Petrin Hill Blossoms on My Mind

What to say? I am sitting indoors, away from the thick clumps of air outside, and wondering about how time can go by so fast, and yet, sometimes lay out in front of you like the endless highway across the abandoned state of Nevada. Lately I have not felt as though life is moving quite as I want it to. This isn't to say it's moving slowly, because frankly, with the way work pummels me I can barely take a breath. No.....it is something more. I wonder how long I can stay in Austin and still love it the way I am certain it deserves. The weather, surely, is enough to break even the most cushioned of spirits right now, but it's more than that. There is no escape here, from the city that is. Everywhere I go there is concrete, or if I do escape it, I know that I am in a patch of trees that only tease me momentarily before yet another stretch of gray is revealed.

I feel as though all the people here are the same, and I grow antsy. I want something very very different. I want to get some epic tropical disease again and wonder, will I need a blood transfusion on a dirty Thai hospital bed? OK, maybe I don't want that exactly, but I do feel as though things are mundane. During the week, I work 12 hour days and come home and feel very similar to one of those large manatees who lives in one of the most beautiful oceans but can barely move fast enough to catch a floating piece of seaweed. Then, Wednesdays come and I am more exhausted than ever and I force myself to get into the car and make my way to kickball and GASP, socialize with people other than those in education! Finally, Friday sneaks up with a spurt of euphoric confetti and I am zonked by midnight from the joy of it all. It isn't really until Sunday that I have chiseled away the plaque from the rest of the week and start remembering that I even have a creative side that exists beyond lesson planning and putting up red and white polka dot border. I'm not even married and this is my life. I am single and still I find it hard to have time with myself. How is that even possible?

A year has gone by, and then some. This time last year, H and I were biking downtown to try and catch a few notes from the ACL music festival. I was still not hired and egregiously broke, and she was exhausted from life. Now, I have a great job that I love and we have 'game night' at our house and make chili and cookies. Naturally, if this weren't happening I would be complaining about that, too.....but I really do wonder how long will my life in Austin last? Will I meet someone who doesn't want to tie me down or 'figure me out' or think I'm interesting without really wanting to make me less interesting over time? Will someone every just rejoice in every bit of who I am the way I see it done in theaters? Will I ever stop loving Jane Austen and all the period pieces from a time where women were equally besotted and oppressed by gentlemen? And I digress yet again with Victorian sentiments.......

I just don't understand how to think about time. Am I meant to not think about next year? How can I not, when I may have to sign a legal document committing myself to set frame of days by April? Is Austin really somewhere I can be for much longer, or will I start to hate it, little by little, for not having seasons, not having an ocean, mountains, open space for me to run in? I just want to move to Italy, really, or return to my dear Praha, where the city is old and vibrant and the apartments are small only because dreams are bigger than property. But, you can escape to the hillside, the most wondrous hillside where pear trees explode in March, and you can weep at the lines of rock that have erected a magnificent place of worship. Why do I miss these things so much? Why does everyone else love Austin so ferociously when I feel mostly apathy? I wonder if I am deeply, deeply ungrateful, or if I am just being an insubordinate resident, a petulant child that doesn't want to like something that everyone else likes. How do you know when you are meant to be somewhere?

I often wonder if I have just been gone from home for too damned long. If I need to just get back there, get back home before I tear down every city in America with my longing for Chico. There is no beauty like that of my dearest orchards, my Bidwell Park, and the way the Pacific sighs int he evenings. How can I live anywhere that doesn't allow me to spend a Saturday gazing upon John Muir's most trusted friend, the giant Redwood?

But of course, so many questions, too many really, for a lazy, humid Sunday in a city that is jammed pack full of hipsters and celebs. So I will get back to my 'real' writing now, and stop telling you all the ways life astounds me, for I fear you would have to sit with me for some time before my mouth stopped moving.

