Evangelical Haircut

Got my hair cut today from a lovely lady . . . who is a Believer. She started down the God path, mid layer. She even said "once I had someone in my chair who claimed to be an atheist!"

Once?

"So you believe things just evolved?!"

We quickly moved on from religion . . . but we did talk about neighbors and raising kids and the "so different" lifestyle I lead.

It takes these encounters for me to remember. I am rather other. I don't wear makeup, "but still you are so feminine." I don't have kids. I'm not married. I don't believe in God. I travel to far away places. I know people who live in cabins in the woods. I know people called Froggy and Crunch and Spermy and Storm and Nasty. I go days and days without showering and I've driven a bulldozer.

Looking around the room at a meeting at work the day before, I felt it as well. My first one true love is a Facebook friend. He hangs with VERY beautiful, super skinny, Southern California girls with tiny little sundresses, smoothened hair and big, bouncy fake boobs. I was looking around our meeting yesterday . . . I don't know those women. The women I hang with don't wear any makeup. They are shaped with strength and wear proper clothes. They drive bulldozers. You know?

And I have to say, I've very comfortable out here in the other right now. I don't want to worry about my eye makeup . . . ever again. And I wouldn't want to be trapped in a world were all there was to talk about was God and other people's children.

Tragic Beginning

I have a friend who went missing in the Arctic. He was working in Greenland and went out during a storm and didn't find his way back. After hours and hours and more than two days, the storm finally lifted and they searched for him again. He was found alive. He walked right up to the search vehicle and got in.

Amazing.

58 hours out in it . . . flat white nothing plus storm. He didn't have gear or food. He built himself a cave to hunker down in to, out of the wind.

He is now back in the states. The news today is that he will lose his dominant hand, all his toes and some parts of both feet. His left hand will need a skin graft.

And tonight I am very sad about this. My friend is a young man. My friend is a very athletic and active man, who works with his body. My friend's passion are the poles and working at both year round. Most probably he won't be able to do this kind of work for a while, while he relearns to walk on newly shaped feet.

I don't know this friend well. I've known him for years, but not well. I don't know him well enough to enjoy his great company off the ice. I won't hear from him out here, but I may hear about him through other folks. And I will miss him very, very much.

I was thinking tonight as I was wiggling in bed, not falling asleep, that this passionate work he did ended up taking pieces of him. It killed pieces of him. He is going to have to leave these pieces behind now, and forge ahead in a new whole way. As a new whole man. I don't doubt that he will work to return to the Arctic and the Antarctic. Maybe. Or maybe this new man will find something else he loves just as much.

The whole thing makes me wonder about . . . well . . . everything. About what we sacrifice for loving a place and working there. What life takes from us. What we have to leave behind. How we forge ahead. What other parts of my friend might have died up there, too? What parts of him are now newly born?

I know this man is a strong, strong man with an enormous life force. I know he'll weather this. No doubt there. I just wonder who he will be now. How this will go. If he doesn't make it back to the ice, I don't know that I will ever have a chance to find out.

God speed, Mr. Speed. Hopefully, there's some truth in positive thoughts reaching their intended. I am sending all mine tonight.

Remembering to Notice Joy

Swirling around me lately is a litany of terrible news.

A coworker's father is in the hospital after what seemed like a stroke.

My dearest friend's father is suffering brain cancer and living in her family room.

Her other best friend just got diagnosed with lymphoma.

My sister's company is about to lay off 1,000 people.

A beloved Antarctican went missing in a Greenland storm for over 58 hours, was found, but it isn't known how many paws he will be able to keep.

My workplace has devolved into paranoia, micro managing and oppression.

Last night I met with my dearest friend and gave her a necklace made in Takaka by a delightful German. It is a joyous silver and glass person, swinging on the chain, kicking up his feet with abandon. It came with a little card welcoming the new owner to the "Happy People Club."

