Best of Wilder Coast: The Year of Magical Thinking

This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.

On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.

To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking.  Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.

And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.

My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive  five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bok choy.


And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking!   Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.

That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.

In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.

Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.


My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks.  Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.

As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.'  That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'

OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.

All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down  and the coffee was poured,  I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.

'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'

I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'

My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time.  My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.

Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year  was looking to be a very intriguing one.

My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.

The Curry

My brother in law, Brooks, has this great cookbook that he cooks out of nearly every night.

I don't use it because I already have a couple of recipes under my belt. I cook them from memory. Also I made them up. One is Black beans and 'stuff' served straight, the other is black beans and 'stuff' over quinoa.  I call it Mexican Mash 1 and Mexican Mash 2, and I eat them every day on an alternating schedule.

But then Brooks got an Ipad from his parents as a birthday present. He downloaded this app which is an interactive Mark Bittman cookbook with a picture of Mark himself on it. It was cool. Actually, it was baller. I started playing with it.

I found a recipe for a winter squash curry. It was easy and turned out to be such a success that I made it the very next day for my cousins. I had Lisa over the next night, and I made it for her, too. I served it to three different friends in four days. They all thought I was brilliant. They didn't know that it had taken over my life.

All of this cooking had me running back and forth to the grocery store, always for the same ingredients: onions, peas, squash, coconut milk, green beans and chard. I'd lap the produce section, then float towards checkout, making direct eye contact with my fellow shoppers. Have a look in my cart, I dared them. Just look at my vegetables. I am better than you.
 

 

For two weeks straight I made the curry every night. Then one day at work, I realized mid-chew that I couldn't swallow another bite of it. I was done. And instead of listening to my body, I soldiered through and took down what was already in my mouth. Then I put the lid back on the Tupperware, and put it back into my lunch bag. Then I threw up.

 

I knew I'd have to throw the rest of the curry out. But each day when I come home from work, I throw everything onto the floor and I run away. I run away to my bed, or to the bathroom, or to the fridge or the computer to check the Internet in case someone extraordinary has emailed me with some life changing news. I do this every day. So, that day, I threw my lunch bag on the floor and left it there. Then, because I am so busy and important, I forgot about it.

Five days later, I tripped over that bag where it was still sitting in the living room. I'd better tidy up, I thought. I picked up the bag. It was heavy. So I reached inside of it.

 

 

The curry. It lives.

Horrified, I put the curry on the kitchen counter and decided to deal with it later.

But that night I went climbing. I was out late, and when I got home I was very tired. I decided to deal with the curry on Monday.  Stop me if you see where this is going.

Monday

Tuesday, I began to really dread dealing with the curry. I thought about how it would smell when I removed the lid. Part of me just wanted to chuck the whole container,  which would be so easy, and so wrong. I really, really, really, really didn't want to deal with it. I decided to put it off till Wednesday.

Tuesday

But by Wednesday, I had literally forgotten all about it.

Wednesday

Thursday, I was also extremely busy.

Thursday

  And then, one day,  I got home and it was gone.

Brooks had dealt with it! He'd thrown it away! I was so happy!

 But later that night, I went to the fridge for a string cheese.

And guess what I found in the fridge.

It was the curry!

Brooks had put it in the fridge, thinking it was still good!

It was not over.  

The right thing to do, the grown up thing to do, would be to remove it from the fridge and dispose of it properly. But then I realized, you know, I could just leave it in there. It's only a matter of time before my sister happens upon it. Then, hungry and unknowing, she'll reheat it and try to eat it.

This could work.

Leave it in the fridge and wait for this all to play out. Or throw it out myself now and move on with my life. I wish I could say it was over. But it's a debate that rages on inside my head to this day.

The time my yoga teacher forgot to wear panties

This time last year, a brutal heat wave was mowing down the city of Seattle. Unaccustomed to anything besides temperate and neutral temperatures, (much like their personalities,) the town's inhabitants ran for cover. Every major and minor department store was sold out of fans and air conditioning units for all of July and August, all espresso served was strictly iced, and commerce more or less ground to a halt. (And I couldn't wear my Ariat Rodoebaby boots, it was too darn hot!)

Not a stranger to heat but not particularly comfortable with it, I did an admittedly strange thing. I opted to seal myself into a rubber floored room, where the temperature, set at a beastly 104, was only a few degrees warmer (and on a few scorching days, a few degrees cooler) than the streets outside. I had come across the kind of unbelievable coupon that you simply cannot turn down: ten hot yoga classes for a mere twenty dollars. Total! The studio, I Love Hot Yoga in the Greenlake neighborhood, was hosting a grand opening promotional, after which classes would be set at twenty five dollars a piece.

