Under the Tucson Sun, Again

On Thursday night, Mario came home from work and said a snowstorm was on its way to the Columbia River Gorge. He thought we should get out of Dodge as soon as possible.

I had spent all of Thursday cooking and doing laundry, so we were ready, except for all the other things we had to do: pack, put together an on-the-road kitchen, clean the house, get all our paperwork together, go to the bank, go to the post office.

We somehow got everything done. We went to sleep early. I only slept four hours. I woke up from a hideous dream, one of the worst of my dream-filled life.

Fortunately, I can no longer remember it.

We ended up leaving at 4:30 a.m. We drove down the gorge and into Portland. South of Portland we hit fog: dense fog in the dense dark.

We were in it for almost five hours.

When the sun rose, it was easier to see even though we were still in fog. We went by one clearcut hillside where only a few snags remained; they looked bent and weary as the mist rose all around them, like the surviving soldiers on the battlefield.

And many of the hillsides were covered in hoar frost. When we stopped, we found ice on the front of the car and our antenna. We kept seeing cars go by with their antennae swinging wildly from the ice forming on them. We had been driving through freezing fog.


We stopped at the Ashland Co-op, and then we went up the summit and over the pass. No problems.

All along the way, I left gifts for the Weather Spirits, for the Land Spirits. I think it is only polite to bring a gift when you are entering someone's home.


We ended up in Redding, California, just as the rain began and darkness settled in. It was a green hotel. They used recycled material ,and they didn't use pesticides.

They had a people-made pond in the middle of the several buildings that made up the hotel. (They called it a "spa" for some reason.) In the pond, two beautiful white swans drifted. The room itself was spare and somewhat modern looking, but it was nice.

After we got settled, we drove into Redding to the natural foods store. I bought Amy's gluten-free, dairy-free Mac 'n Cheeze. We brought it back to the motel. Mario microwaved it and added our quinoa and veggies to it. It was good.

Since I hadn't slept much the night before, I wasn't very good company. I finally drifted to sleep and had another awful nightmare. It was bloody and murderous.

I wondered if this was a sign of something. My dreams had never been prophetic. Sometimes a series of nightmares presaged a bout of depression. But I didn't feel like that was happening. If I had a third night of nightmares, I was going to worry about it. Yep. That was my decision. But for now, I was going to try to forget them.

We started our day out early with rain. I was tired and wished I wasn't afraid to fly. This seemed a torturous way to begin a retreat.

I was having trouble remembering that every journey was a pilgrimage.
I watched the landscape. We drove through mile after mile of orchards and corn fields. The corn stalks were dirty blonde with autumn. For an instant, the corn seemed to shapeshift into a million golden-haired muses dancing into the north wind.

As we drove further south, the rolling mountain/hills sharpened, became more defined. More eroded? Or were those faults we drove alongside? We saw clefts everywhere, reminding me of the great nature goddesses.


Near Santa Clarita, we got a room in a "green room" at a Marriot. We watched the news as we prepared for bed. Apocalyptic rains were due in the Los Angeles area starting tomorrow. (Just torrential rains until then.) They were expecting flooding and landslides.

We got up early again but waited until light before we left so we wouldn't be driving in the rain and the dark.

The rain was heavy. Fortunately, hardly anyone was on the road. We had only gone a few minutes when I told Mario I wasn't sure I could do this. It seemed too hazardous. The cars and trucks were splashing up water making it almost impossible to see. The roads were slick with water. It was raining so much that the water didn't have time to drain off the roadway.

When we stopped to get gas, we had to drive through a flooded roadway. Twice. The belts on the car whined.

Back on the expressway, we saw the aftermath of nine accidents and two tire blowouts. At one point, all six or seven lines of traffic on the other side of the freeway were stopped by one police car as crews cleaned up a wreck. It looked as though the cars were lined up waiting to start a race.

We endured these driving conditions for about two and a half hours.

And then we found the edge of the storm and hurried away. I thanked every being I could think of, thanked my lucky stars, that we made it out in one piece.


Soon we were in the desert.

I saw flowers at the rest stop. The trees and flowers whisper to me wherever I go.


And soon enough we were in Scottsdale. I got out of the car and went into my dad's condo. He wasn't there. I went next door where my sister lived and knocked. My dad came to the door. He looked great. Saw my sister's mate who had had a stroke in July. He looked much better than I had anticipated and seemed to be in good spirits. Saw my sister who had been struggling to endure the awfulness of what had happened to her mate.

I had decided before coming to Arizona that I was not going to try to fix anyone. Or anything. People have their own lives. It was not my responsibility to put their lives right. For one thing, I couldn't. I couldn't even put my own right half the time.

And yet, all my life, people have believed I could make things better for them. I remembered coming home from backpacking through Europe when I was eighteen, and my mother was at the airport with my father to pick me up. She said, "I knew once you were home things would be better. I knew my depression would get better."

Even now, when I think of this, my stomach tightens. I feel close to tears. I couldn't fix my mother. And I wonder why she thought I could.

She didn't feel better with me home. As far as I could tell.

A few months later--after I had started college and then quit and was still at home--she got so angry with me, she chased me upstairs, threatening me with a huge block of wood. I ran into my bedroom and locked the door. She stood on the other side yelling and pounding on the door with this block of wood. At the time I thought she was going to kill me.

This was all very unlike my mother.

I called a friend to come pick me up. I remember taking out my window and jumping down and onto the lawn. But that seems unlikely. My room was on the second floor. I had snuck out that way before, but not as an eighteen year old "adult."

In any case, I left home that day and didn't come back.

I eventually got an apartment in Ypsilanti and went back to school. And my mother and I began speaking again. I don't know what she was angry about that day. I must have said something disrespectful.

We never talked about it.

I wasn't able to help her, even though she expected it. Maybe that was why she had gotten so angry with me: I had failed her.

But I couldn't do anything about my sister's problems. Or my father's, if he had anything.

I had no magical powers.

I needed to go with the flow during this visit. Let go, let go, let go.

We walked around the neighborhood, my father, my sister, Mario, and me. It was good to be out of the car, good to be outside.

Later my dad, Mario, and I went to a movie: The King's Speech about Britain's King George VI and his stuttering. The huge theater was packed, and we were lucky to find three seats together. The seats leaned back too far so I couldn't see well and my feet didn't touch the floor. I glanced at my father and he seemed perfectly content. I decided I needed to cultivate his kind of contentedness. How ridiculous not to be content? I was here with my two best guys. I was safe. I had eaten.

Why was I complaining about uncomfortable seats--even if it was silently to myself?

Geez Louise.

It was a good movie. The King didn't stutter when he was angry or when he swore, so he'd often say, "Fuck, fuck, bugger, shit, shit, bugger." When this happened, I glanced over at my father who was smiling. As I looked at him, I was suddenly struck with the idea that he was just a man, trying to be happy and comfortable in his life. I was glad to be in that theater with him, having a good time. How many heroes do we meet every day who are just trying to get by? We were surrounded by every day suffering. And yet people like my father didn't complain. They just kept on going.

My father told me once that he felt like he was being held together by strings and pins. He'd had two major heart surgeries. He had a chronic immune illness. And the love of his life had died suddenly one day three years ago.

How does one carry on under those kinds of conditions?

After the movie, Dad drove us back to the condo. As we were getting out of the car, I mentioned something about my visit with him in February, about a month after his heart surgery.

He said, "You weren't out here in February."

"Yes, I was, Dad. I came and stayed with you for a week." (I wrote about it here.)

"I don't remember that at all."

I said, "Fuck, fuck, bugger, bugger, shit. Are you fucking kidding me, Dad? I went through all this crap to get out here and be with you and you don't remember? I can't fucking believe it." We were all laughing. I don't swear around my father usually. (In fact, in the past few years, my love of swearing has diminished. I think it happened when I overheard a couple of young men--boys, really--talking, and every other word was "fuck." Didn't want to sound like a teenage boy so I let go of some of those swear words. Unless necessary, of course.)

Then I said, "Dad, don't you remember I rented a car and there was a piece of wood sticking out of the front of it?"

"I do remember that," he said. And then he remembered the whole visit.

Funny about memory, isn't it? How one little thing can suddenly bring it all back. Some kind of connection must occur in our brains or in our psyche. I was suddenly restored to my father's life some eleven months earlier.

And now we had a joke for the rest of the visit: fuck, fuck, bugger, bugger, shit.

I barely slept. The next morning, my youngest sister, Camille came over. My other sister was at work, but we hung out at her apartment where her Guy was. They all started giving me ideas for the next Coyote Cowgirl cover, which I loved. I like collaborative creativity. Especially when I have the veto! Then Mario and I showed them Green Snake Publishing and tried to explain ebooks. (Strangely, it's not always an easy concept for people.)

Later Dad, Mario, and I walked over to Old Scottsdale.
I had asked my dad to show me some places with Day of the Dead pieces in them (for Coyote Cowgirl), so off we went. It was fun walking around stores looking for trinkets to photograph for the cover.

We met my sister for lunch, and then it was time to go.

I always hate saying goodbye to my dad. But it was only until Christmas.

Off we headed to Tucson. I was so sleepy I could barely keep my eyes open. (Fortunately I wasn't driving.) The sun was out; the skies were blue; the construction was finished. It was a nice drive.

Two and a half hours later, we drove down the drive to what we call the Old Mermaids Sanctuary. (I've written about it extensively here (under "Arizona" and on Furious Spinner under "Arizona.")

I always feel like I'm coming home when I arrive here, and this year was no different. We got out of the car and hurried into the casita. It looked the same. Only better. It seemed whole again. Last year, it felt like it was coming apart. Neither one of us could explain it at the time: but it didn't feel whole any more. We thought it might be because of the fence the neighbors had put up in the wash. Later we learned the owners were thinking of putting the place up for sale.

But this year, the place glowed. Felt alive.

It felt happy.

I'm serious.

Mar and I happily brought in our stuff from the car. I was still so sleepy. It was that kind of sleepy where you feel altered. Slap-happy.

We went looking for our housemates and found them. Hugs all around. It felt like we had never left. So odd.

They warned us they were putting in a new furnace, so we might have some disruption but not much. And they mentioned they had had an exterminator come out to try and figure out if they had termites. All my bells and whistles went off. This was an environmentally safe place. It had been conceived as such. A place where those of us who had been bitch-slapped by some of the poisonous practices in the "real" world could come and find sanctuary. Sanctuary and pesticides did not go together. I knew if pesticides were used here, especially for termites, I could never come back.

(As an aside here, termite pesticides are especially troublesome. They've found chlordane, which was commonly used for termites, in the air in homes for decades after it was first used, causing a multitude of health problems. It was finally banned in the late eighties, I believe, but newer pesticides are no better. They just haven't found out all the problems yet. It takes decades. And no, the EPA does not test these products. Each manufacturer tests their own pesticides and tells the EPA what they discovered. I'm not kidding. This was my life for several years: researching and uncovering the pesticide peril. I couldn't believe the stuff I unearthed. The public hasn't a clue.)

