Old Steno Notebooks

Still unpacking I read through my steno notebooks from the last few years. This is the good stuff:

Sometimes it feels like everyone is going crazy. They are going crazy or getting hit by cars.

I hate it when summer is ending and the fall is beginning. It's always cold as fuck in the morning and hot as hell in the afternoon.

The big windows, watching the planes slowly taxi in and out, their take-off and landing dance.

We hugged but he was wearing his backpack and I didn't get to feel the muscles of his back, that valley of his spine, the curve of his waist.

She unwrapped a Hershey's Special Dark and felt the corners soften under her saliva. She folded the gold foil wrapper into smaller and smaller triangles.

The teenagers seemed to speak a language with their eyes as they ate their chili leaning against the kitchen counter. I used to know that language, Aggie thought. I used to be fluent in that language.

When you create your world it needs to be solid--and believing in that world is like pouring concrete. It makes everything hard and immovable. My world was flimsy--a used hanky, made of tissue paper and full of holes.

I want to drink milkshakes, lots of milkshakes.

It's like trying to herd cats. It's like trying to push a snake by it's tail.

Park Blocks--3:41 pm: Girl climbs on the Abe Lincoln statue so guy can take a picture of her. Her head is by Abe's crotch. Boy says, It looks like you are blowing Abraham Lincoln.

San Francisco

In San Francisco the weather is gray and moist. Krista's apartment is stuffy and we open a round window. It's not the frame but the actual glass that is round. "Be careful, " she says, as it's opened. "My landlord says these are really expensive." The window faces the street. The apartment is on a hill. "We are across from a rehab place, not like drugs, but like injuries, and it can be noisy all night with ambulances and trucks backing up." She sleeps with ear plugs.

For a late dinner we head to a ramen place. We walk mostly down hill. The restaurant is tiny and the four of us sit at a small table with barely enough room for our bowls. Cities are like this. Tight and cramped, things built on top of other things. Dirty, chaotic, they feel like they are on the edge, teetering on the brink of non-existance, they are so wild and out of control. Yet they work, there is an order, even with everyone and everything pushed together tight. I am struck by the amount of homeless people. They lean in doorways muttering to themselves and scratching their crotches, or they are walking towards you on an angled path dressed in layers and not really seeing you. I already knew this but had to relearn it: never look at a bum's exposed feet or ankles. The swollen skin with open sores will make you wretch. There is also a woman standing outside a fast food chinese restaurant shoveling food in her mouth off a paper plate. Her face is covered in meth sores.

We walk a lot, up and down hills, to the donut shop around the corner where an Asian women in a visor cooks donuts and watches TV all day. She tells us what is fresh and we order that, apple fritters or old fashioneds with maple glaze. We walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. The day is clear and you can see city and then turn and see out across the Pacific. The beginning of the walk is crowded and we dodge in and out of families with strollers and couples stopping for photographs. As we get closer to the midway point the crowds thin and there are just a few other walkers. The noisy rush of the cars is relentless, like the constant crash of a waterfall, the wheels on the road, the wind make it so you nearly have to yell to be heard. Or you have to walk close, arms linked, like you are telling each other secrets. Krista and I only walk halfway and turn to go back. I don't know what we talk about or if we talk. When we get back I say I have to go to the bathroom again. She is surprised and I feel old. In line there are two french women in front of me and they are joking and laughing with each other in a language I don't understand. I am jealous of their friendship and joviality. I imagine that if they were speaking in english I would join in with something funny about how the bathroom smell. Krista and I wait down by the water for the boys to get back. We sit on a rock wall and she explains to me what a diva cup is.

The next day we will drive over the bridge but it will be so socked in with fog that I won't be able to see the top of the red cables as I peer up through the windshield.

During the entire trip I have been uncomfortable in my skin, wishing I could wear a disguise, a fat suit and a muu muu with a hat and sun glasses. Anything that would make me feel different than how I feel, anything to take me out of myself--not like drinking can, and I do drink but even it isn't the same as it used to be, my hearts not in it-- something that makes me feel new, something that makes me feel like I am a city, cramped all my insides pushed together, teetering over non-existance.

