theology&geometry

Well, it took a fucking Herculean effort to get me here, but I am finally in the Midwest, drunk on Chili’s house cabernet and waiting for my second delayed flight of the day to finally actually board. I spent an hour on the tarmac in Memphis during a grumpy little summer storm, and it made me miss my connection to Portland. Fantasmically, they added a flight to Portland (my connection was originally the last one of the day) so I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to leave. So there’s that, at least. Granted, none of this would have actually happened had I made my initial flight this morning. I’d already be drunk on Portland microbrews by now. But as it stands, I will wrestle with $10 wifi as Larry King talks about legalizing pot on a TV somewhere the background. (I like to think that sentence is the new “Somewhere, a dog barked.”)

On the way up here, this meaty-faced guy and aggressively tanned gal seated behind me were flirting so hardcore that I felt like somewhere there had to be an MTV camera crew capturing the cutemeet. She was retelling a story and used the phrase, “DO YOU WANT ME TO RUB IT?!” five times while laughing unstably. And then the dude retold a story that included the phrase “SORRY IF I BLEED ON YOU” about three times. And then she got really drunk on $7 airplane wine. My imagination was having a field day with their matrimonial future when I could coax it to take breaks from picturing our plane plummeting toward the ground in a fiery ball of molten metal.

My day has mostly consisted of some choice people-watching, accompanied by even better eavesdropping. I am finding myself falling in love with the ridiculous conversations traveling people have on their phones — I myself am not immune to this travelspeak, of course — and how self-important everyone feels when in an airport. Myself included. Can’t you see I’m GOING PLACES over here? I like to stare at the arrivals/departures, make a horrified face, and then crumple into a ball in front of all the chirpy families. Good times.

You will all be satisfied to know that the Homeland Security threat level remains at orange. Roughly the color of any weather map you might access right now.
Homeland Security is hot hot hot!

Okay, I’m starting to sober up and it’s time to check on the status of my piddly little delayed red-eye. Godspeed, y’all.

I never understood how people missed flights. Connecting flights, sure, if your initial flight rolls in late and you’ve got to haul ass to get to the gate across the airport in some unreasonable sliver of time. But that first flight? I just always figured you had to be a real slack-ass to not be able to get to the airport two hours early like me, Little Miss Perfectpants.

Until this morning, when my eyes popped open and looked at my phone clock and BAM HOLY FUCK IT’S 6:03 AND MY FLIGHT LEAVES AT 6:45 WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUU. And I made a valiant effort, throwing together the rest of my travel gear into the suitcase and taking what Ray has informed me was a fatal shower — the deed that did me in and made me miss the flight. But I can’t get on a plane unshowered on the trip out; it’s bad luck. Maybe on the trip home. Anyway.

I drove like a meth addict and got to the Delta counter at 6:41, at which point the counter man told me the plane had already left. I felt like an idiot and wanted to cry, of course, like a little baby who didn’t get her way. But I went to special services and the sassy but nice lady hooked me up with a 2 p.m. flight, which has a layover in Minneapolis but that will get me to Portland at 7 p.m. If all goes according to plan, of course.

So I’m just sort of killing time until then. About to drink lots of coffee and maybe even take a nap. I feel terrible that I basically lost a whole day — and especially because I inconvenienced my hosts. But now I promise I won’t give anyone a hard time for missing a flight. And I am going to write Steve Jobs SUCH a strongly worded letter about the iPhone alarm that just decided it wouldn’t go off today (I triple checked and it was set correctly for the reasonable hour of 4:30 a.m.).

Me: Want me to bring you a souvenir?

Manfred: Yes. Bring me a replica of the space needle.

Me: I’m going to Portland, not Seattle!

Manfred: Same thing.

There was a point within the first ten minutes of Nick’s and my hike up Lookout Mountain Monday morning where I honest to shit thought I was going to die. This is mostly because I am dismally out of shape and unaccustomed to coaxing my body to do much more than stand, sit, and — if I’m lucky — writhe a little every day. Suddenly I was using obscure leg muscles to propel myself up trails littered with rocks and trailing leafy vines, and it felt a bit like the entire universe was pulsing inside my brain with every thud of my very flabbergasted heart. I was a smidge embarrassed at how much a mild trail kicked my ass, but by the second leg, which was undeniably more laid-back and leisurely, I got hiking. And I had regained my breath enough to be able to crack wise when Nick squealed like a little girl when he nearly ran face first into a giant spider web.

We reached the waterfall we’d been striving to see, and I’ll be damned if the thing wasn’t bone dry thanks to Chattanooga’s lack of seasonally appropriate rainfall. Would it be accurate to call the deluge that then ensued ironic? I don’t know. That word has basically lost all meaning for me because I can never use it correctly. The point is, it began raining like a motherfucker while we were sitting leisurely stop the big rocks, basking in the afterglow of a long and somewhat hard-won walk. We traipsed the three or four miles back to the car in the downpour, both of us soaked clean through, me secretly grateful for the rain because it masked both my sweat and my heavy breathing. I would be lying if I said the endorphins didn’t do wonders for me all day.

