lives colliding

i've fulfilled my second to last goal for life in alaska: seeing the northern lights. on my anchorage to salt lake leg flying home for thanksgiving, i was on the left window side of the plane when the aurora decided to do a hundred mile dance. it shimmered right next to me, an incandescent emerald curtain heralding the heavens. it lasted past the point when i became sleepy; i would occasionally wake and still see the striations congealing and drifting apart like dream stuff floating above pewter clouds, leading us to oz.

home has been a really good thing. the friends i have - in what seemed like my former life - have surprised me about how much they've grown. one guy started a nonprofit to update schoolbooks in a kenyan town where he volunteered, a close girl friend is a nurse for the children's hospital, another a performance poet, one guy does advocacy in DC for schizophrenics. i love how they are good people who put their money where their mouths are instead of being complacent or materialistic, or scared. i love that i am inspired again. things are forgiven. hello and goodbye.

Why Do You Hate Us George???

to my solid of solidness, george mcg/horse's ass/last man on earth, who's moving out of juneau this friday. without you, i would have made a complete drunken jackass of myself on weekends - alone. thank you for knowing me and still being my friend :o) the best.

from flicking kids off...

to fires

and fireworks

to forging our klondike relay team

and our freaky food fun...

... you've been the best fucking friend around.

Ou est tu?

a part of me cringes when comedy superstars first play a 'take me seriously' lead in a drama. (i grimaced for most of adam sandler's "punch drunk love" and just couldn't shake my mental funny man picture of robin williams to dare watch "insomnia".) but my favorite anchorman, will ferrell, took on the deadpan irs agent harold crick in "stranger than fiction", and i was impressed with his gravity. anne thompson was fantastic, and i just love dustin hoffman. the plot itself was interesting - a guy finding himself in metafiction - and it was leagues better than charlie kaufman's "adaptation", whose 'i'm clever for cleverness' sake' story about a story was appallingly masturbatory. i love creativity and postmodernity; i'm just not in the camp of lauding the avant garde just because it's new. if it's new and it sucks, it still sucks. (i did like being john malkovich and loved eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.)

i don't want to spoil the movie, but i did think it lacked internal logic. the ending was less than satisfying, but 2 lines spoken by anne thompson's character saved the whole thing, in my opinion, or at least gave the plot a fighting chance to be plausible. i'm not totally scratching zach helm off my radar - in fact, i really want to watch the family movie he directed called "mr. magorium's wonder emporium".

more than anything about the film though, a song from it left a lasting impression on me.

"i go the whole wide world

i go the whole wide world

just to find her..."

the nature of red

I said red and he said red. But he meant red like the lightness of poppies or a misty stripe of rainbow evanescence. And I meant red like the blood of sunsets or the thick of good wine.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I wanted to tell him all, reveal nothing. I am more than the mysterious girl who you believe has seen the world and laughed. I am more than a girl of passion and rage; I am a forever ghost, a book with no last page. But we halt more than speak, and I am drowning in this place without water.
When I left, he turned around and I saw the words left unspoken drift from his parted mouth. They hovered happily in the sun, and it was beautiful. But picture dust specks floating in the light; once you close your hand around them, they cannot be seen.
So he said red, and I said red.

~circa 2004, timeless applicability

The Great Juneau Winter Exodus

Unlike the other exodus-ers who seek warmer climes, crazy Tracy left for Antarctica. Fisherman Jack's in WA for awhile then back to wherever it is he comes from. (I've always just pictured him being born on a boat). George put his two-week notice in and flirts with going to DC, London, Colorado, and Hawaii. And our beloved Vinu - for whom Juneauites have thrown the most elaborate farewell events I have ever seen thrown for anyone's departure because she is just that awesome - is going home, then India, then moving to DC.

To top of all the goodbyes, I am also bidding adieu to my POS car. It completely died on me last night while I was perpendicular to the street, blocking any potential traffic, and freaking out passersby who didn't really want to help but couldn't avoid walking past me. I'd just come from the gym too so my exposed legs just froze as I sank into sidewalk snowbanks trying to push the vehicle into a legal position. Finally, two people helped me to manuever it into its second final resting place. The actual final resting place being the junkyard as soon as I figure out when the bargain day is.

running through my veins

i want to move somewhere. maybe seattle. it's got so many things i like about big cities but it also tries to be environmentally conscious. but living there might be too hard to deal with. i love the memories but they sadden me too. maybe the southwest then. new mexico. i've never been to the region, and i've heard from everyone who's ever lived or visited there that it's amazing. the only other time you get that kind of fervent recommendation is about hawaii.

(look ma, i'm moving to mars!) ------>

in our summer skin

we leave seatac, drive through university, pass shoreline, snohomish, my heart breaking a little bit with each familiar sign. we're on the 5 northbound, rental car sunroof open in pelting rain, empty cans of redbull and rockstar on the floor, and it feels like a juneau summer.

i stick loneliness, your lips, and the two coins of your eyes into my pockets

we chose tulalip as the lucky casino where we'd exercise our gambling prowess. we're downing pabst blue ribbon, we're calling pals in other places, friends forever, this is the wildest thing how fun and carefree, let's not get boring and have babies.

we are not so we are not given we are not sold on what we have seen

in 3 hours, we laugh ourselves back to the monte carlo. holy! he's made two grand, go big or go home, he's given me my plane ticket money back, and i'm still up 5 bens. now we're delirious on taurine, beer, coffee, and luck. this is for hawaii, he says. i say, you should change your last name to mcmonacle. we drink to health, happiness, and to being the solid of solidness, listen to a crazy game of poker, and head back to the tables.

take a shower and shine your shoes you got no time to lose you are young men you must be living go now you are forgiven

9am and it's time to leave for the airport. he has a crazy long run with the dice, makes another two grand. there's nothing in front of him but an army of green chips. we keep looking at it, looking at each other, laughing, holy!, everything is wonderfully fun. outside the casino time warp it's sunny. it feels like we've run a gauntlet. when our plane lands back home, i turn to him and say, i feel like rip van winkle waking up after 30 years. or maybe it's the other way around. i lived a lifetime while they've been sleeping.

driftwood

when everything proves tenuous you can try to find permanence or drift toward impermanence.

every october, alaska airlines has a pfd sale. for non-alaskans, pfd stands for permanent fund dividend and is the annual check every state resident receives from the oil profits. it's usually about $900 - enough for a roundtrip ticket to almost any route our dear airline monopoly flies. definitely enough for a one-way and a few cups of coffee. my friend is taking advantage of this. booked a flight to chicago in january for cheap. she wants to get out of juneau for awhile, maybe a long while if it works out, and i'm wondering if i should have done the same thing.

but today the pfd sale ended, so the prices are back to ridiculous. not that it would stop me if i were really determined - it wouldn't even stop me on a halfway impulsive day. a day where i'd wake up and say fuck this all. or even just a day where i'd stop suddenly in mid-conversation and think to myself, there are other places and people i'd like to meet. because i'm always seeking that elusive Somewhere Else. and that adage about thinking of the present as a gift, well, a lot of the times i'd like to return it.