india

sent in my application to study at the astanga research institute in mysore, india starting on april 1st
http://www.kpjayi.org/

working on my application to teach english to tibetan monks in dharamsala
www.volunteertibet.org

still haven't seen any of my friends who are back because i've been working/busy
blahblahblah

break?

for my christmas "break", i've been working 8 or 9 hours five days a week at Neiman Marcus. now, it really isn't that much, and i'm getting well paid for it (thank god), but i miss beeing NEET (not employed, in education or in training). basically, i've realized how great being a bum is.

eight ways to cut down on the christmas gluttony:
http://www.good.is/?p=14000


cool lemon jelly video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch4vpSVhZBU

home. will update soon.

Deck the Halls I'm Coming Home

Our village outreach yesterday was exceptionally successful (if you don't mind me saying so). We tested an overwhelmingly wonderful 50 people! I think that it was almost half the village!

Most people here refuse to get tested after the dance dramas/health presentation because doing so supposedly means that they are having unprotected sex with more than one partner. We usually test 10 or 12 people at most. Ceri once got into a debate on the bus to Ouagadougou with a few seemingly educated men who didn't want to get tested because they were "free" until they knew their status. WTF does that even mean?!?

Today is my last day with the center. Part of me wishes I could stay here longer and do more work, but I'd be lying if I said that I'm not looking forward to being clean, being able to work out, not waking up covered in sweat, seeing my family, seeing my FRIENDS(!), reading the paper, and, unexpectedly, being home for Christmas.

Now, I usually hate christmas (with an exception of the music, possibly because of my time in childrens choir as a youth). I hate midnight mass (not that I've gone in a while). I hate being home all day with nothing to do after opening presents. I hate the exorbant amount of effort my puts forward to create the sembalence of happiness.

But for the first time in a long time, I'm genuinely looking forward to it.
Fuck, I can't wait.
Bring on 24 hours of "The Christmas Story" on ABC family. Bring on "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve (especially when I ineluctably sob at the end and Elijah feels uncomfortable). Bring on the Ham (that's right, capital H) and the excess of gifts that I don't want, need, or like. Bring on Christmas, I'm motherfucking ready.

burkina faso

Burkina Faso was completely unlike Ghana.

Where Ghana is tropical and lush, Burkina is dominated by the bleakness of the Sahel semi-desert. Where Accra is crowded and hurried, Ouagadougou is lackadaisical and leisure-loving. Where Ghanaian music and popular culture seem to exhaust itself in attempt to be American, Burkina Faso proudly sells baguettes on the street while traditional music blasts on a radio. Where generations of people live on the same plot of Ghanaian land, nomadic northern Burkinabe travel the desert in clans, seldom settling down for more than a season or two.

Burkina Faso is something like the 155th out of 157 countries on the UN’s standard of living list and the majority of people survive on an astounding $1 a day. But if I hadn’t read the statistic Ceri’s guide book, I would have no idea. True to its francophone heritage, Ouagadougou has a joie de vivre that is all at once surprising, disarming and infectious. Our first hours were spent wandering around the streets near our hotel gawking at the beautiful albeit dusty public sculptures, wide tree-lined streets lined with bars and tea stands, masses of Burkinabes on bikes grinning and inquiring “Ca va?”, and the general contentedness of a country so near the bottom of the world pecking order.

I spent the 28 hour bus ride from Accra to Ouaga more or less passed out thanks to a nasty Friday night at Champ’s Sports Bar and the Cinderella V.I.P. room (once a strip club…). Highlights from the first day include drinking bissap, a dark red ice tea-like drink made out of hibiscus syrup and cane sugar juice, and taking a real shower for the first time in a good week. The second day turned to chaotic francophone hell as we showed up to our bus station 5 minutes late to find the only bus of the day to Dori had left. This was astounding to Ceri and I, who are used to GMT (Ghana Maybe Time) and had to wait a wholly expected 3 hours after departure time in Accra for the bus to even arrive to pick us up.

My first reaction was to scream “Fuck!” really loud, so that’s what I did. No one speaks English, so really, no harm done. I automatically switched to get-shit-done mode (a scary one if you’re within 50 feet of me) and ran to a telecentre station, Ceri lagging behind me with half her weight in luggage, to frantically search for another bus company in the city that was leaving for Dori that day. Why so panicked, you ask? Our schedule for the week was so tight that if we didn’t get to Dori that night (another 5 hours outside of Ouaga) we wouldn’t be able to see the desert at all. Why does seeing the desert matter that much? Because, honestly, the tropical forest in Ghana ain’t shit compared to my backyard in Nu’uanu and I wanted to be impressed with some sort of natural wonder before leaving Africa.

