Day of the Dead

This is the fourth attempt at writing a blog post in the last week. Will it be the one that sticks? The one I actually publish? God, I hope so.

I'm not sure why, but I just can't wait for October to be over. Each time I've looked at the calendar for the past couple of weeks, I just can't believe it is still October. Not that I am wishing time away, nor is there some incredible thing to look forward to in November. I really don't know what it is, but I am delighted that today is October 31.

Unfortunately, today is Halloween. I used to love this holiday when I was a kid. Who didn't? You got to dress up, gets loads and loads of candy that you could trade with friends and eat for weeks. It was awesome. I'm not sure why (yet again! I seem to not know myself at all) but I've really lost my love for this holiday. I don't want to dress up, I don't want to go to a party, I don't want to have to deal with the dog barking hysterically every time a new group of kids comes to the door.

Pictured: My Halloween costume from 2003. It's an authentic sailor uniform. Unfortunately, showing up dressed like this to a Bremerton party is like going to a hoedown dressed as a cowboy. No one would even know I'm in costume.

My husband has not lost his joy for this holiday. Most years I deny him the thrill of getting dressed up and going out to parties to be goofy with friends. This year, he is twisting my arm very painfully behind my back to accompany him to a friend's party, one in which I will have to arrive disguised. And whether I were to wear a costume or not, I will know almost no one at this party.

Which leads us, really, to the heart of the problem. I hate going to parties where I don't know anyone. Why is this? I mean, the answer couldn't be more obvious - most of us prefer the familiarity of friends and friendly faces. A party of unknowns is just that - how will I know what kind of people they are, and are they kind people at all? It shouldn't really matter that much. I mean, either you'll make new friends or you won't. Either you'll enjoy yourself or you won't. It's only a few hours out of a lifetime, right?

I'm not sure this fourth attempt at a blog post is worth the space. If I could hold a thought in my head for more than five seconds, perhaps. But I seem to be meandering all over the page. I hope you'll forgive me and come back again sometime. Today I am lost in the Fall colors, overwhelmed with the task of finding a costume for tonight, and reveling in the fact that there are only a few more hours left in this month. Though, we set our clocks back an hour tonight, so there is an hour longer to endure than there should be. But soon it will be November and all we'll have to think about is mashed potatoes and turkey and dressing.

Dog Days

I am stunted. I've started, deleted and restarted at least three blog posts this week, only to hit a brick wall. Why is it so hard to find things to write about? I think my brain is in some kind of reboot cycle or something.

I realized, as I was sitting in the hot tub drooling over the latest Crate & Barrel catalog, that I've hardly even noticed the beautiful maples in my yard going through their Fall wardrobe change. I've had my nose to the grindstone and haven't looked up long enough to breathe. Enough already.

I took Buddy to the vet yesterday because he's had a somewhat persistent cough. They won't even let you bring your dog into the building if you say he has a cough. They immediately assume infectious disease and force you to either stay in your car, or in our case (since we always walk there) stand outside and wait for the vet tech and vet to visit you on the lawn. It was an awkward feeling, loitering outside the front door, being careful not to let Buddy near any of the other visiting dogs.

When I explained to the vet that Buddy's cough is limited to moments of excitement, she immediately started talking about something called tracheal collapse. Okay, so it is just me, or do vets always come up with the worst case scenario on the fly and within moments have you convinced that your dog has an untreatable genetic defect? He coughs three to four times a day for about five seconds and all of a sudden his trachea is collapsing? Sheesh.

Well, two hundred dollars later it looks like he has bronchitis. Rob and I are having to tag team the little 19-pounder to force the cough syrup into his mouth. We felt so bad for him last night he got to sleep on the bed. Lucky little bastard.

I guess I should be glad that the tracheal collapse did not pan out in the diagnosis. Now I just need to give Buddy some pills and keep him away from the cigarettes for awhile.

Give Peace a Chance

I've been reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, a journalist's perspective on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in light of how these events have affected the people of those countries. It is a heart-breaking, fascinating book that I think should be required reading for every American. Additionally, I've been catching up on the last several editions of Bill Moyer's weekly journal podcast. He has had some thought-provoking discussions on the war in Afghanistan with political players, as well as journalists who have spent time there covering the war.

