anywhere to go really. I had no commitments, no family waiting for me and my paycheck and two weeks. I was renting a house in the flagstaff barrio, a small blue stucco cottage I called casita azul that I furnished with black lacquered chairs from a defunct chinese restaurant, ammo cans as end tables, and the box springs to a mattress set that I had paid $10 for mistakenly thinking I was buying a bed; pathetic, the fact was that at that time in my life I slept more nights outdoors during the year than indoors so maybe I had simply forgotten what a real mattress was. I went home brooding the unforeseen deficit. I wanted to work and be on the river. I needed the money: I was newly divorced, yes even river guides from time to time and have real-life obligations, in my case the $500 I owed the attorney for point and clicking my old life into its legally sanctioned oblivion. and then I had the thought that it was only a deficit because I saw it that way and then the phone rang and two hours later I was on my way to elkhorn slough, outside of monterey, ca and a native perennial grass restoration project of david packard's (yep, the david packard) because they had a space for an apprentice and I had sent them that letter expressing interest, months ago, the letter I could not quite remember writing or mailing.
so I think all these years later I am still not a sit and wait, ride out the storm sort of person, circling the drain means for me a chance to ride the momentum to the periphery, scramble up the steep side and get a different viewpoint. I think these are called destiny moments by some people (which sounds like a really bad title to a yanni cd) but whatever they are called my point is that they only exist because when the glass is half full we say yes to the trader joe's two buck chuck even though we were expecting a nice alexander valley pinot gris.
I guess this line of thought is because yesterday it was raining and again today so the $5 sunday ny times purchase was justified, and I read it even the sunday business section which is, as you know these days, even more pathetic than my box springs sans mattress. and there, an article about ruth madoff not having any friends or a hairstylist to keep her hair bambi blonde or whatever and many nights of take-out not her favorite table, discreet but not too much so, at her favorite cafe. and the nice yellowstone club blixwiths and their 300 million worth of debt and no way to keep the caviar bar plumped and filled. now I am not on a beat-the-millionaires bandwagon here or down with the filthy rich (hey I didn't coin the phrase, another odd way to put it) I'm just saying.
in the scheme of things what do I have to worry about? our family debt: a trifle, compared to those credit suisse folks and I am definitely not prone to prada deprivation induced suicide, having never owned a prada anything. the burberry purse is vintage, a thrift store find ten years ago before the knock-off craze, so I'm safe there. no, the power bill might be a few days late and the folks at the student loan shop who so nicely financed my foray to law school (should've had david packard pay for part of it, it was his idea when we had a long discourse about seed patents) know we send it every month I mean really, is anybody hard nosed about due dates anymore as long as you pay the bill the month it is due? yes, the pay cuts have come and hubby works in the dreaded auto industry. the import auto industry, but mercedes-benz owners are cranky these days too.
the part I left out in the story about being bumped off the trip and needing the work was that at the time I was not only very poor, nothing unusual for a river guide in 1989 but that I had just walked away from a lovely merrill lynch bank account: when I was married my husband inherited a large sum of money and we became, overnight, trust funders exactly like the ones we despised when we lived in Telluride and worked so many jobs we were not technically ski bums having no time to ski; we could not even afford to buy a battery for my vintage 1968 land rover and used the hand crank to start it all winter. when the money rolled in we needed a car and paid cash for a saab and I had all the patagonia clothing I had ever dreamed of owning and if we needed food or a trip to the dentist it was there. now the money was not mine when we divorced and I did not ask for it thus the cheap $500 divorce. the eight paychecks I had deposited in the joint account that summer while I worked and he hung out in sante fe with the plastic surgeon from san francisco would have been nice, helpful even and having a big fat zero in the assets column of one's life is honestly scary but being a ruth or bernie madoff would be scarier.
what I knew what I know is that some things are worth leaving behind and not only that: but there are times you must walk away, walk away as if your life depends upon it because it does.
