The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

We're in Anchorage again for appointments and shopping and visiting with friends. Hoping to get a little more light shed on Phil's continuingly recurrent and debilitating vertigo problem. Maybe trying to help sort my crazy head out a bit too. 

This disorientingly sudden summer means it's snowing apple blossoms up here in Anchorage, dandelion flowers are everywhere and all the birds are fighting either to mate with one another or eat one another's young ahead of the game. The whole of the vertebrate kingdom, we are acting like a bunch of superheated insects, moving faster faster faster quick get everything done before it starts freezing again in two or three months! Our allies the plants are acting just the same, and since up here in Anchorage it gets both hotter and colder than it does down in Homer, the 'window of movement' is even smaller and perhaps it isn't surprising that everything is a little farther along here than back at home. Flowers are more 'out,' mallard ducklings barely ducklings anymore, cabbages and parsleys full size rather than just having their first pair of true leaves like the ones in our raised beds at home. 

But it is quite glorious. Sunshine, over 60 degrees, and even approaching 70 yesterday evening - and with the sun out and bright, these relatively cool temperatures are all warmer than they would be in the SF Bay Area where I used to live, for example. Another strange thing is how late in the day it gets truly warm. 6 or 7pm is often the true 'high noon.' Circadian rhythms what? And yet I seem to be very attached to my circadian rhythms and to stick to them anyway. I'm wondering if it's a detriment to spontaneity that I'm seeming to need such rhythm in my life. I don't feel well when the schedule is chaotic, I can't eat a whole load of food 'up front' so that I won't need to for hours after, like some people do, nor can I eat super early or super late to compensate for missed mealtimes. I feel somewhat of a failure, or at least a misfit, for that: people who really thrive up here often seem to have more of that flexibility. At least I can say I've tried.

Up For This Week

The produce from the Lower 48, which Alaskans call 'Outside,' is that bit fresher up here in the big town. Fred Meyer was fragrant  with peaches today - I insisted that Phil should have one. And I bought a jicama that turns out to be so sweet it's almost candy! Sweet, juicy, crunchy, fresh... Jicama is wonderful - I almost can't believe that it is so low in calories and carbs. The bigger ones are always better: smaller usually means picked too early, woody, less juicy. 

Well, aside from waxing lyrical about a leguminous tuber from Mexico that I never saw on the continent on which I grew up, and which some folks in Hawaii chose not to grow because they deemed it too low-caloric to be worth the effort (now, there's a thought!) - this week I'm getting in gear for the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference. It'll last Friday 11th through Tues 15th. My first writing conference, and I'm so excited and also somewhat apprehensive. I really hope to meet some potential mentors and friends, and I'm really apprehensive about it being cliquey and closed-up, and of being too shy myself, or too dorky, or too passionate about obscure rhyming schemes, or too trendy in my attire. We have hit the thrift shops here in town, though, and in addition to my usual black pants, black turtlenecks, black hoodies, Phil persuaded me to get a very cute squashy billed cap with a checkered pattern in colors I wouldn't normally have chosen, but which puts some color in with the black and which he says makes me look very cute! 

So another of the main 'up for this week's' is contemplating the possibility of being 'cute,' paying attention to my appearance and recognizing that first impressions are important when you meet people. Can you believe I'm 33 and only just starting to figure this out? Dirty hippy girl… It seems like most girls whose blogs I read are professionals at all of this: is anyone else clueless like me, or got clued up really late on? Aside from when performing in plays a few times, I've only worn make up four or five times in my life. Never had my nails done. Been to a hairdresser maybe five times ever. Anyone else like this?

This week I'm also intending to finally buy a camera - can take a pic of that hat and some other things too - all the wonderful, galloping plant life…

As the writers' conference looms, I'm going to post a couple of (non-food-related) book reviews this week, books I've recently read that have had a positive impact on me: one, because it talks about why it's not a good idea to be hopeless and check out of life, and the other, because of its sheer artistic genius. Not words I use lightly.

My appeal to the collective consciousness/mind/brain trust is for advice on how to 'get moving.' Even allowing for my low energy levels, it is taking me forever to get things done at the moment. Important phone calls are not getting made. Incubating poems become phantom pregnancies through neglect. Seeds get planted days later than I intended to do it. The only person who would call me lazy is myself, and only when I'm being unfair. And yet I can't seem to get stuff done. Advice? A bigger question, that I'll address more in one of the book reviews, is how to figure out what our life's purpose is. Is there a still, small voice that you hear? Or is it all just a rat race?