The most important aspect of our trip was that….I left the apartment, and I have Raccoon to thank for that. I said to Raccoon that I would come to comi-con this year (not quite understand that comi in comi-con stands for COMIC – but it is more than that, it is a manga, publishing, film, TV, media, cinema film festival event). But as the time came closer, I had fundraised to go but I did not want to go. I told Linda that every day.
I was scared. When things go well I can go outside with someone once a week, I can be awake 12 hours a day but 4-6 of those hours on average are spent doing body tasks to keep me functioning and alive. So, move from bed to computer, and shower once a week, and be on oxygen all the time and be in pain most of the time, but a level of pain where I can function after the first hour or two awake. And with DVD’s, manga and on the weekend postcards, there are aspects of pleasure. With Japanese works of Fiction like the Story of Ibis, or Harmony or Manga like Ooku, DVD sets from the US/UK like Life, Luther and Burn Notice, or films like Bajo la Sal I have the mental excitement again of engaging a mind which is smart, clever and taught me something by bringing me up to a new level. Because who doesn’t need to know how to make a cheap tracking device and set off explosives (Burn Notice, the McGuyver of spy gal). So, good days moments of engaged and alive, and mediocre days, DVD’s like Sanctuary or manga like Otomen or Honey Hunt to keep pain’s claw marks ignored another second and some vocab intact even if I don’t know what city I am in, or who is President/Premier.
It is a cocoon of habit which lets me remember what to do, where to go, and to stay alive while doing it.
What terrifies me is the unexpected, the uncontrollable, the random because that is what makes something which is a painful dangerous condition which will eventually kill me into mind exploding agony where even WITH help, I could die that night, that hour. So when a ‘month of rest’ to get strength for the trip turns into one problem after another, and I am passing out all the time, then hit with a heat wave which leaves me trapped and terrified. Heat hurts. Imagine those hot dogs on the grill or in water as they swell and swell until they skin splits open. That is me. I sleep and all I have are nightmares where my limbs and torso is razored off in layers like a butchers shop does with sandwich meat. And I can’t wake up because I am now in a heat coma (the heat of the blood to my brain is hot enough to give me seizures, but I am too weak to wake up), and if I do wake up, I am paralyzed. That is summer.
And if that pain is not a minute but hours and days and then see what the unexpected and the uncontrollable becomes: pain, terror, loss of function, loss of life (I don’t mind dying for an ideal, I do mind dying because of a heat wave).
A trip to comi-con offered infinite possible problem, like Borges’ shop of mirrors of ‘possible’ from breaking down in a hot California plain desert stretch of highway to a blood clot or stroke (and it WAS in the 90's for several days). It was UNKNOWN, that was the fear. Add in that my medication was running out, and Linda’s job hunting had not resulted in a single short list (problem when over 1,000 managers are let go on an ISLAND where the main employer IS the person who let everyone go – and then they retroactively hired back all of the levels of workers BELOW her, without letting anyone including her apply for the jobs – welcome to British Columbia) or interview. Scary. And of course, being B.C., unemployment is capped far below the poverty line. Scary.
So I cried and begged her to go without me, into the unknown without me, she could take a friend. But I made a promise. And I keep promises.
And the first day I slept 6 hours, the next I slept 4.5, the next 4 hours, then three hours. The damn maps were off and the driving times we planned on were all wrong. There was (surprise!) rush hour in San Fran, in L.A., in San Diego, in empty highway. There was road construction. We pulled up at 1:00 am or 2:00 am and THEN I had to go to the bathroom, finished at 8:00 am, awake at 10:30 am. I almost went to the hospital three times to San Diego. An sane person would have. Except I knew we didn’t have the money and since I figured I would die anyway.... (maybe not a 'sane person').
I made it to the finish line, to opening night, for a few hours seeing steam punk and the sights, and then I wasn’t really human anymore, unable to move, to speak, out on the bathroom floor. For 12 hours, I didn’t know what ‘words’ were, I had nothing going mentally and couldn’t move, I couldn’t even moan my pain.
