Why I Love Blue Crush

I love the movie Blue Crush.

I do.

I am not afraid to admit it. I love this surf movie, I love Kate Bosworth at 19. I love the stupid romance twist with the football player on vacation (Matthew Davis? Yes!), the soundtrack is awesome.

And I love the cinematography.

It's true.


I want to be a bad-ass surf mama when I watch this movie.

This is my all-time favorite movie to watch when I am feeling under the weather. In fact, I have forced countless friends to experience Blue Crush with me.

I think the obsession first started my senior year of college when Blue Crush was being aired on television every day. I was trying not to study and I plopped down on the couch next to one of my roommates, Vanessa, and we commenced in being sucked in by the all-time greatest time suck ever. That entire week the network kept playing Blue Crush and we kept watching. I think all of my roommates sat down on that couch watching the movie at some point that week.

But I was the one who formed the greatest connection to it.

Yes, as I moved on from VHS to DVD, I bought Blue Crush so I could abuse it on far too many occasions.

This has become my go-to movie of choice when I:
a) am sick with the cold
b) am sick with the flu
c) am tired and don't want to go out
d) am in a good mood and want to stay in
e) am sad and need a pick-me up
f) am kind of under-the-weather, but not quite sick sick yet
g) am wanting to experience the greatness that is Blue Crush with someone so said individual will be able to understand my allegiance to this movie and relate to me on a deeper level.

These people have been best friends, boyfriends, roommates, people that I love and want to know that this movie will lift me up when I am down. Because sometimes you just gotta watch Blue Crush.

And when Anne-Marie catches that final wave, I am not ashamed to admit I get teary-eyed.

She scored the ride! She battled her demons! She represented women at Pipeline! She gets Matthew Davis! She gets sponsored by Billabong! She didn't get smashed by the reef!

 Live your dreams, girl.

You local Hawaiian native, surf-babe struggling superstar.

Somehow, this movie makes me happy.

And there's no shame in that.

Crawl and Totter

Anna has started talking to her Dad every two days. She has made it mandatory.

She just tries to get him on the phone.

Pick up, pick up, she hopes.

His voicemail is full. He doesn't empty his messages.

He does not know how to text.

Forgot how to email. He used to email her about 15 years ago.

The house phone is never charged and even when it is no one can find the receiver.

Most of the time, getting Anna's Dad on the phone means getting a hold of her Mom on her cell phone (which is another challenge) and getting her to hand the phone over to him.

And then they try to talk.

The first few words are painful. Pulling teeth. Anna can't tell if it's harder for her to find things to talk about or harder for him to give her more than one word answers.

She rambles on about her life and tries to get a reaction from him.

His favorite words are "I don't know," and "No."

Sometimes he throws in "I'm fine," or "Oh well."

And Anna wants to cry.

Because she just want to talk to her Dad. Her Dad. Her awesome Dad who used to talk non-stop and sing and laugh and tell stories about life. Her Dad who used to have no problem striking up conversations with strangers, her Dad who loved adventure. Her Dad who was like a little kid.

And now he is more like an old weak man. One who has aged about 25 years overnight. Overnight, meaning the past several years.

She worries his mind is wasting away.
She worries he's fading away.
She worries he'll forget important memories.
She worries she'll forget what his laugh sounds like.
She worries she'll only see him smile on rare occasions.

While Anna is on the phone with her Dad one night, he randomly says, 'You have to crawl before you can walk." The words strike her. "Totter," he corrects himself. "What was that?" she asks. "Did you say something about an otter?"

"Totter. You have to totter before you can walk."

She isn't sure if he is just getting confused or being inventive but for a moment she can hear her old Dad, the Dad of the past. "That's true of most things," she tells him.

Anna considers the demise of so many things in her life right now and it suddenly resonates with her that she can't just pretend she can walk again without tottering around for awhile.

Life is full of quite a lot of tottering and crawling.

"What do you remember about the Boston Tea Party?" she asks her Dad.

"I wasn't there."

"I know you weren't there, what do you remember about it though from reading about it?" she encourages him to start talking. She had realized a week or two ago when she was at her wits end trying to find her father's voice again, that if she asked him open-ended questions he would start talking more. And then she randomly asked him about the Cold War and he started talking more than she had heard him talk in months. It was like his brain lit up and he could remember historical facts and dates and Anna kept asking questions in between her tears just so she could hear his voice.

