Action is more interesting than inaction.

When I came to Seattle in 2005, I lived in a dark limbo: sick and soul-sick, alone and unemployed and nearly homeless and living off my savings, responsible for an aging dog and incredible monthly medical expenses. My dog and I lived in the guest bedroom of woadwarrior and jeanineers. Apart from my friends, I thought my life was Hell. Except that it ended, so it must only have been limbo.

I'm unemployed again, single, living off my savings and my severance. This time it's an aging cat. I have an apartment I love in a neighborhood I love, but come the end of the summer this may have to change, and I may find myself living in my friends' bedroom again, or in Rice Lake, or in my car.

And yet I am so happy. The days stretch into one another, and I write and climb and see friends and dance through the days. Is today Friday? I think so. When did I get home? Monday? I wrote this morning, two pages of hard thinking about the final section of the book; and walked home from the coffeeshop in bright sunlight, the weather as welcome as winning $20 in the lottery. I went to Stone Gardens and bouldered alone, with Tool and Nine Inch Nails and VAST in my earbuds. After a while, this guy, Eric, came in after classes at UW, and we climbed together for an hour. And now it's dusk.

Right now my life is a high-ball bouldering problem: far enough off the ground to be dangerous -- no better or worse than a lower route, but absorbing in a way low-balls are not, because it has to be, because it's dangerous not to be paying attention, because the perfect beauty of the climb is worth all the risk. I get my thirty seconds or six months and then I'm back on the ground. So it's up to me to be present for the entire climb.

I head out tomorrow for Wisconsin with a bag full of unwrapped Christmas presents and some knitting. I probably won't be online, so before I leave:

You have a million things to be grateful for. If you have a family, be grateful for it. If you have your health, be thankful. If you have a job, if you have a favorite book, if you like the taste of vanilla ice cream, if you slept well last night, if it was a dumb joke but it made you laugh anyway, if someone smiled at you on the bus, if the movie's out in two weeks, if your power's on, if someone you love got better, if your jeans still fit, if your unemployment was extended, if you can't wait for the DVD, if the bathroom's not too dirty, if the arthritis has good days, if they put extra whipped cream on it, if they never forget to call, if your team won, if your team lost but played well, if you still have a roof, if the cat let you sleep in, if no one bugged you in the parking lot, if someone thought your earrings were pretty, if you took an ibuprofen and it got better, if the elevator was already on your floor when you got there, if the tests came in negative, if you can remember your first concert, if you have money in your pocket, if you have money in the bank, if you have friends, if you have food, if you have love, if you have shelter.

You don't have everything you want. No one does. But you have something. Thank the stars or God or the universe or the resilience of the human heart. Don't forget.

( On the fire road. Home. )

Time for a change in life.

This isn't emphasized because the ELCA has a lot of conservative congregations, but there are about 200 ELCA churches that have set gay equality in the communion of Christ as part of their charters, and actively reach out within the GLBT communities. One of these churches is in rural Wisconsin(!), where the president and another officer are lesbians, and there are a lot of gay and lesbian members.

My 75-year-old dad is thrilled that he has been asked to serve as interim minister of this church. It makes me happy that my dad embraces the right and privilege of everyone to love as they wish; and even happier that he believes this so firmly that his bishop didn't hesitate to offer him the parish.

Go, dad!

The sun came out and the bitter cold lifted itself almost as quickly, so I did the five-mile walk along the Ship Canal to the Ballard bridge and back. I walked through the spray of the Chittenden Lock's dams; the rangers were leading tourists around, a sure sign that it is spring. I saw two crows by the Fisherman's Terminal collecting bits of oily weeds; it didn't seem like the best material from which to make a nest to me, but it was clearly exactly what the crows wanted, and they were very picky about their litter. As always happens, the world started to glow at about Mile Three. Life is good. In so many ways this has been the best year of my life.

Kicks my ass. When I get back to climbing, I'm be stronger than I was before. My abs will be, anyway.

I'm doing backups and there's a lot of detritus on my desktop, so:


A cute picture of my parents. I see this is a version Mom hadn't Photoshopped yet, because the candle in the background is crooked. Mom says that Photoshopping things is a slippery slope.

My dad once said that what attracted him to Mom was that she was smart and wore glasses. I never noticed how cute her nose was before this.


Me climbing last summer. I don't know if I posted this one before. That's my climbing partner Peter in the background. I look very intent, but it wasn't that hard a route, for me anyway. I seem to remember it kicking Peter to the curb a few times before he got it.

( sdn got me thinking about my brother.  )

In other news:

• My cold is settling down, knock on wood. Chicken soup for the win.
  
• I wrote to the head of the MFA program telling him I was taking a semester off.
  
• I finished one knitting project, a scarf, and I am launching into a new project, another scarf. The yarn is a lambswool/angora mix and it's a pleasure in my hands.

( My first car was a 1973 Buick Century. )

This started because I wanted to say that I feel like the Buick today, firing on six cylinders only, but then I had explain about the Buick, and well, there you are.

Man, I miss that car.

