Beach, Day Two (part one)

More than a month after my trip to the coast, here is day two's thoughts and scribblings:

There are a lot of people on this stretch of beach, all hotel guests, I'm assuming. But it's nice, since nobody else is out on the balcony, that there are some people out.

I ordered room service this morning. Room service always sounds so luxurious, and it ended up feeling kind of lonely. I flipped through the tv--left it on some tv judge where two ex-meth addicts were suing each other. Everyone kept clapping because they were clean. I turned it off.

The tide has gone out and there are little waves, slips of water, coming up sideways. It's like they're saying, "We're building a new ocean... shhh. Don't tell anyone."

I think about voices a lot.I hear different voices for things all the time. This book I'm reading, about a bunch of international dignitaries taken hostage in a South American vice-president's home, is like that. Tons of characters, all from different countries, and I can hear all their voices as I read. Testament to the author, I guess.

The little sideways waves have children's voices. The larger, further-out mother waves sound like Kathleen Turner when she's relaxed. A little worn out, all the time.

I started reading "Even In Quiet Places" for maybe the fourth time, and I marked it like a Bible. But I don't read the Bible this way.

The people next door must be staying here a while. They have pulled plants out to the balcony, hung a dreamcatcher on the rail. Dreamcatchers are such bullshit, really.
Wait. Maybe it's not a dreamcatcher. It has a bunch of dangling strings with shells and stuff. Still. Ew.

I was just  getting up to leave the balcony when the old man next door stepped out.
"How do you like the view?" he said.
"Oh, it's beautiful," I said, "Really nice."
And he asked if I had ever been before, asked if I liked it.
"You know, we almost bought this one--thought about connecting it to our own--we were friendly with the neighbor and I told him we'd be interested if he ever sold. So he called, said he had to move to Texas where his company's headquarters was, and his wife needed a drier climate, and we thought about it. They had the place handicapped accessible--"

(NOTE: This is why my room was upgraded. Normally things like that--Oh, let's give her a shower with a bunch of contraptions--makes my blood boil, but this room is way nicer so I'm good with it)

"--but we already had that in our place for my sister-in-law, see. She was handicapped too, and then she died about six years ago--" (People do this all the time in conversations with me--they say 'handicapped' when they mean 'ill', and the story always end in death. As if I know anything about what it's like to have cancer.)

The man had settled in, draping his arms over the wall between our balconies. "She had a bunch of wishes, my wife's sister, and one of them was  to live on the coast for a while. So I lent her the $100,000 for this place--she paid me back when I sold her house--and when she passed away, all her family was here on this balcony, holding her hands and singing songs."

"It's a lovely spot," I said. What do you say?

We talked some more about family--they live full time in Oregon City and will often come here Thursday through Sunday. I mentioned Linfield and Ireland when he said his wife had traveled the world--I had just been thinking of the Irish coast when I stood to leave. So many rocks. One of my favorite memories of Ireland was sitting on a bench staring at the ocean again. I sat there for an hour after a seaweed bath, and didn't feel lonely or confused (I don't think, but memory does weird things to truth.)

The man and his wife both had family who gone to Linfield, and they encouraged me to come back before the summer was over. They're nice people. They came here with a cat in a pet carrier.

Beach, Day One

It's been two weeks since I went to the coast to disconnect. That's been enough time to recognize what a beautiful and necessary time it was, and just enough time to plug back in and get stressed again. I have missed the ocean since my second day back.

I did some writing while I was there, which felt really, really good. It's not brilliant, and it's not deep, but I can't sleep, and so here you go:

Day One...

I want more drama from the ocean. How presumptuous is that?

I wanted crashing waves, and I got them, I guess--when I closed the door to take a shower, I thought, It sounds like a washing machine.

I wanted the waves to be CRASHING: big, white puffs like angry clouds. But these waves just kind of sidle up, move along, and lick the shore.