So a day in bed and when I went out the following day I used Indy and I went to see Moto Haigo, the mother of shojo and yaoi manga, who wrote about things in the 60’s and 70’s wrote about things which aren’t even talked about in the west today, 40 years later. One early manga series was about a young teen whose mother remarries and the step-father sexually abuses him in a brutal and systematic way, while the step father leaves his own son alone. The only way the teen can find a way out is to rig the car to kill the step-father, only to have his own mother in the car when it crashes. His step-brother doesn’t understand the mixture of grief and relief he has at the double funeral and hates him. That’s not an uncommon story, not when churches are giving out payments for tens of thousands of abuse cases, just not a story WE talk about.
Haigo showed a story, Lizard Girl about a woman who gives birth to a girl and to everyone else, the girl is a girl but to the mother, it is a hideous lizard. This was Haigo trying to understand why her mother was active in her disapproval of her career, her life, of her. That classic question of ‘Why? Why can’t they see me?” is answered in an elegent manga.
I went to the Yen Press panel, and found they are releasing another in depth historical manga by the creator of Emaa. I went and got a book signed by the author, for free: and given to me. They promoted Beautiful Darkness, a book on my book list by having the authors sign and give away copies. Score!
And due to crowding I was left in the sun waiting for a trolley for over 30 minutes, and ended up with heat exhaustion and a fever. That's the unknown for ya. We can't know until we go to look, and that's the risk and reward. But I wasn’t afraid anymore. I had gone BOOM in the redwoods and this is part of what it looked like, and I laughed (and later cried). I went to a museum and had a seizure, I went to old Town San Diego, I went up and down in elevation and my lungs hurt, and I was passing out daily. I was stopping breathing when passed out. But I wasn’t terrified, I was doing. I was seeing.
I realized that for me, the great luxury is in doing. To experience something, to see flowers, or oceans, or forest, or cities, or shops would have bad experiences, and okay ones and occasionally great ones but they are all things I cannot get inside a room. I can’t talk to Nene Thomas inside my room. I can’t see antique original stagecoaches in my room. I could not eat at a mexican surf shop and restaurant in my room. And while I was hurt, emotionally and physically, I was reintroduced to....well, me, or the type of me I prefer: dream it and do it.
A year ago, I risked all to see lava. Now I might need to risk all to see a historical street, or to go window shopping or buy specialty tea, or get turned away as a homeland security threat at JPL (for asking security booth of Buck and Bob where the visitor center we were cleared to visit was located) for trying to get postcards. Just a tip Jet Propulsion Lab, the place where unmanned probes of spaces has info and images rendered: if you DON’T want people to know where you are due to SECURITY then you might not want signs directing us off the highway right to the entrance, and you might not want to fly a GIANT American flag larger than the building on top of it. Just a little security hint.
So do I want to get outside for a wheel and see the stores, or go for a picnic or do I want to live as long as I can?
I want both. But if I don’t get out of room, out of the comfort and fear zone, then I won’t get either life OR living. Winter will be here soon and then I really CAN’T go outside (I get frostbite indoors). I needed to get back in the game, that friction called living. And I wouldn’t have done that without Raccoon.
I could not have gone and keep going without a lot of people: every person who gave florestar, dishes, utensils, medications, in order to give me a baseline of a life. And every person who sent a letter or card that kept my spirits up, who sent stamps or postcards to keep me able to reach other to others, who sent manga, DVD's and gift certificates to allow me to engage in intellect, and for those times when I just need to sit, stare and recover. Because out for 4-5 hours and a day recovering is me living on the dangerous edge of going wild (my 4-5 hours is like your 48 hours without sleeping having a party!). So after 5 hours, even after sleeping staring at Sanctuary Season 2 and watching 'Sanctuary going to Comic-Con' extra makes me loopy and smile and go, "I'm here, they're here, we're all here!" (yeah, just in different years - just keep lying there space cadet girl!) Thank you each and every one who helped me in all those ways.
