Redefining Richness.

There is a dollar bill on the sidewalk on a busy road on my walk to work. Every day I note its shine and texture, preserved like a book-pressed leaf by the pressure of countless pairs of walking shoes. Also notable is the fact that several children play tirelessly on this road; several runners run; several college students pass by it, carrying heavy laptop bags and heavy shoulders and the same heavy, tired-but-thankful eyelids as me. Their expressions are the same as mine: A melding of anxiety and bliss; the strange marriage of polarities that is constantly at work in the mind of an individual who lacks monetary solidity. We make love to the freedom of uncertainty, cure it when the honeymoon wears off, and alternately both love and hate the cycle (but we can not afford a divorce). The homeless folk on Pearl Street to whom I surrender many dollars have similar expressions, depending on the state of poverty they are in. If these souls ventured just three blocks North, they'd easily spot the dollar bill burning greenly against the pavement like a flag. With little effort at all, anyone could peel it up and put it in their pocket.

But no one does.

. . .

My first week in Boulder, I managed to land a job at the same bustling downtown coffee shop my favorite book store is attached to. I was thankful, excited, and eager to start. Making espresso, to me, is a form of art: The 'whir' of the grinder, the subtle flip of the wrist to extract the perfect shot, the sensitivity required to coax the steaming milk into a velvety, shaving-cream-consistency; The intuition required to work around four other people in a heavy rush, each body silently communicating to the other: a symphony of movement. A silent dance. The work does not pay well, but there is poetry in it; there is art; a richness in getting up and walking to work when dawn is still just a bruise; being the first face a sleepy individual sees when they walk in and, in their tiredness, unveil themselves to you through stories of a lost baby or work frustration or recent divorce. I am in love with this experience; the freedom in expressing myself verbally without judgment; the freedom to show my tattoos and piercings and newly-stretched lobes with no disagreement from bosses, because it is my job description to be funky and unique and artistic...and despite the insistent call of adulthood to "get a real job," I am not finished with this experience yet.

The only time the poetry fades for this Barista is during the holidays. Downtown Boulder, in these months, explodes with commerce, and all the stress and demand that come along with it is conveyed through the eyes and mouths of every shopper to every service worker on the main drag (I am exaggerating, but not by much). Black Friday was the first day in my new home that I truly felt terrible. After seven hours of straight running, bending, lifting, charming, failing, and spinning in circles to please my customers with no break, I was physically exhausted in a way I'd never been. Limping out of the building into the icy dark with several miles of walking ahead of me, I checked my tips and noted their inadequacy compared to the amount of effort I'd exerted. I walked down Pearl, still buzzing with wealthy shoppers, and I fought back the familiar sting of both tears and (guiltily) envy.

Not wanting to quite go home yet, I found myself wandering Pearl Street in search of something beautiful to cheer me up. I fingered my cold ears, the flesh straining against the small crystals I’d inserted, now completely healed. I had not purchased a gift for myself since arriving, and decided it was about time.

Across the street from my café is a small import store owned by beautiful bohemian women with long dresses and kind eyes. Walking through the threshold, I was enveloped in the warm scent of cedar and sandalwood, bold Indian-inspired garments subdued by caramel-colored lighting, and a woman who’s knotted and feather-laden hair reminded me of Willow trees and forest moss. I looked through the gauged earrings she had for sale, falling in love with a pair of white bone spirals far too big for my small lobes.

“I could stretch them for you right now, if you want to save some money,” she said, her voice bringing to mind string instruments and honey and all other things that take their time. She smiled with equal warmth: “It could be a ritual. Every moment of every day should be a ritual, you know. That’s how we make our lives rich.”

I liked this. “Alright,” I agreed, “But if this is a ritual, I should know your name.
“Lisa,” she said.
“Funny! I’m Lee-a,” I replied, rhyming the syllables, enjoying the similarity, the poetry of our names.
“Perfect!” she giggled, taking my hand. “I have a handshake for “L’s.” Moving our fingers together in shapes, she made a triangle, then a diamond, then a heart, and hugged me. It was the first hug I’d received in a long while. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been until that moment. Thankful tears stung the corners of my eyes, then blinked away.

