Creatures of the forest

For the past week, elk have been bugling in the forest near my camp. That means it's rutting season. I don't hear it in my car at night, but it's hard to ignore during the day. The males call to each other, I imagine they are saying, stay out of my territory, bro. I may have liked you yesterday, but today we are sworn enemies. That cow is mine!

I have not seen any elk yet, but yesterday I was overrun with chipmunks, which is actually preferable. Everyone out here feeds the little rascals, so they are bold  beggars. One audacious chipmunk jumped into my car while I was typing. I felt something touch my foot. When I looked down, I saw nothing. A few minutes later, same thing. Finally, I caught the critter in the act. Who could be mad at a chipmunk? It's the packrats and mice I don't want in my engine. My neighbor uses mothballs in his engine bay. Today I got some at Walmart. Lavender scented. Big mistake. My eyes are burning. But if it saves my wiring being eaten, worth it.

When you hang around an area long enough, and walk by campsites day after day, people start to recognize you. Let me tell you about some of the other creatures I've met this week. It's funny that last week I blogged that I needed more friends. Be careful what you wish for.

JOHN

John is a fifty-something bald man with a white moustache and a desperate desire to get laid. (Not by me, obviously. Old enough to be his mother, yada yada). John and I were parked on the periphery of the same clearing. My minivan fits in small spaces. John drives a red monster jeep thing and pulls a 25-foot trailer. He rides his bike daily, wearing no shirt, no hat, and no shoes. He likes to get high in every way conceivable. Wine, whiskey, and weed seem to be what he mentions most. John believes he's connected to the Earth through the soles of his feet. Yesterday, he visited me on his bike and said he intended to sell his vehicle, trailer, and bicycle and buy an electric bike that can pull a small two-wheel trailer, in which he plans to carry his camping gear, a small power station, and a portable solar panel. With an extra battery for the e-bike, he said he can travel fifty to sixty miles per day for a lot less money than he's spending now. He reassured me he's done this before. He said he needs to cut back on his drinking and smoking before he implements his plan.

GEORGE

The camper who took John's campsite is named George. He drives a minivan and sleeps in an orange tent. His minivan is a mess, but he has a huge fridge with a freezer and a Jackery 1000 to run it. He has 200 watts of solar on the roof. George is tall, thin, maybe a couple years older than me, with a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache and very little hair on his scalp. He's a real estate developer who has some deals in the works but is currently broke. George is estranged from his daughter. George reads a lot and isn't shy about telling me what to read. He thinks Ariana Huffington is the bomb, by which I mean, he thinks she's a total "babe." I asked why he called her a babe. He got defensive and praised her other attributes. Today he expounded on the many reasons why people are messed up, offering explanations such as ruined gut biome, metabolic dysfunction, and Adult Children of Alcoholics. 

MARK

A few days ago, I walked up the road past an open clearing. A very large pickup truck was parked by an old mid-sized trailer (similar to John's). A bloated man sat in a camp chair in the sun with a small fluffy dog at his feet. The man waved and said "come on over," so I navigated the terrain and met Mark and his dog, Ozzie. Mark is clearly unwell. He said he had a heart condition that required him to wear a monitor that sent data to the medical data specialists, who most likely can do nothing if Mark has a heart attack out here in the middle of the forest. Mark was drinking coffee shirtless in the blazing sun while wearing rainbow wraparound sunglasses. His ankles and hands are red, chapped, and swollen.  Ozzie kept licking his leg. After telling Ozzie to cut it out, Mark recommended I get a small generator and put it in the passenger seat of my van.

MARTY

On the way back from meeting Mark, I ran into a woman with two dogs. She was going my way, so we walked together. Marty is maybe mid-fifties, a little shorter than me, with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her two dogs were mid-sized things. One had beautiful blue eyes. I forgot to ask their names. Marty had a lot of stories to tell, one of which was of interest to me. Recently she bought 4.7 acres of land in Goldendale, AZ. She put a shed on it to store her furniture, but she isn't supposed to live there because she's not hooked up to septic and the shed isn't up to code as a livable space. She lives in her motorhome, hauls water, and relies on solar. The law in Mohave County says she can only spend seven days out of a year camping on her own land, but she ignores the law. She said she didn't know what she was getting into, and now she's spent all her money. 

LISA

In the wayback corner of this clearing is Lisa and her spindly chihuahua Ginger. Lisa kept to herself for most of my time at this campsite. She drives a white minivan similar to mine but more beat up, and she somehow managed to pitch an enormous white tent. She's short but strong, I'm guessing. She came over to talk after two men pulled up in a big black pickup, parked, and unloaded two motorcycles. She asked if I knew them. We got to talking. She's an architect with a disconcerting habit of laughing at what she says. I got many glimpses of her perfect teeth. Lisa is worried about the recent Executive Order giving authorities permission to force homeless people into treatment. 

