Please excuse my absence of late- seems I’m full of excuses, but at least they are good ones.

I am taking a class at the Culinary Institute of America, here in St Helena, CA. The class is called Mastering Wine I, and is being taught by none other than Karen MacNeil, author of wine bible, brilliant Sommelier, wine expert of wine experts. And it is wonderful. I’m realizing that it’s as much the classroom environment as my object of study that I love. I’m good at this. I dig being in a class, filled by smart people, taught by a smart person, hearing about a topic that fascinates me and, better yet, experiencing undeniable truth that I’m learning something.

Speaking of which, I’m off to a Bordeaux wine dinner at the CIA where 70 of the 2000 Bordeaux will find their way into my little wine class. Yeah, you know, 2000. Vintage of the century. I mean, if I have to live in Napa Valley, this is what I should be doing, right? Also, for those of you who will appreciate this, the mustard had sprung out of the ground overnight. Beautiful, charming mustard flowers, nodding at each other in the breeze, filling in the rows between the vines with a brilliant blanket of yellow. If ever there was a time to visit, it’s now. (hint hint)

I’m doing that thing I do again, that thing where all I want to do is hang out by myself. It doesn’t help that I’m struggling to gain at least a partial state of health, and for some reason the way I think I’m going to get healthy is to spend lots of time alone staring into space. I mean, it’s working a little bit, but I have to careful about isolating too much.

I’ve been very sick off and on since I moved here to Napa Valley, and we have finally discovered the cause: my room. I can’t name all of the bad stuff that is floating around down in what is essentially the basement of the house, but the guy who tested them said they weren’t “toxic” but that some of them were “very elevated”. Which is good news. If they had been toxic, I’d be dead. Instead, I’m just constantly sick, and the only time I felt good was when I went back to New York for a week. I’m on a number of drugs to combat the icky stuff that is running rampant in my respiratory system and I feel rather far from being actually well.

I also finally went to the podiatrist who listened to my story of foot pain woe for about thirty seconds before sending me straight to x-ray. The good news is I don’t have heel spurs, I just have rather severe Plantar Fasciitis. She said that one cortisone treatment would bring down the inflammation and ultimately make me better.

I thought, Super! A couple of pills and I’ll feel great! But I was clearly deluding myself. She said, “I’ll go get the injections” and my heart jumped into my throat. I’m not sure if I’ve detailed on this blog my phobia of needles. It’s not that I hate them, or hate being near them. I don’t mind at all when they are pointed to enter someone else’s flesh. It’s when I think about them entering my own skin that I get woozy. It took my doctor about five minutes to get the shots ready during which time I tried to talk myself out of passing out. When she returned, I told her that if I fainted, just to let my lie there until I came around. She said, “Aren’t you an EMT?” I smiled weakly, unable to explain, and tried to prepare myself for what was about to happen.

She swabbed the side of my foot, the fleshy part between the sole and the heel, and produced a very thin but way too long needle. It HURT. Each shot took easily about five hours to shove into the meat of my poor, aching feet, and I tried not to hyperventilate because of the pain. Before she started, and after hearing about my little fainting problem, she pulled a screen in front of me, but because of the angle of my chair, I had a perfect view of each needle plunging into my skin. When it was all over, I laid back and said, “I’ll be right back”. But I didn’t faint. I just felt woozy and barfy for about five minutes, at which time the receptionist, who was told to check on me, stuck her head in the door and flashed her shiny braces at me. “Ya’ll right?” “Yeah. Be right out.”

She said that the pain should start feeling better immediately, but that I needed to stay off my feet for a good week. No tennis, no running, not even major walking. But that was Thursday, and right now, Sunday morning, my feet hurt as much as ever. I’m going to have to call her in the morning and find out if they will ever actually stop hurting.

Maybe I haven’t actually wanted to be well. Maybe it’s a crutch I’ve used for a solid year, starting with hemorrhoids, going to my cervical cancer scare, to my plantar issues, to my infected respiratory system. Maybe I’ve used my illnesses to explain why I’m not currently in Africa. I don’t know. But I’ve finally reached a point where I’m just done with this. I want to be well, I want to get back into shape, and I want my 31-year-old body to start acting like one rather than a diseased body three times my age.

Too tired, too sick still, and I had needles stuck in my feet today. I have many foreign substances floating around my body. Some of them I can’t spell. One is cortisone (for my feet), another is histex, another is good ‘ol ibuprofen. Ughy. More later.

