A Cornucopia of Updates

You're probably rolling your eyes at this title. If so, allow me to say that the inspiration came one morning after I rode my bike into civilization and was checking my phone messages. In one, my friend Sara was explaining that she had a "cornucopia" of things to tell me--because, as she said, she "just really wanted to use the word cornucopia." And this is why we're friends.

Now for the meat and potatoes of the post--or, for all you vegetarians out there, the tofurky dogs:

1. Olivia from the Block
I was catching up on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me this morning, and was elated to learn that the special guest for Not My Job was none other than the awe-inspiring Ice-T: rapper, actor, and child delinquent extraordinaire. For those of you who don't know, I've always felt that Mr. Ice and I were kindred spirits because we share the same birthday and we're both gangsters from the street (my street being 136th Avenue). Listening to him on Wait Wait brought us to a whole new level of close, though, because we both chose the exact same answer to each of the three questions. Only Ice and I would know that years ago, pantyhose for men were called Mantyhose. You know this means that Ice-T and I are basically the same person. Be jealous.

2. The 4:15 [Cat]astrophe
It was a quiet day. Some say a little too quiet. It should have occurred to me that the dead mouse I had swept from the path into the dustpan and thrown into the woods earlier that morning was a portend of sorts, especially with Cat Duke sitting amongst the planters and watching me ominously. I was oblivious, though. That was my first problem.

The day passed normally with no noteworthy events save for a brief conversation with a man who, upon seeing a five-sided wall plate near the desk, informed me that he "was in the building shaped like that on September 11th, 2001."

It was nearly 4:00 when I saw a man walk down the path with a giant German Shepherd on a leash beside him. He was a beautiful dog, and I couldn't help but notice every time he passed by sliding glass door near my desk that he was so calm and well-behaved for a dog like that--even a dog in general. The two cats, Max and Duke, were asleep in their usual spots in the front room of the shop right next to the door. It's the warmest place in the building and, being the first room that people enter, the best location to receive the adoration of customers.

By now the man and his dog had been perusing for close to 15 minutes, and I saw them both out of the corner of my eye pass by the door. The dog paused only briefly--if you could even call it a pause--and poked his head into the doorway. The next scene unfolded so quickly that I hardly know what happened. I certainly didn't know that in a matter of minutes I would have a cat literally dangling from my finger by its claw. Whoops, I just gave away the ending. Let me go back.

So the dog sticks his head into the shop, and at that instant both cats jolt awake. Without wasting a nanosecond they lunge at him, claws out and hissing, the hair on their backs bristling. The dog starts barking and jumps back into a pile of ceramic planters, and I hear them shatter. The cats have now succeeded in chasing the dog partway up the path, and his owner is shouting "Whoa! Whoa!" and pulling on the leash. I race out the door and the man is saying, "I'm sorry! They attacked him! I'll pay for those pots!" One cat--Max--had already pulled back and retreated into the shop, but Duke was still out in full-force. Every chance he got he leaped at the poor dog, jumping--and I kid you not--three feet into the air. I have never in my life seen a cat jump so high. The dog, no longer barking, moved back once more with such force that his collar slid right off over his head, and his owner looked down at the limp leash in his hands, utterly dumbfounded. I shouted Duke's name over and over again (I don't know what I thought that would accomplish, but I sure as hell wasn't going to pick him up when he was going all Matrix on me). I decided that it would be a good idea to get between him and the dog. Wrong. As soon as I did, Duke leaped onto me and sunk his claws into my right hand. Now, I have a vicious cat at home, so I've definitely been mauled by a feline before. This was no amateur assault, though. For close to four seconds Duke was writhing and twitching in mid air with his claw pierced into the fleshy part of my fingertip. When he yanked himself free he immediately scurried up the side of the arbor over the pathway and perched himself on the top while the man hurriedly escorted his dog back to his car.

Instinctively, as I have been known to do whenever I grate my hand on the cheese grater and am afraid to see if it's bleeding, I squeezed my fingers into my palm and refused to open them until after I had cleaned up the broken planters. My hand was in such pain that it was shaking, and the skin around each of the three gouges was turning a deep purple. This faded within a few minutes, but the cuts bled for a long time.

So. I have a shredded hand, the cats are still out there looking for the dog, and my last hour of work went by faster than any hour of work ever has and likely ever will. What a rush.

I realize I could have given you the abridged version, which would have read something like, "There was a domestic animal brawl and I got scratched," but where's the fun in that? If I've learned anything from my hero Ice-T, it's how to act like a G. What could be more G than a cat hanging from your finger?

