November 5th

It's over, it's all over... the midterms I mean.

For the past thirty days straight, I have been plugged into the campaign machine turning out volunteers across the state of Montana. Yesterday at this time, 3 o'clock, I had called about four hundred members of the League of Conservation Voters to make sure they had voted. My googledoc list of committed LCV Volunteers would be a quick toggle away on my computer screen to make confirmation and follow up calls. Gmail a page tab behind, checking to see if I had any new messages from Washington, D.C., or Bozeman, Mt.

And now...

I'm just sitting at cafe drinking hot chocolate and waiting for an intern to meet me with the phone charger I lent him yesterday. Sitting around reminiscing. Thirty days ago I was cursing my damn ambitious spirit that lead me to take a job that would need such constant attention, non-stop rejection, a loss of pride and a lot of nerve. And today I miss it! I miss the call universe of strangers to reach out to, training volunteers to do the same, building relationships with them that would bring them back in to help out again. I was totally plugged in.

But now it's November 5th.

Our guys didn't get elected (another blog post, amen!), my coworkers are hung over, quite, depressed. They're either cleaning out the office or are at the ready for the Secretary of State to release the names of the twenty ballots that are being contested in Diane Sands state senatorial race -- she's only winning by 8 votes. The 8th vote happened right in front of me a few hours ago.

I got a call this afternoon from Laura, the Deputy Field Director for the Montana Democratic Party, asking if I wanted to help out with Diane's race. It had gone into recount and in every district that she would be representing, a handful of provisional, contested, and rejected ballots were being challenged. Those voters were being followed up with a call, maybe a voice mail, by the Secretary of State, Linda McCulloch, but nothing more. The ground organization for which I'm a part (in a strictly volunteer capacity because doing more while being paid by the League would be breaking the law) needed the names of those voters to do the manhunting needed to get them a new ballot before the 5:00 PM cut off time this evening. That meant a rapid amount of calling around to gumshoe for voters, and then doing a friendly interrogation to determine if we even wanted that person to recast their ballot! But first, Linda McCulloch would have to release their names.

Which she had refused to do. But not before some one in the campaign had learned of two people who's ballot were being contested. They were a ninety year old man in a nursing home across town and a young woman at work at REI (a recreational equipment store) at the time. An older gentleman associated with the campaign went to have a chat with an elderly man across town, and the head campaign organizer, Nick, brought back the young woman from where she had been at work. While chatting with Diane about their hopes for marriage equality legislation in Montana, this young woman's ballot and ID were being scanned in our office and sent to the court house. I saw it all. And I wished I could have stayed to help find voters should the lawyers get McCulloch to release the names. But my phone was dead and I wouldn't get the charger back from Parker until he could get out of class at 3 o'clock.
I went home, lugging all of my belongings from my now empty desk. For some reason, now home, I found myself in my favorite orange chair. Not a pressing matter needing my immediate attention. Not a coworker to commiserate with about non-stop campaigning or about an apathetic citizenry. My volunteers I would probably never talk to again, whether they liked it or not! No progress report requests from Laura in my inbox to guiltily ignore. I found I couldn't get back up. Instead, surrendering to November 5th, I closed my eyes for a little nap.

The Most Important Lesson My Mom Ever Taught Me

"Why do they hate us?"

I woke up this morning wondering where my family was. It was 10 am, and they've been trying to get to town by 9. For the past decade, my mother has set up a tent at the local farmers market on the weekend; she reads tarot for $10. Mom's weekend second job, she calls it, doubles as family day. Even the waitress at the local diner, and her mom, know that Saturday is our family day. 

A little about my family. I was raised Middle Class German Catholic American in the Bread Basket of the US, Iowa, by my father and his family until the age of fourteen. Summers were spent with my mom, a Native American and Hispanic woman, in the desert of New Mexico, just south of Albuquerque. 

At the age of fourteen, I choose to live with my mom. She had gotten remarried, and moved to Montana. Rural, Indian Reservation, Montana. There was a time when we had to leave the house at three AM to travel the hour, off the reservation, to the nearest town with a bustling farmers market in order to secure a vending spot.

