In a Meeting

I have been attending meetings once a week about a project that isn't ours, but will effect us. Because it's a meeting in which I generally don't participate, but mostly observe, I sit along the wall in a corner and listen. At the table sits a very tall, lanky man. A man I have known for years and periodically think is attractive. For two weeks, this man has been completely distracting.

He comes into the room urgently, finds a place near me at the table and sits down. He leans far back in the chair, making room for his long, thin legs. He crosses them and shifts sideways.

As we listen to the starfish in the center of the table, he rolls back and whispers questions in my ear. Close. Quiet. More close and quiet than he needs to be, really. His breath is hot and stale against my neck. He rolls back towards the table, re-crosses his legs, and puts his chin in his left hand. I study the tiny curls in the back of his head, each with one gray hair. A gentle line of silver.

He shifts slightly and the gather in the back of his green button shirt gives a little. His shoulders spread. Oh, holy heaven.

He rolls back again, reaching for a timeline I have on the table next to me. His hand comes up short, so I help, gliding the page slowly over his outstretched hand and down his long arm.

The wing span. Oh God, the long, strong wing span of this man makes the starfish go quiet and the others disappear. As they all yap on, I drift away and am suddenly wrapped up in that wing span, nose and mouth climbing from collar bone, up the long neck to his jaw. I am held and encompassed inside those enormous arms, my legs curled against him in the chair. His soft lips and gentle whiskers kiss my eyes. I slide my arms around him and feel the epic expanse of his strong back.

He smells of soap and coffee.

I have often said grown-ups need giants. Big people who can wrap us up in their arms and shelter us.

This man seems that big. That calm. That smart.

And he's sexier than hell in a meeting.

Conversation with Martin

Martin: "How's Beth?"

Beth: "I don't like it here anymore."

Martin: "No! It's fun."

Beth: "Everyone is miserable."

Martin: "No. No. It's fun . . . like a disaster movie!"


Martin makes everything better.

A Desire for the Comfort of Fullness

This summer I have been trying very hard not to gain back my Denver weight. I have been bringing my lunch and changing my portions and refusing cake (that one was actually pretty easy, what with it being associated with grief and loss and abandonment and all). I have been trying to drink less, exercise more. Gobble water like my life depended on it.

I was watching the movie "Spanglish" the other day and there was a little bit of dialogue that I had to go back over and write down. Because I think it is true. The narrator kid says it, dubbed over Tea Leoni, skinny like a skinned squirrel, running up the road.

"American women, I believe, actually feel the same as Hispanic women about weight. A desire for the comfort of fullness. And when that desire is suppressed for style, and deprivation allowed to rule, dieting, exercising American women become afraid with everything associated with being curvaceous, such as wantonness, lustfulness, sex, food, motherhood. All that is best in life."

A desire for the comfort of fullness.

And I have been noticing this. I bring my yummy salad to work and follow it with an orange, and I'm good for the rest of the afternoon. The small amount of food does what it is supposed to do. It keeps me alive, alert, without a headache. I don't feel drowsy and loaded down or bloated up. Perfect fine. But not full. Not solid and fed and full and sated. Not in that luscious way that good food can bring.

And it makes me kind of wonder . . . is it so bad to be bigger and rounder than those hikey bikey jumpy squirrel people? To truly taste luscious food? To drink wonderful liquor every once in a while? Is that really something that I should be mean to myself about?

A desire for the comfort of fullness.

Food. Life. Love. Wine. Beauty. Art. Creation. Friendships. Laughter. Good ideas. Grand vistas.

Long, languid afternoons, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood and watching the pine tree grow.

Indulgence can over indulge. Of course. . . . But too much deprivation and shoulds makes everything awful.

Romantic Thing to Say

This week, during a bad day, I almost sent an email to a coworker that would have said just this:

"I hate everyone but you."

But I didn't. It was too romantic to send. He being married and all.

But it should be a card to buy at the supermarket.

"I hate everyone but you."

The Cave Between Gold and Platinum

For some time now I have been noticing a shift. Cake by cake, I am realizing that I am coming to the end of my Golden Years with The Program. Today, it's feeling very much like the end. A lot of people are gone. More are still going. Another one announced today. She's moving to Alaska. Unfortunately, I anticipate more cake.

This morning we also had an All Hands where the topic was the budget crisis and what we might have to do to get it right. The topic just made the day sick and done and empty.

We are millions in the hole -- mostly due to fuel prices. Millions in travel costs. Millions in charter costs. Our Head just froze full time hiring, travel and trainings. Now They are talking about docking the boats, canceling the LDB, closing runways, moth-balling planes.

