This is an excerpt from Moments, the second in the series.  The other day I blogged about A Moment of Transcendence at Fort Bowie, Arizona. Today I’m blogging about Revelation.  My series of moments are not in chronological order.  This one is from college, 1964.  That 1964 is 46 years ago seems impossible, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had from this experience.

This introduction applies to all the Moments:  How many special moments do we get in a lifetime?  I mean the truly magic moments that stop us in our tracks to marvel, that imbue a sense of awe that we remember forever after.  On this Friday the 13^th, 2009, a beautiful Spring day, it seems like a good idea to recall those moments if for no other reason than to remember.

This is a journey for the meaning of life. I think we all grapple with this at one time or another, and for some of us it seems harder to come to peace with this quest. For me personally, it was a journey that started perhaps in junior high school, intensified in my senior year of high school, and just about broke me down in college. I wasn’t raised in a religious home and I was intensely curious about God – first and foremost, was there a God. This contributed to the complexity of my quest. It went like this:

A freshman at University of California, Santa Barbara, I was majoring in philosophy. As students do, I was searching for the meaning of life, the big picture. I was desperately unhappy, which compounded, or was perhaps caused by, the search for meaning. My work habits were spotty – I studied best at night and stayed up very late. I didn’t fit in with the other kids in my residence hall – I was quirkier, liked solitude, and was drawn to more complicated people – and I wasn’t finding any. Now I realize what an arrogant thought that was, but I was a Democrat in a suite of four intense, conservative Goldwater Girls and so very out of place. My best friend was the vending machine with Hostess Fruit Pies and Paydays.

In a period of solitude, intense reading, many sleepless nights, and constant thinking that had my head spinning, I had a flash. A moment that one could perhaps call mystical. My thoughts were colored by sleep deprivation and had forced me into a meditative state. And there it was – a glimpse of the meaning of life, a picture of the whole, and I was in what I would now call a state of grace. Whatever the universe was composed of, I was one with it. I was both apart from it and part of it. It was in me and around me.

I couldn’t hold on to the state of grace and the clarification, but I did remember the revelation – life was about nothing except living. Here we were, it didn’t matter why, so the thing to do was live as if it mattered, live a good life, and have fun. Yes, fun. Learn, do no harm, and have fun. It didn’t matter if there was a God or not because that would not affect the manner in which we should live. This was both a simplistic solution to the quest but also a very profound one.

I wish I could say that I lived a less troubled life from then on but I didn’t. What I didn’t know until decades later was that I was actually clinically depressed for most of my 20s and 30s, but that is another story. I’ll just say that it’s hard to fight a battle when you don’t know who the enemy is. Eventually, I thought hard enough and lived long enough to return to that night of revelation – that was indeed all I needed to know to live a productive, satisfied life. It’s a relief to stop wondering about the meaning of life, about the existence of God, and all those intangibles that we won’t know until much later if at all. It just doesn’t matter. We’re here.

I have a house for sale.  Please come buy my house.  It’s been on the market for three days and no one has bought it yet!  I don’t know how long I can stand to keep this house so clean.  This is what selling a house means:

• no dishes left in the sink
• no dishes put in the dishwasher unless they already look clean
• nothing on the drainboard – doh!
• no trash in the wastebaskets, which are purchased for the sole purpose of holding trash
• hang the towels just right in the bathroom
• keep your dirty laundry covered up
• don’t leave sweaters and shoes laying around
• don’t cook anything with strong odors
• make it look like you don’t have two cats and a dog
• don’t walk on the rugs and smash the pile
• don’t let the plants die
• teach the dog not to poop
• make sure the house smells good at all times
• put stuff in the cupboards so the counters don’t look cluttered, but keep the cupboards clean
• keep your desks organized and tidy – in other words, don’t use them
• don’t just throw sections of the newspaper on the floor when you finish them, to pick it all up every few days

You know which one is the hardest?  The shoes!  I try but at any time I may have five pairs of shoes scattered around the house.  I seem to be incapable of putting shoes away.  And I don’t do dishes after every meal.  My dirty laundry just sits in the laundry basket so now I keep it covered with a little rug.  And it doesn’t bug me that the newspapers stack up in front of the couch.

I drew the line at the cupboards.  I did sort the linen closet, but I stopped there.  The kitchen cupboard where the bowls and refrigerator containers are?  I can clean it and the next day gremlins have wreaked havoc.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I throw refrigerator containers in the cupboard instead of placing them in neat stacks.  The closet in the office?  Where all my newly-organized photos are?  Potential buyers are just going to have to use a little imagination to see how spacious it could be when organized.  Same for the closet in my studio.  And the coat closet.  And the entire laundry room.

The garage is in a class of its own.  Bad at any time, it’s now a total disaster because Mark is restoring his Model A.  At least people looking in can see that there is a real project going on.

It’s not that I’m messy or disorganized.  It’s just that I have no interest in doing these things.  I’d rather write, or draw, or read, or ride my bike, or drink wine. Heck, I’d rather just sit and look out the window.  And my housekeeper has missed two weeks because she got rear-ended and is in physical therapy.

I must admit, though, the floors are pretty darn clean.  Cat hair in this house during shedding season?  No way.

So although I am flapdoodled, frizzled and fragmented, I feel like I’m in stasis.  Can’t start a painting or collage because the entire studio would be in disorder (I’m not a neat worker). Can’t start packing for the move because there is no where to put anything – our storage unit is full as is the garden shed.  We just have to close on the house we bought so we can start packing and moving stuff over.  Having a wedding shower Saturday so I have all the stuff for that sitting all over the laundry room.