That was a decade ago. Now, that market is just blocks away from where I've just moved into my own apartment. At ten AM, I get the text, "we're here, and I've already had a reading! Want breakfast?" My step dad and my most beloved little brother had left mom at market and gone to bring back McDonald's, another part of the Saturday ritual. By the time I'd arrived, they'd left her with the bag of breakfast and gone to The Break Espresso to wait out the rest of market. Finding mom alone, with out "The Men" as I call them, and with out a customer to read for, I sat down to eat breakfast with her at her table. 

"Sarah Reads Tarot" has gone through many renovations, but essentially a sense of privacy needs to be established, despite being in the bustling market. Draping from the sides of the canopy is some sort of long cloth, except at the front entrance where I had half heartedly draped a purple velvet cloth, at Mom's request, to block the sun. Sitting and eating now, it hung just low enough for me to notice a pair of knees in sport shorts with determination making their way towards our set up. 

A young man pushed back the purple cloth, but not in the middle as you would if you were seeking to approach mom for her mediumship, but more to the left hand corner. "Hey, can I ask you a favor? " She would later describe him as being beaten down by life, "he had a crooked nose like he'd been beaten up a lot."  He's obviously drunk. I focus on my sausage biscuit. "Are you guys Native? Can I ask you a favor?" 

"You can ask," my mom says, reassuringly.

"Can I have a dollar, I'm trying to get home?"

Mom laughs, "A dollar? All you need to get home is a dollar!?" 

"Yeah, that's the price for the bus. I'm Kootenia." He says, as though that explains it all.

"I'm Pueblo from New Mexico, nice to meet you," my mom says extending her hand across the table to shake his. 

"I'm trying to get up north, but I'm from Fort Belknap." I could see, at the mention of Fort Belknap the just the slightest, unintentional sign of redding in his eyes. My mom reaches into her box where she keeps her days earnings. After coffees for the family, there's only six dollars. 

"This is all I have. Good luck getting home, have a safe trip." 

"Thanks, thanks so much," He says. Then he moves around to the other side of mom's table, getting closer to her. "What do you have there, what's that," in reference to her crystals, eagle feather, and her tarot cards; the tools of her job that only the trusted handle. 

"Oh, I don't think you should touch my stuff," Mom says with clear hand gestures. 

"What are those," he asks with his finger only scant inches from the cards that no one touches but Mom. 

"You mean the Tarot Cards?" 

"Yeah, those. What do you do? I want a reading." 

Mom laughs a little, "no, I charge for readings and I just gave you money." Her hands wave gestures along with her next statement in order to help him understand.  "But come back when you can get a reading; have a good day." Mom and I stare at him. 

"Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, I'll be back." He turns away from us, down towards the row of canopies and is gone in the crowd. 

A decade ago, where the interstate Y's from Missoula to go up north to the reservation, Mom and I were about to reenter the interstate from the gas station there. A much older Native Man emerged from the decorative teepee the gas station had set up on its lot. He came to mom's window, "hey, can you spare some change?" She reached into the visor where she had just stashed some cash. "Here you go, good luck." "God bless." She rolled up her window, "Mom, you gave him a twenty! You had to give him a whole twenty!? That money couldn't go towards better things." "No. That man needs it a lot more than I do." You just can't argue with that logic. 

After the man left, mom and I sit in silence because I wanted to argue about the six bucks but I have learned better. It had been coffee change I early had joked I wasn't going to give back. When I did, she said, "don't worry, I'll spend it on you later anyway." Now that it was all gone, I felt a sense of betrayal, and the shame of knowing just how totally childish all of this was. Mom had the high moral ground here. I knew that enough to be ashamed at not fully understanding why. Which only increased my petulance and in turn my frustration with also wanting to honor the man, his struggle, my mom's generosity. 

"It's a part of something larger, something more karmic, don't you think, that he showed up?" I asked her. 

"Whenever I set up my tent, I always pray to The Universe 'please bring me people that I can help.' The Universe took me literally today. People that I can help with the cards." She says as if to clarify her request and the karmic significance. 

I shake my head, smile, "with readings," delicately emphasizing the profit aspect, and continued eating. More silence, and more building frustration. 