I must have looked really upset, because the woman running the telecentre asked me what was wrong and I explained, in broken French, our predicament. Thank Jesus for that woman. She spent a good half an hour calling up friends and relatives until she found a nephew who, with a friend, whisked Ceri and me away on their mopeds to search for a bus to Dori. How francophone.

The bus was, admittedly, sketchy as all fuck. It was filthy, full of old men that smelled like horses (though we ourselves weren’t exactly roses at that point), crowded, hot, and all around greasy. Someone hacked spit out the window at least once every minute. No lights after dark. No stopping at bathrooms. The five hours seemed longer than the 28 from Accra to Ouaga.
Tuesday we went to Bani to look at the seven mud mosques. Supposedly, there is a 150 year old man who lives in the village to this day. When he was around 20 years old, he walked, yes walked, from Burkina Faso to Mecca to fulfill the Muslim obligation of hadj, or pilgrimage. When he returned, he built an assortment of beautiful mud mosques in his small village, of which seven are still standing.

That night we took a minibus to Gorom-Gorom, where we rode camels into the desert on Wednesday… refer to previous post for all the juicy details.

I’m back in Accra again. The city is a bit too much L.A. for me with all the traffic, pollution, hustling, getting scammed on by gross men, and the almost celebrity obsession with obruni (“white” people) and I was quick to dismiss the city as unworthy of visit to fellow travelers we met in Burkina Faso. I stand by my grievances, but admit that my heart jumped a bit as we crossed the border back into Ghana. I missed screaming “puuuorrrwaaattaaa” out the window of my dingy tro-tro and having 4 young girls with coolers balanced on their heads come sprinting towards me holding up sachets of purified water. I missed my wachi, my stew, my pepe, and my 20 pesua boiled egg snacks. I think I even missed telling creepy guys to fuck off. Okay, maybe I didn’t miss the creepy guys that much, but as we walked back into our front yard and Mama Ya started bouncing up and down, enormous breasts crashing together towards heaven with the force of the sea, and screaming “You are welcome! You are welcome home!” I couldn’t feel too bad to be back in this dirty, disgusting city. In fact, I felt kind of happy to be home (at least for the next week).

thanksgiving

i woke up in the sahel desert on thanksgiving morning. well, more like i woke up in the sahel desert around 3 o clock thanksgiving morning because our campfire had gone out and i was so cold i couldnt feel my feet or fingers. my memory of the next three hours vaguely resembles the drowning scene in titanic as ceri and i desperately clung on to each other in order to escape the cold as we rolled in and out of conciousness, rubbing our feet, praying to allah that things would get warmer. how romantic.
(post desert-spooning incident. eating the only meal of thanksgiving day)

around six o clock we mounted our camels for the 2 or 3 hour ride to gorom gorom and the somewhat legendary thursday market. walking with us were various nomadic people from around the desert making their way to gorom as well.

the bus from gorom was to leave at 12, so Ceri and I moseyed our way over to save our spot at 11:30. we had only eaten some leftover baguette for breakfast but weren't feeling especially peckish, so decided to wait to eat until Dori, about 2 hours away. That was a big mistake.

our bus pulled out at about 2:00. late, but not especially horrendous for african standards. 45 minutes later, in the middle of desert nowhere we stopped. ceri and i thought it was a piss break, but after half an hour, we became suspicious. every else seemed to have vacated the bus. directions had been shouted in french, though i hadn't payed enough attention to understand any of it. i decided to go for a walk to a tree i saw in the distance until the bus left. 20 minutes later i watched as the empty bus did just that... back towards gorom gorom. as i jogged back to the road, ceri was running towards the fleeing bus pleading for her bag (in english). hopeful, i started running behind her screaming "SAC! NOTRE SACS!!!" one of the workers looked confussed and then held up a water botttle as the bus speed off.

the passengers were all walking in one direction, so I asked a swiss guy named Steffen what the hell was going on. He said that we were heading to the next village to wait for the bus to be fixed. we arrived at the village (consisting of about 10 mud huts) at around 3. we were famished and tried to buy a pack of glucose biscuts from this guy selling assorted crackers. We only had a 10,000 CFA bill and he refused to take it. seriously, why do they print those things if you can't buy anything with them. (okay, i admit it's probably more than he makes in a month and really i should have stepped back to look at the big picture and not be bothered but i was fucking hungry)

by sundown we had made friends with a belguim guy who gave us a packet of peanuts and some angel of a man who gave us change for our 10,000 bill and we had our glucose biscuts (they taste as nasty as they sound and we could only eat two each before feeling naucious).