So would someone please come buy my house so I can start living again?  This is what it looks like.

This is the front.  I had to take these pictures for the MLS.  Did you know you can put your house on the multiple listing service even if you’re selling it yourself?

Notice how clean the stairs are. And the nice stained glass window by the front door.

Living room with fireplace and a cut-through to the family room.  It’s a nice open floor plan.

Dining area leading to the patio and the kitchen.  Aren’t the floors clean?

Family room.  It is so uncluttered!

Library.  Talk about status! Who wouldn’t like to say they have a library?  Of course, it’s also the grandkid’s playroom since I appropriated their playroom for my studio.

For that matter, who wouldn’t like to say they have a studio?  Especially one that looks like a kid’s playroom?

Wonderful concrete counter tops in the kitchen with a fabulous sink.

Great back patio where you can do lots of entertaining.  Like the shower I’m giving on Saturday.

And of course, the view.

The MLS only allows ten photos so you have to take my word that there is an upstairs with three bedrooms, two baths, etc.

NOW – those of you who saw the post with photos of our new house must be saying this woman is insane, why does she want to move?  But I promise that the new house will be fabulous as soon as we get our happy paint on the walls and cover up all the ridiculous olive drab that the whole thing is painted.

And you know what? Speaking of paint?  I hope the couple who looked at this house today buys it and for one particular reason.  She said the paint colors were happy!  She got it!  Our walls are orange and ochre and lime green and bright blue because those colors were all over Costa Rica and we were happy there.  So we painted our house in happy colors.  The woman who looked today is the first person EVER except for us that has called them happy colors out loud.

But if she doesn’t buy it – will someone please buy this house before it’s been on the market a week?  So I can relax?  So I can quit being flapdoodled, frizzled and fractured? So my days will be frabjous days?  I want to wake up and say “O frabjous day! Callooh!  Callay!”

Fort Bowie

Our daughter Jennifer and her husband Matt spent a summer in Tucson, Arizona  back in 1993 while Matt interned with the Indian Health Service.  We like to go wherever our kids are to see new places and be able to better share their experiences.  So off my husband and I went to southeastern Arizona in late June.  The heat was blistering, but where we were was so interesting that it didn’t matter, and anyway, Mark and I love the desert, which comes with heat, conveniently or not.

We took a camping trip in Cochise County – territory we could have covered in a day, but there was so much to see we took almost a week.  We absorbed as much history as we could as we explored an area saturated with Indian lore.  Geronimo, Cochise, and the history of the Apaches gave this little corner of Arizona a spiritual feel.  We spent a couple of nights at Chiricahua National Monument, where we took a morning trip to Fort Bowie.

The trail to the fort was incredible – there were tracks from stage coaches

Foundations of the Butterfield Stage Stop from the 1860s

and wagon trains that told the story of fortitude, duress, and the quest for a new future;

Wagon from the 1860s on the trail to Ft. Bowie. This was the site of the Bascom Affair - a massacre.

Pony Express stops and a small cemetery that housed the remains of Geronimo’s young son spoke to the nature of one person’s quest creating another’s tragedy.

Geronimo's son Little Robe was shot in the forehead by soldiers at Ft. Bowie. They also killed Geronimo's wife.

Then there was the fort itself.  Fort Bowie was a Civil War fort and there were remnants of many of the walls and buildings.

Sutler's quarters at Ft. Bowie, a Civil War fort

I imagined myself in the time period, felt the tension between soldiers and Indians, the sweat and discomfort of uniforms and closed, small quarters in the heat.

View of Ft. Bowie from the ridge trail

I picked up a nail and a piece of adobe and began the trek back on a high ridge so desolate, so alone, so quiet, that as I stood and surveyed the territory with a small breeze at my back, it was as if “the whole” blew through me.  I felt connected to the earth and to history, to the spirits of the Apaches and the entirety of the world.

Words don’t convey the expansiveness of this feeling, this moment, as well as its intimacy.  For just that brief instant and for the second time in my life, I felt that no questions needed answers, that soul was connected to soul.  It was illuminating, it was magic, and then it was lost as we continued the trek to our car.

Trail leading up the ridge. On the back of the photo, I wrote "Indians walked here."

We almost lost ourselves on that trek as we had failed to bring enough water, not understanding how the 115-degree heat could suck all the moisture out of our bodies.  We drank the water we brought, we poured it over our heads and down our shirts and barely made it to the car where we bowed to the vending machine gods.  Yet that one transcendent moment lives within me still.

Above is a map with Portsmouth Island, a barrier reef island off Ocracoke Island in North Carolina.  Along with Cape Hatteras and other islands, these form the Outer Banks.  What you are about to read is a true story and believe it or not, it’s understated.

A Biblical Journey

“When we were in the Outer Banks we went to Portsmouth Island – they had the most amazing shells I’ve ever seen.  And it’s really historical.”  My sister exhibited her usual extreme enthusiasm for anything related to the past.

“How do you get there?”

“Well, you have to find someone to take you and pick you up later on because no one lives there and it’s deserted, but”

“Wait.  What do you mean I have to find someone to take me?  Like who and where and”

“There’s just people with boats all over Ocracoke.  You’ll find someone.”

