bikes europe hawaii india june 12th list photo theatre
by stacia
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arbitrary dates for self-reflection
in 2008, probably the best and worst year of my young life, i:
* held my dying cat kari, the heart of my heart, my companion of more than fifteen years, while she took her last breaths.
* visited friends and family in berkeley and san francisco.
* stage managed two shows for public playhouse (moonlight and magnolias and daughters), stage managed the “made in oregon” series and the promising playwrights at jaw this summer, and was on the backstage crew for a christmas carol at portland center stage.
* finally managed to sell my car, and lived off the proceeds for awhile.
* found a well of happiness within myself (somewhere in my belly).
* fell in love.
* biked over 230 miles in three days in april, from my doorstep in portland to my parents’ house in sammamish, washington.
* biked in provence with my dad and my brother.
* made plans to spend two months in india in the fall, which were later cancelled due to the angst mentioned below and other angst related to other bike vs. car collisions. it was a rough summer, what can i say?
* got hit by a pick-up truck while riding my bike, resulting in a broken collarbone, a busted knee, some post-traumatic anxiety crap, and a whole lot of angst.
* lived in the jungle in beautiful hippied-out puna, hawaii for a month, doing work-trade for my jungle-hut accommodations, swimming in the ocean, dancing, playing, and exploring.
* appreciated the hell out of my friends and family.
* read 35 novels, seven books of short stories, a couple dozen plays, four graphic novels, one biography, one book of poetry, two travel memoirs, four books that defy categorization, and nearly 70 zines of varying length and quality. i also started reading three books that i did not finish.
at the end of 2007, i answered the question “do you have any plans for 2008?” with simply this: “the future is full of possibilities!” 2009 approaches and, well, the future is still full of possibilities. just the way i like it.
here are my resolutions/revolutions/evolutions for 2009:
a. recently took these photos in goa:
new happy your to you!
there you are
today’s walk was towards pahoa.
on the way i talked a little about the reasons why i’m here in hawaii, instead of, say, india (i was supposed to leave tomorrow…), and the person i was walking with reminded me of john lennon’s words: “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
so there you go. and here i am.
it is the kind of beautiful here that requires superlative superlatives. the most beautifulest! (however, i have four mosquito bites on my right kneecap alone right now.)
we passed lava tree state park and wandered in.
lava flowed over and around trees, encasing them, and the trees rotted away, leaving the negative space around them.
kissing trees!:
also:
getting caught in the rain, embracing the rain, walking the wrong way, finding the right way, sweetbread, kind and gentle people, edible greens in the garden, two sweet cats…
oh and everything everything everything lives (reacts!):
art bikes hawaii india june 12th lit photo quoted theatre
by stacia
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looking up in looking down
i’m trying this again. my blog at log.whyiamnotdying.net gets about a bazillion spam comments a day lately, and i never felt totally myself writing there, which is probably why i mostly just posted a whole lot of photographs. plus, this seemed like the easiest way to upgrade to the new version of wordpress. i think i can write some stuff that’s suitable for public consumption without feeling stilted and weird if i just stop, i dunno, thinking about it too much. and i really would like to have a “travel” log ’cause life really is one hell of a journey these days. so here we go.
physically, i am pretty much healed from my june 12th injuries (when i was hit by a pick-up truck on my bike, resulting in a broken collarbone and some muscle damage in my right knee), though i’m still working on my strength and flexibility, and sleeping on my left side and carrying weight over my left shoulder are still uncomfortable. i also have a pretty ridiculous lump where the break was. emotionally… this too shall pass.
i’m not going to india as planned this fall/winter. i cancelled my plane tickets a couple of weeks ago. it’s not the right time for me, for several reasons, and i know it.
instead, i’m going to the big island of hawaii for a month to live and volunteer at an eco-hostel i found through the wwoof hawaii directory. for ages i’ve had this idea that wwoofing in hawaii is my “plan b” for when everything else went wrong. everything went a little bit wrong this summer, and so. i think it’s going to be pretty low-key for wwoofing, but that’s just as well for my healing body and mind. i am looking forward to being salty and sweaty. the place is called hedonisia and it’s about 4 miles from pahoa. i’m still trying to decide whether it’s worth the hassle and the extra cost to try to bring my bike with me.
in the meantime, i’m stage managing a show (2 weekends left in the run) and have some real employment lined up for when i get home from hawaii. i mean theatre employment–i mean they’re paying me! a more-than-symbolic amount! i am stagehanding during the holidays and then stage managing a show at a children’s theatre, which i am pretty excited about, most of the time. sometime last month i started getting all these indications that my efforts to establish myself in the theatre community here have begun to pay off… at the same time that i started to think about whether this kind of theatre work is really what i want to do with myself. i am so interested in running (or pedaling) off out of town all the time and sometimes i feel so very, very young and sometimes i feel like i oughta just grow up already.
too many tough goodbyes.
at least i am back on my beautiful bike.
there is a lot of hope in here somewhere.
lastly:
“The Man in Bogotá”
by Amy Hempel
The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge–though not, she threatens, for long.
I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.
I tell the woman about a man in Bogotá. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.
Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.
When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then–that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.
* * *
Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogotá. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.