by 8pm ceri had passed out on a mat provided by some villager who apeared to be the cheif. by 9, dressed only in track pants and a linen short-sleve button down, i was freezing. steffen went to search for a blanket and found a millet storage room. we slept in that millet storage room, which for some reason felt tropically warm. cozy as three starving and dirty clams we squeezed ourselves into a five by eight foot clearing on the floor on which Steffen had spread our mat. happy thanksgiving.

bitching aside, i had a memorable thanksgiving. it meant something for the first time ever. for the first time in my life, i wasn't at home eating Nana's sweet potatos and Aunty Leally's lillikoi chiffon pie. i was in the middle of the desert with little grasp of the language, no way to call home, no way to leave the scene, nothing to eat and nothing warm to wear in the cold. for the first time since i reached africa, i missed home. i felt like a dumbass thinking back to last thanksgiving, when i woke up hung over as fuck at around 11 am and then ditched my family to go get high and swim at the admiral thomas with jun, matt and sam only to return home for dinner irritated and stoned.

i put my family through hell sometimes. i refuse to go to college, openly drink myself stupid, run away to alaska only to have them bail me out. i never studied very hard or cared very much about doing well in a school they shelled out some 60 grand for me to go to. i buy too many clothes, use too much gas, eat out too much and don't do enough chores, but that doesn't matter. when i called home when i reached Ouagadougou at 10:30 the next morning, my mom was so happy she sounded close to tears. i missed them so much i cried (something i never thought i would do. i blame the hunger). my family loves me more than anything and for that i am thankful.

email to mom from ouagadougou

thank you! ceri and i really like burkina so far. it is much more peaceful than accra and the people are more friendly as well as less aggressive. unfortunatly there is litle to no cell phone reception so i dont think youll be able to get through. i also forgot to bring my cell phone charger so ive turned it off until i get back to ghana.

everything here is very french; people are sitting on the streets drinking wine (albeit in islamic garb) and everyone drives a moped or bicycle, keeping the wide streets relatively empty of the vechicle congestion so characteristic of accra.
i slept for most of the ride here, making the 29 hour sojourn more peaceful and restorative than tedious. watching the lush tropical forests of coastal ghana change into dry savanna served as my entertainment when not watching the atrociously bad ghanain soap operas, usually featuring clergy as protaganists, they played on the bus.

tomorrow we ride to dori and on tuesday were off to the sahel desert via gorom gorom. ill email you when i get back to ouaga (probably friday).
more love than anything,kalei

positive

quick update before leaving for burkina faso tomorrow until December 1st. there is only internet in the capital, Ouagadougou (wag-a-do-goo), and Ceri and I are spending most of our time in the northern region where we are planning to ride camels and camp out in the desert! very exciting, but probably no internet for a good 10 days.

i tested my first positive yesterday in a small, very poor village in Amasaman. It was an older man who looked very poor. His teeth were all half rotten and he already had some of the symtoms of low T cells. it was unnerving to watch him discover that he had HIV. He didn't believe us for a long time and tried to leave repeatedly. I don't blame him.

so much for starting a band...

turns out i have less rhythm then i thought. i had an african drumming lesson today in Amasaman (pronounced ah-ma-saw-ma) and really sucked. in my deffense the beats are a world away from the four four timing i'm used to banging out on the kawai baby grand in my livingroom.

earlier in the day we got turned away from a school because the headmaster didn't want us to teach the kids about using condoms. christianity here is ubiquitous. on the bright side, jesus gives these people hope when they feel screwed by the western world as they sell crap on the roadside for 12 hours a day before returning to their 10 by 10 foot mud hut that they share with 9 family members on a street from the set of a save the children ad. if there was no christianity here there would be no peace. i am possitive of that.

the negative is that some of the doctorines of chirstianity, like abstinence until marriage, just don't work. And yet people pretend that no one is having sex when in reality i have volunteer friends who work with 10 year olds who perform sexual favors for cash. when people pretend that there is no issue, no one, not an n.g.o., not a government, not even the church, can fix it.

maybe reality here is just too harsh to wake up to. i don't know.

i am tired

of getting abused for being fucking "white" which is ridiculous because i have less caucasion blood than barak obama. i got into a shouting match with a chief in kokrobitte this morning... more on that later. on the way to this internet cafe, i got grabbed by strong men 3 times and had to hit their hands to have them let me go. and don't get me started on the "obruni" cat calls and the fact that i can't go ANYWHERE without getting hit on. i need a drink, but i can't go to a bar without at least 5 ghanaians harrassing me.
more later

littering

so, in ghana there are no trash cans. no one has them in their house. there are none in the street. instead, you just drop whatever you want on the dirt road as you walk or literally throw it out the front door, to the side of your doorstep. if the government here was just a little less impotent and built roads and a garbage system instead of the 20th football system, life here could be so much better.
on a side note: people here are not materialistic, but i'm pretty sure they would be if they had more.