“Well, I might try, if I have –“

“No, you have to go. That’s all there is to it. The most amazing shells I’ve ever seen were all over that beach!”

So I’d go.  It did sound like an adventure and I was planning a trip to North Carolina, a major adventure in itself.  We used to live there and I hadn’t been back in forever.  Traveling just wasn’t in our budget, what with three teenage girls and a dearth of extra funds.  But when The Boys said they were moving to North Carolina, I blurted out, “I’ll come visit you!”

The Boys were actually men – Michael and Bryan – and they were actors.  Supposedly North Carolina was a hotbed of the film industry at the time, being cheaper to film in than California, and they could get their SAG cards more easily there.  The Boys were a little quirky, as most interesting people are, and I was having a hard time envisioning them crossing the country in their small white pickup truck.  But they did, so I would come.

To me, “I’ll come visit you” was a promise even though I didn’t say the words I promise.  I planned, flew, rented a car, and was on my way to visit the Boys, with stops planned along the route.  One was Portsmouth.

The day of the big Portsmouth Island adventure arrived. I set out from Ocracoke, one of the islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, former hangout of Blackbeard the Pirate.

I started asking around.

“I’d like to visit Portsmouth Island – do you have any ideas of how to get there?”

“Why would you want to go there?  It’s deserted, there’s nothing there, and”

“But my sister said there are great shells on the beach.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think…”

“I need to go.”  I hadn’t learned the lesson yet that maybe the locals would know more than I do.

“Ok then, ask Rudy.  He can take you out there and pick you up.  You’ll find him down at the docks.”

So I found Rudy but I got a little nervous – who was this Rudy anyhow?  What if he didn’t come back for me?  What would I do? How’d I contact anyone?  This was way before cell phones.  I had no idea what to tell him about where to drop me off, so he suggested dropping me at one end of the island and picking me up three hours later at the pier.

The die was cast and I was going to Portsmouth Island.  Bug spray in hand to counteract those North Carolina mosquitoes, I climbed in the little boat with the little motor and felt like I was in a bathtub toy.  But it got me there.

Brimming with excitement, I began walking along the shore ready to scoop up those fabulous sea shells.  But there weren’t any.  There wasn’t even anything to consider – was it a shell or wasn’t it?  There were no broken shells to pick up and discard.  I found a dead horseshoe crab and took a picture of it in case it turned out to be the main attraction, but truly, there was nary a shell in sight.  I wish I could show you the picture, but it was a bad one and I threw it away. Did Rudy take me to the wrong place?

Resigned, I headed inland towards the deserted town so I could make it to the pier on time.  I slogged through marshy land, squishy mud, and scratchy brush.  It was hot and humid.  I mean HOT and humid.  I wasn’t having fun yet.  My clothes were soaked with sweat, my shoes covered with squishy stuff, and there were bugs all around me.  I sprayed on some more bug juice just in case.

The closer I got to the town, the denser the swarms of mosquitoes and gnats got.  I kept spraying as I walked faster and faster.  I looked at my legs and they were black! There were bugs stuck to my legs, stuck to the bug spray.  It killed them all right, but ensnared them and now my legs looked like something out of a science fiction movie.  My arms were turning black, too. I futilely sprayed, brushed bugs off, and had to spray again. It was no use.  Starting to panic, I was practically running and saw the town ahead.

Now I was running – and I saw an actual house with an open door!  People were there!  Hallelujah, I was saved.  No time to knock – I burst through the screen door yelling, “Is anybody home?”

“We are.” A youngish sort of couple appeared.

“Forgive me for bursting in but I’ve been walking through the slough and I’m covered with bugs and hot and, I mean, I’m a former Peace Corps volunteer and I can deal with a lot but this is the worst…”

“What in the world are you doing here?  No one comes to Portsmouth in the summer.”

“You’re here.”

“We work for the State Park Service and we’re the caretakers.  But neither of us would think to venture outside without full mosquito netting, I mean head to toe, and covered with 100% DEET.”

Great.

“Here, why don’t you wash your legs off and we’ll give you some DEET to put on, but how are you getting to the main island?”

I explained, I washed my legs, I put on DEET, and waited for the helpful park caretakers to invite me to sit on their sofa until it was time to go to the pier, but they turned me out.  And I had to wander the deserted town until the appointed meetup.  It was an inferno.  Not a whisper of a breeze.  I tried gamely to see the historic buildings but it was so stifling inside that I thought the heck with it, I’ll go sit on the pier and wait.  I was silently cursing the caretakers for not letting me wait on their living room sofa.  It’s possible I wasn’t silent.

Oh well, I’d been through plague and pestilence, what more could happen?  I’ll tell you what more could happen.  A huge thunderstorm could happen, and did.  I was already feeling very biblical, what with the plague and pestilence bit, but now I was out in the open in howling wind, torrents of rain, and thunder crashing all around me. I supposed I was being tested with the flood, and soon Moses, or Rudy, would part Pamlico Sound and rescue me.

I huddled on the pier, soaking wet and steaming at the same time from the humidity.  There was enough steam to get out any wrinkles I might have had.  Too bad I wasn’t older!  At the moment, I saw nothing redeeming whatsoever about the big adventure.

It could have been worse.  I found out afterwards that I was lucky – I’d been there at low tide.  In fact, I had been walking through a tidal marsh!  Had it been high tide, I would have been wading through three feet of water to reach the town.  And who knows?  There may have been creatures under the water come in with the tide to torment me.  With my luck, there would have been a jellyfish invasion.

