Explosions

Yesterday started as a great day. I woke up at 10, opening my eyes to the standard California blue sunny sky, and went and checked my email and then was just making quinoa with chicken apple sausage and broccoli and tomatoes when Justin staggered from the undergrowth and collapsed on the couch. He's been sick over the last few days; he got it from me.

I fed him lunch, and then we retired to bed, where I read him about seventeen chapters of "Practical Demonkeeping" and we ordered food delivered from the local food delivery place and they brought it to the gate and I went out and got it in my pajamas. And then I had to go to dance rehearsal.

I'm dancing with several different projects here in town, and none of them are bellydance related, which is kind of fun for me. The bellydance community here is pretty tightly knit, and there aren't a lot of troupes; twosomes and threesomes, yes, but no troupes. It's on my own or nothing, and I am uninspired to fight tooth and nail to claw my way into the public eye when I'm leaving in six months anyway.

So I went to dance rehearsal and was slightly hurt by a misunderstanding but still chipper, and on my drive home, I stopped at the 7-11 to pick up soda for Justin and realized I didn't have my wallet. "I must have left it at home," I mused. So I got home. Not there. Called the people who might still have been at rehearsal. Not there. But by the time they called me back, I realized I'd left it on the roof of my car after getting gas before rehearsal, and drove away.

I panicked. My credit card, my ATM card, my health insurance card, my driver's license, my irreplaceable student ID card, and, painfully, my Social Security card, which you're not supposed to carry around with you...all in the wallet. I called to cancel the credit card at about 7:45 to find that someone else had already called to report it lost at 7:15. Maybe that means I'll get it back, I hoped. But then realized I had to act like I wouldn't, so I had to replace everything anyway, and do all the things that you're supposed to do in case of identity theft, like notify the credit bureaus and all that jazz. The worst part really, is that I'm leaving in six months. The wallet could have held out another damn six months, and then I wouldn't have needed the cards in it anyway.

Then (thank you, PMS) I got painfully miserably angry with Justin for never washing the dishes. Which he doesn't. But I was pissed about it.

The downside of traveling is never feeling like you're at home anywhere. Although I've come to a rest here in California, it doesn't feel like my home; I feel like a temporary resident, which is why I don't have a California driver's license (well that, and I don't need one). This is my current mailing address, here in North Hollywood, but it's not where I live in my head, mostly also because I don't want to stay here.

The major problem, of course, is that the government does not look favorably on those who migrate, or even people who spend six months in one state and six months in another...where do we mail your checks? Where do you replace your driver's license? Where is your residence, your address, your home? Do you want where I'm living, or where my mail goes to? It's a series of questions, and life is not easy for a nomad, at least not here.

(On the other hand, I do live in an industrialized nation. I have loads of friends. My life is hardly difficult. But trying to figure out where you belong is more of an emotional hardship than a real, physical one. Trust me. I know. When RAID performed at the Echoplex on July 4th, in the two hours beforehand, I walked around Echo Park listening to the illegal fireworks go off everywhere and smelling the cordite floating in the air, and thinking how lucky we are in this country that it doesn't smell like this for more sinister reasons.)

Back in the saddle, naturally

So, it turns out, San Francisco is the best possible city to be going to if you are going to have some kind of car accident and rip the tires off your truck. Hypothetically speaking.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, much earlier than I was hoping to, I called AAA and they delivered to my door a flatbed tow truck driver who could have come from Central Casting if you requested a "sturdy, friendly young man who could star in a production of Oklahoma!" As it was, he held the door of his truck cab open for me, and we happily regaled each other with political discussion on the two block drive to the mechanic, who, since they were attached to a Shell station, I knew would be ass-raping me on the prices, but they were the only ones open. When we arrived, I unthinkingly hopped down from the cab to see driver Jaime standing there, arms akimbo.