I accomplished very little today - coffee and window-shopping, catching up with a bunch of people on the phone. I did work a little on the essay I had hoped to finish, but it's been difficult. I can tell you where and when I stall out writing fiction, but I don't have enough experience writing nonfiction to be able to say, yeah just ram through this and it'll start to feel good again. Is the essay any good? As I said, I don't know much about nonfiction, and in any case the organizing principle for the essay isn't especially common (so saith my advisor). I would like people to read it and reassure me -- but that's not going to happen until I can push it out the door with its best pinny on. I may need a writing workshop again, this time for professional-level nonfiction writers, if such a thing exists.

I drove down to Golden Gardens Park for my second walk on the beach since breaking my leg. I went down for the first time on New Year's Day, only my second day completely out of the boot and off the crutches. It was a bright, cold, beautiful afternoon, with a lot of people on the sand, kids trying to dam the little brook that dribbles beneath the bridge, stocking-capped adults burning their Christmas trees in the fire pits, creating great pillars of heatless fire. I didn't actually look around a lot because I was watching my feet carefully to make sure I didn't step wrong and hurt myself. I only walked a couple of hundred yards, but far enough to feel the damp sand chill my feet through their socks and shoes. I was a little sore that night, but it made me so happy to walk, just walk.

I walked farther this afternoon, between a quarter- and a half-mile, and I felt stronger, better balanced. It made me just as happy as the first time. I can't wait to walk miles and miles again.

I've spent the afternoon putting Christmas things away. I know it's early for most people, but I have no one to please but myself, and I like the idea of my house in order for the New Year. Most of my ornaments are tiny stuffed animals which makes putting them away pretty straightforward: open Rubbermaid; throw ornaments in; when the crate is full put a top on it. But there are some others that are fragile or from my family or associated with times in my life, and I'm more careful with these. This is a list of a few:

• Some of my parents' Scandinavian straw ornaments from the '60s: nisse, julbokke, stars and little hollow balls
  
• From my time at Oxford, a handmade stuffed Tigger from a Lewis Carroll shop across from Christchurch
  
• From my life in New York and Portland, a little wood coyote in a play-bow
  
• A tiny kiwi my grandparents brought back from one of their many trips to New Zealand
  
• My tin beetles from when I was little
  
• An antique mohair bear, only two inches tall, its legs held on with long nails, that my grandmother bought
  
• A tin Mexican swallow from my mother's childhood
  
• A yellow Micro Machine car I found in my first geocache

It was bittersweet tucking these things away, knowing December will be here again in an eyeblink, all the years and memories before this slipping another year into the past. The unexpected sun was pouring through my windows, by 3:30 already honey-gold with westering. And VAST, the last track from Nude playing. And I cried, and it was a good but complex thing.

When you live with someone their moods moderate yours. Even when you both have terrible days at work or a brilliant Saturday together at the beach, you experience what looks like the same feeling differently, and your (unconscious) reaction to the differences starts to subtly alter your own emotion. If one of you feels good and one bad, the effect on one another's moods can be a lot more obvious, and it can work for good or ill.

Alone, there's no regulator. I feel what I feel, happy or sad or something more complex. It comes and it goes, replaced by the next unadjusted, unmoderated mood. This can be a good thing because I can't run away from sad or scary things, I can't escape into someone else's moods. And because I'm there for whatever I'm feeling, it moves through, clouds and sun exchanging; and I'm actually looking up and seeing them.

This is about Tatsuko, Chris's and my tortoiseshell girl. We got her when she was really young and pretty fierce, and Chris had this game he played with her: Giant Electro-Deathray Kitty (the name changed a lot). Tatsuko would suddenly become a giant electro-deathray kitty. The populace were terrified (some screaming ensued here) and would call the cops. So the cops (played in this performance by Chris's fingers) would show up and attempt to communicate with the giant kitty. And the kitty would maul the cops, with cop radios cutting in and out and more screaming.

So then the army came, also played by Chris's fingers; and they would send in a reconnoiter team, who would also be mauled (more radio, more screaming, some touching sacrifices and "Tell my wife I love her"s) -- and then there would be a tank (Chris's hand moving forward with a heavy vehicle rumble added in Foley) and some missiles fired. The giant electro-deathray kitty understandably objected to all this, particularly when things escalated and the Air Force sent in jets -- Chris's hand, out flat now and with him making the Universal Boy Jet-Noise, the missiles played by fingers that arced down and poked her in the ribs.

The enraged monster was unstopped by all this; so in the end the generals and government were (in a series of funny voices) forced to make the horrific decision to nuke. Another jet, this one pretty high -- about chest-high -- and then the bomb drops and the giant electro-deathray kitty is apparently destroyed, the mushroom cloud represented by Chris tumbling Tatsuko over and over in his hands as he raises her over his head, and then puts her back on the ground.

Except that she lives! She lives!

( There are never any words for things like this. )

Short answer: Oh yeah, it was good.