pictures

i finally found a decent internet connection in ghana. you wanted pictures, right?

cape coastmy neighborhood marketmy street at sunrisefuu fuu (corn mash), staple of the ghanaian diet
breakfast of doughnuts and porridge

wet 10-10-08

when it rains in ghana, the roads turn to mud, stranding you and any aspirations you might have for the day. structure and any order the city might aspire to melts. trotro's break down or get stuck in place, or simply refuse to take passengers. traffic quagulates and walking becomes the most pragmatic, albeit filthy with the overflowing sewer water, mode of transportation.

when it rains in ghana, the chaos in the streets becomes amplified, but so does the peace in the home. steam streams from the windows as my mud hut sighs in relief from the heat. the tin roof streaches out while the rain drums african dance beats on its back. the yams are hot, the air is cool, and the company is quiet yet content.

the view from my front door

my message to py

THAT IS SUCH GOOD NEWS!!!! i know you would love hawaii!

accra is unlike any experience i've had in my entire life. i am essentially living in a slum, but the spirit of the people and their sense of community is stronger then what i've felt anywhere else in the world (and i've amassed quite a few miles in my time).

the hardest part is the dirtiness of it all. i felt like i've been covered with a layer of dust an sweat since i've been here. i have to shower with a big bucket and a small bucket to scoop water out onto my head. besides the dirtiness, people are so surprised to see a non-black that they either stare or shout "bruni" (which means white person) at you. everybody tries to talk to you or sleep with you, which is making me callous to the point where i ignore 15 year old kids.

but that aside, the nightlife is fantastic. i went to a rastafarian beach club last night where a reggee band was playing and everyone was dancing and having a really great time. i can drink here too! so weird!

it's great to hear from you and i hope to see you soon!
kalei

on my fifth night in ghana

i went to an election party thrown by nyu's exchange program in the yard of a hotel in downtown accra. seeing as we're something like 5 hours ahead of the east coast, it didn't start until 11, when the first polling stations closed. there were 200 to 300 expats, students and ghanians there camped out in front a giant screen alternately playing cnn and aljazera (sp?). the moment when the polls on the west coast closed at four in the morning and obama was announced the winner will be imprinted in my memory forever. everybody started screaming and sobbing and jumping and dancing and singing all at once. women were on the ground praying and college boys were dog piling each other and ghanians were waving the american flag and blowing horns. i'm pretty sure i'm on ghana cable t.v. group hugging perfect strangers with tears streaming down my face with the Barak Obama regae song from kenya blasting on the speakers. just as obama appeared to make his acceptance speech, the sun started to rise from behind the screen and it was morning.

yes we can.

from the second morning

(excerpt from my moleskin)

"As you set out for Ithaka, pray the road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery."
-"Ithaka" by C.P. Cavafy

Ghana is dirty. I've been coated by a combonation of presperation, dirt and smog since I arrived 35 hours ago. I'm not sure exactly where I'm staying. Cari (22, England) and I have moved into some sort of bizzare apartment complex containing two one story classroom size and style buildings with a wall down the center. Some people from the center sleep in the room next to us. The other building belongss to a family with a gaggle of children. I know three of them are girls 12, 7, and four years old, but there are so many people just walking around that I can't tell who lives where and is related to whom.

people here seem to spend an exorbant amount of time moving piles of sand and dirt. half finished construction projects seem to be a national pastime and litter the landscape like the purewater pouches litter the street.

Ghana's passions include jesus-loving, rastafarianism, and everything chinese. this results in stores like "sing his praise" cell phone repair and barber shop, taxis with stickers on the dashboard labeling the drivers as a "ganga farmer", and movie theatres dediated to the proliferation of jackie chan movies.

music thumps relentlessly and roosters wake me up in the morning.

obama, alcohol, and being a dumbass

in frankfurt STILL in fucking transit because i am a dumbass, i didn't know how long each of my flights were/are. i just got off an 11 hour flight from SFO and leave for a 7hr 45min flight for Accra in 4 hours.

on the bright side, my obama tee is scoring me many smiles and a few preemptive celebratory shouts from otherwise stoic germans/europeans.

sat next to a pretty cool german student and now have a place to stay in frankfurt whenevs...

the silver lining to the smog of airplane travel is that i am currently legally drunk. i also found out that ghana doesn't have a drinking age (this may be bad) and that the drinking age in tanzinia is 5... wtf? i am now legal everywhere in the world besides: oman, parts of canada, japan, pakistan, south korea, united arab emirates, and fiji. oh yeah, and the u.s. of a.