If you live in the United States, than you've heard of Hot Yoga. It's the obnoxious exercise craze in the same vein as yogalates, pilates, and plain old for-the-wimp-normal-temperature-yoga. Hot yoga makes you sweat so much that it has the power to radically reshape your body and knock out the deep seated toxins that chew on your kidneys. It's a panacea for those with chronic illnesses and a speedy (but not easy) highway to getting in shape. I was neither sick nor particularly out of shape, but I did have my face to consider.

I have a round face, something that strangers of all ages feel compelled to point out to me. "You look like my camp counselor," a little girl said to me the other day at the ice cream shop. "I am a camp counselor," I responded indulgently, leaning over to be at the level of the little girl, adorably dressed in polka dot stirrup pants and a rainbow patterned t-shirt. '"Yes," she said, flashing a sweet smile. "You have a circle face, just like her." I straightened up. Little girl just brought up my biggest insecurity about myself. And by the way little girl, polka dots and rainbows look stupid together. Choose one or the other.

The truth is, I'll never achieve that high cheekbone, doe eyed, mysterious look that I feel I should look like -being a writer and all. At least not until I lose a few pounds off these cheeks. Which was exactly what I planned to do at Hot Yoga. The fact that all of Seattle was slow-roasting just made it easier to sign up. Since I'd be suffering either way, I may as well get some good out of it.

What surprised me about my first session was how much I truly enjoyed it. I am chronically inflexible, but stretching is much easier when all your joints are piping hot. The yoga teacher was an attractive young man with an Australia accent, and the sheer volume of sweat that poured out of me was incredible. It ran in continuous rivers from my hands and forehead, saturating my brand new Whole Foods yoga mat. Because of the heat wave, I think he was a little concerned for our overall safety, and he treated us with extra compassion. We were allowed to drink water whenever and leave the room for a breath of fresh air as many times as we'd like. Each time the door swung open and shut, a heavenly gust of cool air swept through the room.

After the ninety minute class was up, I weighed myself on the scale in the studio's bathroom. My jaw dropped. I was two pounds lighter than I had been before the class. This was remarkable. In just nine more sessions, I could sweat my face off entirely! Ecstatic with achievement, I burst into the hot afternoon, feeling cool and elegant and toxin free.

Spurred by success, I enlisted my friend Kendra to sign up, and together we made a nice ritual out of it. An hour and a half of steam cleaning our insides, followed by cucumber sodas and a swim in Green Lake. We were both losing weight and, I must say, feeling really good.

And then, of course, things went south.

I was seven or eight visits into my ten pass visa when it happened. Kendra had to work so I went alone, and thank god, because if Kendra was present for what happened next, we would most certainly have lost our minds. Or at the very least, we would have made a huge scene in a very crowded yoga class, and public scenes are never as much fun in Seattle as they ought to be, owing to the bland nature of the natives.

I sat in the front row in my tiny little top, legs crossed, arms resting lightly on my knees, completely centered and ready to begin. Once the room was packed to capacity and all was quiet, the teacher walked in the door.

Because of the drop-in schedule, you never know which teacher you are going to wind up with. Which sadly meant I had never again seen the Aussie. The woman who walked in was one I'd never seen before, and she immediately brought a new, totalitarian feel to our normally mellow and democratic yoga class. "I will not be performing the positions, only explaining them." She said by way of introduction. "Therefore, it's no use to look at me, unless you find a pregnant lady enlightening."

Dang it. She's pregnant and she's smug about it. Steeeerike one. "You are not allowed to leave the room." She continued, sliding seamlessly into strike two. "Regrettably, the studio would not allow me to actually lock you in, but do be informed that if you choose to leave, you are not welcome back in. Your movement lets out the heat, but more importantly, it distracts the other patrons." She took a moment to let that settle in before hitting us with another. "We will take regular breaks for drinking, but other than that you are strongly discouraged from drinking during poses. This, too, provides a distraction."

And so we began. The teacher strolled the room in classic pregnant lady pose- hand rubbing her stomach in small circles. Her tight tank top and short Prana skirt were dark with huge patches of sweat. She told us to bend over, twist, reach, stretch, faster. Faster and faster. It felt more like an aerobics class in Hell than anything else. When at one point someone made a move for the door, she stopped the whole program. "If you wouldn't mind waiting till the end of class to leave..." she droned, "It's just that you'll really distract everyone by leaving."