Anyway, it took me a little bit to settle down about this. I understood no pesticides would be used while I was there, certainly. And beyond that, there wasn't anything I could do. Not in this case.

I had to let go.

Mario and I walked the wash. This is one of the rituals we do that grounds us to this place again.


Later Mario and I went to the library and then grocery shopping. That night I stayed up and watched part of the lunar eclipse for a few minutes with our housemates.


Today, Mario and I walked the wash again and went up to the Saguaro park.
We decided this year we were going to try to remain in the sanctuary as much as possible. We would only go into town twice a week, if possible.


In the afternoon I made phone calls and wrote emails to prepare for my research about the jaguar, jaguar conservation, and the perils of life on the borderlands.

Later, we walked to the park again. It felt so liberating to be outside, even though each walk triggered an asthma episode. On the way back, we listened to coyotes yipping as the sun went down.

All in all, it was a great day in the Sonoran Desert. I am grateful to be here. I intend to listen for the siren songs of the Old Mermaids.

Funny, last night I dreamed I was walking in the desert. I saw a rattlesnake right off the path, preparing to strike. I was helping someone navigate the trails and avoid the snake. I think the person may have been my mother.

One of the last times I saw my mother was at this Old Mermaids Sanctuary. She was sitting on a swing with one of my sisters. I had a photo of that moment, but my computer crashed and took the photo with me. I try to see that moment again and again in my mind. She looked beautiful under the conifer, in that swing. Above her in the tree, the Old Owl slept. She was impatient to be going, tired of our incessant conversation, no doubt. My mother was an artist, thwarted by illness. I wanted her to stay in this place, I wanted her to see the beauty and art all around her.

This was how artists and writers lived.

I wish I could have helped her.

Wish I could help myself.

Let go, let go. Let it flow.

I feel the tides of this sea still.

Always?

I have always believed this place would heal me. I have always believed the Old Mermaids would heal me. They have in so many ways. This is where I belong, at least for now, for this moment in time, I am under the Tucson sun and moon once again.

Read more here...

On The Road

Go here to see some pics of our jaunt to Arizona. Right now we're in a hotel in Santa Clarita. They're predicting disastrous rains tomorrow. We're hoping they're wrong.

Read more here...

Certified: Chapter Thirteen: Let Them Eat Cake

I felt relieved when I quit school.

Life could go back to where it had been before I started in June.

No one would miss me.

Yep, I was relieved.

Even though I didn't like quitting something mid-stream. I had always said it would be all right to quit if it wasn't working out. Besides, I was more interested in the sustainable food certificate, and that was impossible because one of the required classes was only offered in the winter, and I couldn't take it because I would be in Arizona for the first residency.

My advisor answered me the next day. She said I'd have to fill out a form. She didn't say she was sorry to see me go. Nothing. Just that one line.

I had wanted to go to this particular school because I didn't think I'd just be a cog in a wheel. I thought they would be flexible and change their requirements to meet my needs. I wanted to fashion a certificate around what I was interested in, what would most benefit me.

That wasn't quite what they had in mind. And I understood that from a bureaucracy point of view.

Still, I wanted to do things my way.

A couple hours after I'd received the email from my advisor, the teacher for my Political Ecology of Food and Consumption class wrote to me and said he wanted to figure out a way I could take his food systems class in the winter.

Wow!

Just like that, things changed.

I wrote back, yes, yes, yes!

Suddenly everything was different. Now I could change to the Sustainable Food and Permaculture certificate. I wouldn't have to take at least two classes that I was dreading. I looked up the requirements for the certificate. I could do an independent studies for part of my electives.

Yes! I loved independent studies. I thrived when I could work at my own pace, which was often faster than the pace of those around me.

I emailed my advisor and told her what had happened and that I was changing to the sustainable food certificate. And I said I wanted to take an independent studies.

She wrote back that the department didn't allow independent studies any more because it was contrary to their goal of helping students to learn to collaborate.

Then why the heck did they advertise it as part of their program?

I was quite annoyed.

I called her and insisted I wanted to take an independent studies. She told me they had something they called special topics. Students did their own projects, but then they came together once a month, on the Monday of the residency weekend, to discuss their projects. I told her it wasn't viable for me to stay in Seattle for two extra days to sit in a room for three hours to talk about my project.

Perhaps I could work it out with the instructor, she suggested.

I asked her what she thought of my plan to change certificates and do one class as an independent study.

She didn't think it was a good idea, but it was my certificate. I could do whatever I wanted.

It wasn't the food certificate she objected to; it was the independent studies.

I told her I'd think about it, and I got off the phone.

I found out the instructor for the special topics was my food teacher. He was already letting me miss the first residency because I was going to be in Arizona in January. I didn't like asking for too many favors.

But I asked. I told him about the independent studies I wanted to do and I said I couldn't be at the Monday meetings. He said we'd work something out.

Yes!

I did wonder if it was smarter to stick with the ecological planning and design certificate. Would it be easier to find a job with that under my belt? Who was going to hire someone with a sustainable food and permaculture design certificate?

It didn't matter. I was much more interested in the classes I had to take for the sustainable food certificate.

I wanted to write about food. I was interested in sustainable food and I had been since I was a girl.

My husband laughed at the whole process. He thought I was always "working the system." Gaming the system, finagling my way into and out of things. He wasn't being judgmental: He admired it. I said I was just trying to get the most out of the experience. I didn't want to sit through classes that didn't interest me, especially given how much the classes cost.

I filled out the form and changed my certificate to Sustainable Food Systems and Permaculture.

With that decision made, I concentrated on my final project. For our last residency, we needed to make and bring a dish to class that had meaning to us. We also had to make video about the dish and be prepared to talk about our dish during the residency.

I had lots of ideas. Most of them involved soups. I loved making soups. My mom used to make the most amazing soups. My soups were never as good as hers, but I liked soups because they are very forgiving. You can leave ingredients out or add new ones. Plus they're hard to burn. I was notorious for starting to cook something in the kitchen and then leaving and forgetting all about it. (Been doing that all my life, so it's not an age thing!) I have ruined our complete set of Creuset pots (and now they're so expensive we can't afford to replace them). And more besides them.

But I had to get this dish up to Seattle. If the weather got bad, I'd be hauling whatever I made with me on the train. Soups would not be easy to transport.

I decided the easiest thing would be to bake something, like a carrot cake. Carrot cake had meaning to me because Mario and I had a carrot cake as our wedding cake.

It was a sheet cake made by a local baker in Ann Arbor who used whole wheat flour and no sugar. It was our announcement to the world that our life together would be wild and whacky.

Carrot cakes also had meaning to me because my friend Michelle and I had created a recipe for a carrot cake that was gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and it was delicious. I loved being able to make a cake that I could eat and other people enjoyed, too.

I was so excited about the prospect of making and talking about this carrot cake that I decided I was going to write a book about it: The Carrot Cake. I started doing research on each and every ingredient in the cake. I spent days talking to growers and produce managers and producers. I loathed talking on the phone, but that was what I did. I learned more about carrots than I would have ever imagined. And I wrote it all down.

I was fascinated by all of it.

I intended to finish the book by the last residency, but I soon realized that it would be more fun to have time to breathe! I decided I would finish the book over the next sixth months.

I then made my video about the carrot cake, incorporating a lot of what I had learned doing research for the book. I used my computer as the video camera. I did some test pieces. They were difficult for me to watch. Ever since my nose was broken and distorted by nasal polyps, it's been difficult for me to see myself in the mirror or on camera. I can almost forget about that sorry and sad part of my life, until I see it in the flesh. Until I see me in the flesh. I felt ugly and not like myself when I saw how I looked. How I look.

But we all change, if we are lucky. Life is played out on our faces. My life had not been easy, and it showed. So what?

I did the video.

Now I had to figure out what my final presentation would be. I could talk all about carrots, like I had on the video. I could talk about why carrot cake had meaning to me.

I thought about making another video that they could watch during the residency. Then I could pretty much hide in the background somewhere and not have to talk to anyone much. And when I made the video I could stand far enough from the camera that they wouldn't notice my distorted nose. (Yes, my illogic is funny.) I figured this would be easier on them, too, since they must all see me as loathsome as I saw myself. I wasn't one of them. I was so much older, so much more battered.

Oh man. What kind of tape was playing in my head?

Where had all this insecurity come from? I liked life much better when I was arrogant and sure of myself. Too many years of illness had left me...not full of myself. Because of illness I had had to quit a full-time job. Since then, nothing had seemed exactly right. I had been used to having a place in the community. I had been used to having a "regular" job.

Now I struggled to make a living through my writing and a part-time library job I did from home.

As I was going through these various humiliating thought processes, it occurred to me that I needed to stop trying to be someone I wasn't. I didn't want to be a business executive or even a director of a non-profit. I didn't want the hustle and bustle of a forty-hour a week job where I was in charge of everything. Maybe I had at one time.

I was a storyteller. I forged connection through stories. I foraged in this world and that world and then brought everything together and created a story. Baked a story? Cooked a story?

Still, I told Mario, "They're all really into videos and texting. They seem very comfortable staring at a screen and getting information that way."

"Probably most of them have never heard a story live," Mario said. "With a real person telling it."

OK. That possibility sold it. I was going to tell a story about The Carrot Cake That Saved the World, Or At Least Part of It.

Soon it was time to make the carrot cake. I set aside an entire day. I had all my ingredients, including lots of carrots.

Before I started, I drummed a bit. I sang to the directions and to all the plants that were going into this carrot cake. I had dreamed years ago that a Rumanian woman told me "you must always talk to the spirits in everything," including food. So I do. I asked the Invisibles to make this a healing and nourishing cake for all.

Then I started. I ground cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg into powder from their whole forms. I milled quinoa for the flour. I mixed these dry ingredients together with some baking soda and powdered ginger.

I grated a couple cups of carrots. Then it was time to make the carrot juice. I cut up some carrots and started feeding them into the juicer. Suddenly the juicer started "walking" and then vibrating so fast it looked like it was going to fly across the room. I tried to hold it down, but it was too powerful for me. It started spinning like that girl in the Exorcist, while spewing out orange vomit. I was terrified this thing was going to fly and hurt me. I pulled the plug, then ran from the room.

Eventually the juicer stopped spinning. I had quite a mess to clean up, but nothing was broken and no one was hurt. I called the Champion Juicer company man and asked what had happened. He was pretty sure I needed a new blade. I said, "Whether I need a new blade or not, it doesn't seem like it should do that. I could have been seriously hurt."

He seemed unperturbed by this possibility.

Juicing carrots was out, but I still needed carrot juice. Fortunately Mario was in Vancouver. He stopped at Whole Foods on his way home and found organic carrot juice in a glass jar.

Once I got the juice, I continued to make the carrot cake.

The cake came out fine, as far as I could tell. It didn't look like it had "sprung up" as much as it should, but I was hoping it tasted good. In any case, it was finished.