"i wanted to paint nothing"

"if you want more meaningful art, build a more meaningful world"
- Sarah Nardi



sometimes i feel like i live in a cultural void. apathetic hipsterdom reigns in the west for a generation that has had everything they couldn't afford handed to them on a plate. it's the me generation on steroids. freedom from want has translated to freedom from meaning.

i'm in transit to accra, ghana. i packed my bags yesterday afternoon, jamming 5 shirts, 3 skirts, and 2 shorts into luggage full of mac nuts and hawaii tees destined for my homestay family. I haven't really prepared for africa beyond buying a travel book this past tuesday and getting my required immunizations. i don't really want a plan beyond working at Sankofa.

We live in a meaningless world that chooses to glorify the self as a means of cartesian entertainment. the thing i want from africa, the only thing i want from africa, is to find a place where people still strive for something as a society: an ideal, survival, peace, war, anything.

i want more meaningful art, so i am going to find a more meaningful world.

p.s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDw4gk5pYl8

old people

I've come to the conclusion that being old is just like being drunk all the time.

Point 1) When I'm drunk I can never find my wallet. I once hysterically tore past an angry japanese-speaking bouncer in a tokyo club to search frantically for my wallet in the bathrooms for a good half an hour before realizing that it was in my pocket. My grandma goes byzerk at least once a day convinced that she has lost her wallet/passport/jewelry bag until she realizes that it's in her purse.

Point 2) When you're drunk, you just say what's on your mind. You ask really obnoxious and blunt questions like, "Why are you so fucking passive aggressive?" and can just say "Sorry, I was soooo blackout that night. I didn't mean it." Same with old people, like when my 70 something year old Italian voice teacher told me that my butt looks bigger. Except that she has the implied excuse of being old. Well that, and she's probably not sorry becuase she ment it (but I guess you did too, really).

Point 3) When you are drunk, you usually fit into three catagories: introspective, angry/grumpy, or really really happy. When you are abot to die, it's normal to think about life and shit. This either makes you really really grumpy like my Papa who watches the history channel and complains all day until he gets mad at you for trying to get him out of his chair, or you don't give a shit about anything and get happy happy happy because you realize that being ridiculously jovial is all you have left in your short, short life.

I am on a boat headed for Nova Scotia with 1999 old people on it. I will test my theories and get back to you. Or maybe I won't.

boire a quebec

so ive been in quebec for a good 5 hours. the night time social scene is the complete opposite of hawaiis "lets get shitfaced on the beach or in the car before the show or game" culture. ive been drinking legally all night at cigar societies, bars, and clubs and i think its safe to say that only americans were getting blackout. all the 18 and 19 year old quebecois were sipping on coniac (sp) or beer and talking in french to rapid for me to understand. the point im trying to make is that only the people who grew up with drinking being a taboo thing were over indulging (myself included if you cant already tell).

what im trying to say is that since everyone here grows up drinking, they dont want to get blackout and it seems the status quo to have a designated driver for the night. THIS MAKES SENSE. fucking america doesnt get it. i want to move somewhere where i dont have to drink warm karkov before going to a concert. is that too much to ask

quebec, east coast, ghana

i'll be heading to ghana on october 29th to work at the sankofa center until christmas.

http://www.thesankofacenter.org/

basically i'll be going to schools to sing and dance about AIDS. sounds right up my alley, no?

but before that, i'm off to lanai this weekend with mams and pops. plan on hiking, atving and horseback riding by those awesome cliffs that i got to see on the boat trip. stoked.

then on the 10th i go to quebec with my nana. i'll be meeting up with the jeff dymond experience and am tingly with the anticipation of his rainbow disco aura. leave on the 14th on princess cruises' "sea princess" to begin a two week long leaf-peeping extravaganza with nana. will update regularly when my life is more interesting...

vicky christina hott mess

yeah, so i went two days on lemon juice, a record failure...

anyway, saw vicky christina barcelona and now i can say that javier bardem's character is the most attractive man i have ever seen... in a movie. whoot!

something i'm embarrased to like

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/london-fashion-week-daviddavid/#more-7525

fashion is silly

master crap

flew into hnl last night. had a great (though) tiring week with alix. highlights include a banging aesop rock concert, a pretty disasterous usc frat row on opening night with the pitzer kids (alexa, matt, sam), pitzer bff drama, fairfax highschool swap meet where i scored an amazing cashmere sweater on the cheap, the gorgeous getty villa, sneaking into disneyland for free, and some dank cali-o.