Saving Lives, One Blog Post at a Time

I didn't do anything today. I googled the name of a former classmate, Zina Helzer, because I can't find her on Facebook and the first entry in the google search was my old blog. I had written about her in an article entitled, "starbucks and j dubs." I was a little alarmed that my blog came up as the first thing. I imagined this Zina googling herself--she would probably have to use her maiden name, she must be married-- and coming across my blog. In the post I mention that she was totally awesome so that might make her day when she comes across it. It might turn around her whole sorry life. My old blog might be life changing for Zina. It's amazing. Here is my favorite line from that blog post. The post was mostly about getting a latte and going shoe shopping--riveting stuff:

This all happend in the first hour after I woke up. It was one of the longest hours of my life. I like that sometimes though, like time has slowed down and I can notice things that I hadn't before.

So of course I spent sometime slumming it on my old blog. I read most of the entries from April to August 2005. I had one semester left of college. I noticed that I blogged about my cat a lot, not my current cat, Maebie, but Salvador the cat I ended up giving to my mom because Daniel hated him. HATED HIM. I also noticed that a lot of my blogs were about feeling bad because I didn't have a job. I wish I could have patted myself on the back back then and said, "Don't fret, in five years you will have a job that you like a lot." I also blogged about being hungover, or at least mentioned being hungover a lot. I used to drink a lot more than I do now. I also smoked a lot more. This is from my post about my 24th birthday when I went bowling:

It would have been cool to skip school and go bowling. Too late now.

And from a post about Tara's wedding, which I was TOTALLY hungover at. The bachlorette party consisted of Tara and I drinking vodka tonics out of big plastic cups and smoking cigarettes:

I don't know half the people there but while outside smoking two gay guys (groom's side), go ga-ga for my eyes.

"They're so clear," one says.

"it's like i can see...i can see...tomorrow," says the other. 



"you're different," they tell me. "you're different than those other people in there. you're mature. you're supposed to be an actress." 



why do gay guys always think i should be an actress?

While bumming around on the Facebook I followed a link to the blog of another teacher at one of the studios I work at. The blog was all about loving God and being a mom. (sing song)BOR-RING.

Disappointment, Starring the Babysitters Club

After realizing that I hadn't read Babysitters Club Super Special #9: Starring the Babysitters Club!, I ordered in off Amazon and it arrived in the mail yesterday. It was a great mail day. So last night I got cozy in bed and started reading it. First bummer: The book starts with Jessi's narration. She's one of my least favorite characters. Even though she and Mallory are like totally for sure in the club I always think their problems are juvenile because they are only 11. They aren't even teenagers. In some areas of the country they wouldn't even be in middle school, they'd still be in grade school. Maybe because of starting out less than stellar I was having trouble over-looking the absolute awfulness of the story. I didn't even get to the second page before I was sick of the formulaic writing of the book. I know! That's what they're all about, but for whatever reason I just couldn't handle it last night. Ann M. Martin uses parentheses too much and always in the same spot. The narrating character says how she and her friends are part of this club called the Babysitters Club, or the BSC, and they in parentheses she goes-- (more about that later). She does it in every book. I think I was imagining reading the "more" part and knew that I could recite the function of the BSC in my sleep. I am surprised at myself. I never thought I'd see the day where I would get sick of these books.

I'm not sick of the characters though. It's like I said in my earlier post--I want to know what they are doing now. I found myself saying things like, "Oh please Kristy, you know Bart is your boyfriend and you totally want to bone," in my head while reading. I'm sure I'll push through Starring the Babysitters Club regardless of how terrible it is. I'll just skim it, like it's something I have to read for school.

I know the picture isn't from the book, but I thought is was funny.

