The Last of the Sunny Days

I am so greatful for this stolen moment of stillness in time. I am sitting stretched out, my back up against the base of an old willow, the sun on my face, looking down from the Cemetary onto the city below. I can see Hood and St. Helens, and all the lightly dusted sugar-topped peaks of the distant Cascades. For the sights of far off mountains beyond mountains alone I bear the afternoons of such crystalline and frigid words of art. I had so much to say, so much crashing at the gates of my brain all morning, and now all I want to do is sit and peer out on the valley at my feet.

Good lord I need to get outside.

How I Spent North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho...in less than 24 hours!

I wish I could write this adequately. Of sunrise over North Dakota so bright and so sudden and so riveting that I struggle to tear myself away, and am seeing spots for minutes on end.Of land carved by some unforeseen spoon, dotted with horses and the white remnants of an early thaw. Of prairie grass that would it not for early January flapping in the breeze. It sort of makes me undeniably content just sitting and watching the world slide by, surrounded by lost souls and adventures so similar to my own.

Theres no good way to voice the spontaneous immediacy and distance I feel, looking out on the waves like foothills. Its sort of like sitting on some abandoned Atlantic beach and knowing that the only thing between you and Africa is water. Where cowboys ride trains past ancient Pioneer cemeteries with three graves and faded Pickett fences. And footprints mark the snow pack even hours from the next town. And empty churches and freight liners whisper sweet departure songs to empty grain silos. Even the sun makes rainbows through the ice.

For coffee and sagebrush I could translate the tails of this forgotten West quite happily for days on end.

Riding trains is sort of this sweet zen. I've whiled away nearly the whole day just staring out the window. The more you stare at the same things for hours on end, the more intriguing places your mind usually wanders. Deep Montana in the early evening, and I was really hoping for a sunset to light up the prarie-land and the very beginnings of high mountains. Clouds came in, so instead I'm marvelling at the beginning of the Rockies in the dying light and two guys with twelve-string guitars playing old blues and John Denver.

Someday I'll learn to play the guitar. I've got to. Montana is flat. Every small town we've passed through today I peer around desperately, trying to imagine myself here. Its so brown, that's the first thing. Other than that I think the endlessness of the high-prairie and the slow heave of the horizon just might grown on me. I love the expanse, if that's even a word. I love a gaze in every direction going on for miles on end. Even the sad sort of desolation of empty houses and empty land, its something bewitching.

There would certainly be sunshine, however...

Adventuring Again

Trains are in so many ways like some slow nostalgic rapture. I could stare for hours on end out the windows, locked in some zen-like battle for concentration and coherence, and never quite come out on top. It's Tuesday night and I'm fighting my way through some bittersweet comings and goings, and doing my best to work through and compartmentalize a long week of hello's and goodbyes and internal reminisces. As always, my work is to understand instead of mourn.

I'm closing in on Tomah, Wisconsin on day five of this epic adventure. I can't quite shake the notion that my story, the one that again places me on a path greater than schooling, begins again here.

Seeing Rachel again made me feel incessantly old and Russia so very long ago. Friends like that where you can pick up after two years of limited contact, and talk for two days on end about nothing and everything at all, well, they're pretty much amazing. We talked as we did that long fall day in the one Western coffee shop in all of St. Petersburg, almost without pausing for breath. I can never quite find the right words to explain the wonder I feel at being around people with whom you share more than just a mutual understanding of life and ethics and passions and priorities. It was nice. I'm so proud of the work that she's doing, and only kind of secretely jelous of getting to go back and face the mysterious darkness of the Russian bureocracy...Only kind of.

It was so good to see Chad again, and so unexpected. The Chernov clan I can take or leave, but Chad I will truely miss. I tried all summer long to figure out what made working for him such a pretty awesome experience, and never quite completely defined it. It was a treat to work for someone so wise. He taught me so much over the source of the summer, and saw so much good in me and the work that I do. It was so nice to talk about my plans and ideas for the future, and my mythical thesis project in a completely objective manner, with someone with the experience to know what I'm talking about. I appreciate so much the encouragement and support and belief that I am doing the right things and fully capable of all the bigger and better and crazier things I am dreaming of. I admire and respect him alot, and a little bittersweet to leave.

I've been so struck by the strangeness of doors that are closing behind me as I pass further west. It was downright bizarre and a little disconcerting to leave home for undoubtedly not the last time, but for the last time buit-in, expected, and counted on. It's sort of the same effect of leaving Czech, heartbreaking because you don't know the next time you'll be back that way again. Being there is so strenuous that I have a hard time parsing the difficulties of leaving. Its a completely different feeling then usual, when I know I'll be back for a visit in four to six months time. I probably will, but when the money gets cut off it'll be on my own terms and on my dime, and I can't help but feel a little bit marooned.