THE FUN NEVER STOPS

Mark pulled up when Lisa and I were talking and proceeded to act like a jerk when he heard Lisa talking about rangers photographing our license plates to add us to the database of homeless people who might need to be institutionalized. Mark's opinion was that it would never happen. He called Lisa an idiot. She defused the conflict with remarkable grace and skill, I thought. I walked away before the conversation was over. 

George went away and came back and gave me the update, with details, on the sad saga of his real estate problem in Marana. Yesterday John rode up on his bike and talked to me at my open sliding door. George came over to join the conversation. It was a two-way conversation, with me as witness. It's amusing to be a fly on the wall, observing the banter of two men who are using words to arm-wrestle.

Today, George said that what is wrong with everyone (including me, apparently) is that we don't know how to eat, sleep, think, or poop. Something like that. He gave me a list of books to read. Then he gave me his entire life story from kindergarten through the Vietnam draft, which he escaped by virtue of winning the number lottery. 

The theme of this week is listening while others talk. And talk. And talk. Now that I've met a small sample of forest dwellers, I can offer a tentative theory: These people are lonely eccentrics who are hungry to be heard. They latched onto me like a mosquito probing for a blood meal. 

I know how to listen. I can be pretty good at it when I really try, and I'll put up with a lot, offering platitudes like "oh really!", "how did that go?", and "it sounds like you've had an amazing life." I do this because I like being of service. It's a small gift I can give that costs me nothing. It's kind of fun to see them bloom. Like thirsty desert flowers, they open up and bask in the attention. At last! Someone is interested in me!

Nobody asked me anything about myself. I volunteered a few things at first, but I quickly realized they didn't care about me, so I switched my strategy and kept my responses short and empathetic, along the lines of "me, too!", and "I had a very similar experience!"

Today after George berated humanity for not pooping correctly, I'd had enough. I said something like "this just proves that humans are too stupid to live" and walked away. I think he was a little taken aback. But he still can't stop talking. In fact, all these creatures can't seem to stop talking. Bla bla bla, yada yada yada.

I asked to meet people, and this is what is out here. Probably there are a few "normies" like me who are trying to maintain a semblance of their "normal" lives but just happen to be doing it in a home on wheels. I won't find them, because they are avoiding the creatures of the forest, which is probably what I need to start doing, now that I've had a taste of their desperation.  

Change is coming

I miss my stuff. Almost all my possessions are ensconced in a 5' x 5' storage unit over by the mall. The cubicle is 8 feet tall, otherwise no way could I have stacked my shelves, bins, and boxes into that small of a footprint. I marvel at how many possessions I still have, given all the moving and downsizing I have done in the past three or so years. Swedish death cleaning may be a thing, but in my case, it has not resulted in total cleaning . . . or death, I might add, so there's that.

Speaking of death, I'm feeling transparent these days, uprooted, barely clinging to something I don't recognize anymore. I just want to get away from everything, but of course, that is not possible, because as we know, wherever we go, there we are. However, I can live with myself in my own brain. What I cannot live with for long is the clamoring of well-meaning people who think they can save me. Or the criticisms of confounded people who can't understand why this is happening to me, given how white and well-educated I am. Or the judgments of fearful people who subconsciously realize their lives are one wildfire or flood or divorce away from being in the same predicament. 

I can live with my own fears, but I can't manage the fears and criticisms of others. 

Meanwhile, my dear friend from college is sinking fast into some terrible form of dementia. I don't know what the diagnosis is, but who cares what it is called when it's obvious her brain cells are exiting stage right, like rats from a sinking ship. Folding, perforating, evaporating, no idea what is happening in that head, but it is total disaster. Nothing is firing right in her brain anymore. It's utterly terrifying to witness. I could hardly sleep last night, and I'm not the one experiencing the inexorable disintegration of my executive functions. It's one thing when it happens to your 90-year-old mother. It's another thing entirely when it happens to your same-age friend. Death is staring her in the face, and she can't even find the words to express her despair. 

I'd rather have cancer, to be honest, than dementia. I can only pray to the gods of young drug addicts at the U of A campus that there will be a handful of fentanyl tabs left for me when it's time to go to the great art school in the sky. And that I remember what they are for and why I should quickly take them, before someone else does. I do not want to go gently into that big state-run memory care tenement, where I will be ignored by underpaid medical assistants and abandoned by distant family to overloaded social workers. I'm pretty sure there will be no internet. I mean, I ask you! No internet. If that happens, if I have a brain cell left in my head to make a decision, I will make a run for it, somehow, I will find a last shred of freedom. I'm not ashamed to be a silver alert. 

