While the weather outside is frightful

Elric of Melnibone is often cited as a classic of the era and genre, 70’s sf&f pulp, but it’s not something I would gush over long about.  I appreciate the trope, conflicted warrior would-be-scholar prince must rescue his love from his nemesis and needs a magical object to do it.  But I’m in no hurry to finish the series, and the next time I pick up anything by Moorcock I think I should be stoned.

I knocked it out between last night and this afternoon,  during the commercials while watching Jackson’s Lord of the Rings on my mom’s cable.  Reading about the surreal nation of Melnibone and its race of jaded, heavily drugged sorcerers felt appropriate as I avoided the cold while watching this early snow that has hit the Texas panhandle.

And it is amusing that Elric was mostly a distraction during the commercials of a movie based on Tolkien’s trilogy.  Moorcock apparently held Tolkien in serious contempt, making all sorts of weird assertions about Tolkien avoiding serious questions, that he failed to make readers tackle heavier issues while promoting a middle class English bourgeois sentimentality.  But Elric had only one character in the entire book who was less than royalty, and he was a traitor who earned a pretty horrific death.

Anyways, I’m back in West Texas and it’s snowing.

Cherry whiskey moon (draft)

Along the Spit road towards the pink sunset I walked
north and westwards 
as the light dripped down
behind dark hills winking with village night lights.  

About a mile I walked until the road was dark. 

Halfway through whiskey and cherry soda
in my green nalgene,
I turned back towards black mountain shadows cutting into midnight
blue starless night as the red Moon eased herself up
just above one peak, only
to slide back behind the next westward point, as though
afraid of the dark ocean waters though waxing into her strength. 
I wove around crumbled brown
bits of kale and skeletal driftwood mounds
until she was gone and the whiskey was gone and the darkness
was just enough for sleep in the Alaskan summer night.

An epiphany by the sea

I have spent the last several days alternating between hiding from cold, unceasing, heavy rain and combing out my dreadlocks.  Between the cold nights, the fact that a shower costs at least seven dollars out on the Spit, the truck not starting for a couple of days, a certain health issue of mine flaring up, still broke and lacking adequate employment after being here a month, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

This sucks.

Next time I run off on an adventure like this, I either need to have an adequate sum of money saved up that can sustain me for a few months, or have a job with enough hours lined up before I get to said place.

I only learn things the hard way, and Jesus Christ do I pay for that.

Now I am facing a handful of options and I have to make a decision quick.  I’m waiting to hear back from the University of Fairbanks about the fall semester, and I just filled out a couple of applications online for some crap jobs up there.  Preferably, I would get hired at the Barnes & Noble.  I could go ahead and stay in Homer until September 20th, working as much on the dock during the week as I can, and with any luck have a measly $1500 saved up to leave AK on.  I have decided against blowing it on a trip down the west coast; I wouldn’t get very far and winter will be coming.  I could go back to Texas, get an apartment, find a job for a bit.  I don’t really want to spend the winter in Homer, but if I could just get a job in town and a place to stay it could still be a possibility.

Wherever I end up, I need to get back on my feet, work for a while and put some money back.

School is more of an occupational habit of mine these days than anything else; the only point in getting my degree would be to lock myself into a career in academia; if I am getting my bachelors, I am getting my Phd.  But academia disgusts me, and there is nothing actually preventing me from learning ancient Sumerian and jumping on the translation project now that it has been moved out of that basement in England onto the internet.  Or anything else I want to do, for that matter.

I am absolutely terrified of succeeding at anything.

A decade and a half of unfinished projects, dreams set on fire, and a pattern of self destructive behavior that raises its head at any point at which I might actually see something through.  I’m sorry, Shmoo.  It’s why I don’t write for a living, it’s why I left town last winter instead of digging in and putting up with the rest of the semester, it’s why I never fought hard enough to maintain control of old activism projects.  It’s tied into a twisted need to be perfect at everything instantly; if I am anything less, obviously I should not be doing it.  It’s psychotic and unrealistic, and I can blame my parents all I want for screwing me up, but no one can clean up the mess they made but me.

I’m only happy when I have some sort of cause to stand behind, something that can get me stirred up enough to hold onto the passion and drive I need to stay afloat emotionally.

That’s what I’m trying to figure out now.  I need to be an activist.  I need to be driven by outrage over social justice issues, chaining myself to trees, something.  Part of the twisted up bits of my personality necessitate that I be devoted to something outside myself, and I have been hoping (recently, searching) for years to find something worth that depth of passion and devotion.