Work it Out Workshop

I went to this writing workshop today. It was put on by VoiceCatcher, a journal I've been published in. I was a little worried that it would be lame--women just sitting around writing about their feelings. YACK! But it was really great and I wrote a lot and some of the other writing was really good. This is one of the pieces I wrote today--it was prompted by this poem:

Double Feature

by Theodore Roethke

With Buck still tied to the log, on comes the light.

Lovers disengage, move sheepishly toward the aisle

With mothers, sleep-heavy children, stale perfume, past the manager's smile

Out through the velvety chains to the cool air of night.

I dawdle with groups near the rickety pop-corn stand;

Dally at show windows, still reluctant to go;

I teeter, heels hooked on the curb, scrape a toe;

Or send off a car with vague lifts of a hand.

A wave of Time hangs motionless on this particular shore.

I notice a tree, arsenical gray in the light, or the slow

Wheels of stars, the Great Bear glittering colder than snow,

And remember there was something else I was hoping for.

This is what I wrote:

Double features frequently leave me feeling like I need more, like I was supposed to do more. All those hours in the dark, taking part in someone else's plotline. That's why we go to the movies, to put our lives on hold. They are a pause--they are what makes that wave of time hang motionless. And it's funny that it was suggested we write about something we haven't before. I just went to a double feature on Friday and told Paul as we looked out the second story window of the Hollywood Theater that sometimes I really, really missed working in a movie theater--the popcorn smell, the ice noises, the mechanical sound of soda being poured, the pure simplicity of my job. Tear a ticket, butter popcorn. It wasn't even hard to smile. Paul said he missed it, too. We were looking out on Sandy Blvd. and I asked, "Do you think that man down there is happy or sad?"

"He's in between." And he was exactly that but I said, "I think he is happy." Paul probably thought I was stupid or at least silly.

I got two boyfriends working at the movie theater. One was five years older than me, short, skinny, with a constant 5 o clock shadow. He had gaps between his teeth and later when I would talk about my time with him my brother would ask, "Why?" And I wouldn't have an answer.

The other was a mormon who was just breaking up with a Bolivian woman he'd met on his mission. He had full lips and a torso shaped like a V. When he would walk into the theater lobby my friend would nudge me and say, "Your boyfriend is hot." I thought I knew more than him and told him what beer to drink, and which shirt to wear and how much eye-liner to put on when he played a show. The idea that we wouldn't spend every waking second together shocked me and he spat, "You don't want a boyfriend, you want a puppy."

After him I stopped working at the movie theater--gave up my free movies and popcorn and soda. I have to deal with the small amount of jealousy I have for the girl in the box office who looks up from her book to ring up my ticket.

Old Friends

I just came across a blog that was all about how this gal is re-reading all the Babysitters Club books in chronological order. In chronological order of the publication date because it's impossible to read them in order according to the dates in the books. They start in seventh grade but then enter a time warp in which they never leave eighth grade. I think they do actually graduate from middle school when the series ends but I've never made it that far.

This blog that I found makes me think of a fews things, like:

1. I am always doing stuff like this, re-reading books from my childhood. Why didn't I ever write about it? July 2005 I read a Judy Blume book a day for the entire month. Sounds ripe for blogging about, but I didn't. I guess I'm just good at blogging about all the things I wish I would have blogged about.

2. Ann M. Martin, bless her, came out with a Babysitters Club prequel. I don't care about what those girls were doing before they joined the Babysitters Club. In fact, I know what they were doing; they were babysitting. They were babysitting all the time! They turned it into a business. I want to know about what happened after the Babysitters Club broke up because Kristy, Claudia, Stacy and Mary Anne all started high school and got concerned with other things. I can imagine Kristy and Mary Anne really fighting to keep the club together but Claudia and Stacy wanting to go to cool high school parties and drink and smoke cigarettes. Jessi and Mallory might as well be dead to them. They are in seventh grade and all the other members are in high school. Claudia and Stacy definitely smoke cigarettes. I bet they still smoke cigarettes (I think they would be about 36). That is if Stacy isn't dead--she does have diabetes. Oh, and Dawn! Dawn will definitely because a burn-out with dreadlocks. She's a total hippie!