Lisa took the earring and rubbed it with a hemp salve. “Very healing,” she assured me, and in two swift and gentle tugs, the gauges were in place with no pain whatsoever. “Beautiful,” she said. “Like a warrior.”

Walking home in the dark, I watched the mountains like black paper cutouts against the navy backdrop of sky, both glittering with hole-punched light: One with the scattered glow of mountainside porch lights, one with stars. I contemplated what it meant to be “rich,” deciding that my original definition—that richness is measured in sincere life experiences, not necessarily in dollars accumulated—was still my more preferred one of the two. I walked slowly, intentionally, defining and redefining familiar words: “Freedom.” “Wild.” “Sincerity.” “Resolve.”

Turning the bend on the last block to my house, thinking about the dollar bill stamped into the sidewalk which was now nothing more than a suggestion of currency in dim light, I heard footsteps to the left, not quite human; and not ten feet in front of me, a buck walked so nonchalantly I might have mistaken him for a shadow, if not for his startling weight. Shocked, awed, I froze in my tracks and watched as the animal—his antlers exceeding me in height—barely acknowledged my presence and walked, carelessly, freely, right over that dollar bill.

The black marbles of his eyes did not acknowledge the green of it, glowing in the halogen streetlamp like an emerald.
He did not even look down.

The Importance of Preservation; Finding a Gem.

“When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. Dmitri Nabokov-the Russian novelist's only surviving heir-has preserved for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.”
--E-mail advertisement from corner book store in Boulder.


I was not sure how to feel about the above when I opened my email box this morning.

. . .

I was first introduced to Nabokov's work as a college student, assigned to read Lolita for a core class. Over-worked and forced to make sacrifices on assignments, I set it aside and, for lack of a better term, bull-shat my way through the class (Sorry, Professor Satler) by making constructive, out-of-the-box inquiries to direct the conversation away from the actual text and into a neutral territory I could participate in and get my A. It worked, though in retrospect I never did fully appreciate the mind-blowing piece of literature I'd basically raped (no pun intended.) It wasn't until this year--sitting at my coffeehouse job in Sheboygan, bored out of my mind, grasping for anything enriching for my brain to feed on--that I picked up my dusty copy of Lolita and sat, captivated, for three full days until every delicious metaphor had been licked clean. (I was almost fired for this. It was worth it.)

My first week in Boulder, when the sun still hung high and summer glazed the smiles of every downtown shopper like a balm, I put on my favorite blue sundress and headed out to explore. Never having been away from home before, I was feeling the sharp twinge I now know is called "homesickness," and needed a distraction; something new; or, rather more appropriately, something bordering familiar. Rounding a corner, I caught the old-fashioned gold lettering plated against the emerald-green of a false-front building: "BOOKSTORE."

I will never forget walking in those doors. It was the first time since my lover had gotten on the plane back to Wisconsin that my heart leapt into my throat, coaxing me forward: Three full levels of floor-to-ceiling shelves, hardwood floors, oriental rugs, lush armchairs, and a vintage charm the romantic in me thirsts for. I climbed the first flight of stairs to a room lit by a frosted-glass, cylindrical skylight, plopped myself (clean dress be damned) onto the floor in the center of the poetry section, and enclosed myself within a wall of stacked familiarity: Billy Collins; Robert Frost; Anne Micheals; Mark Strand. I gazed upon the titles adoringly as if they were the foreheads of many lovers. I was home.

. . .

Homesickness is a tricky thing. For me, it snuck up on me and hid so well beneath my initial elation that when the stardust cleared form my eyes and reality set in, I could not define it. There was a strange, burning emptiness. I found myself, in dreams, sitting at my Grandmother’s kitchen table, bathed in light from her window, drinking weak coffee from china teacups. Light caught in her hair, spinning it into spider webs. Her hands moved over my own lovingly and felt like soft tissue, warm and comforting and familiar. Every morning for a week I woke to a tear-soaked pillow, and didn’t know why.

. . .

