Art of Seeking

The list of things to get done before 9 a.m. is growing, which expands the list of things to do tonight.

But I’m here anyway.

The moment I start to fret about things, I’ll panic, and I hate panicking. It’s a really awful feeling.

So I’m going to relax, eat some crackers, and try to remember where the hell any one of five or more pairs of toenail clippers have gotten to. I’ll worry about everything else in a minute. Or, I’ll have a glass of wine and settle into a book about native Bolivians dealing with an invasive species of anthropologists.

Everything feels weightless now, for some reason. I don’t know why, but I’m enjoying this fluffy cloud of invisible comfort while I can.

Maybe it’s an element of exhaustion that I’m tired of putting up with. It’s been a long summer of running around to the effect of wearing myself out without getting much done.

I’m getting a bit more done these days without feeling so exhausted. I guess I just got tired of being tired. I’ve slowed down a bit but I haven’t stopped doing everything I need to do. Well, a couple of things, and it’s probably going to hurt me, but I’m not quite sure what to do about those at this point.

Last week I had a feeling I should start up my old Art Of Seeking discussion group. It’s been on hiatus for about five years.

On Sunday, two people approached me and asked me to start it up again, and yesterday another person. Okay, Universe, Goddess, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Jesus, Rama, and/ or Ghost of Boudicca, I can take a hint.

The Art of Seeking is a spiritual discussion group. We talk about everything from dreams to Shintoism to what the hell Satan was doing with the witches in all those inquisition- era European woodcuts. We met bi- weekly for about three years, then once per month, then not at all. It just kind of fizzled.

So, I guess I’ll try it again, and see if it works out this time.

Until then, I guess I’ll get back to my reading.

It has been one of the longest weeks of my life.

It started off with Matt in the ER with the stomach flu from hell. He’d been writhing in pain for hours and ended up losing so much fluid that the danger of dehydration was severe.

The drive to the hospital was hell, getting someone’s attention was not fun, but relatively quick (especially compared to my recent ER experience- which is the main reason we went to a different hospital this time), we got him hooked up to an IV and got some anti nausea medicine in him. Eventually the doctor gave him something for the pain as well.

He took one day off from work. He still hasn’t fully recovered- then I came down with the damn bug.

Thankfully I still had some nausea pills left over from my appendectomy recovery that Matt reminded me I had. So I got the fatigue, the cramps, the horrific chills, and a lot of nausea that went away for the most part when I took the medicine, but my stomach still felt very weak and flipped around a bit.

I missed the first and second days of classes. I still felt like hell today but I went anyway.

The place is PACKED with freshmen in ridiculously tight jeans who like to stand around in the way and stare into space a lot (I’m guessing this is the effect of about two decades of corn syrup as a dietary staple). I don’t think it’s ever been so crowded.

Thanks to the learning disability that has me switching numbers around, I’d programmed my class at the wrong time and showed up an hour and a half early. I swore a lot, re- programmed my calendar, and went down to the language lab to practice my Spanish for a bit.

So, basically Matt and I have been like a crippled old couple all week. The two younger girls have started school, so schedules have all changed, so everyone has forgotten how to do chores again.

I’m bloody exhausted. Matt is even worse.

But tomorrow is the weekend (YAY!!), so tomorrow, we sleep the hell IN.

For now, I hear thunder again, and I hope I’m about to enjoy a storm.

“Sometimes, I think it’s a sin when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.” -Gordon Lightfoot

The wind scatters the leaves at my feet and sends its voice shouting through the protesting trees, until the voice of the wind and the voice of the trees are as one- a chorus of anxious confusion.

I wander along by the towering eucalyptus, lost in thought. I’ve collected several of the huge seeds from the sand by their exposed roots. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. I’ve never seen such huge trees before.

I wonder how long I can wander before someone comes looking for me, and I try to get as far away as I can.

The meadow grass is taller than I am. I get tired of pushing through it and walk again down the line of eucalyptus trees, wishing I could get to the wash down the embankment, but it’s been fenced off. I wish there was water in it. Water fascinates me.

