it could take six, seven, eight.

Now I couldn't sit out here in the sun waiting to see if the hostess ever came home.

Then the door opened and a woman leaned out. I told her who I was, said the key wasn't there.

"It's been a crazy day," she said. "Come on in."

Yes!

I stepped into cool darkness. Ahhh. She led me down a very short hall.

"Someone just left," she said. "I haven't had time to change the sheets or clean."

"No hurry," I said. "I can make my own bed."

The door was open to a tiny room. It looked more like a big closet than a room. She handed me the keys and then made my bed. I went out to the car and began bringing stuff in. A few minutes later, the hostess rushed out of the room and I was able to squeeze in.

I wasn't certain what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. I was thinking more apartment or more hotel room. This was like a kid's bedroom. A small kid's bedroom with two very small single beds arranged in a kind of "L" shape. In a couple of places near the window, the walls were streaked with something brown.

I sat on the bed and looked around. It wasn't so bad. If the room stayed cool and I was able to sleep, I could do this. I wished I could smell; the room was in the basement and I wondered if it was moldy or mildewy.

I took my cooler of food to the tiny fridge. I'd made a bunch of food for the potluck on Friday. I needed to store some and freeze some. I opened the door. The fridge didn't feel very cool, and there wasn't a freezer. I crossed my fingers the fridge worked, and I put my food away.

Then I went back to my room and tried the internet. It wasn't working. I wouldn't be able to get some of my work done.

I closed the door to the room, stripped down to my skivvies to cool down, and sat on the bed. I felt alone and isolated. I wanted to engage my beginner's mind about all of this but I just felt miserable and out of place. Why was I doing this? Where did I come up with these ideas, these hair-brained schemes? I felt so tense, teary- and bleary-eyed.

I finally opened up the computer and put in a disk. I'd brought a couple of movies and some comedy shows. I ate a little bit of Mario's steamed veggies and my quinoa.

After a while I got restless and decided to go to a vegetarian café which wasn't far away. I could sit in the air conditioning, order good food, and use their wi-fi.

I drove there without getting lost and found a parking spot, which was no easy feat in that area, and then I went into the cafe. They either had no AC or it was broken. It was stifling. I stood in the middle of the restaurant looking around. I couldn't stay there.

I took my computer and went back out and sat at one of the tables along the building. I opened my computer. I needed directions to a few places. I googled those and saved them. Then I sent a few emails.

Suddenly I heard a young man say, "I don't understand why people just can't be honest. I'm honest."

I looked up and saw a tall young man walking by. Next to him was a shorter blond girl clutching books to her chest.

I looked back down at my computer.

"Why can't people be honest?" he asked. He was talking loudly. "I've had really bad blow jobs. I have had some really bad blow jobs."

I think he said it three times. I laughed. Really, dude? You're about two years old. How many have you actually had?

I watched him and the young woman walk across the street. I wondered what she thought about their public conversation. I couldn't hear a word she was saying.

If she was saying anything at all.

It was too hot to stay outside. I walked across the street to the Wal-Greens. It felt so nice and cool in there.

I couldn't believe I wanted to hang out in a Wal-Greens.

I drove to Whole Foods. I felt proud of myself that I found it. I still didn't have a sense of the city. When I was younger, I was able to find my way almost anywhere. I had an amazing sense of direction. I wondered if all my google.maping was helping to erode my sense of confidence, my sense of place. I needed to get a map of Seattle and figure it out.

Yep. That was the answer.

Later.

I returned to my little room. I turned the fan on. Ate some dinner. Talked to Mario. I still felt uncomfortable. I felt hot, fat, ugly. I had gotten my hair cut really short before I left home. I hated it. I looked at myself in the mirror in the bathroom in my little religious house and I thought, "What a pig."

I was so shocked. How could I think such a thing? How could I say such a thing out loud?

I immediately apologized to myself and the woman in the mirror.

When I was a girl, my mother had told me that you should look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're beautiful because you can't count on anyone else to do it.

I had started out so cocky. Smart. Capable. Cute. Now I was unsure of myself, felt awkward and ugly, felt stupid and unaccomplished. Was I going through the teenage years again? Only I hadn't felt ugly then, or stupid or unaccomplished.

Too many years of intermittent depression had warped my brain?

I went back to my room and decided it was normal to feel like a stranger in a strange land. I was a stranger in a strange land.

I tried to sleep. Couldn't. Finally put the movie Pride and Prejudice in the computer and fell to sleep to that.

I dreamed I was in the bathroom hugging Anderson Cooper and telling him he needed to get some rest.

Dreamed some mad man was trying to kill me.

Woke up every half 'n hour or so to pee.

After a while I stopped getting dressed when I had to get up to pee. Figured if I ran into anyone on the way to the bathroom, I'd just tell them it was all a bad dream.

In the morning as I was talking to Mario on the phone, I raised my blinds and looked out the half window to the back of the house. Across the tiny alley was a fence. Various bushes or trees grew here and there amongst some rocks. That sweet light of early morning fell in the alley way. A tiny wren jumped from rock to rock. She stopped and looked at me.

Wrens always reminded me of my friend Linda. She told me she might come back as a wren.

I watched the wren until I saw a rat just under the fence. He walked from rock to rock, too.

I said to Mario, "There's a rat."

"In your room!"

"No," I said. "I'd already be packing my bags. No, it's about five feet away, outside the window. What's the difference between a rat and a mouse?"

"Pretty much size," he said.

"This is a rat then," I said. "Its tail is about a foot long. And you should see the balls on him. They're huge!"

"That's why there's so many of them," he said.

I laughed.

The rat went out of my sight.

I said good bye to my sweetie.

It was time to start this thing.

I drove downtown to the university campus. I parked in shade and hoped it would last. Then I hauled myself and my food inside the campus building and up the stairs. The building felt stuffy and hot.

I found a tiny student lounge with a refrigerator. A woman was in the lounge. She looked past me, like she didn't want to see me. I thought, well this is a good beginning. I put my food away and looked for the permaculture classroom.

It was hot and stuffy inside that room, too, and the woman I'd seen in the lounge was there. She didn't look up when I came in. The only other person in the room, another woman, looked up and we said hello to one another.

When the instructor came in, he rearranged the tables so we were sitting more in an octagon than in a large rectangle. People began arriving. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. It hadn't occurred to me that they were probably all going through the same program together, to get their Master's degrees. Since I already had two Master's degrees, I had decided to get a graduate certificate. No one else was doing that.

I was doing my own lonesome thing. A class of one.

He started the class with introductions. We went around the room and introduced ourselves. Everyone seemed so young. And bouncy. Or something. Excited about their schooling and potential new careers?

I had trouble settling down. I felt like such an outsider. They kept using all these acronyms. "I'm in the C3PO program." "I'm in the ED&X program." I'm making those up but what they were saying sounded just like that.

I remembered when I first started library school many years ago, and everyone talked in these acronyms or abbreviations. It drove me crazy. It felt like a way to keep outsiders from getting access to some kind of secret knowledge.

I wanted to set all the abbreviations free and let them live up to their full potential: by becoming whole words.

Anyway, part of the introductions I didn't understand because of this.

But then we started talking about permaculture.

I first heard about permaculture over a decade ago. The word means permanent agriculture and/or permanent culture. When I first looked over the information about it back then, I was intrigued by the idea of mimicking nature.

I was not so thrilled about the idea of having to use farm animals in order to make your gardens work. I was not interested in keeping rabbits in cages so I could use their poop. (How could anyone put a rabbit in a cage after seeing them run free in nature?) I had grown up a farmer's granddaughter and I knew how difficult farm work was—and how tedious the work and lousy the pay.

