Reverse psychology

"So what do you want?" is a question I found myself asking a friend the other night when she told me she couldn't find the right job, partner, etc., etc.

I have no judgement, because it's a question I'm often asking myself these days too, one that I seem to come closer and closer to answering with each interrogation of self. But the thing is, I've been brutally honest with myself in trying to answer it, brutally picky about it, and way too interested in all of the wrong things in making my choice.

Tonight, when I asked Jay what he thought about me staying here, and I told him about the house I was going to be in, a complete bohemian crashpad, he reminded me to focus on the book. He reminded me that I don't like living with other people, let alone three or more. And he reminded me why it is that I considered moving out to California to be with him almost immediately after he asked me the first time.

This hasn't come without hassle, however, and I've actually been really in tune to what my body has been telling me with each guy I meet and hang out with lately. God, I'm going to say it... For all of the stuff that worries me about Jay or makes me think twice, these other guys can't even compete with everything that is right about him.

In this choice, as in other important ones, only by making mistakes and taking chances have I found what it is I don't want, and I believe that it is this knowledge that is perhaps easier to understand and hold onto when making choices and understanding what I do want and what is important.

Having determined that traveling and writing and writing about traveling, or "triting" as a friend mistakenly called it, is what I am going to do with myself, I no longer feel like I have to find "the" career right now. If that means I have to teach to do it, so be it. Eventually I will.

January, the MFA, that's all fallen into place. It was just this one last piece I was trying to fit in somehow. And I was worried about it not fitting to my specifications, but when I brought up the whole thing with Jay tonight, he sorted it out and pressed the last part in place with the assurance I needed.

All of this decision making feels good, and if has come at the price of a lot of uncertainty and bored friends and mindless repetition of the same worrisome problem, well, at least it is finally over. And even if I've gone about it the wrong way, I have also finally decided on where I'll be living in a month.

I'm going home to Nebraska for two weeks. Fishing, catching up with friends, maybe even some canning if the garden delights are ready for it. Jay will be out there too, and he's down to hang out with my dad... holy shit. I can't wait. Honestly. And after that, after the two weeks of down time at home, I'm... gulp... off to California.

Making a decision feels almost as good as the certainty that comes with knowing it's the right one.

A fond farewell

"The new boat is ready."

He tells me this on Monday, after he tells me that he and mom went back to Pierre last weekend and brought home nine more salmon. I'm happy that they had such a good bite, I can tell he's thrilled to be soaking more fillets in brine, but there's something about his voice, some hitch in it that triggers my red flag.

"Are you sick dad? You sound like you have a cold."

"No, I'm fine. The new boat is in so we'll have to go up and get it this week."

Of course. The new boat.

When I went home a couple of weeks ago, it was to send out old '88 Lund Tyee off to the dump, a final farewell to the boat that followed us the summer we drove to Alaska and lived there, the boat that went to Washington, and Oregon and all over the Midwest with us. I wanted to sleep in that boat one last time, plant my face in the smelly blue carpet under the dash and breath in the essence of lake mud and fish scales and familiarity that I have breathed in for the past two

decades.

I learned to water ski behind that boat when I was little, and after my stroke, when I decided to give it a try again, testing my balance and my strength, that old blue boat pulled me right up. We were supposed to bring home the new boat the same day we dropped off the old one, but it hadn't been delivered to the dealer yet.

It seems sort of silly to recognize an inanimate object as something so special and unifying to a family, but if there's any one thing that sort of brought my parents and I together, it was that boat. I'm sure the new one will do the same thing, but as I was coming home from my run last night, I was thinking about the ways in which this boat will be different. It's got a laminate floor, not a carpet one, so now, when I want to be rocked to sleep in the sunny stillness of the lake, I'll probably stick to the floor, not wake up with the fibrous lines of fuzz I'm used to.

I'm glad I didn't see the boat's end, because it would have been a sad one for me. I don't know what this new boat will be like, exactly, but I know that if it does work in the same way as the old one-- and I don't mean vroom, skidding out across the water-- I already know it's going to have a different relationship with me.