My promise to Raccoon and his to me of Comic-con got me jump started back into seeing, doing and being (him showing me how to get rid of that extra fluid, Indy style). Doing, being - I might have spent much of the travel experience in the van, might have never left it but once in Yosemite, but I was THERE.
The very thing I feared was the gift that Raccoon gave me: The unknown. Because it not only contains all things I fear, but all things I will fall in love with, all passions, all excitements and joys. And that I might not remember them for more than a couple days doesn’t matter, the habit of living and expecting more, both in life and from myself is an attitude I want to cultivate. I don't know what I can find, not until I try. Thanks Raccoon.
After Comi-Con, Raccoon, who comments here, offered to let us stay there for two nights, in order to get our energy back for the drive home. So the plan was to go from Fresno to Yosemite and to the edges of San Francisco in one day. What? That’s totally possible right? Well, it turns out it is possible if you are some sort of driving masochist.
The road into Yosemite has not been upgraded since the 60’s and they had stripped many miles so once in the ‘National Park’ lands the two lane road turned to gravel for miles. The up to 5,000+ feet (a mile high) and down again and up again and down again was playing a bit of havoc with my lungs but the scenery was nice and people even stopped for deer.
On the way up we stopped at the Yosemite Steam Train, which is a narrow gauge train that was used in this region for logging and transport and still runs today. If you look at the picture of the engine, straight down from the steam whistle, you can see the vent and the puff of steam venting as the engine is building power. They combine dinner and a steam engine ride, with the number 15 engine in the shed along with some of the other vintage train cars. We sadly didn’t have time for a ride (but picked up postcards!).
We entered the park inner system where you can go left to go to Yosemite Valley or right to go up to the Mariposa woodlands. We went right and started climbing even more. We had wanted to go to the Sequoia National Park but couldn’t fit it in, and to find that the Mariposa had groves of Sequoia trees as old as 1,800 years was a win/win. There was a trail that I was told, “I wouldn’t even recommend mothers take strollers on it.” So we wheeled on the road and then went a bit off road when needed. The road climbed another 1,000 feet so both Linda and I got our exercise that day. The Sequoia’s are tall and majestic and people have been visiting this area for such a long time, most of the trees are named. In fact there is a tree which you used to be able to drive through from the 1880’s until 1969 when it fell down in a storm. Pictures of people taking their wagon teams through the tree show that people like big trees and they like to go through them.
We encountered a fallen giant soon along the path and it was covered with carved initials and dates, the oldest I saw was from 1934 but I am sure if you looked hard there was some from over 100 years ago. A picture of Linda down near the root system gives a sense of perspective on this mid sized Sequoia tree. The Sequoia are a type of Redwood but unique. One of the unique aspects of them are the LARGE pine cones they produce (do not stand under the tree when they fall!). I think you are not supposed to take them from the park but we saw people walking with them (the one photographed was put back on the display stand after). I also think they release the seeds during a forest fire, maybe someone can help me on that. Which would make sense as if you have a forest of 1,000 year old trees you don’t need new ones every year, but when some of them have been wiped out.
While we were up there we looked up at noise and saw a woodpecker who had already made several holes into a tree working away, I don’t know if you can spot him in the bark, as this is up 40 feet or so.
We saw a LOT of wildlife in a very short period of time, which was very refreshing after staring at bad driving, very bad driving and lots of cityscape (hey drivers, there are things called ‘indicators’ you can turn on before you change lanes….just a heads up!).
Here is a blur of a tree, and that black blur is a black squirrel, which I have a film of. He just kept running round and round and round the tree, so I will put a film up of that later, as motion is so much easier to see with animals in the wild. So consider this ‘coming attractions’ once I get the films uploaded to youtube.
We also saw a small type of squirrel called Peco’s which live around the Sequoia. We saw two of them which were running around the place like it was a giant track, first round and round the tree up and down then on to the next park, over the log, down the fallen log, then racing each other right in front of us and around back to the tree again. They did this several times (getting a pictures of two racing Pecos is harder that you might think). If you look at the tree on the left at the bottom you will see a black shape (one Peco) and the other is a grey stretched out blur approaching the tree, the second picture shows the grey on the tree as the black is about to scamper around the corner. It was amazing to watch, like some Chaplin film, or a high energy comedy energy.