I loved gardening. But the part I loved was being with the plants and eating their bounty. I hated pulling weeds. It was like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill. And I never liked tilling. I worried about the damage I was doing to the soil and the creatures beneath.

I didn't like the constant, repetitive and back-breaking work of gardening.

Permaculture offered relief from that.

This time when I started exploring permaculture again, I saw that permaculture was not a dogmatic set of rules or ideas that I had to "obey" in order to be successful. If I didn't want to cage rabbits or use goat manure or whatever, I didn't need to.

The idea was to design with nature. Mimic nature. Design sustainable and efficient food systems and gardening systems that were beautiful and abundant.

Permaculture is all about relationships. It's about humans being part of the ecological landscapes. It's about our human landscapes being part of nature.

Permaculture is about social change. It's about visioning and envisioning. About observation. About joy.

I was thrilled when we started talking about permaculture. I was almost able to ignore the heat.

The instructor said every design has two clients: the people and the land itself. Permaculture is about turning bad news into good news. All permaculture is different. We learn from mistakes. It's about thinking about what you're doing. Showing up. "It's a reflective process born of observation," he said. "Remember this. Social change takes time. Social change takes no time. Social change is timeless."

We watched a movie with Bill Mollison, one of the fathers of permaculture. He showed his land where he'd practiced the principles of permaculture. It went from nearly hardpan to tropical forest. He said he worked 30 days over 3 years. After that he could leave for months or more and come back and everything would be fine.

You can't do that with a regular garden. That's one of the differences. The perma in permaculture doesn't mean permanent fields of corn or wheat or soybeans. It's about a permanent, edible forest, filled with perennials. We can eat from it the way animals eat from forests.

With permaculture, the gardens serve multifunctions: they're habitat, they're full of edibles for us and the other creatures, they're beautiful, serene, playful; they build the soil and clean the air.

In permaculture you can learn as much from your failures as your successes.

In the movie, Bill Mollison showed us a garden in India where it was hardpan. Within a couple of years, it was a tropical garden.

After the movie, we talked about relationships in the garden. In nature, plants don't do one thing. This plant fixes nitrogen and provides shade and is edible. This one is beautiful and draws insects to pollinate and make honey. This one provides ground cover, repels insects, and is medicinal.

These kind of partnerships where the plants provide mutual aid to each other and the "garden" are called plant guilds. Toby Hemenway describes these guilds as a "group of plants...harmoniously interwoven into a pattern of mutual support, often centered around one major species, that benefits humans while creating habitat."

The instructor told us how he used permaculture concepts to help a group in Jamaica learn to work together after a longstanding bitterness. I kept thinking about work situations where people held onto long-held beliefs. Could permaculture practices help loosen those kinds of damaging beliefs to reinvigorate work life?

At the lunch break, I offered to drive several people over to the apartment where we were meeting for lunch. As I drove, I looked around and wondered where the trees were. Things looked barren in spots, almost like California--as though we were in a hotter more desert-like climate.

My classmates in the car with me hadn't brought any food. We stopped at a Thai restaurant so they could get lunch. They went in and I stayed outside to watch the car.

I was hot and uncomfortable. The air was extremely polluted and I was coughing. I again wondered what the hell I was doing. We were supposed to spend the afternoon out of doors. I didn't think that was smart on 95 degree days when the air was brown.

Eventually we ended up at the place where we were all meeting for lunch. I was so uncomfortable. I didn't feel well. The heat often makes my heart race. I felt dizzy and a bit nauseated. I had gotten heat exhaustion once when I lived in Tucson and ever since then, my little body just screamed with horror when it got hot.

The lunch house in West Seattle was tiny with no air conditioning.

I wanted to leave. No one talked to me. I didn't talk to anyone. I had to haul all my food up and down stairs. It was all in glass jars so it was heavy. I couldn't keep it in the car because it was so hot and I needed it for the potluck.

We finally drove to the instructors house, a short distance away. It was 1:30. I had barely eaten or drank anything. I felt dizzy and sick. And freaking hot.

I opened the trunk of the car before we went into the house to get my inhaler. I dropped by keys in my purse in the trunk.

And then I shut the trunk.

I was four and a half hours from home and I had just locked my keys in the trunk of my car.

I couldn't believe it.

By now, the stress of the heat, of being away from home while I was hungry and dehydrated, took over. I went into the house--which was not air-conditioned--and I felt panicked. What was I going to do?

Fortunately the instructor's parents were visiting from Arizona. They gave me their triple A card. We called them and they promised to send out a locksmith in an hour or two.

I went out to the deck where everyone else sat listening to the instructor. I didn't have anything to write with. Everything was all in my trunk. I didn't have any water. It was in my trunk too.

Class started.

I don't remember anything.

I only remember when I got up someone had taken my seat. I didn't have anywhere to sit or stand. It was too hot and sunny.

I just wanted to go home.

We were instructed to break up into groups of four and look at the permaculture design and the various systems around the instructor's house. The three people in my group apparently knew one another. They huddled around one another and pointed out things to each other. When I drew near, they walked away. When I said something, they never acknowledged me.

Was this high school?

No, in high school, I was popular.

And not in a bad way. I was friendly with all the different groups.

As we wandered around for an hour, this ostracizing happened again and again.

OK. So I was the new kid. Why try to include me? Why try to make a relationship with me? But wasn't the entire philosophy of this university to build relationships?

Maybe it was me. Maybe I stank. Maybe I seemed aloof.

Maybe they didn't want to be around someone who had so foolishly locked her keys in the trunk.

Maybe they were hot and miserable and only wanted to talk to each other.

Eventually someone came and got me and said the locksmith had arrived. By the time I got up to where the car was, I saw a young man standing next to my car with the trunk open.

I laughed and shouted, "You are my hero!"

He grinned.

He asked for my keys. I fetched them from the trunk and gave them to him. Then he leaned over and did some more fiddling. I saw part of a tattoo on his back, near his waist. I was so tempted to lift up his shirt so I could see the rest of it.

"Yep," he said. "When it comes to locks, I'm the magic man. I know I may look like a slacker, but I can do the work."

I said, "Honey, I don't judge people that way. Look at me, I've got white hair and everyone thinks I'm seventy."

He laughed. "Yeah, everyone thinks I'm fifteen but I'm thirty-two."

He stood up. I smiled and held out my hand. He shook it, firmly.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mike," he said.

"Thanks a lot, Mike," I said.

We let go of each other's hands, and he went back to his truck. I waved.

Then I went into the house and hugged the parents of the instructor. What a kind thing they had done for me.

I went back down to the bottom of the property to where everyone else was. I had forgotten to get my notebook, so I still couldn't take notes. It was too hot to climb the four stories back to the car. I sat on the grass and tried to listen.

I just wanted to get out of the heat.

Went inside and watched a movie about permaculture in California.

I slipped on the stairs and nearly fell but I saved myself.

Score.

We all ate potluck.

I put out my quinoa and black beans.

There was plenty of food. I shouldn't have hauled all that food all the way from home. Why had I done it? Was I trying to impress them? Make friends? Be part of the group?

No one cared one way or another.

None of the students talked to me. The instructor asked me a question or two, probably out of politeness.

I talked to his parents.

I've always gotten along with people older than I am.

I wondered if no one wanted to talk to me because they thought I was old.

But old people are the most interesting!

I've always thought so.

Probably their not talking to me didn't have anything to do with me.

They just wanted to talk to each other.

See, I was always the one at any party or gathering who made sure no one felt left out.

Right then, I was too tired to take care of myself or make friends or do anything.

I just wanted to go home.

Right now my home was on the other side of the bridge on the other side of the freeway in the basement of an old house, a few feet from a rat with huge testicles.