I pick as many wildflowers as I can find. I’m not used to so many different kinds. I love the huge trees and the closeness of the grass, and how I can make tunnels through it.

But I miss the sky. The huge Coachella Valley desert sky with its cirrus clouds and sunsets over Big Bear that lasted forever. The thunderstorms in that sky with lightening that traveled on invisible threads inside clouds as big as planets.

I miss the space, the reddish sand between the sagebrush and brittlebush, the creosote bushes and their sticky leaves, the bitter gourd vines and their fruity scented orange blossoms.

I miss the smell of the desert after the rain.

I find a clearing in the meadow. In its center is an orange flower I’ve never seen before.

I let it be.

I think about some silly thing I’d heard about people running through fields like this and embracing, in movies that are supposed to be romantic.

I don’t get it. Especially with adults. All the adults I’d ever known were stiff and cold around each other, afraid to move the wrong way or say the wrong thing. Kind of like me, only they still hang out together and talk to each other, fearful every minute. Like me, only older and more bitter and never trying to escape it. Like me, except that they seemed to either be confused by me or hate me. Like me…

only my fear was so much greater.

I didn’t like being around people, no matter the stage of life. They looked at me like they were expecting me to say something stupid or do something wrong, waiting to jump at the chance to tell me how wrong or stupid or ugly or …whatever I was, or my clothes were, or my voice or words or teeth were.

Nothing particularly good, ever.

No, I didn’t like being around people. Not kids, not adults, not anyone.

Sometimes, I would make a friend. Things would be great for a while, then something would happen, and they’d start hating me like everyone else, only worse. Probably because not liking me made them more popular with everyone else.

So, I would wander off.

I would wander as far as I could, for as long as I could. I would play with rocks or dirt or leaves, make up stories in my mind with endless plots and details, all centered around me as somebody else. Someone with something about me that people liked.

I could daydream all day, until I was ripped away from the worlds in my mind by the necessity of going back to the church or the school or home for food or sleep or because someone was calling me. Sometimes I really didn’t hear them, or the bell, or anything but the thoughts in my head.

So I would go back, get laughed at or sneered at or something, and deal with it (usually with some kind of adverse reaction) until I could wander off again. Or take a nap.

I loved sleeping, when I could live in my dreams.

The high school principal at the continuation school I went to used to call me his favorite pessimist, and pessimist I’ve generally remained. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m usually right if I’m pessimistic, or if it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe a little of each.

But, my mode of pessimism is changing a bit. I am still disgusted by the ubiquitous nature of human stupidity, but I’ve listened to too many other pessimists for too long, and it’s gotten to be more than just depressing. Pessimism used to include some social critique and out- of- the- box thinking (e.g. George Carlin. Love that guy). Unfortunately, many of my fellow pessimists have degraded into a bunch of shock- jock types who are more about spewing vulgarities than actually putting any thought behind it. I don’t mind a bit of vulgarity- it’s a part of being human that can be a protest to institutionalization of thought- or even a result of it. But when people are vulgar just to be vulgar, I get bored.

Then, I started meeting people who actually give me hope for the human race. People whom I’m actually glad that they’ve procreated, or actually think it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Folks who aren’t just intelligent, but people willing to work their asses off to help make living on Earth not suck for the vast majority of people, like those in extreme poverty who are generally exploited by the rest of us (compared to these, I’m just another rich bastard). Three of my favorite professors spend a lot of time in Latin America, either directly helping these people to survive, or publishing work about the importance of their history and existence, or both. Every day, I see more students getting involved in their work- people with brains and consciences and motivation. This encourages me.

There are still too few compared (as I see it) to the overwhelming audiences of the plethora of influential whack- jobs of the world.

I recently sent a comment to t- shirt hell, on why I was unsubscribing. Their newsletter used to be hilarious and vulgar. But it became more and more vulgar, less and less intelligent, and I just lost interest.

I told them I appreciate their rampant exploitation of the first amendment, but now that I know there are people in the world who are sincerely working at making the world a better place, I’d rather listen to them. I fully expected a douchy reply, as I’d read their douchy responses to people in their newsletters for years.

Instead I got a personal email back saying they were sorry to see me go.