Breeze for the Parched

I think this may be it; we have made it through the most painful summer in 50 years. It has felt like it, too, though I was lucky enough to escape the bulk of it. Just six weeks of relentless blaze has made me feel lethargic and irritated by the crippled landscape around me. There is a bleakness with drought that is hard to understand. It does not wipe out towns in a matter of minutes, nor does it break in half skyscrapers, instead it slowly extracts the life out of all the things around you. It reminds me of Scotland, in January, when the sun started setting at four and you pleaded with it to give you just a little more of its light.

But now, now I wake up and it is the second day of relief. There is a fall breeze that almost mimics a sacred howling and for a moment I can pretend that 90 degrees is as heavenly as 76 (the sick part being that I think it truly does feel like 76).

As humans, we love that things begin and end. Babies are born in unison with elders dying, flowers bloom then return to the earth, and we wait excitedly for them to resurrect again. We lament change, but really, it is what our life is driven by. How can we continually love the heat and childlike feel of summer when it has been that way for five months? We can not. We need change to start us up again, to regain our attention and our passion into something revitalizing. I need to let go of pools and BBQ and steaming cement in order to be part of something new. Never have I wanted pumpkin spice candles or hot soup and bread more. And when it ends, when my dear fall ends, I will miss it dearly, and when it returns it will be all the better because change makes me miss more ardently. Change makes me lament all the things I am scared I wouldn't love enough if they were mine always. Even my students show the benefit of change. In my classroom, students work harder and with more vigor when they know the activity will change in twenty minutes. They desire to be moved, to change their thinking, and I wonder if that way of thinking ever truly leaves us.

I suppose that is a normal thing to fear, not loving the steady things in your life (or perhaps I just like to pretend it is). What if I had everything I wanted, in my hands, every day, would I still love it so? Perhaps I would, or perhaps my affections would wander and get lost down the street, besotted with something just out of reach.

I already am remembering people and things fondly, as though when I had them they were utterly amazing. That guy, the one I know was not for me, is remembered now for the lovely words he rarely spoke, the way his arms wrapped around me when he chose to come to me at all. I am so good at these tailored lies it begins to store in my mind as truth. This, of course, is not how things were, and I must remind myself that change moves us forward because we need to move, and we must not turn our neck too far to what was. I believe something or someone is meant to stay with you, it would have.

The best part about change is that you never really know when it will sweep you away. One day you feel as though fall will never come, and then you are awoken by heavy, sultry winds and you step outside to the most delightful smell of crumbled leaves and cooler whisps of air. You are always given what you need, always provided with that vibrancy of change when you thought nothing could ever thrill again.

So I sit outside now, at my favorite coffee shop, letting myself get lost in the flashbacks of this new season, as I start to let go of everything summer placed upon me. I peel back the memories of summer until I am naked and new, awaiting all the sensational things that will find me this season.

Boyz to Men

Come on, admit it, you LOVE this band.....I mean, everyone does, right? It is a totally intriguing name when it comes to R & B jams and a bunch of men in matching clothes from the 90's, but in life, there is a bit more to it than that.

So, when do boys turn IN to men?

I have been wondering this for some time. When is that wonderful age when they stop shotgunning beer and farting the alphabet? It turns out that there is really no one time, it is instead different for each kind of guy. My roomate, H, sums it up as more of a phase-thing. For example, a guy (I use this non-descript word for a male specimen with undocumented boy or man status) can either be in his 'single college' phase or he could have transitioned into the 'serious relationship' phase. You have to be on the look out for this, almost as much as someone in Texas looks out for rain on the forecast as they approach a record-breaking streak of drought. You can pick up on these phases with the following signs:

A guy is in the single-college phase if:
-He wears a backward hat
-Lives with 4 or more people
-Uses words like 'bro' or 'stellar'
-Nods his head at people, as though to acknowledge them without words
-Wants to get tattoos that involve some kind of snake/dragon (this is always a red flag)
-He plays video games three or more times a week
-Pizza is a food group
-He slaps your back when you hug him
-He drools and tries to lodge his tongue down your throat as though it is a medical examination
-He continues working non-stop part-time gigs and loses his wallet on numerous dating excursions
-He refers to your job as being 'real' and you are really 'grown-up'
-He calls you seven times between 2:32 a.m. and 4:29 a.m.
-He grabs your ass when cuddling (if cuddling happens at all) and/or doesn't look you in the eye while hooking up
-He calls you 'sexy lips' or 'my lady'
-His friends have lime on their breath from doing body shots of of sorority girls the night before
-He owns a dog and lets it drink from the beer bong