I asked someone for directions to get back. I listened vaguely. I didn't really care.

I grabbed my stuff, said good bye to the parents, and left. Got in the car and drove. Figured out a way to get out of this part of town and get onto that free way.

Was relieved to be on my own.

Glad to get home to my little basement room.

But first I drove to Whole Foods. I got a couple of frozen dinners and a box of gluten-free chocolate chip cookies.

Went back to the room. Microwaved the dinner. Went into my room and closed the door. Sat in my skivvies cooling off again and eating.

I watched the part of Pride and Prejudice I hadn't seen last night. The part where he is walking across the field at sunrise toward her. I love that scene. He's beautiful and vulnerable. It feels so romantic.

I thought about why I liked this movie. It always perplexed me. And I suddenly knew why.

I liked it because the man showed up. When he figured out the problem and what he could do about it, he just did it.

That's always been my definition of romantic. I've never liked presents or flowers or candies or any of that stuff. I liked men who truly showed up.

That's what my dad did. He worked at his job and when he was home, he was home for us. He helped us with our homework. He taught us how to do things. He took us places. He was there with us. He showed up.

My husband is the same way. Whenever I see this movie, I think of Mario. Think of how he has shown up every day of our marriage. He isn't a juvenile kind of man and neither is my father. They don't sit around drinking with their friends and whining about their wives like all the men in movies do. Or they don't sit around watching TV and not participating in the functioning of the household like so many men in real life do.

Mario shows up. After thirty years, his eyes still light up when he sees me. He still laughs the hardest when I'm funny. And he thinks I'm hysterical. His breath still catches in his throat when he sees me naked. He makes spring rolls for me when I've been away. Once when I was gone for a week, he left a half-eaten apple on the table because it reminded him of me (because I was on the one who had eaten it). He even wrote a poem about it!

I love people who show up. I'm tired of people who have dropped out. Tired of people who want to stay in adolescence.

That was why I liked that movie. They remained true to who they were and they showed up for one another.

I watched the movie to the end and thought of my husband so far away.

I wondered why I was here, alone, instead of at home in bed with him.

Because I was trying to learn to show up better.

To be more effective.

To build better relationships.

Some thing.

It's tough being around other people and feeling alone.

I had trouble sleeping.

I ate the box of cookies.

Yep, I truly showed up for those cookies. They were my best friends in the world.

Read more here...

Redux

I have been busy getting ready for school and writing Jewelweed Station. I hope to write more here later in the week. In any case, enjoy the sunshine. Stay cool. If you want something longer to read, here's my essay "Healing the Wound Wild" that was published in the Journal of Mythic Arts a few years ago.

Read more here...

Certified: Four

(I wrote this while I was sick, so please forgive any mistakes or...etc.)

On Monday, the day before I was starting class in Portland, I woke up ill. And I didn't feel any better on Tuesday. I didn't want to skip the class. It only met once a week.

I couldn't believe I was so sick. This felt like one of my unsustainable patterns exerting itself in my life. It went something like this: I worked too hard, I worked too hard, I worked too hard, and I'd get sick. Then I'd have to peel away those things in my life that weren't serving me.

Well, I wasn't going to fall for it this time. I was going to class.

I took a walk around town early afternoon to see if I could actually drive to Portland and walk to class. I was able to do it. I had to stop a lot, but I made it down to the post office and back up again. At 4:30, I got into the car and drove to Portland. I got stuck in rush hour traffic so I didn't make it to campus until just a few minutes before 6:00.

I went to the building where I thought the class was, my favorite building on campus with the atrium and bamboo garden, but there was no classroom 238. Oh man. I got the wrong building? It was 6:00 now. Probably nothing was open on campus for me to find out where the real class was. I was having too much trouble breathing to be running all over campus.

I walked over to my friend Mary's department. If she was there, she could help me out. The door was locked. I couldn't believe I had driven all this way and now I was going to have to drive back home. I felt a little panicky because I felt too sick to actually walk to the other side of campus where the library was--and probably a class schedule.

Then I heard someone call my name. I turned around. Mary was leaning out the door. I was so happy to see her. I couldn't really talk easily because of the laryngitis; I was able to convey that I couldn't find my class.

Fortunately, Mary had a schedule and she figured out the classroom was in the building across from the one I was at. I didn't have far to go. I walked around the building and found 238. I opened the door and went inside.

I couldn't smell anything, because I couldn't smell anything. But it reminded me of my physics lab from high school which always smelled slightly of pipe tobacco. Long tables with computers on them faced the instructor who sat at a table. Behind him was a huge white board. No windows. No air. Ugly green healable plastic on the tables. Cluttered tables and shelves at the back of the room.

The instructor was reading off the names of students. He sat at his table. He worse glasses and had a handlebar mustache.

I sat down and immediately turned off the computer screen in front of me. I listened to my wheezy lungs as I sat breathing, trying to relax and get my bearings.

Then the teacher began talking. He said we would learn how a residential home was built, from the ground up. We would learn about all the different systems and how they functioned within the building.

I wanted to become more knowledgeable about building systems. This would help me evaluate buildings and the environment more intelligently, so that I didn't suggest anything stupid or untenable.

For instance, the instructor talked about someone plugging up air holes in their house to help with the heating bill; this cut off the air flow in the house which then helped grow mold. They had to tear the house down. Things like that.

Soon the teacher started talking about the building codes which he seemed disgusted by. And he talked about energy efficiency and "green" policies with derision. He said that all green ideas were more expensive ideas.

He went on and on about some government policies. In Colorado, he said, the water from your roof does not belong to you and you can't capture it. It's considered to be part of a river or tributary so it must be allowed to continue on its way. In Arizona, on the other hand, you must capture the water from your roof if your building is over 2500 square feet.

He said the government was going to start going door to door talking with people about energy efficiency and forcing them to make changes.

"I call them the green Nazis," he said, "going door to door in their brown shirts."

He followed up that statement with, "As you can probably tell, I don't care much for the government."

I heard nervous giggles in response.

I growled to myself. I was taking this class as part of a sustainable building certificate and the instructor was going to deride any "green" methods for the next twelve weeks? Plus I'd have to sit and listen to him bash "the government" for that same amount of time.

He was the guy in charge so everyone would have to listen to him and perhaps become biased because of his opinions. I suddenly felt like I was in a classroom taught by an older Timothy McVeigh.

I wanted to raise my hand and say, "Hey, I work for the government. So does my husband. We work for the library. My father worked for the government, first in the Air Force and then as a teacher. You work for the government because this school gets funds from taxes."

But I sat quietly. For years before the Oklahoma bombing, I was furious with the "government." Years of Reaganomics had shredded our infrastructure and our manufacturing base. I despised what George Bush had done in Iraq. And then when Bill Clinton got into office, one of the first things he did was "don't ask, don't tell," which I thought of as a complete betrayal.

Then Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrow building. I sat watching that horror on TV and wondering what had happened to us as a nation. McVeigh was anti-government. He hated our government. I decided then and there that I was nothing like him and I didn't want to participate in the kind of rhetoric that would lead to something like that. It was one thing to criticize our policies, which I continue to do, but to feed extremism was irresponsible. I had the creepy feeling as I sat in this classroom that this man was feeding that kind of extremism with his offhand remarks.

Should I raise my hand and say, "I'm a green Nazi according to your definition and I work for the government. You wanna string me up?"

I looked around the room. I didn't have to take this class. I did not have to sit here for weeks listening to this man's opinions. I might learn something, but at what cost? I could barely breathe in this room, and I didn't think it was all because of my cold.