It almost kind of made me feel bad a little.

But not really, as I have plenty of reading to do which keeps my pessimism intact while giving me hope that someone actually gives enough of a shit to write about it. And the more I read from Knowlton, Bradford, and Klaus (et al), the more I read what they read, the more I would rather get involved with what they’re doing than sit around complaining about what fuck- wads seem to comprise the greater majority of the population.

The only downside of this attempt at looking up is the amount of reading, schooling, driving, and fund raising involved while attempting to run a household. I’ve been flossing my teeth at my desk.

Back to work- attempting to make life not suck, one person at a time, starting with me.

“Leslie’s parents have lost it,” Ana told me this morning. “They’re forcing her into psychotherapy for having a personality.”

I asked her what she meant.

Apparently, this 16 year old friend of Ana’s has very religious Mormon parents. She doesn’t want to be Mormon, so they decided “The World” was interfering with her decisions. They won’t let her watch the silliest of cartoons, or listen to any non- religious music, and they took all her black clothes away.

Sounds familiar… the same thing happened to me when I was a teenager, except that my parents are Christian and couldn’t afford psychotherapy for me. A friend of mine in high school went through something very similar with her father. He was a Zen Buddhist.

The funny thing is, it’s not all about religion, because the schools do it, too. They put you in categories for wearing different clothes or different hair or having a different lifestyle. It’s about conformity, and the fact that institutions such as churches and schools expect and enforce conformity for fear of what might happen if too many people start thinking critically. Conformity is more important to the institution than the  individual, but to make it important to the individual, they engage in humiliation tactics and, if that doesn’t work, they call you insane, stick you in a home for crazies, and drug you.

I’m grateful my parents couldn’t afford that kind of horror, as I’m sure my life would have ended up worse. I had a few friends in high school who were forced into that “counseling center” to the tune of $100 per day. Most came out in much worse shape than when they’d come in, with stories of hardly ever seeing the sun, being let out in the yard once per week and spending the rest of the time in a tiny white room with a slit with bars over it for a window, being forced to take medicines without being told what they were, and kids being humiliated in “group therapy” sessions.

My friend told me one day about a small 14 year old boy who had been told he was a serious drug addict and was going to be in jail for the rest of his life, because he’d been caught smoking a joint with some other kids. It was the first two drags off a joint he’d ever taken.

One person I knew talked about how the place “wasn’t so bad.” She’d become very sweet and normal on the surface, but very strange. She used racial slurs more casually than anyone I’d ever met, then she’d smile and talk about how pretty her shoes were. “That’s what you turn out like when you “succeed” in their program and graduate,” my friend told me. I suppressed a shudder.

These institutions scare parents into thinking their kids are going to hell or jail or just generally to a very bad place if they don’t look, dress, and act like they belong in their ideal of a social order. The parents freak out and do everything they can to “straighten” the kid out, because they love their kids and now have reason to fear for them. Or, the parents are so institutionalized that they pass judgment on anyone who doesn’t fit the ideal mold. “I was so embarrassed,” Leslie told me last week. “The guy working at the register at the store was gay and talking to me like girlfriends do- and my dad called him a faggot. Really loud.”

And they have her on medication.

I’ve done my best with my kids. They’re not perfect, by any means. They’re definitely not conformists, but they’re respectful and they care about people. Even the ones they’re made fun of for caring about, like the so- called “crazy cat lady” and her disabled son. They argue like any teenage girls and it gives me a headache, and they “forget” to do their chores a lot, but they’re not afraid to talk to me about issues they have or ask me questions.

Most importantly, they’re not afraid of being humiliated for being who they are.

I think that’s more important than wearing the “right” clothes or listening to the “right” music or hanging out with the “right” people. I just wish the scare tactics used by institutions weren’t so successful. I fear for Ana’s friend. I’ve seen this all before.

Fear- the world’s greatest marketing tool.

“We Are the Innocent- We Are the Damned” -Ronnie James Dio

I woke up with a cop shining a flashlight in my face. I blinked at him for a second then nudged Jay, who sat straight up.