3. So thinking of "Where Are They Now, Babysitters Club" just makes me think of "Ramona Quimby, Age 28" and how I really need to know what she is up to these days as well.

The Road is My Home

A few days ago I was following a UPS truck and they pulled over in front of Vernon Elementary school hitting the branches of a cherry tree in full bloom, causing the petals of the blossoms to fly through the air and to the ground, like confetti. It was the most beautiful thing I saw that day.

Today I've noticed the lilacs are blooming and was able to stop and smell some of them. Lilacs are my favorite flowers. We had trees of white, light purple, and dark purple in our backyard at Lafayette. We also had an apple tree, a pear tree, walnut trees, and grapes. There was a wood stove in the living room and a bowl of walnuts in their shells, shell cracker right by the bowl, was always placed next to it. In the backyard there was also a hole in the ground that was covered by a lid that would come open if you stepped on the handle. The lid was heavy and rusted. That hole scared me. It was where my dad put the dog poop he'd clean up before mowing the lawn. When I was seven our brittany spaniel had puppies and half of the litter died from Parvo. It was really sad, and after that I imagined that the hole had dead puppies in it and that we were always throwing poop on them.

When I was younger it seemed like grown-ups were always getting these odd obsessions or interests. I guess I did it when I was younger as well--when I was ten and eleven I really liked suns and then I really liked cows. Even though I stopped caring people were still buying me birthday cards with cows on them or t-shirts with a holstein print. My mom got into buying these tiny British cottages that she kept in a mirrored, lit, corner case in our dining room. My dad went through phases of being really interested in old coins. He had about 30 vintage fishing lures framed. My uncle would always come visit toting a catalogue with the latest gun or knife that he wanted to buy. He'd show me the picture, as if it meant anything to me, and tell me all the specs. He still does this really. Their interests always seemed odd to me, but I supposed my obsession with holsteins was pretty ridiculous. I feel like now I'm getting my first adult obsession--vintage travel trailers. I really want one. I spent over and hour researching them today. I don't even have a driveway to keep it in. I'm not sure what the draw is. I definitely have romantic notions of cross country road trips pulling something like that 1965 Terry trailer I have pictured, of living simply and owning little. I know my Terry trailer would sit untouched most of the time, and I would probably be too lazy to do whatever small amount of upkeep it required. Maybe when I grow up a little bit more--when I have a driveway. When I have more things to call my own I can buy something that lets me pretend that all I need is its 13 feet of living space. My life in a tin canned.

The Old Stuff

I started a blog in fall of 2004. It was required for a fiction class that I was taking. We were required to write in it everyday. So there is a lot of stuff there--some good, some bad. I continued to write in it sporadically over the next couple years then I just stopped pretending to care.

Here is a the address:

http://hoardingitforhome.blogspot.com/

It's the name of a Mates of State song.

I got a letter from Billy today. I've been hating everyone and everything lately and it was a real treat to get. He discussed the new Nicole Holofcener movie and how we should see it. He also asked if I liked country music. There was a period in my life when I liked Garth Brooks. I think I was fourteen. I like old country. It reminds me of my Grandma Oldham. She died, suddenly, when I was 20. When I came home for the funeral I remember playing the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack and crying. She played the fiddle and the mandolin. Whenever I hear either of those instruments I think of her.

Warning: the old blog, like this blog is riddled with typos. I hate proofreading.

I actually had a live journal account during this period in my life--when I was "off the map" as Billy put it. Dating a horrible guy and dealing with the death of my grandma. I don't remember the address, only that it had the word "pfiffig" in it, which means clever in German. I was also taking German at LA Vallley College at this time in my life.