A guy is in the serious-relationship phase if:
-He buys his own home
-He has decorations in his living space/bedroom
-Owns a button-down shirt and wears it regularly
-Prefers a beer over 'shot shot, shot shot shot' (please think of the song when reading sequential shot writings)
-Enjoys things like salmon or any other kind of fish
-He enjoys watching sunsets
-Owns a pair of genuinely nice leather shoes
-He holds you tight when you hug him
-He gently kisses your neck, eyes, cheeks.......sigh
-He has a career-oriented job that makes him fulfilled enough not to want to fly to San Fran to jump off the Golden Gate with animated hand gestures
-He calls you at 9:00 p.m. to tell you, once again, what a wonderful time he had at dinner with you
-He plays with your hair and moves his arm up in anticipation of you wanting to 'lie in the nook'
-He calls you 'baby' and 'honey' (we hope nothing sicker starts, like 'shnookums')
-His friends like to play pool and have a beer on the weekends
-He owns a dog and takes it to the dog park

These are just some general tips to look out for that I have found. It is amazing how guys, when they allow themselves to transition into the serious phase, change their actions. Suddenly, women are less disposable plastic objects and become these lifelike whimsical creatures that they want to hold onto.

My other roomate, N, has been having some problems in the guy world, just like me. I mean, let's face it, it's tough out there. Between online dating, meeting guys downtown at bars and the occasional set-up, it feels as though there aren't any good men left on the planet (and of course all the ones you fall in love with instantly are married). I went on a lot weird, awkward dates last year, and the only one that sort of worked out only lasted three months. I often wonder, are these three-month relationships really good or did they just destroy me a little bit more? I don't know....I guess as long as I don't start hissing at all men then I'm not too bitter, right? I think we all just want to be JILTED by a great love. Is that so much to ask for? I mean, why does Mandy Moore always get the happy ending?

I think both of us, N and I, thought that as we got older guys would finally mature and enter into the next phase. It seems that this isn't always the case. Sometimes they are 25 when they transition (like H's boyfriend), but other times they are 32 and they only transition after all their friends get married and they realize they have the maximum subscription to Netflix. It just takes time and faith to meet the right guy. I think it is also important to not have a set-in-stone list of the guy you want to be with. For example, the last guy I dated hit almost all of my wishlist, such as: drove a truck, had his own place, was a country boy, owned dogs, was incredibly smart, was quiet/tortured, was a great snuggler.......and so forth (weep, sniffle) with some added bonuses of: opened my door, was a great kisser, loved driving me around everywhere, was happy to hang out in groups with my friends. But, he was SO not right for me, and I think I should STOP pretending I know what's perfect for me. After all, it has taken me 25 years just to find out what clothes are the right fit on me, so why should I be so presumptuous as to think I know what man will contour to me?

So keep up the good fight ladies (and you guys, too), because I think the relationship gods have a cruel sense of humor but are saps at heart. There IS someone for all of us out there, just don't be upset if he isn't over 6 feet like you'd envisioned......

Bleach It

OK, so don't judge me, but I have gone and bleached/dyed my hair blond. Well, alright, it already WAS a little blond, but I did highlights and now I am like Barbie blond. As though I needed any more fuel for the 'locavore' Austin fire, being from Cali and all, but now I look like the kind of person that may have surf wax in her purse or something. But, then again, Texans do love the crazy blond, big-haired thing. It's OK though, I think it adds that bit of zest to things in my life (not that I am too short on that right now). I have started school and it feels amazing to be actually doing something with my time. I mean, hey, I am all for long afternoons where I nuzzle up with the spine of a book, but I do need more than that, too.