There he was, there was her Dad. If only for a moment.

He remembers old things, but not a lot of new things. It is scary. His forgetfulness, his change in mood and behavior. The weight he has lost. The joy that seems to have been sapped from his soul.

The doctors are still looking for all the answers.

But Anna and her family are pretty sure they know what is happening.

And it frightens all of them.

And every two days, Anna tries to get her Dad on the phone, even though, recently, he's missed several of their mandatory phone dates.

And she crawls and totters and hopes.

The phone rings.

Pick up, pick up.

GET CRUNCHY

Wah-wah-wah.

How fuckin' moody I've been.

Ethereal lingering prose-y writing and this and that. Sentences that go on forever, odes to adjectives and images. I can barely read my own material without wanting to punch myself in my own sniffling face. God, have I ever written so many back to back pieces in the 2nd person with "you" as my favorite pronoun in the world?

Here's the deal. I'm going through a breakup. An icky, sad, disgusting, smushy breakup. The end of every great love affair is like this. Your body turns itself inside out. You sob in the shower (that's my favorite place to sob! It's like crying in a waterfall! Ask your travel agent for more info!) You get a cold for two weeks. You sleep. And sleep. And then you sleep some more. Heyyyyyyy, STOP IT, 2nd person voice. Let's take this back to 1st person.

I'm so tired of saying 'youyouyouyouyou.'

How about ME ME ME ME ME.

I'm tired of feeling icky and smushy. I hate this version of me! This version of me stinks. This version of me is fricking falling apart, not just over the breakup, but over everything else life has handed me at the same time. The human body can only take it for so long. Someone once told me that the body won't let itself stay raw for very long. Its not its natural state, it doesn't like to feel that way. And for good reason--who wants to walk around feeling like an exposed boo-boo? Not this girl!

Where's that band-aid?!

Agh, but there's the little stinker. [Please note use of 2nd person is coming back to be utilized for general knowledge as in a 'How-To-Guide'] You can't just slap a band-aid on it. (Or a ring for that matter. Zing! Ouch. Jokes. Yes. What?) You have to let your wound heal on its own time. And some wounds take time. And some are deeper than others. And some wounds re-open. Wounds must fester and ooze like the strawberry Gushers of our childhood youth and then sloooooooowwwwwwwwly start to scab over and get crunchy and THEN you must wait for the little bits of scab to fall off on their own. Cuz if you pick at it, ITS OVER! My guarantee: you start picking your scab off too soon, you'd best be starting that whole effing ooze/fester process all over again. (Why did I just say 'effing' when i said 'fuckin'' above? F that shit! Let's swear!)

Well, fuck.

Hmmmm.

So now that I've finally said, "Here boo-boo, face the world WITHOUT a band-aid!" I have to do just that.  Be exposed and start getting crunchy.

And it is a long crunchy road.

Or at least it CAN be, I been there before, Mama!

Didn't want to walk that road, again, but whatccha gonna do.

Hail a cab? Nope. Cabs don't come to this part of town, stranger. (Cue dueling sundown music between two cowboys.)

Find a prince on a horse to ride me back home? (Hmmm, when I word it like that, that doesn't sound half so bad! ...) But, NOOOO. No. BITCH, don't be rebounding on princes. (Or wait, WHY NOT? Then I'd get to drink tea with the Mum and be besties with Kate Middleton...unless the prince on the horse was William and then I'd have be all, OH NO YOU DIDN'T, WILL!)

Right....so, what? Click my heels three times and wish I was back in Kansas? Oh, Dorothy. You simple-minded twit.

WHY DIDN'T WE ALL JUST DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE INSTEAD OF SKIPPING ALONG YOUR DUMB GOLDEN HIGHWAY TO A PILE OF MELTED WITCH AND MONKEYS?

Dorothy, you led me to a pile of melted witch and monkey brains.

Ugh.

But it's okay! Just like Dorothy, I've got to travel my own yellow-brick road and grab a motley crew of friends suffering from various emotional and personal issues like fear of confrontation, illiteracy, and the inability to love.....and THEN we'll all be transformed at the end of the journey!

Right?

Right.