So yeah. Hiking. Cool shit.

The rest of my brief but lovely trip to the ‘Noog involved indie rock shows and good food and ridiculous jukebox choices, overly enthusiastic panhandlers, tappas, drunken goopy text messages to the manfriend, hazy vistas, frizzy hair, army cots, and cheap, frozen booze. And drunken walks through Nick’s very hip, very cute neighborhood of St. Elmo. The more I visit Chattanooga, the more I really like it. They are doing good stuff over there in the bends and hills of Tennessee and I’m always happy to go back.

Coneflowers! Taken in the garden at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. I’m going to write about my fabulous mini-vacation in the ‘Noog soon enough. I am having trouble finding enough hours in the day lately to do much writing at all. This, I assure you, is a good problem for me.

On my way through Lakeland a few weeks ago, I got behind the rental car I rode to Chicago in back in very late December. It really threw me to just randomly be riding in traffic behind the very same car that had been my road home for a few days. I mean, how many rental cars are on the road in Memphis at any given second? But I know that was the right car. Well, truck. It was an Explorer. I remembered the painted-on number and the Georgia Bulldogs sticker on the back window. I watched it turn off Highway 64, headed to wherever it was meant to go that day. I wondered if the CDs I had made for the trip that my trip companion didn’t really care for had gotten stuck somewhere obscure, maybe between the seats, and if anyone would ever find the discs and pop them in and actually like them, months after they had been made.

It got my captive brain thinking about how, from certain angles in the stratosphere, we must all seem like ants, following the same pheromone trails, looping here and back and here and back, stop go stop, rarely straying from the same paths every day. How often do you go somewhere you’ve never been before?

Today I started thinking my way out of going to Bonnaroo. Amber’s not going to be able to make it, so I’m looking at a solo trip. Which is fine — permit me this mopey moment where I say, in an Eeyore voice, “I’m used to doing things alone” — but it’s hard for me to imagine having a really good time alone. It’s mostly the camping bit that I dread, because I think I’ll be able to find friends during the day (if cell reception holds; it was kinda iffy last year). I can put my work face on for everything during the day. But I don’t think I am the kind of person who should be allowed to camp alone. Last year, deep in the heat of our tent-raising fiasco, I repeatedly just suggested that we give up and sleep in the car. Granted, that is because we were trying to erect a tent that was eleventy billion feet tall (which, in the end, turned out to be an AWESOME home) and we were … inebriated … and it was midnight and there was a storm brewing and everyone else around us put up their tents in ten seconds flat.

In my deep driving-to-Cordova-and-back thoughts (the deepest thoughts known to man), I reasoned that I could just spend my days off at home, working in the yard, or traveling to see friends. And then I put in an Avett Brothers CD and thought about being in the photo pit for their show and how I would kick myself if I chickened out of that opportunity. Look at this lineup. Look at this fucking lineup. There are several artists on that list that I have worshipped for a long time. And I have the opportunity to not only go and hear their music in the midst of the biggest party in the state, but to get ridiculously close to some of them and point my camera at them and steal some moments from them for eternity? It’s too bad you weren’t there to slap me out of my mopey bullshit. I know that’s what you’re thinking.

So Bonnaroo. I’m fucking going and it is going to be fucking great and if it’s not, so what? I will get a story out of it regardless. The stories are my life.

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I got hopped up on coffee today and got extra pissed at myself for having not visited Nick at his new place in Chattanooga or Cox since he moved to Oregon YEARS ago. And then I decided that this summer was going to be the summer I rectified both those problems. I requested time off, cleared my schedule, and booked plane tickets. So it’ll be a Chattanooga-y July and a Salem/Portland-y August and I could not be more excited to forge a new pheromone trail or two in my life.

The plan is to stop making NYE plans. Every time I have tried to orchestrate something beyond “go to work and then get misty-eyed in the car later when the clock turns midnight and you’re on your way home to an empty apartment/house,” it has failed with such spectacularity that I’m sure some day I will be able to laugh about my foolishness over this manufactured night of revelry. Right?

2009, the plan: Drive up to Chicago with Sig to meet up with Patrick for Girl Talk at Congress Theater. Dance my ass off and let the sweat wash the grit of an iffy year off my body and mind. Crash at 4 a.m. with a smile on my face and a good feeling about the coming year.

2009, the reality: Late start. Sub-zero temperatures. Cab barf (not mine, thankfully). Tipping extra. Strangers. Nearly dying in a mad crush of women in the bathroom like it was Walmart the day after Thanksgiving. Losing everyone I knew. Watching the room erupt in joy as midnight chimed. Trying and failing to hold it together. Wanting to roll back the clock and start over. Walking out while the show still raged on and trying to hail a cab while drunk and shivering. Watching cab after cab, full, pass by. Sitting and waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting and walking and riding and finally sleeping while everyone else stayed up all night.