I saw Fradkin briefly, and really shouldn't have worried to tell him of my abandonment of Russian. He actually mentioned it, more like suggested it really, before I could. We were talking about grad schools, and he said something like how he thought my skills would be better used in something environmental rather than Russian. I was amazed that he could read me so intuitively. I am so deeply and profoundly blessed to have and have experienced so many guiding figures such as these in my life. I am continously realizing what a large impact all of these mentor folks have on me, and I can't express how thankful I am.

Minnesota Line and time for a nap...

Oh the Irony.

Dead List Fall 2007, or otherwise titled, how Peggy got her groove back in three days or less!

Securely Dead:
-my laptop
-Gender in Latin America paper about Russia...yes I know
-Statistics Paper, in which I learn to write eight pages without any conceptual knowledge whatsoever
-Russian literature presentation about cognitive exile in the Master and Margarita, the one in which I get 10 minutes or less to prove to my father, in the audience, that my $40,000 a year education has in fact been worthwhile. 1-2-3 GO!
-Spanish Conversation presentation about superstititions in Czech Republic. 'Cause I'm a good circumlocuter. The best even, you might say
-Nine of ten reading responses.

Writhing about yet
-Russian lit paper on cognitive exile. Presently attempting to come up with three pages of quotations from the text to make it a ten-pager
-Laundry
-Music scholarship job, what?
-CO app to guide next semester...procrastination of choice

Alive and kicking, bohuzhel bohudik...
-Stats final?
-Gender take home final? I mean seriously...who gives a research paper and a take home final, and then bitches about the amount of grading you have?
-The monster that ate my apartment
-Figuring out how the crap I am getting back to Ptown in January...if you know anyone willing to put me up somewhere between Milwaukee and Portland, do let me know.

Absurdities

If I can look back on college, this my post-adolescent life ten years down the road, and remember weekends like this, I think I could be truely content in how I've spent the past few years. If I can look back next week and think of weekends like this, I know I could be content in how I've learned to spend time. If I can wake up tommorow, or I should say, in four hours, and laugh, I will have truely arrived at something great.

Saturday snowshoeing on Hood, on one magical sun-filled afternoon spent beneath the Oregon pines, climbing vertical hills like I've only ever daydreamed about, looking out on the mountains that I've only yet seen in my minds-eye. Talking and listening and talking somemore and laughing and not being pent-up drama. And more talking and laughing and smiling--I'd almost forgot how. And then getting marooned...its funny every weekend that I go up to the mountains, or out to the coast, or just plainly away I pray to get stranded. Pray to not have to come in for a good long time. And then when it finally happened, all I could do was laugh with joy at the absurdity of the situation. Long story short: we killed the van, and ended up waiting for a towtruck for a good 3 hours in the parking lot at the trailhead while the temp dropped down a ways below freezing. But for watching the stars come out behind the mountain, and seeing the face of the summit alive in the afterglow of the day, not to mention the gift of unencumbered time and getting caught up on the past few months with a good friend--for all of this I'd head back up there in a second. For that again I'd agree to spend the night up there, anything.

Cookies, holiday music, wine, and more good talk with camp friends Saturday evening, sleeping in past noon, waking up to snow and the luxury of dozing this afternoon. Crowned by truely one of the most amazing live music performances I've ever seen, and I am only feeling slightly bad for not even attempting to do homework.

My mind and my body are full and tired. I am learning again to say yes and damn the consequences. Because the moments when you forget all the hindrances of rationality are the ones that you'll look back on, twinge a little bit in the memory, but smile to yourself all the same. However absurd they seem in the moment.

Thankgsiving: A Work in Progress

A month of fall has somehow slipped past, one horrifically slow in the roller coaster meanderings of these up-and-down days, and one frighteningly quick in the progression of have-tos and must-nots and all too fleeting glimpses at joy.

Every day I walk past a billboard advertising I think that movie that they're making out of Kite Runner. The source really doesn't matter, its the caption that gets me: There is a way to be good again. There is a way to be greater than all of these faceless despairs, many ways in fact. It got me thinking about inspiration, motivation, what ever little kick in the pants that helps you get through the day. All the people whom I most admire seem driven by almost supernatural forces and a strength too remarkable to be human. My own pithy attempts just to make it somehow from dawn to dusk more than pale in comparison.