now to buisness.
i am overweight. since october of last year, i've gained a whopping 25 pounds.
i blame this on three things:
1) gross vodka consumption
2) spending lots of time alone
3) the entire state of alaska

a shot of vodka has 90 calories in it. that means getting drank adds a good 1000 calories to my diet and a bit of umph to my backside. when i'm alone (either traveling or at home) i tend to eat more. this isn't depression or the filling of some personal void with cheese, but simply the fact that i like to eat well and get enormous pleasure from it. i like to eat very well and very often...
and finally, my favorite place in the world, alaska. on my private island in alaska, we didn't always have internet or phone reception or even light, sooo when we were bored we would eat. eat crappy food that was bad for you. ergo ten pounds this summer.

in lieu of all this, i'm going on master cleanse for ten days if it kills me. i did this lemon/maple syrup diet last year for 5 days and was completely fine (though i did start watching food network like i was a 12 year old boy watching internet porn). ten days is the standard, and what i will do this time. wish me luck, i'll be crapping a lot and probably get pretty grumpy. welcome home.

i flew into LAX on september 11th.

last year, when that day came around, i remember spontaneously sobbing while driving home on the pali. i was listening to some NPR story told from the point of view of a taxi driver whose first customers were driving to the one year anniversary of the attack on the towers. the story wasn't especially heart wrenching, but i had this sudden sweeping realization six years ago, someone had tried to destroy something that i felt a part of in 2007.

i won't claim to be a new yorker. i'm going to the city for only the fifth time next month, but it has come to represent something unequivocal in my mind. maybe it has something to do with the theatre or curry hill or fashion week or the fact that the new york times contains the words "new york", but that city has developed into the undoubted setting for my personal consummation. i feel dumb and may regret saying this, but through all my travels around the country and the world, there is no other place where i can see myself making a life.

to me, l.a. is the anti- new york. though i have come to appreciate certain parts of the greater los angeles area (namely malibu and the fairfax district), i could never imagine living in a place where rush hour constitutes 7 hours of the waking day, you can't drink the water, the clouds are brown with dirt, people want to be celebrities, and you can't walk anywhere. it is sprawling while new york is compact, ethnically white and hispanic while new york has a million faces, and bitchy where new york is... upfront(?)

if anything, the two things l.a. DOES have are Disneyland, and four of the best people in the world.

it's huckleberry season

i probably stock you on facebook...

in other news, i drove to crater lake today with my grandma jeannine. it's something like the 6th or 7th largest lake in the world, the clearest lake in the world (i guess they test these things), and it also is in the middle of a mountain. aml burns painted a picture of it that i found on google. here it is.

i've always hated spending time with my grandma. she's the woman who made me rewrite my entire math homework on a new sheet of paper when i was seven because the first copy had too many eraser marks on it. when i was ten and wanted to go on the east coast trip, she sent me a check for 15 dollars to spend for valentines day. i ended up not going, so the next time she visited, she tore up the check because "i didn't need it." she also likes spending time at cemetaries (geneology) and walking through old churches. we fight about everything.

that said, this week has been unexpectedly pleasent. one thing alaska HAS taught me is to shut up and just go with the flow even if the flow leads you to a three hour trip to jc penny (i didn't know they still existed) or a drive to look at wheat mills. i've discovered that when i just take those trips to Food for Less like a man, life goes smoothly, just like my bm's after a week of non stop berry eating. sorry, you didn't have to know that...

felines

i can't stand cats.

no plot, just spandex.

i am also allergic to cat hair. coincidence? i think not.

cabbage patch kids and everything unladylike

so i arrived at my grandma jeannine's house last night to discover a dirty dirty family secret...

my grandmother sleeps with a cabbage patch kid.

what.

the.

hell.

there's the pictures of the wretched thing. okay, maybe it's not as weird as finding out that she collects her dead friend's teeth, but it's pretty freaky.

these days, whenever i do something terribly unlady like or rough, i simply say, "Alaska," because, chances are i picked the habit up there

burping ... "Alaska"

passing gass ... "Alaska"

sitting with my legs wide apart ... "Alaska"

shoving food into my mouth like my nana shoving toilet paper into her cart at costco before a hurricane ... "Alaska"

not showering for 72 hours ... "Alaska"

Alaska has added so much to my character

things that don't work

now include my computer. i'm going to try to get it fixed while i'm in medford, oregon for the shakespeare festival from the 4-11th.

meanwhile...