Carrot cake tragedy averted.

We left for Seattle the next day, Friday afternoon. It was already dark out, but it wasn't raining or snowing, so I was grateful. The ride up was peaceful and uneventful. We drove through downtown Seattle at night. All the buildings were lit up. A huge star hung over Macy's. It was beautiful.

We found a place to park right out front of the hotel. After we checked in, we walked around the neighborhood. Then we went to bed.

Mario fell right to sleep.

I did not.

I tried watching Pride and Prejudice on my computer. That did not put me to sleep. I watched TV for a bit. I tossed and turned.

I got out of bed and read Shambhala Sun.

I went back to bed.

I finally fell to sleep around 4:00 a.m.

I woke up around 7:30 a.m.

Mario made me oatmeal for breakfast. I put together a lunch in case there wasn't anything for me to eat at the Interpretive Feast. Then I went out into the cold morning and drove to our instructor's house.

I got lost once, but it wasn't a big deal. With a little help from Mario on the other end of the phone, I got on the right track again.

My teacher greeted me at the door. He showed me where the kitchen was, and I put away the carrot cakes and my lunch. Most of my classmates were already gathered in the living room. I went and stood near them. When I said I was feeling wobbly from lack of sleep, two of the women offered me their seat. I said no at first, but then I sat with them.

"As long as you're not giving me your seat because I'm old...er."

They laughed.

Soon the house was full, and it was time to begin our presentations. Because I had dessert, I was scheduled to go last. I wasn't happy about that. By late afternoon, I might forget the story I was going to tell. But I decided to just go with it and not worry about it. Funny how sometimes that works: to decide not to worry.

The first presentation was about pancakes. We watched a video, and then my classmate made pancakes on a plug-in griddle in front of the class while she talked about what pancakes meant to her. She did a great job, and soon everyone (except me) was eating pancakes.

Next up a man talked about enchiladas and what they meant to him and his family. After his video played, he made eggs on the griddle while he talked. I scooped up some enchiladas (on the side of the casserole so that I wouldn't get any cheese); then he put an egg on top of it for me.

It was delicious. Spicy and chewy.

And so the day had begun.

I can't remember all of the dishes. Some I could eat, some I couldn't. There was cabbage soup, some pastries, a dip, an Israeli dish with tomatoes and eggs, ravioli, smoked salmon, grits. I ate the tomatoes and eggs, the grits. I even had some hard cider.

I liked the hard cider. Besides a sip of beer a couple years ago and a sip of wine 15 years before that, I hadn't had anything to drink in decades. The hard cider didn't make me sick or dizzy. It didn't make me high. It just tasted good.

I loved the personal stories that came with each dish. I liked that the instructor's seven year old son was a part of the day. I loved that we were talking about these dishes in the context of our lives and our cultures. At one point I looked around at everyone as someone was talking about her dish, and I thought about how lucky I was to be a part of this event. I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world. I was actually a part of it, instead of feeling a part from it and everyone else.

In the middle of the day, I noticed I had a voicemail. I went outside and listened. A Family Member had left a message that one of my sisters was in trouble. The Family Member sounded like she had been crying or like she was stoned. My heart raced as I called her to see what had happened. It seemed like something happened to my family every time I went to one of these residencies. The Family Member was incoherent: It was obvious she had been using drugs. When I told her she was incoherent, she said she was just waking up from a nap. I remembered when my youngest sister was still drinking, she had often used a similar excuse when I asked her if she was drunk: "No, I'm just tired," she'd say.

Oh, so that's why you're slurring your words?

I ascertained that my sister was not in any danger. My sister and the Family Member had just had an argument. So I hung up the phone and went back to the feast.

Fortunately, I was able to forget about my family and enjoy the day. This was new, too. Perhaps I was actually learning some new skills: How to live life and not worry by just not worrying. Why hadn't that ever worked before?

It didn't matter. I was enjoying myself.

At the end of the day, it was my turn. Everyone was ready to go home by now, I was certain.

But I was going to tell them a story anyway.

I sat in a chair at the front of the room and I told them about a woman named Grace who could have lived in a village or a city anywhere in the world three days ago, three weeks ago, thirty years ago, or 300 hundred years ago. Her community was dying. The land was infertile. There were no jobs and the people were sick. Grace didn't know what to do. She went to the Old Woman who lived at the edge of town, in that betwixt and between place, because Old Women always know the answers to everything.

Grace asked the woman how to save her community. The Old Woman said, "That's simple. Make them a cake. It must contain these ingredients: You must find that which holds all life. You must find an edible stone that carries the souls of the ancestors. You must include the god-given Mother grain brought to the people by the dove. You must find the spice that the goddess Chango built her lunar palace from. You must find that which feeds the dead and makes them immortal. You must find the spice that will give you visions or make you mad. Find the plant that is the goddess Mayahuel. Find the oil that anoints the dead and kings alike. Find the tree that originated in heaven and is sacred to all, with its feet in water and head in the fires of heaven. Find the tree which gives all that is necessary for living and that came into existence after it sprouted from the head of the first person to die. Find the ashes of the phoenix because in those ashes are the spices you'll need. And most of all, you must find the honey underground, that food which does not get its sweetness from the heavens, the bees, or the birds."

And so Grace went around the world for three days, or three weeks, or thirty days, or 300 hundred years. She found what she needed: an egg (holds all life), salt (an edible stone), quinoa (god-given mother grain), cinnamon (what the lunar palace is made from), ginger (put in the mouths of the dead to chew), nutmeg (visions or madness), agave (goddess Mayahuel), olive oil (anoints dead and kings), dates (originated in heaven), coconut (provides all that is necessary for living), and allspice (from the ashes of the phoenix).

She brought all these ingredients back to her village. But she couldn't make the cakes because she hadn't figured out what the honey underground was. Then she went out and stood in her overgrown and neglected garden and looked around. She didn't know what she could do now to save her people. Then she heard a whisper, or maybe it was just the wind, but she looked down and saw some frothy greens growing from the ground. She reached down and pulled on these greens and up came this golden orange carrot: what the Celts called the "honey underground."

She thanked her garden for this unexpected gift. Then she made her humble carrot cake. And once she fed it to the villagers, her community and the people in it began to thrive and all was well again.

Grace didn't write down the recipe, though, so people all over the world have been trying to duplicate it. I told the class that I thought I may have finally figured out the recipe, and I made this carrot cake with that recipe. This cake would surely heal and nourish them all.

As I told this story, no one moved. A couple people closed their eyes and listened. They seemed mesmerized. When I was done, someone said, "What a perfect way to end the day."

I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I felt full of myself again, in that glorious way when you know you are yourself again.

I cut up the carrot cake and passed it out.

I noticed a couple people didn't finish their tiny piece of cake. It was a little chewier than normal, a little denser than it usually was. I wasn't sure why, but I tried not to fixate on it. The story was good, and most people ate the cake.

Our teacher talked for a bit, and then it was time to leave.

I felt like I had been a part of and a witness to an extraordinary event.

I followed one of my classmates' car out to the expressway, so I wouldn't get lost. Then I drove back toward the hotel. I was soon mired in a traffic jam.

Ah Seattle.

Eventually I was able to get away from the jam. I parked outside the hotel. Just then I got a call from my sister. She told me about the fight with the Family Member. She decided she needed to go to an al-anon meeting.

Our whole family probably needed that. It was difficult having an addict as a family member. It was difficult to keep from being angry with them for throwing away their lives.

Later I talked to the Family Member on the phone. She still sounded stoned to me, and usually I won't talk to her when she's like that. But I did. She essentially said it was her choice to deal with her life this way. And I agreed it was.

Even though I wanted to shake her and tell her to knock it off.

I wondered if she would end up in the street or dead from an overdose.

It was so terrifying and frustrating.

I had stressed out about it so much over the last year, and that wasn't helping anyone. In the end, it was her choice.

Mario and I went out to eat. Then we came back to the hotel and sat on the bed eating the rest of the carrot cake and talking.

That night after Mario went to sleep, I lay next to him with my hand on his neck. I could feel his pulse under my fingers. I thought about the day, about the food and the stories, about my man curled up beside me.

I felt so grateful for my life and for this day.

I closed my eyes and fell to sleep.

In the morning, we went to Cafe Flora for breakfast. Then we went to Elliot Bay Books, down the road from Cafe Flora. I bought Dale Pendell's Pharmako trilogy. Mario bought lots of books. Then we drove to the Medicinal Herb Garden.

Most of the herbs had been cut down for the winter. Some beds had ground covers growing in them, some had leaves over them. The black cohosh still called to me, even though it had almost melted into the soil. And the hawthorn tree. Tiny red berries hung from the thorny branches. Figs hung from the fig tree, looking like tiny shriveled purses.

Mario told me that when I walked amongst these plants, I looked most like myself.

I was so glad to have him with me this time.

We went back to the car and drove toward home.

We stopped at Chutney's in Vancouver for a quick dinner.

Then we continued toward home, where we arrived safe and sound an hour later.

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For Your Holidaze Pleasure!

Green Snake Publishing has temporarily reduced the prices of The Salmon Mysteries and Church of the Old Mermaids in case you want to get a few for holiday gifts. Have fun!

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Entanglements

Green Snake Publishing is beginning to put up my short stories. You can download them onto your e-readers or your computer. They'll keep putting up stories, maybe one a week for a while. Next book up is Coyote Cowgirl.

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Church of the Old Mermaids Anew!

Church of the Old Mermaids is now available at smashwords, kindle, and nook. This means you can download it to your computer, ipad, kindle, etc. Plus you can still get it in the print version. Green Snake Publishing corrected a couple typos and smoothed out the design so that it reads better on kindle & elsewhere. Good to know the Old Mermaids are swimming everywhere now!

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Briar Rose Download

It has begun! You can download my stories for your e-reader or computer now. It starts with Briar Rose. For a while, Green Snake Publishing will make one of my stories available each week. It's great to see some of my favorite stories published again.

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Green Snake Publishing

Join the reading revolution! Green Snake Publishing is up and running. The site is evolving. Today you can find a free story from Mario as well as others you can download for .99. This week, watch for a story by me. I'll let you know when. Such fun! Pass it on.

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Certified: Chapter Twelve: Feeding the Dragon, Part Two

During the month between residencies I read The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler. Dr. Kessler, the former FDA commissioner who worked to expose the tobacco industry, wrote this book to try to figure out why he and other people overeat.

I wanted to know the answers to this too. I've had off and on food issues all of my life, including bouts of anorexia/bulimia before I started high school and then bouts of cravings for sugar and carbos the rest of my life. The cravings always felt beyond something emotional: They felt physical.