New Year’s Eve, you are such an elusive and usually pointless bitch to please.

Anyway. Chicago was interesting. I am conflicted about it but the one thing I can say without reservation is that it was cold. Gut-blastingly cold. It’s cold here in Memphis now, yes GOD YES, but I’m talking single-digit lake-effect chicanery up there. Cold that will slice your face open. Cold that will make your lungs ache in fear of instant death. Cold that will make your leg hair grow. But, oddly, it’s cold that I can handle, given the right equipment (two layers of gloves, some wool, and fuzzy boots). I made it my mission to see what I could see despite Jack Frost raspberrying on my face and I saw quite a bit. I owe Patty O’Pinions for that, really. He’s a gracious host. And I had a sweet place just off Michigan to call my temporary home thanks to Sig’s old/ my new pal Zachary. It’s good to know people. I’m grateful for people, even if people (such as the wasted, barely-clothed lady who came INTO THE BATHROOM WITH ME at a restaurant and saw my horror and said, “Don’t worry! I won’t watch!” before I slipped out and let her do her business while I pissed in the men’s room) can suck real hard sometimes.

So thanks for the memories, Chicago. Your women should invest in pants but you’re really onto something with that deep dish pizza you’ve got. Got-damn!

More Chicago photos are here, but you’re going to want to put a coat on before you look at them.

[Project 365]

Got a late start to Chicago Wednesday night Thursday morning. Late as in 4 a.m. Meaning this photo is only technically my Day 364 because I hadn’t yet been to sleep.

[Project 365]

Mom was so reluctant to see Amber and me leave that she insisted on a prolonged photoshoot outside as we were walking out the door. I hated to leave too; the family was going to be there for the rest of the week and I was going to schlep back to work after dropping Amber off in Murfreesboro. The drive back was easy enough, even if I did have to drive into the sunset the entire time (which is half as pleasant as it sounds). I bid Amber adieu at her mother’s house and arrived home after 10 to a door that would not honor my newly made spare key. Dazed, I trekked over to Zach’s — my catsitter — to retrieve my original set and found the house full of people doing crafts and shit. I must have looked like a psycho (moreso than usual) to them. Blank-eyed and on the verge of exhaustion tears, which came when I finally got in the car with my working keys.

The cats were happy to see me — to see anybody, I’m sure — and I have pretty much forgotten everything else about the remainder if that evening.

[Project 365]

Tuesday brought much milling about and squirreling away. Pigeon Forge is lined with places you never want to go into but that you always end up buying shit at. Why? I don’t know. It’s some kind of universal law involving the eventual depletion of your checking account.

Amber and I were sitting and waiting on the folks to meet us when my mom walked up to us. “Y’all!” mom started, then laughed. “I was going to say, ‘Y’all make a good couple!’ but that’s not what I mean!”

I looked at Amber and back at mom with a smirk on my face. “Well, actually, I’ve got something to tell you…” I said dramatically.

Mom froze in her tracks and a look of complete terror overtook her. I laughed, suddenly completely embarrassed. “I’M JUST KIDDING!” I screeched. Mom looked more relieved than I have perhaps ever seen her. Amber and I devolved into nervous laughter and I realized that my parents must actually wonder about my sexuality since I never bring boys for them to meet and I am creeping up on thirty, unmarried and unashamed.

We sat down for dinner at a place that will not only make your food, but will make the plates it’s served on. The food was great and Amber and I were really bad at being sneaky about paying the tab for everyone. Oh well. Free food is clumsy sometimes.

We spent the remainder of the evening at the outlet mall, trolling for bargains or shiny things to catch our eye. Part of me feels guilty for spending so much time shopping, but then I realized that A) What was I going to do? Camp in the woods? HA HA HA B) I was helping our battered economy! C) I was buying much-needed Christmas presents for friends and loved ones! D) My other cultural options were pretty much dictated by Dolly Parton’s corporate handlers. So. I deal with the guilt pretty easily.

At some point, I managed to take this photo, which cracks me up, without exception, every time I look at it:

Amber and I came back to the cabin with a car full of sweet sweet swag, and tucked in, determined to watch The 12 Men of Christmas since that scamp Stephanie had given me a review copy and I was determined not to let her down. We made s’mores in the fireplace and drank champagne and I yelled at the television when I realized that my protagonist was a 3-foot-tall, obnoxious PR hack with a supersonic voice. Fun fact: That movie had not a damn thing to do with Christmas. Or men, really. Or the number twelve. Except that there are 12 months in a year and that is roughly the amount of time it will take me to forget that this movie exists. Fun fact part two: There’s a token black dude who gets roughly seven seconds of screen time. Hilarious!

Two bottles of champagne, another s’more, and an untold amount of honey bourbon liqueur later, we passed out.

Vacation!

[Project 365]