To continue yesterday's musings, I'm wondering and wandering on the things that keep me going. I'm thinking about the things that remain, even through all the stomach clenching chaos I have a knack of discovering for myself, the glimpses of better that have a habit of popping up at all the right times. I close my eyes and I can see mountain silhouettes, pretty much universally. I see the shades of green darkness, the shadow horizon of the Siskiyou's in Southern Oregon, and the dirt road unfurling in front of me. I see the hills of the Orlicke hory, where I am making my way aimlessly from foothill village to village. Mostly I am just on the edge of the woods, looking over and across the fields to the sunset beyond the next ridge. I close my eyes and I am lying in the middle of a deserted Forest Service campground, with two little girls clinging to me as I point out made up constellations. I keep them closed and I am running, simply moving for the sake of feeling my body, freely and without pain. I am on stage, bathing in music like water and the presence of people whom I love. I am sitting too close to a campfire, one which I have built with my own two hands, and we are singing. I close my eyes and I am on the top of Neakanie Mountain, and I am tucked into the hillside in the sunshine, drowsy, and amazed at the beach and endlessly blue water so far below me. I am sunrise and unencumbered time. For all of these things I am. And in all of these things it is the simple act of being which is remarkable, and holy above all.

I get up in the morning because somewhere deep down, sometimes more hidden than others, I believe that in this day something astounding will occur. I have faith that I will meet someone or something who will challenge the boldness of my perceptions. Or some small conversation will manage to reach me unawares. I get up because, or with the hope of being surprised, of being pushed, and hopefully of pushing back. In each day I need movement, the promise of the strokings of endorphins, and of big sky and fog. I need to know, and to constantly be reminded that the world is still out there, still pulsating. Sometimes this is as simple as taking away my breath, or as ethereal as shattering the hard shell of some wayward soul. I live for connections, for connecting people, for connecting to people, and for being connected to my own little turtle-shell atmosphere.

On this day of reflection and benediction, what moves you?

Its so hard to remember, I'm just trying to remember, this time around.

I've made it no secret to the world lately, how shitty life has been for the past few weeks. Admitting that I am out of control is one of the hardest parts of being depressed for me, because I am way to good at being like this. The last few weeks of this supposed living hell have taught me alot, have reminded me of a lot, and have left me questioning the very foundations of the life that I find myself living these days.

I got back from working a fantastic week-end long outdoor trip over on the coast for the weekend. I spent two whole days frolicking in the forest, falling asleep on top of mountains, and offtrailing it over sandunes to find the ocean. We had mushroom fights (apparently thats how you can tell certain types of mushrooms, whether or not the crush on impact), we rocked out with a handfull of guitars and drums and failing that pots and pans. I forgot everything for two days, and in a lot of ways its just crushing to come back to town and loose all perspective on life and love and loss and stress and challenge and meaning and belonging. I forget myself, I forget how to be myself, and I forget the incredible strengths that I have been given.

Its a good question, actually, what is so blinding, why in the heat of things its so hard for me to remember all the good in the world and in myself. I was talking on the phone tonight to a very dear friend, one who I am so blessed to have in my life. He simply said to me, "you know, Peggy, in the heat of things in the backcountry I have no doubt in my mind that you can take charge when you need to. I know you can be confident and sure of yourself and be the person you need to be when there are people who need you. The trick is to learn to do that in the front country as well."

Thats really the rub, is remembering all of the good that I have been given. Remembering how powerful I can be, and how calm, while sitting on top of mountains. Keeping hold of people around me, particularly those with the infinite ability to see through my varying mascarades of bullshit, those who know me well enough to know the truth, that this is not me, and definitly not a me that I enjoy or am capable of being for long. I read some things I had written this summer, about how I wished I could take with me the serenity and the awareness of those experiences. I wrote, literally word for word, that I wished I could remember summer, once school starts kicking my ass and I'm too far gone to realize.

Kind of prescient.

Or sad.

What I mean to say, I guess, is that I am having a hard time. Maybe not today, maybe not tommorow, or yesterday, but I'm having a hard time. I dont know why or how or where from, and I'm not totally convinced that it is for me to know, neccesarily. I know that for whatever reason, winter here in Portland seems to bring out the worst in me. I know that this time around I am doing my damndest to fight it with acupuncture, excercise, solid outdoor time, friends, strangers, music, and cutting the crap. Some days I do pretty damn well and I am conscious and aware and thankful to be alive. Somedays it is all I can do to get out of bed in the morning. Somedays, like sitting here tonight, its all I can do not to run away, to totally flee because doing what I need to do to get through is so intimidating that I cannot even begin to comprehend how to accomplish it. Depression for me is not a sadness, its not an overarching malaise. Its a loss of perspective, a lack of energy, and a total abandonment of logic and rational thought. I still consider myself an optimistic person, I have hopes and dreams and big plans for the future. Its just that sometimes the space between here and there seems unconquerable and unending. Its all the worse, too, because I know that I dont have to be here, I dont have to be like this, that school and the pursuit of that one piece of paper is keeping me here.

My knees are wearing out, and I'm terrified of loosing running and hiking and that absolutely visceral reminder that I am alive and awake and aware and strong. I am very afraid of what comes next.