Kessler discovered many things, but what most fascinated me was what happened to rats when they were fed a junk food diet: They ate until they were obese. And when Froot Loops were put out in an open field--where rats normally don't go because that's where predators can find them--they hurried out into the field to get their Froot Loops, not paying any attention to the danger.1

What scientists were learning was that a combination of salt, fat, and sugar caused pleasure neurons in our brains to fire and the more we ate this combination, the more neurons were fired. When Kessler talked to researcher Sara Ward at the University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill he asked her about the combination of fat and sugar being a "stronger reinforcer." How strong was it, he wanted to know. She said that "the breaking point at which...animals will no longer work for the reward...is slightly lower than the breaking point for cocaine. Animals are willing to work almost as hard to get either one."2

Wow. Doesn't that put a different spin on using willpower not to overeat?

Kessler also learned from one of his sources, a food executive, that the food industry understands this tendency for these food combinations to create cravings and the desire to eat more and more: They designed food to have layers of fat and sugar and salt to stimulate these cravings.3 They also designed foods that people wouldn't have to chew so much, a kind of "adult baby food." People will eat this kind of food quickly and eat a lot of it before their stomachs have time to signal them that they are full.4

When I read this I remembered Marion Nestle had said she didn't think the food executives were sitting around a table trying to figure out how to make people fat and diabetic, with heart disease. They tried to figure out ways to sell their products. I don't think tobacco executives sat around a table trying to figure out how to give people lung cancer and emphysema. They were trying to figure out ways to sell their products to people. Wasn't it the same thing? Was there any difference between the part of food industry who was trying to sell addictive and unhealthy products and the tobacco industry who was trying to sell addictive and unhealthy products?

After I read Kessler's book, I lost a sugar and carb craving I had had for several weeks. It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me and it reset my brain. Or something.

For the class, we had two projects to do over the month. One was to go to a grocery store we didn't normally shop at and try to figure out the narrative of the store. Mario and I went to a Safeway in Lake Oswego, which is an upscale town close to Portland, OR.

The building looked like an older Safeway. Inside, the lights were low, the music on the sound system was mellow. I didn't see any children and only one man; mostly I noticed middle-aged women (and up) shopping. Safeway had huge signs over the produce declaring: Organic, organic, organic! Then all through the store were these yellow cards touting the discounted price if you had a "club card." I figured the narrative of this store was you can be mellow and classy (because it was a rich town) while being smart and saving lots of money.

We also had a "commodity challenge." We had to abstain from eating anything with corn or soy in it for 48-72 hours. I thought this would be easy breezy since I was so accustomed to depriving myself of different food stuffs. And I didn't eat corn, anyway, or much packaged foods.

It was not breezy. We couldn't eat animals who had consumed corn or soy either. This meant no eggs or chicken.

Then I discovered my packaged gluten-free rice tortilla had xanthan gum in it. I knew this was a kind of bacteria fermentation. What I didn't know was that it was often cultivated on corn or soy. So that was out.

I learned that abscorbic acid (which is in my organic fruit spread) was also probably made from corn (along with citric acid). That was annoying. But since I couldn't have my rice tortillas, I didn't have anything to put jam on anyway.

All those years I thought I was corn-free, I wasn't.

Very annoying.

I was able to eat well easy enough: rice, beans, vegetables, salmon. But I did get cranky having to watch everything I ate even more carefully than I normally did. Plus I felt tired most of the day since I didn't get much protein in the morning. (Legumes may be protein but they don't react in my system to give me that same kind of clarity and energy that animal protein does. I wish it weren't true, but it seems to be. I was vegetarian and vegan for many years. I didn't work for me.)

I stopped my soy and corn fast at 42 hours. Then I went out and got an Amy's gluten-free pizza.

One Tuesday, Mario and I drove to Seattle to hear Marion Nestle speak.

Yes, I voluntarily drove to Seattle when I didn't have to. We left a couple hours early so I could show Mario around the city. I journeyed to the Dragon of Seattle ahead of time. This time the Dragon wanted another dragon. I had a small red Chinese dragon. He wanted me to bring it to the Troll. (Yes, I know how this sounds. But I just see it as bringing a gift for your host when you go to their house for dinner.)

The drive to Seattle was much easier and more fun with Mario along. We got lost trying to find Cafe Flora, but we pulled over and looked at the map together and figured it out. Mario used to have a lousy sense of direction and I used to have a great one. When we moved to the West, everything switched around: Now he knows how to get everywhere. And I don't.

We had a great late lunch/early dinner at Cafe Flora, and then I drove Mario to see the Troll. We couldn't find it at first, but I kept driving around, since everything looked familiar, and finally we were driving up Troll Drive and there was the Fremont Troll. I left the red dragon in the Troll's hand.

We went to Marion Nestle's lecture on the U of W campus. She covered much of the same ground as she did in her books and on the video I had seen. She talked about how the food industry was now targeting children with their marketing and how the food industry balked at every attempt to get truthful and complete labeling.

She often acknowledges how difficult reading food labels are. When she shops, she first reads the labels on packaged or frozen foods. If the list is long and incomprehensible, she puts it back. If the ingredients are food ingredients, then she checks the serving size. (I got these gluten-free English muffins once and looked at the label and calories, sodium, etc. The calories and sodium seemed a bit high but I thought it would be all right once in a while. I forgot to check the serving size, which turned out to be A HALF a muffin. They're still sitting in my freezer uneaten.)

Next, if the calories seemed low, she looked at the per serving for calories, fats and sodium. "If these are big fractions of the Daily Values," Nestle says, "I leave the packages where they are...I watch the sugars. To keep my intake of sugars below 10 percent of my daily 2,000 calories, I can only eat the equivalent of four tablespoons (60 grams) a day."5

Still a wee bit confusing, no?

We left Seattle while Nestle was answering questions, and we got safely home.

When it was time for the second residency, Mario agreed to go to Seattle with me again. This time we got caught in some heavy rushhour traffic, so it was after dark when we got to town and we were hungry. We met my Seattle friend at Cafe Flora. I had the Autumn Root Roast: celery puree with chanterelle mushrooms, parsnip and butternut squash hash and wilted beet tops. The dish was a bit too salty, but beyond that, it was scrumptious. And the conversation was great.

Afterward Mario and I checked into our hotel, the same one I had been in last time. It was late so I couldn't take Mario around the neighborhood. We put stuff away, and then went to bed. Mario fell to sleep almost immediately.

I lay in the dark, wide awake, listening to the Friday night revelers outside, crowing and laughing and talking.

I turned on the TV once or twice, to see if it would lull me to sleep, but it didn't have a timer, so that didn't work. I couldn't turn on the light because that would wake Mario. I hadn't brought my computer because I wanted to travel light. (My meditation CDs are on it.)

I didn't sleep and I didn't sleep and I didn't sleep.

Crap.

I couldn't believe it. I had brought Mario to make everything better. Easier.

And I couldn't sleep.

I finally fell to sleep around 3 or 4:00 a.m. I was awake by 7:00 a.m.

Fuzzy, cranky, and wobbly as hell.

Mario drove me to school. I had talked him into going back to the hotel and hanging out, maybe doing some writing. He had wanted to check out when I left for school. Something imagining him back at this old hotel in our room on the second floor overlooking part of the city, seemed calming to me. And romantic. As though he was going to a hotel room in Paris to be this great writer.

What a cornball I am.

At school, our class was in a different room from last time. It was bigger and had windows and we turned off the fluorescent lights! I was so happy with this turn of events.

In the morning, we talked about our experiences with the commodity challenge. At least half of the people had done the challenge wrong. They had continued to eat dairy, eggs, and meat. The instructions seemed very clear in the syllabus. No one had an explanation about why they had done it incorrectly.

Then our instructor asked us to describe a favorite Halloween candy and what it meant to us. (Since it was the week after Halloween.) As we went around the room, I was astonished at the stories about all these different candies. And not a one of them seemed embarrassed to talk about how much they loved candy.

I thought, "But isn't candy for children?"

I could not remember the last time I had bought candy, except for Halloween to give out to the trick or treaters.

I wondered if this was an age thing. When I grew up, eating candy was a treat. We didn't have candy in the house, except after Halloween. When I was in junior high, I would sometimes walk down to the drug store after school and buy a Three Musketeers bar. Or when I was a young kid, I would run down to the five and dime if we were in town on a Saturday. I'd stare at the bins of candy for a long while until finally I'd pick up and buy a hard candy we called a jaw-breaker.

That was about it.

It felt strange listening to people talk so fondly about candy. It seemed too personal. Shouldn't people be ashamed of such things?

Of course not.

Yet, it still felt weird.

I told the class I didn't eat candy. (What a prig I must have sounded like.) I did remember enjoying candy corn at Halloween when I was a kid.

I told them I liked Halloween because it was my mother's favorite holiday. It was the only one she seemed to really participate in. Dad took us out trick or treating and then when we came home, Mom had decorated the kitchen table and put out apples and cider and caramel for us. She seemed happy and involved with our family.

That's why I liked Halloween. Not because of the candy.

Anyway, we had other discussions. At lunch, I found Mario sitting downstairs, so we went to a Vietnamese restaurant that had one gluten-free vegan dish. A bowl of vegetables and noodles.

In the afternoon, our class listened to several speakers. One was a woman who worked for the food industry. She did research to find out how, what, and where people ate to help the food industry market to people. I kept wondering if she did the kind of research that enabled food companies to design addictive food we didn't need to chew.

She was currently doing research on Americans eating alone. Unlike most people in other cultures, a lot of Americans eat alone. She said we in the U.S. eat 45% of meals alone. 20% of people eat meals in a car. Americans eat more separate meals. In a family, the husband might eat something different for dinner from the wife and the children might eat something different from either of their parents.

We also heard from two women from Nicaragua and one woman from the Philippines. The woman from the Philippines talked about how things had changed now that they were mining the mountain near her. She said, "I exist because others exist." They had been healthy and strong because they understood the connection with the mountain. They buried their ancestors on that mountain, only they didn't call it that: They planted their ancestors. Now the water and air were polluted.

The Nicaraguan women talked about fair trade. How fair was fair trade? The prices were often too low still for the workers and farmers to make a living even when it was called "fair trade."

Even though this was all interesting, I could barely stay awake. My three or four hours of sleep were not enough. The class ran long, but I was anxious to get our of town before a storm was set to hit. We had planned on leaving at the end of class, 4:30. I hated driving in the dark and the rain. I asked the instructor if I could go, and then I left.

Mario and I got to the car just as it began raining. I had wanted to stay overnight so we weren't driving in the rain, but Mario wanted to leave right away. I felt like I had dragged him to Seattle on his days off, so I agreed to leave on Saturday after class.

We weren't on the expressway ten minutes before I regretted that decision. A torrential downpour began. Soon passing cars in six lanes of traffic were spraying water everywhere. It felt so dangerous. Our tires seemed to barely touch the pavement. I had my hands up several times, waiting for a crash. I was so stressed I could barely contain myself. I wondered if I was going to have a stroke or a heart attack.

I got angry. I yelled at Mario for not wanting to stay in Seattle. He glanced at me dumbfounded. I kicked the inside of the car. I growled and cursed.