If there is one thing I brought in with me from Wisconsin in excess, it is books; I rarely get rid of the ones I've read and adored. There is something about the way a good book teaches and offers an experience that the sensitive side of my nature equates to friendship. I took each and every “friend” I’d ever made, put them in plastic bins, and shipped them to Colorado with me in the same way that I’ve kept and preserved every tangible memory of my grandmother, who passed three years ago. I could easily fill an entire room with the above mentioned artifacts (I’m sure my roommates are thrilled).

It is this perspective, I suppose, that made me halt at the above bulletin about Nabokov’s book. I went to the store, as I do most days after work. I held the book in my hands, fingering the cover. The thirsty reader in me, of course, felt her mouth water at the mention of a book—a SECRET book—available for the first time from an author she thus far respected greatly. The romantic in me, however, took a step back—pursed her lips. The thought of this writer’s wishes having been deliberately disrespected by his kin put a bad taste in her mouth—a familiar one. She knew how she would feel if her own manuscripts, not edited to her approval, were released to the masses; she was all too familiar with the haunting ache of knowing a deceased loved one’s wishes were not properly carried out.

I smiled, closed my eyes, had a short moment of silence.
I put the book back on the shelf.

Dust.

And wind. And sun.

Our relative inexperience with these elements is what made my partener and I stop and stare in awe and inquiry at the dust-covered vehicles on the road. They popped up for the first time in Nebraska: A Hummer here, a Toyota there, covered bumper-to-bumper in terracotta dust. As we neared Colorado, they increased in number until nearly every car around glowed golden in the heavy sun like sand castles on wheels.

"What IS that?" I asked the man next to me, my hands pressed to the glass, tracing the edge of the vehicle in question with my eyes in the over-zealous curiosity that is both my attribute and agony. He would smile, skin warmer in it's hue than the rolling sunflower fields on either side of us, his own honey-colored eyes tracing the lines of the car, lines of my face, then back to the car again: "I don't know. I guess we'll find out."

I did indeed.

On the walk to work this morning, my eyes--usually filled with gratitude and love for this city and countryside--were instead filled with the grit and dirt of the dry landscape. Likewise: my legs, arms, tongue, scalp, and every nook and cranny of my body not covered in clothing...I can feel it between my toes if I wiggle concentrate.

It's days like this I learn about the elements, reminded again just how strong a hold nature has on us. Typically and traditionally, we (and our strong human egos) like to think it's the opposite. Those of us who hold great reverence for the earth like to think we're all one in the same, the dust and grit being a place we rose from and will one day lay. Windy days in Colorado--just like the winters, I'm told by locals--teach us a lesson in reverence; in giving in to a power greater than ourselves. I'm not talking about God, though the lines of people making their way to work by foot this morning appeared strangely religious: heads bowed, eyes squinting into the blinding stare of the sun, arms held out in front of them as if to draw, or push away, something intangible only they could see and feel.

I'm still walking tomorrow, but I'm bringing a hat.

...And maybe a gas mask.

Losing and finding the breath...

It is a good place to begin: With the body, where all things begin.

I'm a runner. I say this with both the shy modesty and overt pride. As a child, I was chubby and had asthma that sat on my chest and pressed like a fist squeezing my lungs free of air like helpless sponges. As an adult, a bike accident rearranged the bone structure of my hips and spine into a tinker toy jungle gym of arthritic joints. My doctor told me my abdomen would never heal into a structure capable of accommodating any sort of impact. I told him to eat my shit (I may have been a tad more tactful than what I remember...).

Being born into a clan of naturally stubborn and independent women, and being an individual extremely conscious of her physical health, I took up the sport both as a method of staying in shape, and to prove to myself that I could achieve the impossible. It took me nearly two years, but upon leaving Wisconsin my asthma had all but vanished and I was logging five miles a day at a leggy, quick-paced gait.

When one speaks of the West and its mountainous territory, the subject of elevation and breathlessness is one of common interest and intrigue; however, like childbirth, old age, cancer, most organic experiences of the body, really; understanding is achieved best by experiencing it for one's self.