This is what people love about the ocean, isn't it--it's so endless and so constant. I like watching these little waves curl; I love the curvature, the green. I love it so much I'm a little sad every time one crests, because it's over.

I sat in the bar and had an old-fashioned and a pound of clams. When I ordered, the waiter said, "One pound of the steamed clams, or two?"
"One will be fine," I said. "Thanks."
I ate them slowly; I was there a long time. I had a book.

There was a woman sitting at the table nearest me, probably in her 50s, and I thought, She's not beautiful. I wonder if she was when she was younger. I wonder if her husband still thinks of her as beautiful. 

And then I hated myself a little, and my brain said, "How selfish can you be?", and I thought, Well, at least that much. But I'm loved anyway.


There was a woman standing on the beach, and I liked seeing her, there by herself, staring at the sea. The sea sounds so much more poetic than the ocean. But the ocean sounds bigger. When she turned and started walking, I felt like all the poetry of the moment left.

Three women came and sat near me in the bar. "Ooh," one of them said. "What you have looks good."
"It is good," I said, and I popped a clam in my mouth to show how much I was enjoying them. A little bit of sand crunched between my teeth.

They decided on the clams, the beef tips, and the artichoke dip. And rustic bread. I know this because the one woman kept repeating the list in different order:

"Look at this view, ladies. And we're going to have artichoke dip, and rustic bread, and beef tips... and clams!"

And later:

"I can't wait for our clams, and beef tips, and artichoke dip, and rustic bread. And look at this amazing view!"

It's almost dark. My words are sliding off the page....


Ta da! Day two coming soon....

I am disconnecting to reconnect.

Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

by Richard Brautigan 

1.    

Get enough food to eat,
    and eat it.
  
    
        2.
    Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
    and sleep there.
  
    
        3.
    Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
    until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
    and listen to it.
  
    
        4.

Pretty soon, I am leaving. Not for long. Just a few days.

The plan is to stare at the ocean for long stretches of time. I will have books--they may be opened, or not. I will have a notebook and a pen. The notebook may stay blank.

The phone, while with me, will ideally be off. This stresses me out a little.

I don't disconnect well--I'm constantly plugged in somewhere, constantly engaged in something, so that my alone time either feels not alone at all or totally, utterly, lost-in-space-and-time alone.

So I am going away, and I'm not bringing anyone with me, and I'm going to stare at the ocean and be quiet. I won't say silent--I might sing.

I need to disconnect to move past the disconnected feeling I have been living in. Doing more hasn't helped me feel better or stronger.

I am not putting expectations on this trip, other than the sound of the waves, crashing in rhythm. I may learn nothing. But a part of me hopes I can learn to recognize again that giving yourself grace is not lazy.
Maybe I'll be reminded that I am safe and secure in an insecure world.
Hopefully I'll see again that the people who love me love me intensely, and that those who don't, don't need to.

I am bringing some poems with me on the trip. The one up at the top speaks to the inspiration of the whole trip. Hopefully, I'll have a copy of William Stafford's book Even in Quiet Places--possibly the only book of poetry to actually make me feel like I was discovering something.

And this one:

Keeping Quiet

by Pablo Neruda 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

(ps. Thanks to Eric G. for reminding me what poetry can do.) 

Heather is a bum.

I didn't go back to the gym Friday.

In fact, I haven't been back in ages.

I did buy an iPod, a swimsuit (for the HydroPower aqua aerobics class I have yet to take) and a yoga mat.

The mat is shrink-wrapped, and I can't get the iPod to sync to my iTunes library (yes, I downloaded the latest version). The swimsuit still has the tags on it.

It's like things are on pause, across the board. Not stopped, not stalled... just paused.

Any ideas on how best to push play?

This blog is not just about the gym...

I promise. But for now, it kind of is.

So, I went back to the gym today. And when I say that I'm slow, I'm really slow. 