Can you believe it? They are actually talking about canceling those boats. Two, big, red, ice breaking research vessels that have been running non stop since God knows when. They were the pride of the display cases. But now they are ships we can no longer afford. I joked about it not a month ago. "You wanna fix the budget? I know how to fix the budget," I said, hands on hips. "Cancel a boat! For fuck sake. It costs $12M a year!" And now, that cavalier declaration might just be coming true. They are probably going to cancel the boats.

Fuck.

Meanwhile our splintered twin of a client is back in Washington, fluttering around in a delusional frenzy, crashing into itself, approving more science. It funded ENORMOUS, international projects that have huge plane requirements (more fuel, more labor, more camp staff, more camp stuff, more flights all over), and we are talking about parking the boats and putting a whole division of the program out of business.

Yep. My Antarctic Golden Years are over. What I came to 10 years ago -- a mighty mighty American Hope and Dream -- is ground down and tired and over-extended. Literally hundreds of people have left it. Great people, who for whatever reasons, walked away. And no one is coming back right now because it's in such disarray. Disarray caused by many factors -- not all of which were our fault. But disarray none the less.

And, you know . . . despite the dark cave in which I now find myself, I have every hope that I am just in transition. Isn't that weird? More and more, I am committing to sit with my sick old friend. I need to admit that it will never be the Golden Years again. That much is clear. And I need to start the transition to my Platinum Years. Eventually, finer than Gold. I want to make another chapter for myself -- where I take what I have learned and make my old, tired friend vibrant again.

It's a weird and lonely and dark place I sit today. I can't see the path for the shifting, and we definitely don't have the right fools in the boat. We are paddling every which way, ripping the thing asunder. And I have no idea how in the world I will be of any help. But surely there is a way to right it -- somehow? Surely.

Flashes of Shame

There must be something in the moon lately. I am being plagued.

You know that party question . . . What was your most embarrassing moment? . . . Well, I never had an answer to that. I don't have one great big one that, years later, makes for a funny story. I have millions of tiny little ones. Small moments that when put together -- like lately -- become this crippling wave of horror, self hatred, and dread. Oh God, I think to myself. What have I done!

It's been bowling me over.

Why, oh why, do I need to wake up to these vivid old memories?

In a Quiet House

Sitting in a quiet house, our brains are left to wander.

I have a Shins song in my head. I know the tune but only the last word of each line. Crusade. Right. Hand like a knife. Forget about it . . . girl.

I am thinking what a shame it is that we do so much to numb ourselves. We get high and drink too much and blather at people and always need to be DOING something . . . so we don't just sit still and wonder.

I have been thinking about my little cousin who's in art school and hoping he's getting enough philosophy. He should be studying philosophy so his art has cool meaning. The search for the knowledge of self alone can create a life's work.

I have been thinking about the word hobo as used by my friends in the program. "Camping like hobos . . . " "Noble hobo." "I was living like a hobo, hiding food in bushes." And I am wondering to myself why that would be good. Hobos were lost men. Not men searching. But men alienated, aimless and demoralized. Aren't roots good? Aren't family and safety and connections something we are really searching for? Ultimately? I am reminded of Michael Perry and why he moved home.

I have been thinking about the weird red scrapes up my arm, that I must have gotten behind the bush when Dad and I were putting in the window well covers.

I have been wondering why all the sudden there are so many flies.

I watched the rescued baby bunny munch on the dead lettuce I put out when I thought he was abandoned. I find it funny that the bully squirrels, so bold and pushy around the birds, are deadly afraid of bunnies.

I can hear the mourning doves. They sound like they are in the ceiling.

Outside my office window is a sea of green, lit well in the cloudy afternoon. The sun is rolling on and off. Bright and dim again as the wind blows the clouds around. Now that the leaves are full, I can’t even see the houses across the way. I am in the woods! Like my day dream.

There is a fly stuck between the screen and the window. He is keeping his distance from the spider that just joined him.

I am thinking about the lake in Wisconsin and how beautiful and strange and dreamy the north woods really are.

I am noticing it’s time for lunch.

Day Dream

Today is a very quiet and cool Sunday. I have spent the morning day dreaming and journaling. I just took a walk around the neighborhood, and even it is sleepy and slow.

While journaling I had a vision of a life I want to lead. It is a slow and rainy Sunday in the woods. My partner (whomever he may be) and I are laying around in the screen porch, watching the rain hit the leaves, drinking smoothies, and reading something wonderful to each other. Something writerly, descriptive and lush. I read and my partner lays on the glider, gently swinging back and forth, rocking himself with his foot up against the wall of the house. It is almost dinner time. But we are in no rush. We'll eat fresh beans from the garden out the back. He'll grill some chicken. I have some cobbler left over from the party yesterday.

And the rain comes down and he glides back and forth.

Back and forth.