LA

In LA I realize that I am capable of liking people and things. In LA the sun was shining and it was warm but breezy. I did a headstand in the front lawn of the observatory, making sure my legs were straight and my toes pointed. A hummer limo pulled up and a wedding party got out. Bride, groom, bridesmaids all there taking photos in the front lawn. In all the pictures we took of ourselves I have a double chin. My face doesn't look like my face, but instead like the face of someone who looks sort of like me, someone my friends would see and say, "That girl kind of looks like Kaite."

The day before our flight to LA I ritualize everything, everything I do is loaded with significance. This might be the last time I _____________. Hug Maebie, eat this food, kiss, hug, shit, shower, the last time I see my friends or talk to my family. When I am done teaching class I want to hug each one of the kids really hard but I don't. I wake up at four in the morning and my head buzzes with anxiety. I wish there was an off button, that I had an off button. On the plane I sit next to a man that is headed to LA on business. He's a psychologist. He's the one that makes defendants in court cases into humans. He interviews them and gives the reports to the judge so that they can be seen as a whole person, and not as whatever horrible crime they committed. We agreed on a lot of things: Meth is bad, Fire on the Mountain is good. He has a daughter that is older than me and he spoke at length about how much he disliked her boyfriend and told me to dump mine if he didn't get his act together in the next four years.

The day we are leaving LA I wake up feeling sick, like I'v inhaled too much smoke from the fire we made the night before. Breathing feels toxic and my head feels light and full of holes. I am doing the dishes, being a good house guest, when Sadie walks into the kitchen wearing bright pink pajama pants, a Devo t-shirt, hair-piled on top of her head and says, "Stop doing those," and then, "Um, the fire is still going."

"Like still smoking, " I ask.

"No, like flames. I'm in trouble."

I saw her spray the fire with water from the hose. I jumped up and moved away because it sent a plume of smoke into the air with force and determination.

Once the fire was out we ate chilaquiles then we drove all around the city saying goodbye to people. It didn't feel ceremonious though. I wasn't dwelling on the possibility of each thing being the last thing. Maybe because I was too tired from lack of sleep and rich food and smoke inhalation to really care, maybe I wanted it to be the last thing. I wanted to finally find the off switch.

Writing Everyday

I have an acquaintance who, whenever anyone says they are a writer, he says, "Oh, yeah, do you write everyday?" Like he's challenging you--which he is. He thinks that if you don't write everyday you're not a writer. I think it's a great idea to write everyday, but the questions is what? I write emails everyday. I write responses to instant messages. I write texts. I pretty sure my friend wouldn't classify me as a writer. The last time I talked to him I told him about going to grad school and writing and he said, "Oh yeah, do you write everyday?" even though he's asked me that three times before in the last few years. I told him that I don't write everyday but that I think about writing everyday. I don't just think about the act of it but I think about things to write about. I'm always thinking about things to write about, constantly, but it's the act of writing that is the hard part. Anne Lammott said that writing is just holding the lantern for your characters that are digging the hole. My characters are in the dark most of the time.

I think that I find my friend's question so annoying because he's not a writer. He makes no claim to be one, nor has he ever attempted to write anything since college, that I know of. I think he just doesn't get it. I mean, even if I wrote every single day, would I then be a writer? Even if I never published anything, ever? I think he asks the question because he knows people will say no. No, they don't write everyday, and then he's caught them, he's made them admit that they really aren't what they presume to be.

He's a real asshole.

Take offs and Landings

On my third day of SPRING BREAK Paterson and I drove down the Historic Columbia River Highway. We drove back into town on Marine Dr. and stopped outside the fence of the airport and watched planes take off and land. Seeing a plane on the horizon we would try and guess which airline it was. We were never right. I would guess Southwest and it was be obvious from before the planes were even near the runway it wasn't Southwest. They have grey planes. We weren't the only ones watching. A few trucks pulled up and men ate their lunches from Burger King while watching lift off and touch down.