Now, over twenty years later, I still can’t say I find anything redeeming about the adventure of having the adventure – or the story I can tell.  I don’t know what my sister was thinking.  I swear, I’ll bet she had the wrong island and the wrong state or something because nothing about that godforsaken place had value.  It was historic, sure, but do we have to preserve every old town and place just because they existed once?  I say, no.

Adendum: Now, with the internet, I see that Portsmouth can be a nice place to visit but NOT in the summer.  Here’s a description from North Carolina Outdoors. Note that to escape the mosquitoes they ate lunch sitting in the surf!  Also, these people were transported by someone named Rudy, and I’ll bet its the same guy.

“So my wife and I were totally unprepared for the blitzkrieg that erupted almost the moment we left Rudy Austin’s charter boat (from Ocracoke) and started for Portsmouth Village. Sure, we had several bug sprays containing DEET in various concentrations, but even the strongest would only keep them from biting. Hundreds, (I promise I’m not exaggerating) swarmed us even after we were lathered in DEET. Like the dust cloud that trailed Pig Pen of Peanuts fame, they followed us everywhere we went, trying to fly into our eyes, noses, ears and mouths, and biting any shred of skin that wasn’t heavily lathered with repellent.

Despite the torment, we did a perfunctory tour of the village and then made our way across the tidal flat to the beach. Finally, thanks to an ocean breeze, we were able to enjoy our lunch relatively unmolested while sitting in the surf.

What did I learn? Next time I go to Portsmouth, I will wear mosquito netting. The people I saw who had netting covering their head, neck and torso, and wearing long pants, were strolling around like it was a day in the park. (Well, actually it was a day in the park.) And nothing I have endured in the outdoors has given me a greater appreciation for the hardships our ancestors endured than our encounter with the mosquitoes of Portsmouth Island. Imagine living here in the 1700’s without screens on your windows!!

On the positive side, I have talked with people who have visited the island in March and April who had no problems with the the insects. But I would be prepared for insects in every season.”

Girl Power

The story on this is funny.  My friend Michael Purcell and I were going to Colorado to visit my daughter last year.  We were just outside of Las Vegas and there was nothing there – but I needed to stop and get something out of the ice chest.  I pulled off on a dirt road that perhaps said no trespassing (it was government property) and it was  as desolate and barren a spot as the moon.  Only hotter.  Michael said, “This is the kind of place someone would come to dump their porn collection so no one would ever know.”  Right.  Except as I wandered off I found these video tapes just as you see them.  Um, the one in front is called Girl Power.  Some are Superstars of Lesbianism or something like that in multiple volumes.  Not all the secrets the desert holds are natural ones.

Cacti Mundo

On our Mexican Riviera cruise last December, we took an excursion in Cabo San Lucas that stopped at Cacti Mundo.  It was amazing!  Especially if you like cacti.  Patterns are so intriguing.  I’ll bet we could make up a story about these little cacti – lined up like soldiers in perfect precision.

Popcorn

Yep, you can pop corn right off the cob.  I think of this ear of corn as something like an egg sac, and all the little kernels are struggling to get away.  Most made it, these couldn’t break free.  Doomed to be mama’s kernels forever.  Traded freedom for the security of mom.

Rain

Three photos from Martin Luther King Day this year.  What wonderful clouds.  Think of the stories they could tell, especially in relation to struggles for freedom.  Is the sun about to break through, or are the raindrops trying to escape the confines of the nebulous clouds?  Do they portend a gathering storm or are they empty threats?  I love all the metaphors that images yield.

Maybe they mean nothing more than it’s going to be a rainy day.  Which reminds me of one of my beloved childhood poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

The rain is falling all around,

It falls on field and tree.

It rains on the umbrellas here

And on the ships at sea.

The Bath

Walking through the woods near our cabin I came upon this bathtub.  Nothing relaxing in this tub but pine needles.  I don’t know what story this tells other than someone didn’t want to move it either into a cabin or out to the dump.  But I sure love the tub.  And the photo is almost but not quite black and white.  I left this in color as well as one red traffic signal in a cloud photo.

Do Fences Make Good Neighbors?

This lovely little fence near Telluride, Colorado, could tell many stories.  It reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem The Mending Wall.

Frost asks,

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

And his neighbor answers,

Good fences make good neighbors.

Like all of Frost’s poems, there are layers and layers of subtlety in this.

Man in Telluride

Telling stories with pictures almost makes me want to teach again.  I’d love to know what kind of story my students would construct around this lone man in Telluride, Colorado.

The Hotel Padre

Bakersfield’s Padre Hotel already has plenty of its own stories. In fact, they are so colorful I don’t think you could make them up! You can read about them here.

The Stormy Day

You know, I’m not sure how good a photo this is, but I keep coming back to it.  That in itself makes it good enough for me to put in the show.  It’s been a bountiful rainy season in Bakersfield so far.  We’ll probably exceed our annual average of 5+ inches.  Yes, to us rain is exciting and we often wonder what that wet stuff is coming down from the sky.  We could turn it into a Chicken Little story – the sky is leaking! The sky is leaking!

Quonset Hut

There seem to be a fair number of quonset huts scattered around Bakersfield.  Guess they never wear out.  The bounty of the rain left a puddle big enough to make this look like a cylindrical building.  Cool, huh? Every picture tells a story.