As cops go, he was cool. He looked relieved. “In my line of work,” he told us, “you’re happy when you see something like this and it’s not a couple of bodies.” We’d had a hard time trying to find a place to sleep, given up, and crashed on a sidewalk in an alley behind a strip mall.

He asked my name. I gave him a fake one, but I told the truth about everything else. I was 15. Jay was 21, he wasn’t my boyfriend, just a buddy.

He didn’t arrest us, just told us we really needed to find another place to sleep for the night. We’d already been caught snoring in some lounge chairs by a hotel pool and been shooed off by an angry manager.

We went to a hotel lobby that looked deserted and crashed on the sofas. It took a whole fifteen minutes for them to find us and kick us out. We went to another hotel and I crashed on the vending room floor while Jay took a dip in the jacuzzi- and was caught by a female security guard, who was cool but kicked us out all the same. I was annoyed with him at that point. I’d been relatively comfortable crashed out between the soda machine and the coffee machine. He could have just gotten himself caught and came back to get me later instead of leading her to me as well, goddammit.

There was nowhere left to go. We ended up on the sidewalk right in front of the Hyatt, heads on our duffel bags, asleep again.

Although I was really fucking sick of being woken up, I didn’t mind so much this time as money was being waved in my face. “I just hate to see people living like this,” the yuppie said, and gave us ten bucks. Suddenly, we were wide awake. Money= food! Breakfast!

We found a lovely little cafe, ordered coffee, and enjoyed the comfortable atmosphere. The hostess/ owner was a charming middle aged woman with a soft voice and wavy gray hair.

I had a bear claw. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten in my life at that point, and to this day, I have a soft spot for bear claws.

As we walked across the brick street, something caught my eye. It was a five dollar bill. This day was shaping up nicely. We walked down the strip and were confronted by a jovial old man who decided to take us to McDonalds.

We had a lovely meal and a great conversation. Well, Jay yacked it up most of the time- I was much more absorbed in my egg mcMuffin sandwich (and yes, I still love those things). We said our goodbyes and were walking down the strip again when Jay decided to bum a smoke.

“Hey, man, you got a cigarette?”
“I got somethin’ better,” said the everyman, and handed him a joint.

He smoked it behind some tamarisk trees by a once- fancy 50’s shaped apartment complex.I tried to take a hit, but (laugh all you want) at that point I wasn’t very good at inhaling.

We spent the rest of the day walking about ten miles from west Palm Springs to the east side of Palm Desert. It was dark when we got to Nectar and Bailey’s.

Nectar was a sweet hippie girl who let us stay the night. We listened to Dio while the ultra- Christian Jay lamented that he loved those guys “way too much.” He was concerned about how Satanic Dio supposedly was- I wasn’t concerned at all.

Nectar gave me some small black hoop earrings since I’d been afraid of my piercings closing up. Jay got mad at me for asking. “That should be the least of your worries,” he said. Nectar and Bailey didn’t notice as they were making shroom tea and tending the healthy marijuana plant on the back porch.

“You don’t have to buy them, you can pick them on the golf courses,” Bailey said of the mushrooms. He showed Jay what to look for so he wouldn’t poison himself.

We made a day of it. I ended up carrying all Jay’s shit and muttering under my breath while he collected mushrooms from the endless green lawns.

We went to Jay’s girlfriend Sandy’s house where he cooked up his own shroom tea. Her friends were trying to convince her that I was bad news for their relationship. In fact, I wasn’t attracted to him at all- he was really fucking annoying for being such a good friend- and he’d talked about nothing but Sandy from the beginning. Nevertheless, she was freaked out and indecisive. She was still nice to me, though.

Unfortunately her dad was a cop, not a dumb one, and not a cool one. “you’re a bum, I don’t like you- and I have a feeling you’re a runaway,” he told Jay and I, respectively, after we’d spent the night. We fled.

We spent the following evening where we’d met, Jay and I, in Taquitz Canyon. We sat on the boulders listening to the water flow by, the wind in the trees, and the occasional frog.

Jay sipped his shroom tea. “Want some?”

I took a couple of gulps. It gave me a little buzz, but Jay was much more affected.