I'm afraid of flying. I have been for about nine years. It's not a 9/11 thing. Although I have spun some crazy scenarios in my head about terrorists taking over planes. On one flight from Burbank to Portland there was a man who had boxes and boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. I was sure that he had poisoned them and was going to offer them to us or force us to eat them, we'd all die, or pass out and he would take over the plane. I know, it's a ridiculous plan that doesn't make sense. But I'm not scared of the terrorist stuff as much as I'm scared of the plane have some sort of mechanical error. I don't even like writing about it. But even with this fear I've alway had an attraction to airports. Not the inside, food court, Brookstone, souvenir part of them, but the runway part, the take off and landing part. I plan to take my lunch to this spot in the near future.

SPRING BREAK: DAY ONE

Since I work as a dance teacher my breaks are the same as the school breaks. This week happens to be SPRING BREAK. So, even thought I'm not in school I get the same excitement and recklessness that traditionally goes along with SPRING BREAK. I really shouldn't be excited about it. I am forced to take a week off and I don't get paid, yet the studio still charges the clients for that week. Dance teachers get a raw deal sometimes.

Every SPRING BREAK I come up with some goals that I want to accomplish during my time off. I usually aim too high. In my mind I was going to lock myself in my room and write a screenplay during this spring break, but I don't see that happening. So I decided to go not worry about goals and just sort of float along, day to day, and see what happens, realizing fully that this is what I kind of do all the time anyway.

So far today I have worked out and gone to see if I could get my glasses fixed. My glasses are 1960's style black frames. They broke last night when I accidentally used them to help myself get out of bed. I only paid $16.99 for the frames (actually Dane bought them for me for Christmas when I pointed them out in a shop at the mall), so it's not too surprising they broke easily. I paid nearly $200 to get the lenses put in though and I really don't want to have to buy new glasses. The new lady at the glasses shop suggested I go to the store at the mall and buy as many pairs of these frames as possible so I can just pop the lenses out of the broken pair and into a new pair whenever they break. Great Idea! So I went to Lloyd Center, not the mall where Dane bought me the frames but the closest mall to me and they have the same store, Lids. Aren't all malls basically the same? I think Lloyd Center has a little more character because of it's location.

For my birthday one year my dear friend Billy agreed to get his ear pierced. I got to pick the earring--I chose this little gold cross. We went to the Piercing Pagoda at the Lloyd Center. Billy was surprised that it hurt so much. I had a great photo of his face right as that gun was pushing the metal through his lobe. He let the hole close and I think he might hold it against me that I made him mutilate his body. While on this birthday trip I was riding the escalator, licking a cone of frozen yogurt when the young man behind me observed, "Damn! You are fucking that ice cream cone up!" I informed him that it wasn't ice cream, it was frozen yogurt. So, I always look forward to going to Lloyd Center because you just never know what it going to happen, though usually, nothing does.

The mall was more crowded than usually because it was the first day of SPRING BREAK. The ice was being cleaned and kids were eagerly awaiting to go in circles, around and around, on the rink. I went to the store where Dane purchased my glasses and they didn't have the frames. The sales attendant informed me that they might get some in a week, and that their store was the only Lids store to be getting them. I was pretty sure he was lying. There was a Dianetics booth set up that was advertising free stress tests. As I walked by on my way to Lids I noticed an old man sitting with a young man and nodding. I guess he was getting a stress test. A lady asked me if I wanted one and I thought about it and how it would be something fun to do on SPRING BREAK, but I didn't want to have to wiggle my way out of becoming a Scientologist. The stress test looked like they made you hold on to metal jump rope handles while a needles bounced up and down on a machine. Beyond the Dianetics booth there was a Pirate Store, a store that specifically sold things for looking like a pirate, and all the sales people were dressed like pirates. The mall is such a bizarre place, it's like visiting another world, a future world. I feel like if people from the past came back and walked around Lloyd Center they would be so baffled, speechless. On the way back by the Dianetics booth the old man was sitting, eating a sandwich and watching the kids skate. Another man was grabbing the metal handles and I heard him say, "This really works, huh?" On the way out of the mall I noticed there as a vending machine for Nestle's Quick. I thought, how strange, a chocolate milk vending machine. The future is a crazy place. Luckily, I get to go back there tonight because Paul and I are going to see a movie there. Lloyd Center twice in one day? Spring Break really does rule.