There were also three male deer grazing in the valley down from us but blocked mostly by trees and not giving great pictures. However while looking at them a squirrel or Peco jumped up on the stump behind me and started to chitter in chastisement. I wonder what I did? So the wildlife was literally running up to me, in various forms.
Here is Linda between two of the younger Sequoia’s in order to give some perspective on the size of these trees. Soon after we met a couple from Chester in England who said, “You see one tree, you’ve seen them all.” Which I though odd since in the UK, any Oak Tree of significant age is on the survey maps and named and recorded in a national registry. I like lots of trees, the giant Douglas Fir of Vancouver Island, the Moss and Trees of the Hoh, the Redwoods, the Sequoias, and would love to see the gaint Mahogany trees of South America. We have seen the Oaks of the UK, the Black Forest and looking forward to more.
On to Yosemite, Linda saved me a hard wheel by driving down to meet me. We drove for another hour before the Yosemite valley started opening before us (This was taken by me while Linda drove). You go through a long tunnel and then the valley is there, broad before you with half dome in the back, Angel Falls on the right and El Capitan on the left (apparently this year you have to reserve to do the 3-5 day rock climb up it – just in case you don’t have enough things to do or train for). I guess the park service got tired of people stopping so they put in a view right at the end of the tunnel and I got a picture of Linda and the Yosemite Valley. When planning Linda was ‘Why do we have to drive all those hours to Yosemite?” and I kept saying, “It is just something you have to see.”
Yosemite IS something you have to see, along with the giant mansion sized boulders on the ground which are just a ‘cracked chip’ fallen off of these giant granite faces. Thanks to Ansel Adams (who has a museum of his work here) and others, this valley is preserved and an ad saying “Pepsi” or “Got Milk?” is NOT spray painted across any of the majestic towers.
It was close to 7:00 by the time we made it down into the Yosemite Valley Drive and we didn’t know when the visitor center closed or if it was already. Linda had gone out and took a picture, but on the way back two squirrels were getting ‘busy’ which we were told later was not sex, but just ‘playing’, er, okay, well, here is a picture of them and you can decide (Yaoi: Squirrel Style?). I hit the horn to get Linda to look up as I found the visitor’s center closed at 7:30. We drove, we got lost, we got lost again, and then we found the visitors center, with Linda going ahead to look in the gift store. This picture was taking by a kind and very nice looking German female (hee hee!). On the way in we had passed a sign reading “Speed Kills Bears” with a picture of a bear. I guess it was supposed to make us slow down but considering most people are scared of bears, maybe it ended getting people to speed up? Linda wanted a picture but in the visitor’s center we found a magnet of it. We also got a FEW (dozen) postcards in the 12 minutes we had. Plus I talked to a Ranger and showed him the videos, and he identified the Peco’s versus the black squirrels.
The Ranger also let me know that because we had the blue badge I could drive on an ‘official use’ and ‘do not enter’ road which went out to Mirror Pond and from there we caught the sun shining the sunset on Half Dome. Yes, these few hours were a fast and rushed tour of Yosemite and while we wanted more, it was enough. On the way back we saw a male buck with antlers feeding with the Yosemite Valley behind. The park seemed to have animals and scenery everywhere we looked. Two cyclists rode between me and the buck deer while I was about to take the picture, the husband saying to the wife "Deer, what deer, I can't see anything?" as he passed by 10 feet from the deer and rode past and away, never seeing.
The sun continued to descend and up above, in the clouds, the sunset continued. We headed out of the park stopping to make some sandwiches and prepare for drive to San Francisco. Eiki Eiki and I had not left the van much but we had seen a lot and taken a LOT of pictures (ohhh, about 200). The road down from Yosemite is a twist rapid elevation drop which is the hardest on me and made me pass out complete for about 90 minutes (not sleeping but literally BAM, unconscious). It was as we neared San Francisco that Linda let me know that she wasn’t EXACTLY sure where she had the directions to Raccoon’s house.