The other night, Ian and I were discussing the merits and the disadvantages to having a blog. It’s been rather useful to me, only getting me into trouble when I’ve had too much to drink and a recent heartbreak. In the past, I’ve avoided writing in my journal when things were bad. Obviously this has not been the case with my blog, and while many things I’ve written about were gross or embarassing, I’m glad to have had this outlet. I’m sure I would cringe if I went back and read my entries from August, or from whenever I was having particularly icky health issues, and I know I’ve alienated people who I wish were still my friend. But yet, here I am. Still.

I know I’ve not been writing, but self-flagellation gets boring even for me. I’ve not been living some sort of “wrong” life. I’m not sick because I’m not taking care of my soul or anything. Well… okay, maybe I’ll lay a little blame on myself for my persistent lack of health. The fact is, things are different around here. The air, the sky, the pollen, the mold, my sleeping hours, my working hours, my friends, my every single day is absolutely, completely different than what I’ve known, maybe ever. And my body is having a hard time of it. I’m not stressed, not exactly, except for the constant pressure I put on myself to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life. It’s enough to drive my body sick.

I suddenly remembered, in the middle of an evening watching movies and eating dinner with a friend, about a night during Ian’s wedding. It may have been the night of the rehearsal dinner, but I’m not completely sure. We went Night Swimming. It was raining, cloudly, and not really warm, and someone had a bottle of scotch, and it was perfect. We were playing Chicken and Ian’s good friend Summer kicked my ass. That lady is strong.

By the by, I’m looking for a date to Sean’s wedding. Here’s what I’m looking for: most important: love my brother Sean. And Jordana. And the rest of my family. Please be funny, courteous, charming but not too much so, a decent dancer, kind, and brilliant. Don’t be weird in a bad way. Don’t be the kind of guy who: drinks too much and is mean or really stupid, will vote for Bush (DUH!!), or wears pleated pants with any regularity. No major soapboxes either, unless they are well-informed and involve specific facts that bash the current administration (whee! I like this!) Don’t be a smart-ass unless it’s truly funny. Don’t let me take myself too seriously. Watch my intake of vodka gimlets. Do be the guy who wants to shoot a couple extra games of pool when everyone else is winding down for the night.

I best stop. I could go on forever.

Anyone too smarmy or too handsome need not apply. Anyone with the first name Viggo and last name Mortensen is allowed one or two strikes from the above list. Anyone who posesses all the above should fly his butt out to California, or drive if he happens to be close, and let me buy you a cup of coffee. We’ll take it from there.

January 18th, 2004

I mean, is it the 18th? Sometimes it’s hard to know.

I’ve heard that a lot of people get sick when they move to this valley. Something in the air, the pollen or somesuch, or perhaps the lack of pollutants that cause an immune system to completely abandon ship. The thing is, I don’t really care that this happens to “everyone”, I care that it’s happening to me. I’m sick, AGAIN, and I’m totally baffled. How is it possible, this third illness in less that two months. How is it possible that I woke up in the middle of the night, with that all-too-familiar thing in my throat and congestion in my head that is the start of something big and awful?

It seems pretty clear to me. I’m doing something wrong. I don’t mean that as a judgment or even a specifically negative thing. I mean it as simple truth. It’s not like things are hard here. It’s not like I can’t get enough sleep or don’t have access to great fresh vegetables or can’t afford a personal trainer. I can do all three of these things, but I’m clearly not doing them all well enough. I’m not taking full advantage of this wonderful chance I’ve been given. Oh, no, instead I’m complaining about how boring my job is and how early it gets dark and blah, blah, blah.

Well, now, since I’m at work, I prolly ought to stop this diatribe right now. I’m just really tired of this, and since it seems largely self-imposed, I ought to do something about it.

January 11th, 2004

I am supposed to be working on a piece right now but I can’t concentrate. I have three framed photographs on the windowsill right in front of my desk. One is two sided, with a young Kent playing cello on the left, and an even younger Steve playing piano on the right. Next to that is a framed picture Sean just sent me, of he and I, and we are probably 6 and 4 years old, respectively. The picture is strangely sepia-toned, and the expression on Sean’s face is priceless. He’s smiling, but his mouth is shut and his chin is all screwed up, like he’s happy, but there is something deeper, too. My hair is in pigtails, and my mouth is spread in a characteristically broad, contented smile. Sean has one arm around my back, the other in front touching my shoulder like a prom picture. More than that, though, he looks so proud, his face contorted with joy and, seemingly, a job well done. He’s telling me, in that picture, that he is a great big brother, and that I am the best thing since spice racks.

