Further Thinking

I am having second thoughts about what I wrote yesterday. Not the young bull or the chupacabra (I left a light on for them), but the idea that looking for order amidst the chaos is necessarily a reasonable thing. As I mentioned, this is a tactic that works for me because it keeps me alert to opportunities. The ancient Chinese Taoists believed that heaven assigns each person a destiny and gives in each moment the means to move toward it if we so choose, and as long as I don’t get too caught up in a narrow interpretation of destiny, this mirrors my own thinking that there is an action among the set of available options at any given time that is the most advantageous. This implies a certain order that can be discerned with the proper levels of awareness and attention. Of course, my own awareness and attention has led me careening on an implausible life trajectory from writer to editor to designer to publisher to retail owner to acupuncturist—and from suburban Maryland to suburban New York to Baltimore to Chicago to Baltimore to New York City to Baltimore—and while it dawns on me that this range of experiences actually dovetails more than is immediately obvious, the destiny it is preparing me for must be a doozy.

On the other hand, I think of whackjob fundamentalists who mock and thwart efforts to curb global climate change and then claim that the resulting hurricanes are their god’s punishment for whichever of their own personal bugaboos is getting the most media attention that week. This hijacks my whimsical thinking about order and chaos in the personal realm straight to the mental hospital as far as I’m concerned, but I can see where a discerning eye might find a connection.

For the record, I believe in the eventual full expression of potential (genetic, nurtured, taught, practiced, and even stumbled-upon), but not destiny or imaginary pouting deities that punish the world with cataclysmic tantrums.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

The I Ching reports that I will achieve great progress and success, so that’s nice. It also says something about a young bull with wood on his horns, perhaps indicating that the ancient Chinese were not so interested in the MPAA rating system. All I know is that the I Ching, the ancient Chinese, and that horny young bull had better get this show on the road because I am long overdue for some good news. I actually don’t believe in divination or that everything happens because of some inscrutable Cosmic Plan, although it strikes me as a very good idea to live as if I do. Cosmic Plans suggest an ordering force amidst the chaos, and a mind alert for order amidst the chaos is a mind that is ready to make the best out of a bad situation, act when opportunity knocks, and in general pull itself up by the bootstraps. You had better believe that I am on the prowl for progress and young bulls. And, of course, chupacabras, which I do believe in because I encountered this unretouched photographic evidence.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

This chupacabra comes to you live from The House That Is Collapsing Around My Ears. Built in the 1870s and renovated in the 1970s, my house has seen it all. Right now, it is seeing plumbing leaks, mirrored walls, and kitchen cabinets that look like they were installed by werewolves. I spend months addressing one domestic atrocity, and another arises to take its place. “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine,” say the pastel yellow walls. I believe them. I used to think I would like to renovate an old house, but for fun and not out of encroaching necessity and with zero budget. Now I think I would like to build a new house to my exact specifications out of 100 percent adamantium, the indestructible material that Wolverine’s bones are made out of. If adamantium is too fictional, it can be titanium or something. I am not fussy.

Hunger

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, more technical difficulties. Honestly, I can’t swing a dead cat. Well, I could, but then I would get such letters! The daffodil people pale in comparison to the cat people.

How are you?

I have been doing various things over the past ten days, including trips to Undisclosed Locations. One thing I did on the trips to Undisclosed Locations was read the Hunger Games trilogy, which left me wishing I had heeded my overwhelming intuition not to read the Hunger Games trilogy. In case you have been living in the same ignorant cave I was until two weeks ago and do not know what I am referring to, I will tell you. Hunger Games is about a barefoot Appalachian girl living in the future who everyone is in love with even though she is secretly sort of hateful. She goes on a reality TV show that is similar to “Survivor,” except instead of getting voted off the island, she has to kill people with her bow and arrow. Over the course of three books—the first of which is good enough despite being contrived, the second of which features less goodness and even more contrivance, and the third of which is so eye-rollingly preposterous that I wanted to snatch myself bald-headed—she sleepwalks her way along to becoming the most important person in the universe. This is apparently not as difficult as it would seem, since she also finds much time in her busy schedule of killing people to swan around wondering who she should be in love with.

Something I do appreciate about the series is the portrayal of the role media celebrity plays in the political and economic subjugation of the masses, and how this is aided by a misguided obsession with stylistic frippery. In this unholy alliance between the politicians, the media, and the stylists, an appropriate proportion of the blame falls on the former two, while the latter generally come across as at worst empty-headed fawns and at best as manipulators of public sentiment for good cause. For me, the best cause of all was the casting of the gorgeous Lenny Kravitz as Cinna in the movie version, so I am giving them a pass on that one.

