There is no end to the gorgeous days here in Napa Valley. Every day more leaves fall from the trees, and more rye grass sprouts from beneath, and Pierce’s disease turns the vines a burnt, glorious orange-red even as it robs them of life-giving water. I turn corners and see deer, skunk, pheasants (I think), and jackrabbits. Here, beauty does not fade with the seasons; it gracefully adorns a new wardrobe.

I think the salad days might be over. I’ve managed to lose two friendships by doing exactly nothing wrong, or at the very least, nothing that should have been wrong. I wrote that I wanted to be surprised by a man, and I have, time and again but only by the ones related to me. I am tired of it. I’ve called these men out, confronted their fears, asked them to be straightforward and kind, made light of our situations, and yet… and yet, in the end, I lose. Why? I want to sit down my latest loss and say, “What exactly are you afraid of? What exactly bothers you?” But I know that he, like too many others, simply cannot be a stand-up guy. He won’t even return a phone call.

And so, because I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here, because I long for my companions, because I want to be part of this world I take myself out for a dinner I can’t afford (particularly after dumping $600 on credit card bills- more moving expenses? I thought it was all on my last statement, blissfully paid off!) and immerse myself in yet another novel. My stepmom expressed concern that I’m going back to New York too soon, that perhaps I’ll find it appealing and want to stay. What can I say? New York is appealing, certainly, it’s my favorite city on earth. But I will not go back to work in a restaurant. I will not go anywhere to do a stupid subsistence job. But I will go anywhere that holds opportunity. I will do everything in my power to create that opportunity here, but right now I can barely look to tomorrow let alone six months from now. As my mom always says, I’m dancing as fast as I can.

I’m still stuck with me, obviously, and I need to not only make myself okay, but make myself okay with where I am, and somehow that’s always been hard.

Wednesday, November 19th

There is no winter where I sit. A chained-down picnic bench, dusty and cob-webbed from neglect, vibrant green shoots of grass, quiet, gently ebbing waters of Lake Berryessa- but no winter. I hear only two birds, one singing, one chirping, but the rest is so silent I can hardly bear the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard.

Twice now I’ve gone in search of hikes, and twice now have found awfully beautiful spots but no trailheads. I’m told there is tons of hiking around here but so far it eludes me.

It is just under 70 degrees and the sun is soft through the trees. I’m not far away from the car as my dad’s sporty little Beamer is certainly incongruous in this land of pickup trucks dragging motorboats. Every tree glistens with cobwebs. I almost can’t believe how beautiful it is, right at this spot twenty feet from the shore. There are a hundred cigarette buts near this picnic table, and when I bushwhacked up the hill in search of a path I stumbled on empty bottles of Corona. This made me sad not because I wouldn’t drink beer here, but if I did, I would certainly take the empties with me.

My drive here, to this Lake, took about forty-five minutes even though it is less that twenty miles from my home. The roads are small and windy, the land gorgeous on either side. About five miles ago I came across an old wooden barn-turned-winery, sadly closed for the season. I love this. I’m reminded of last summer, months spent in the wild, sleeping under the stars every single night. I always chose to pitch my tent or throw my tarp near water; it sung me to sleep.

I miss this, I want this in my life. I often wonder if I am really too old to go fight fires for a summer in Wyoming, or to go to Niger for two years, or to take next spring and summer to wander around the world by way of Vanuatu when I go visit Anastasia. My good friend Kellie is 34. She just moved to New York six months ago and she is one of the most well-adjusted people I know. She has spent her adult years travelling and she has balance and conviction like few people I know. If I were to go to the Peace Corps in the spring or summer, I would still be younger than her when I got back. I would not miss my brother’s wedding.

I just don’t know. I’m determined to give this place, my new home, a fair shot. My life here is peaceful and fun and good. But the question is: do I want a peaceful life?

In the very bottom of my gut, no. No, I want an extraordinary life. Challenging, hard, weird, helpful. That is the life I want. I just have to decide where I’m going to find it, and also figure out if it is something within rather than without.

It’s a crisp November day, sunny and gorgeous, and still I wait for one man to surprise me.

I live with a sweet creature called Dolce. Dolce’s needs are pretty simple: many scritches on her back and head, time outside, haircuts, and the occasional potato chip stolen from my stepmom’s fingers on the way from the bag to mouth. She is pretty finicky with her food, and often decides she doesn’t like the game she’s playing and will take her ball, plop on the ground, and turn entirely inward.