Monday, I walked a half a mile on the treadmill, at a pace of 1.5 mi, with a 2.0 incline. Not a lot, but it was enough. 

So today, I walked a half a mile, with the same 2.0 incline, but at a pace of 1.6. 

So you know what that means, a quarter mile took me nine minutes. 

Nine sweaty, painful minutes. 

But I did the half mile. 

I also tried the fly machine, which seemed really easy and simple, until I hit my tenth rep, at which point my arms started saying OMG WHY WHAT IS HAPPENING OMG IT BURNS OMG. 

I did three sets of ten. Better than zero....

And I very seriously need to make the small investment in an iPod Shuffle, or maybe a Nano. Today's Bally's playlist included the following: Van Halen's "Panama", painful enough alone. That was followed by Phil Collins. WHAT is Phil Collins doing in a GYM? And that, friends, was followed by Vertical Horizon. 

VERTICAL HORIZON. 

I hope you understand how painful that was to my ears. 

VERTICAL HORIZON. 

I'm going back Friday. 

Version Me

I have not written a blog post in a really long time.

In fact, I haven't done a lot of things in a really long time.

Since I last posted, it's a new year. Worldwide, some beautiful and some horrible things have happened, and my prayer is that the horrible will come back around and birth some beauty soon.

In my own little speck of the world, I turned 30. In fact, I turned 30 while I was sick in bed, not yet realizing that I had pneumonia.

The pneumonia is gone now, but it certainly took its time.

One of the other things that I haven't done in a really long time is go to the gym. Day after day, I left work, looked at the big neon Bally's sign literally directly across the street (it could only be closer if it were in my building), sighed a little bit, and drove home.

Being sick makes you depressed, and getting sick when you're already. let's be honest, pretty depressed, makes you REALLY depressed, and when you're depressed you don't want to work out--maybe you want to go home and watch mindless TV. Like "Wipeout." Not that I ever did that. But, you know.

SO.

Without making this post too full of self-pity or just plain boring, I decided to go back to the gym today. No more maybe. Today.

Nevermind that it's Monday.
Nevermind it's a night I'm working late.
Nevermind I don't feel like going to the gym.

So, I went to the gym. Having cerebral palsy at the gym tends to make everything a little more intense, a little more daunting. The machines are scary, and could potentially throw you to the ground. Everyone around you is very fast, and very thin.

I got on the treadmill and got a look from the guy next to me, who was casually strolling. Not a mean or hurtful look, but that look that everyone gives me initially--the  flash of sizing up and 'what's-going-on-here'-ness.

God, I thought, He's gonna be watching me.
And then I realized: I didn't care.

I listened to our side-by-side footfalls on the treadmill belts. There were two of his for every one of mine.

God, I thought, I'm so slow.
And then I realized: I didn't care.

I started sweating (like, really sweating) at about five minutes in.
God, I thought, I look a mess. And I'm going so slow. And this guy's watching me (he wasn't, for the record).
And I realized I didn't care.

I walked a half a mile on the treadmill. That might not seem like much, but I don't walk a half a mile anywhere, ever. Every goal I set for myself, I reset a little further out. When I return to the gym, half a mile will be the expectation, not the stretch goal.

I was thinking on the way home about going back to the gym, and about how likely my body was to hurt in the morning (I also did some tricep and chest presses, some tiny free-weight things, and some odd things with an eight pound medicine ball, AND I stayed on that Precor swoopy machine (swoopy) for three entire minutes.

And at first I thought, Heather, you're new! And then I thought, no... this isn't Heather 2.0, or Heather 30.0 or anything else. This is Heather as she is right now. And that's pretty awesome. Not looking in the rearview mirror brightens the horizon exponentially.

Also, the musical selection in Bally's is terrible, and someone needs to give me an iPod, stat.

12-21-2010

New things are on their way. 

Watch this space. 

(Don't literally watch the space--that's liable to get boring. But you know what I mean.)