This was not my place, not my journey. He was not my teacher. I didn't want to have this battle or this struggle in this room and this place. I wanted to learn from more evenhanded teachers.

I got up and walked out the door.

I drove home through the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. I felt relieved. Now I wouldn't have to get stuck in traffic one a week.

When I got home, I dropped the class. Then I curled up on the couch and tried to breathe and sleep.

Read more here...

Certified: Three

Technocrap and Other Adventures

A few days after my interview I got paperwork in the mail from the university: a congratulations letter, financial forms, and my student ID number. I could now begin the process of registering.

Easier said than done. It took me an entire day to get signed up onto the three different interfaces needed for this university and then to register. It was so cumbersome and difficult that I started to have doubts about going back to school.

I had to tell someone at the school how awful this process was. I mean, if they knew they would change it, right?

By the end of the day I was very discouraged, and I had a terrible headache.

The next day, when I felt better, I composed a letter to the assistant at my department. I hated to begin a relationship with a complaint. But I'd do it. I figured things couldn't change unless someone talked about what wasn't working.

Unfortunately when I complain about things or point out flaws in processes, the response is usually something like, "Really? You're the only one who has ever mentioned this. You must be really sensitive."

That was usually when I got the invisible badge of troublemaker, or worse, the invisible badge of the overly sensitive troublemaker.

I wrote the letter. I said I was sorry to start out complaining, but I wanted to know why they used three different interfaces for each student at one university. I told her registering was awful. I would need to use these interfaces daily, and it couldn't be torture every day; if it was, I wasn't willing to do it.

I did try to call first, by the way. The person I needed to talk with was out of the office, so I sent off the letter. Once something gets in my head, I need to get it out or else it gets caught in my brain like a hamster on a wheel. I needed to either have the conversation with someone about the problems or I needed to send the email. Only then would I stop thinking about it.

I felt for sure I was going to get the standard reply: "This is the way is it. Get over it."

Fortunately that's not the answer I got. The assistant acknowledged problem. It was something they were working on. She also acknowledged that the registration process was not ideal, and she gave me some hints to make it easier next time. She was amazed that I had accomplished so much without any help.

It wasn't a brush-off which was more than I expected. And never once did she say I was too sensitive.

That felt better.

I decided to keep going forward with this.

I got my financial award letter. They (the federal government) believed we could afford $5,000 a year for my education. This was exactly what Mario and I had figured. They offered to loan us the rest. Actually they offered to loan us about three times more than I needed. Mario and I talked, and we decided we would get a loan for half of the tuition.

I looked up how much interest we would have to pay on this loan and discovered that by the time we paid it off, we would have paid about thirty percent above and beyond the principal. That didn't sound like a low-interest student loan to me; it sounded like usury.

I also found out about what books I'd need for my classes. One of them was $175. That was over half my weekly pay.

I kept wondering how the average person managed to go to school nowadays.

I emailed my advisor some questions about the program, and she emailed me back that I needed to chill out. She didn't use those words, but that was the essence of the email. I needed to get through these first two classes before I made any plans for other semesters.

Live in the now, baby.

At first I was offended. How dare she advise me to stop my incessant planning and figuring. I wasn't some twenty-something person who didn't know what to do with the rest of her life, by god. I was a fifty-something person wondering what to do with the rest of her life. Much wiser than those twenty-somethings.

Yes, well, I quickly realized my advisor was supposed to advise me. That was her job. And she was right. Why look at which classes I'd take next year when I hadn't even started my classes this year? Maybe I'd hate them. Maybe I wouldn't be able to do the work. Maybe I'd quit before I even started.

Yes, I would stop obsessing about my classes in Seattle.

I began looking around for classes I could take closer to home.

Mission accomplished: Obsession diverted.

I looked around for classes about sustainable building.

Toxic building materials had made me sick. Was there something I could do to prevent this from happening to other people? Why didn't people use more sustainable and healthy building methods? It was certainly possible nowadays. Were they ignorant of the dangers, or did they just not care?

Even buildings that were supposedly "green" weren't always healthy. They might be energy efficient, but they didn't necessarily use no-VOC materials. (You know that smell that accompanies paint, carpeting, vinyl? That's outgassing. And what it is outgassing is "volatile organic compounds" or VOC. These compounds can cause all sorts of physical and mental problems and are especially hard on the little nervous systems of children. Some materials outgas for years.)

I should become a sustainability consultant and help people make those kinds of decisions. When the library remodeled, the librarian and the maintenance department didn't know where to go to find carpet, flooring, and paint that were no-VOC. Mario and I did the research for them (and we followed the advice of our friend Steve Rypka). That could be part of what I did in this new world of It's Easy Being Green avec Kim.

I found a certificate program in sustainable building at the community college in Portland. I loved this college. I went to one of the campuses nearly every Friday to help out my friend the anthropology professor with her class. (Not that she needed my help.) The class was usually in the technology building, this gorgeous space with an atrium and bamboo garden in the middle of it.

Every Friday, my friend taught a shamanism class. Spring semester she taught Celtic shamanism. Last year it was Faery Shamanism. Next fall, she would be teaching Norse Shamanism.

I got such a kick out of being a part of this class, sometimes sitting in the middle of the floor of the classroom drumming, sometimes going outside under the old Doug firs where we did ceremony honoring the land and the directions.

It made sense to me that they would have a sustainable building program. I should have thought of it earlier. I filled out an application.

A week or so later, I was accepted. Soon enough, I got my student ID and I logged onto their site. It took me about 30 seconds to get on, and everything was there: classes schedules, registration, financial info, email, bookstore, library. It had all the things I needed on one page after one login. It was such a joy after all my struggles with my university in Seattle. (I sent an email to the assistant in Seattle to urge them to check out this student interface.)

As part of this process, I had to get my transcripts. I hadn't really looked at what classes I'd taken for years. I was startled as I flipped through the transcripts. Most of the time I took five classes a term, but sometimes I took six or seven classes! I also worked twenty to thirty hours or more a week at a job. No wonder I'd been stressed out and burned out most of the time.

As I looked at these classes, I realized something was missing. I had not taken a single science class. I had signed up for an astronomy class, but I'd gotten bored when I realized we would never be outside staring up at the stars, so I dropped out. I took several psychology courses if you count that as science.

Other than that: nothing. Which was strange. I had started high school wanting to be a research biologist. Now I wondered why I hadn't taken any science classes. I was probably afraid. I was always working so much and so hard; I couldn't afford to take courses that were too tough or required lots of homework and risk the chance of flunking or getting a bad grade. Bad grades meant my average would drop and then I'd lose any of my (very small) scholarships.

I was also startled to see that I had taken two Math courses. I had no memory of taking two classes and only a vague memory of one. I had taken it at night and I remembered I had never been so bored in my life, except maybe when I took Logic.

I hated logic. Loathed it. Loathed philosophy too. I didn't understand what use logic would be in my life, yet I was supposed to take this course. With philosophy I felt like I had to read supposed wisdom written by a bunch of white men who sat around trying to figure out how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. What could be more useless? Why weren't they out working a job or cooking a meal or changing a diaper?

I was not impressed with them. I was a practical woman.

Interesting how I would marry a man who majored in Math and Philosophy. Of course when he talked to me about Math or philosophers, I was fascinated. He knows how to tell a story. We have probably had more intense and fascinating conversations about math and philosophy than anything else, except possibly literature.

In any case, I registered for a class in the architecture and design department at the community college. It wasn't science, but it was practical: introduction to building systems.

Later Mario and I went into the city to the campus bookstore to get books for my class. One of the books was $125. I groaned.

Mario said, "It's just the cost of doing business."

I gritted my teeth and bought them.