"Oh, sorry," I said, and climbed back into the cab and shut the door, which he then promptly re-opened, and helped me down out of, using his hand as a stepping block. Then he manfully maneuvered the truck into place, tipped his hat and said, "No problem, little lady," and got on a horse and rode away. Not really, but that's what it felt like. Although, since it was San Francisco, he was more likely to have been starring in a revival of Brokeback Mountain, not Oklahoma!

Then Darcy and I went into the city to take Jill Parker's class, which, as it turned out, Jill Parker wasn't teaching. She was in the hospital. Then we took the BART back to Oakland, with my friend and local shit-disturber Burstein, and dropped Darcy at her Crucible classes, where she learned how to put out someone who has caught on fire ("Tip number 42: Spray them with water. Just a thought, really.").

Then we engaged in some tomfoolery of the Stuff White People Like variety; namely, we participated in a giant Oakland-wide game of tag/capture-the-flag/Red Rover. It was called Journey To The End Of The Night, although by the next day, everyone was calling it Journey To The End Of My Feet, because everyone had dislocated something or tripped on something or fallen into a rosebush or gotten blisters. As one friend pointed out, "My blisters have toes." Fortunately Darcy almost passed out from dehydration and famine before we'd gone too far, so we were spared the indignity of passing out, or being chased in front of a car, or tiptoeing through someone's backyard.

Instead, we ate Chinese food, and watched people flee by our window, to the consternation of uninvolved passers-by. Turns out, the truck was basically uninjured; except for needing new tires, which was an aforementioned ass-rape, it was completely driveable, so I picked it up (with Burstein), and then we completely left it in the wrong part of town during JTTEOTN and had to walk back it dragging poor gimpy Darcy, who hurt her leg, and in the company of some guy Burstein knew from Noisebridge. We looked drunk, but were actually just deeply, deeply amused, which probably amounts to the same thing. Then we went to Dorkbot's 7th anniversary party, where I realized just how jaded I am, when Darcy asked what a Tesla coil was, and I said, "They shoot like 50,000 volts of electricity and make lightning. But these probably won't be as cool as the ones I saw at Flipside, which actually played music and the Doctor Who theme song." When Tesla coils are boring, you've been going to Burning Man too long. Ditto snail shaped art car that shoots fire from antennae.

Sunday, we gave our souls to Five and Diamond in the Mission, and I realized why all SF belly dancers look the same: because Five and Diamond's stuff is really fracking cool. I escaped only having spent several hundred dollars. Then on Monday, I drove home, where I was instantly assaulted by having Lots Of Things To Do. And also with Being Poor.

The moral of the story is: do good deeds, and God will reward you by making sure you don't die when you drive off the side of the road, and you get to talk on your cellphone the entire drive home without a headset and not get caught by the very same CHP officers who were nice enough to let you sit in their (collective) patrol cars.

A day.

To begin with, I am fine.

Today, I was driving to Oakland to meet Darcy; Darcy has never been to California before. Not only that, she's never been this far West in the United States before, and I have been planning for months to drive up and meet her and hang around with her in Oakland, while she goes to fire eating classes. I've done this drive a zillion times; it's a straight shot up highway 5.

So I put an ad on Craigslist for a rideshare and picked her up after volunteering at the Center this morning, around 11:45, and we hit the road. She was a sweet girl with a head wrap and sunglasses, who said, "That's so crazy," every five minutes and spoke in detail about where she lived in San Francisco. Like, for hours. So it was sunny and the sky was blue and we were going through the really boring part of California, and it was just starting to get interesting again, about fifteen miles before the exit for 580, when I was like, "You know, that's weird, the car is kind of juddering."

I'd noticed some liquid leaking from under the car (which was not my car, but Justin's truck) before and wondered if it was leaking oil. I checked the oil. Not leaking oil. I checked the radiator, and then smelled whatever was leaking and realized it was water, probably from the air conditioner. I checked the tire pressure on all four tires, and put a little more air in each one (they were all low).

This was in Patterson, CA. Then we started driving abck on the highway again and I said, "That's funny, you feel that little catch in the car? It had that before, that's why we were shaking." And my rideshare said, "Yeah, that's weird."