Oh. (It turned out she had left them……at Raccoon’s house on the way down).
So we hit a lot of exits since a lot of them got the ‘that looks familiar’ to Linda. As for me, since it was a week ago, I had no memory at all. Eventually I decided we would systematically take EVERY exit, and we had eliminated each one until we had one left. It was 1:00 am and we were both punch drunk from exhaustion. There were orange cones and there seemed to be a gap so I directed Linda into what I thought was the ‘construction exit’. I directed her instead to a police car waiting in the dark which popped on the lights, and started writing things down and checking Linda’s eyes (that red is exhaustion, not drugs, honest!). The police officer let us go, but he didn’t know how to get to Raccoon’s address. He did know that the Trader Joe’s we knew was nearby to Raccoon was ‘around here’. Great.
We didn’t get a ticket and after one final wrong turn, corrected we finally made it to Raccoon’s where I lay down, irritating his two cats who had claimed the futon as their new plaything.
Yosemite was worth it, though I woke up the next morning in shock with blue fingers and shuddering. It was good to know we could have a day to rest up as well. Because after that we were headed into the unknowns of southern Oregon, then a long driving day from there straight back to Cheryl’s (who had flown back earlier).
While we were off-road, there was a trail to some of the big trees, and I was feeling like “Darn if I am going to be stuck in this car for 3 days and do nothing!” so I ended up wheeling around (down a BIG, BIG Hill) some very big trees (since about 1/2 of the tree is in the picture, and goes up, and up). It was dusty dry, but also dark from the canopy 300 feet overhead. I took most of the film and it was really hard to get pictures that showed how huge these original redwoods were. I tried but found that without perspective, often they just looked like regular trees instead of this ‘medium sized’ tree that fell down (medium large trees are 400 years old or more, there were trees 1,500 years old in that area). As you can see, sometimes I had to wheel under the trees, but no problem.
Linda borrowed my camera as light shows up better in the film section as she decided to take some films of me around the trees. Of course, this is when wonderful films appear (honest) and sometimes other things can happen. Yeah, well,
yeah.
My first thought, and Linda’s was: “How many bends to the legs now?”
What happens basically is this, chair stopped dead as rocks grabbed the chair while
I leaned forward. I shoot out chair.
I touch down at lowest point (which are knees as I am leaning forward to get under tree), body continues forward dragging legs over rocks while using up energy.
Did I bleed? Oh hell.
Honest truth. We had only 3 hours of light left to see the Redwoods and I hoped the cotton would act as a bandage as the blood soaked through. I never looked after one shot until 10 hours later. That is when it was bandaged.
I have left bits of the redwood and floor of the forest in two states and several towns as they keep appearing. I remember begging Linda to find a bathroom so I could get the amount of BARK from a redwood tree out of my ASS (you know, four hours later, once photo ops were gone.)
Then it turned black, and I had missed some bark so in LA, I had to dig and peel most of my skin the size of a fist or two off of my knee, which isn’t all of the hurt on that leg, just some of it.
10 minutes later I laughed like a maniac! I looked like one too, with blood soaking through and running down my leg and I am going up to groups of families laughing and laughing, and asking if they want to see something funny.
We are off on a ROAD TRIP! I made a promise that if I was still alive I would be at the Eisner awards with a friend. It has been an up and down year and we are heading down budget style but when they announce the winners we will be there (or recovering nearby). I didn’t really get that it was attached to Comic-Con, the giant comic/gaming/book convention annually held in SanDiego (where anime is just a poor cousin…alas). But no problem as doing different things is the challenge of being human: change and grow.
So we are going on the road in about 36 hours, except I have to sleep 4 times in that period, and pack some clothes, and a few other things, you know, books, oxygen, moisturizer, um, dunno. I spent the whole evening figuring out how to use the PSP I have for hand therapy (that sounds really dirty doesn’t it?) for storing videos from youtube. Wow, way to suck up….oh 7 hours, EEEEPPPP! Oh well, I have about 20 videos and um, nothing else. Not even a corset: time to attack the closets and cupboards.