“It’s like there’s a little man inside my head going  ‘hummmmmmmm…’”

I slept soundly on my boulder, wearing all the clothes I owned. It was a little chilly for a Southern California spring.

I always look back on this time of my life wishing I could go back. Even if we had nothing but the clothes on our backs, I’d never felt so free, or so care- free, before or since. When you’ve stripped down to nothing but the bare elements, it’s amazing what you don’t have to think about any more. I could have lived on the streets like that forever, as long as I had Jay looking out for me. But I probably wouldn’t, always. I would have probably ended up on my own in a dangerous world (like I did about a year later in Canoga Park) if I hadn’t been caught and dragged home to my parents a couple of weeks later. Still, I remember that ultimate freedom and enjoy the memories. I miss Jay and his high- fives and cheesy humor.

“Wow,” he said to me one day, “My hair is getting heavy.” He sported a long, curly, very distinctive blond mop.

He paused, then said, “At least I’m not light- headed!” He laughed himself to tears and gave me a high- five. “That was a good one!”

Yeah, I miss that guy.

Damn, I was a fucking moron.

I know there’s something amiss
in what I cannot say.
It lurks in half- finished conversations and
half- lived dreams,
endless analogies and stifled yet ever- present fears.

I’m forever attempting to understand
the why and how of
what and who
all inside myself
…my soul begs for sleep.
My souls.
My arguing half- selves.
An endless conversation
and when they all manage to agree…

I know I’m in trouble.

Because that is when I am down to the last drop
at the bottom of the well.
The truth is clear, undeniable and formidable
in its barest element.

There’s little you can do when I get like this.
You can do no wrong, I can do no right.
I’m lost in the perfection of you,
seeing only what hurts in who I am.
The impossibilities strike me
like physical blows.

The perfection of you
is the sorrow of my soul.
For want of the beauty I see in you
my world crushes me from the inside…
and I am forever
forever
drowning in that element
that smallest, barest glimmer
of truth
The infinite space
in a subatomic universe that
I can only see from the outside.

I hold onto what little dignity I have left
in your beautiful light
and hope you will never notice my shadow.

…but still overwhelmed by the fact that I wasted my whole summer working my ass off for nothing but consequences for failing due to health reasons that are bound to complicate my entire autumn/ winter semester.

I started feeling better when a friend ended up with extra Primus/ Gogol Bordello tickets at the last minute and decided to give them to me. We only got to catch the last hour of the show, but I got some great pictures and had a lot of fun, and we got to meet Gogol Bordello’s violin player, Sergey Ryabtsev.

I have some beef with that venue, though.

“Not your typical beer- soaked venue,” says their facebook page. And they’re right. It’s a much bigger, fancier, prettier beer- soaked venue. Seriously, the floor was so sticky I nearly lost a shoe.

I found the males of the staff overzealous and rude. I will list every incident.

First, a man was smoking outside, and security yelled that he had to be behind the ropes to smoke. He apologized and went behind the ropes. Security said nothing to the other five or six people smoking outside the ropes, and did nothing when someone tossed a cigarette off the balcony and it nearly hit someone.

Second, my drunken friend was yelling down at me from the balcony. I yelled back at him to relax, and no one could understand what he was saying anyway. A huge security guard yelled at me, “We don’t need you provoking anyone up there! Get back by the building.” I would have liked to protest, but I know better than to piss off security.

Then, we saw security drag a geeky looking toothpick of a kid outside. “We know it was you! We were standing there watching it! We can SMELL it!” His wife, a slight thing in a cute dress, followed nervously.

While they fingerprinted him and eventually had him arrested, she talked to us. He’d taken one hit off a joint that was being passed around. He didn’t have anything on him.

It looked to me like security had jumped on the kid least likely to put up a fight. As the night went on, I saw a lot bigger, more threatening looking people smoking weed that security didn’t so much as blink at.

Once inside, I went upstairs to try to get a good view of the stage for pictures. All the tables were moved away from the rail except for one. I asked someone if we could move it, so a grand total of six more people could possibly get a better view. “We tried that,” he said, “but that guy stopped us.” A security guard was hogging the view, his arm on the table so no one could move it. Why?