"It's karmic though," I say. "Here I was, just this morning, feeling all smug. I was watching The Daily Show before you guys got here. Jon Steward was interviewing a woman that had made a documentary about the struggles of people in small, rural towns. What he was saying is that we, as a society, assign a value judgement to those struggling with poverty. As though being poor is because they're immoral. So here I was feeling all righteous that I don't do that, but I'm angry with this man. Anyway, I guess they make good money, peddlers." 

"Does he look like he's making good money? Besides, you of all people know you can go do better things to make money."

More silence between us.

"Can I do that cause I'm Native. Just barge up to people and say, 'hey, are you Native, can I have a sandwich?'" 

Mom turns her head away from me in the direction the man had gone, "Fort Belknap is one of the poorest-"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry, that was a terrible thing to say." 

"-Most aweful reservations." 

"Yeah, I'm sorry, that was insensitive." I bow my head and wave my hand at her for more. "Okay, go ahead, I deserve the lecture." 

"I just did my make up, and I'm not going to mess it up." 

Oh my god, what land mine did I step on!? 

"Where that man comes from is so terrible. Where he comes from no one cares about him. Alcoholics, poverty. No one cares." Cry heaving, trying to keep it together, "If I can show him, with just that little bit, that some one cares about him --" She takes a moment to breath, collect herself. "I have  students from Fort Belknap -- there is so much poverty, they come to college with nothing, they don't have any one. No one cares about them. No one. They don't even want to graduate because they don't want to go home. That's terrible. That's how terrible it is there." 

I stare at her, trying to muster all my courage to open up to her message and to understand. There's an uncomfortable charge between us, and she makes a crack about her eyeliner. At that moment, one of Mom's regulars rides up to the canopy entrance on her bike. An older hippy with wild curly hair, and probably no bra. "I wasn't going to stop by today, but then your ex... husband...? Sam popped out right in front of me out of nowhere, and I thought, 'hm, I better go see her!'" 

"That's a sign for sure, I better go."

Four or five years ago, the topic of the days lecture in Counseling Theories in Context class was multicultural considerations. A young man, a graduate level student in counseling and the son of a woman I then considered a mentor, asked over an auditorium of students, "Why do they hate us," referring to all minorities, generally I guess. "No, really, why do they hate us?"

His question made me simultaneously angry and sympathetic. I'm sure I've held some version of the sentiment, as well as tried to answer it. Emphasis on tried. What I can say is that after this exchange with my mom, with such intense hurt lingering between us, I noticed a dramatic shift in my views towards the people around me. People probably much like the young man asking with such honest ignorance. In replace of him, specifically, were his ilk: those in yoga spaghetti shirts and capris, happily getting espresso with their in-laws, probably, and a baby in a stroller, oblivious of shame. Those healthy, contented people became insufferable to me, suddenly. You'll never know suffering. Where he comes from -- alcoholism, poverty -- no one has ever cared about him. Yet, I had just condemned him.

Maybe every one asks, Why do they hate us?

Cooking Without A Kitchen

A sink and fridge, a kitchen make?

The birth of personal pan Green Chili Enchilada's.

This is the adapted recipe of the authentic enchiladas of my Hispanic grandmother. Or my mom learned it on the streets of South Central Ave., Albuquerque. Either way, it's pretty darn "authentic." Here's how you know. It's way simple! I mean WAY simple.

However, calls for the extravagance of a stove and an oven. Four hundred and fifty dollars a month will get you an apartment downtown with your own bathroom, but not a stove. 

Stove Top Substitute

No worries, cooking still is going to happen!

Personal Pan Green Chili Enchilada's



If anyone has ever taught you the traditional way to make fry bread (that Native American stable) you know the recipe: "about this much flour to about this much lard." Use about that much chicken. You figure, it's going to go in about two cans of mixture, so, you know, one pound is too little, and two pounds is too much. Unless you're a big chicken fan...

Cook, then shred to your hearts content.

Make your chicken feel small, insecure. Belittle your chicken.