It's monsoon in southern AZ. It sucks, but no more than any other season here. I feel so out of place. I thought I would love this place . . . warm, dry, what's not to love? I used to chase the sun. In Portland, even as a kid, I would perk up whenever the sun came out. Clouds were my enemy. I craved blue skies. In Los Angeles, the sun was a gentle presence, filtered by fog and smog. Skies were pale robin's egg blue, like a fine china teacup. Not so in the desert. When the sky is blue, the sun is my enemy. Clouds are my shelter, even when winds are whipping up the dust and I'm dodging rain drops. I'd rather be struck by lightning than let the sun touch my skin.

The first monsoon was exciting. So energetic and raw, who knew! The novelty quickly wore off. If you've seen one spectacular desert sunset, you've truly seen them all. I have grown to hate this place. And this place hates me right back. No matter how many knuckles they have, or how gnarled their fingers, all the cactuses on all the hillsides everywhere I go have their middle fingers raised. Every last cactus in this dirty, noisy, unholy town is flipping me off. I ask you, have you ever been so aggressively dismissed by nature? I know. It seems impossible, and yet, everywhere I go, there they are, these angry bitter saguaros, telling me, You don't like it here? Go back to where you came from, gringa blanca. 

I don't want to go back to where I came from, but I know I can't stay here. I seem to have a habit of moving first and regretting later. Maybe this time I will try a new strategy. Maybe this time I will look first before I leap. Regret might follow, but at least I can say I tried my best to keep my eyes open. 

Chasing the filthy lucre

I finally did it. After two-plus years, I initiated the firing sequence (two negative Covid self-tests) and launched myself back into community. I'm (sort of) proud (but mostly shocked) to announce I mingled unmasked with a group of humans in an indoor setting for a two-hour event. I can't believe I did it, and I hope I don't regret it. 

On a mild morning this week, I drove up the winding road to an art gallery-slash-gift shop in an upscale mall in the Catalina Foothills. (Now that I've moved to the Trailer, I can claim I live Catalina Foothills adjacent. Look at me go, I've been here just over a year and already I'm a snob.) I had expected to wear my mask, as I always do in an indoor setting. However, nobody else was wearing a mask when I arrived. After seeing that, my higher reasoning faculties shut down, and I caved to peer pressure. Nobody said anything. I just folded. It is embarrassing and humbling to admit how little spine I really have. 

Maybe if I hadn't been the star of the show, I would have had more gumption. As an audience member, I'm good at hiding out in the last row. I could have quite happily hid behind my N95, no problem. However, I was at the art gallery to share with the gallery membership the knowledge and experience I've accumulated as a mentor to artists who think it would be jolly good fun to turn their art into a money-churning cash cow. In other words, I was there to give a lecture on business plans. Whoa, did you feel that breeze? That was your brain checking out for a second. I know. It happens to me too. Art and business? Wha—? 

Seems like we don't really hear of those two things being discussed in the same sentence, do we? At least, not in the real world, and by real, I mean like, actual reality, not the magical world of marketing that makes billions of dollars persuading artists they can become rich and famous without dying first. Art and business hook up in the business world, but not in the art world. MFA students aren't taught how to register as an LLC and get their marketing plans ready. Budding artists are told their art is not a commodity. It's something unique and special. In fact, to call art a product is a deadly insult to some artists. To call their art anything less than fine is fighting words. Don't you dare use the word artisan. Craftsperson. One step away from hack. 

Whatever. Artists love to hear about the joy of delivering their art to the art-hungry world. As soon as I mention the words sales tax or LLC, they all but run screaming into the night. In fact, only one person in my audience of a dozen or so wannabe artist-turned-millionaires was wearing a mask, so I could see the exact moment when their brains turned up their little cerebellar toes and said nope, not for me, I'm outa here. 

As usual, each artist in my crowd was at a different stage in their career. No way was I able to address all their needs. It's dumb to try and yet I keep trying. Isn't that the very definition of insanity? Well, no big epiphany there. Still, I did my best to be informative, pleasant, and engaging, even as they one by one got right into my personal space and breathed all over me. I didn't shake any hands and nobody touched me, I don't think, probably because I am a stinky mess, having forgotten how to groom. I've lost the art of caring about how I look. Or smell, apparently. Clearly, I've been alone and sweating in the desert for too long. But I wasn't stinky enough, apparently. They still got too damn close. 

I delivered my dog-and-pony show, and when it was over, I helped schlep the chairs back into the storage room and stack them in neat vertical piles, ready for next month's members' meeting, because my mission in life is to be useful, even if it kills me. I am not a member of this gallery, in case you are wondering, nor do I plan to be, even though as a creative knucklehead, I would fit right in. The idea of immersing myself into the bubbling angst of artists struggling to retain a shred of their creative souls as they troll the world of commerce for enough filthy lucre to pay their rent is too much for this introvert. 

Every conversation I have with artists these days starts the same way: I want to make money selling my art. After a while, I want to scream. With laughter, of course. I think I've been alone too long.