On my first run, simply put, I. Could. Not. Breathe. "Flat ground," in Boulder, is really just a hill with a more gradual incline than the more common and impossible slope. I suddenly understood what the trail runners in my athletic magazines had meant in their descriptions of mountain runs so tiring they were almost hallucinogenic: I found myself drifting out of my body, imagining Boulder a curvaceous woman laying on her side, and I, some determined insect making my way up and over the steep slopes of her hips. That old and familiar fist grew fingers that wrapped around my neck; sprouted lips that blew ashes down my throat. Five miles was quickly reduced to two, and my confidence slowly followed suit.

In frustration and curiosity, I began researching elevation and its effects on the body, especially that of the runner. Amongst articles warning me of sleep deprivation, constant thirst and irritability (all symptoms experienced and explained), I stumbled across an article on runnersworld.com about Kay Ryan, present US Poet Laureate, called "I'm a Runner." Intrigued and inspired by this fellow writer and runner, I found her unintentional advice on incline jogging tucked into the center lines of the interview: "I go so slow that not even the hills could make me run any slower! I consider it running if there's any time at all that both feet are in the air."

Go slowly, gradually? This was not something that had occurred to me. It was however, and perhaps ironically, one of the reasons I came to Boulder: To accept, with slow and intentional gratitude, the natural flow of my capabilities as an individual, and use them to their full potential.

The next day I bundled up in ample running garb (integral, as the sun recedes behind the mountains at five o’clock PM and takes any warmth it offered with it) and allowed my stride to fall into a slow, but respectable, trot. It was something new: running not to prove something, but simply to enjoy the experience of running. I became aware of the intimate, micro-workings of my body: The tendons of my legs pulsating and stretching; my abs clenching; sweat pooling between my breasts, in the small of my back. I became aware of my body as an amazing machine; a proper essay: all parts communicating with one another to produce a cohesive, explosive conclusion. The experience was something easily described as natural, meditative, and almost Zen. I respected, for the first time, my own natural capabilities and boundaries; I found, in this raw acceptance of self, that I fell into the same space one enters when writing a good poem. Upon returning home, I had, once again, only covered about two miles, but they were the most satisfying two miles I'd ever run.

Maybe one of the most important lessons I am to learn here is congruent to the most important lesson I learned in writing poetry and prose: When to extend the metaphor, but--more importantly--when to slow down and take a breath.

Thanks, Kay.

Introduction...

Light is gathering on the rims of things in Bookends Coffee: Window panes, mugs of Italian roast, and the lenses of glasses on the faces of college students and business men alike, making them suddenly kindred in their illuminated, wrinkle-browed concentration.

In Boulder, this mountain city one full mile closer to the sun than my home, it is impossible to escape light. With 300 sunny days annually and coffee shops whose storefronts boast floor-to-ceiling windows which stay open into even the colder months, Light pools in every available crevice. This morning, as the sun stretches into late morning, light slides off of tables, down legs, gathers in pools on the floor and pulsates, ripples, reminding me of Lake Michigan's shoreline and all watery things: The only metaphor I am able to make, my memory bank having been built on a foundation of water.

From the time I was small, I have lived in rural Wisconsin, surrounded in some form or another by a large, moving body of water: Rivers, lakes, marshes, and all other manner of watery land that I am told Piscean people are subconsciously drawn to. Metaphisics justifies my intuition that living near this energy has amplified my already mutable, forgiving disposition, and even before I came to this place to permanently reside, I knew I had something to learn from the stable, grounded, solid energy of the Rocky Mountains.

Many people have asked me and my best friend Carrie why we chose to make such a spontaneous decision to move to a place so strikingly different from all we've known. I have defined my desire to live here (besides the need to humor an incurable wanderlust) as practice in relativity; A need to redefine and promote growth within myself; a practice in the art of faith and trust in the natural flow of things. I can not imagine a more appropriate place to achieve this.

This blog is an attempt to record all adventures, misadventures, loves, pains, joys, lessons, and all other manner of experiences that come from such an endeavor, and to encourage you, the reader, that anything is possible with a dream and a little bit of elbow grease (and amazing friends...and a properly-running car...and some cat drugs...but we'll get into that later.)

Cheers to change and the pursuit of something crazy,
Lea