As if the exercise and 104 degree temperature wasn't bad enough, now it was really uncomfortable in the rubber room.

Towards the end of class, she worked her way towards the front of the room and sat down, right in front of me, indicating that the cool down has begun. "The emphasis will now be on holding long poses to cool your inner kayarararmambamba," -something to that effect- "your core spirit." She leaned back against the mirror and spread out her her legs, as about to stretch her quads. "Now," she said, "Sit up with your legs crossed and face forward." I did what she told me.

And what do you know, for all her enlightenment, she had forgotten her panties.


No underpants. Sans panties. Without undergarment. Nothing. Just her little yoga skirt wide open, hands on her thighs, instructing us to "Look up now, and find a focal point." Oh god. Oh God! Where do I look? I understand that pregnant woman get all in touch with their bodies but this is absurd. She must know. I mean, there had to be a draft or something. Yet she appeared calmly oblivious as told the class, "You must look inward as you're doing this cooling exercise."

I don't seem to have a choice but to look inward.

"Deeply inward."

This is when my brain snapped into what the girls at camp Onaway would refer to as 'full on waterfront emergency mode.' Look up, look down, look at the mirror, look at the walls, just do not look forward," instructed my survival instinct. "No- wait- don't look at the mirror, you might inadvertently make eye contact with someone. You must Get Out. Escape. Escape Immediately."

But what about my yoga mat? I can't roll it up...?

"Leave it. Take only yourself. Escape."

So I rose, as inauspiciously as possible, and made a beeline for the door, making an effort not to slip on the sweat-coated floor. The door swung open, letting in a cool draft and the sound of a siren from outside. Miraculously, I managed to get out of the building and onto the curb before the hilarity in its purest form burst forth from within. It took a full ten minutes until I could catch my breath again.

When the class finally ended, I ducked back inside, peeled off my mat from the floor and went dashing down the street towards the lake, never to return.

Yes, it was the last time I attended a hot yoga class. Hot yoga, where certain spirits flow just a little too freely for my taste. I'm willing to bet I wasn't the only one who didn't use up all ten passes. I mean, they tell you right there on the forms that it's not "for the faint of heart."

No kidding.

A general announcement

As many of you know, I will be away at a job from June 23- July 30th with no access to my computer.

During this absence, my blog will be maintained and published by the common household objects in my home.

Thank you very much and I hope you look forward, as I do, to what they have to say.

-Melina Coogan
Author and Creator, Thewildercoast.com

announcement

This is what happens, every time the door opens. Every. Time.

Oh hey, didn't see you come in. That's weird, I usually see everything that goes on around here. Well, anyway, hi!. hi hi HI HI HI HI! I'm so glad you're here! Before you came in I was just quietly chewing on my fish chew. I think it's a trout. Not really sure. Hey- since you're here, do you have any interest in rubbing my tummy? I'll just- I'll just roll on my back for you. Oh- oh, you -wow. You are a total natural at this. I know we just met but I feel like I really connect with you, you know? You know? Hey, if it's cool with you I'm just going to roll my eyes back, maybe close them for a while....wow. So relaxed. This is what it's about, man! I - woah. WOAH. You just moved your foot. You just moved your foot! Were you aware of that? God, I was so totally zoning out till you did that. Hey, look, there's my fish chew! Boy, I love chewing that thing. Did I mention that when I get it right, the tongue sticks out? It's totally cool. Here, let me....let me just try and make that happen for you...gotta get up on my feet for this. Chew chew chew chew chew chew chew. Hey- woah! It squeaked! Did you hear that? Did you even HEAR that? Sometimes I forget that happens and then it's like- woah! Hey! Is this thing alive? Well, okay, I'm not making the tongue stick out...maybe do you want to try that tummy rub thing again? This time if you could just be really still, yeah, yeah, thanks. Perfect. Oh, wow, now I'm really happy and WOAH! WOAH! THE DOOR! THE DOOR JUST OPENED! IT DID I HEARD IT! Don't be alarmed but - Woah! I gotta GO I gotta go SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING. I gotta BARK I gotta Bark LOUD. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back or, you know- maybe I won't. The DOOR OPENED it could be ANYTHING!

This post dedicated to Abby Crahan's dog, Jack.

Alone

I thought it would hurt more than this, the restructuring. The way life bends to reform itself after its very frame has been altered. I thought the simple things I do for my own contentedness and comfort would begin to feel thin and transparent, as they stretch tight to cover the hole left by a sudden absence. I lost a good man from my life, and with him all my sketches for that particular future I had- briefly, but fiercely- set my heart on.

