I thought I had an allergy attack. Maybe a sinus infection. It started Tuesday afternoon as Erik and I drove to Chelan. Erik kept opening the window for the dog and I kept hunkering down trying to keep the cold off of my neck.

There was a pesky cough and some lethargy.

By nine that evening I was ready for bed.

During the night a truck, tires sweaty from speeding on hot asphalt, had run over me and I was a crumpled, sweaty, limp mess.

I wasn't sick but I avoided coffee and drank water. At lunch we had a pizza and a glass of wine. I wilted and went back to bed.

On Thursday, Erik and I toured some wineries. Among the wineries, we met with Milum and Katy of Tildio Winery and Scott Benson of Benson Vineyards. It was a magical day.

With a 103° fever, anything seems magical or mystifying.

That night Erik made me soup. It was a nice last meal.

The next day we packed up and left. We left my grandmother. Alone. With it. The virus. To kill her.

There are things in life that you will always feel guilty about. Giving my grandmother a cold is going to be one of them.

The other day I invented a new tool. It was the Stick of Tolerance and Compassion. Anytime someone nicked at my nerves I imagined taking out this stick and bapping them on the head– sometimes several times in quick succession.

Cut me off in traffic? Three baps.
Ignore my invite to dinner? One bap.
Act like a self-righteous fool? Twelve baps. Maybe one good solid Thwak.

It’s working. Now, instead of distain I actually myself brighten with every bap I imagine.

I finally looked at the book that I wrote and produced with my friend Philip Shaw. Philip is one of those creatives whose work is solid and appeals to an intelligent audience. The cereal box readers of the world might think his stuff is pretty but... the people who know how to use a semi colon are the ones that understand the fullness of his work.

We aggregated a book about the Pike Place Market together. It was supposed to be a pretty, fun, and instructive piece with tips and recipes and history.

What ended up being produced was an unintentional homage to the hodgepodge architecture to the Market. Sad but not as pathetic as I once thought. (Cheers, Philip. We did what we could and that was okay.)

As Erik said, What a difference a little time makes.

But this is what I have learned: shut up. be nice. let it go.

The Dalai Lama is in town. I’m not a fan of his holiness. What he says is not particularly spiritual. It isn’t even philosophically novel. My grandmother, three year olds and an atheist friend of mine all say the same and more interesting things but with better English and more conviction.

It has taken the Dalai Lama QUITE a while to be against the war in Iraq. His initial thoughts were: Let’s wait and see if it is a good thing. That causal attitude alone makes me a little suspicious of his wisdom and ability.

At some point, his holiness made the slow step and said, We must pray for no war.

The Dalai Lama preaches things not applicable to world’s troublemakers. PRAY? How many of us have prayed that we'll wake up with millions of dollars in our bank account, only to be let down? Pray. Funny.

His holiness preaches what works for him and those that follow him, not what works for those he wants to change. He wears robes of convenience.

If one reads texts that surround Tibetan Buddhism one finds, in practice, a bloody and self-involved religion. In The Super Human Life of Gesar Ling, enlightened men sit on the human skins of those that they have vanquished and it is okay to kill others if you are enlightened because you will send them toward enlightenment by doing so.

How familiar.

While The Super Human Life of Gesar Ling is not a religious text, it is indicative of the culture the religion has thrived in. It is a culture that views males as superior to females. There will never be a female Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhism reccognizes spiritual hierarchy and women are spiritually inferior to men.

My largest complaint about the Dalai Lama (other than his religion’s views on the holiness of women) same-sex unions. He’s against them. He's against oral sex. The only copulation accepted by Tibetan Buddhism is between a man and a woman and only with the goal of creating a child.

That said, I do appreciate Buddhist views, just not Tibetan Buddhist views. The view that human thought is not the center of consciousness (dogs dream, cats get embarrassed) is one I believe in. Occasionally, I have Buddhist moments.

On Saturday it was sunny and warm. All the insects woke up and many found themselves passing through our house. A honey bee was at our kitchen window trying to get out. The window was open and the bee was butting her little head against the glass with increasing anger and panic; her stinger ready to sink into whatever force was stopping her.

I started to sweep her toward the open section of the window. She would hit an invisible wall and move the opposite direction. At last we worked it out and she flew off in a huff.

Here’s the lesson from the Buddhist (it's a little Taoist too) moment: Stop looking at your goals and thinking you have to fight your way to them. Work hard and let others help you out with different viewpoints. Don’t harm yourself by stinging others.

