At present I am supremely sunburnt. I am being punished for attempting a hike at 1pm on a 98 degree Boulder day. I went to Eldorado Springs and met a friend for a random bushwhacker hike. We saw cactus flowers. We saw enormous jagged cliff things. We saw a cave, a river, and the development of a storm. When I left to go home there were insane winds whipping the canyon at which point I saw a very tan man in a white shirt with a white bird on his shoulder. I closed my eyes to protect from the sand and water being blown in my direction, and when I opened them, the white bird man was gone. My father said he thought maybe I was halleucenating.
This is possible. The past two months feel like a halleucination. I have been around the block and back, to say the very least. I have ridden the subway of Los Angeles with a creepy cop and his Israeli anti-terrorist dog. I saw best friends and went to a hippie mountain festival. I listened to a woman and her sock puppet talk about off-beat weddings.
There was the libertarian wino dinner and the gourmet pizza poolside date. There were fifteen plus conversations with rabbis, an unbelievable Korean day spa, and the Thai massage place of my dreams. This is all Los Angeles, mind you, where I was shocked to find some sort of satisfaction. I have never loved seeing Jews so much and never been so surprised that driving in bumper to bumper traffic for hours could decrease loneliness. Everyone else, I realized one day, was also alone in their car.
Los Angeles yielded unbelievable music events, newfound family that I adore, and yes, an interview with my man Kenny G. I saw a porn studio, a warehouse turned art studio and apartment, Thai Elvis, and Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. I meditated on mortality and dead blue decaying bodies in Santa Monica, looked for Brandon Walsh everywhere I went, and heard more about Paris Hilton than is healthy for any grown woman. Paris nausea was rivaled by the kindness and support of the Jewish Journal staff.
There was better food than I thought was possible to eat and the ocean, in case it was possible to forget, makes two hours in traffic worthwhile. Celebrity sightings: Julia Louise-Dreyfuss, Rick Schroeder, Robin Williams, a sleu of Jazz musicians, and Kirsten Dunst. Sidwell Friends sighting: Brooke Press. Wash U sightings: Danny Hurwitz, Robert Miller, Dwyer Kilcollin, Pat Vallencourt. Others to be mentioned: Pete Nowalk, Meta Puttkammer, Willette and Manny Klausner, Jonathon Gold, Don Ringe, Arianna Huffington, Ashley and Anna and then some.
From LA I flew to Boston and my car was driven by a craigslist wanderer back to Boulder. Boston took me to Providence took me to grandma took me to Jon took me to Burlington took me to Montpelier took me to the wedding took me to Martha's Vineyard and then, back to Boulder. I watched architects marry on Lake Champlaine, ate creamies in the hills with a long lost friend, and spent the best night of my life alone in the woods where it all started.
Now Boulder is a writing summer session full of famous writers and 12-hour school days that end in a pile of me in my boiling hot bedroom. Boulder looks like the Land Before Time and when I leave here I will be wrinkled like dinosaur from the constant sun. Rebecca Brown, Wanda Coleman, Karen Tei Yamashita, Laird Hunt, and Samuel R. Delany are my writers of choice this week. My car arrived in one piece and I am still being gathered. Little chunks of Merissa are now scattered in California and along the coast of New England. If you find one, bring it here and I will take you hiking to a cave, the tectonic plates that mirror your insides, and then tubing down the glacial stream.
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