saw neko case at bumbershoot festival in seattle. with the release of conor oberst's first solo album last month, i've been getting into americana music. neko (a member of the new pornogrpahers when not working solo) and her band, which included a banjo, were simply astounding. her voice was firm and smoky in her chest voice but sweet in the higher registers she used for her lullaby like ballads.

later at the festival while walking to reefer maddness the musical (http://www.reefermadness.org/), i heard someone shout "kalei" and turned to find lindsey bailey with whom i met up with at university of washington at midnight that night and tried, unsuccesfully, to find cool people in her dorm who were down to get drank on the first night of a three day weekend, got drank by ourselves until i had to leave at 2:00. went to the airport at 4:00 and flew from seattle to portland.

i'm staying at a hostel for the first time (above). so surprizingly clean that i called home about it. ferreal. that was, until i met the smelly lady who sleeps 10 feet away from me and the forty something indian woman on the bunk bellow me who always looks surprized...

will try to get my computer fixed so i don't have to walk 40 minutes to use the internet. yayo!

is this horrible or wonderful?

We've all heard it, "wikipedia is not a source," not that this has stopped any of us from actually using the site and then just omitting it from the bibliography of whatever we are researching.

And yet, today while reading an article blurb on The New York Time's blog "Ideas" http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/ I clicked a link to John Rawl's biography onto to find myself on... his Wikipedia page? Is this a vindication of a formally dubious source or reason to discredit a well-established source? In other words, what the fuck?

"but AA shirts are soooo comfy!"

Went to a Mirah show. Walking around Capitol Hill in Seattle was like walking around some outdoor American apparel playground. Also a lot of lesbians and boys who weigh way about as much as my left thigh.

Realizing what a douche bag you must have been at the show/movie/party/family dinner/ large lecture section/ school function/bon dance last night is always a shitty feeling. I stood behind the blackout girls at the Mirah concert. Hipsters are notoriously judgmental and I could just feel the hate from the crowd being magnified by their rimless glasses and boring into these girls like rainbow colored laser guns. Thank god for the blow and 12 corona lights the two girls probably shared before showing up at the club, or else they might have noticed the hatin’. During their freak dance session to the opening act’s ukulele cover of Cher’s “do you believe in life after love?” One fell over and the other walked away into the crowd. no one helped the one on the ground get up, and when she finally managed to stumble to her feet, she had this puppy eyed look of blackout abandonment and squeaked out a confused, “Lauren?” before faltering off to find her friend. People giggled and I got a better view.

The neighborhood that my cousins live in is similar to the hipster scene. their house alone has all the right ingredients to be stunning; high ceilings, marble counters and floors, long mirrors, 20 foot windows, and multiple plasma TVs, but when nuzzled 10 feet on each side by identical looking faux-mansions, it just looks plain tacky. I got lost for 40 minutes today driving through different communities named “the pinnacle”, “the woodlands”, and “china creek” because every house, street, driveway, BMW SUVs looked exactly the same. sure, side bangs compliment nearly every face shape; skinny jeans are hot if you weight under 120 lbs; plaid is cute and Raybans are classic, but Jesus Christ when you get into a room and 1 in 3 people are wearing one of those no one looks cool.

Yes, I have had side bangs and I probably will have them again, so I guess I’m guilty too. Sacrificing live music just to avoid fashion suffocation is too large a price to pay, so I guess I’ll just have to keep on trucking.

don't worry, i won't start wearing mom jeans

out of sitka into seattle

i looked like a meth addicted hobo getting onto the plane. i had mosqueeto bites all over and wet hair. i had 1o0 lbs of crap allocated into two rolling luggage bags, and, thanks to gas price fueled airline restrictions, had to wear everything else. this means that my handbag included 4 books, a scale, my teddybear, a tuxedo shirt, a wool sweater, 4 longs bags full of pictures, a polaroid, my fisheye etc. and that i wore my ipod and bose headphones, digital camera, a scarf, an ukelele with two eagle feathers and another book inside the case, and my muscratt hunting hat. people stared.

for some reason, i've been thinking a lot about visage and attractiveness. in sitka, anything with legs is considered sexy. i blame this on the long woman-less weeks of hard labor in the middle of the ocean. cool in sitka doesn't really exist. there simply aren't enough people to have a social heirarchy, at least in my experience.

today i ran errands and waded through the infinte strip malls that comprise the greater seattle area with my aunty and cousin. the vastness and diversity of the people was startling after crunchy, vanilla alaska. i saw so many shapes and colors and faces and proportions that i couldn't tell what was beautiful from what was ugly, what was cool from what was stupid, what was desirable from what was repulsive. in my shell shock, i just saw. skinny people were skinny. some people put gell in their hair. what's the difference?