The worst thing about the books is the writing, which is terrible both stylistically and as storytelling. Actually, while the style (first person, present-tense!) is bad, the storytelling is fine in the first book, which is how they hook you into reading the second, which lurches gracelessly—almost randomly—from scene to scene. The third is written so indescribably poorly that the only motivation for continuing is the faint hope that something redeeming will happen in the end, a hope that, for me, grew fainter and fainter as I watched the remaining pages dwindle. By the last page, almost nothing is resolved, no one is happy, and only the “ever after” quality of the epilogue is reassurance that that author won’t try to pull a fourth book out of her ass. I think it is fine to write a novel with an ambiguous conclusion, and (SPOILER ALERT) I, myself, am in the process of getting around to possibly doing that one day maybe before I die; it is another thing to not work toward that conclusion in any way and just end the book because you have apparently run out of ideas or patience or time, or think it probably won’t matter anyway because you’ve already made millions of dollars off of the others and the cliffhanger in the second book has already guaranteed sales of the third.

Well, anyway. I’d continue but the pipe under my kitchen sink is broken and I need to turn my attention to that. I shall click on “Publish” fearing that the Hunger Games people are worse than the daffodil and cat people combined.

FRIDAY CHUPACABRA BLOGGING

“Hasten slowly” was Octavian’s motto; mine is going to be “close enough.” Throw it all together in a pot and you get today’s chupacabra. Please realize, I understand that this is not a real chupacabra; it is a cat with antlers. I also understand this is not a real Friday; it is a Thursday night. But these things are close enough. I have a final exam tomorrow, and a haircut. I will not have time to update my blog and conduct DNA testing of mythological creatures for your viewing pleasure, no matter how much you clamor. Let them feast on cake. Let them feast their eyes on a cat with antlers. A sorta cross-eyed cat with antlers, I’m just now noticing.

I am so glad that I am finished studying. You may think I’m yammering on about studying now, but just you wait until I can be bothered to sign up for the national board exams for acupuncture. When I pass, I am going to throw a big party, and you will be invited. There will be cake and a very special guest.

How was your week?

S-s-s-studying

Remember Max Headroom, that stammering 1980s-shaped head that would pop up on video screens? What ever happened to him? I wish he would pop up on my iPhone screen and give me the answers to this final exam. “The-the-the-the-the answer is: D-d-d-damp-Heat in the Bladder!” The phone could technically do that without Max Headroom’s involvement, but I am doing my part to bring down the unemployment rate one washed-up icon at a time. Knight Rider is my scullery maid.

OK, we have now reached the end of what wit I have to spare for you. Tune in on Friday for a chupacabra.

State

I am playing hook hook hooky between studying these patterns of disharmony: Phlegm-Fluids Obstructing the Lung and Damp-Heat in the Large Intestine. Let me assure you that my hypochondria is not flaring up AT ALL. Sike! I have everything! Luckily, half of the patterns I am studying seem to feature “poor memory” as a symptom, so I can use that as an excuse if I fail this final exam this Friday. By Saturday, I will be all “Phlegm What Whozis?” Maybe I am aging backward like Merlin, and I can never remember anything because I haven’t encountered it in the timestream yet. Of course, I do remember the adorable little songs we learned in elementary school, like the one about the grandfather’s clock that fell over and crushed the life out of him and then stopped working itself in a textbook murder-suicide case study, so there goes that theory. Also, I am drinking a lot of kombucha with chia seeds in it, and I think it is time for some more.

Into the Shower

Last night, I saw Into the Woods a documentary about how wishing for impossible things leads to either short-term material happiness or blindness, although sometimes the blindness is reversible, and it can also lead to getting squashed. There was a witch. I don’t know. I liked it, but in the bright light of day, I couldn’t tell you what exactly happened on that stage. It is bright today, isn’t it? I haven’t looked out the window yet.

In other news, Goblin is off having acupuncture as we speak, and I should take a shower and shave so I look vaguely presentable when I perform acupuncture on someone else later. And there is studying to do, etc., etc. Honestly, I am feeling a bit of malaise. I don’t think the things I wish for are impossible, which is even more frustrating than if my greatest dream were to wake a sleeping princess in a tower surrounded by thorns. But I may be blind already.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

Oh my stars, has it been a week since my last chupacabra? I cannot imagine what the problem is lately. I have to get the lead out. Not posting chupacabras is just one aspect of my life that is derailing; I am also not studying Patterns of Disharmony, not writing vital vital essays, and not flossing my teeth. I am weary. I am caught between a chupacabra and a hard place. I am caught between the moon and New York City.