I was so sick and tired of being scared to death all of the time.

I told Mario I didn't actually blame him. I blamed myself for not doing what I wanted to do. What I knew would feel safer for me.

We kept driving until we got to the food co-op in Olympia. We stopped there to eat and for me to calm down. I wanted to stay until the rain stopped. (In April?)

At the co-op I got rice cakes and macaroon chocolate chip cookies. (So much for not eating junk as a response to some emotional crisis.)

We sat in the car and ate rice, sweet potatoes, salmon, and vegetables. And then I began eating the cookies.

I started to calm down.

As though I had taken a tranquilizer.

We got back on the road. It was raining less.

Or else I couldn't tell the difference.

After I ate three cookies, I realized they didn't taste that good.

I ate the rest any way.

We arrived home safe and sound around 9:30 p.m.

I decided I couldn't do this any more. I was going to quit school.

I emailed my advisor that I was done after this class.

Thanks for the memories, but I was outta there.


----
1 Kessler, David A. The End of Overeating. p. 33
2 Ibid. p. 31.
3 Ibid. p. 18.
4 Ibid. p. 95.
5 Nestle, Marion. What to eat. p. 304.

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Happy Hallows All!

Happy Hallows! I didn't write a Halloween post this year, so I'll link to an old one, where you can let your imagination roam. Go here.

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Certified: Chapter Eleven: Feeding the Dragon

I decided to take just one class in the fall: The Political Ecology of Food and Consumption. It was a small class and I'd know half the people in it. Plus it was on a subject I was fascinated with: food.

Many of my novels revolve around food, one way or another. Mercy, Unbound is about a girl who won't eat. In Coyote Cowgirl, no one has seen Jeanne eat for twenty years. She ends up as a chef at La Magia Restaurant, creating truth-telling dishes for the little community of Sosegada, Arizona. In Broken Moon, Nadira brews chai and tells stories. In Church of the Old Mermaids, part of the novel takes place as the characters eat dinner or breakfast.

You get the idea.

I've had problems with food for as long as I can remember. The last really delicious meal I remember is when my grandfather committed suicide. I was eleven. Neighbors and friends brought over lots of food after he died. The Hungarian woman down the road made chicken and dumplings and apple pie and brought them over for us. I remember the meat melted in my mouth. And the apple pie was so beautiful: the crust was golden and the apples were just sweet enough. The smell of cinnamon filled my nostrils.

A couple years earlier, my mother had what they called a nervous breakdown; it most likely was postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. She had essentially stopped cooking (or doing much of anything) while she tried to deal with her mental illness. My father was working full-time, but he did his best to get all five of us children fed.

Essentially, we hadn't gotten a lot of good-tasting meals during those years right after my mother's breakdown.

My grandfather died, and I got a good meal. That felt strange. It is no wonder that before I started my first year of high school I developed an eating disorder. This was in the late sixties, early seventies, before people even knew what an eating disorder was. I was terrified of being fat when I started high school. If I was, I believed, no one would ever speak to me. So I watched everything I ate very closely. If I ate too much, I threw up.

By the way, I wasn't fat. I probably weighed about 90 pounds.

Fortunately I only binged and purged for a few months. I started high school and stopped worrying. Well, at least I stopped worrying about that kind of thing.

Unfortunately one of my younger sisters emulated my behavior, and she developed a full blown nearly lifelong eating disorder.

When I was in my early twenties, a doctor told me I was allergic to the world, including most of the food in it. This was a terrible diagnoses for someone like me. I became terrified to eat anything. I'm certain during this period that I didn't get many of the nutrients I needed. This no doubt exacerbated my struggles with depression.

Today I am gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free, nightshade-free (at least I try), and mostly meat-free. I try to buy only organic and sustainably grown food. The upshot of this is that while I long for community--at least I used to--it feels impossible. Most people bond over meals. I usually can't eat anything everyone else is eating, so I don't bond with anyone and they don't bond with me.

For this Politics of Food and Consumption class, we were going to spend a day eating each other's food as part of our final project. (We each have to prepare a dish that is meaningful to us.) I was fairly certain I wouldn't be able to eat anyone else's food, so I felt a bit of anxiety about this. I contemplated dropping the class, but I decided to go for it anyway. Maybe taking this class would heal some of my fears around food.

Before our first residency, I got started on the readings. First up was Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating. He does research on our eating habits to see what gets people to eat and what doesn't. Restaurants and food companies use this research to help them figure out how to lure us into eating more. And the government no doubt uses this research to try to get us to eat more healthy.

Wansink found that most people think they are immune to advertising or to any kind of manipulation. His research has shown that just the opposite is true. How the menu is worded, how the restaurant is lit and decorated, what kind of music is playing, and where the food is from can make a difference in how people gauge the meal they just ate.

For instance, lots of Chinese restaurants have loud music and bright colors. This gets people to eat quicker. So the restaurant has quicker turnover. An Italian restaurant is often dark and quiet, with soothing music. People will linger for longer periods of time. That way they eat and drink more and they're spending more money.

In one study Wansink and his researchers served everyone the same wine, for free. For half the group, the label on the bottle said it was from North Dakota. For the rest of the group, the label on the bottle indicated the wine was from California. Guess which group rated their wine superior? Yep, the people who thought they were drinking California wine. In reality, it was the same wine.

He also found that when people eat with other people they eat more. And the amount each person eats goes up with each additional person in the group. (Although I'm guessing that figure doesn't go up forever.)

People also underestimate how much they eat. Wansink conducted one experiment where they put a hole in the bottom of a bowl and inserted a tube from below so that they could keep filling the bowl with soup as people ate. (The "eaters" couldn't pick up the bowl and they didn't know about the hose.) The researchers kept track of how much everyone ate. Nearly all of eaters thought they ate one bowl of soup when in reality they ate much more.

People who ate from normal bowls (without a hose) ate about 9 ounces. The people who ate from the bowls with a hose were still eating when the researchers stopped them, 20 minutes later. The "typical" person ate 15 ounces, but some ate more than a quart!

Both groups of people estimated they had eaten between 123 and 127 calories. The people with the normal bowls had actually eaten 155 calories. The people with the hose had eaten, on average, 268 calories!

People were using sight to gauge when to stop eating, not when they were no longer hungry.

Perhaps we don't know when we aren't hungry any more.

At a super bowl party, Wansink and friends kept bringing chicken wings to the partygoers. When the researchers would remove the bones from sight and bring more chicken wings, the people kept eating the wings almost nonstop. On the tables where they left the bones, the people didn't eat quite as much.

What Wansink learned is that Americans seem to keep eating whereas people in other culture (particularly the French) eat and then they're done. They don't eat until they're sick or too full. They eat a meal, they enjoy it, and then they go on with their lives.

I don't know many people who enjoy what they eat. They wolf it down and then look for more.

Wansink also determined that if people put just 20% less on their plate each meal, they'd lose 25 lbs in a year. And they wouldn't even notice it. Most diets don't work because people notice the difference and they feel deprived. Then they fall off the diet and binge.

I also watched a talk by Marion Nestle and read her book What to Eat. Both she and Wansink talked about how supermarkets try to get you to buy things that aren't good for you or that you don't need. Supersizing everything makes us think we're getting a deal, but we're just eating more than we should.

They both suggested shopping on the edges of the grocery story. You get into trouble when you go into the aisles: the wilds of an unhealthy food forest! Too many misleading labels. Too much "fake" food. These stores are overwhelming and overstimulating for a reason. Maybe if you get lost or overwhelmed, you just start grabbing at things to buy!

After all my reading, I was excited to go up for my first residency.

Mario planned on coming up with me to Seattle this time. Since I was only taking one class, I thought it would be fun for him to drive up with me. I also thought it would help my stress level. I made reservations at a hotel we'd stayed in before. They didn't use pesticides and they hadn't done any recent remodeling. It was only a couple minutes from campus.

I decided I needed to do something else to help me when I went to Seattle. I had four more courses to take over the next year, so I needed to figure out some way to be there and to feel relaxed and safe. So I did a "journey" to the spirit of Seattle. I told Seattle I meant no harm. Asked for permission to come again. Asked if I needed to make an offering. Seattle wanted plum sauce. It was a big old dragon-like creature and it wanted plum sauce.

Yep.

Now you might think this is crazy. Maybe it is. Logically it doesn't make sense. But logic doesn't work for everything. Since I was a little kid I have talked to the land, the trees, the clouds, the animals, the weather. And always, always, always, it makes a difference to my experience when I acknowledge and honor the presence of everyone and everything in a particular space: the Visible and Invisible.

It couldn't hurt.

I also asked permission of the hotel. If I did anything stupid or seemingly disrespectful when I got there, it was out of ignorance not out of purposeful disrespect.

I come in peace, peeps! Wherever you are.

At the last minute Mario decided not to come with me. He doesn't like Seattle. My feelings were hurt for a little while. Wouldn't it be worth going to Seattle to spend some time with me? He was participating in union negotiations in Vancouver, so I met him for lunch at Chutney's on my way to Seattle. I had thought about driving straight on to Seattle without having lunch with him so he would know my feelings were hurt. Fortunately I realized that was childish--plus I'd miss a chance to see my guy before I left.

We had a good lunch together.

Then off I went.

The traffic was fine. I still felt a little dizzy and off-balance after a recent bout with vertigo. I wondered if my days of long drives were coming to an end. I easily found my hotel. Their parking spaces were all sold out for the night, so I had to park in the street. This made me a bit nervous, so I put the Irish fath fith on the car: keeping it invisible to those who would do it harm.

I hoped the burglars and vandals understood Celtic charms.

My room had a kitchen so I would be able to cook. I put everything away and then I went for a walk. It was a hopping Friday afternoon sliding into evening. Across the street from the hotel was a health food store. Nothing much in it for me, but I bought a Lara bar. Next to the store was a used book store. Across from it was an Indian restaurant.

I felt buoyed by all the people, stores, restaurants. This was gong to be so different from my basement room in the little religious house away from everything and everyone! I walked around the block.

I felt a little strange. I wondered what all the people around me saw when they looked at me? Did they wonder why this old lady was walking around Seattle alone? Was that how people viewed me now? They saw my white hair and my broken nose and dismissed me as nothing and nobody?

I had someone tell me that once. About fifteen years ago. She said she saw me walking around the neighborhood and she just figured I was this little shy nobody. And then I opened my mouth and spoke.

That had been even before my hair had turned white.

Since when did I care what the hell anyone else thought?

Oh come on. We all care a little bit.

I didn't like this new mind worm. "You're old, you're old, you can't even be bold."

Oh man. Sometimes the mind is...a hideous thing.

I went to the all night grocery. I nodded to the homeless man selling papers. He looked healthy and well-groomed. His eyes were clear; his smile was friendly.

Usually when I go into a grocery store, I get depressed because there's so much I can't eat. This time I looked around the store as though I was researching it.