I didn't sleep on that gritty floor again, that one last time like I'd imagined. I wasn't tired, wasn't as bored as I usually am (thank god for the ipod) and I guess I have sort of grown up over the past twenty years (thank god for that too) and maybe don't need to do that anymore while fishing. Maybe I'm able to be present in that moment, regardless of the vehicle, and be in it for what it is. Time spent with my family.

I'm not thinking about it with the necessary depth to apply a good metaphor to the whole thing, but someday, in proper homage to the boat and my dad and the relationship we have out on the water, someday, I think I will. And rest assured, it'll probably happen while on the lake.

This means something

When I was little, life's beauty was in the small surprises. An afternoon tangerine split open and shared with my mom became something special when we found a baby tangerine growing inside the juicy, golden flesh of the fruit. An egg cracked for a birthday cake became a conundrum when two yolks slid like bright golden suns into the yellow bowl we always used for cake batter. Had we just doubled the egg content somehow, with nature's twist, or would it matter that there were two yolks?

Mom and I have never been close, at least not in my memory, although I'm sure she could tell you of a time as an infant when I enjoyed her company. As a psychologist, she's given me enough unwanted advice over the years for me to edit the DSM-IV, and I always feel like she just wants to be my friend, until I tell her the graphic details of my life that I'd share with a friend. Then she's my counselor again.

Funny, I can take that from my friends, who try to help me figure shit out, but not her. Another one of nature's great mysteries.

Anyway, today as I was dicing an onion and a red pepper for some pineapple salsa, I came across something that totally reminded me of her. And it wasn't onion tears.

My red pepper, when split in two, had a little baby green pepper nestled up inside the humped crest of its top, right near the stem. It's not unususal to find this sort of "mutant" fruit in nature, and like I said, it always makes me smile and think of my mom in a good way when I do. Mutants= mom thoughts maybe not the nicest of ideas, but that's not quite the correlation.

So I finish seeding the pepper, separate the stem, and pull off the little nubby of green pepper poking out from under the crisp red flesh. Lo and behold... there's a YELLOW pepper growing around the little green bit of pepper. This thing just keeps getting better and better. And the best thing of all... the symmetry of it. Each side of the red pepper had this sort of genetic extra growing on it.

When I was little, a dumb six-year-old, you know, mom would tell me that there was some special meaning in this additional fruit or egg yolk or whatever, and I'd believe her.

Now, I'm hardly a dumb child anymore, but when I find this sort of thing on my own as an adult, I think of those special rare moments with my mom, and today, finding this trio of peppers in part of my dinner made me smile. I took pictures (obviously) of the thing, and then yes, I ate the little guys.

Those cakes never differed with an extra yolk, and the tangerines were never sweeter, but as we ate the cake later on, it was like we had a little shared secret tucked inside only for us to know. Today's yellow pepper was sweet ( yellow peppers are my favorite anyway) and the red was yummy too, but the green one, smallest of the three, was a touch bitter.Still though, that didn't matter, because as I crunched on them, I could feel the bright colors of the peppers and the bond with my mom secretly tucked away in me somewhere.

The existence of something bigger

Vibrant pigments and glowing landcapes like this are common in Nebraska at night, and on my last evening at

home, this is what the sunset started out like. We were about 20 miles from home, but the views out there on the open plains are all the same. It's just the foreground scenery that makes a difference. As it does anywhere, really.

I have watched the sun set into the sandy dunes of Egypt; I've seen it slip languidly into the cooling blues of the Alaskan ocean.

But nothing has ever topped my Nebraska sunsets, and as the prairie grasses ate up the sun and my visit with my family came to a close, I was so in awe of the spectacular ending to the trip that I couldn't talk.

We spent the rest of the drive home in silence, and upon arrival, I bailed out of the car and stared up at the pinholes of (now white) light sparkling in the night sky, like I've done every time I get home at night for the past 25 years. Whatever your theory is on our existence, you can't tell me there's not somehing bigger than us up there.