Today I realized something. For many, many months I have been forgetting to notice joy. I have been reminding myself only of the dower, depressing, struggle of everything. I have noticed only the massive tragedies and the frequency of everyone's bad news. I have turned my eyes down to respect everyone's hard time.

And I have completely forgotten to notice joy.

Joy is still happening. When allowed, joy will come right up to you.

Today I went to the garden shop and it was FILLED with plants and baskets and hoes and rakes and hoses. It smelled of wet dirt and flowers. I thought my heart was going to burst! I was so excited I started to hyperventilate and almost had to sit down on the wet cement floor.

You see . . . there is still joy and things to feel joyful about . . . even in the face of hard things.

I must remember the balance, and that it isn't disrespectful to those suffering to allow one's self a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss.

Notes to Blog

Because I will most probably not get around to blogging about this stuff, I thought I would at least note the notes . . .

Blog about the phrase "I have known love," stated by NB when speaking of turning 30 and being ready to die.

Blog about my theory of alcohol management and how to control sales . . . and how no one will listen to me. (after getting out of a meeting on alcohol management policies for Antarctica and listening to stupid new directors talk about rationing).

Blog about how hard it is to sit and wait for your friends to deal with what they must. How they must. And how you have to wait for their attention.

Blog about SM shredding papers every morning and the atmosphere of fear and distrust that has taken over the office.

Blog about the phenomenon of seeing the person you made up in your head and not the person who actually stands in front of you.

What is the history of the term "red herring"?

What is the small little something that would make me not succeed? ie: like the thing that made CH unpromotable?

These next ones I carried all the way from the ice:

Blog about the conversation with Jake in the dish pit.

Blog about walking home from the hot tub.

Blog about "the commune", about manager cook day, about the ladies in the bathroom with their "water vessels" (humidifiers and tea kettles) who all gather there before bed and discuss the day.

Blog about EW sitting on the floor in the hallway with all the construction workers before they went downstairs to work. How she was reading out a child's letter full of questions about Antarctica, and how all the construction workers, sprawled all over the floor, were fascinated and attentive.

Blog about how I want my life to look at the end of it.

Blog about sitting still. About the preteen behind me on the plane who never stopped talking and about Kevin Pearson -- can't remember what he said -- but it was about talking instead of being. Art of stillness. Have you noticed most conversations aren't interesting to ease drop?

Blog about the Sweat Pea - magical land of Takaka.

Blog about the Heritage being my base camp.

Blog about releasing from the season in gasps.

Blog about Farewell Spit.

Blog about the circle of friends. Who can tell and who can't when you are needing to be propped up.

Blog about making the mistake of missing the obvious with RM and waiting for him to act.

Water

I'm in WI visiting my sister. Last night we went to this great restaurant in an old power plant that sits right up along the river. River. RIVER. Not like a piddly little western river. This is a proper, raging mid-wester river. HUGE flowing dangerous water. Everywhere.

And as we sat at our table and watched the current I started to feel anxious. No. Not from the big currents nor the force of it. I was feeling anxious seeing that much water flowing away. How could they be so wasteful!

After being at Pole where we melt all the water we have, and then coming back to Colorado, which is quickly becoming the second great American dust bowl, I couldn't believe that these folks would let that much water, huge volumes of it, just flow away down stream!

Do you know what we could DO with that much water!

Today it's raining sideways. The gutters are full and there are puddles everywhere. The half-frozen ground is soaked, the sod bobbing like a raft on a lake. Gelatinous.

It makes me think about what it means to be parched, dry and barren . . . in land and in life.

Maybe instead of fearing this rain storm (I'm supposed to be driving half way across the state today), I should be drinking in the cleansing . . . slurping down the life.

I'll go with that for today.

You can heal your life . . .

Throat: Avenue of expression. Channel of creativity.

I open my heart and sing the joys of love.

Sore Throat: The inability to speak up for one's self. Swallowed anger. Stifled creativity. Refusal to change.

It's okay to make noise. I express myself freely and joyously. I speak up for myself with ease. I express my creativity. I am willing to change.