I like to cook the hell out of my chicken because I'm convinced it's otherwise a pink killer. Oh, I have so many superstitions about chicken... I'm not a rational person. Once the hell is cooked out of your chicken, add to it one can of Hatch Green Chili Enchilada Sauce, one can of Cream of Mushroom. Pepper to taste

Reassure with one can of Cream of Mushroom and one can Hatch Green Chili

Take that Mixture from "...um" to "Yum!" with Green Chilies

This is where the fun starts! Use the smallest baking tin sold at grocery stores, 6'' I belive. Cover the bottom in corn tortillas. I use one and one half small torts, I gotta cover those corners.

Divide into Excessively Exact Fourths

Tortilla Nest

Take one of those fourths and get it comfortable on those torts

Introduce it to a nice layer of Mexican Style Cheese

'Nother Layer of Torts, That'd be Two

Another Fourth under cheese

So Pretty

REALLY IMPORTANT!! Cover your beautiful baby enchilada with tinfoil before you break the laws of physics getting it into the toaster oven. If you don't you'll broil that top layer of cheese. Which is how I came to learn the difference between baking and broiling.  

broil¹/broil/

verb cook (meat or fish) by exposure to direct, intense radiant heat

TIN FOIL!

As for how long you cook it and at what temperature... eh... Well, looks like this time I choose 400 degrees for thirty minutes, give or take fifteen. Just get that cheese melted.

Here's the catch of that tin foil, though. You've been baking. 

bake/bāk/

verb cook (food) by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame or heat source, typically in an oven or on a hot surface.

Because we sheltered our cheese from direct exposure to heat with the foil (that never even gets hot to the touch, I think it's alien technology), there is no browning of the cheese and it will take it longer to melt. What I like to do is remove the tinfoil after thirty minutes of cooking and let the cheese become exposed to the heat, broil it.

The Only Fork I Own!

Dig in. Add sprouts if you're into that sorta thing :D

Makes Two! Repeat in other Pan.

Fire Smoke Hazed Nostalgia

Sun Rise over The (mis)Zoo(la)

I've heard some of the smoke is from fires in Canada, and some in Washington. I feel a little guilty saying this because of all the troubles wildfires and their smoke can bring to people (and let me tell you, last year while going door to door -- no, wait, two years ago now -- for the political campaign, I did not hold this sentiment); the constant smell of tree smoke is a comforting one. Sort of like how the smell of suntan lotion always takes me back to being a wee girl back in Iowa, my cousin and I spending countless days at the Flora Pool. (As a rule, I don't wear suntan lotion. I want my face to look like a raisin when I die. Oh, and I don't burn anyhow...)

And I can't even tell you what memory, exactly, this smells brings. Campfires, for sure.... and the time when campfires are prohibited so they, themselves, don't turn into wildfires. Days up at the "The Lake" (locals know the only lake you could be talking about is Flathead Lake.) Every year we have to spend one day, at least, up at Blue Bay. Sometimes, Sam even goes and cooks steak while we all swim (he's not an outdoorsy fellow, but the man loves his steak and his family. He's a Taurus, whattya want).

Little Guy and his Dog at Blue Bay

My Little Guy, the little bro, learned how to swim there. We've gone from dragging him out, kicking and screaming, because he was developing hypothermia (early summer that water is f-ing frigid), to him hugging tight on my back and freaking out of I took him too far out. Eventually, I'd pushing him off me and watch him frantically doggy paddle in place till he got scared and became attached to his big sister again. Now, I have to drop the Little from his name, and if I finally make good on my threats to push him off the dock, I know he'll live through it! (Lol, and in that time, Mom has gone from, "okay I'll swim, just let me get in at my own pace." That never happened, and turned into, "I'm going to sit at the shore line, just do not splash me." Now we're at, "I'll stay up the hill in the shade and start lunch.")
Maybe it's just the smell of swimming, I'm gunna go get me some Clark Fork in a minute...

And the smell of surprising free bus fares. The air quality gets so dangerously bad that the city busses become free. Always a nice surprise. I remember my first summer back to Montana from New Mexico, and living with the ol' high school chums. The smoke was so thick going outside that it hurt your eyes. Seems like you could hardly see to the end of the block. The whole upstairs in the house was inescapable from this smell. And, of course, all the windows were kept closed so it was fantastic, all hot and smokey and muggy. Funny the things ya remember, and maybe miss a little.
And the setting sun over Missoula, a perfect deep deep red circle against a gray-scale sky.