Below both these larger pictures is a small metal frame with chipped gold paint and a broken pane. There are two trimmed pictures. The right is Ian, on a bike, holding a flower, basking in Iowa sunshine. He’s not smiling, not exactly. He’s looking at the camera as if to say, “Yep, this is my bike. My flower. It’s a good day. I’ve got stuff to do.” He looks like he’s on his way somewhere, and the flower is an integral part of his mission. Next to that is another picture of Sean and me. He’s on my right side this time, but again, one arm around, other arm this time on my lap. I am wearing a beautiful green dress and matching scarf, which my mom made for me. We are a year younger, maybe more, and my smile is exactly the same. Sean’s mouth is still closed, but this time his smile is a little more confident. “You can take our picture,” it says. “We are cute, and you can record that, but as soon as you are done, we’re outta here. We’re back to our world, where only we speak the language.”

My smile is the same in every picture. I was so, so, so loved. I never doubted love. There was not existence without love. My parents loved me, yes, but my brothers’ love was palpable, ever-present, everywhere. I grew up with four brilliant men, and they loved me. They still do.

You see why I’m having trouble concentrating. I was given so much, and as a result, I feel that I should have done better by myself. I should have done better.

January 10th, 2004

I have so many stories to tell and I’m too tired to do it. Which is no excuse, really, but I do have to be up in a few hours to return to my workplace where for eight hours I’ll stare at a wall. No, make that six hours. The other two hours I’ll be in the kitchen stealing bites of cheese and nuts.

I bought (with more than a little help) a car yesterday. It’s an ’84 Volvo Turbo sedan. It’s nifty, but I hadn’t driven it for twenty minutes when I tried to clean the windshield and the wipers stopped working. A few desperate phone calls later I figured out I probably blew a fuse. How did I get to be 31 without know that there are fuses in cars? And that they might potentially be changed? I have to admit that I felt pretty manly when I popped a new fuse into my fuse box (cars have fuse boxes?!?) and suddenly I had wipers again. Of course the whole debacle took about five hours, and I had to go to a party wearing Duckwear (our affectionate name for the clothes we wear to work) but at least I have a car. I’m spoiled by my dad’s BMW, but now he gets it back, and things start to settle in my world.

Elizabeth called my car “Easter Egg Blue”. Heh heh.

When’s the last time anyone actually kept gloves in a glove compartment?

My brother Steve drove up for the evening, and we had the unfortunate experience of choosing “Mona Lisa Smile” as the night’s entertainment. I think he enjoyed it more than I did, but I think he also gets a little bit more pleasure from the casting choices. Although there is something about Julia Roberts laughing out loud on screen that is worth the price of almost any admission. Pretty sure she didn’t laugh once in “Mary Reiley”. Oh, god, what a piece of yurk that was.

And why do networks now have to bleep out “god” when people say it in movies? “The Breakfast Club” was on the other day and I only made it through to the scene where my favorite stoner ever, Judd Nelson, calmly looks at the principal and says, “Eat…. my…. shorts.” They blipped out “shorts” and substituted “socks”. I threw my sandwich at the screen and had to take a walk.

I’m at work, unable to post the last couple of blogs I’ve written. Soon enough, fair readers, soon enough, or at least as soon as I can get my hands on a functioning land line. Stolen airport internet usually doesn’t let me send email or post stuff.

What’s up with the spelling of “Healdsburg”? There are a lot of unnecessary letters in that word.

I finished a piece today that isn’t utter trash. Which worries me, because the stuff I don’t like is usually the stuff that gets kudos from others. It’s hard to know if waht I’ve written is any good; it’s mostly whether or not it scans. This piece scans, so I feel that I can let it go. It’s fascinating to me how my mind resists focus. It would rather multi-task than take a breather. I was working on this piece today, and my mind kept on a) turning my attention to the people in my coffee shop and, more importantly, b) kept reminding me that I have a novel to write. It was like the little icon that bounces at the bottom of my computer when it wants my attention.