Oh, we are driving because I am a ‘frail thing’ (how exactly does a frail thing gain all this water weight, even the doctors say it is, they just don’t know how to get rid of it – oh wait, that’s because it is a side effect of congestive heart failure – which I figure can’t be THAT serious, I mean, they would DO something like, give me a ‘decongestant’ or is that something for allergy season?). Specifically a frail thing that can’t survive a take off (maybe, let’s find out!). I also will be posting EVERY DAY or TWO DAYS so tune in, okay? We are driving down to keep me in the air conditioning. I may have a survey of the hell hotels of the west coast, but Linda says ‘think the 1/3rd rule!’ – and so I do. After trying to gain strength and then getting whammed by the heat instead I am scared to go outside. Now that is reason enough TO GO OUTSIDE. Face my fears.
Linda is still applying for jobs, and with the heat gone we are both a bit more sane. Also, I don’t think about doing icky things to myself to stop the whole pain thing (imagine a life where all you can remember is a) heat hell b) not sleeping c) extreme pain d) seizures and other pain things. It makes life look, well, not one I would advertise. But I am EFM and I am on the road. HA! If someone can loan me $5 I can buy some postcards (all the money went to the trip and um...I dunno, it just GOES. That happen to anyone else? I use the library and they end up charging for LATE fees whether you are conscious or even in the hospital or not, boo to them!).
This is the garden I would LOVE to visit on the way to Comi-Con, however, being not only a continent but also an ocean away, I would need Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang as my vehicle to see it on a road trip. Too bad that, you never know when you need to learn about poisonous plants, and they always suspect everyone ELSE but the woman in the wheelchair (insert odd crackling laughter here).
We went by the James Bay Market to talk to my favorite potter, who has made this vase. Apparently it is NOT a blue vase (no this isn't the Matrix), but it is a titanium vase which due to the infusion of titanium which actually absorbs instead of reflects light, the blue is what colour escapes. So it is every colour BUT blue, or the blue like in why the sky is blue and is a vase which is an optical illusion having shifted the colour spectrum through the materials. I think that was the explanation. She uses a lot of different minerals, in order to get special effects, and I never heard of a pottery vase made with titanium before. Maybe someone scientific out there can explain it better?
We did about 50 postcards this weekend, and I did a postcard project blog post about the postcards up to this month, over at the postcard project. This was a ‘children’s week’ where we do a lot more of the children’s postcards, because it is cool as a kid to get a postcard. On the trip I hope to get more good animal postcards because we pretty much are cleaned out, that and really good stickers, which most of them we got sent to us somewhere near San Fran, so will go search there. Actually, I hope we get lots of really interesting postcards as we go to the Redwoods and other Big Tree National Parks, and Yosemite on the way back. Also to the Oregon Coast which is supposed to be gorgeous (I hope THEN it is sunny). And of old San Diego, I hope it is still as I remember, the old Well Fargo building.
Anyway, I am outta here. I will try to update tomorrow about how I lost almost an entire DAY (night and then day) trying to get Amazon.com to understand me. As Amazon does not have a policy for people with speech disabilities or impediments, I found out. And some call centers in some countries end up being a comedy routine of ‘who’s on First’ which goes on and on. At one point I kept trying to say, “I have a SPEECH impediment” and they kept going, “Spanish, you want someone to speak Spanish?”
As the day goes on I can be hard to understand unless you have been around me a lot. The tongue and throat muscles get weaker the more I talk.
I eventually said, “Non Espanol!” then asked, “Can you understand me?
“No,” the second person said (the first had said I was static and hung up on me), “I can’t understand you.”
I paused to ponder how they could answer that question so perfectly if they couldn’t understand me?
“Supervisor!” I said (It might have been closer to ‘Uper’isor’ but they got it and said, “Yes, I will transfer you.”
Thank GOD! I thought.
“If you could just outline to me verbally what you want to speak to the supervisor about.” They continued.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Dude, stop using the manual, PLEASE!
I told Linda that every day.