So I noticed a few people standing on the stairs who had a pretty good view. I went over and snapped a couple of pictures- then a security guard yelled at me, “Up or down! You can’t stand on the stairs!” He said nothing to the three people standing right next to me, who stayed put unmolested.

The thing that really got to me the most was when I went to get a cup of water.

The first thing I’d noticed when we got inside was the heat. I’d been at a similar concert before that has the same stifling atmosphere. I’d gotten heat exhaustion to the point of vomiting, so I was going to do my best to stay hydrated here, knowing how dangerous it could be. So I went to the bar and asked for water.

“Three dollars.”

“For a cup of water?!”

He nodded. Having no real choice, I gave him the money. He got a bottle of Fuji water and dumped it in a plastic cup, spilling a quarter of it in the process.

Ok, venues, if you happen to read this: Heat exhaustion can lead to heat stroke, and is not uncommon at crowded concerts and events. Heat stroke can hospitalize and even kill people. Charging THREE DOLLARS FOR A PLASTIC CUP OF WATER at a venue such as this isn’t just unethical, dangerous, and stupid- it’s highway robbery.

Upstairs, a female bartender gave me water out of the tap for free. I told all my friends to get water upstairs.

A side note- three bucks is obviously a lot for 12 oz. of water, but I seriously resent this bullshit for another reason obvious to people who actually know me- I’m poor. Ridiculously poor. Three bucks is a Starbucks latte for you; it’s three bags of frozen fruit and vegetables at the dollar store for me. Or six squash in the fifty cent box at the Farmer’s market. Or two dozen eggs. If my friend hadn’t given us tickets, there was no way we would have even been able to get into this show, and I know plenty of people who were there who had spent every dime they had to get in to see Les Claypool and friends. If they’d had to pay for water, they would have ended up dehydrated or worse.

The music was incredible. The show was amazing. The crowd was cheerful and happy and courteous. Mostly. I can see the need for security to be strict, but these guys were just assholes.

They should take a lesson from their female counterparts at the same venue.

They were strict. They stood firm on policy, and I had no doubts about their ability to kick any ass that got out of line. But they were cool. They didn’t yell, they didn’t act like their jobs depended on being Nazis. They just did their jobs, and managed to remain assertive and even nice.

I think men can manage that, don’t you? A little less threatening, a little more sensible? Well, one would hope.

WARNING: RANT IN PROGRESS

No me conozco que hacer ahora. Soy muy cansada y muy triste. Soy fracaso.

So many people are counting on me. So many others, I can feel glaring at me even if they’re not here, condemning me for not struggling hard enough through things most of them have never experienced. Others I can practically feel laughing at me. Still, I have no real excuses. I’m just so tired of trying, failing, trying again, failing again…and I wonder, why keep hitting my head on the same brick wall that isn’t going anywhere?

I’d be perfectly content to poke around the house and in the garden for the rest of my life, canning things and cleaning things and sewing things and doing all that happy hokey domestic shit.

Or would I?

I would always resent not being able to live up to all the dreams I’ve been told I could accomplish if I would just “believe.”
But I believed, and it seems like so many lies. What is there to believe in? That I have what it takes to conform to a slew of standards set for people I can never relate to? That I can stand on my own and be strong and thrive in an environment that scares the living shit out of me? That I’m good enough and knowledgeable enough that people will actually respect and listen to me?

I think there are a grand total of eight of those. Maybe ten. And some for whom it really depends on their mood.

I’m exhausted and about to lose my mind. How much more do you want me to take before I crumble and erode away? Will you all be happy then?

I’m so tired of this facade. Look, people. I’m not a brilliant person. I’m definitely not that gorgeous. I’m poor, loopy, moody, strange, sloppy, disorganized, and sometimes needy. Especially when I’m stretched beyond what I can take.

All I really want to do is wander around the world, analyzing the living hell out of everything and taking pictures and doing other fun artistic stuff while wearing very comfortable funny- looking clothes, preferably without people constantly on my ass telling me who I should be. I want to understand histories and sciences and especially bioarcheology and osteology and attempt to reveal the stories of the dead. But that will never happen, because it takes a lot more money than I’ll ever have to be that kind of privileged nut.

