Cheetos and Condoms

Excuse me for being crass, but how could I just let this priceless combo slip through my wordsmithing fingertips??

It is a widely publicized fact here in this great north-north-northwest state that the ratio of males to females is something like seven-to-one. Inquiring gal pals and sarcastic (jealous?) guy friends like to pigeonhole and stereotype: clearly if I have returned....no...if any girl has returned to big North, it must be propelled by luck-in-love possibilities and endless attractive male suitors swaggering at our sides, as insinuated by sheer ratio. It's like nowhere else on earth. "right?". Yes, but that's not why. Let's set the record straight...

You see, yes there are often more men around than usual, dawning Carharts and long unwieldy beards (sometimes attractive) and dropping a kind of sloppy wink in the direction of a group of young ladies (not that classy). Some have courage enough to ask for a number, even when its clearly been signified not to press the issue. So sometimes we bite. In a small town like Fairbanks its inevitable to run into the bearded boys from previous encounters on a daily outing, a routine errand, a girls night out to dinner. If perchance its one of the handsome, intelligent, funny L48 transplants, bring it on. But who assumed these men were always young? Who assumed they were always attractive, smart? or polite? Were you thinking they would follow through, buy a drink, or act in any way above and beyond the average men you weed through, chase, dream of, look for, or even love down yonder? We get stood up and blown off by those of potential, not called, hit on by local yokal sourdoughs, and stuck back in the same rutty ditch we've come to hate but feel at home within. And at the grocery store as we balk at scummy Alaska men stocking up on basics for their ladies waiting back in one-room cabins, we secretly wish someone would desire us enough to run out and pick up some cheetos and condoms.

For it to work, it can't matter: A case for casual miracles

I heard in a kismet-ic movie line last night that “for it to work, it can’t matter”- that is, if you want to throw a match into the sky and watch it become a star, first let go of needing it to be as so. This notion struck a chord with me and my ever-self-defeating need to take control, to chase my own goal down in nature’s way: like a lion on a zebra’s tail, and grab its jugular…make it mine. For the past year I think I have been making a whole-hearted attempt to release the need but retain the want and the commitment in such goal-seeking instances. But today, cosmos, I plead my case to you.

Dear Cosmos,

Right here- this chair I’m sitting in, in my half-walled office, bedecked by fluorescent light and stale office air- this is the point and the time I wish my art or writing career would suddenly launch from the ground into the cosmos at warp speeds with me attached by a long but sturdy string and dawning a bright red cape and a satisfied look...a shit-eating grin if you will. The rate of movement generated from this creative launch would dry the tears of boredom that I have shed this morning between daily bouts of grievous ear-to-phone squeezing and perilous head-jutting that has caused my neck’s clear and persistent revolt. If I were any other version of myself, at any other time, I would have done a traditional colonial curtsy to this whole scenario before the mutiny of the neck and, with personal belongings in hand, gone running from the scene of the crime with arms spread wide…like a child might joyfully glide through a springtime meadow, happiness abounding, onto some new possibility.

Last time my skin began to crawl with contained creative frustration, quickly squelched by the rational mind and its sidekick “integrity” (circa New York 2007), my spirit-being pulled the mutiny tactic on my physical self then just as now. My formerly “chill” self became a poster-child for high blood pressure, cholesterol and anxiety attacks despite a consistently active and healthy lifestyle. At this first mysterious onslaught of poor health I was baffled by its initiator. But this time I know the culprit.

While I hear the faint sound of "integrity" in my ear reminding me of the tasks on the menu-bar below as I wordsmith my day away for personal uses, I can no longer physically accommodate its urging. That leaves me in my own personal conundrum: if this weren't a small town, I would hand in my notice today, bow gracefully, and bolt. I am now not only trapped by my shoulder-riding pal “integrity”- the angel (or devil?) in my ear, but also by the confines of a small population, and the fact that I want to prove everyone wrong for making me second (or third) choice for an empty title headlining a bunch of administrative tasks no one else would like to do, all spiraling inward to meet at the eye of the storm...evidently this chair, in this office, where I sit.

“Don’t worry” my friend and I always jest “its just our twenties…we can get them back later”….maybe if I skyrocket back in time right now I could spare a few precious years…

A metaphor of macroinvertibrates, or, an ode to all of you

How polluted, how convoluted, can the stream become before all signs of life surrender?? "Sometimes a polluted stream looks and smells clean..." but the surest way to tell if the stream is vulnerable, and has "lost", is through the macroinvertibrates. The emotions of the water-body. Within the spectrum of the species I strive to be the rat-tailed maggot: pollution (convolution) resistant, with a shield of armor for its skin. She navigates the meandering stream or river-bed, once clean, reliable, now littered with impurities...but still, protected by that shield and breathing through that long and rat-like tail that reaches above the cloudy water's edge so far from the heart-center...she is nearly impenetrable.

I am perpetually caught off-guard to be more like the Caddis fly, however, that builds its own casing, a safe-zone for protection, but then and still falls victim to the polluted waters. Every time. She feigns resistance through the falsetto skin, the mummy-like bag...but is not so strong on the inside.

The redeemable fact is that Caddis fly, like the Dragonfly and Damsel, still maintains some authenticity. Through her age and metamorphosing from ancient dinosaur times to present day, she is still a fighter, and takes pride in being so, that she may serve as warning of pollution for others who might follow her path to unknown demise. While the rat-tailed maggot has essentially become a robot, impenetrable to the ominous and foreboding changes of the waterbed.

This ode is partially for my learning and teachback-ing. With real life metaphors, constructivism, we are more readily able to retain foreign information. Internalize. And regurgitate with ease.

But to all of you: go and see the polluted waters and find there remaining only the species of rat-tailed maggot-harsh, resistant, benign. The cockroach. Remember the artistry and grace of the simple, vulnerable, nearly extinct Caddis fly, who builds her own sack of protection from harm, presenting a tiny tidbit of her inner structure, daring to be made even the least bit vulnerable...then hastily contaminated, and recognize that her extinction is chiefly because of your shit.