There is a pose in yoga called Shivasana, or “corpse pose”, that many say is the most important. It concludes every practice, and allows your mind and your body to integrate what it has discovered, if anything. It’s really hard to stay focused during that pose. Well, I should say that it’s really hard to drift in the appropriate manner. You’ve just pushed your body to it’s outer limits, and rather than relaxing, my mind has a tendency to obsess. I have cried like a baby more often during Shivasana than I did as an infant. But what I learned to do was accept each bizzare thought that entered my mind, and then invite it to leave. I think about lying on a grassy Iowa field, but there is a white door nearby, and as these demons and ill-wishers, or even thougths of lunch, present themselves during Shivasana, I accept them, and then invite them to exit through the door. I have to do the same things sometimes when I’m working on more than one thing, or else I’ll spend my life looking through the boxes that I was supposed to organize and ultimately throw away.

I’m trying to figure out what I want. Do I want a full-time, 9 to 5 writing job? Do I want to be a staff writer? Do I want to be a journalist? Do I want to hole up and write my novel with no outside contact for a year? Do I really want to only be a freelance writer?

I don’t know.

I mean, duh, obviously this is the problem. But it remains. I just don’t know.

If you want to get to the heart of a town, spend some time in a local coffee shop. I do my writing in a little spot called the “Coffee Roastery” or something like that; looking around I can’t seem to find the name. (Unlike Starbucks, where I wouldn’t be surprised seeing the trademark on the coffee when it comes out the other end.) There are few other” writers in this town who take advantage of this perfect spot. A large part of my “writing is people-watching-the perfect distraction- and only once have I seen other laptops clacking away as I sat here pretending to write. Right now there is exactly two other folks taking part in this caffeine ritual, and they are a strange pair. One is about my age, tall and dashing in a long black coat and shiny, patent-leather shoes. The other could be his dad, and both of them are busy reading, not speaking a word. Ahh, we’ve just been joined by another- an aged cowboy with work boots and gallon hat. He’s just sat down to a bunch of paper files and a pencil. A pencil. When was the last time you saw someone with a pencil?

It’s the perfect place for writing, though. I always sit at the end of a long wooden table that easily sits 10, maybe because it reminds me of dinners at the farmhouse. Even when the place is full, which is rare, no one joins me here even though the table is big enough to suggest that it is not one person’s domain. The walls are almost entirely green corrugated steel windows, and the ceiling is high and sloped. The lights can’t compete with the sun, even on a cloudy day, and some cute teenager is almost always grinding coffee at the “bulk purchase” bar. There is a map of Africa by the women’s bathroom, with all of the great coffee regions labeled by name, and I have a habit of tracing Niger (just north of Nigeria, landlocked in the middle) and thinking about the fact that I could be there, right now. I will not stop thinking about that, not ever.

I’ve been struggling this week with my life. I know that seems banal and silly, since this is the struggle I’m constantly writing of, but it’s been pronounced lately. It feels as though I’m here for some grand reason, something beyond the charity and good will of my dad and Carole, beyond the spot I was in back in New York, but the reason is simply not clear. I’m not really happy, here, but to fair, I wasn’t happy back in New York. Yes, I pine for weekends at the farmhouse, for eggs in the morning with Sean, for time spent with Jordi as she dances and wiggles her hands in time to the music in her own head, for tea with Tessa, for pool with Ian, for time spent. It hurts me, drags at my heart to be separated from them, even if I didn’t see them that often. I pine for my friends, for Kellie and Hayley, for Allen, even for Christopher. But I do not pine for a job that will keep me down, for a life of fear, of constant worrying about money, of not being able to afford to take time off to see these people that I love. When I was there, all that mattered to me was space, and I sacrificed the better part of my life so I could live alone. I realize now what a mistake that was, for a number of reasons. I will isolate, given the opportunity, and I spent more time alone that last year in New York than any single thirtysomething girl ought to. I didn’t have enough money to take a weekend off to go up to the farm. I was in a rut that only got deeper and deeper.

I’m not entirely out of the rut, but the sides of the ditch have stopped rising. I feel that I might be close to starting to climb out. I have no money in the bank, but I’m not worried about rent. I’m not doing a job that is important to me, but neither does it sap my life force. I’m no closer to choosing a clear path for my life, but I sit down to do this every day, and that makes it better. I’m eating better, sleeping better, taking care of myself even though I’ve been sick as a dog. My battery is recharging, my heart is healing, and I’m getting ready. But for what?