R.I.P. J.D.

“What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”

Thursdays are the worst days.

One week later...

Feels like I've been out of commission since the quarter started, and I'm still not fully recovered from the million bugs in my tummy and million swirling thoughts (constantly) in my head, and day after day further buried under the pile of clothes and school books that grows when productivity gives way to illness.

Last weekend, in a Sunday afternoon reprieve from the sourest stomach, Pup and I squeezed in a bike ride and visit to the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair, and for the past serendipitously rainy and cool week we've been hyper-aware of the mushrooms growing out of every crevice of our wooded campus, and identifying with our best guesses.

But really, we've stuck around our apartment wrapped in blankets and swallowing down scratchy throats and watching documentaries about drag queens, excursing only for class or work or for medicine or sudden insatiable cravings or when a social outing fallen through turns our warm apartment suddenly too stuffy.

There are many things that endear me to Santa Cruz; I was so happy to roam a small and musty room with hundreds of locals just as fungi-fascinated as me. But at the same time, Pup and I still struggle to find a place to root and grow, our own branching network underground connecting us to thousands of new and interesting individuals, to find beauty and life sprouting from the dead material of the forest floor.

Back in Santa Cruz

Speeding through downtown Los Angeles a few nights ago to swimming through low clouds for a quick five hours today--classes start tomorrow at eight in the morning and I'm back in the spirit, sitting before a stack of notebooks and screenshots of my schedule on my computer desktop. Give me a minute to settle in again, with three more science classes and some cold, dense fog to brave.

New Year

And we'll take a cup of kindness, yet

I can't believe I've reached the end of this weird, difficult, and most of all, quick 2009, and very uncertain not wanting to think too hard about "where I was last year" or "how far I've come" besides wanting so badly for this new year to feel the newest, the happiest, the most creative and the most warm of all for everyone I care about and please, for me. I feel hopeful.

In Los Angeles (experiments with scheduled posts)

aaaaa!!

Squirrel

This guy was just sitting right up real close next to my car in the Kinko's parking lot yesterday, and holding his ground (tree) when I so obviously and heinously threatened him by returning from my secret print, fold, staple mission and unlocking my car door. Lots of knuckle tapping, lots of little war noises on both sides.

Thirty hours later, twelve hours to boarding a plane to reunite with a more welcoming animal.