But it hasn't been that way, not even after the dust settled. Instead, all the different pieces of the day feel as if they had been shaped by a master craftsman, each serving its purpose and locking into the next, holding the season together.

I've been alone these last few days on the hill. Alone in the country, which is to say that, should I want, I could sit out in the field and watch the sun whirl above me up for a week straight without seeing another soul. (For anyone who is keeping record, I don't choose to do it this way.)

Sometime last night, the temperature dropped way, way beneath prediction, and I had to climb out of bed, shivering, and pull all the windows shut. All day long, the air held a trace of autumn's snap. It was a fluke which held no promise of lasting, but I could sense the plants were startled.

The cold was a welcome respite for me. I spent the day pleasantly alone, busy each moment with things that needed to get done. I felt not a whisper of the bitter side of solitude, but in the evening, I made a point to escape the big old house, should sadness seep in along with the cold drafts that appear like ghosts from the doors and window and out from between the wood slats of the floor.

I drove to a place in town that has a big open fire inside, and pint glasses of beer, and the sounds of people eating and drinking and talking.

The gray clouds that gathered thick overhead were tinged on their underbellies with a shade of magenta of unseasonable boldness, but they blew past or dissolved before the last bit of light had disappeared, leaving the sky a clean, electric blue. I ate a warm bowl of warm tomato and cheddar cheese soup, and in the circle of lamplight on my small table, read from a hardcover book of humor writing from The New Yorker.

If there is one hour has the potential to strike me with nostalgia and sadness, it is the time when evening melts into night, a time I've always considered designed for a person to come home to find the lights on, and dinner being cooked, and someone waiting for them. But at that moment, alone with the warmth of the flames from the big iron fireplace, I felt lucky. Lucky, and fed, and nothing else.

little Italian men and my first taste of obsession

It's a strange and funny thing to spend time with the people who knew you before you had fully mastered yourself. Back when you were in high school, or younger, just bits and pieces of a self waiting to be colored and trimmed and sewn together. I remember that time with vividness, when I swapped out one identity for the next with the regularity of movie stars changing their hair, or their husbands.

Many of my old friends have come home for good, and we sit now at the cafe in town town and look back on ourselves in those younger days. We talk about the things we struggled over, the things we fought for and failed at, the things we admit now might not be worth repeating. We reflect not with remorse or embarrassment, but with humor, and fondness, as if our younger selves were merely little dolls who did outlandish things for the purpose of causing ourselves laughter and disbelief in later years.

I had dinner the other night with two of those friends Cass and Elissa- both writers- we closed the restaurant, drank a bucket's worth of two dollar margaritas, scribbled on the table and arrived at the conclusion that these stories we were sharing screamed out to be written down. Small stories, and at first glance insignificant, yet we've come to realize that what separated us in our adolescence are, like it or not, the very things that define who we've come to be.Growing up in someplace like rural Vermont, our stories revolved around the elaborate schemes we came up with to entertain ourselves. I lived (and live currently) in the middle of a land trust, miles away from anyone or anything except the three summer houses of any aunts and uncles, all vacant the majority of the year. Whenever my parents agreed to drive me and my sister into Quechee to get a candy bar at the Jiffy Mart, I would fall into fits of nearly epileptic glee.

I was not often lonely in the negative sense of the word, it's just that I was fully aware of the community that we were lacking- community in the classic, neat squares of front lawn where neighbor children play sense of the word. We're so far out that no one will actually claim us. Half of our dirt road is in West Harford, our mailing address is White River Junction, the closest town is Quechee, we went to school in Woodstock, and we're technically in North Pomfret. When it came time to plow our roads, they all dismissed us as belonging to somebody else.

From all of my unusual and creative endeavors, my arsenal against the many slow hours of childhood, this very small, admittedly peculiar detail stands out: my obsession with Nintendo. And my desperate attempt at compensation for there being no Nintendo.

We've never had television in my house in Vermont (movies, yes) and we certainly did not have any video games. The no TV I was at peace with, and had in fact already developed an attitude of slight superiority with regards to it. But as a ten year old, I was ready to mutiny on account of the video games. I fantasized about throwing myself on the stoop of any house that I knew had a Nintendo system, and begging for them to take me! Just take me in! Make me yours!