Work is strangely exhilarating. I mean, who knew that setting up my class and attending department and team meetings could get me so thrilled? It's kind of sick really. I even know that I am that irritating 'young-en' that is always smiling and has the energy of a Cocker Spaniel. I'm sure it will pass by the end of next week, but right now I'm having way too much fun wearing pencil skirts and using academic acronyms. Bleh, I am a sad, sad case aren't I?

I guess there is a reason for my new highlights. I said goodbye to someone that for some reason I was hanging onto. Sort of like those scabs that you keep on because, hey, you kind of like that people think you're a badass. But really, you need to just pluck it off and throw it in the bin. So, I did that, but it looked more like me tip-toeing up to his porch and dropping his fabulously baggy gray sweatpants on the doorstep along with a note that made me seem more mature than I'm really feeling. So...the next night, I scheduled a hair appointment and BAM! I am back in action. I am a sassy gal and I have sassy hair so whatcha gotta say about it?

It has been miserably hot. I mean, I may-peel-off-my-shirt-in-front-of-a-stranger-just-to-get-a breeze-from-their-open-aghast-mouth kind of hot. The A/C at my school is on 'low', as in, low on cost not low in temperature. So, not only do I get to see my fabulous colleagues, but I get to smell them as well (and I am not excluding myself from the stench by any means).

It is amazing to go back to a place and realize, hey, I know people here and I don't think they hate me too much. In fact, this morning, when I walked into the ELA District Meeting, a new women from my school raised her hand up immediately and rushed me over with a grin as though I had coffee beans grinding in my chest. She was alone, granted, and may have asked Charles Manson to join the group, but she noticed me and I was equally glad to be welcomed by her. Then, the other people from our school came in. I got to see them, one by one, make eye contact with me and start in my direction, as though I were somehow part of their directional purpose. It was kind of cool.

Anyways, I am actually exhausted now that I am at home, in my room, and in the cool-ish air that somehow flows in magic whisps around my room in icy chunks. I picked up a book that my dear friend Roger gave me and now it sits, on my bed, awaiting my arrival and my sweet grasp on its cover. (Has anyone noticed my talk of books is becoming sexual? No? OK good.)

That is all for now. No real theme to this post, but they don't make sticky notes big enough for my ranting brain OK?

The Colors Abound

Well, I'm here, back in the 'big city' and all of that. It's nice, too, being in Austin with friends that were fast becoming mere images from old films than actual flesh beings from my year living in Texas. "This is where I live," I whisper to myself, "this is my home now."

After being welcomed at the airport by H, J, Z and N I felt like nothing could touch this chapter in my life. That's what it feels like, too, a new phase. Sure, some of the same characters reappear in my life (some have been imprinted in my own flesh for decades) but there is still that smell of spring, that smell of wandering blossoms and wild lavender in the air that makes me think something's up. What will it be? I don't know, and oh! how I rejoice in the unknowing!

I had a very anchoring conversation, while on my summer hiatus, at a lovely coffee shop, sitting outdoors sipping an iced coffee with my spiritual equivalent of the Dalai Lama. She can be tough, downright brutal, really, but it is her ferocity for truth that reminds me that it isn't just that I seek answers with her, but that I seek them in myself. I think I can say, unabashedly, that this is one of my greatest qualities. Even when I smother truth with pillows filled with naivety, I still keep it alive, even if it's barely breathing beneath my weight. This can also be an obnoxious quality to have, one that is unrelenting and forces you to see far uglier things than you wish. But, in the end, I do believe it is truth that will set you free (and so I use cliches when they are epically appropriate).

When I think of truth I like to picture a photograph in black and white. It looks lovely enough, demure and classy, but if you look closer you see there is one part of it that shines with color. There is that one bright hue that lashes out, drawing you into it, and you know that is where the beauty is, in the realness of what you are. It is a blue door in a dull landscape, telling you that this is where the juicy opening of your life stems.

I am hoping that this next year will be lined in truth. Like the inside of a plant cell, I will guard my walls with impenetrable honesty about who I am and what I want. I will not let people make me less than that. I will teach as best I can, while quietly unraveling all the ways I can improve (while hopefully gently avoiding any emotional masochism). That I can love with everything inside of me, knowing I will get hurt badly, scraped across highways of human relationships, because that is the absolute only way to find the sum of what I am capable of.