As I carried the books out of the store, I thought about what I was doing. I was apparently incapable of doing anything slowly. Or doing one thing at a time. In the course of just a few weeks I had decided to totally upend my life. I was not only going to school in Seattle; I was now going to school in Portland. This little country mouse was in for a ride.

I was more than just a little crazy.

Read more here...

Certified: Two

Two

Two days after I found out I was accepted into the program, Mario had to go to the doctor. He'd been having a pain in his arm for several months and it had gotten much much worse the day after he went to the dentist. He needed to see someone to try to fix it.

Part of my anxiety problem revolves around doctors. I was never afraid of doctors or dentists when I was younger. I went to all my check-ups. Got all the exams I needed. Then one day I couldn't do it any more. The idea of going to a doctor sent my blood pressure soaring. I was wracked with fear and loathing. I got this anxiety even if someone else had to go to a doctor.

On Thursday, the day Mario had to go to the doctor, I felt like a basket case. I hadn't been able to sleep the night before. In the morning, I couldn't keep still, couldn't relax. I thought I was going to go insane before he actually went to the doctor.

Only someone who has intense fear can understand what this was like. It wasn't anxiousness. It wasn't butterflies. This was terror. My rational mind said one thing, "This is silly. Everything's all right. They'll figure out something simple to help him." But my body was registering terror with all the accompanying symptoms: Racing heart, nausea, restlessness, sweating. Imagine the most afraid you've ever been, unreasonable or reasonable fear, and then you might know what it felt like. What if always feels like. If you've ever been assaulted, you understand what this fear was like.

Trying to meditate didn't help. It never does. Trying to breathe calmly didn't help. It never does. I had this urge to run away. This is a common instinct when I'm feeling terrorized. I believe it's a primal urge. I want to get away from the danger. Most of the time when I want to run away, I tell myself that my reaction is the problem, and I can't run away from me. That has kept me from spending thousands of dollars on hotels and gasoline as I tried to run away from the problem. If the problem is you, there ain't nowhere to go.

But this time, I felt like I was going to explode. I understand that expression. I used to think, how could someone feel like they were going to explode? But it does feel as though something is going to give if I don't take action.

It wasn't raining so I decided to get in the car and drive the two hundred plus miles to Seattle to look around my new campus. I asked Mario if he wanted me to go to the doctor's with him. He said no. I still don't know if he was trying to spare me or if he didn't really want the company.

I got in the car and drove west on Highway 14. I'd only gotten a few miles when I started to feel better. All the chemicals and hormones pulsing through my body must have started to calm down. I felt like myself again. I began to cry. Was the rest of my life going to be spent like this?

I felt like Marlon Brandon in On the Waterfront. "I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it." This anxiety--this mind terror--was my Rod Steiger, my brother Charley who sold me out.

And I wanted to kill him dead.

I pulled off the road and went into the nearby Doestch Ranch park to call Mario. I sobbed as I told him how much better I felt. All of this reminded me of when I'd gone to visit my dad in Arizona recently.

I'd taken a train for the first leg of the trip to get to my dad. I spent the night in Santa Barbara after I got off the train, and then I rented a car. I drove from Santa Barbara to Phoenix. As I drove along the coast with the radio on, I was happy. I was ecstatic, actually. Joyful. And I was alone. I knew that everyone I loved was safe but far away, so I couldn't see them or sense anything about them. I didn't have to try and fix anything. I hadn't been that happy for decades.

I wondered then if I was only going to be happy and relaxed alone driving in a car. I wondered again this day.

As I sat in the car in that park, the anxiety began to come back. I told Mario I was going to keep going.

When I closed the phone, I stared out at the gorge cliffs across the field and the river from me. They were gorgeous in the morning light, the dark green trees highlighted with the sweet light of morning.

I used to live just a few miles from here. After I'd had to quit my job, we'd moved to Skamania Landing. When we first got there, I was so dizzy and ill, I could barely walk across the room. Gradually I began to get better. I could walk across the room and do laundry. Then I could walk to the bottom of the stairs. Then I could walk to the bridge. Then across the bridge. Then to the turtle pond on the Doetsch property. Finally I was able to walk to these fields, where I now sat in the car in a parking lot.

That was before it was a park. Back then, I walked on a path through the field. To the south, cottonwoods grew along the Columbia River. Across the river, the gorge cliffs rose. Sometimes when I looked at these cliffs, they seemed to be receding, continually moving away without actually going anywhere. I never figured out what caused this optical allusion but other people saw it when they walked with me.

I remembered the first time I made it to this field, I felt like I was getting my life back. After being confined and constrained by illness, I felt free again.

One time I reached this field and I began having trouble breathing. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back home. I took my inhaler, but I was still having problems.

I walked over to a copse of tall slender evergreens near one end of the field. Something about these little woods always captivated me. I was certain leprechauns romped through it. I don't know why I thought of leprechauns. But on the day when I was having trouble breathing, I asked the leprechauns--or the spirits of that place--if they could help me.

After this plea, I began to breathe more easily, and I made it safely back home.

This field, this place, these trees, these rocks, these beings had been a part of my life for so many years. I was grateful today to have found this place again.

I started the car up and continued on my way to Seattle.

The drive through the Columbia River Gorge was spectacular. It always is. I had lived here since 1987 and I never grew tired of it. But the drive up and down I-5 is an exceedingly boring drive. My permaculture instructor suggested that I look at the landscape differently during my commute so that it would become interesting to me.

I was hoping I could eventually do that. Today I didn't want to think about anything. I listened to XM radio, and I drove. My mind relaxed. My body relaxed. It was the best medicine for me. I acknowledged that this medicine was not very sustainable. I was burning up fossil fuels. At least I was driving a supposedly fuel efficient car.

An hour and a half later I pulled into at a rest stop. As I walked up toward the rest rooms, I felt strangely happy. I already had that road pulse. My body and vision throbbed a bit, as it always did during a long road trip. This felt so familiar. Driving and then stopping, driving and then stopping. Nothing else mattered. I wondered again if I was going to have to spend my life on the road, never at home, in order to be happy.

I thought of all the novels I had written that ended with the word "home." I rarely felt at home and neither did my characters. Many of my books are, at least in part, road trips.

About four hours after I left home, I came over the hill and saw Seattle in the distance. It always looked cozy to me, and a bit elegant, tall buildings rising up from the land, almost like a copse of silvery trees--like the leprechaun evergreens in the field at the Doetsch park.

As soon as I went over the hill, I landed in Seattle traffic, one of the reasons we rarely come up to Seattle. It may be better now, but years ago, it could take four hours or seven hours to drive from our house to Seattle or from Seattle to our house.

I hoped in the next year I would get to know and like Seattle better. Mario and I had great affection for Portland. We didn't know Seattle well enough to like or loathe it, but we were wary of it. We couldn't discern a center to Seattle. In Portland, you can drive downtown, park, and walk around and find lots of things. Often downtown Seattle felt deserted, at least where we went.

And the drivers seemed crazy. Especially at rush hour. One time we were trying to leave Seattle and a semi-truck came close to crushing us. He knew he was doing it. I looked right into his eyes. He was furious and trying to hurt us.

The people we did see in Seattle always looked dressed to the nines. The Pacific Northwest was known for its grunge look. I've always appreciated it. I appreciated that out here you could dress anyway you wanted and people would barely notice your clothes. They noticed you. People were judged by the content of their character, not the content of their pocketbooks and how much moula they could spend on clothes. But the way people dressed in Seattle seemed more like Sex and the City lite than Pacific Northwest casual.