And I thought We'll keep an eye on it, at least until about six minutes later when we blew a rear tire going 75 on highway 5.

I was in the right lane, and there was a car behind me, and a large truck coming up in the right hand lane, all a fair ways back, and a damn good thing they were too. I heard a loud noise and turned my head a little bit to go What the fuck? and suddenly the car started to fishtail. It skidded across the highway, weaving wildly across lanes, and I saw it heading for the center median and had a chance to think Holy fuck when I tried to steer into the spin the way they teach you to do in Canada if you're on ice and we spun in a wide circle across the highway, hit the side lip at a slight angle, spun backwards, rolled backwards down the hill, and came to a rest parallel to the highway, down a very steep embankment, near some attractive apricot trees.

We were both uninjured.

As I sat there trying to process what had happened, the first thing I did was make sure my rideshare was okay. She was. I was. I looked up and saw that two cars had stopped. There was a bearded man on the phone, shouting "Is everyone okay?" I nodded, dazed. A woman walked towards us, holding up two fingers. "What?" I said. "Only two passengers?" she shouted. "Yes!" I shouted back. "We're not hurt."

She drove away and the other guy stayed with us. He'd called California Highway Patrol, who had been, interestingly, chasing a motorcycle that was going 140 and weaving in and out; the same bearded guy was ON THE PHONE with CHP when he saw my tire blow and watched me hit the ditch. He must have just pressed 2 when it said "Do you want to report another incident?"

So the CHP officer showed up, and the nice bearded man took my rideshare to Berkeley. I waited in her patrol car, as she remarked, "I'm almost out of gas." The tow truck showed up. He didn't take AAA. We called another tow truck. He took 45 minutes to get there, in which time I switched officers. Then eventually that officer left me with ANOTHER officer, and we got a flatbed truck for the car, since the first AAA guy got my car up the embankment, but couldn't load it onto the dolly.

While I was sitting in third CHP officer's patrol car, he got a call to look out for a blue Mustang that had run someone off the road. We were waiting and waiting, and then suddenly I said, "Hey that's a blue car. And it's a Mustang!" and before we could tell the tow truck driver where we were going, we pulled out and hit the lights and pulled the blue Mustang over. It turned out to be a seventeen year old girl, who may or may not have been drunk. I watched the CHP officer give her a very stern talking to while I sat outside the McDonald's and wished I hadn't left my purse with the tow truck driver, because my stomach was starting to consume itself. I think I used every calorie in my body in panic.

Eventually, the truck showed up, I bought a hamburger, and they used my 100 mile AAA membership to haul me to Oakland, where they deposited me on Morley's doorstep, since no mechanics were open. The tow truck driver was super nice, and pointed out the remains of a brushfire on our drive up 580, and I remembered that the bearded guy had remarked "It's a good thing your catalytic converter didn't start the brush on fire!" as we stood on the side of the highway staring at the aftermath and I thought That was an option????

It could have been so much worse. If we'd hit the lip of the highway at a slightly different angle, we would have rolled the truck going over the side. As it was, we almost rolled when we slid down the embankment, but didn't. The truck has no body damage, although the rear driver's side tire, the one that blew, is dramatically untreaded, and it apparently popped the front passenger side wheel and did something to the front suspension, what with going over the edge of the highway. We didn't get hit by the semi behind us on the highway. We didn't hit anyone else while the car was out of control. Not only were we not killed, but we were not even injured in the slightest; not even whiplash.

The worst that happened to me was spending three hours sitting on the side of the road with CHP, waiting to tow my car. I got to Oakland about four hours later than I expected to. I have a place to stay and public transportation to get me around. I have friends who took care of me and texted me jokes and tried to help me in any way they could.

It could have been so much worse. I am so lucky.

As we were coming to a rocking, juddering landing in the ditch, the split second thought went through my head, "Of course we're okay." It never crossed my mind that we were going to die. Not once. And we didn't, through some miracle. Some people might think we were about to die, but the whole time I thought, "This is very bad, but how could we possibly die?" Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. But I thought we weren't going to die, and we didn't. Not a scratch.