What’s new with you?

Enclosed, please find one chupacabra (male).

Oh, Brother

The play we saw last night was about Grigori Rasputin, that madcap monk whose machinations within the Romanov dynasty inspired the Russian Revolution, uncertainty in the outcome of World War One, and probably the Gillette Turbo razor. This extravaganza was actually not a “play,” but a “rock musical.” I asked Rob what made it a rock musical as opposed to a regular old musical, and he pointed out that the orchestra featured a guitar, an instrument that did add a certain zing to the production but was not quite loud enough to drown out such lyrical atrocities as the rhyming of diphtheria with Siberia. Students of history will also be keenly interested in the revelation of Rasputin’s wild love affair with Grand Duchess Anastasia despite being himself pursued by a miscellaneous prince who looks like Boy George and who later shoots him, stabs him, cuts off his penis, and throws him in a river to drown. Rasputin, of course, survives these indignities thanks to his lifelong pact with famed witch Baba Yaga and goes on to purchase a Che Guevara tee shirt, start a theater troupe, and make a number of existential monologues on the nature of something I would be able to report if I had been paying attention.

The play starts slow, runs off the rails not long after it gets interesting, and lasts two and a half hours. It has gotten critical attention of a sort that called it a “smoldering train wreck” and “a stylish heap of hooey,” but I actually didn’t mind it much. It’s not that I’m easy to please, but I don’t get out much anymore, and the delicious White Russian I got at intermission and a brief shirtless scene went a long way in this instance.

Brother Russia is playing at the Signature Theatre in Alexandria, VA until April 15. If you see it, I recommend getting your White Russian before the show starts, and you can even bring it in the theater with you in a plastic cup.

You Just Might Find You Get What You Need

Well, I didn’t win six hundred million dollars and prostitution is still illegal, so I don’t know how I will afford to replace my ghastly kitchen cabinets and failing appliances. It is true that necessity is the mother of invention, but why can’t necessity also be the mother of my winning lottery ticket? In other news, it is the day of fools and pranks and hoaxes, to which my skeptical nature renders me generally impervious—although if I had a dollar for every time I gave someone a dollar because they found themselves stranded on Charles Street without a bus ticket, those shiny new kitchen cabinets would already be mine.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

Bigfoot and chupacabra are running neck-and-neck in the winning search keywords for this site, although hippopotamus and long finger pointing and moving you are also contenders. I just read the past year’s archives of the Savage Love Letters of the Day, so I realize there are all sorts of imponderable desires out there. If you want to learn about a chupacabra, Google will send you here; if you want to learn about a common by-product of anal sex, Google will send you there.

Falling somewhere on this saucy spectrum are the numerous hits I have been getting from mockthefruit.com, which redirects to a European gigolo website with this enticing copy: “Would you like to have an affair? Maybe you don’t have enough time, or feel you don’t have the opportunities to meet exciting men.” This is perplexing because I don’t know if they are trying to mock me or recruit me into their harem of beautiful stallions.

I will throw this chupacabra into the mix.

A Change of Heart

OK, OK, I like daffodils now. You can stop tagging me in your Facebook photos of that particular flower. To my jaundiced eye they are still hideous, but my heart now perceives their inner beauty, which transcends their outer ugliness and shines like an anus-shaped sun upon the swan-infested landscape of your soul. There is also a rainbow.

Honestly, I have never seen so much carrying on about a flower! Flowers are there to feed bees, which are there to make honey, which are there to feed Winnie-the-Pooh. And Winnie-the-Pooh is there to feed licensing deals and lawsuits. Scientific analysis of this food chain reveals that the daffodil to be an insidious tool of the One Percent.

This was intended to be a semi-apology, but I see it is going south. Dianne says I should DECLARE things instead of being all namby-pamby about them. I declare that the daffodil is still ugly except when it is pretty.

Hope

Good evening. I used up my quota of commas elsewhere today so don’t expect to see any here. Also look at this video and tell me what you see.