Lately I've noticed some of that in Portland. I'll see some woman dressed like she was on the streets of New York City and I want to yell, "Hey, we don't cotton to your kind here. Dress down or go home." I recognize even as I have these impulses that I am judging someone by the content of her clothes, and I nudge myself toward compassion and tolerance.

It's just that I don't want to live in a place where people are deemed worthy or unworthy based on their clothing. That seems so high school. Who wants to live perpetually in high school?

When my youngest sister moved from Michigan down to Santa Cruz, she was stunned by the way people dressed. She'd call home to her friends and say, "These people leave the house without make-up! They wear sweats!" She had always been known for her style and fashion sense. She felt like she was losing part of her identity in Santa Cruz. She started dressing more casually and not focusing so much on how she looked.

I said, "Isn't that freeing?"

She said, "No! It's awful."

She left Santa Cruz and moved to Scottsdale.

The traffic wasn't too bad today. I got off the expressway and drove downtown Seattle. I noticed the people on the streets seemed to be very well-dressed. I could feel butterflies in my stomach. I was not going to fit in here.

I kept driving until I saw the campus building. Across the street was an empty lot. I took a right and parked alongside the building. I saw a group of people milling around nearby a coffee-shack. Homeless? This was definitely not the most well-heeled part of Seattle. My stomach fluttered again.

Then I laughed at myself.

Homeless or rich. Which do you want, Kim?

Neither. I'd like everyone to have what they need and I'd like no one to be judged.

Like I was judging everyone.

I wanted to go into this educational experience with a clean slate. I wasn't going to withdraw from everything if people didn't act exactly like I wanted them to. I wanted to overcome some of my own character defects and communication flaws.

I told myself to buck up and get with the picture--and a whole bunch of other cliches.

I got out of the car and got a parking ticket and stuck it on the driver side window. I closed the door and locked the car. I glanced all around me--I was in the big city now. Then I walked down the sidewalk and around the building. It was a bright sunny day.

I walked into the building. I saw the front desk immediately, to my right. Next to the door was a statue of a pig. A mosiac pig, all shiny with pieces of colored glass. I wanted to put my hand on her and say hello, but I felt a bit overwhelmed and overstimulated at that moment. (I later learned she is called Pig of the Future formally and Ms. Coco, for Commitment to Change, informally.)

The person at the desk was obviously busy. People lined up to ask her questions, plus she was answering the phone. She looked harried. She looked at me expectantly when it was my turn.

"The sign on the door said to register at the front desk," I said, "so I'm registering. I'm going to be a new student in July."

She still looked at me.

I breathed deeply. What question did I want to ask her? I hadn't made an appointment with anyone.

"I just wanted to walk around," I said. "Get my bearings. Go to the library."

She pointed to her right. "The library is that way."

"Rest rooms?"

She pointed again.

I walked away. I felt disoriented. Why was I here? Oh yes, to escape myself. Darn it. Here I am.

Just past the pig and the front desk was a kind of gathering place. I noticed chairs. And the light was dim and relaxing. I wanted to take in every details, but I didn't. I didn't ground or relax or look around. I felt like a stranger in a strange land who had already had a stressful day. I went into the rest room.

Breathe, breathe.

When I got out, I walked down the corridor past the library until I saw people in an office. I went in and introduced myself. The woman at the desk was very kind. She encouraged me to walk around and go to the library. The admission's adviser was gone for several days. I thanked the woman at the desk.

I went back into the hallway and looked up and down the corridor.

I didn't know where to go or what to do.

Should have had a plan, man.

I went to the library and asked if someone could show me how to use sakai, the online program I'd be using for my classes. I glanced around. It was a small library, probably half the size of the first library I worked at, the one my library mentor at the University of Arizona called a dinky. I think she meant it pejoratively, but I've always had great affection for small libraries.

The librarian came out and introduced herself. We sat together at the computer. The program looked fairly straight-forward. I began to start to feel comfortable again. After she was finished, I left the library and began wandering again. I must have gone past the admission's office again, because the kind woman at the desk leaned out the door and asked me if I'd been upstairs yet.

I said no, I didn't know there was an upstairs. She said, "Well come on, I'll show you!"

She took me up the stairs by Ms. Coco. At the top of the stairs, all the hustle and bustle of downstairs seemed to disappear. I felt myself instantly relax. We walked by an area where several people sat at tables and chairs near a skylight. The light pouring down from the sky felt refreshing and soothing, almost like water coming down to create falls.

I told the kind woman at the desk that I was studying at the Center for Creative Change.

"You've got your own place down here," she said. "Where you can come any time."

We walked down a hallway and she opened a door and we went into the Center for Creative Change. Right near the door were couches and chairs where several people sat talking to one another. The kind woman at the desk showed me where the assistant usually sat, although she was gone today.

Then she asked me if I wanted to meet anyone. I said sure! She introduced me to the director, the one who had interviewed me. Then the kind woman left and I had a nice talk with the director. She then introduced me to the permaculture instructor who sat in his darkened office. She told him that I hadn't decided firmly yet on which certificate I was going to get.

"Yes, I'm fascinated with food," I said. I searched for something intelligent to say. "I'm interested in getting healthy organic food and I love to eat."

I wanted to put my head in my hands. That's all I could think of to say, "I love to eat?" Oh my. It wasn't even true. I didn't think I particularly loved to eat. Any love of food had been whipped out of me over the years by experts telling me what I should and shouldn't be eating. (Remember, you're allergic to the world, kid, and all her bounty.)

I was embarrassed by my inane remark. My only hope was that he would completely forget this conversation.

We left him and I met another instructor. He had lived on the coast of Washington. We commiserated with one another about how tough it was to doing any work on the Washington or Oregon coast. When Mario and I lived in Bandon, we had been called "peace mongers." As if wanting peace was a bad thing.

I looked around. It felt cozy in here. My new place. I could probably fit in here.

Soon after I left and went back outside. I checked my phone. Mario hadn't called yet. It was rush hour, but I decided I wanted to see where I was going to stay during my sojourns to Seattle. I had found a reasonably priced place at a religious establishment that catered to travelers as part of their charity work. It didn't matter that I wasn't religious. It was a kindness on their part.

It took me four tries before I got going on the right road. Everyone was zooming by me at 300 mph. At least. The lanes were so narrow. I couldn't figure out how everyone could go so fast on these narrow lanes.

Soon enough I got off that road and drove under another freeway. When I looked at the huge cement pillars that held up the highway, I was reminded of a dream I had had recently about the end of the world. I had seen a pillar just like this one.

I found the house. It looked like it was in a decent part of town, somewhat isolated, but I hoped it would be safe. I next drove to a nearby vegetarian restaurant, Chaco Canyon, but it was so busy and noisy, I decided to skip it. I had had enough excitement for the day.

I found I-5 and drove into the rush hour fray. Mario called. I did what I usually don't do. I answered the phone. (I had an earplug in so it was hands free.) He was fine. The doctor said he was having trouble with his rotator cuff. She was sending him to physical therapy.

I was relieved. Physical therapy meant he could get some help.

All that anxiety for nothing.

Thank goodness.

I drove on.

Later I called my father. I tried calling my sister, the one in Scottsdale, but she didn't answer. I wanted to talk to someone. Tell them about my day. I missed my best friend. She had died four (or five?) years ago, and I still didn't have anyone I could call a best friend. No one I could commiserate with. No one I could share my deepest darkest secrets with. My youngest sister was the closest I had to that and she wasn't answering her phone lately. She was going back to school, too, plus working two jobs while trying to adjust to life in a concrete city where it was 100 degrees out.

So I called my dad.

I don't even remember what we talked about. I sat in a gas station parking lot just listening to his voice. Hearing about his physical therapy. About the flowers in his garden. About the dinner he would make for company that weekend.