I was rabid for any device that could allow me to wile away in the hour in a gaming induced stupor: game boy, game gear, duck hunt, even Tetris would have been better than nothing. I blame my cousin Christopher, whose vast collection of electronic games was constantly replenished as new models came out. He exposed me to the stuff and then withheld: allowing me brief access during holidays at his summer house, and then bringing it all home with him when he left. I met Yoshi the green dino on their big screen TV one Christmas, and fell instantly in love. I dreamed about Yoshi. I dreamed about all of them: the Italians, the hedgehog, the ducks, the mismatched pieces of brick.

On a few occasions, I came close. So, so very close. Christopher promised me one summer to let me borrow his older version of Nintendo, but every time he visited, he had neglected to bring it. Such was my disappointment that that summer, I believe it permanently whittled away at my girlhood spirit.

Then there was that shining moment- one of the most ecstatic in remembrance- when the daughter of my mother's friend left her Game Gear at my house. They had just hit the road back to Boston after a long weekend, I walked into my bedroom, and there it was, lying alone on my bed. Feeling religious in my joy and gratitude, I lay down next to it, took it in my two hands, and turned the ON switch.

One of my most despondent moments was when, ten minutes later, they drove back to retrieve it. "Close one!" her dad said to my mom, jauntily. "Five more minutes, and we would have been too far to turn back!"

Crushing.

Fortunately, I was a do it yourself kind of kid. I could always be counted on to take matters into my own hands, even when it yielded pathetic results. One summer day when I was eleven I was woken by my own brilliant idea- of course! Why hadn't I thought of this before! I ran downstairs in my shortie pajamas, rolled out some butcher paper, and with colored pencils and intent focus, drew out the entire first level of Mario brothers. Green mushroom trees, puffy clouds, neat rows of brick boxes and question marks. Then I sketched a little Mario, cut him out, and bopped him along the drawn out landscape. I repeated this a few times, before it finally dawned on me how sad I was.

Still, A for effort.

Looking back on it, my not so super Mario world was the beginning of a long and illustrious career of faking it till I made it. Which is just another way of saying "make it work with what you got". Still others might call it "lying". I myself consider it a tool of immeasurable value, a combination of improv and resourcefulness. It's what makes one scrappy.

When I was sixteen, 8 months and one terrifying driver's ed class held in the vacant building next to the strip club away from getting my license, I hijacked the family Subaru. I drove it at twenty miles an hour towards the rope swing, a popular warm weather hang out that, at only six miles from my house, was practically in my backyard. (We live a long, long way from anywhere.) My hands sweating and my heart banging at the thrill of my own daring, I inched past the roadside swing. Thank you God, I remember thinking, because there on the riverbank stood John Maguire and some other popular boys, taking turns doing back flips off the rope. I put my elbow out the window, put the car in neutral as I had practiced, and said all casual, "Oh, heeey." Look at me, just driving past. Just driving, alone. No parents. Just driving. And they said "Oh, heeey," and nodded in appreciation. I drove past them. Then I drove home, mission completed.

I was also the girl who, for a few months in 10th grade, kept Visine and a lighter in her jacket pocket. Even though I had no need for them, as I never smoked pot. Ever. But I figured, hey, who has to know that? By then I knew that a suggestion of coolness was as valuable as coolness itself. And it worked. A friend of mine eventually put my jacket on, put his hand in the pockets and drew out my two props. "Heeeey!" he said knowingly, "I wonder what these are for!" I just shrugged and said, "Well, you know." Later that day I threw them in the trash, no longer needing their services.

I blame the success of these foils on any and all incidents of exaggeration or misrepresentation that have occurred since.

The truth is, I figured everyone had a little of this in them. A little resourceful A little scrappiness. A little do what you gotta do.

And then I moved out to Seattle, and my total and complete misjudgment became evident.

The coat rack

Lorenzo is, to the best of my knowledge, the most handsome man in all of Chile. He was raised in the valley of San Alfonso del Maipo, in a home hung on a hillside above the river. He and his three brothers served as our unofficial guides to the area, navigating us through the hydraulics of the Yesough and the Maipo, leading us to high altitude waterfalls and the bones of Pinochet's death camps. This past semester, he became the full time Spanish teacher at New River Academy.

During graduation dinner, the teachers -Tino, Lorenzo, Callie, Andy, Matt and I- headed to the porch for a momentary escape from the swarm of parents and students. As we passed through the decorated hallway, Lorenzo spotted an antique coat rack nestled into the corner. It was black wrought iron made from four thin, flat bars that joined at the base to creat its trunk, and then separated at the top like petals opening in all four directions, curling into spirals.