Let's add into the mixture of monkey brains and melted witch the fact that I'm also dealing with career stresses, artistic woes, my own health issues, parents' MAJOR health issues (yes that merits all caps), and there are now plenty of outside forces making the breakup boo-boo a little tougher to heal--which deserves credence of its own-- it will never heal properly if I don't acknowledge that it is a legitimate wound of its own. It's just that all of these outside forces COMBINED with this oozey breakup wound are making for one sore body, one with unfortunately LOTS of wounds that all are festering and oozing at the same time. It's like life just handed me an awesome car crash on a plate and said, "Dig in!"

Well, I'm gonna be an awfully crunchy lady for awhile, but hopefully I will reach the end of this road (along with my dumb friends who can't love or fight!) with some thicker skin and a bit more insight as to what exactly is at the end of the path.  I'm not saying I won't trip when I try to do that really cool skipping move like they do in the movie (I never said I was coordinated) and fall on my face and rip the scabs open and have to start all over. But sometimes that happens with scabs and wounds. They re-open and we try to close them again.

Hell, I might look kinda gross for awhile.

But all people in battle do.

Yep, Dorothy was totally a battling warrior.

And I gotta be right now too.

So I'm ready.

Time to GET CRUNCHY.

Empty House Dream

You were in my dream last night.

But you were dead.

...Or maybe we both were?

And I stayed in bed longer than I needed to so I could see your face again, so we could embrace one last time.

I walked through each empty room in a house I did not recognize. It was a new house or an old house--one I was moving into or moving out of. There were no boxes, just blank rooms. And each room was bare and dark. There was a sense of either an end or a beginning but I couldn't tell which one.

*

My family was there too, and as I weaved in and out of each room I could feel their presence, see their faces. Perhaps they were there physically in one room and they just remained on my mind as I journeyed through all of the rooms in the house. All of the rooms were connected to each other by one long hallway and separated only by the doors that connected each room.

And as I found myself in the last room, I realized you were there beside me. You had either been following me or you were in the room by yourself the whole time. And all of a sudden I knew you were not in this world with me any longer. I knelt beside you and we embraced. It seemed you had been wandering. Unable to move forward, you were trapped between life and the after-life, had not walked into the light, had never seen the light to walk into. I did not know what happened to you or why you were no longer alive, and I did not ask. I was only sad. After some time, I said, "We could have made it." You closed your eyes and hung your head and after some time said, "I know." And we both looked at each other in sadness but we both knew we did not exist in the same realm anymore... So we just embraced again.

But now I'm moving through the rooms again even though I want to stay there with you, and there's a feeling of newness or oldness, of death or is it life? is it a beginning or and ending, I can't tell, all of these things seem so close to each other now, so interconnected that one can't quite tell what has just started and what has just finished, a brief understanding that life and death are so thinly connected, so finely interwoven that an ending is a beginning...that a death is a life....that a beginning is also an ending...

The rooms remain dark and I am on my own now and after some time I find someone, I don't know who it is, but this someone let's me know you are no longer in between worlds.

You are no longer stranded.

You have found light and moved into the next world.

And I am at peace for you but ravaged for us and empty and full and each room is still dark and I continue walking, knowing that you are not wandering anymore, knowing I will not see your face in your purgatory any longer. You have found your way out of the empty house and I continue walking through the bare rooms...

*
*

The dream ends, though I want to see you for longer than this short visitation we have strangely been granted, and I wonder now if I am in between realms, as well, searching for the light in the empty house like you were.


*
*

A Note to your Surgeon

Crafty scalpel.

Did you do the job?
No need to pretend, there's no shame.
Seriously.
I'd like your Institution's name.
So I can also do the same.

See, this stitch right here?
That's where my doctor botched the same incision.

but your work looks highly efficient
swift
recovery complete

Did your office not process the surgical evaluation we drafted/the detailed Scottish tremors/ the medical history we were hesitant to fax over/the get-well note rendered/our grievance committee had hoped for/at the very least/notice of receipt/

Skilled Surgeon,
Quite impressive.
you've ripped out
your stitches well.

Defining You: My Former Lover as a Shoe

You once asked me what kind of shoe I thought you were. You had stayed up all night reading every single entry of this blog. You had wanted to know the inner workings of my crazy brain. You had read it all. And you were not afraid of this brain, rather you seemed fascinated by it and you still came back for more. "I kept wondering what kind of shoe I'd be?" you half wondered aloud, half asked me directly.

"I'm still figuring it out," I replied. "But you're not an uncomfortable shoe," I think I had said to you.

...What kind of shoe were you?