I doubt, highly, that the kitchen window experience was a Buddhist moment for the bee.

Oh we are in for an adventure.

The people who own the house we've been staying in are coming home in June. They're returning a month earlier than anyone had planned. We will be glad to see them.

Instead of staying in town, we have decided to go to Chelan and see what we can do for work and a life for the summer.

Though I love Seattle and my friends, it will be nice to be away for a while.

We will be moving soon, a little over a month from now. There's stuff to sell, clothes to pack and things to put away.

The only thing that makes me squint is the garden. We just planted one.

I guess it goes to show that we just weren't ready to put down roots.

Two years ago I was slumped over in my two thousand dollar a month flat on the top floor of a luxury apartment building. I was crying.

I realized that I had made the worst mistake of my entire life— the decision to pack up my car, get rid of everything else and move to a wasp infested shed in the middle of the high desert.

There were a few reasons for doing such a thing:
My life wasn’t working.
My heart was broken.
I needed a new story.

The story of my life up to that point sucked:

Five years before I had watched a boyfriend die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The trauma and guilt of the event haunted me throughout my days. I didn't just watch him die, I held him. I tried to stop the blood from rushing from his body to the floor. I know what resides in our heads and when I see people, I see them as entirely mortal.

My last boyfriend, The One, had called my mother to break up with me. I knew that mourning the motherfucker was not only wrong but a waste of time. Still, I did. My mourning was beginning to translate into heavy drinking.

My career was a laughable endeavor. I wrote a great manuscript (two) that no one was going to read.

I had too many clothes. The dry cleaner even said so.

I felt cursed by my possessions.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to learn. I’m not exactly sure what I learned. But whatever I did, it worked.

Now I am engaged to the man that, if I had my way (and he were single at that time), I would have known and loved my entire life.

I can now drive without making my dog urinate in fear and am not afraid to change a 1987 Toyota Camry Wagon’s oil.

My possessions are cherished because I don’t have a lot. I’m getting back on track with what I want to do when I grow up. Things like life, love, me get better everyday.

Still, there are times when I miss The Shed. I miss the freedom and the silence. I miss the rocking out in the car with a martini and cigarette and the casual glint of fire that reflected back at me when I looked in the mirror. I miss the thrill of not knowing if I was actually going to make the turn I was taking.

I miss the smell of the desert in the morning and the feeling of being completely alone save one very pissed off dog.

That’s how I know I’ve had a good adventure. That’s how I know I’ve changed the story of my life — I can look back on the past with fondness. It is something I couldn’t do there for a while. Cheers.

If you had looked through our kitchen window the other evening you would have seen a woman pointing and screaming VOMITORIUM at the top of her lungs.

So the dog has an issue with coughing up sputum. He’s allergic to everything and he’s cold and this is what he does and has done since he was a puppy.

When he was a puppy, I trained him to cough up on a towel or in the bathroom. Said designated area was called the vomitorium.

Lately, he’s taken to coughing up where he feels like.

When you say “vomitorium” he usually stops coughing and goes to his bed.

Funny where life takes you.

Now, so I have learned... a vomitorim is a hallway in an amphitheatre and has nothing to do with vomiting.

No wonder the dog is coughing up in the hallway.

How exciting!

Though I have yet to get the Pope’s email, I’ve decided to write my own list of sins:

Dog:
Thou shalt not covet your neighbors' yard to poo or pee in.
Thou shalt not pee on your own lawn, even when it is raining and you don’t want to go for a walk.
Thou shalt not sit in front of the heater and hog all of the heat while the rest of us freeze and then wheeze in contempt when we shut it off because we’re still cold.
Thou shalt not cough up sputum on your freshly laundered bed.
Thou shalt not walk into the street to poop.
Thou shalt honor the command to come.

Home:
Thou shalt drink all the wine in your glass unless you do not wish for more, in which case you shalt leave just a sip in your glass to indicate you are finished.
Thou shalt take of yer shoes before entering the home
Thou shalt not wash my sweaters and shrink them.

Driving:
Thou shalt not tailgate
Thou shalt use your indicator light when turning or changing lanes
Thou shalt not use your cellphone and drive – lest I smite you hard!
Drivers shalt be okay with the passenger’s occasional dashboard clenching and cry of alarm.