It was only when I heard the fear in everyone else's voice that I realized this could have been a much bigger deal. We could have needed an ambulance. This post could have been made by Justin, and said something very different. You could have read about it in the papers.

But you didn't. You read about it here. Written by me. And now I'm going to sleep.

The sort of thing we do out here

The party I was at on Monday was the premiere party for a TV show my friend SuperKate is involved with. In no particular order, there were: a bouncy pirate ship, a guy on stilts, a fire eater/sword swallower, completely naked girls painted to look like they had tiny outfits on serving food, midgets painted exactly the same way doing the same thing, a Mexican guy with a monkey that was wearing a little mariachi outfit, a balloon twister who was making dirty balloons like strippers on poles and penises, a magician, a bellydancer (that we knew, naturally) with three snakes, a rollerskating chicken, karaoke, a roller rink, hot chicks giving out vodka, hot guys giving out water, blinky bracelets, and probably some famous people. There was also a head-on collision directly out front with fire trucks, police cars, and staggering people, which was PROBABLY not due to the party. I hope.

Also, this is very important: Justin Winokur's new album, "Leaving" is out on iTunes and CDBaby, for digital download only. It is good. Very very good. It sounds sort of like what would happen if you let Brian Wilson and Elliott Smith have a summertime pool party with a bunch of kindergarteners, as directed by Baz Luhrmann. It's poppy and rocky and zippy and sad and happy and introspective. He asked a bunch of his friends and family what songs they would want played at their funerals, and then wrote his own music based on the answers he got. It also has one of my favorite versions of "Don't Fence Me In" that I've ever heard, and the title song of the album, which he wrote for his friend Adam's mother, is so soft and sad and sweet that it always makes me tear up a little.

It's only ten bucks. If you like good music, and I'm sure that you do, please go buy it.

All that glitters is Hohoq

When I first told my friend S about Kripalu, which is a yoga retreat center in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, she burst out laughing and said, "Is it a coincidence that their name can also be pronounced Cripple-You?"  The idea of being jammed into Scorpion Pose by people at a place whose very name offers the risk of quadriplegia sounds like the kind of thing you DON'T want to pay several hundred dollars for.

A neat little rock cairn from a hike behind Kripalu.

And yet everybody does.  The place is always full of people swooshing around in their organic bamboo pants and their lululemon tops and their peaceful expressions, talking about crystals or wearing buttons that say "In Loving Silence", which as far as I can tell, means they're part of a meditation retreat and are taking it Very Seriously and means you shouldn't talk to them.

I think you can find spirituality everywhere, frankly, and although I think Kripalu is an excellent place to do it because it's neat and out in the woods, and the food is delicious and provided for you and there's three yoga classes a day (although one's at 6:30am) and there's ayurvedic massage and classes on Kundalini and chanting...I also think that I might have been just as happy swinging in the hammock with the volunteers I met.  One of them offered me really terrible organic gum, which is exactly how he presented it, and then we hung out in companionable chatter.  The breeze and the birds...so peaceful.  Hammocks are my sense of God.

Little deserted boathouse on the same hike.

Usually I don't like cities at all.  I hate them, actually.  Small cities are okay, but big ones like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles?  Hate.  And this may seem pointless, because I actually live in Los Angeles now, which seems like a unique form of self-loathing, but I like grass and real nature smells and birds and trees.  I like sounds that aren't man-made and not having to drive everywhere.

But last night Justin and I had a date.  We went to his friend Beth's art opening, and looked at her photography and ate all her cheese and crackers.  Then we had nowhere to go and the sun was warmly lighting all the buildings, so we just drove.  We drove past the alien palm trees stepping down off curbs, and through the condominium spires of Beverly Hills, where there is nature, because people can afford it.  Finally we tipped out at the ocean and parked in one of the Santa Monica parking structures, which are free for the first two hours.