...for Bebe. Think good thoughts for me. eta: She's now listed as "Adoption Pending" on the site. All they have to do now is check with the landlords and they've already said okay, but I will be happy when I see the email!

Went to Tsubaki Grand Shrine yesterday. I parked the car just beyond the torii and walked down the gravel drive to the shrine. The deciduous trees up there are still bare-branched, but it's mostly cedars up there. It had been raining so every branch and needle shone under the overcast sky. Koichi Barrish and I drank tea and talked for a time. I told Koichi that coming to the shrine was thanksgiving for me, for surviving and thriving. He nodded: "We will do oharai," he said. He left me alone for a time while he prepared the prayer and dressed. Then he returned and led me down into the main shrine.Every other time I have come to the shrine, Koichi Barrish has worn white vestments; today he wore vivid golden-orange and an eboshi cap.

The space is large and quiet and quite cold, too big to warm. The inner shrine and what in a church would be the altar area are carefully fashioned of cedarwood and brass. Everything feels mindful, as if even the knotholes have been observed and planned for. I love the things in the shrine: the mirror, the ribboned naginata, the sacks of rice offered to the kami, the offerings and the great drum and all the objects and articles of worship. I don't know what half of them are or why they're there, but they all feel half-remembered to me, as though I might wake up suddenly and think, Of course. Ritual places and things are like that, I think: we recognize their importance and power somewhere deeper than memory.

Oharai is a half-hour ritual, and he performed it for me, alone in that big space. They are landscaping for a new little building outside, so his voice and the drum and the bells blended with the thumping of a mallet somewhere, and that was perfect. The drum sounded different in the humid air, as if it was cranky about awakening. I let the unfamiliar words sift over me like pollen, though I recognized my name, kii e-jonase makiterike and many times, domo. Thank you. I bowed when he told me to. I knelt and felt joy light the air around me, a cool, calm joy as bright as the water shining in the needles.

Afterward, he gave me amulets, one for my household's well-being, and one for myself. Tsubaki enshrines Ame no Uzume no mikoto, who is the goddess who danced and charmed the sulking sun from a cave. This makes her the kami of artists and artisans of every sort, but: "It's special to perform rituals for woman artists," he said. "There is so much power."

I decided to do a retreat at the shrine in a couple of weeks.

My dad is 74, a Lutheran minister who does short-term interims at churches that are between pastors. My dad just got his first gmail address, and has started sending me occasional emails. He signed the first one "the original j-dog," so in my reply, I asked what that was about. This is what he replied:

The Story of jdog. When I interimed at Zion in Superior, I had a 9th grade confirmation class. 8 girls and one henbpecked boy. I tried everything I could think of to get through to these chatterboxes. Then I tried something! "Let's go up into the church, up front. Bring your pop."

We did that and spread out all over the old carpet (and me leaning against the altar), we just talked. We talked about everything they wanted to talk about. I don't remember what all, there was some talk about faith, coming out of their "wonderings." I remember at one time saying, "Hey, this isn't a sex-ed class!" You get the idea, anyway.

The classes were a ball! Our poor boy was pretty well invisible. He would lay there on the carpet, face down cradled in his arms. He said NOTHING. After a few weeks of this he stopped after class and volunteered this. "I am listening, I promise."

Anyway, the bond developed and towards the end of the class year, I overheard two of them talking about "jdog". I waited to the next class and faked a wonder about this "jdog". Laughter broke out. When they slowed down my question was, "Is it a complement?" More laughter and nods.

Now that's how learning and discovering should happen. I left there a few weeks later, but will always remember the new name and the face that to these 8 girls (and one boy) I was the coolest thing around.

'bye, and loveya. Dad, Dave, jdog, take your pick.

I am so proud of my dad the J-Dog, and I love him so much.

I did go to Stone Gardens this morning.

It was like grabbing a ringing phone and hearing a much-loved voice hanging in space: I'm bored, let's play.

It was like walking into a party where you don't know anyone and seeing that it's going to be fine, they're playing your sort of music and the people look nice.

It was like listening to the El-P remix of "Only" on headphones and dancing under a streetlight.

It was like waking up to the smell of coffee, same coffee it is everyday, only every day it's just as good, just as welcome.

See, there aren't words for it. I can tell you that I got there at 10:20, and worked on locking off because I'm terrible at that, and then fell off the overhang on the V-1 I finished once and will never finish again, and that James and Adrian showed up then so we talked about Moab. But that's not really anything. Well, falling was something. I think my entire ribcage is going to color up when the bruising starts.

I walked in and the air smelled sweet, like baby powder. I had ears in, was listening to some tracks I forgot to label when I saved them onto my hard drive a few months back, so now, who knows what they are? They were the heartbeat I climbed to, anyway. I stretched and laced into my shoes.

The wall and I clicked. That is better than anything. That is like falling in love. I told Peg this weekend that climbing hasn't been like that for me lately. I like it, I hate it, I do well or poorly, I nail it or fuck it up. But it hasn't been love. Today was like getting a Valentine, was like reading something good that someone else has written about you, like picking up a book and thinking Oh, cool, I love this author.