What were they trying to get me to buy? What was the narrative of this store? As I came into the door, I saw flowers. Beyond the flowers, in semi-darkness, was case after case of wine. And then the produce.

The Days of Wine and Roses...and Produce?

I left the store and went back to my hotel room. I called Mario and excitedly told him about the bookstore I knew he'd love, about the all night grocery store, the Indian restaurant. He sounded sad and said he wished he had come.

I said, of course, if you had come you'd be with me. That's worth any trip.

After I got off the phone, I remembered I hadn't gotten the plum sauce yet. I went back into the night and headed for the all night grocery store. I passed the homeless man again and we exchanged "hellos." I told him I'd forgotten something. "Good thing you remembered," he said.

I went right to the check-out so that I wouldn't have to spend forever in the aisles looking for plum sauce.

A woman said she'd show me where it was. She asked me what I was going to use it for. I couldn't say, "To appease the dragon of Seattle." I mean, I could. But then that would have been an entirely different conversation. She'd be fitting me for a straight jacket.

So I fibbed. "Spring rolls," I said. Although I wouldn't actually use plum sauce for spring rolls. Yuck. I couldn't think of anything else. I should have said moo shu. Something. I kept thinking, well I don't actually eat plum sauce because when you cook plums the oxalic acid becomes inorganic and is harmful to the body.

She didn't want to hear about oxalic acid or the dragon of Seattle.

She took me to the plum sauces. They didn't have a lot of plum in them. Corn. Sugar. Would the dragon care?

Or was it the thought that counted?

I bought the plum sauce.

When I came out of the store, the homeless man asked what I'd bought.

"Plum sauce," I said.

"Mmmm," he said. "That sounds good."

I couldn't lie to the homeless man. I didn't tell him it was for fake spring rolls. But I didn't tell him about the dragon either.

I said, "Yes, I hope so."

Then I bought his paper.

What a pleasant man he was.

I went back to the hotel. I put stones around the plum jar, to create a little plum sauce sacred area. I laughed. Sometimes it was fun being me.

I turned on a baseball game, muted the sound, then put on a Deep Space Nine disk on the computer. Multi-media.

Tried to sleep. The room was too hot.

I managed.

In the morning, it was raining.

I packed and loaded the car. Then I went to the hotel's little courtyard where I was surrounded by plants, and I left the plum sauce.

Off I went to class.

We were in a tiny windowless room.

It was awful.

I went inside and got immediately dizzy. The fluorescent lights flickered. I was horrified.

How was I going to sit in this tiny room with sixteen other people?

I left and thought about dropping the class. I could take another class, a required class, from my advisor. Her class was in a big room with lots of windows and lots of space.

I went back down to the car and called Mario. I cried. I tried to ground myself. I was so sick of feeling sick. Why couldn't I walk into a room like any normal person and not notice anything?

I stood outside the car and stared up at the gray sky. I drank the tears from the clouds. It was hardly raining. I used to call this kind of drizzle cloud sweat. Maybe it was dragon sweat. Maybe it was the dragon letting me know that I could navigate this watery realm.

I went back to class.

We introduced ourselves. The instructor wanted us each to tell a food or farm story. I told both. About my grandfather who owned a farm, who worked it and had another job. He had bad hay fever, and yet he still wanted to be a farmer. Until he took a loaded shotgun, stepped off his land, and shot and killed himself.

Then nothing was ever the same in our family. Ever. The farm I had practically grown up on was gone, over.

Everything changed.

I told them I still remembered that meal, on the day of his funeral.

We then talked about food and food issues. Our instructor suggested that changing our eating habits or buying responsibly wasn't enough. This bothered at least one activist in the room. People want to believe that these little things can change the world. My experience has been that we need more. We need policy changes. We need a cosmic shift. A paradigm shift.

He also showed an alphabet poster where each letter was the first letter of a particular brand. We went through the entire poster to see if we could name the brands. "K" for Kellogg. "T" for Tide. Etc.

I didn't know most of them. I was happy I hadn't been branded. I was disturbed that most of them did know the brands, particularly the younger students. It seemed like it should be the other way around. Did this mean younger people had been exposed to more branding than those of us over forty?

At lunch, we were instructed to go to Whole Foods. We had to walk through the entire store and then pick a section and figure out what the narrative was.

I had a meeting with my advisor first. She said I seemed right on track. I told her the room was horrible. She agreed. She said they were so pressed for space, and since we weren't going to be in that room for the last residency, we were stuck with it.

I walked to Whole Foods and went through the entire store. I'd been there before. It was huge. I felt a bit dazed, as I often did. In the produce department I stood and looked at rows and rows of beautiful colorful fruits and vegetables. Two young nice-looking men were putting produce out. They were friendly and answered any questions I had. As I looked at this beautiful food I wondered how any of us ever ate anything else.

Then I sat in some nearby chairs and watched people. One man by himself at the bulk bins looked quite confused. He started to take filberts and then changed his mind and was going to get cashews and then changed his mind again. He finally got almonds. I noticed quite a few confused-looking people.

What was the store's narrative? "Come to this beautiful, peaceful place where we have all the answers. Whatever you buy here is healthy and you'll live forever."

After lunch, the class discussed our experiences at the store. And we talked about the readings.

Then it was over. I felt invigorated by the experience, despite the awful room. How we get food and who gets food is a social justice issue. What you eat or if you eat determines how healthy you are--or if you'll live at all.

Change the food we eat and the world changes.

1 in 7 people in the United States live in poverty. Over 20% of the children in the United States live in poverty. In all likelihood, this means they are subsisting on junk food because junk food is cheaper for people who don't have the time or knowledge or space to cook.

We produce enough food in the world so that no one needs to go hungry. And yet it is still happening.

I had much to think about.

But first I was ready to leave the dragon of Seattle and head home.

Read more here...

Butch

I've been thinking about New Mexico. Since I can't be there now, I've started work again on my novel Butch, which takes place in New Mexico. I started it a while ago, and I want to get back to it. I read the first chapter last night and laughed. That felt like a good sign. Here's a little bit of it. It is a first draft, so be kind. We'll see how it goes. I feel like I need to go back to Taos and spend some time there to finish it.

Chapter One

Near Taos, New Mexico, 1918, or thereabouts. Space and Time being a continuum and all.

Butch McShane could shoot, sit a horse, spin a yarn, track a varmint or villain, and pleasure a woman better than anyone alive. Butch’s particular talents held little value for the new folks pouring into the Southwest like locusts to a barbecue, but the old-timers still appreciated and tolerated the likes of Butch McShane.

On that late night in April no one fussed much when Butch kicked open the door to Angel’s Heaven on Earth, while holding a pistol in each hand, and called, “I am here to rescue Miss Angel. Everyone out now or I will be forced to shoot you.”

The five or so men still in the saloon left quickly, backs to the wall, watching Butch as they scurried out. Butch had been known to take pot shots at more than just rabbits. Thirty-seconds later, the room was clear, except for the smoke, and Angel came from around the bar, hands on her cinched waist, blond curls framing her face and tickling the top of her bosom.

Butch walked toward Angel, guns still in the air, and leaned over and kissed her pearly white neck, and then her breasts--one at a time.

“Don’t be doin’ that unless you mean it,” Angel said.

“Darlin’,” Butch said. “I always mean it. I don’t have an insincere bone in my entire body.”

“Dammit, Butch,” Angel said. “Those were paying customers. Someday I’m gonna really be in trouble and nobody will believe it!”

“Just call me the cowboy who cried wolf,” Butch said.

“Cowgirl,” Angel said.

“Aww, Angie,” Butch said as she dropped the pistols onto the bar. “I was just trying to have some fun.”

“Sometimes you are more of an asshole than any man I know,” Angel said. “The law is gonna put you in jail if you keep doing this kind of thing. Just wait until I close and sneak in the back like all my other girls do. Now I’m gonna let the boys back in.” She started walking toward the door.

“Let me just take a trip up your dress first,” Butch said.

Angel laughed.

“I’ll be glad to,” she said. “After the boys finish their drinks. Now you can either stay here and be good or come back later and be bad.” She opened the door and leaned outside. “Come on in, boys. She promises not to pistol whip anybody.”

Doc Broome stumbled in first, followed by Merle Connelly and Johnny Jack. Butch sighed and turned back to the bar. This was not the ending to the night she had envisioned. She started to pick up her revolvers, but Angel slapped her hands down on them, pulled them away, and slipped them out of sight behind the bar.

“You can get them later,” she said. “You know I don’t allow weapons in my establishment.”

“Well, then,” Butch said. “I had better leave, since my body is a weapon. A weapon of love.”

Hearing all this--since Butch did not understand the concept of a whisper--Johnny Jack and Merle laughed as they climbed back onto their bar stools.

Butch leaned close to Johnny Jack’s right ear. “You remember, dontcha , Jay Jay?”

Merle and Angel stopped and stared at Johnny Jack, whose dark skin was turning darker.

“Hey,” Butch said. “He was a lot better lookin’ back then, and I was a lot less particular.”

With that, Butch staggered out of the bar. Or maybe she swaggered. It depended upon who you asked. Memories fog the truth, distort it, amplify it. Or expose it. But everyone appeared to be in good spirits, especially Butch, when she left Angel’s Heaven on Earth.

Butch's horse Rosey stood next to someone’s automobile, her black and white coat nearly fluorescent in the moonlight. Her white tail swept across her black rump. Butch patted Rosey’s almost all white face. Black circled her left eye, and white spread across her neck, barrel, and flank and down her left rear leg like a kind of jagged almost-horse-shaped white continent across the sea of black horse.

“I need to take a leak, Rosey. Then we’ll be on our way. Or maybe not. Where’s George? Have you seen George? Oh fer Chrissakes, I’m talking to a horse’s rear end.” She giggled. “Not so much different than talking with a man.”

She had come into town earlier with George, but he had business at the other end of this street a few blocks from the plaza. The nearly full moon lit up the ramshackle wooden buildings that seemed to lean one against the other. On the few occasions Butch actually noticed this particular bent to the buildings--like now--she wondered what actually kept them up. “Whiskey, of course,” Butch whispered. “We all need something to keep us standing.”

She breathed deeply. A romp with Angel would have been fun, but this night air was bracing, nearly knocking the drunk off of her. She gazed up at the clear dark sky. The stars shivered and winked. She could hear the whisper of the acequia madre even though it was some distance away. She grinned. The full moon, silence, and alcohol made her senses preternatural. A chorus of coyotes began yipping at the moon. The cottonwoods across the street and down a bit stood tall and nearly bare in the moonlight, like tangled members of a Day of the Dead tableau, or a Danse Macabre. Despite this, the air smelled of spring the way only New Mexican air can: like dust, peppers, and the color blue.

Butch started walking away from the buildings and into the night, forgetting why she was there, only wanting to get closer to the sound of the coyotes and the mother ditch. Then she heard a woman cry out in the darkness. Instantly she ran toward the sound, up over a silver rise and then down again. Running in the desert was just plain stupid; running at night in the desert was a death wish. However, Butch could never resist the cry of a woman in trouble. And she was drunk.