The first time I left my hometown, I was tired of waiting for an intangible something to happen, so I made something happen.  While away the first time, I realized I was looking for that very something, but I still didn’t know what it was.  Now, on my second time in Alaska, after hours of communing with the cold ocean, lonely and fed up, I’ve finally figured out what I’m looking for.  I still haven’t found it, but it’s certainly a step.

So, what I’m facing now decision-wise is how best to go about getting back on my feet and making myself useful to the world, and then to figure out to what cause and task I may do the most good in the world.

It may not seem like much, but I feel far less lost than I have in years.

Wintry Summers of the North

It rings a strange note in my psyche to observe that today, the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, one of the major headline repetitions concerns a flooded toilet on the space station.

 The stars have begun to appear again in the brief hours of darkness, burning through the thick summer fog that silences the beach and feels in the surreality of extreme low tide to surely be hiding some terrible creature wakened in the warming Arctic waters and searching madly along ancient migration routes for remnants of a long-vanished world, driven to blood-lusting insanity by the slow realization of the depths of its loss.

The ravens refuse to deny these musings.

Today at my job I had to tell a pair of honey mooners that they could not go on the bear viewing flight tomorrow because the husband was too fat at 320 lbs.  It was the black cowboy hat, rather than the girth of his gut, that kept me from blushing over clasped hands as I calmly apologized and told them talk to their travel agent about getting back the $635 a piece that had been spent on the excursion.

Yesterday I got my Alaska food stamps card in, and now there is good cheese in my cooler, and salsa to put on my rice.  I’ve lost another pants size since landing in Anchorage last month.  But Food Bank Monday is no longer a priority.

The water in Kachemak Bay averages about 38 degrees, and wind gusts up off of it with enough force to send tents tumbling from the beach up the berm to the road.  Sometimes there is someone around who is not too drunk to do something about that.

I want to go to California for a bit, and perhaps go see the pyramids in Mexico.  It bothers me that my passport still has no stamps in it.

The Summer Solstice in Alaska

Time does not move in a straight line here.  It flows, eddies, gathers in pools, sprays up in a briny froth, breaks in a repetitive whoosh again, again, again upon black rock beaches, the chill of space seeping past the thin atmoshpere down into quietly threatening Artic depths.

Midnight, noon, dusk and dawn, these words are abandoned far to the south, replace dby long hours of sunlight broken in brief reprieve by the twilight.

The invisible Moon wrenches the sea away from dark stretches of sand and this is morning beaauce it is cold and the fires have died out and the sky is blue and brilliant.  Cold winds then race across the bay, skipping carelessly over our thin needle of land towards the mountains and glaciers in the east, and this is mid day beacuse the clouds have returned and the sand is a thinning strip.  The wind stops as the clouds drip down and break up, revealing blue sky agan and this is late afternoon because we go to the fish tables to watch tourists carve fillets out of salmon and halibut then push aside exposed bones and red or white flesh still full of that good fat which makes warm stew and the tastiest burgers.  Then the ocean is raging upon the rocks, flung back by the unseen Moon in a mess off roth and spray, the sun finally dipping behind the western mountains with a flourish of crimson and gold that never quite fades along the crest of the northern hills, the camp fires blaze while fish is fried and washed down with beer or whiskey until the twilight brightens and that is all of night once the tide starts to pull back again.

The Spit – Preface

Homer, Alaska, is a small town nestled up into green hills then spilling down to the cold black shores of Kachemak Bay, which cuts deep into the Kenai Peninsula, some 235 miles south of Anchorage. Five miles out into the bay reaches a thin finger of land crested by a two lane paved road, curving past rocky beaches and a treacherous low tide bog. As the land widens, buildings appear, lining the road with beach campgrounds, rv parks, gift shops, restaurants, art galleries, rooms for rent, and the offices of various boat or plane charter companies, until the road hooks around a full harbor populated by a jungle of masts, rigging, and boat cabins drifting on their moorings. This is The Spit.

Aside from the tourists, the beaches of the spit are populated by a veritable army of human odds and ends who work the dock, restaurants, gift shops and offices. They are difters, students, fishermen, punkss, hippies, adventurers, convicted felons, artists, musicians, writers, all seeking out those tales of great fortune to be found in the Last Frontier. These are the Spit Rats.

June Brevitas 1.1

I am in Homer, Alaska.  I will write a series of posts soon about the very long journey that brought me here.  I am exactly where I hoped to be a year ago and am almost completely caught up with myself.

The words one may use to describe the beauty of this place are but a soft breeze caressing  shadows cast by the light of experience and awe which utterly overcomes one’s mind, heart, and soul while breathing in cold salty air perfumed by mist and ancient ice fields that cling to the black tipped mountains carpeted in a green more glorious than the most precious of emeralds.