Maybe I never knew what kind of shoe you were and that's what always fascinated me about you. Sometimes you were a hiking boot--manly and sturdy and solid and adventurous. Sometimes you were a Birkenstock--earthy and worldly and natural.

Sometimes you were a slipper, warm and comfortable and all encompassing, and in your presence, I was fleecy and surrounded and safe and warm... I loved your slipper moments when your shield was down and you were a boy and a man at the same time. You were a child in your sweetness and a man in the way you took care of me. You were a slipper in the early hours of the morning when you held me close as we awoke, and a slipper late at night when you held me tight as we'd fall asleep. You were a slipper in the way you always found me and took me in your arms again when dozing had separated us.

Sometimes you were a clog. You were a combination of comfort and work. You were still sturdy but you blended both worlds. You were unpretentious. Did not care for fashion in those moments. You wore shirts with holes and pants dotted with glaze and dust. You had zero care for other peoples' opinions of you. You did things your way. And fuck them if they had anything to say about it.

Sometimes you were an incredibly expensive Italian leather shoe. You splurged on the best wine, the best dinner, the best hats, the best beads, the best opera tickets. Because "all the fun is being up close, you can't enjoy it from far away," you had said. You enjoyed music and theatre and opera and fine art and fine foods and antiques that cost more than I have ever managed to save in my bank account. There was this mentality of living in luxury if you were going to splurge at all, mixed with this mentality of living modestly that continued to intrigue me. You had a taste for the fine things, the rich things, but your home was very much unadorned aside from a few pieces of art strewn about, propped against walls. And in this way you weren't an Italian shoe at all, you were a gladiator sandal of the most uncomplicated kind. You lived simply and cleanly. Didn't own a microwave or a TV. Kept meaning to get a table. We ate dinner on your living room floor and ate breakfast while sitting on your kitchen counter. You rarely had food in your refrigerator. Everything was cooked fresh. You would buy what you needed as you needed it. Nothing processed. Nothing artificial. And if it came from a box you would not eat it. Except for granola. You did love granola.

Sometimes you were a sexy shoe. A high-heeled gorgeous dangerous shoe. A shoe that you knew if you put on you would feel dangerous and exciting wearing. You were a motorcycle riding, sky-diving, free-spirited, sculptor man-child with a past that was speckled with trouble and clay and glass and danger and lost love and second chances. I dared to wear this shoe even though I feared it might hurt after awhile.

Sometimes I felt like you were a combination of all these shoes. You were a hiking boot-slipper-clog-Italian loafer-sandal-high heel. And all of these shoes fascinated me. All of these shoes were so different yet made so much sense as we put them on at the same time. And this shoe was funny looking and it fit oddly sometimes, but I still loved discovering the different shoes you could be and how each shoe made sense in our world. I'd never met someone who was as many shoes as you were.

And yes, sometimes when I wore you,  it felt like there were pebbles rocking back and forth across my soles. Sometimes it felt like you forgot someone was wearing you, needing your support. Sometimes it felt like you were only there for the soles when they were inside you and never when you were walking on your own. Your shoes were fine when we were together and imaginary when we were apart. Sometimes I wondered if I even owned a pair of shoes. Did my shoes even exist? Had I only made them up? 

As WE wore this shoe, I think we both slowly realized there was also a piece missing. There was a buckle that had loosened, or patch of fabric or a swatch of leather that had torn away, worn away...and that missing piece had torn away long before I met you. And nothing I could do could bring that piece back. It was a piece you were still searching for when I first tried you on. And we both ignored it for a long time, and even when we both acknowledged there was a piece of your shoe that was gone, we tried to work around the missing buckle....maybe we could create a new buckle?

But you can't slap a new buckle on an old shoe that has walked a billion miles next to someone else who stole the buckle in the first place...A shoe that has walked in darkness for so long and is still looking for a way to walk in the light again. The shoe may have stumbled upon a new pair of feet, the owner of the feet may have dared to try on this strange hybrid shoe, and they danced for a long time together in and out of sunshine...until she realized the shoe was still looking for the piece of itself it had lost along the way. Or maybe he never owned this piece in the first place. Their journey was always a labored one because they had both desperately needed that missing piece to feel whole again. They had tried to pave a new road to walk on together, but until the shoe realized it needed to walk into the light on its own again, it would never feel right walking into the light besides anyone else.