Hippy Land, New Zealand

I just got back from Hippy Land.

My friend and I came off the ice and needed some time to regroup. She summered at McMurdo. I, at Pole, as always. When we were looking for a place to travel, a random coworker recommended we look at Takaka, to the north. He goes there frequently and loves it. Other good friends of mine travel there as well. My friend, having the better connection to the internet, did all the investigations and bookings. She found a house between Takaka and Pohara called Sweet Pea. In our email correspondence I could never seem to type it, so it came to be known between us as "Sweat Pea."

We traveled up with a friend who climbs there. He stays for months every year. He knew the way and seemed to appreciate the ride.

The town and the trip now seem pretty magical.

Takaka is in a long, green, peaceful valley, up and over an enormous hill, at the top most part of the South Island. It is rural and quiet and cow-filled. The clouds hover over the mountaintops like Bali Hai. There are pine trees and palm trees and bushes and flowers everywhere. The region is called Golden Bay, the top of which is ringed by Farewell Spit. The ocean is light green and turquoise. It laps up against the sand, and doesn't roar. Everything is covered in spider webs. The town is thick with spiders everywhere. The Sweat Pea was crawling with them.

Spiders encourage you to write and bring Grandmother energy.

I loved it.

The place was packed, no vacancy signs everywhere. But we never felt crowded or rushed. There were hippies. Lots of hippies. In vans and at the grocery and smiling at you as you came into their shops. Unlike in Hippievilles across America, though, these hippies coexisted nicely with the old people, normal looking people, tourists and children. Everyone seemed to be tolerant and kind and full of the natural enjoyment of life. Everyone was welcome.

And, I do believe, the place understood what my friend and I were there to do. We both have had big, hard seasons. For very different reasons.

My friend is going through a life change, reevaluating a relationship she's had for over 10 years. She needed a gentle, far away place to land, to think and just to be.

I was run ragged from my season. I needed a place to shake the badness off of me and a jumping point from which to look forward. I am starting to visualize The Woman I Want To Be.

Little magic offerings came to us while we were there. The house offered my friend a book, just sitting on the shelf one morning, called "Don't Look Back." It was written like a children's book, all about coming to the end of something that we thought would continue. It talked about the grief of it, but also how we must keep going forward. The book ends with "Don't look back. You aren't going that way." It chilled me when she read it out loud.

I had a little, drunken encounter with the climber who rode along. I don't know how it really ended. Not for him anyway. I may have put too much weirdness between us. But the gift of it to me was profound and remarkable. I had wanted it and one night at a dinner party at the Sweat Pea, it just rolled out effortless before me. It has been a long, long time since I kissed a man, or had one hold me while I slept. I actually was starting to think I would never have it again. But the Sweat Pea delivered. Broke the spell and gave me the great gifts of listening to a man breathe in his sleep, of touching his foot with mine, of being wrapped up in warm strong arms. Again. Finally.

Hippy Land didn't give anything flamboyantly. I think it just listens. And slowly blossoms before you. Small treats, left to be discovered. And it doesn't seem to need anything back. It's delighting in the community of happiness, of togetherness. Of life being lived in a very beautiful, quiet place.

I can see why it gets addictive . . . this Bali Hai, this Golden Bay.

Today I'm sitting in my hotel room, on the tenth floor of the Heritage. The day is cold and intermittently cloudy. My friend continued on to Tonga. The climber, of course, stayed behind. I am alone to reflect. To remember. To feel. And I am grateful for it. Grateful for all of it. I'm trying not to dread the weirdness I may have inflicted upon the climber. I'm trying not to dread the oncoming return home, back to the crazy makers who infected my season. I'm just trying to thank Takaka and the Sweat Pea.

Thank you for those few beautiful, restorative days.

Thank you for breaking the spell, and bringing us spiders, and letting us rest.

Thank you, Hippy Land, for all your Hippy Goodness.