I am humbled before the glory of the Goddess.

Alaska 2009

My brain says it’s 3am.

The clock says it is 11pm.

The sun says it is about 8pm.

I want a halibut burger so bad but everything is closed for the night. I have to go get a new Alaska phone tomorrow, as Virgin Mobile has failed me. The International Hostel in down town Anchorage isn’t bad. Tomorrow I am also finding my way to Homer. All of these things mean that it is time for a serious nap. Also, I nearly cried when I saw the mountains around the bay still snow-capped and stepped outside the airport into a brisk 50-something degrees in the middle of June. The sea gulls still make the most horrifically annoying sound ever produced by a living thing in the history of the entire Universe.

Kerrville Folk Festival 2009

I popped awake just before seven this morning, surprised and confused to have beaten my alarm by over an hour and to not be suffocating on the stifling hot air that has driven me from bed every morning for two and a half weeks now. I looked up at the walls of my tent, noticed condensation and found myself wondering if it had rained last night. Then I remembered the raging storm and hanging out with K under a big canopy while we hid from the rain and chatted over the thunder and the guitar circle drinking their beer. We were close and touching after the darkness at the back of the old converted school bus while lightning and wind sang us a real song.

I sat up in my sleeping bag and discovered a glob of brownie mix on my freshly laundered pants; I remembered the brownies and the suppressed rage of our pirate chef at the pizza oven but could not recall how brownie batter had managed to crust and dry all over my knee. Across the road while eating brownies I remembered sighting a large number of the festival recycling crew, drunk and insane on the power of the store. And rum.

Rum? Recycling crew? Margaritas? Oh no… I ran my hands along the sides of my head and gasped.

There in a pile by the tent door was most of my hair. My four month old dread locks.

Hours and hours earlier at the bottom of the meadow we were all crowded around a picnic table in the shade, taking long pulls of clear Bacardi and dark Captain Morgan’s spiced rum while C prepared pitchers of some neon yellow concoction which bit the tongue in that way that Kool-Aid can not. The sun was still in the sky, there were at least ten of us, and we were completely blitzed. Innocent pretty little Alli had her face in her hands and was shaking her head slowly back and forth when she sat up to tell the empty air, “I… need a mohawk… I need a mohawk right now!” The group was lost deep in the hive mind of inebriated collectivity, and this was deemed a brilliant idea. We rose from the the picnic table like a tsunami thrust up from the open ocean by the deepest of earthquakes, and we fell upon the ranch in our quest for clippers. Up the hill and through the trees and around the tents then past the stage and back down the hill we raged laughing, pausing at recycling stations to sort beer bottles and cans into their proper containers. The recycling crew was drunk and on a mission; the ranch knew to be afraid. Somewhere out in the wilds the mission evolved, and Alli was no longer a sacrificial victim but the instigator of a ritual – the entire crew was getting shaved.

Then someone gave us clippers! Why would anyone do that?

We found our way back down to the center of the campground, racing against the sunset for beer and an open area. And the deed was done with lightning climbing over the hills in a steady rhythmic doom over the buzz of clippers eating away at identities and styles and stereotypes. No one tried to stop us, we were one with the storm.

So, having never cut my hair short, much less shaved it before, in my entire life, I woke up this morning with a red dread lock mohawk.

May Brevitas

Last weekend I was out in Denton, spending time with my good friend Lauren, and found myself developing a certain fondness for the town.  Small, hip, with live jazz to be found in every direction, I finally understand why so many of my friends have settled there.

Today I am sitting in my parents’ living room all the way out in Lubbock.  It is drizzly, gray, and cool, defying the harsh sun and near-100 degree temperatures that welcomed me home earlier in the week.  The new piercing through the inner shell of my right ear, a conch piercing, is sore and a bit itchy with healing.  It was a gift from my friend Ashley, a talented artist whether on paper or skin.

I leave for Kerrville and the QVC Ranch Monday morning to pitch in with pre-Fest preparations.  I’m excited, free food is always a good thing.

I have a plane ticket to Anchorage for June 10th, the Wednesday after the music festival ends.  I am still working out the details of what will happen when I get there, but I have amassed a healthy list of contacts in Homer, and if for some reason I do not get a coffee shop job right away (unlikely) there is always Safeway.

I started doing a bit of research over what to do with myself after September (I am planning to take classes over the Internet so that I can do a bit of traveling), and have a better idea of the options I am considering.  I am determined to use my passport before the year is out.

So, that’s a handful of goals and a lot of moving about in a short space of time.  Now if I could just focus on this damned novel.