Surrounded

I started with the drive through Las Vegas and I’ll end with it.  Michael was driving and he speeded up (or maybe he slowed down) so I could get a picture of the back of this trailer.  “We’re surrounded…that simplifies our problem.” Is it a line from a movie?  I think this is one story I don’t want to know!  A little scary.

So that’s the show.  If you live in Bakersfield please drop by The Empty Space and take a look.

Terror in the Classroom

The incident gave me the first jolt of pure terror in my classroom. I had a python – Jake the Snake.  He’d been in the family for a long time, sometimes living with me and sometimes with my daughter.  It boiled down to whoever was sick of buying mice every week and asked the other to take over for a while.  It seemed like a great idea to have Jake in the classroom because I was going to be a really cool teacher and what could be cooler than snakes?

So in the corner of my busy classroom, and by that I mean a classroom not just with busy students but also with busy walls, sat Jake the Snake in his terrarium, waiting for his mouse.  Every Monday I’d bring a live mouse and during silent reading time, the snake monitors would clean the terrarium, change the water, and send the mouse to his maker.  Plus, a group of students could watch Jake catch and eat his prey.

It was imperative that the room be silent because otherwise Jake would be distracted and not eat.  You can’t leave a mouse in a snake cage for long because as they become accustomed to each other, the snake fails to eat the mouse and sometimes the mouse will even gnaw on the snake.  Really.  And then Jake the Snake would become Jake the Snack – which was how some of my weaker spellers already described him.

The fateful Monday arrived.

“Adam, Alex, you’re the snake monitors this week.  Time to get busy.  And the blue group, it’s your turn to watch Jake eat.  Come on up and remember to be perfectly still and silent.”

Alas, it wasn’t destined to be a silent Monday.  Before I could act to quiet the kids, Jake acted.  The mouse was in the jaws of death, the kids made too much noise and movement; Jake dropped his lunch into the water bowl, lunged after it, and voila! The mouse was again in the jaws of destruction.  But, agitated by the commotion, Jake had him crosswise, not head first, and he couldn’t disengage his jaw to drop the mouse and start again.

Crimany, snakes I was ok with but mice gave me the creeps.  Think.  Alex and Adam were boys; they wouldn’t want to show fear or squeamishness, so they could handle this.

“Blue group, sit down.  Boys, one of you is going to have to hold Jake and open his mouth while the other one removes the mouse.”

“Cool dude, that’s awesome.”

They both were excited. And Alex pried open Jake’s jaws while Adam removed the mouse, which then exploded.  And there was blood.  We – they – got it cleaned up, the day went on, I went home and started to worry.

Alex didn’t really have a family so no problem there, but Adam’s mom was involved.  And she was big.  Not fat, just really big and solid.  Tall, imposing, scary.  What if she got upset? What if she started worrying about salmonella?  Isn’t that what you could get from handling reptiles?  Why did I ever bring Jake to school?  Maybe she was scared of snakes and would go to the principal about this irresponsible thing I’d done, exposing her son to illness and snakebite and mouse poisoning.  Or talk to other parents who would talk to the principal because every Friday everyone in the room got to touch Jake when the snake monitor carried him around, and salmonella would reach epidemic proportions.

I worked hard at calming myself down since other stupid things I’d done had turned out ok in the end.  But the next morning right before class started, the office secretary called to say Adam’s mom had come to see me.  My fate was sealed.  My first year of teaching would come to an ignominious end.

Adam and his mom entered the room, I greeted them calmly, on the outside at least, and she asked me a question about his writing. So far, safe.  I still had a job, but I was waiting for the bomb to drop.  And it did, but it was a dud.  As we were finishing, she said, “By the way, about the snake yesterday? That was a really cool thing.  Adam told me all about it and how exciting it was.  Thanks for giving him the experience.”  As she exited, somehow, I remained standing.

NOTE:  The art journal image is actually one of my former 5th-grade students holding Jake the Snake.  Jake now resides with Josh, my daughter Karen’s former boyfriend.  Karen and Josh had many reptiles when they lived together, and he was happy to give Jake a home until one of us might want him back.

TRIVIA: A note about the student, Cristina.  I had pictures of all the presidents in the back of the room, and one day Cristina put up her hand.  “Yes, Cristina?” “Why are the presidents all old white men?”  I thought it was a brilliant observation and I keep meaning to stop in at Walmart, where Cristina works while going to college, and ask her if she remembers that remark. Because of course it is no longer true.

I’ve just picked Nita up from the airport wearing those flashing antennae – and on the way I saw a rainbow which I immediately took for a good omen.

Nita saw the rainbow also – from the plane!  We headed back to Fantasy Springs – no need to wait for luggage – after all, Nini would be leaving again at 4:30 the next morning!  So she arrived with a little hot pink bag whereas I arrived with a huge suitcase containing my pillows and down comforter.  Why not?  I was driving, (although I do confess to taking my comforter to Europe more than once).  Most importantly, in our bags were the outfits we were going to wear to the concert.

Dress-up

Part of the fun was getting ready for this extravaganza.  What to wear? I settled on black leggings rouched at the bottom, a gold sequin top (would rather have had black, but the black didn’t come in big sizes), a black jacket thingy I’d got at Ross ages ago, black boots (with gratitude to zappos.com – if you don’t get shoes from zappos.com, you should), and of course Party City’s flashing antennae.  And a purple and black feather boa.  That thing dropped feathers!  You could follow me like Hansel and Gretel.