Eating Out:
Thou shalt take yer cellphone calls outside.
Thou shalt not bring yer child to a restaurant and set its dial on cry/scream.
When entering, thou shalt follow the laws of distribution and give right away to those who exit before entering. (Finite space requires emptying before filling.)
Thou shalt not shout about your sex life and weight problems in one sentence to the other strangers who are enjoying happy hour without you.
Thou shalt not use your chopsticks as a pointing/drumming/fighting device.

The dog has taken to sitting in the garden and basking in the sun. He plants himself in the dirt near where the peas are set to sprout. He closes his eyes and lifts his snout and looks like a small dozing bull.

When the sun has the nerve to snub the world and take a time out behind the clouds, the dog comes to me and snorts. Then he wheezes. Then he gets wrapped up in a blanket where he falls back asleep. When the sun comes back out I put him outside again.

This morning the sun was perfectly content to sock itself away. After our walk, Officer dragged his paws up the path and stopped. He looked at the garden. He looked at me. He looked at the garden. He looked at me.

I explained that there wasn't any sun to be had.

He walked up the porch and wheezed.

I gave him the ultimatum that every cat owner who has a patio door has given: In or Out. You decide, but the door is not going to stay open.

The dog looked at me. He looked at the garden.

He wheezed in contempt.

Summer can't come fast enough.

Last night I had a dream about ferry boats and a family of menacing circus freaks.

This morning I had a dream in which I told some dream friends about the circus freaks and the ferry boats.

The dream people in my ferry/freak dream that were listening to my previous dream wore an expression of contempt and boredom on their face — the look when someone is forcing them to listen to a story about a dream.

Since these people were part of MY imagination, I would assume that they would be rapt with interest.

Indeed not.

I need new dream friends.

This morning I was reading about bird watching and read about Eurasian Wigeons

I thought it was a typo.

What the hell are Wigeons?

Ducks. Ducks that sound wrong — Like a swearword in olden times.

The world has slowed to a gag-less pace and I've finally pulled my head up from the safety of the ground. Here are my questions:

What the Freakn' frack has happened to my hair?
Why does our house smell like a Chinese restaurant?

There are these mood pits I tend to drop into. They’re excellent pools of punk rock angst that inspire all sorts of sneering. It isn’t as if I want to drop into them but any attempt to wrangle my way out is like swimming in quicksand. I’ve learned to stay very still when these moods hit and hopefully no one will get hurt. Days like yesterday need to be put into parenthesis – like a quiet side detail.

An ellipsis later and I am inspired to go for a teeter in the morning sun. hazah.

This is not to say that I am all exclamation marks; that would be just as unfortunate.

You know when you’re sitting in the middle of a restaurant and someone at another table catches your imagination? A person who approaches life in a way that you never would. Their hat, or their dining companion or their laugh say so much about how they take their coffee or what kind of pajamas they wear.

Then they pick up their fork and simultaneously lean back into their chair and in that motion they become someone you might identify with. All of the sudden you wonder what it would be like to be them. Would driving be easier? Would reading chick-lit be interesting? Would pop music have meaning? Would I understand the national debt with nose tightening intimacy?

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have simple thoughts. What if, when walking into a restaurant, I weren’t also thinking about the irony of Tianamen Square and the lost merits of the Oxford comma? What if, when I walked into a restaurant I thought about walking into a restaurant?

What if I didn’t have three ideas for every one I said? Wouldn’t that be nice?

No. No it isn’t.

This vertigo thing took away all of my thoughts and made me very aware of the present. My therapists would all be proud of me. I have to say the present isn’t that much fun. It certainly isn’t interesting, though it does make gardening more interesting.

Last night Erik and I were doing the Saturday crossword puzzle and I stared at it without a single thought. Right then I resolved to get my brain back.

One’s focus changes when one can’t see straight. I look at things longer because I have to.


Things seen while defying my inner gravity:
A crow flying over our car, tense and earnest, toward a circling hawk. Its eyes shone black with war. It was a vibrant moment of mortality.

Then I saw a flock of chickens hunting and pecking on the side of a major arterial.

A 19” television and three unopened bottles of beer next to a telephone pole a block away from the chickens

An ancient red ford side-step truck with a heart shaped wreath on its grill tooling through one neighborhood and showing up in the chicken/TV neighborhood.

Two dead kittens in the middle of the road.

The doppelganger of the ancient red ford side-step truck (sans heart-shaped wreath) sitting in front of a 7-11.

The wind, maddening the trees.

I can't wait for a steadier world.