Lolo Pass highway, South West of Missoula

And last year, Travis going just that ten-twenty minute drive south to fight the fires in Lolo, stopping by Caras on his way. God, Caras was damn near unbearable there for a few weeks. Hotter than hell (people actual become delirious, it's true! I've seen it. Mighta even happened to me too!) and the place filled with smoke. Those poor greenhouse ladies were all sun burned and sweltering too. Shoot, summer's hard!

Here's to this being the worst of it this year. I've got to keep all of these here windows open in this apartment. Plus, my butt's got some swimming to do! Oh, and there's, like, lives and property to keep protected too...

Drawing Red Hearts

OH GOD I'M WRONG!!

Wasting Time on Sunday: Posh Nosh and 4th of July Ridiculousness

The Splendid Table, how long has this existed!? Sunday morning, alone, in my lonely little apartment (don't be fooled, I'm loving this!) I turn on public radio and found a fabulous cooking show with a host that is just so passionate about food. It's utterly delightful. It's on Public Media Radio Something or other, and at splendidtable.org.

It's very much like Posh Nosh, for your satirical pleasure:



Away from the high and refined sophistication. Now to another sort a cultural experience. Up in the mountains, along the highway, is a casino gas station called the Gray Wolf. There you'll find a little fireworks shop right around this time of year, there to entertain ya.

For years I've been hearing about an amazing fireworks show pre-4th of July holiday to kick off selling fireworks that are supposedly illegal to buy anywhere else but on the rez. This was the first year my family was able to take me up north with them, and it definitely delivered. The fireworks were SO MUCH FUN. Maybe because of the hackneyed danger of being parked along a major interstate.

But before the big show, to get every one in the mood and make some moolah, the organizers show off the smaller fireworks that they're selling with commentary that is so Down Home genuine it's hilarious and heartwarming.

I Think I Might Be Noah...

My favorite movie right now is The Fountain. There is an element of that movie that has me completely rapt. In my gut kind of grip that says, "look at this, this is important!" It is the spaceship.

I'm fascinated by it. It's a spaceship that holds The Tree of Life. All Life. Like the archetypal ark.
The portion of The Fountain in which there is a spaceship I regard as metaphor for the evolution of one's individual soul, resolving the struggle of itself as an individual, wanting, and not an individual, but a cosmic whole. In this scenario, the spaceship contains all life. It is a sphere that is completely self sustaining.

The Fountain, as well as it's spaceship, has me transfixed. A few days ago I became obsessed with this little dohinky:

"The Original EcoSphere is the world's first totally enclosed ecosystem - a complete, self-contained and self-sustaining miniature world encased in glass."

Maybe it's because this little sphere was created by NASA and sent into space, but I always see this in my mind's eye every time I see that spaceship. There are obvious parallels with the Earth, yada yada, but The Fountain is not a movie about the survival of the Earth. It's about Love. It's a Love story. Maybe even survival of or from Love. Love as catalyst for perpetual evolution. Love as the cycle of life and death for which we know no other game.

This EcoSphere, in my own psyche, is a Love story. In some spiritual traditions, the same Love that can be felt for another, one other, doesn't need to be so pin pointed. And neither the lover so transfixed. It can be distributed through out all of Life as well. Same Love, just spread far and wide. I offer that as one explanation for the pure, delicious mystery that is The Fountain.

Like my therapist says, "I can validate you all day long, but what's the point of believing this!?" Practically speaking... I don't know yet... I'll get back to you...

Gotta Start Some Where

This is one of my all time favorite TED talks. I have watched this SO many times that I have found myself saying, "don't be daunted. Just do your dance." The greatest love is showing up for your piece of it.



Elizabeth Gilbert was my Brene Brown before Brene Brown. Vulnerability, chump, if those names don't mean much to you.

This has to do with death, but I'll get to how eventually, one day; or everyday for the rest of the ones I got left. Dramatic today, aren't I?