Yes, I’m being a pessimist.

I’m tired of being hopeful and ending up disappointed because of things falling through due to me being either poor or extremely distracted. I’m tired of working my ass off just to be told that I’m not good enough or I don’t have the money or something fell through or I’m just not competitive enough. When I’m acknowledged at all.

I’m tired, I’m an emotional wreck, and I just want to forget the past three months.

Please, don’t send me inspirational quotes and pep talks. I’ve been hearing it for eight years, and I’ve yet to see how it helps. All my successes have not come from sayings on motivational posters and half- assed cheerleading. What few successes I can claim are simple acknowledgments of my abilities by people I respect and wish I could be like- specifically, my four favorite interchangeable professors. One stands out but I won’t say who.

They’re the only ones who really motivate me, and I haven’t seen any of them for months. Meanwhile I’m just getting more and more sick and tired.

RANT CONCLUDED. Don’t wake me.

I could walk for hours in the morning. I had nothing better to do, anyway. All the psychos I roomed with were sleeping through their hangovers, I had no school, no job, no money… pretty much nothing but the clothes on my back. Until Jenny showed up and gave me some of her old clothes and even some make- up.

One day Jenny came with me on my morning walk.

The morning in Canoga Park seemed lush to me considering the aridity of the desert I’d spent my entire life in. I’d only seen dew once before. The sky was dawning a periwinkle blue as we walked the miles to the more affluent areas.

I’d asked Jim for some rose cutters, and he actually found some for me. He’d also given me a yellow rose. It was the first flower anyone had ever given me. Too bad I, at 16, wasn’t interested in a depressed ex- biker fifteen years my senior.

I’d been nice anyway and thanked him.

I walked along, picking apricots and peaches from people’s trees, cutting roses when I’d find a bush full of them and figured one or two wouldn’t be missed.

Jenny was taller than me and could get to some of the better fruit.

It was a nice escape. Back “home,” there was an ancient can of beans in the cupboard and an onion in the bottom drawer in the fridge that had grown some long, healthy leaf- like things out of the top. This was the only breakfast we’d get except for the three disgusting Magna cigarettes Deeno had left for us on the coffee table while muttering under his breath about getting sick of us not putting out.

The leisurely walk took us temporarily away from the freaks in the apartment complex and the ones driving down the street, slowing down, and yelling “Ya workin?” even if I was wearing jeans and a t- shirt. They never bothered us when we walked together, or when I had Deeno’s axe with me.

A week later, we had a better- although temporary- alternative.

A bunch of Jenny’s relatives had gone out of the country for a funeral, leaving an empty, furnished apartment in a much nicer neighborhood. Her mom gave her fifty bucks, and we took the bus to the grocery store and got real food. We stayed in the tiny but clean and comfortable apartment for three days. We cooked and cleaned and relaxed while listening to metal on Pirate Radio (an actual station, not real pirate radio), and felt secure without creepy guys and crazy people around. Motley Crue’s “Don’t Go Away Mad” was frequently on the air.

Then we were caught.

They said they wouldn’t have minded if it had just been Jenny, but they really didn’t want that gringa (i.e. me) around. She was lectured in Spanish for a good hour while I nervously packed our stuff.

I was sent down the road in a gray denim skirt and a tank top carrying  all my worldly possessions (a small bag of clothes) in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other that a friend of Jenny’s had left behind. It was a ten mile walk from Reseda back to Canoga Park. I got lots of catcalls, some even from cute guys. But no one offered me a lift. The cops didn’t even stop me.

It was the last time I would see my Jenny.

On our morning walk, the sun hadn’t yet risen.

The Ballad of Jayne by L.A. Guns plays in my head whenever I think about that day.

I clipped a red rose and handed it to my friend. A huge, pink rose on an adjacent bush was ready to drop its petals.

They came off easily in my hands. I lifted them above my head, and let the petals rain down on me.

Jenny smiled. “I’m going to save that picture of you in my mind,” she said. “You’re like a sister to me.”

I miss my Jenny.