She is also very loving, and wants more than anything to be part of the family. She wants to sit at the adult dinner table and will do so the minute anyone gets up for seconds. She will slam her head against a cracked door, trying to get out, and manage to shut herself in, helpless to get herself away from whatever is bothering her. She will chase the ball, try to grab it, but ultimately will shove the ball even further under the chair when it was easily within reach of a gentle paw.

She wants to understand what is going on, and intently watches the people who speak of things she doesn’t understand. She spends days looking out the window at nothing but the wind on the trees. She will sleep ten hours at a time if no one disturbs her. She barks at the coyotes when the fire department alarm sends them howling, and part of her believes that she could actually take them on. She accidentally interrupts conversations; her social graces are perfect at best, and occasionally abysmal.

She has a habit of making things worse than they already are, and of sometimes getting away with things purely on charm. She wants for companionship, but seems to entertain herself when she’s all alone. She is not easily trusting, but when she decides she loves you, there are no limits to her affection and loyalty. She lets you know she wants to be with you by slamming her entire body on your closed door.

Remind you of anyone?

*Sigh*

At least I don’t have to be walked.

Suddenly I realize that maybe lightning won’t strike.

All this time, all these years, I figured that it would be in the moment I met him. I thought I’d know immediately that he was the one. Lately, when I shake a man’s hand for the first time, I either consider him or completely write him off. It’s a phenomenon in my life. When you hit your 30’s, you’ve never been married, you’ve been single for almost three years, you start to evaluate parts of your life in broad brush strokes. Every time I’m introduced to a man, I wonder if he might be the one I marry. I’ve yet to shake the man who will get that particular honor; this doesn’t stop the thought process. But I’ve been waiting for it- the moment that I look up and meet the right man’s eyes and maybe there won’t be music suddenly but it, “it” will happen.

Just tonight, Carole mentioned something about one of my old friends, how she wished that something might happen with him, and my dad cut her off. “Just… stop…” he said, smiling, holding his hands out as if to halt a car about to roll off a cliff. Her comment meant little to me, in that I feel no remorse about this guy who is just a friend. First of all, I’m lucky to have his friendship, but also, I long ago categorized him, filed him away. According to my current thinking, he will always be to me exactly what he is today.

Now I’m about 95% sure about this. I’m know he’s categorized me in the same way. We have a great time together but we’re not entirely compatible. But tonight I doubt myself. Could I actually fall in love with someone who didn’t knock me over at first conversation? Could it eventually happen with someone I see every day? I wonder, I wonder. I have little doubt that I’ve already met and lost him. In fact, I’m sure. I do know that I’ve invented something that wasn’t there about a hundred times, and once, not too long ago, had something real and beautiful that just wasn’t meant to be. But… I don’t know… my life is so different right now and I barely remember what I’m supposed to do, who exactly I am sometimes. It’s strange to not be lonely or sad, particularly since those two dark feelings dug in, threatened me more than ever the minute I decided to move here. They were pretty sure they’d get their hold and find a home in my new life. But they’ve yet to find me. God knows they hovered around my New York apartment, patient, waiting for a chance to strike.

I’m 31 years old. I’ve not fallen in love since I was 22. I’ve never had a partnership, never had a truly good man as a partner in my life. I’ve never chosen anyone who had any capability to take care of me on any level. I’ve never had the right guy, only the wrong, be totally blown away by me. I’ve had many shallow relationships, days or nights or months that left me with my head in my hands, cross-legged on the floor, amazed by what the need for companionship would sometimes drive me to do. I invented so many people who simply didn’t exist. True to form, I sampled parts of people’s personalities, like so many chocolates, and ignored the parts that weren’t to my taste. I’m infamous in my family for biting open six See’s candies and then leaving the rest when I found the caramel one. I did this with the people in my life. Such strange bedfellows, so to speak. The friends I chose, the lovers, the short-lived relationships, the longer-lived relationships, some so insignificant I didn’t bother to mention them, even when they dragged on.

And yet, I do not despair. Why?

I really don’t know. I do not know why I’m not beside myself that I have yet to find love. It’s not even that I have faith. I just, I just cannot be unhappy about what I cannot control. I can only feel good, and sleep soundly at night, that I haven’t made any more terrible decisions.

Friday, November 14 2003

It’s getting near ten o’clock, minutes till my bedtime, and after a lovely dinner with Dad and Carole and some friends visiting from New York, I’m left with two oddly conflicting feelings: I’m at peace here, and I miss New York.

I sleep through the night here, perhaps because I only get about six to seven hours at a time. This last month in New York, I was sleeping ten hours a night. Man, that rocked. But I also spent hours staring at the ceiling, or reading, or annoying my cat when the world around me silently slumbered. Here, I’m asleep by 11, up at 6:30, soundly out for the entire night. I’ve not had insomnia once.