"Wait a meenute-" said Lorenzo in his thick, stacado Chilean accent. He stood studying the coat rack for a minute, and then removed his suit jacket. We were all dressed up for the occasion,
I had straightened my hair and let the girls paint smokey circles around my eyes and layer mascara on my eyelashes so that my cheeks tickled each time I blinked. We all watched as Lorenzo held up his coat in front of his face, measuring the distance of some space evident in his mind, but not ours. "Eet iz on my check leest of thzings to do in my life, to do thzees-" he said, and he tossed the coat across the width of the hallway towards the rack. It hit one of the curved arms and stuck, and under the momentum of its weight the rack wobbled sideways for a moment, as if it were making to fall over. In a moment that seemed unreasonably full of suspense and importance, we drew a collective breath. But at the apex of its unbalance, the rack swung instead back towards us and rested again on all four iron feet. The coat pendulumed sideways for a minute, and then hung still.

Looking satisfied, Lorenzo moved forward to take it back, and as he did he opened his hand, gripped an imaginary pencil with the other, and moved it against his palm in a check motion. "Check!" He said, with obvious triumph. Then he took the coat off the rack, threw it over his shoulders, and proceeded outside.

Some time later, as dessert was served, I sat down next to Lorenzo and informed him that I, too, had a check list, and that mine oscillated between the lofty- a completely sustainable existence- and the trivial- biting a tube of lipstick completely in half (accomplished, age 19, totally worth repeating). I inquire as to the rest of his list, and he replied with such fluidity that I really believed that somewhere, maybe under his bed in the Maipo valley or buried in a box beneath his family's mountain horse pasture, there existed a detailed, hand written list that he had meticulously created, written out again and again until it was complete, and then committed to memory.

"I will have four cheeldren," he said, " and write a booook, and be on thze world champi-ohn rafting team, and work for a seazon in Alaska on a fishing boat."

He asked on the contest of my list, and I rattled them off in a similar fashion- "Restore a farmhouse, write a boooook" (it was hard not to pick up his heavy, beautiful accent) "drive across the country, have three children." He nodded in appreciation. We kept talking, he ate his dessert, and I tried not to throw up.

********************************************************************************

The first time I met Lorenzo, I was tanned and strong and we were riding in the back of a pick up truck near the Argentinian border. The day after, I ripped out a page from a book of Pablo Neruda love sonnets, rolled it up and threw it into his hand. Then I turned my back on him and ran as fast as I could back to the car as he called "thzank you, thzank you", and then I drove to the airport and flew home.


The second time I saw him, 6 months later, I had just awoken from my night's sleep. I was staying in the tower room at his parent's house, and I emerged from the small room at the top of the stair case just as Lorenzo was walking past on the floor below. Feeling self conscious but pretty in a relaxed, tousle-haired way, I said "good morning" in Spanish, and then fell down the entire staircase.

All the way down.

Badly.

In front of Lorenzo.

Only Lorenzo.

*********************************************************************************

It's funny that we bother to make life lists at all, for all its manic unpredictability.

My Curse

I'm driving through the foggy dark of a mild spring night in West Virginia. Tino is in the passenger seat. We're talking so fast we haven't touched the radio. Behind us is the little house in Beckwith, the base for our strange little school. Across the hammocks, beds, couches, floors and porches, the kids are falling asleep for the night. Or so we presume. Teenagers have their own secret world, and when the lights go off, who knows. Who knows.

We are driving towards town, to some basement rafter's bar where Tino and I will drink beers and catch up on the months and miles between us. I haven't seen him since we said goodbye one early morning in Chile. He was half asleep, I hugged him in his wooden bunk and headed towards the Temuco aiport. We were both bruised by exhaustion. I was shaking with both sadness and relief to be leaving, deep in the fog brought on by one life quickly running out, and another poised to begin. Tino stayed behind, ran bigger waterfalls every day and fell in love with a Chilean girl named Canella.

Tino and I are both native New Englanders; we grew up with seperated by only a stretch of highway 91. We met in Chile as teachers for the school, I was 24 and he was 20. We've shared two long trips to Chile, two trips to Canada, two trips around the South East of the US. Sometimes our days together seem as if they could fit inside the space between heartbeats, other times, it seems like we shared half of our lives.

He is the kayaking, survivalist trained son of an herbologist and a Unitarian minister. He knows how to break hearts across the world, pose for a camera, and play the guitar. He's a lot of fun. And I miss him so much.
We drive down the road, high beams spotlighting the dilapidated houses on either side of us, roadside souvenirs of an area of the US that is dying. And then I see an animal in the road. At first I think it's just a shadow, but as we approach it, the lines darken and solidify into the shape of a heavy, grey and black body and a long, pointed nose. I hit the brakes and we are thrown forward. The animal freezes, then jumps up. It jumps up, as if to meet the underside of my car. Which it does. There is a thunk.