Austin can be a very tricky place to find truth. At times it feels as though you are plucking petals from a flower, asking truth if it loves you or loves you not. Everywhere you look there are those that are lying about who they are and what they want. Their clothes alone remind you how desperately people hope you can not see through them. Perhaps a vest, from 1976, can make them look unique and worthy of film class, or that a tattoo weaving up an ivory back can be a shield against people claiming you're uninteresting. But we know better. And I can feel that flurry of city bringing me in already; the drinking, the partying, the men........It is a very vibrant call and I will remind myself what the truth is inside of me, for that is the gravest stance of all, not knowing one's self well enough to have conviction. If you can not fight for yourself, how can you expect victory?

I will read my own words, in months to come, (or this very same afternoon) so that I can at least try and make them true. For, as I write, I know that it is I that am most worried about being those dishonest things than anyone else.

So here's to a fresh start. A big white glob of paint stuck on my life, reminding me I must actively search for the colors that make my heart delight.

Never Let It Go

There is a movie I watched recently, starring Kiera Knightley and the lovely Carey Mulligan. Both of these actresses have a propensity for being in period flicks that leave me feeling distant from modernity and yearning for simpler times. This movie was different, though, being more sci-fi than romantical. The plot is that cloning is an acceptable action, and that with cloning life expectancies have jumped to 120 and there are no longer people suffering from disease. This sounds lovely, in theory, but as always there is something tilted when science becomes too strong. In the sad case of the three main characters, they grew up as clones, born and breed to be the harvesting vestiges for other 'real' humans. Something Heather kept saying, throughout the movie, stuck with me. The three characters grow up together in a boarding school, not knowing they are clones until later. They are still taught schoolwork, but they know nothing of any other world existing outside the brick and ivy walls of their isolation.

Heather kept saying, "But why don't they fight for more?"

Before I even took a breath, my reaction was, "Because they know nothing else."

Why didn't they fight the people that put them on a cold, silver table and took their organs out one by one? Why didn't they build a boat and try to cross over to America, even if they died somewhere over the Atlantic? And why, dear God why, did they for a moment think that they were inferior to their originals?

But I didn't think those things; not at first. I saw the movie as a classic example of not yearning for the ocean when you have never seen any body of water larger than a pond. How can you want that vastness? How can you dream in neon when everything around you is an abused hue? The truth is, I don't know. I come from a time and place where dreaming is so prevalent that often reality is disappointing. Where, seeing the Eiffel Tower is more like the mind confirming the glossy pictures in the magazine than accepting the building as something profound. That is why I loved the movie. That is why I can't stop thinking about it. I want to know why those three didn't fight, why they didn't try to run away or selfishly take their own lives to at least be in control of their bodies. But the things they did find, the things that could not be halted or harnessed, were love and disappointment of things that could never be.

While walking through the redwoods on a recent trip to the California coast, I thought about this movie a lot. Sure, the scenery is beautiful, as England always is, and the acting is raw and worthy of award, but there was more to it. In fact, all I could think about, looking out at the great rippled trunks of red trees before me, was how amazingly steadfast the human spirit is. That there are those out there that sacrifice everything for love, for family, for pride. That in Yemen, child marriages are quietly acceptable, even when they result in death for a twelve-year-old girl from internal bleeding. That there could be women whose husbands are twenty years older than them, and they must live their lives within their beautiful internal palace of spirit with all the doors and windows locked around them. But they do it. They watch their fathers give them to violent old men and they stop crying, eventually, at that betrayal.