The Notorious D.U.K.E.: three-quarters feral.

Goooood Morning Vietnam!

So I'm trying out this whole blogging-in-the-morning thing. So far I'm fairly skeptical. My wittiest thoughts always come to me right before I go to sleep--right when I'm about to not need them at all--and usually in the morning I haven't had enough time to brew anything half-coherent. I have decided to share with you a story that might not elicit any sort of reaction, but I'll tell it anyway:

When I'm not working in the pottery shop itself, I package pottery to be shipped through UPS. If on any weekday I package more than five boxes, I call UPS and leave a message on their machine that says something along the lines of "Pickup at Orcas Island Pottery, five boxes." One day last week I woke up early and got one box packed. I was planning on doing at least four more after I was done in the shop, but I ended up being too exhausted. The next morning, my day off, I had packed a bunch more and was in the packing room listening to music and singing along and ripping paper and cutting cardboard and printing labels. I noticed a big truck pull up outside the door but I didn't think anything of it because I assumed it was a delivery of packing popcorn or unmade cardboard boxes. The man walked in with his son and started carrying out the pile of boxes I had made near the computer. I forget exactly what I said, but I brought up that I was surprised to see him since I hadn't called UPS for pickup. He looked puzzled and explained that there was a note on his desk telling him we had eight boxes to be taken. Normally when I call for pickup I print out a summary report for the driver, and I have to send all the package information to UPS online. I hadn't done any of this, so I quickly printed out a report. I was still confused...even more so when I looked down at the summary and saw, next to "Number of Boxes," 8. Trippy, right? The UPS guy must have sensed my concern because he said, "If this is the weirdest thing that happens all day, consider it a good day!" I still don't understand. There is absolutely no way anyone could have known I had eight boxes for pickup. I was still in the process of taping one shut when the driver arrived. Plus I had multiple other boxes almost done at the same time--what if he had come ten minutes later, and I had nine? I'm probably the only person who's weirded out by this, but I thought I'd share. Also, it should be noted that I called for pickup two nights ago because there were six boxes, and UPS never came. So...they come when I don't call and they don't come when I call? Am I dealing with a canine?
Speaking of packing, I should head down and whip out a couple boxes before I open the shop. There are 21 down there waiting to be picked up, so UPS better come.

Oh. And I'm not sure I'm a fan of this morning blogging thing. I think I'll stick to the night.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions for potential Examiner articles I could write about Seattle, I'm all ears.

Just a Thought

While riding my bike home from work this evening, I decided that working in a pottery shop is like learning to drive on the freeway. At first, you pray for traffic. 60 mph is as unfathomable as the psychic octopus in Germany who predicted the winner of the World Cup. You're content with the slowness of things--after all, isn't the stress always less when there's nothing to stress about? After a while, though, you grow restless. The car in front of you isn't moving fast enough. It has been a whole hour since your last customer and you're getting tired of trying to read Angle of Repose while CBC radio is playing a French version of Frankie Valli's "Oh What a Night." You want to flip the page, turn the radio dial, introduce the gas pedal to the floor of your car. I know, I know. I'm an ace with analogies. It's true though. Slowness is nice--even preferable--for a while, but when it becomes 3pm and you feel like you've been sitting in the same chair for weeks on end, a customer or two would not be an unwelcome sight.

That is all.

Double-Exposure

Several days ago I began a conversation with a coworker about photography. She mentioned a gorgeous (well, what I presumed was gorgeous based on her description--she didn't actually use that word) double-exposure she had "accidentally" taken a couple years ago, with a hot Phoenix sunset laid over the image of a birdbath with at least four inches of snow on top. We discussed the art of pairing images, a concept on which neither one of us can claim any sort of expertise, and it was a joyous conversation. That evening I sat in bed until I swear every part of me was asleep except my eyes, and I played with creating double-exposure collages on the computer using my images from Australia. I didn't have any sort of great photographic epiphany, but I definitely had fun. I made about fifteen. Here are some of the keepers, in case you're interested. And, I guess, even if you're not:

Base: My friend Mish looking out across Apollo Bay at sunset.
Overlay: Naked gum trees near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road.

Base: A bird caught in shafts of light in a sunset over Royal Park in Melbourne.
Overlay: My favorite tree in the world--an unbelievably symmetrical ghost gum in Royal Park.

Base: The tower of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne.
Overlay: Rainbow lorikeets in the park at the end of the day.

Base: An elderly fisherman, empty-handed, on the jetty at Brighton Beach.
Overlay: My same favorite ghost gum.