Better Endings

Sometimes, epic tales need better conclusions.

Homer's Illiad, for instance. His heel, really!!? (yes, my ego is certified large enough to criticize Homer, no cause for alarm folks)

But what brings me here tonight is the ending to a story that really matters: Xena, Warrior Princess. The Xena ending is bad. Rob Tapert, buddy, you brought us The Bitter Suit, and I love you for it. Hell, you brought us Xena in the first place. But A Friend In Need really, frankly, just drops the ball. The story and the dialogue actually make me angry. Do you want that to be the way you leave your audience!? The only way to correct this mistake is a movie, Rob. I know Renee's abs aren't what they used to be, but I'll love um just the same.

Until Rob gets his act together, I simply must take matters into my own hands. It's just called for.

We'll do it as a two parter, just like it is, with the whole MOST EPIC VILLAN EVER!!! We're not going to complicate the story with Gabrielle-Mock-1, a Pre-Gabrielle love n' good doing source in Xena's life. There's Gabrielle and that's it, she's our love story. (WTF Rob, why would you make a love triangle in the last episode. You disappoint me).

MOST EPIC BATTLE EVER!!! CLOSE TO DEATH ACTION!!! Keep the mythical battle in the forest, and the fountain of strength smoochy smooch between our gal pals. Then with the forest fires, and sword in the gut o-faces. Quality!

That's the BEGINNING of Part 2.
Part 1 was all story build up about why THIS IS THE MOST EPIC VILLAN EVER; exciting but cliched. We leave um hanging at the end of Part 1. But we make swift, clean work of it at the top of Part 2. Keep um a little uncomfortable about pacing -- "what... she defeated the bad guy again? That's it? Most amazing warrior the world has ever known again, already!?... well now what?"

Part 2: Day In The Life Style. Xena has, again, proven that she is the most incredible warrior the world over. Now what? "I'm kinda thirsty, aren't you?" Day In The Life! Climb down from Mt. Fuji, get some saki with the locals, find a laundry, hotel, and a hot bath. We'll make cracks about Asian laundry's, Gabrielle will be all smug about "hearing the sounds behind the sounds" as she trips over a rock and gets a boo boo, and all Xena wants is that water. Just gooey, love sticky life. On to the next village.

Not enough closure; title character has to die, huh? Food poisoning. Taverns, how sanitary can they really be? I'm kidding, but not as much as you think. Let's marinade in the passing, having it be kind and slow, and oh so utterly simple. Then our Love Warriors can reflect with each other: joke, cry, really talk and hug it out until even the audience is screaming END! We'll Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings it: "END ALREADY!!"
That's how you do it Rob.
What do you think Xena?

Drums Beat a Rhythm, Let Villains Beware

After all these years...
It started when I was as a tiny lass, in front of my grandpa's partially wooden TV.

I was eight or nine, maybe even ten, but no older, when I started this journey. And on an ordinary Saturday twenty years later, over homemade biscuits and faux-sausage, a mystery held that entire time has be revealed. Its revelation is utterly satisfying. After such a long time, the mystery itself becomes comfortable, hardly thought of. But an odd shaped piece of puzzle I hardly understood to be missing has fit itself exactly as it should, and all feels right with the world.

Watch it again. You will experience the mystery, as you probably have before, but resigned to the power in the wonder. It sounds right, and it feels right even if it's incomprehensible. Never fear dear friends. The wonder, fantasy, and awe of the Bulgarian singers in the opening intro is not lost by knowing what they are actually saying.

But before I tell you exactly what that is, I must say that I am not comfortable simply revealing. It cheapens the magic of what I hold in great esteem and wonder. Maybe, one day, The Universe will think you, too, are mature enough to grasp the significance.

Or you hit the link: http://www.neatorama.com/2011/01/28/10-facts-you-might-not-know-about-xena-warrior-princess/#!VSUpf

Grass Taco

To call my dad health conscious is just not saying it. Breakfast was a pile of vitamins and a pickled haring. And then for reasons much too complicated for the scope of good eatin' to explain, I spent a decade eating less than awesome. All that healthy food early on did set a bench marker for how good the whole system feels when the intake is high quality.

