Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Ghost Log

When we went to Portland, OR, during the second leg of our trip, we stayed at the Edgefield, a former county poor farm that has been converted into more or less a resort hotel located in the suburbs of Jerry Garcia's mind. From the hallway walls to the steam pipe caps in our room, the place is slathered in murals that nod to its history as the residence hall for that poor farm, then a nursing home, then a squat complete with real live anarchists, at which point it was rescued and refurbished.

When you walk up the stairs to your room, there's a huge painting of two gleeful old ladies riding a silo as a rocket ship, followed by beatific and bald angels in wheelchairs. The fuse boxes make heads of Shiva-like gods whose many arms are playing with yo-yos. Chagall-like brides and grooms fly around on the third floor. For the duration of your stay, you are living inside some art.

Our first night there, all three of us had nightmares. Mine is just too scary to relate; my husband's involved both running from something and running after something. Our son just said "Bad dream." When I went down to the front desk the next afternoon to ask a few questions, I hung there for another minute, wondering whether to maintain the appearance of a normal person or just go for it. I went for it.

"Can you tell me," I asked the nice lady, "do people often have, uhhhh, intense dreams when they stay here?"

She smiled this potent smile, a blend of kindness and absolute what-the-f*** spooky I've never seen before, and said "Would you like to see our ghost log?"

She handed me one of those marbled school notebooks, filled with handwritten stories from guests and employees about their various experiences over the years, from thumps to dreams to full-blown non-existent people standing right in front of them.

I sat in the lobby, having some of the best coffee I've ever had in my life -- and free! -- pondering the ghost log. I'm not sure what this has to do with this blog, other than that the universe has some very interesting nooks and crannies, and travel is one of the only ways you can ever stumble upon them. That, and that I sometimes expect that asking for all of these things is going to have an inevitable backwash in the form of nightmares and ghost logs. To get the miracles, I worry you have to pay a price.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I'm a tunnel and a bridge

Close friends of ours threw us a barbeque while we were in San Francisco. The directions to get there, to Stinson Beach, said at the end "over a hill and down to the beach". "Over a hill" actually meant 45 minutes of ascending haripin turns. The first 35 minutes I was fine. Fine with my eyes shut and chanting to myself while my husband said "This is SO AWESOME" over and over again about views I could not see through my very very shut eyes. The last ten minutes I lost it. I also figured we must be lost and would just be making hairpin turns up into the sky until our rental car ran out of gas, at which point we would have to make some decisions akin to the cast of Alive.

Once there, I had a good time at the barbeque, but I felt like a wuss. We eventually left the park area and went for a walk on the beach with some friends and our son. New York has some nice beaches, but they are nothing like the West Coast in terms of sheer breadth. My son's comment was "Wow, Mommy. Big big water." I wandered over to the shore line and had my daily universe conversation. I said please let me find some balance. Please let me find some serenity and balance. I'd been frazzled and tired since we'd gotten there a couple of days before and felt like I hadn't had enough sleep or a minute to myself. I attempted a tree pose (standing on one leg, raised foot resting against knee of standing leg) and promptly fell over. Then again. Then again. A friend later pointed out to me -- OK, so you couldn't balance on sand.

I got pretty frustrated and went into a small tailspin in my head, I can't be peaceful, I can't enjoy the moment, I suck at yoga, blah blah blah. So I did what I thought was giving up and did a downward facing dog (hands and feet on the ground, tush in the air) thinking at least I won't fall over from all fours.

I stayed there for a minute and then heard my son calling my name. Before I could get up he had clambered underneath me and looked up and said excitedly "It's Mommy! Mommy is a tunnel! Mommy is a bridge!"

I made a promise then and there to accept this wonderful phase of my life. One where we're running around and doing too much and having lots of exhausting adventures. One of joyful chaos. One where I am a tunnel and a bridge (believe me, I'm going to think about that one some more) and this wonderful little person is here with us, because he will be a big person before long. If you catch me complaining, remind me that I asked for peace and serenity and quiet and stasis and the universe very clearly said "No way, chica. It's time for something else."

Monday, November 19, 2007

Honey, I'm home

And have been for three weeks. Vacation was wonderful; I'll be blogging about some of the major events here in the next week or so. Since getting back I've been catching up with work, dealing with various welcome-to-winter ailments of everybody in my house and going slowly insane as a result of communications breakdowns. Both between me and other people, and actual breakdowns of my email server and cell phone.

Before I left on vacation, I blogged a bit here and there about a friendship that had stopped working long ago and had many things left unsaid. I had a long meditation/prayer session where I asked for the friend in question to be freed from what I perceived as an overarching state of anger that has been holding them back in life. I asked for their happiness. I asked for them not to be held back by what happened between us. I asked for them to come to some understanding of my side of things.

Careful what you wish for. I'm still glad that, within a week, the wheels were set in motion for all of those above things to begin to happen. I just wish clearing the air felt less like a baseball bat to the skull. This is some really dense and painful air.

I don't want to disrupt this person's privacy, so this is the last I'm going to discuss it here, but I felt it was important in the context of what I'm trying to do here to mention that I'm still having alot of trouble with this lesson, and I think it's an important one, that I don't get to be exempt from the workings of the universe and if I'm going to ask for things, the universe looks like it's going to make damn sure I participate, even if I'm picked last and the uniform is a really ugly color.

Be well, more tomorrow.