nowhere to sleep

yesterday, with my day really to myself for the first time all summer (is it even still summer?), i walked 20 minutes along the side of the highway to visit the owls at the rapture center. owls are my new and first favorite animals since horses in the fifth grade and cheetas in kindergarden. i love the bright yellow of their retennas and how they hardly ever break eye contact with you, neck rotating 270 degress just to make sure that you aren't fucking with them. they are a mix between wizards and pimps in mean fur coats.

i was supposed to go to the island on sunday to "collect my bellongings", but turns out that phil's rather impetuous and dramatic decission to fire me had an affect on his family. His wife Gwen was in bed all day with high blood pressure caused by stress and her heart condition, and daughter Jess had a severe anxiety attack! does this mean they like me? when i got a boat to the island at 12:30 yesterday (i got to drive!) to get my shit, jessica was there to meet me at the dock because i wasn't allowed anywhere without her supervision. why? "because that's protocal." shit, what did phil think i was gonna do?

post-goodbyes etc. i was stepping with my left leg into the boat, my cell phone slipped out of my genie pants' soft cotton goodness and into the ocean. watching my primary means of communication with anyone i love sink lackadaisically through the verdent water was less than inspirational. an hour later using a 24 foot pole with an empty yogurt container duck taped at the end, tim fished out my very dead cell phone and my (thank god) working SIM card. no t-moblie shop for a good 500 miles so i am offically cellphone-less until i get to seattle, probably within a week

caught a pink and drove to the water reservoir, passing a huge snow bank covered in dirt with josh (who agreed to put me up for up to ten days in exchange for my mad dishwashing skillz) and this ageless wigga named tom who chugged a third a fifth of smirnoff and didn't feel anything. watched josh's wife's softball game with the alaska's answer to mokes and got to drive a car for the first time since jun 14th.

after the game went to watch v for vendetta at spencer's apartment (he's from hilo) and then when opening josh's front door afterwards, realized that josh and alicia were banging in the living room... right in front of where i was supposed to sleep. closed the door, left the keys on the porch, and ran like hell back to spencer's house, where i fell asleep on the floor. oh, sitka.

more like a beginning

Phil,
Thursday you made it clear that you were overstaffed and that my presence at the lodge was not imperative to finish a successful season. Now assured that my leaving would not damage the lodge, I feel that my own personal well being necessitates my resignation from Talon Lodge, my last day being August 28th, 2008.
This resignation has no relation to the issue of my schedule. I made it clear to Jessica during our conversation that I understood I couldn’t have my specified day off. I regret that my emotions and not my head controlled how my conversation with Jessica ended and I apologize for the unprofessional statements that were made.
I am resigning because I am tremendously unhappy here. I feel that I cannot live in an environment where the border between professional and personal life is blurred to the point of being indiscernible. I cannot live in an environment where the independence that constitutes such an enormous part of my identity is persistently repressed, my efforts to act in the most professional and mature manner of my ability are demeaned and disrespected by the comportment of my superiors, and where opposing opinions are granted no validity. I cannot work and act with alacrity under these conditions and therefore cannot fulfill my duties at the lodge.
This experience has been illuminating apropos my own abilities to overcome obstacles as well as to distinguish certain lines in the sand that I will not cross. As you once said, I will take the good from this experience and leave the bad behind. There has been much on both fronts and I am forever grateful of the opportunity you have given me and regretful of my inability to complete the season.



I was planning to give this letter to phil (my ex-boss) tomorrow morning. Last night, though, I left my shift about 20 minutes early and had autumn cover for me. Brooks picked me up and the dock and took me in so that I could see my friend Mason who was in town for the night. Phil didn't want me to do this, but I didn't tell him. I figure that what I do on my free time is my choice. Apparently, he didn't think so, and so he called me and left me a message telling me I don't have a job anymore and that I have to go pick up my belongings from the island sometime today. I asked Josh if I could trade my mad dishwashing skills for a room and his house, and he said the answer was a probable yes but that he had to ask his wife.

I'm at the highliner cafe with a filled out application next to me. On it, I wrote that I was seeking temporary employment until September 18th. Dad's coming to visit on the 26th and we're going to Juno until the 29th. I think that leaving the AK after that wouldn't be too bad of an idea. Maybe hit up Seattle, prolong my stay in Portland thanks to a commune that Kelly Aldinger offered to hook me up with, and live under Alix's bed for a week and a half in L.A. I guess time will tell. I don't think I want to stay in Sitka any longer than I have to. Application is going in the trash in 3..2...1...