Four and Twenty

I live in a town where, on April 20 every year, there is a major pot smokefest up at the college campus. In general, actually, pot is fairly tolerated here. So, while many of my gentle townsfolk are marking 4/20 in their own way, I'd like to mark the day in my special way. This is the thirty-second anniversary of President Jimmy Carter's attack by a swamp rabbit, and recently, the Carter Library authorized the release of some previously unseen footage of the attack:

Of dinosaurs and flying men

I would like to see Mr. Wallenda walk on the moving ferris wheel tomorrow at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, but would prefer he not plummet to his death. The frisson that accompanies an extreme likelihood of death or impalement tends to impede my enjoyment of many things. You know how some people secretly hope something thrilling and slightly scary will happen?

That is not me.

So, I am planning to go and watch with a blanket (small, tasteful) draped completely over my head.

I don't understand the excitement of witnessing something that may hurt someone. How is that special? If *I* were to walk atop the ferris wheel or ride a small motorcycle on a high wire, I, too, might die, and there's nothing unusual about that. What would be unusual and therefore really arresting, is if someone could do it with no threat of harm or anything going wrong with the trick, whatsoever. That would be both awesome and relaxing to witness, and I'd be right there. No blanket necessary.

Also, this:

 

words

Writing is amazing. I'd have a better descriptor for you, but I just ran out of the words in my head.

This has happened to me several times -- once, when I was managing editor of a newsstand publication and also the senior editor, head proofer and also writing four different columns -- we were on deadline for that day, and the EIC decided that we were short one  feature. I was asked to whip it up and out in under three hours, some 1,900-words on a sport in which I do not engage, and which I had never even heard of until that moment. I brewed coffee and wrote and wrote, earphones on, kids watching cartoons mere feet away (always). I wrote my columns, and the front-of-book, and the feature. And yet another one, and then proofed it all. At the end of that intense day, when some five (six?) thousand words total had come out of my head and onto the screen, and were sent off for layout, I felt the way I feel now. Drained of words.

And I've done it again, finishing a HUGE project just last night. It's a good, slightly shaky feeling, like after a long run, but with my brain. I worked in one long, intense burst; it was hours and hours of writing, and now I need to regroup. There's not much left in here in my head, just a big bucket holding one small pebble, rattling around without much enthusiasm.

Down time is hard, between big writing pushes, because writing and editing are my top two, three, four things to do. And when I need to walk away from them, I have to rustle around until I remember what my fifth and sixth and seventh things are. I like to walk, I love movies, I garden and I throw things for the dog, hoping she brings them back to me (It's never guaranteed. She's part Retriever and part Apathy in fur).

But in so many ways, all of those things are just methods of waiting until I can write (or edit) again.

I took my kid to get a fruit smoothie today, still feeling writing-hungover. The copy-heavy sign in the waiting area was full of nonsensical ellipses, and missed commas, and too many adjectives. Imagine being with someone who stands next to you while you wait for your mango smoothie, muttering under her breath about weak ad copy and lousy punctuation. That was me, the muttering, head-shaking word snob. 

I know. Poor kid. Still, it took most of my willpower to not take a red pen to the thing. Luckily for all involved, I could barely make a fist.

Apricots

I grew up on the edge of San Jose. When I look on Google Earth to see my old street, I can't even type the address in correctly, because the town was eventually subsumed by the city and now isn't (named) what it used to be. We had an orchard at the end of the street and a horse stable at the top of the street; our houses had never been lived in before, and the newly planted, baby trees in our yards were all shorter than I was. I would walk the few blocks to meet my friend to help groom her pony and get rides when I was eight, nine years old.

I don't go back. I don't go back because there is no there to go back to. The orchard was razed for development thirty years ago. I can't even find where the horse barn was or where we made forts -- all the roadmarks are gone. I still dream about playing in the orchard, biking through the little ranch-house-edged neighborhood. In my dreams, I can smell the wet asphalt. I wake up in the night, sometimes, homesick for something that doesn't exist and hasn't existed for a terribly long time.