Today's dilemma is that I only have a microwave to cook with. My options are foods that are either super processed and bad (we're talkin your Hotpockets, etc), or raw.

Raw's, actually, taking the cake. Here's my favorite dish, super easy. I call it the grass taco. (And the name is all I can take credit for. Original recipe in Natalia Rose's "Raw Food Detox Diet.")

Cabbage, Dijon Mustard, Avocado

Cilantro, Chopped

Lay Cilantro on the Avocado, Fold, Eat Over a Sink

It tastes good, I promise... but then again, that's what dad used to say... NNNNNNOOOOO!

A Round, Deep Dish

You're looking at my "kitchen" window. That's a tiny bowl of water in a bonsai in the fore of the trees and office building across the street. It's a practice I read about in Rachel Naomi Remen's book "My Grandfather's Blessings." Her book is a collection of stories from her life as the granddaughter of an Orthodox Russian Rabbi, a medical doctor, a counselor for people fighting and dying of cancer, and as a visionary in the medical establishment. These stories are inspiring, and Remen is my professional lighthouse.

Her story titled "Breathing in and Breathing out," from My Grandfather's Blessings (correct english punctuation, always a mystery...) reproduced here with out permission....

"I begin and end every day with a very old ritual that was taught to me by a gentle elderly woman who is a Tibetan nun. Each morning, the first thing after awakening, you take a small empty bowl that you keep for this purpose and fill it slowly to the brim from a source of running water. Doubtless, the originators of this ritual had in mind some high mountain stream. I use my kitchen faucet, turning it on and letting it run for a while before passing my little bowl through the water to fill it completely.
As the bowl fills, you reflect on the particulars of your life, whatever they are. The people with whom you share your time, your state of health, whatever problems you face, what skills and strengths you have, your disappointments and successes, your worries, your personal gifts, your personal limitations, your home, all your possessions, your losses, you history as a human being. As the bowl fills, your receive your life openheartedly and unconditionally as your portion. Walking very slowly so as not to spill a drop out of the brimming bowl, you take it to a private place in your home, perhaps a personal altar, and place it there, dedicating all that it contains to the service of life. Leaving the full bowl in this place, you begin your day.
I find that this practice has been profoundly healing to me. The thought that all things can be used equally to befriend life seems to soften the edges of things, to break down the boundaries between one's sorrows and one's joys, one's wounds and one's strengths. They may be of equal value in serving life. Perhaps it is through such consecration that all things will ultimately reveal their true value and meaning.
Each evening, the last thing before going to sleep, you take the bowl outside and empty the water out onto the earth. Then you place the empty bowl upside down in its special place in your home, turn out your light, and rest. Perhaps this cycle of openheartedly taking on whatever one has been given, using it all to serve the life around you, then letting it go completely refers as much to the wisdom of living a lifetime as it does to the wisdom of living each day."

Studio Process

It's all a process yo. Everyday, just another series of actions taken to achieve a particular end. Day in, day out, passes of effort. A whole lifetime crafted by repeated construction. Romes, relationships, art, good food -- just everything that matters in life.
Oh, I'm sorry, all I'm blogging about is my studio apartment. But that, too, is process. I have nothing. Not even a plate. My fork and spoon are from a camping trip I took, like ten years ago; there's a knife that comes off the handle of the spoon. If not for the microwave, I'd be eating nothing but gram crackers (not true, but that's another blog).
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, process. It'll come together. Slowly, but surely. As paychecks come in, the weather warms up and garage sales sprout, it'll come together.

Pert Near All I Own

Pert Near All I Own in an Apartment

Hey, there's a crisper full of veg I'll have you know!

The Virgin Looks On

Buildings

Maybe it's not that big of a deal. Feels like a big deal. I've moved. Into my own place. Me, alone. My life crammed into one room (would that I had enough life to fill it), second story corner studio in the epicenter of the heart of this college town. Okay, this isn't a Madison, Wisconsin -- same feel, teeny tiny scale.

There she be, completely empty. Could be anybody's. And while this is by no means a final destination, there is a sense of conclusion in moving here. So, for my own happy reverie, I'm looking back at the places I've hung my hat.