DVD sets from the US/UK like Life, Luther and Burn Notice, or films like Bajo la Sal I have the mental excitement again of engaging a mind which is smart, clever and taught me something by bringing me up to a new level. Because who doesn’t need to know how to make a cheap tracking device and set off explosives (Burn Notice, the McGuyver of spy gal). So, good days moments of engaged and alive, and mediocre days, DVD’s like Sanctuary or manga like Otomen or Honey Hunt to keep pain’s claw marks ignored another second and some vocab intact even if I don’t know what city I am in, or who is President/Premier.
then hit with a heat wave which leaves me trapped and terrified. Heat hurts. Imagine those hot dogs on the grill or in water as they swell and swell until they skin splits open. That is me. I sleep and all I have are nightmares where my limbs and torso is razored off in layers like a butchers shop does with sandwich meat. And I can’t wake up because I am now in a heat coma (the heat of the blood to my brain is hot enough to give me seizures, but I am too weak to wake up), and if I do wake up, I am paralyzed. That is summer.
loss of function, loss of life (I don’t mind dying for an ideal, I do mind dying because of a heat wave).
to a blood clot or stroke (and it WAS in the 90's for several days). It was UNKNOWN, that was the fear. Add in that my medication was running out, and Linda’s job hunting had not resulted in a single short list (problem when over 1,000 managers are let go on an ISLAND where the main employer IS the person who let everyone go – and then they retroactively hired back all of the levels of workers BELOW her, without letting anyone including her apply for the jobs – welcome to British Columbia) or interview. Scary. And of course, being B.C., unemployment is capped far below the poverty line. Scary.
she could take a friend. But I made a promise. And I keep promises.
and then I wasn’t really human anymore, unable to move, to speak, out on the bathroom floor. For 12 hours, I didn’t know what ‘words’ were, I had nothing going mentally and couldn’t move, I couldn’t even moan my pain.
and I laughed (and later cried). I went to a museum and had a seizure, I went to old Town San Diego, I went up and down in elevation and my lungs hurt, and I was passing out daily. I was stopping breathing when passed out. But I wasn’t terrified, I was doing. I was seeing.
to see flowers, or oceans, or forest, or cities, or shops would have bad experiences, and okay ones and occasionally great ones but they are all things I cannot get inside a room. I can’t talk to Nene Thomas inside my room. I can’t see antique original stagecoaches in my room. I could not eat at a mexican surf shop and restaurant in my room.
And while I was hurt, emotionally and physically, I was reintroduced to....well, me, or the type of me I prefer: dream it and do it.
or to go window shopping or buy specialty tea, or get turned away as a homeland security threat at JPL (for asking security booth of Buck and Bob where the visitor center we were cleared to visit was located) for trying to get postcards.
Just a tip Jet Propulsion Lab, the place where unmanned probes of spaces has info and images rendered: if you DON’T want people to know where you are due to SECURITY then you might not want signs directing us off the highway right to the entrance, and you might not want to fly a GIANT American flag larger than the building on top of it. Just a little security hint.
But if I don’t get out of room, out of the comfort and fear zone, then I won’t get either life OR living. Winter will be here soon and then I really CAN’T go outside (I get frostbite indoors). I needed to get back in the game, that friction called living. And I wouldn’t have done that without Raccoon.
Because out for 4-5 hours and a day recovering is me living on the dangerous edge of going wild 
(my 4-5 hours is like your 48 hours without sleeping having a party!). So after 5 hours, even after sleeping staring at Sanctuary Season 2 and watching 'Sanctuary going to Comic-Con' extra makes me loopy and smile and go, "I'm here, they're here, we're all here!" (yeah, just in different years - just keep lying there space cadet girl!) Thank you each and every one who helped me in all those ways.
Doing, being - I might have spent much of the travel experience in the van, might have never left it but once in Yosemite, but I was THERE.
And that I might not remember them for more than a couple days doesn’t matter, the habit of living and expecting more, both in life and from myself is an attitude I want to cultivate. I don't know what I can find, not until I try.