I wished I lived closer.

But it wasn't easy being around people I cared about. Too much anxiety.

I continued homeward. I stopped the Olympia food co-op. We always stopped there on our way to or from Seattle. We stopped at food co-ops and libraries wherever we could find them. I couldn't find anything to eat for dinner there, so I bought gluten-free dairy-free chocolate chip cookies. They weren't sugar-free. Sugar plays havoc with my depression, but I wanted some cookies. If I was a drinker, I probably would have wanted a beer. I bought the cookies.

I ate the quinoa and vegetables I'd brought in the cooler. Then I ate the cookies.

I got on the expressway again. As I was driving, I realized that I had essentially cured myself of the anxiety, at least temporarily, with this expedition to Seattle. Whatever part of my brain that was ill must get occupied when I drive. I had tried other ways of distracting myself over the years and they hadn't worked. But this did. Was it because most of my attention was diverted with driving? Or was it because driving is a mental and a physical process?

This felt huge. Could I figure out what part of my brain was causing me trouble and then work to fix it? I had tried mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for my depression and it had helped a great deal. But it had not assuaged the anxiety. And just trying to distract myself with busy work had never alleviated my anxiety.

Sometimes I wondered if I was just someone who should have a full-time job away from home that occupied my mind most of the time.

But this driving thing. Today. It had worked.

I got more and more excited. Maybe I could get fixed. Maybe I wouldn't be stuck with this demon the rest of my life. I could do research or something. Ask my old therapists. My naturopath.

I looked around at the landscape. Why had I always thought this drive was boring? Deciduous and evergreen trees grew up all around me. I was essentially driving through a forest. The road curved, I curved with it.

Go with the flow...

I remembered Dorothy in the land of Oz, in the Emerald City. All she wanted to do there was find home. That, apparently, was my life's work: to find home on this planet and in my body.

Maybe my travels to Oz would help me find my way home, too, eventually.

For now, I was on my way back to the Columbia River Gorge where I would find my sweetheart waiting for me.

Read more here...

Mario's Interview

You can read a fascinating interview with Mario here. I learn from him every single day, and I learned things from this interview I didn't know. I'm so glad he's in my world!

Read more here...

Certified: Learning to Repair Myself and the World in the Emerald City

(I've decided to write about going back to school, because, well, that's what I do. It is more than you ever wanted to know! My intention is to keep my interactions with other people generally private. Although obviously other people will be important to my experiences, I won't violate anyone's privacy. I'll only include conversations that aren't private, unless I just include my side of the conversation. Those of you who've been reading my posts for years know that I'm pretty good at keeping people anonymous unless they give me permission to write about them. The subtitle of these posts is not reality yet, but my hope is that repair, healing, and much more will come to pass.)

Introduction

When the Deepwater Drilling rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico on Earth Day 2010 causing the worst environmental disaster in our country's history, I didn't know what to do. I was angry and depressed. I felt fear and horror as I watched the disaster unfold. No one seemed to know what to do. I wondered, "Where were all the smart people who can fix stuff like this?"

Of course, stuff like this should have never happened. After decades of lax regulations and a kind of legal deification of big corporations, it was happening. We couldn't deny it.

What could I do? I called the President. I called my elected officials. I begged them to do something, to stop relying on information from British Petroleum. I felt like I was watching one of those dystopian novels I had read as a teenager come to life. Like Brave New World or 1984, where the corporations are the government and if you say a lie long enough, it becomes the truth as far as anyone else was concerned.

I suddenly felt as though I had no useful skills. I'm a writer and I'm a librarian. I had written a novel in response to Hurricane Katrina. It was a beautiful novel (Ruby's Imagine) but I couldn't see that it had changed anything.

And I feel like those of us working in public libraries are on the front lines, protecting intellectual freedoms from anyone who would destroy or limit them. Unfortunately, my library wasn't very "green." They remodeled using toxic materials which caused me to become so ill I had to quit my job. I now selected books part-time from home.

Neither my skills as a writer or as a librarian felt useful at this moment. I had also been a social and environmental activist most of my life, starting when I was in elementary school trying to save killdeer nests from marauding boys. But it seemed that any skills I had acquired over the years from my many unsuccessful battles and skirmishes were also useless.

Oil was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of the state where I was born.

What could I do? I asked again and again.

I felt the bell jar of depression and anxiety beginning to fall.

One night I couldn't sleep. I have advocated a sea change in this country for some time. We seemed soullessly consumptive. I remembered recently being at a workshop where the facilitator figuratively shook her finger at us and told us we needed to change how we looked at the world; we needed to change our lives. (The topic isn't important to this discussion.) I grew quite irritated with her. How dare she tell me, a grown woman, how I should live my life? In that moment, I understood how other people probably felt when I began ranting about our consumer culture, the perils of capitalism, our dependence upon fossil fuels, or whatever other lecture I taken out from up my sleeve.

I didn't want to lecture anyone. It wasn't nice and it wasn't effective. I didn't want to battle any more either. It was absolutely ineffective. We couldn't sit around waiting for the government to tell us what to do. We couldn't wait for anyone to tell us what to do.

No more waiting. No more talking. How about some practical skills?

I certainly needed some.

I wanted to learn how people could live on this planet in our cities or out in the country and still be a part of the environment--not a part from it, not pariahs amongst the wild, but a part of the whole ecological community. Then I could help create places that were energy efficient and safe and healthy to human inhabitants and the surrounding environments.

I sat on the couch with my computer in front of me and began looking for places where I could learn these skills. I didn't want to get another Master's degree; I already had two. I didn't want a Ph.D.; I couldn't afford it and I wasn't interested in teaching.

In the middle of the night, I stumbled upon a nine-month certificate program in ecological planning and design in Seattle, Washington, two hundred plus miles north of where I lived. The program included electives in permaculture and food systems, another area of interest for me. (Mario and I had signed up to take a two week permaculture course in California a few months after 9/11 happened. We cancelled, deciding instead to stay closer to home. Now nine and half years later, maybe it was time to try again.)

The next morning I talked it over with Mario. If I took the program over the next year, we could probably afford it if we got a loan, unless something drastic happened to our incomes. As I talked about it, I wondered if I was crazy.

I was famous in our family for having great ideas. I was a visionary! But once I had the vision, I was often ready to move on. I enjoyed planning a party or a class or a ceremony more than I actually enjoyed the event, whatever it was.

I could go onto a work site and figure out what wasn't working or what was working inefficiently. I'd usually know how to fix it, too. But I didn't necessarily want to stay around and keep doing the day to day work.

This was a strength and a weakness with me. I was willing to try new things. Recently I had rented a room in a healing center to do Reiki and shamanic work. I loved the space, and I loved being there by myself. I enjoyed working with clients, too. But I didn't like promoting myself. I didn't like waiting around to have people come see me. I didn't like being stuck in Portland traffic. It was a three month experiment which told me a lot about what I wanted and didn't want. Some people might call that a failure; I called it a learning experience, although I was a little frustrated with myself for not making it more financially successful.

When I was young I knew I was smart; I was sure this meant I could always take care of myself. When I got sick, all that assurance went out the window. Now I knew I could easily be one of those people who ended up homeless and living on the street. Since then, I had been looking for a way to get a more steady income--more steady than intermittent writing income--without changing my beliefs about living and working sustainably.

Maybe going back to school could do that for me. But I didn't want to drain my family--Mario and me--of any more of our finances.

What if going to school was just one more way to educate me uselessly?

Mario encouraged me to go for it.

So that day and for the next couple of days, I made phone calls to the school.

First I talked with an admissions advisor. We talked about the certificates. I told her my concerns about going to school and spending all of this money and then not getting a job or any work out of it. She didn't have a real answer to that. What could she say? "I guarantee you'll find work?"