2007, 123 W. Kent with the old chums from high school who put me up in their sketch basement hole for those two months before my freshman year of college. Considering I made the arrangements from San Francisco the day before I was going to be stranded in Missoula, I am grateful they gave me the room. Joe, Tyler, Brandon, all those guys are great. But the sayonara was swift. Packed all my belongings in a monster duffle (from when I played volleyball. It was blue, emblemed with an angry bulldog crushing a volleyball in its jaws, and only three legs...), and lugged it the half mile to my dorm room, Duniway Hall. The plastic where the strap met the bag squeaked the whole trek, and I'm surprised it didn't break.  

So then there was Duniway Hall, and there's a lot of good memories there, but lets soldier on. 

One year later I was bound for New Zealand glory, and that was an incredible trip I am so fortunate to have been a part of. Duniway was abandoned for the month pre-trip. My old friend Steph was gracious enough to rent me her floor in the second story studio over looking Hellgate High. Literally, a 6'x2' portion of floor. Then I came back and spent another couple months there. Good times. We drove each other nuts.  

She moved (I might have gotten her evicted, but who remembers anymore) to the North side, and me to the University District under The Groves, the family on North Ave. Five years I lived in their basement. First with the incredible bad ass that had gaged my ears just a year before down at Painless Steel, and then with a really nice pharmacy major from Alaska. You want names? If only I could remember them! Anna and ... hold on... not Bret... Not Mike, that would be every roommate after... Holy Ghod!

Five years in a lesson on boundaries. Slow learner, and I'm still in lesson. So me and What's-His-Name (I'm convincing myself it was Ian... pretty sure...) shipped out at the same time, but not together, to the Riverfront area of town. 

Thanks to the application to rent this studio I'm in now, I know that I was at the Riverfront with Mike, Badhu, and Nahlie (his huskies) for one year and a half. No defamation intended, living with an elementary school teacher as an adult has spun my view of my own childhood teachers on a top. My neighbors, JJ and Adam, taught me about the ways of New York City, extreme sports, and never being too old for nothin. Hope they're all doing great, dispersed around this state though they are now. 

There was that stint for a month with my mom. We eventually got on each other's nerves, but if not for that move, we wouldn't have seen the UFO during the hour and a half trip up north. And I'm really thankful she was there to save my butt. Thanks Ma! We saw a UFO!!!!

(Let me explain. While I had been packing that week, I might have, occasionally, watched some "Fact or Facked," hense the "all week" comment. Watch in the highest, best possible video quality to really see the lights)

Mr. Huberman, how I love him. December, while frantically trying to find an alternative to living with my mom, I came to the second to last house of a corner of this town. I was there, but the guy I was to rent from, Mr. Huberman, wasn't. The woman moving out obliged to show me the place. January sent me to Pablo, Mt, and Salish Kootenia College. Maybe it was the last week in January, I sent out a mass email and text for appointments to see rooms. All day I went from place to place disappointed but desperate. That night, mom and I are about to drive out of Missoula, pouring rain, and I get a call. "You've already seen the place. I think you should move in." Mr. Huberman! Because The Universe is squirrelly, he found himself still looking for a roommate a month later, and I was his eleventh-hour hope. For my part I had sent him a viewing request having completely deleted all of his contact information the previous month and not recognized the room listing. I met him that night at his friends house just to get to know my new roommate. 

  

The second to last house on Maurice with artists and hippies. I will really miss that place, and I will really miss Mike. He made that place art and beauty. Not that it was hard, it was begging for such care. But it was also begging for crowds to entertain, and it eventually got that as well, which was my cue.

The process of giving my 30 days, getting out of my lease, replacing a renter for my room, finding and applying at a new place, getting rent and deposit together, packing, final cleaning, and relocating was accomplished in one week. One week! And there's a lot of people I have to thank for all of their help to make that possible. My padre who totally came through, Sam for efforts far beyond just simply providing the truck (at midnight... in the bar district.... being totally dry himself, and having spent the entire day wrangling car trouble), Mom's wisdom and means, Coe's eternal support and patience, Calvin and Mike for their good natures.