I’m getting ahead of myself again.  So back to the resort – we had barely walked into the hotel when we encountered a group of women, and Nita knew quite a few from Twitter.  They were going to lunch at Elephant Bar – did we want to go?  Of course we did.  No experience would be missed.  The word of the day was YES. So off we went – with hot pink bag still in hand.

Look at that pink ring Nita is sporting!  A wonderful glambert whose name I don’t know was giving out huge rings, little tiaras, and an Adam Lambert Concert Survival Kit!

This was fun and gave me more stuff to wear to the concert – all the necklaces, the little tiara, etc.  Whoever did this – thank you so much!  It’s so appreciated and really added to the fun and made me feel a part of things.  I am not an active Lambert twitterer nor fan club poster, so I don’t know all the names like Nita does.  Just the four I mentioned yesterday.

We wandered around back at the hotel, looking at all the fountains and such.  What a gorgeous day.

I loved the angle of this next photo – the way the blue streak looks like a reverse plume of smoke from a chimney.

All righty.  Time to get dressed!  Which we did and Nita looked splendid in a fantastic blue top – you’ll see a photo below.  It was time for the Glamily Reunion.  When Fantasy Springs scheduled this concert, I don’t know if they really understood how we would take them by storm.  As it became more apparent, they planned this Glamily event so we could all mingle and enjoy each other and Adam’s music.  They had a cardboard cutout we could use for photos.  Close as I got to the real thing.

Doesn’t Nita look gorgeous?  I gotta say, though, if you want real attention, wear flashing antennae.  While I was taking this next photo with my cell phone…

A reporter, Rodrigo Pena of the Press Enterprise, was taking this photo…

which appeared in the newspaper the next day!

Ok, Glamily Reunion over, we were primed.  And in the lobby, there was Adam’s drummer Longineu.  What a sweetie.

We were ready to rock and roll.  Here we are waiting for the concert to begin.

And oh my, what a concert it was.

I won’t try to write a review, but I will make some observations.  It seemed like Adam was finally free of the Idol constraints, the constraints of prime time television, and he was able to be himself.   He was indeed our alien from the Planet Fierce.

I wish I could take credit for this photo, but it is Rodrigo Pena from the Press Enterprise.  There are links all over the web where you can feast your eyes on this man, who by all appearances was happy.  You can get a run down of the concert along with video at MJs Big Blog.  Or just search the internet and you tube – some audio is better than others, as well as video.

Adam glittered, he vamped, he strutted, and oh did he sing.  Anyone who hasn’t yet should download For Your Entertainment from iTunes and listen – especially to “Soaked,” “Broken Open,”  and “Fever.”

Oh my God – Fever!  The man became Laddie Gaga and was something indescribable – as he was in “Down the Rabbit Hole.”  What I liked best was the acoustic set where his voice defied description – “Broken Open” and “Soaked” were worth the price of admission.

What brought the crowd to new heights of amazement was “Whole Lotta Love” which he sang in a slowed-down, bluesy acoustic version.  The band hadn’t rehearsed it because Adam was spontaneous (he admitted to rehearsing in his car), but it was a virtuoso performance on all accounts.  Do listen to this.  For seven minutes, we were in a trance.

I can hardly process this experience still.  To think that Adam Lambert may have never come to public attention without American Idol.

We were pretty zonked at this time and went up to the twelfth floor lounge for a tiny bit, then headed for bed.  I took one and one-quarter sleeping pills and put in my earplugs, but Nini had to get up at 4:00 in the morning to take a taxi to the airport!  She said afterwards that she thought about waking me to say goodbye – good thing she didn’t.  She doesn’t know my total lack of functionality in the morning, and that barely qualified as morning.  Pseudo-morning.

So after I got up at the more civilized hour of nine, I checked out and went back in to the Starbucks to try to establish some degree of coherence before heading home in the automobile.  And after I chatted a minute with the guy behind me in line, my sleepy brain registered that it was Monte Pittman, Adam’s guitarist!  He is also Madonna’s guitarist.

So this was cool.  Oh – I should mention nail polish.  See Monte’s black polish? We ALL had black polish, or dark blue, some with glitter.  It was de rigueur.

Headed out with Adam on CD, loved the blue sky…

and the mountains and the wind farms…

(I wandered through the wind farms and that’ll be another post)…finally heading up over the Tejon Pass

(gotta stop taking photos while driving)…and exited the freeway at Olive Drive in Bakesfield…

which is the city I call home.

My fangirl experience had come to a close.  Gosh I’m glad I did it.  I was in a regular flapdoodle.  I’m not sure what that means, but I read that word in the barefoot heart yesterday, in the “rightful sound” post by whollyjeanne, and I love it.  I want to be in a flapdoodle so I’m using the word.  I think it fits.

And let me just finish by saying this: my immediate fangirl experience may be over, but I am going to any Adam Lambert concert within a 300-mile radius.  If I had the money and the time, I’d be a real groupie and go all over the world, but I’ll just have to live vicariously for now.  Sigh.

Maybe I could just write the name Adam Lambert Adam Lambert Adam Lambert over and over.  Would that explain it all? How does one begin talking about Adam Lambert? I’m going to try, so stick with me.  Because this story is about more than one man, one glittery alien from Planet Fierce.  It’s about bringing people together and making us play dress-up and go places we wouldn’t ordinarily go – not in our demographic.  Adam’s main demographic, or fan base, as of now at least, is women over 40.