Suddenly, she ran into a brick wall--or a person. They both fell back onto the ground. Butch jumped instantly to her feet. Nothing or no one was going to catch her on the ground: not a scorpion or a rattler certainly.

The body she knocked into was a bit slower getting up off the ground.

“Are you all right?” Butch asked. Butch always talked in a kind of drawl. Not Texan. Good Lord, no. Not Southern. Kind of Mexican, Native American, and Arizonian all rolled into one singsong drawl. She reached her hand out. The man stood on his own, quickly dusting off his chaps with one arm; he kept the other arm bent at his side. He wore two ammo belts crossed over his chest like a Mexican bandito; a cowboy hat shaded his face from Butch

“You Pancho Villa or something?” Butch asked.

The man went to step around her. Butch moved to block him.

“I heard a woman cry out,” Butch said, noticing a black shape near a medium-sized palo verde whose yellow flowers looked bright white in the darkness. “That her?”

The man shook his head. “I was the one who yelled,” he said, his English accented. Mexican. Clipped almost. From the rico class?

“I was thrown from my horse and was trying to get my bearings. I stumbled over that--that body. I yelled.” He hesitated. “Like a woman. My voice...rises when I am...afraid.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Butch said. “I scream like a woman too. Nothing wrong with that.”

“But you are a woman?” the man asked.

“That’s a fact,” Butch said, “I am pleased to report.” She kept her eye on the Bandito as she went toward the body. She squatted next to it. A man. She found his arm and felt for a pulse at his wrist.

“He’s not dead.”

“Shit.” The English word out of the man’s mouth sounded desperate.
Butch stood and looked at the Bandito. “You wanna tell me something about this?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know you. I don’t know him.”

Butch could see the man’s arm now in the moonlight. Part of his sleeve was dark.

“He shot you?” Butch said. “I didn’t hear a shot. Looks like it’s bleeding heavy.”

“He shot me some time back,” he said quickly, as though relieved to speak of it. “He and his compañero have been tracking me. My ex-wife and her husband took my daughter. I went to México to get her back, and her husband sent his thugs after me. After I made...fuss.”

Butch laughed. “A fuss, eh? I kinda like making a fuss now and then.” Something about this young man tickled her. Like Angel’s blonde curls.

“I did fall from my horse. And I did find this man tracking me. I hit him with a rock from behind. I don’t know where the other man is.”

Butch tried to remember if she had seen any strangers at Angel’s.

The man on the ground moaned.

“Come on,” Butch said. “I guess I better get you outta here. The doc is drunker than I am, so I’ll take you home. TomA and Trick will either cure you or kill ya.”

“I’d prefer the cure,” the man said.

“Wouldn’t we all.”

Butch and the Bandito hurried over the rise and down again, toward Rosey. Butch untied the horse and got up into the saddle. She reached her arm down and helped the man up behind her.

“I’m Butch McShane, by the way,” she said as she turned Rosey around. She gently kicked the horse into a gallop.

“I’m Mateo Cruz,” the man said.

“Yeah, well, hang on, Bandito,” Butch said. “We’re gonna get out of Dodge.”

A moment later, the darkness swallowed the trio.

Read more here...

Certified: Chapter Ten: Jewelweed

(I think you'll be glad you stuck with me through this part of Certified. I really do learn from my adventures. Also, I do have some photographs this time, but I was having trouble with my camera, so they aren't the best. I've also put in more links than usual, but I hope you find them useful.)

Chapter Ten

During the month between residencies, I finished up Jewelweed Station, a novel I had been working on since late winter. It felt great doing something I loved, being comfortable with it, having fun with the story. I fell in love with writing again--or else I let the disappointment of my publishing experiences evaporate and I could see that I still loved writing.

I also worked on my master plan for the permaculture class and my final project for integrative environmental science.

First I mapped my house and property the way it is now. (We rent.) For the master plan--or the "poof!" plan as the instructor calls it--I needed to permaculture our house and property (at least on paper). Incorporating much of what I'd learned all term, I let my imagination soar.

First I put in a rain catchment system to harvest my rainwater. I calculated that if I caught all the water from my roof, I'd get 68,000 gallons in a year! Wow. (Even someone in the desert can harvest quite a lot of water from their roof.) Even without filtering or cleaning the rainwater from the roof, I could use the rainwater to water much of my garden, particularly the perennials (where I don't eat the leaves), and to flush the toilets (about 10,000 times).

I also put a couple of solar panels on the front of the house, plus a solar water heater. In most houses, water heaters use a lot of energy, so a solar water heater would save us lots of money (besides helping to reduce overall energy use).

Mostly my poof! plan had lots and lots of food. What I've learned about permaculture (and about ecological gardens) is that we have the potential for amazing abundance in our own backyards, no matter how tiny or unproductive they seem to be. I live on a small lot, yet I was able to design for apple, walnut, and cherry trees. (We've already got several prune plum trees.) I also designed for mulberry and blueberry bushes, plus espaliers of apples, pears, and berries. I planted maples trees for shade, and lots and lots of wildflowers because I love them, and because they're good for the birds and butterflies. I put in a huge vegetable garden, and I made room to "grow" worms.

(In permaculture, we design for diversity, and everything has multiple uses. For instance, daikon radishes break up the soil, plus they're edible. An apple tree provides shade, flowers for the bees and butterflies, and fruit for people and animals. Other plants fix nitrogen and provide food. Other plants are beautiful for us to look at, plus they provide habitat for the birds and the bees and are drought resistant. And on and on.)

My before-permaculture drawing showed a sweet-looking, but rather barren landscape.


The after-drawing, the permaculture poof! plan, was so filled with color and life--so much abundance.


The most important thing the permaculture class taught me just that: the possibility for abundance is everywhere. We just need to do some work and then within eighteen months (or less or more), we're not thinking about what we don't have, but about what we're going to do with all the abundance.

For my integrative environmental science project, I had planned on designing an ecological garden for the community library. For the final presentation, I decided that each of my fellow students would play the part of a community member while I talked about the ecological library. I wrote little (compassionate) biographies of people in town who help out with the library. (I changed their names.)

Most of the students live in an urban area and don't do any work in rural areas. I wanted to give them an opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes and see what their reactions might be to this proposed changed.

I finished both projects well before I was due to leave for Seattle. Yes!

Our car was acting up, so I decided to rent a car to go to Seattle. I wouldn't have to worry about breaking down and there would a CD player in the rental, so I could listen to a book on CD. I was hoping that would help make the drive up to Seattle more sustainable.

And I was right. The drive to Seattle was eventless. No rude drivers. No traffic jams. I listened to the second have of Manhunt, the true life story of the hunt of John Wilkes Booth after he murdered President Lincoln. (I'd listened to the first half while driving from Phoenix to Santa Barbara in February.)

I was almost in Seattle when the car went over a patch of bumpy pavement, and I had a bout of vertigo. I was immediately nauseated and terrified. I realized then that the car had been "wobbly" the whole ride and it had made me a little car sick.

I got to my "home" in Seattle, the little room in the house owned by a religious community. Unfortunately the key they'd left for me didn't work. I could get into my room but I couldn't lock it. It took me a while to convince the young woman on the other end of the phone that being able to lock my room was important for me. Eventually she seemed to understand; she arranged to get me a key, and all was well in my little world.

I was still feeling sick and dizzy, so I drove to campus (University of Washington), parked my car, and walked to the Medicinal Herb Garden. Last time I'd been there, I had been waiting for the class. (If you remember, I went to the wrong place and I waited for about thirty minutes for classmates that never came.) This time I walked slowly around the garden, looking at the flowers and plants, trying to ground myself and feel better.

After a few minutes I walked over to a huge old cedar tree. I rested my cheek against it, then sat on a bench beneath it, meditating. I felt as though I was sitting near Yggdrasil, the World Tree. I breathed in and out, in and out. I could hear the buses running outside the garden, saw students walking on the paths around the gardens, and I breathed and tried to relax.


After a while I got up and walked toward a small orange flower. It turned out to be jewelweed, a plant I'd never seen but had starred in the novel I'd just finished.

In it, Callie noticed one lone jewelweed growing by her mother's grave. "Jewelweed. Usually it grew closer to the water and was surrounded by other jewelweed. It was one of her mother's favorite flowers. Her mother said people often didn't see jewelweed or ignored it all together if they did see it even though it was a great healer. Get stung by nettle or touched by poison oak and the juice from jewelweed would sooth the inflammation away. Her mother believed wildflowers could fix anything."

It was nice to see this plant here and now. I started to walk away. I turned and everything in the background became blurry, as though I had moved too quickly for my vision to keep up. This had happened before, usually when I was tired, but just then I felt a little afraid and vulnerable. Was something happening to my vision? I turned quickly again to try and make it happen again.

It didn't.

I told myself to calm down. Maybe it wasn't anything physical. Maybe something energetic was happening in the garden. I walked to the other end of the bed, to see what was growing with the jewelweed.

I had to laugh: It was black cohosh.

I didn't know a lot about black cohost, but I recalled it was considered to be a powerful "women's herb." I decided to sit next to it and meditated on it. Immediately I "saw" a powerful witch-like Kali-like figure. She was dark purple and full of motion. She had lots of advice for me. Mostly I knew I could call on her to fill me up with courage. (This was interesting to me. In Jewelweed Station, my main character, Callie Carter, pretends she is docile and compliant, and when she had difficulty with this, she fills herself up with Jewelweed. This gives her the courage to hide and protect herself, to gather information and power, until the time is right to reveal herself.)

I thanked the plants and trees. Then I drove to Whole Foods and got some food. I went back to my place, watched two Netflix DVDs of Entourage, then fell to sleep. I thought of black cohosh before I drifted to sleep.

I dreamed someone phoned me, and the person sounded just like my mother. I was so excited to hear her voice. But as I talked with this person, I realized it wasn't her, and that made me very sad. In another dream, I was talking to my boss about a dream I'd had about him. He had huge white teeth in the dream. He told me my dream was right. He did get a backache and he read Healing Back Pain and it went away.

Healing Back Pain is a book by John Sarno that saved my life. My friend Jenine recommended it to me when I was suffering from acute back pain. Dr. Sarno believes most back pain (and many other symptoms) are caused by oxygen deprivation that occurs when we suppress our emotions.

When Jenine first pointed out the book to me, I was pissed. I thought, how dare anyone suggest this agony I'm experiencing was all in my head? Except that wasn't what he was saying. I read the book in one sitting, came up with a kind of mantra/affirmation and said it every time I woke up in pain that night, and in the morning the pain was gone.

It was a miracle. Truly. I've given that book to many people over the years. I guess in my dream I had recommended the book to my boss.

I also dreamed I saw a car go over an embankment and flip over. I ran to the car, but we couldn't get the injured woman out. She curled up into a fetal position. I put my hands just above her and gave her a healing to try to keep her alive until the EMTs arrived. It worked. I saved her life.