It's in the Cards

Before going to my reading yesterday Paterson and I got lunch at New Seasons. He said, "What if they tell you that I'm going to kill you?" I laughed and he said, "They might ask if you've seen the movie 'Sleeping with the Enemy.'"

I then thought wouldn't it be amazing that if instead of mythical creatures on cards, like "witch of the woods," "earth dragon," or "forgiveness fairy," they had tarot cards that had movies on them and depending on how the cards were drawn or laid out that is how your life was going to go.

So imagine Paterson was really going to kill me, during a "movie card" reading I might draw the "Sleeping with the Enemy" card. And my future would be told: I'd have to teach myself how to swim secretly to fake my own death only to be looking over my shoulder constantly and be crippled in terms of creating new relationships. And then I would kill Paterson, thus freeing myself. That's how the movie ends, right?

I just remembered that the one other time in my life I had a tarot reading was when I was living in LA. My ex-roommate did it. She was really into shit like that. She had this dresser she'd painted purple then stenciled suns and moons all over it. She had a mosquito netting over her bed, for style not function. Going into her room was like entering some kind of new age lair. She was always reading self-help books and she really loved tuna noodle casserole. When you read tarot cards you have to have a question you are asking so I asked what was going to happen on my impending road trip to Oregon. The cards said I was going to deflower a virgin. I didn't deflower a virgin but I did, while drunk, make out with a good male friend of mine. Between sloppy, drunk kisses I kept insisting, "It's in the cards. It's in the cards."

Earth Dragon

This post is the account of a tarot card reading. I went in thinking that tarot cards are the lamest of the lame and I left feeling basically the same way. But the only psychic I ever trusted moved to Hawaii and I wanted to see what a "clairvoyant" thought regarding my decision to go to grad school. And it gave me something to write about.

My reader's name was Logan. He wore a newsie style hat, a flannel shirt, and jeans. He turned his cell phone to silent as the reading began and I'm pretty sure he burped in the middle of it. Not that burping should make a difference. We all get a little gassy from time to time. He asked me what I wanted to know and I said, "Whether or not I should go to grad school." He said, "Go to grad school or do what?" I said, "Do what I am doing now, just keep doing what I'm doing now." He seemed confused; we got started.

He fanned out a deck of cards in front of me. The cards were big, like over-sized playing cards a child might use. He told me to pick one and I drew from the middle.

"Ah, the earth dragon," he said. Yes, he had a goatee but he didn't stroke it or anything. On the card there was a dragon, sitting in front of a cave. It looked more like a bearded dragon, like an actual lizard, than a Rhodesian Ridgeback from Harry Potter. "The earth dragon lives in a dark cave and protects and hoards treasure. What it means metaphorically is that you have a lot of treasure inside you and you hide it from the world."

He then drew cards from another deck and set them up in a pattern of two together. I can't remember what all of them were and what they represented. I think the first two represented where I am now and there was a card that showed "self-reflection," and then there were cards that showed where I was headed and what the energy behind it was. The cards that I remember most were the ones about hiding treasure and the one about being generous and giving the world my "treasure." During most of the reading the lady who runs the shop was on the phone and the walls were thin and you could hear everything she was saying. I could tell Logan was having a hard time coming up with what to say next.

I don't think I got anything thing out of this that I didn't already know. To make this decision, like any decision I need to be reflective, and to not listen to what others want me to do. He also said something about the marriage between my feminine self and my masculine self and becoming whole. It's easier to make decisions when you're whole. It was really just a whole lot of baloney. I don't think I would have felt the same if Eliza would have done my reading--there was something more honest about her, more specific and less vague.

Paterson pointed out that I dropped $20 for a fifteen minute reading yet I'm unwilling to spend $20,000 on an education.