It makes one wonder if the human spirit is made to want certain things, programmed to crave freedom, to cherish family, and to spill into other humans with affection and love. Do these things come in each of us, like a complex micro-chip? Or, do we merely seek what is within reach, what our environment has exposed us to? I don't know. All I know is that in Thailand, they wanted white skin so bad they bleached their arms, legs and faces just to look a certain way. I also know that I will never want to stop learning about people, geography and the environment. That, though I have never been a mother, I want to one day hold my child in my arms and know that love of a mother and her darling baby. Could the movies and media have implanted all these desires in me? Perhaps.....but I think there is something more, something so deep within my spirit that no matter how much the outside world hammered upon my skull I would still want the things I do. Even if I had been born in 1476, I would have yearned for the Pacific Ocean, and I would want a room of my own for my writing (as blasphemous as that would have been). So what comes first, the desire or the delusion?

It seems that the overwhelming spirit of humans demands that they can never let their truest desires go. They can never let it go, and I'm afraid nor can I, which is why, just like the characters in the movie, I will always be lost in the magnificence of love and the darkness of wanting things I can't express and know should not have been born in me.

Country of Mine Country of Thine

I teased before, of someone getting left behind, and there was such a person. It started with the arrival of my mother into Seattle. We swept her from the airport and then her and I went to an incredible dinner with my friends from Austin, Andrew and Christina. Andrew's house (parent's house) in Seattle is located high above a lake, so that when you look out all you see is forested perfection and the moving water below. We had the most delicious, and vegetarian-friendly, meal that ended with coconut-cream pie and left me wondering how mothers manage to bake homemade pies on top of everything else they do.

The morning after this spectacular dinner, we were on our way to Vancouver to cross the border and, just to pass the time, I opened my mom's passport. I was mostly trying to snoop at her international stamps, but unfortunately I stumbled upon an expiration date. It appeared that her ability to leave the US and return had rotted. So we left her in Washington, cruel as it sounds, in a larger effort to go pick up my grandparents in Vancouver.

Vancouver is a unique place. There is water and hills surrounding it in almost a San Francisco-esque manner. The buildings are tall and new and covered with so many windows they almost looks like sparking scales on a standing beast. I was, at first, upset that our hotel was so far away from the town center, where I was set to meet a dear friend, but found that taking the Sky Train into downtown brought back all the delicious freedom and unknowns of international travel. It was almost exactly the same as the Sky Train in Bangkok, except that when I got off, the air was not thick and sticky, smelling of various potent gases and banana peels. No, Vancouver is extremely clean and the people are outside biking, walking and laughing over over-priced pints near the water. As I walked down to the boat docks where the little water planes parked, I realized that I hadn't really been alone like that in a long time. Sure, in Austin I do things alone all the time; I go to coffee shops religiously, I run errands, go for runs, etc., but there is something different about the solitude of walking with no agenda and no knowledge of where you are or what will come. I find myself missing that spontaneity, that dependence on myself, where I want to hold my own hand and skip, but for the realization that I may look rather like a demented Shirley Temple than the independent goddess we all wish to be. I had lots of those freeing moments when I traveled, particularly in Ireland and Prague. In Prague I was famous for being the 'recluse' in our program and wandering to the castle and apple orchards at random intervals of time. Ireland found me in its countryside, wide-eyed and dragging a suitcase up monstrous hills where the sheep looked at me as though I were a complete arse. I even sat alone in a pub, beer touching my lips just to keep my busy, and I found I could do almost anything.

I think we all worry about dependence. That, we will meet someone and lose a bit of ourselves. Or, perhaps we have been with someone a while and worry that it has already happened. We may ask ourselves, when did I start liking college football? Why do I get excited about a hot dog stuffed with cheese when I am a vegetarian? I fear the answer is far too brutal to admit to ourselves. We fall into patterns, we like the feel of the crook of a neck while we sleep, and instead of holding our own hand we let our little palms fall into the stronger hand of a man. I wish I could decide if this loss of independence is normal, good even, or if it is the end of the brightest parts of yourself. Perhaps it is a little of both. I suppose it is natural to 'share' things with another and, to be honest, who would prefer to travel alone? As much as I adore walking across the Charles Bridge at sunset, I still wondered, what are these magnificent colors in the sky without someone there to reflect with you upon them? To smile and casually comment, "Look how the castle glows." I wish this weren't the case, but hey, Paris is kind of a bitchy city when you go there single. I don't need a chocolate croissant and white-lit streets romancing me when my hair is greasy and I just ate an entire Tolberone by myself in my hotel room.