......And most of the time, you were actually no shoe at all, you were just a shoeless creature. You were just a human who preferred to feel the ground with his bare feet than to weigh them down with anything. You were a man who'd move to the top of a mountain in a second if he had the chance, a man who'd build a glass dome at the very highest peak and sleep inside peacefully so he could see the sky and the stars and feel close to the spirits. You were a man who would disappear into the woods whenever he could because the city became too much. You were a man who made his home a jungle and surrounded himself with plants he charmingly named. You were a man who would sail out to the middle of the lake and anchor down and exist on the water for days on his own because he embraced the solitude and the peace the waves would bring. You were a man who clipped fake butterflies into potted plants and placed plastic sharks in the shower. You were a man who biked everywhere, a man who owned THREE bikes and pedaled endlessly. You were a man who'd rather walk around with no clothes than be bound by clothes, a man who would immediately pull off his shirt as soon as he was safe inside his cocoon of a home, a man who preferred silk and linen if he had to wear anything at all. You were a man who adored animals, a man whose closest friend was a stray dog he had rescued. But the truth is, she rescued you too. More than I could. You were a man who very clearly said he identified with the tiger in the zoo. You felt caged by society, by people, you wanted to be in the wild.

Most of all I think of you as this man....this rare and rough around the edges barefooted man who was looking for himself when I met him, a man who adored clay and the Earth and the moon, a man who found beauty everywhere and appreciated the human form and the human touch more than anyone else I'd ever known. And whether you were a pair of shoes or a barefooted soul, I hope one day you find the pieces you were missing when I met you. And that I'll get my missing pieces back, as well.

Soleded Gutenberg is Dead. She was a Chia Pet.

Soledad Gutenberg is dead.

She was a Chia Pet.

Yes, I named my Chia Pet 'Soledad Gutenberg.

The reasoning for this lies within my own warped sense of humor when my my German friend who married a Mexican gave me the 'Hello Kitty Chia' as a silly but endearing birthday gift. Her married name is now Franziska Fuentes. The German-Mexican melding of language has such a lovely ring to it. It rolls off your tongue. Franzzzziiska Fuuuuuuentes. Lovely. I thought I would give the Chia a Mexican-German name as an ironic salute and thank you to Fran. And so "Soledad Gutenberg" was born.


If Soledad was a human she would have kicked some major ass. That's an ass-kicking name.

 Anyway, she's dead now.

I threw her out today.

But she was a fighter, I tell you.

The first attempt to grow Sole (pronounced "Sole-ay" as I nicknamed her) was met with marginal success. She did alright, but she was spotty and bald in most places, as only limited chia sprout had occurred. After a few weeks, I tried again with the leftover chia seeds. You keep some in reserve, you know, I learned that from the last time I grew Chia Pets. Don't use all the seeds at once! Aside from the fact that you're not meant to use all the seeds in the application anyway, what if you want them for later when and if you decide to have another go at Chia-ing?

So I had the seeds (lesson learned) and I tried to grow her again. This attempt was better. I had paid more attention to the areas that I had missed the first time, I made sure the seeds settled into the grooves as they were supposed to, I took extra care to water her every day, to make sure she wasn't thirsty, I did for Sole what I could do. But in the end, she still had some bald spots. She was fuller and brighter than the first attempt....... but it is hard to grow a Hello-Kitty Chia Pet.

CHIA PETS ARE NOT EASY.

The thing about a Chia Pet is that it has a shelf-life. You know from the get-go that it's not supposed to last forever. You have all that fun getting it ready to go, watch in excitement as it blooms and grows, you look beyond the areas that don't grow in, and you secretly hope that your Chia Pet might last forever, but...

Chia Pets only last about 4 weeks.

You can try to keep them going for longer, you can keep watering and fussing and adjusting, but when something isn't meant to last past a certain point, it can't survive even with the extra effort. You see, what happens is the Chia starts to wilt. It even grows a white sporey looking moldy/fungus thing on its body. It's pretty gross. The Chia is still partially green, but the damage is done. The spores have infected the whole thing. The Chia is essentially dead.

I continued caring for Soledad, denying that she was actually on her way out, I kept her around, kept watering her, kept fussing. But in the end, there was nothing I could do.

Soledad's time was up.

She looked at me, I looked at her. We saw the spores. And we knew it was time. We said our goodbyes and then I threw her in the bin.

Farewell, fine Soledad Gutenberg! You were a feisty little critter, a kooky combination from two different worlds.  You were a blast while you lasted. Fond memories abound.