And my life is peaceful. It is not stressful, but lately it has been full, and I’m not worried about keeping the roof over my head, and I paid all of my New York closing bills without once putting my head in my hands. I have a couple of friends who make me laugh, and who want to do cool fun stuff with me. I have the adults sleeping above me who have done nothing but welcome and support me.

But the Peace Corps called today, and want to know if I still want my position. I thought I had given it up long ago. I never called them, never wanted to actually say “no”. I miss my brothers, and my sisters. I miss Chopin. The dog. Today I leaned down to talk to Dolce, sweet, sweet Dolce, my stepmom’s dog, who looked back at me with perfectly blank eyes. She’s the funniest and sweetest dog you’ll meet, a constant source of personality and entertainment. But Chopin would meet your eye and let you know what he thought of you. His kisses were rare and treasured. He hates bicyclists and loves a good spot on the floor, as long as it’s near Tessa.

Only about 5% of me nags at my lack of acting and singing. Most of the time. If I actively think about it, it grows to over 50% of me, but then again, I haven’t been in a real show since just after 9/11. One of the things I want to do here is to get back into shape, maybe start dancing again, and become a viable actor once more. But is that what I really want? What exactly do I want? Do I really want to be happy here? I’m kinda happy here. I’ll admit it. Happier… happier than I’ve been. I don’t know for how long, how long this will be enough but I want to start creating more as soon as I feel ready.

I’ve started and stopped new book ideas a couple of times. I seem to be doing more short-term writing, but I know as soon as I find my new book I’ll fall into it. My old book idea was just the story of a weekend in my life, and I finally realized that the facts of the story were getting in the way of my tale. So I start anew, eventually, eventually.

Steve said that he thought my last blog entry was a little racy (not his word). He said that there were lines to read between, with my stories of the men I’m meeting out here. However, he’s wrong. There is exactly nothing between those lines. I’ve not been intimate with anyone out here. There are no steamy stories to tell. Geeze, I’ve detailed issues with many of the unmentionable parts of my body on this here blog, and if something happened to me that was worth writing about, you can be damn sure you’d read about it right here!

Or, at least, the PG version…

I have long and detailed blogs written on my not-at-this-moment-crashed trusty tangerine iBook, but really, internet access is hard to come by. My dad gave me the green light to research satellite access but, oddly enough, there hasn’t been enough time. I’m starting to hunt out the people of my generation who hide in this valley. Thankfully I’m not what you would call shy, and so walking up to two men and a woman at a wine bar last night and spending an hour with them was not at all awkward. It also could have been the two glasses of Amarone.

I’m at work, I’m exhausted, I have to go taste a billion bottles of wine.

Everyone at home keeps asking, “How is California?” The truth is, I still don’t know. I’ve been here twelve days or so and I’m only sure of a few things. It’s beautiful here, there’s no denying that. I’m sitting on the deck, nearing sunset, and the Rutherford Bench sprawling before me is colored in strips of rust, green and gold as the sun shades the dying vines. The other night, driving home from dinner, rabbits with ears five times as long as their bodies were bounding in front of my car. The fog was steaming up from the ground, in low-lying clusters, tendrils of wispy smoke gathered together at the base like a ghost bouquet. I could hardly believe my eyes- what made the fog do that? It was Halloween night, after all, and the thought of a ghost hand rising from the ground, grasping for a bunch of gathered fog was enough to make me drive a little faster through the night.

It is also cold here, much colder than the Indian Summer currently being enjoyed by New Yorkers. It is easily in the 30’s at night, and the days are somewhere in the lower 50’s. My first days here it was almost 100 degrees, and we’ve dropped well over half of that in the last week. Amazing.

I don’t know what my job will bring. I’m hopefully making some friends there but there are only two people near my age, one of whom I’ve most likely already alienated. Everyone else is somewhat older, one guy in his 40’s, another in his 50’s, and another topping 60. There are plenty of people above us, literally, in the offices, but we don’t have a lot of contact with them. The second person near my age was sick when I first got there, and then she went out of town, so I wonder if it is possible to connect with her. You get used to talking a certain way with your friends and family and then sometimes you shock people, even if just a little bit, when you are out of your element. But I want to connect with deeper, richer, more worldly people, and I have to believe they are here, somewhere, waiting to meet me.