Base: The beach at Coral Bay--the destination of my road trip up the west coast of the country.
Overlay: Sandstone pillars at Pinnacles Desert in Western Australia.

Base: The Melbourne skyline from the singing bridge near the cricket grounds.
Overlay: Me and Mish in a park near Sassafras, a small town in the Dandenong Mountains.

Base: Sunset over Royal Park.
Overlay: A baby wallaby at the kiwi sanctuary in Christchurch.

What I Am Right Now

Lately I, like Robert Frost, have been one acquainted with the night. Its chill is sturdy, my invisibility comforting. I love the feeling of falling asleep only when there is nothing more for me to see. No calculators or credit card machines, no vultures or deer, no bales of freshly cropped hay strewn across pastures like scattered dice. I need to be done with my day before I'm done with my day.

I am nearing the end of my allotted island patience, and have become so disenchanted with all this enchantment that I no longer bestow upon my days off the same adoration that I did only a week ago. I have biked until it seemed I had burned through all my muscle. I have taken over thirty photographs of a single sunset. I have hiked Turtleback Mountain twice. I have consumed my customary chai latte and lemon coconut scone at Teezer's more times than I care to admit. I have read and written at the waterfront. I have watched countless seasons of countless shows. Even my guitar--my one true everymoment companion--doesn't make the same music anymore. The Here and Now has never been a vocabulary that I have easily memorized, and this is frustrating.

That being said, I can recognize that I am living a beautiful existence. I am working hard, exercising, sleeping well, and devouring the books that I never had time to read during the school year. Currently I am in bed listening to "Arms of a Woman" by Amos Lee and drinking peppermint tea. My clothes rack is open and draped with shirts that perfume my room with detergent in a way that makes me feel as though one deep breath would cleanse me down to the soul.

I have fallen in love with a magazine named Orion who is tall and gorgeous and full of poetry. If only I could find a man who fits the same description. I am thoroughly bored by every item of clothing I own, but I think in this case I'd rather be bored than shocked. Yesterday I started the first poem I've written since my last day of classes, and it didn't end well. Actually, it didn't end at all. I put down a single stanza, had to help a customer, and never went back to it. Sometimes I wonder if that's the shape my life will take--the excitement of beginning, the breathless intention to follow through, the piercing halt that comes so quickly that I don't even realize it until I look back through my journal and find four lonely lines floating on a blank page like a ripple that never breaks.

A week ago I took a day trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island with a friend from UPS who is also on Orcas for the summer. In the afternoon we happened upon a treasure of a used bookstore, so packed with old titles and splitting bindings that it was a wonder the building wasn't bulging on its foundation. The poetry section was located in a small room at the back of the shop, and as is the case every time I discover such books, I ran my hand along the familiar titles, occasionally sliding one forward over the edge of the shelf just enough to see that the pages had begun to yellow at the spine, a graceful acceptance of their long life.

Among the poets I have come to consider dear friends--Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Ted Kooser, Robert Frost--I found a slender green spine stamped with gold letters, The Rain in the Trees: Poems by W.S. Merwin. I slid it into my hand and fanned the pages beneath my nose before flipping the book open at random to a poem called "Before Us." By the end of the first stanza I knew I had found a kindred spirit in Mr. Merwin:
"You were there all the time and I saw only
the days in the air
the nights the moon changing
cars passing and faces at windows
the windows
the rain the leaves the years
words on pages telling of something else
wind in a mirror."
I don't need to tell you that this book is now among my most cherished of possessions. I do that--create for myself an existence in which so often words on a page are the only permanence I can kiss goodnight.

Between hunting for soul-suspending poetry and spending seven-hour shifts in the pottery shop answering the same questions and writing the same words on different receipts, I have developed a fascination with hands. It's not an obsession--not yet, at least--and rather than bordering on the absurd, it merely caresses it. I think hands are extremely telling of a life. Maybe it's because I treat mine so poorly, having practically emerged from the womb gnawing at my nails and cuticles, but I have found a new appreciation for the ways in which life transforms us, especially in the places we hardly think to notice.

Home in only a few weeks. I'm ready to say goodbye.

My Decision

It's 1 a.m. and I have to work in the morning (well, later in the morning) so I should go to sleep. I'm not going to sleep, though, because I have just made a decision: I am moving back to Melbourne.