Creative Every Day’s theme for March is telling stories – and this is a multi-faceted story. Besides Adam Lambert, it’s a story about Twitter and making friends from cyberspace to real life.  I went to Fantasy Springs with Nita Lambert, daxtonsnini on Twitter.  I drove from Bakersfield; she flew from Oklahoma.  We became best friends in 14 hours.  But let’s unravel this story from the beginning, which of course is American Idol.

Why Adam?

Adam captured us with his voice.  And his looks.  Which did we notice first?  Who could say? He’s the total entertainment package.  But that voice, which spans octaves, bass to tenor!  And that face and that body and the chameleon ability to morph into any decade, era or style!  I talked about this with dozens of women at Fantasy Springs – what is it that binds us to this 28-year-old gay man?  I think when we first saw him, it was nice to realize someone could still excite us.   Next, our jaws dropped – someone like Adam couldn’t really be possible, could he?  Then it was just fun.  But we saw something else.  As a 28-year-old gay man, Adam was comfortable in his skin.  He had nothing to prove; he wasn’t making excuses because there was nothing to make excuses for.  And he was nice – just a polite, nice Jewish boy.  So we did what Jewish mothers do best – we got protective.  Adam has thousands of mothers out here who will protect him like only a mother can.  That’s our demographic. Don’t mess with our kid.  Understand?

I become a fangirl and find daxtonsnini

We were captured and captivated and we began reading whatever we could find about Adam.  This newly-minted fangirl, who had previously only followed Don Drysdale (a Dodger pitching great of the 50s and 60s) with any passion, found herself joining fan communities.  And one day I must have done an Adam Lambert search on Twitter because I found someone named daxtonsnini.  I’ve written about Nini previously.  But her name attracted my attention – because who would be called Daxton except my 13-year-old granddaughter Daxton? Who surely was unique in the namebooks.  So I tweeted daxtonsnini, asking her, “What’s up with your name?”

She has a three-year-old grandson named Daxton – that’s what’s up.  And her name is Nita but he can’t say that so he calls her Nini.  Daxtonsnini.  We had Adam and Daxton in common.  And we were both equally star struck. We had stars in our eyes.  We were starry-eyed. The stars had come out for us.  I’m glad we have camera-phones, however poor, to capture stars.  This is Nita and me.

Let’s jump ahead (which I just did in the previous photo).  Adam was giving his first solo concert at Fantasy Springs Casino and Resort in Indio, near Palm Springs.  I wanted to go.  I wasn’t going to go.  I had to go.  I couldn’t afford to go.  But how could I miss it!?! I would miss it. I was at the cabin on the day tickets went on sale, and at 10:00 A.M. I was online buying two tickets.  I tweeted Nita.  I had two tickets and a reservation at the hotel.  She had to come.  No, she said, she couldn’t come.  Daxton had been ill, had surgery, and she’d taken too many days off work to care for him.

Did I mention she is a teacher, like me?  And a reading curriculum specialist, like my daughter Jennifer?  And that she’s been married 40 years?  And I’ve been married 41 years?

Blackmail – almost

I shamed her into it.  If I could go to Switzerland for four days, which I once did to visit someone, surely she could fly to Palm Springs from Oklahoma on a Saturday and return on Sunday?  Indeed she could.  I told her that she’d know me at the airport because I’d be the one wearing blinking antennas.  If she didn’t believe me, she didn’t know me.  (I have a friend, Tammie Stevens, who made a shirt for me once that said “Dignity is not in my future!”)  So here we are in the airport and I have my blinking antennae on.

Synchronicity

I’m jumping ahead again – Nita didn’t arrive until Saturday morning, and I arrived Friday.  I checked into the room and went to the box office to collect the tickets.  And I ran into lots of people doing the very same thing.  A few of us went into the Special Events Center where the concert would be held to check out the stage.  And play on the stage as it turned out, and stand in the very same place Adam would be standing.

People came from all over the United States – the world even!  Canada, Thailand, Australia – and Bakersfield, CA.  I went into the casino with these ladies, who were from New York, Canada, and I forget where else,  to have a drink in the steakhouse, suppressing my normal behavior which would have been to go to my room, relax, read, write, etc.  I was going to wring every once of experience out of this fangirl adventure.  And in the steakhouse we met Isabelle.  She is an 89-year-old woman from Wisconsin who is a huge Adam fan!  She recorded a happy birthday message to him on you tube, it came to the attention of fan groups who found out she couldn’t afford to go to the concert, so the fan groups started fundraising and bought plane tickets for Isabelle and her daughter; Fantasy Springs kicked in the hotel rooms, and Isabelle was even able to meet Adam.

That’s Isabelle in the middle.  What a sweet lady and what a wonderful story!

Now this starts to get bizarre – creepy – strangely wonderful – and the synchronicity kicks in.  I am in some fan groups but I can’t remember which ones exactly and my user names are all bollixed up, and Nita was my only Adam-related Twitter contact.  As the concert approached, she suggested I follow GlamUlli, LambertFan8, and Binahlinda.  So I did.  Right after we posed for this photo with Isabelle, another large group came in for dinner.  I recognized a photo from Twitter – it was GlamUlli – from North Carolina!  Out of the 3,500 people attending this concert, GlamUlli walked into the restaurant!

Pretty dang amazing.  Then a smaller group walked in and I sort of joined them at their table for dinner even though the waitress said there wasn’t enough room.  And of those four people I joined, two of them were LambertFan8 from Fairfield in Northern California and Binahlinda from Texas.  How amazing is that?  I had just met three of my four twitter contacts and would be picking the fourth up at the airport the next morning.