Back to Vancouver......

So I met-up with Natalie. Natalie. My dearest Natalie! This will be our THIRD country to meet, starting with our initial introduction in Peru, a reunion for a festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then our Greek feast and clinking pints in Vancouver. I guess clinking pints has been a theme for us. We have drunk our way through many bars, houses and streets around this world and never thought twice about it because we had a greater backdrop of each other. She is never one I waste unworthy anecdotes or trivialities on. After our hugs and squeals when we meet, I must hear only the juiciest, most painful and real parts of her, as she does with me. We can talk for whole days at a time and never bat an eye. The only thing we dare pause for is food. And my, did we feast! We ordered all the food that you wish you could eat, and we dipped and dolloped and scarfed unabashedly. As we ate and talked outside as though only days had passed since we'd seen each other, not years, we watched a horse-sized dog lament and whimper for its owner, who happened to be about ten feet away and eating outside, too. The dog could see the owner but was nowhere near satisfied. It cried, the gut-wrenching tears of need, and was even as desperate as to stick its scone-sized paws on the railing to just get that much closer. Eventually they moved it so it was at their feet, and then it cried for joy, as though it were still devastated because the love was just too much to handle. Natalie and I both had our hands on our cheeks, watching every move, understanding perfectly how the dog felt, and wondering why it is acceptable only for canines to be so damned pathetic. When women, or men for that matter, behave as such, it is practically a convicted crime, worthy of a heart tar-and-feathering amongst your peers.

Moving on to the last parts of the visit. We went to a pub and I tried to compose myself when I saw the beer prices, $8 for a pint? Natalie informed me that that was normal, and that Vancouver was even more expensive than Dublin (which is really saying something). We eventually met a darling couple from Belfast, whose accents I knew immediately as being the same as many people I care dearly about. They were wonderful. Fresh to Vancouver, they had a newlywed kind of hope about them that almost floats off the corners of their smiles. We talked lots about travel, life, politics and, naturally, ended up on the topic of the United States. To be honest, I miss hearing peoples' views on my country. I also love to hear what comes out of my own mouth when I am put in a position to represent 310 million people. You often don't know the volume of your voice until you have the passion of speech. I won't go into details about my political or social beliefs, but there is nothing better than really discussing the things that matter, especially with a beer :-)

And so, the next morning, I awoke in Natalie's apartment, fresh from snore-free sleep (my father has some vocal nasal blockage) and we wandered back to the Sky Train to get me back to my dad and grandparents. We still had to go back over the border and meet my stranded mother. As we walked, she showed me all the boarded up windows from the riots in Vancouver, after Boston won the Stanley Cup. The city was in the news for its violence, something it truly has no business being linked with, and was shamed for the destruction of their downtown. Well, the people of Canada were appalled and, being the rather radiant country they are, the boarded up walls where glass once stood were written over in colorful pens with pictures and words of hope and apologies. The best part, the most uplifting part, was that there was a pancake breakfast happening right in the middle of the city. They were blasting oldies music and dancing while flipping pancakes and serving them to the homeless and anyone who wanted a fluffy morning snack. They were making something right, the way humans can, after something awful has occurred. They were the very example of why, in so much war and evil that you find yourself still believing in people, because at our very core we delight in goodness and community.I find I have to believe that, seeing what I've seen. I wanted to weep, I truly did, when I saw the swaying of arms to "Jump, for your love" and the way everyone sort of blended together, in all their colors and skins, so that they were just one place of peace, one entity of rebirth and rebuilding, and I was unwaveringly grateful to be a part. I knew I was going to be late, so I eventually had to hug Nat goodbye and walk away from music (a tragedy, always), but I loved that Vancouver showed me something extraordinary, and I won't forget it for that. I urge you to see what the city does for you, if you every find yourself hopelessly north and looking to be surprised.

More next time about the final days of my trip in the rugged Olympic Peninsula (though I sit now, in Chico, enjoying the hot weather, cold water and iced coffee that sweats in my hands).