Magic Touch

I was recently admitted to the MFA program at Portland State University. I took the recent publication of a story I wrote nearly three years ago as a sign that maybe I wasn't half bad at this writing thing, and did I really want to teach dance for the rest of my life? So pushed out three applications and nearly $500 in fees (the fee to apply for Hunter College in NY is $125. No, I didn't get in). After I my applications went floating out into the ether I started to second guess my thought process. Sure, I had a story published. Yes, that story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, but really, I hadn't finished anything more than an email in three years. When I found out I got into Portland State I was elated. That was my number one choice, mainly because I didn't want to leave Portland. I didn't want this whole grad school thing to disrupt my life too much. I like it here. I like my job and my friends and... my job. I feel lucky. I didn't want some back burner dream of someday completing a book-length work of fiction to interrupt the good thing I had going. After I found out they weren't going to give me any money I had to pause and really start to weigh the pros and cons. I talked to a poetry student who had recently finished the program. She said that she probably wouldn't have gone if she had to pay. She said that she as now applying to teach at various colleges in the Portland area and was also applying at New Seasons and Whole Foods. Then she flip flopped and said that it was a great education and if I could afford the debt it was worth going, then she said that there was someone important on the other line and she had to go. She'd put me in touch with a fiction MFA student. She hasn't yet. I talked to a professor I had while at USC. She didn't beat around the bush. She was like a hard-nosed detective in a noir movie, ready to sell it to me straight. Look here kid, it's a crazy world out there. It's ridiculously competitive she said. Not getting an assistantship does not mean I'm not a good writer. With an MFA you won't be teaching at the upper levels of continuing education. You'll be teaching at a community college or online to the wives of truckers in Oklahoma. She said that just getting into grad school was a feat and she thought I would regret not going, that my writing would benefit greatly. I would benefit greatly. Was twenty some thousand dollars really so much? I felt like I needed some guidance, but not from someone who knew me, or was a writer. I needed someone who was impartial and unbiased. I remembered a girl I'd met at a bar about a year ago. Her name was Eliza. She was an ayurvedic pulse reader. When I first saw her she was taking her friends pulse and saying things like, "yeah, I can see that clearing up for you," and "you're feeling way more open and creative." I asked her what she was doing and she said she'd show me. She took my left wrist and then started to rattle things off about me. I am allergic to sugar. If I have sugar it should only be fruit. I was feeling uneasy because I recently lost my job. I wasn't blown away by either of these revelations. It's common knowledge that sugar is terrible for you and in this economy it's pretty easy to guess that someone had recently lost a job. She and I talked about my sister a little bit and then she let go of my wrist. I asked her more about what she did and she would say that she just knew things, ever since she was little, and that we all had this capability but very few of use learn how to use it. She kept on saying, "You understand, you're an artist." But she never once asked me what I did for a living or even as a hobby. She said that when she was little she would cry all the time because she could feel the pain other's felt when their cats died. "It felt like cats where always dying," she said. "At that table over there," she nodded with her head, "someone's cat recently died. And there is a long triangle going on." Eliza can do it, I thought. She'll tell me what I'm supposed to do. So I dug out the card that she had given me and I put her number in my phone. I was nervous to call for some reason. I didn't want to do it when anyone was around. I didn't want anyone to know about it. I called four days after putting the number in my phone. She didn't answer and I left a message about how I'd met her in a bar and how I wanted another reading if possible. She called me back in less than five minutes. She'd moved to Hawaii. "Oh really, which island?" I asked. People who know Hawaii always ask questions like this. I was going to tell her that my sister, the one she said had chronic fatigue syndrome, had lived on Maui for eight short months. I didn't though. I just said good luck and she told me I was sweet for remembering her and to go to the place where she worked and to talk to Joan if I felt like I needed guidance. Guidance is exactly what I need, but it feels even stranger to go get a pulse reading from a stranger. But really that is what Eliza was--a stranger to me. So I'm back to square one. Should I go to grad school or not, with the added question--should I go to an ayurvedic pulse reader to tell me if I should go to grad school or not?