Every morning for the past several weeks I have woken up with this knot in my stomach that never seems to unravel. It's irritating, the lack of communication between my body and my mind, two warring continents. I feel hollow. I feel nauseous. I feel overwhelmed. Since graduation--and really, way before that--I've been asked to map out my future like an atlas. It's as if only one possible future exists, and up until now I have been okay with that. It has been comforting, actually, to know that there was nothing remarkable about my post-college plans. I was going to be eating microwaveable macaroni and cheese just like everyone else my age.

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, I discovered that this knot in my stomach dissolves everything except for the feeling I get when I play my guitar from Melbourne or listen to my Australian playlist on iTunes or scroll through the thousands of pictures I took during my ten months abroad. The theme song of McLeod's Daughters, which I found ridiculous the first handful of times I heard it, is suddenly the most accurate utterance of my life: "It'll take some time to find your heart and come back home." It has taken some time, but I realize now without a doubt that I belong under a different sky. I won't be there soon, and I might not be there permanently, but I will be there.

Melbourne, I'm coming home.

Extremely Cold and Extremely Loud

I would like to begin this post with a statement: it's July.
Let me rephrase that: it's July...isn't it?
Before you answer, consider my ensemble for the past two days:

Yesterday:
-Long-sleeve shirt
-Sweater
-Sweatshirt
-Two pairs of socks
-Jeans

This morning:
-Wool socks
-Wool slippers
-Sweatpants
-Long-sleeve shirt
-T-shirt on top
-Sweatshirt
-Cat on lap
-Heater on highest setting (which is not all that high)

Now I ask you again: it's July, right? I could see my breath yesterday morning. No way in H-E-double hockey sticks is that acceptable for July.

The cold is making the days pass so much more slowly than they should be passing. I have to plan my meals (breakfast in particular) around how much warmth my palms can glean from the plate or bowl I'm holding. I chose poorly with cereal this morning, and had to boil some water for tea, even though I did not want tea, just to reintroduce the novel concept of bloodflow to my fingertips.

Oh good. The rain just started. Wonderful. Because, since it hasn't rained since yesterday, I was getting worried that the crops would start to perish the 5 EFFING MINUTES of sun we've had in the past 24 hours.

My boss just lent me the first four seasons of her favorite television show: an Australian series called McLeod's Daughters. It takes place in South Australia on a cattle ranch called Drover's Run. Now, I'm faithful to my Aussie soaps--Packed to the Rafters, Home & Away, Neighbours--but the deceased McLeod and his feuding half-sister daughters are a whole different breed of entertainment. The very first episode featured such intense plot points as death, inheritance, greed, lies, scandal, stealing drums of petrol from an unsuspecting lady rancher, accidentally letting the cattle out of their pen, a car accident resulting in two dead cows (well, one was dead; the other had a broken back and Claire had to shoot it in the head to put it out of its misery) and the explosion of a ute (SUV) carrying petrol. And then, in a final scene that was undoubtedly stolen from the end of The Princess Bride, the McLeod daughters and their three female cohorts go galloping into the wide green abyss of pastureland to round up the cattle to a country love song that was likely written and performed by a prepubescent city boy. No, it wasn't that bad. I have actually come to love it (the song AND the show). The dialogue was amusing and witty, and of course I appreciated the inclusion of words such as "ute," "avo," and "ta." When the episode ended and I turned off my light and slid under my covers, I couldn't help but fall asleep brainstorming ways to get back to my beloved Oz.

Also, I would like to share with you my morning triumph. Every few Fridays the garbage man comes to collect trash from the dumpster right outside the yurt (about seven feet from my head). He's a loud garbage man. It certainly doesn't help that most of the trash is stiff clay scraps, and the sound they make when they hit the cold metal truck bed is akin to dropping the truck itself down an empty well...on top of your ear. Every Thursday night I have to mentally prepare myself for the next morning's rude awakening, and even with this preparation, Mr. Vociferous Garbage Man (let's call him Vocy) is always a surprise. Time after time I am jolted from sweet slumber by the cacophonous noise that could, to my groggy mind, only mean one thing: 2012 has come early. Now you may be thinking, "Oh, the inhumanity! Where is the triumph in this story?" The triumph is here: this morning I was awake--get this--before the truck arrived. That's right. I outsmarted the Orcas Island trash collecting system. I heard Vocy snorting up the driveway in his beast of a truck as I sat happily at my computer watching Lie to Me (my new favorite show) and cheerfully munching on cereal with fresh peach slices. As he approached the yurt, I couldn't help but think, with a sly grin, "You're too late, Vociferous! You can ruin some other poor sap's slumber this morning, but I'm through with your shenanigans! I am moving on."

Olivia for the win.

Also, Mama: still no Orca sightings. I have, however, made several positive kelp identifications.