"Oh GOD!" I yell, taking my hands off the steering wheel and holding them out in front of me. "Oh my God oh my god ohmygod!!" Tino reaches over and grabs the wheel. "Oh man, you got him!" He shouts, laughing. "You got him!"

We continue driving this way, my foot on the gas peddle, Tino's hands on the wheel. I continue to say "ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!"

"If it's any consolation," Tino shouts over my hysteria, "you hit the ugliest animal I've ever seen." He was right. That long, pointed nose, that fat body, that grimmace. "What was it? What was it?" I ask.

He says, "I think it was a badger."

Eventually, I regain control of myself and the vehicle. We drive into town and sit at the basement bar, peeling the labels off of our bottles as we talk. On the way home, he points to a slouched figure on the yellow line, says "there's your animal!" and laughs.

Later on, I fall asleep listening to the girls late night whispered conversation, the raspy sounds of someone watching a movie, someone snoring. These are the sounds that used to drive me crazy as I tried to fall asleep after the long days. Now, I welcome them as I drift away, invite them to permeate my dreaming. I am so happy to be back in the secret, hushed symphony of a regular night at the school I love so much. The badger I killed, just a detail melted into all the other details, is forgotten.

Until yesterday. I am back home from West Virginia, back to my safe, square little house. I wake up late, as usual, and shuffle downstairs. I put something on the stove, flip through a magazine on the kitchen counter. And then I see it. Actually, I almost trip over it.

There is a skull on my carpet.

As far as skulls go, this is a particularly hideous one. This is not something to be mounted over the counter of a Phoenix, Arizona bar. This is not the stuff of porcelain white bone, sun bleached and anonymous. This is the skull of something that died recently, and viciously. There are bits of black and white fur clinging to the long, pointed nose. It's teeth, still filled with plant and animal decay, are twisted downward into a sneer that clearly says, I was killed before I should have died. This is the skull of a badger.

First I blame the dog. She's lying on her side in a puddle of sunlight, peaceful, and she's obviously annoyed when I wake her up in the rudest of manners. I yell and pretty much drop-kick her outside. I grab a hand towel and, which my eyes closed, pick up the skull, fingers in the eye sockets. I run through the house and toss it off the porch. It lands with a sickening thunk. A vaguely familiar thunk.

I go about washing my face and hands, violently scrubbing under my fingernails. I'm not a stickler for germs or cleanliness or any of that, but I feel as if I need to cleanse myself of any trace of that skull. It was not a friendly thing. I think of that time I was in San Alfonso del Maipo in Chile, and we drove up into the mountains and found one of Pinochet's death camps. "Do not touch anything, or bring anything home," said Lorenzo. "This is a bad place."
Then I quickly pack up my things, give one last shiver, and start the car. I go into town to write, listen to music, and forget. I take the dog with me.

When I return in the evening, the skull is back. On the carpet, in the same spot, with its gaping eye holes and grimacing, clenched mouth. The living room smells like a carcass.

This time, I can't blame the dog.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I've been cursed.

Oh my God, what was I thinking that day I turned 25, in the gloom of a Vermont mud season, when I decided to make this year my year of magical thinking? And why did I ever put it out there into the universe by writing this:

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom.

(?!)

Oh, that's right. Studded with the unexpected, rich in omens. Then that post goes and wins an award, and gets a lot of publicity, further pumping that extremely silly message into the world. I really thought magical thinking would mean more fireflies and sunsets and candlelight and train tracks and things just falling into place, la la la. Instead, it seems so far to be my year of dark magic, power animal digestion, skulls on the carpet, money magically disappearing. Not my intent whatsoever.

As I am writing this, my girlfriend Abby walks through the door into the cafe. Abby is one of my most precious discoveries since moving to Boone. Blond, beautiful and full of color, she laughs as she talks in such a way that she sounds just like a sweet, exotic bird.

I close my computer screen and give her the details of my weekend, including the story of my curse. I list to her the things that have gone wrong already since the skull befell me. Headaches, lost possessions, more money concerns. Trivial things, maybe, but this is just the beginning of my curse. Trivial things so far. (Duh duh DUH!)

"My year of magical thinking isn't going too well," I conclude, leaning back in my chair, only half joking. "I'd say it's going quite darkly."

"Don't worry," she says in her bird way. Although the story of the skull made her eyes get big and round, she tries her best to sound reassuring. "This is just life. Sometimes there are bumps in the road."