Next I told her I only want to go to school if it was a green campus. She said it was. They didn't use pesticides and they used green building practices: no-VOC paints and carpets when needed. She told me it was an old building, but they did the best they could despite that.

I then wrote to the permaculture course instructor. I told him my life history in about a page. After I sent the email, I felt embarrassed. How could I so easily tell a stranger about my life and who I was? I wasn't sure why I did it. I wanted these people to know life had not been easy for me. Illness and financial woes had taken a toll. But mostly I wanted them to know I hadn't succeeded at making anything better in the world, despite my efforts.

I didn't tell him everything, of course. I didn't say that I struggled with anxiety and depression. Didn't tell him that sometimes incessant worry possessed me like some demented neurotic demon that I couldn't shake loose no matter what I did.

I didn't usually tell anyone that.

I'd always had a touch of anxiety, even when I was a kid. When I was in my early twenties, I caught a glimpse of my diagnosis in the file on my shrink's desk: chronic depression. When I saw those two words, I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. It sounded like a life sentence: chronic depression. Chronic meant it would never go away, right?

In my mid-twenties, a doctor told me I had something called environmental illness. She told me I was essentially allergic to the world. This was devastating news. I loved the world. Now it was making me sick? I had to change everything about my life. The way I ate, drank, dressed, lived.

I stopped drinking. I began eating organic foods. I tried to lessen my stress and take time to relax, but I was in college, working nearly full time while going to school full time. I didn't know how to relax.

The diagnosis evolved over the years. What I had was now called "multiple chemical sensitivities." (This is essentially what the workers and some residents in the Gulf now have; the doctors call it tilt: toxicant induced loss of tolerance.)

I didn't like any of the diagnoses I'd gotten over the years. They all felt like a curse, a life-sentence. As I tried to protect myself from "the world," my life felt more and more constrained. Less and less joyful.

And my incessant worrying got worse, coming and going until it seemed to settle in good and hard after my mother died two and a half years ago. Maybe that was because I started eating less healthy. Maybe it was because I had also lost two very close friends two years before that. Maybe it was because of the two surgeries I had had, although they had cleared my sinuses so that I could actually breathe through my nose for the first time in nearly fifteen years.

Maybe it was because I was now in my fifties and I felt like half of my life had been spent in illness. More than half.

I didn't know why I had this chronic anxiety. Doctors, acupuncturists, naturopaths, cranio-sacral therapists, all manner of therapists, and shamans had not been able to help. It started to feel as though this unsustainable part of myself was hardwired to me and there was no way to riven it from my real self--because I was sure my real true self did not cower in fear or anxiety because she couldn't get her mind right.

In any case, after the permaculture instructor read my email (where I didn't mention my anxiety), he asked me to call him. So I did.

We talked about his permaculture class and the program at his university. I told him I had worked on many environmental projects. I had also been part of the Sanctuary movement when I lived on the coast of Oregon--on the fringes of it while I was in a peace group there. I had organized and marched against the war in Iraq. I had sued my county after they illegally sprayed pesticides in front of my house. I had fought many battles, and I was tired. He talked about cultivating resilience. With my voice shaking with tears, I said, "I feel as though I have no more resilience."

"I promise you at the end of this," he said, "you will find your resilience again."

Maybe those weren't his exact words. But they were good words. I felt better. Like maybe this was for me.

I felt like I was talking to someone who was like-minded. I realized I wanted to be around people who shared my world view again and who were willing to work for their communities. I didn't want to lead anyone anywhere or teach anyone anything. Not right now. I wanted to learn new skills. I wanted to learn to earn a living doing something meaningful.

After our conversation concluded, I filled out an online application to the graduate certificate program. Part of the application included a five page essay about who I was and why I was drawn to this program.

In the middle of the night, I also filled out a financial aid form called FAFSA. I wasn't eligible for any grants--there weren't many for graduate students--but I might be eligible for a loan.

It was strange filling out all these applications. To see once again where I'd been. Got my Bachelor of Science degree at Eastern Michigan University where my father had gotten his degree. Then my Master of Arts. I'd stayed at EMU because it was comfortable and because I got a gig as a graduate assistant teaching freshman English. I took a writing class at Michigan State University as my very last class for my Master's degree: that was when I met Mario.

I'd worked at a kitchen cabinetry place during my college years. The building used to fill up with deft spray lacquer. I'd run outside to get away from it. I thought it was toxic stuff, but my boss would get angry if I said anything about it. She said that's what they did and if I didn't like it I needed to quit.

I should have quit. I've spent many nights since wondering if working there was what damaged me.

Mario and I moved to the coast of Oregon a year after we met to make our way in the world as freelance writers. I worked at a restaurant and then ran a food co-op for a while. Both of those jobs ended badly. So I became librarian at a tiny library. Two years later, we moved to Arizona where I went to library school.

I developed terrible allergies in Tucson, along with asthma. I remembered students walking across the campus lawns as a man in a hazmat suit rode atop an herbicide spraying machine. I remembered the Catalinas turning red every evening from pollution. I couldn't wait for the year to end so we could get back to the Pacific Northwest.

Where everything got worse.

But I couldn't focus on that. That was all in the past. Going to school was a new direction. Maybe I would finally find a sustainable and healthy way to make a living. Maybe I would actually get well again. Or for the first time.

Soon enough I had an appointment with the director for June 1. She needed to interview me before I was admitted. The weather was so bad I asked if we could change it to a phone appointment. I didn't relish driving in a torrential rainstorm for four and a half hours. It was the first time in the twenty-three years that I've lived here that I've ever cancelled an appointment because of the rain.

At the appointed time, the phone rang and we began our interview. The director wanted to know why I had chosen her school. Then she talked about their view of teaching. Instructors didn't act as "sages on stages" but as "guides on the sides." Part of the purpose of the program was to teach people about effective collaboration. Group work was essential.

I told her I had had bad experiences working in groups. First there was the food co-op in Bandon, Oregon. My bosses had been the co-op board. Twelve of the most dysfunctional people I had ever met. They seemed to believe that because it was a food co-op and they believed in peace and love that everything would turn out. When one of the board members went psycho and threatened me in front of the entire board, with spit spewing, cigarette in one hand and finger poking at me with the other hand, not one of them did a thing to stop him or protest his behavior.

I later had to call the police on him, and I resigned from the co-op.

That was my most infamous experience with group work. But I'd had other experiences. The director said that we could learn as much from those bad experiences as we could from the more successful one. She suggested I write down my group experiences before beginning the program to see what I had learned. I agreed that would be a helpful exercise.

I told her I was quite willing and eager to work in groups. I wanted to learn how to collaborate more effectively. I had become somewhat of a lone wolf. I wrote alone. I did my library work alone. I had come to believe I worked better alone without all that human interaction.

She also said that working on the computer was very important. Since our classes only met once a month, we needed to keep in touch and collaborate via computers. I told her I was quite comfortable with computers and as long as the software worked on a Mac, I'd be fine.

At one point when we were talking, she said that we wouldn't see any cultural changes in our lifetime. This work we did was for the long haul. We needed to realize this to keep our sanity. I didn't argue with her, but I thought, "I don't think we have time to wait." I kept thinking of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

When it was time for me to ask questions, I said, "I'm 54 years old and I have white hair. Am I going to be out of place?"

She told me the average student was about 36 years old. I wouldn't be out of place, but I wouldn't be part of the majority.

I could live with that.

When I got off the phone, I realized I had been accepted to the program.

I grinned and called Mario.

I was ready to begin my adventures in the Emerald City.

Read more here...