That’s LambertFan8 on the left and Binahlinda on the right.  So far, we all seem like pretty normal people.

Crisis

We had a great dinner – excellent food – and finally I headed to my room.  I got undressed and started setting out my clothes for the next day – I knew I had to pick up Nita at 9:58 so I had to be prepared – I am not a morning person as regular readers know by now.  I started organizing.  Where were the tickets for the concert and the Glamily Reunion?  They were not in my purse.  But I put them in my purse – carefully!  Stay calm, I told myself.  Check jeans pockets, remove everything from purse, check wastebasket.  They just weren’t there.  Call restaurant.

I got the security desk in the casino. I explained my predicament.  They said the restaurant was closed. I said, please go see if Dominic is there (the manager) and he’ll remember me.  Please look for my tickets.  They did, they called back, and said no tickets had been found.  I was approaching full-panic mode but I was stark naked.  I called the front desk.  All I could do was wait for the box office to open at 10 in the morning.  But Binahlinda might still be in the casino!  I called her cell number.  It was not her cell.  It was her home number.  Her husband answered and I explained and asked for her cell and he told me to hold on while he found it.  He must have had to go a very long way to find it but finally, I had it.

I texted Linda.  Are you still in casino? No, she wasn’t. She had returned to the Holiday Inn.

Saved

I got dressed.  I went to the restaurant.  The door was open – I told the bartender what had happened (she remembered me also as we’d had quite a chat about Cochise County, Arizona, where she’s from), she told me to go in the restaurant and look, and someone appeared to say they had found tickets.  I was saved.  Can you even imagine having to pick up this wonderful woman Nita whom I had almost browbeaten into coming with the news that the tickets were lost?

Tomorrow I’ll finish with Part Two, unless it drags on, in which case I’ll turn it into a three-parter.

Stay tuned….as I proceed to dress completely inappropriately for my age and body type.

Who watched Idol Tues. and Wed?  I had a feeling that the season would be flat without Adam.  He was so exciting that we can’t expect anyone else like that to show up.  But really – the song choices were so drippy and boring.  Out of the thousands of choices available, this is the best they could do?  Casey is the boy standout, and not just because he’s so darn cute.  He puts his soul in his work and his image fits his song choice.  Other than him, where’s the stage presence?

Girls – Crystal and Lilly were the only stand-outs as far as I’m concerned.

And yes, I miss Paula; and no, I can’t get used to Kara.  I keep trying but just can’t warm up to her.

So here are the journal pages I did the last two nights.  They don’t mean anything in particular: my constraint for journaling still is watercolor background and collage material from a few National Geographics I have laying around.

This is The Blues.  The next one is Electro Pop.

Full report with photos coming after Palm Springs.  However – the Casino says we cannot take cameras into the concert.  And how is this stopped, what with cell phones and all?  We’ll see.

I’m going to the Fantasy Springs Casino and Resort in Palm Springs to see Adam Lambert in concert!  It’s no secret that I am a fan – and I’ve found other fans on Twitter.  One is named daxtonsnini.  Huh?  I have a granddaughter named Daxton, so I asked daxtonsnini, “What’s up with your name?”

Daxtonsnini’s real name is Nita.  But she has a grandson named Daxton who can’t say Nita and calls her Nini.  Well, that was instant bonding.  We had Daxtons in common as well as Adam.  Turns out daxtonsnini is a teacher and curriculum specialist in her district in Ada, Oklahoma – and I was a teacher here.  She’s been married 40 years; I’ve been married 41.  And she’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met – yes, I do feel as if I’ve met her.

That’s why, when this concert was announced, I pounced and got two tickets as well as a room at the resort.  I asked daxtonsnini – I can call her Nita – if she wanted to come.  No she said, Daxton had been sick and she’d taken days off work to take care of him so she didn’t want to miss more.  Ok.

Wait – I asked her why she couldn’t fly to Palm Springs on Sat. and back to Oklahoma on Sunday.  After all, I told her, I went to Switzerland once for four days.  Next thing, she had the ticket, I added a night to the reservation so I could pick her up at the airport in Palm Springs Saturday morning, and we are set.

Almost set.  What’s a 63-year-old pudgy Glambert (that’s me) to wear?  Something totally inappropriate of course.  Black leggings rouched at the ankles, a gold sequined top, and boots.  I mean it’s all for fun, right? And in case that’s not enough, I have some antennas that twinkle, all glittery, and a black and purple feather boa.

I don’t think anyone will look too closely at me because we’ll all be in a state of high excitement, probably with a few drinks under our belt.  Heck, we’ll all look good in that state!  So let’s just go along with the fun and no one tell me I look like Men in Tights or anything.  I can’t wait for Adam and to meet Nita.  Life is such a great adventure!

I’ll report back when I return and have pictures, I’m sure.  Oh – and the resort has organized a Glamily Reunion so fans from all over can meet!  And I mean all over – there are people coming from as far away as Thailand.

For all you on the East coast and in Texas where it shouldn’t be snowing

When I posted the photos of the almond orchards the other day, (the fateful day when I found our new house without even looking), many of you said you had weeks to go before you saw any green.  So I did a journal page for you with a Japanese poem.  I don’t know the author so can’t attribute correctly, but here’s the poem:

One solitary plum blossom

and the whole world has spring.