"Sometimes, you're right, I guess." I say. And then we both pause and say at the exact same moment, "and sometimes, those bumps turn out to be badgers." We're laughing and it's just so ridiculous. But then she leaves. And my coffee is cold. And I am left to sit here, staring at the computer screen, thinking. This is what I can conclude so far:

Sometimes there are bumps in the road. Sometimes, those bumps are badgers, and you kill them. Sometimes, those badgers exist in purgatory between the dead and the undead, and they haunt you and leave their mangled skulls on your carpet.

What next? I wonder.

And I do wonder.

The feeling of leaving, the feeling of staying put

I drive to the grocery store in the evening, needing only a few things. The store where I go is called the Food Lion, and it is not a very nice place, but it's close to home. As I step onto the parking lot I hear something, something I haven't heard for so long I have nearly forgotten it and the strange effect it always has on me. I freeze in place, body turned towards the sprawling, concrete building, and feel a familiar ache settle into my chest and curl inside the four chambers of my heart.

It is the sound of frogs, which means that winter is gone, and it also means I'm going to have a very small personal crisis. I always do when I hear frogs.

Some time in the past few days, the spring frogs emerged in wet places across the south, including the marsh between the Food Lion parking lot and highway 421 in Boone, North Carolina. Starting when the sun sets, they stand with their skinny legs anchored into the muck and cry their frog hearts out: that tranquil, sad, aquatic meeep meeep sound.

Ever since I was a kid, that warbly song has made me want to do funny things. It made me want to rise out of bed, pack a few of my possessions and start walking. This is before I could drive. After that, I wanted to pack up my car and drive and drive and drive. Maybe this is the effect that the full moon has on the rest of the population. Not me. The full moon causes insomnia and spontaneous photo shoots that never turn out as well as I hope. But not this.....this inexplicable blend of emotion, something like falling in love mixed with homesickness mixed with the desire to RUN and discover something completely brand new.

It feels like part of me is moored to the harbor and part of me is struggling towards open water. And it hurts.

The same strange thing would happen years later when, driving across the city at odd hours, I would catch a glimpse of apartments glowing with a strange bluish light. A television screen, or a dimly-watted light bulb, dismal hues that never found their way into my own house. The same ache of the childhood frogs would tug at my heart cavity. I would explain the feeling like this: there was something waiting for me- something I had to get, somewhere I had to be, and I had to go forward and find it, NOW. I remember once turning to my friend Miranda, we were driving on Aurora late in the evening, and doing my best to articulate it. "Do you ever feel that way," I concluded, "like maybe you're supposed to be somewhere else?" And she sighed, her hands on the wheel, and said, "maybe."

When I was little, I just felt it and fell asleep and trusted that in the morning, things would be right again. They always were, my mom would draw back the curtains, things would be cheerful and bright, and all those unnamed feelings scurried under the bed or blinked away in the sunshine.

These days, when it catches me- either by strange lights in strange houses or by peepers in marshes near grocery stores- I try like to hold onto that feeling, see it I can't squint my eyes and make out the details. What is it that I'm wanting so badly? What could I possibly feel homesick for before I've even found it?

From what I've gathered so far, it's some place, some life, where I completely belong, where the money I put into the bank doesn't mysteriously disappear. There are friends around a dinner table, something on the radio, and everyone says the things I think they should be saying. And I think I own the house. Yes, I definitely own the house. The word that sums everything up is permanence.

It doesn't make any sense. My childhood was the picture of permanence, everything in it's place, and still I felt it, like a shred of adulthood had fallen through the cracks and found me: a glimpse of things to be, where elements of life melt away when you're not looking, and answers don't exist to questions you haven't asked yet.

I stand there in the food lion parking lot, listening. On the highway, cars rush towards me as diamonds and fly away as rubies. I'm 25, I think. Is this where I thought I'd be.

I move through the halogen glow of the parking lot, and think, I'm going to buy lots and lots of food. I'm going to throw it in the car and take off. The dog and I will drive and drive and drive.
That's where you'll find me if you're looking for me. In Pennsylvania. Or Maryland. On the side of the interstate, asleep with the keys in the ignition. Just some number of hours and some number of miles away from that thing I'm looking for.

Ali Walsh Art

My year of magical thinking

This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.


On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.

To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking. Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.

And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.

My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bok choy.


And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking! Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.

That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.

In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.

Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.


My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks. Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.

As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.' That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'

OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.

All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down and the coffee was poured, I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.

'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'

I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'

My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time. My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.

Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year was looking to be a very intriguing one.

My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.