It is a tricky thing to live in America and have an opinion about these two wars we are fighting. If you raise your voice against them, you are not supporting the troops. If you are supporting the troops, somehow that means you support war. But one of Moyer's guests made a comment that struck home with me - he said that Americans have a duty to not put our troops in harm's way without just cause. In other words, it is our moral duty to question the purpose, means and ends, of these wars we are fighting. What do we hope to accomplish? And what is the cost, not only to our country and people, but to those who live in those countries for which we are carrying the torch of democracy?

I remember sitting in my crappy little apartment back in 1991, banging away on my typewriter, writing about the Iraq conflict. I had friends over there. They had been sent over when it was still Desert Shield, and were still there when it morphed into Desert Storm. That was 18 years ago. And I feel just as powerless now as I did then. I feel like the only thing I can do is to continue to educate myself about what is happening there, about who the people are that live there, and hope that we can begin to not only imagine, but fiercely practice, tolerance and humility in this small little world of ours. Yes, there are fundamentalist terrorists. Some are in Pakistan and Afghanistan, yes, but some are right here in our own country, pounding on their Bibles and teaching their children to be God's warriors (for more on that, check out the movie Jesus Camp). But most of us are just run-of-the-mill folks with run-of-the-mill expectations for our lives. Given the choice, we'll take peace over war.

How do we choose peace?

Vampire Town

I wrote a song about the freak we met at the campground a few weeks ago. Here goes.

Sitting on his worn-in barstool
a quiet night in a vampire town
A long-haired dude named Hippy
talking about how he almost drowned
Johnny saw the sheriff out of the corner of his eye
Somehow he had a feeling he knew why

Come with us, son, the sheriff motioned
their way out the back door
Johnny knew everyone was watching
though his own eyes were on the floor
He shuffled out of sight while Hippy
let out a sigh, the coast was clear
the time was here to light up and get high

They took Johnny to the station
set him under a microscope of bright light
"Where did you take the girl?" they asked
But in his mind he wasn't right
"They took my gun in Texas," was all he
managed to say, but they kept him under those
hot lights until morning the next day

They couldn't get a confession, or even
prove he was insane
So they drove him back and dumped his
tired body in the rain
Johnny looked up and down the empty street
and decided to move on. Forks was no longer
a friendly place, it was a cold vampire town.

The death of imagination

Sixteen years ago I was sitting on a bench at the San Diego zoo with my friend John. "Do you know what killed the dinosaurs, Julie?" he asked me. I'm thinking a meteor, lack of food source, something obvious like that. "Lack of imagination!" John pronounced triumphantly. He was hot on the topic of imagination back then, probably feeling (and rightfully so) that he had an overabundance of it where others had so little.

I was reminded of that moment while watching the HBO miniseries John Adams this week. The brilliance of the Declaration of Independence is not only inspiring, it is awe-inducing when you stop to consider how revolutionary its ideas were in its time. The series got me thinking about all of the incredible leaps that have been made since then in industry, technology, medicine, etc. These thoughts swirled and bumped into each other in my brain until yesterday at 5:30 a.m., while waiting for my scooter to warm up, I considered, "What if all of the great ideas lie in the past?"

Could John, from 16 years ago, be right in that the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs for the very same reason? Are we doomed by our own complacency, our own comfort in what is easy and obvious? I mean, shit, I can't even figure out how to fix a leaky faucet, and yet there are people smooshing three gigabytes into a phone and analyzing your psyche based on your last ten thousand credit card purchases. Are there enough people still out there dedicated to the craft of imaging something that does not yet exist? Or perhaps seeing the connections, and the possibilities of connections, in what does exist and tying it all together to make something even more brilliant?

I just hope that whatever digs up our bones 60,000 years from now will stop to consider how great we could have been. Perhaps they too will make movies where they imagine bringing us back from the dead on a magical island, where we eventually rip them from limb to limb with our enormous teeth and breed without the benefit of a sperm in sight. Perhaps our future is bright, after all.