We walked along the beach and the moon hung above us, and the pier was all lit up.  We ate in a restaurant that was like the fantasy of a boat, all dangling glowing glass globes (say that five times fast!) and criss-crossed bamboo ceilings and the bathroom sinks were copper bowls sitting in roughly-hewn wood and the waitresses were REALLY pretty.  And we walked along the Santa Monica Promenade and saw a dog skateboarding.  Justin said, "Did you see that?  That was amazing!"  And I shrugged and said, "If you've seen one skateboarding dog, you've seen them all."  And he said, "Have you seen a skateboarding dog before?"

And I said, "No."

Squid from the aquarium in Mystic, CT

We watched the sun set in the cloud city that could have been Hohoq, drifting out of the sky and populated by Thunderbirds.  I turned to Justin at one point and said, totally surprised, "Los Angeles is really pretty."  I don't usually think that, since I spend so much time hating it here.  But he just smiled his soft smile and said, "Yeah.  It is."

This morning

I crawled into the bed cave to kiss Justin on the cheek when I left for the counseling center I volunteer for, and he murmured, 'I don't sleep as well without you. You're my anchor."

There was a brief sleepy pause.

Then he said, "It's like you're dragging me down kicking and flailing into the briny depths."

Flying back to the South...west

Finally, back on Southwest.  

Inadvertently, I somehow booked my return flight from Hartford to arrive in LAX, which is the world's most hateful and difficult airport, except maybe Philadelphia.  As an aside, I have learned from numerous discussions with flight attendants over the many many years that I have been jetsetting from one corner of this country to another, that if a plane is late, it's coming from Philadelphia.  If it's got a mechanical problem, it probably came from Philadelphia.  If some airport somewhere is iced in with a bizarre snowstorm in July, it's Philadelphia.  If a wormhole to an alternate dimension ever opens and rends the fabric of space-time so badly that we are sucked into the dimensional vortex, it will occur on Runway 1 at Philadelphia.

So, after a short and uneventful flight from Hartford to Baltimore, I looked at the Departures board and was mildly alarmed to see that there were no flights for Burbank listed.  "That's weird," I thought, and dug out my boarding pass to see the dreaded LAX code on it.  This was literally the first I had noticed not having booked myself through Burbank.  It was a bit of a surprise.  Not only that, but the plane goes through Phoenix too, which actually means two stops on my way home, and then a hellish hour-long ride on stupid highway 405.  Not that I am bitter.  But Burbank is literally seven minutes from where I live.

The Southwest flight crew on long trips are invariably both immensely amusing and in excellent spirits; perhaps they all are passing around amyl nitrate back there in the galley.  But this flight, the male flight attendant, a very fetching, tall, handsome African-American man, called the cabin's attention to himself as we were boarding.  "We have a newlywed couple right here," he said, "and they're on their way to their honeymoon, and I was wondering if anyone with an empty seat next to them could switch elsewhere to let them sit together."

Someone did, so they cuddled into their seats, blonde and young and smiling.  The girl keeps stroking the boy's hand.  Very cute.  Then about two hours into the five hour flight (or maybe three, I don't know...long-distance flying gets vaguely tedious after a while and it all blends together after the Miracle of Flight passes), that same flight attendant coughed into the PA and introduced the blushing couple.

"Now, I'm going to go through the cabin and hand out napkins to everyone who's married, and ask you to write some advice for them, and then I'll collect those napkins and hand them back," he said.  The couple laughed nervously.  And after they sat down, hands shot up all over the cabin, looking for napkins.  I saw people writing industriously, and then the flight attendant held up a sheaf of collected napkins with writing all over them.  "These are all we got!" he said.  "They got lots of advice to read now.  Thanks for participating!"

The nice thing is that I'm sure he did that to keep everyone amused in the middle of the flight, when everyone is starting to get a bit tired of sitting down...but he also asked us to turn to our neighbor and sing the big purple dinosaur's "I love you, you love me..." friendship song as we taxied down the runway.  I suspect he's really just terribly outgoing.  This further underlines my desire to be a Southwest flight attendant.  Or at least marry one.  Or maybe all of them.