I don’t much know how to do it, though, I mean, how do you meet people? How exactly do you do it? It’s easy enough in the restaurant business. You are thrown together with a bunch of people who you see five days a week, and then you do stuff with them, and then you meet their friends, etc. But I want to meet people outside of the restaurant business. I wonder if there are any writing clubs or groups around here. I’m sure I’ll figure out how it works in this valley, but right now, I just don’t know.

It’s now 8 at night, nearing bedtime for little ‘ol nine-to-fiver me. I got to bed at midnight last night (oooh! so late!) and was up before 7 so I’m plum tuckered. I’m out in my dad’s office, fighting through the dial-up war that goes on every evening in this valley. Dial-up is obviously slow all on its own, but when everyone in the valley is checking their email or the paper or whatever it is they do, it takes almost twice as long to load a page. Also, it’s so damn cold now at night that I have to talk myself into taking the ten-second walk from the house to the office. These two factors have been keeping me away from the internet. That and cable TV. Oh, what I’ve been missing. (Although, I should add that I just blew an hour watching the end of Dances With Wolves, a movie not only that I’ve seen forty times but also one that lives in the cuboard by the TV. I’m telling you, I simply cannot be trusted around moving pictures.)

Another reason I’ve not been drawn to writing every night is that my life, right now, is simply routine. I get up early, I drive to Dean and Deluca, I get a soy sugar-free vanilla latte, I go to work, I come home from work, I make dinner, I watch some tele, I go to bed with a book and fall asleep early. And you know what’s weird? I’m loving it, a little. It feels sane and nice and once in a blue moon I run into my dad or Carole. I know I’ll need to start mixing it up soon, I know that I’m dying to get into a writing schedule, but I’m being pretty good to myself, not beating myself up over what I should or should not be doing with any given minute.

A couple of my nights have been a little more interesting, both spent with friends from work. Last night I went to a restaurant in downtown Napa to see one of my coworkers at this second job. Another guy from my tasting room went with me and it was fascinating how different both of these guys are away from work. The one eating with me is a really neat and strange guy, always with some odd joke about whatever it is I’m doing, but at dinner he was pretty serious and a little intense. The one waiting on us, also from the tasting room, has proved to be one of those guys who is weird the morning after. This latter one and I hung out for an evening last week, had a great time, but I don’t think the evening ended exactly how he was hoping it would. Not that he wanted anything unreasonable or extraordinary or icky but I’m climbing very, very slowly back into the romantic saddle and that leaves me cautious and determined.

Sadly, he’s a little put off. He’s been, if not rude, certainly standoffish and closed and not nearly the funny jokester he was all last week. So, unable to help myself, I called tonight and left him a message. “Hey, listen, so you seem a little put off. I was wondering if I could, you know, do something about that. I moved here, what, eight days ago? And I know exactly no one in the valley? And I’d really like to avoid any situation that would alienate a potential friend, like you, particularly since we work together. So if I’ve done or said something confusing or wrong, I hope you’ll let me make it right, and if you are just feeling weird, well, okay, but I’m hoping and inviting you to, well, get over it. Okay? Okay. Thanks.” I simply could not have slept tonight if I hadn’t done this. I want my side of the street to not just be clean, but to be whitewashed, spotless, and with all my recyclables sorted in their proper bins.

Beyond that, well, I’m looking forward to… what, I don’t know exactly, but to whatever seems to be just around the bend here. I have learned a couple unsettling things. The scariest is that most people my age here work two jobs just to afford the rent. If I get in that trap, I might as well never left New York. The second job is invariably waiting tables in a restaurant somewhere, and again, that would be a hopeless, awful thing for me to have to do. Again, I might as well be working at the #1 restaurant in New York if all I want to be in life is a server. Secondly, any writing opportunities I thought I might have at my new job are clearly spoken for by MY BOSS, who is also a writer, and who expressly asked me not to muscle in on his favorite part of his job. So I will have to pursue writing jobs out-of-house, and I’ll have to create some sort of living arrangement that will not put me right back into the hole.

But I do have hopes, and ideas, of what I want to do with my time here, be it another month or ten years. I want to live in the hills somewhere, Calistoga or Anguin or anywhere, in a cabin or cottage on a dirt road with nothing around it. I’ve lived in cities my entire life and I want to change that. I don’t care if it’s run-down as long as it’s sweet and safe. I want to have my cat out there with me, and roommates if I must, and I want to be able to have a bunch of people over for dinner. I know I’m not asking for too much. (Oh, wait, and high-speed internet).

I came home last night to dinner waiting on the stove, polenta and mushrooms and tomato sauce. It may seem like a small thing but I’ve been doing this, all of this, all on my own for a long, long time. I don’t remember the last time I came home to find dinner waiting. I can’t even express what that means to me.