The next morning I drove to campus for my permaculture class. Seeing everyone again was like seeing a group of old friends. We did a check in at the beginning of class. He wanted to know what we had learned in the class--one or two points that really stuck out for us.

I said, "I've learned that somewhere along the line, I turned into a control freak. Not about other people, but about myself. I learned that I don't like doing things I'm not good at. I don't want to start things until I know everything. I learned that I can actually do things without knowing everything. I pulled out a whole patch of peas that were infested with aphids. Normally I would have gotten depressed--or at least angst-ridden--about my failures as a gardener. Instead, I figured this was just a learning process for me. Next year I'd do different and better. I've learned that everywhere around me is the potential for abundance. Everywhere around me are solutions. I love that. I've learned to let go."

Yep. I didn't plan to say any of that. It just came out, and it was all true. Perfection was not needed--was not even obtainable. I could make mistakes, and it was not the end of the world.

We watched a movie and talked; then we looked at all our master plans--our "poof" plans. We hung the before and after drawings next to one another. It was such fun to see the abundance, the liveliness, the wonderful imaginations of each person expressed in this particular way.

After lunch, we all met at someone's house in Seattle to look at their permaculture garden. Next we were supposed to meet somewhere in Shoreline. I had a map. People offered to take me with them; I should have let them. I ended up driving around for two hours, feeling sick and dizzy in that car, and I never found my class. I did finally find what I thought was the right address, but it looked like a crack house, and there were no cars out front, so I figured it was the wrong place.

It didn't feel like this was the end of the world. I was not angry at my teacher, my class, or myself. But I was feeling a little sick from the car.

I went back to my place and curled up in my bed. I called my friend and said I wasn't sure if I was up for going out. I'd invited her out to dinner, and now I was canceling. I felt like a whimpy jerk. I told her I'd call later.

I got some food from the refrigerator in the hallway. Then I put Pride and Prejudice in my computer, got under the covers, and vegged out. My dizziness and nausea settled down. I called my friend again and we decided to go out.

She picked me up when it was still light, so I suggested we drive to the Medicinal Herb Garden. We had both taken the Celtic Shamanism Two-Year, along with Faery Doctoring, so I knew she would appreciate the garden. We parked and walked along the curving tree-lined street. And then we were in the garden, walking from this garden bed to the next.

It felt like fall had set in: many of the herbs had no flowers, some of the formerly plump stalks had dried out and turned beige and golden. Of course, this wasn't any different from the evening before, but I noticed a bit more about the garden this night than I had yesterday. The piece-de-resistance was the ancient tree. My friend noticed that it seemed as though it was really two trees: one tree was enveloping another. Was it actually two trees?

It turned dark quickly, and we were soon driving around Lake Washington down a dark and narrow road. I was so exhausted that my anxiety was vanquished, and I only thought vaguely about the possibility of crashing into oncoming traffic. We passed the Japanese Gardens. Then we were out of the woods and on Madison. My friend parked the car, and we walked to Cafe Flora.

We had a great dinner and great conversation. I was still a little spacey and dizzy. This often happens to me when I'm one on one with someone. I don't know what it is. Some kind of unconscious stress or shyness emerges--or tries to emerge--but I tamp it down so hard that I don't feel any emotions: I just feel sick.

It ain't easy being green, and it ain't easy trying to figure me out.

I'm great with crowds, by the way. I've always kidded around that this means I'm great with shallow relationships and not so good with deep relationships. I actually do connect with groups of people much better than I do with individuals.

Anyway, we had a good time, and then I went home to sleep.

I had nightmares about people trying to kill me. I also dreamed Mario and I saw a jaguar in the woods. The jaguar was walking away, but he turned and saw us. Then he started coming our way. This was quite frightening as we tried to figure out how we'd get away from him.

I got up early, ate, packed, and put everything in my little nauseating rented car. I said good-bye to my little room in the basement; then I left.

It was great getting to school and seeing everyone in my integrative environmental science class. Many of them were in my permaculture class, too, and a few asked me what happened, where had I been yesterday afternoon.

I said, "I drove around nearly two hours trying to find the class. But I couldn't find you all. I guess my role in the forest garden is to get lost."

I laughed and shrugged. It was good to see that my perspective had changed over the last two months. I didn't take it personally that I couldn't find the class; I didn't take it personally that I had gotten lost. It wasn't a character flaw on my part or a rejection by the community on their part.

I just got lost.

Should have gone with someone else.

No big deal.

We started presenting our final projects. Three of us had individual projects. The rest of the class had worked in pairs or in triads. The teacher had posted the order of our presentations: I was last. I wondered if everyone would be exhausted by the time I presented, but I didn't worry about it. If they were tired, I'd change it. I was good at sussing the energy of a group and then flowing with it.

The first presentation was on climate change. Three of the students were working to help the city of Seattle go carbon-neutral. During their presentation they showed NPR's Robert Krulwich's five-part cartoon video called "Global Warming: It's All About Carbon." (It was so funny! I highly recommend it. Click on Episode 1 & watch in order; for some reason this link goes to Epi 5.)

That was the highlight, but the others were good too. One duo talked about the green belt in Seattle. Another talked about a transit station going up in their neighborhood. They were all different. All informative. Everyone was engaged and enthusiastic.

And I was last.

I had them push away the tables and put their chairs in a circle in the middle of the class. I asked them to leave all computers and cellphones behind. Someone asked why, and another student said, "Because she doesn't want us texting during her thing." She smiled. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

She was exactly right. I had noticed people texting and checking their email while others were presenting. I wanted to see what would happen if we were all in a group really together, elbow to elbow, breathing each other's air.

At first, some of the students looked quite uncomfortable. I explained that they were each going to take on the role of someone else, a real person from my community. I wanted them to act and ask questions from the viewpoint of that community person. I would tell them afterward what really happened at the real-life presentation that I had given a month or so earlier.

"You'll already know everything I'm going to say about a permaculture and ecological garden," I said, "but it was mostly new information for the community when I made the presentation. I also gave you information about these people's personal lives because it's important to realize that everyone working on a project has something else going on in their lives. We've all got people we love who are in trouble. Or we're struggling with our health or our jobs. Something."

I had written up the biography of each person and put it into an envelope and sealed it. On the outside I put the name, sex, and age of the person. Most of community members were well over sixty years old. I instructed the students not to open the envelope but just to take in the name, age, and sex.

"If you're working in communities and neighborhoods," I said, "you will often be working with people who are very different from you. I am often the youngest person in the room and that's been true for a long, long time. I think it's good to be aware of the differences and to not judge people just because they're older than you are or because they live in a rural community, or whatever. It doesn't mean they're stupid or uneducated. Some people live away from the city by choice."

I instructed them open the envelopes. I began my presentation. The energy of the group quickly shifted. People were soon asking me questions from the viewpoints of their "characters." It was quite invigorating! One person was concerned that things wouldn't be neat enough in the garden. Another person wanted it to look more wild. Someone else was worried about the cost.

I answered their questions. One person kept asking the same question again and again. I wasn't quite sure how to answer the question differently. But the person asking it was very perceptive: often in these kinds of situations people do ask the same question again and again, even after you think you have answered the question adequately.

It was a wild and crazy presentation. Very dynamic. I loved it. I felt like we were a real community. I was laughing when I ended it and thanked them all.

We remained in the circle to close. People thanked me for my presentation. We talked about our time together. And then it was time to go.

As usual, I was the first to leave. I got in my little rented car and drove out of Seattle. I thought about the summer.

I remembered how lost and alone I had felt when I first started this program. I had felt so out of place. I was older than almost everyone. I was one of only two people who lived in a rural area. I had felt like a country bumpkin around a bunch of young city people.

But none of that had been true. Or rather, none of that was real. I had been projecting my own fears onto this experience. Once I let go of those projections, once I relaxed a bit and recognized my part in my frustrations, once I gave myself a break, reality was made visible.

A reality was these were great classes where I learned a lot about my world and myself.

But something else happened during these ten plus weeks.

I faced some facts about my life--always a difficult thing to do. I had a family member who was struggling with drug addiction. She had gone into rehab for three months, and she now had the skills to help herself and to get help, but she wasn't doing it--at least she wasn't doing it enough to keep herself from relapsing. Every day for weeks, I had worried about getting a phone call that she was in a coma or a car accident. Every night I feared I would get a call from someone telling me that she was dead.

I tried to get her help from afar. I tried to talk with her and encourage her. But I was often speaking to her when she was high, and I didn't always know the difference. Later she wouldn't remember what I'd said or anything about our conversation. And she lied so fluently, so easily. Lying is the second language of addicts.

We hear again and again that addiction is a disease. I knew that. But I kept telling the rest of my family, "If it's a disease, then we have to do get her help. You don't tell someone who's having a heart attack, 'if you really want help, you call 911.'" How could it be a disease AND one still had to get help themselves?

I didn't get it for a long time. Then I realized that my family member's addiction was ruining my life. It was affecting my husband. It was affecting everyone in our family. Different family members had tried to help her. My father, only six months out of dangerous heart surgery, travelled out to stay with her. She remained straight while he was there, but as soon as he was gone, she relapsed. I thought seriously about going to live with her for a time, but then I had a flashback to last winter when I'd gone to Arizona. I had spent half my time trying to save her.

I couldn't save her. If I went down to live with her, I would be miserable and it would just delay the inevitable: when she would have to save herself.

I had started this program in Seattle because I felt hopeless and helpless about the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I had wanted to save the Gulf of Mexico. I have always wanted to save the world.

I have always wanted to save this particular family member. I felt like I had been trying to save her my entire life.

Once she told me she wanted someone to love her so much that they'd feel like they'd die if she died. She wanted someone to love her so much that they'd give everything up for her.

I told her no one would ever love her like that: no one except herself.

She had to save herself. She had to grow up and save herself.

My relative isn't alone in this desire. I've heard other people say similar things. They're waiting for someone else to save them. Some politician. Some leader. Some spiritual guru.

It ain't gonna happen.

We've got to grow up and save ourselves. It is a profound lack of maturity which causes us to put our heads in the sand.

We've got to act like adults and solve some problems.

My family member is comfortable in her addiction. I think many of us are comfortable in our addictions--we are comfortable with our comfort.

I know I am.

Or I was.

I now know I can't save my family member. I hope she can save herself. I hope she can love herself enough to put herself first, before her comfort. To save herself.

I was extremely uncomfortable during the course of these classes. I made so many mistakes. I made so many judgments. I was hard on my classmates and teachers. I was very hard on myself. But I kept doing the work. I kept going forward. And eventually, through all the smoke and mirrors I was tossing up, I saw the possibility for abundance. For abundance in the world and in my life.

It won't always be comfortable. It will definitely be messy. But I know we can plant it, grow it, build it, create it, let it happen.

Poof!

There it is.

I got home safe and sound.

Ain't it grand?

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