I will tell you what I see: hope for humanity. This is not typically what I see when I walk down the street mostly because it is not in evidence but also because I get distracted by calculating odds and rearranging my mental to-do lists and scowling at daffodils and checking out hot guys—and if I am with Goblin there is poop to tag and bag. I should really look harder or with a more forgiving perception because I’m sure that hope for humanity can manifest in some people just as getting out of bed in the morning but that is more subtle and not in convenient YouTube format.

I will explain my rationale. That skinny boy on the spray-painted bicycle is not merely getting from point A to point B. Well he is getting from point A to point B if you consider point A to be the sidewalk and point B to be the top of a roof. But my point is that instead of doing something useful he decided to do something impossible. Why would it occur to him that he could or should make death-defying leaps onto or off of ledges or handrails or parking garages or trucks—the whole time balanced on one bicycle wheel? Because he’s an idiot. Yes. But also because at some point he imagined that the laws of physics and the limitations of anatomy might not be as rigid as they appear . . . and since it is unlikely that the first time was the charm he probably tried a thousand times before he even got the slightest hint that he was on the right track.

I don’t know. People expect Olympic athletes to be able to do incredible things because they have thighs like cement mixers and the treasure troves of Coca-Cola on their side but this looks like an ordinary suburban kid who figured things out for himself without world-class training. Maybe he is an android or a dracula or a CGI artist with time to kill. If he is just an ordinary kid then imagine what any of us can do if we decide our oddest dreams are worthwhile and our perceived limitations are illusory—and try again and again to prevail against all evidence that we were wrong.

Also today I read an article about some guy who got a face transplant so that’s pretty good.

My Weekend, By David

Oh dear. According to the traffic statistics page I obsessively frequently sometimes almost never consult to see if anyone likes me, China has been viewing this blog every few minutes. It’s not as if I don’t love and cherish every one of the 1,350,000,000 Chinese people—I have spent years of my life studying their medicine and my penmanship looks suspiciously as if it has origins in their language—but when foreign countries come a-callin’ so insistently, I wonder if I have either attained Hasselhoffian popularity or am about to be the victim of another tsunami of comment spam. “我喜欢你有什么说,” the comments will say. “点击这里购买 Xanax.” Or, “Er, der die Bucht schaut in Ordnung ist in unserem Buch. Wie wäre es mit Lexapro?” Fame is so exhausting.

I spent today thinking about maybe beginning to plan to prepare for this thing I am doing on Monday. The thing I am doing on Monday is “presenting a patient” to Bob, the founder of Ye Olde Acupuncture School, so in return he can tell me what a terrible acupuncturist I am. Sike! He’s going to tell me I’m the bees’ knees. This little passion play, a traditional and terrifying rite of passage for clinic-level students, is called Bobservation. These are usually witnessed by thirty to fifty people; mine will be witnessed by thirty to fifty people plus an investigative team from the organization that periodically reviews and renews the school’s academic accreditation. So no pressure or anything, but the entire future of the institute is on my shoulders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!

!

My bedroom smells like Goblin’s feet.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

You will be as disappointed as I was to learn that the once-thriving chupacabra movement has languished in my absence. Here, I resort to depicting a paper chupacabra until the species replenishes itself.

Meanwhile, almost every search term that has directed people to this newly relaunched blog involves the word bigfoot, so at least there is some semblance of sanity in the world.

Flowering

I forgot how much I love writing, by which I categorically do not mean hunching over a keyboard and squeezing letters out onto a screen through a narrow and unforgiving sphincter in my brain. Writing is the worst part of writing; the best part is having things in the world strike me in a certain way that relates to other things in the world. Juxtapositions evoke words and turns of phrase that can bounce around merrily, reproducing and evolving, for days until the moment comes to type them out and I forget them all.

Facebook has bastardized this process for me, because for the past few years I have been able to capture ideas closer to the moment of inception, however this quick hit has robbed the world of my delightful ruminations and has generated other trouble besides.

And thus we come to the Great Daffodil Controversy of 2012 (as distinct from the Great Daffodil Controversies of 2006 and 2007). That daffodils are the most hideous thing ever has been well documented here and here and here, and I blame the mainstream media for keeping the population in the dark—although, because I am nothing if not a unbridled optimist, I assumed my Facebook Friendsies would share my evolved views on this subject.

Remember how Fonzie could never say he was wrong? He would be all, “I was wr–  I was wr–,” and Potsie waould say, “You were wrong, Fonz?”, and Fonzie would say, “Yeah, that thing.” Anyway, I, too, have to admit that I was wr–. I mean, I was wr–.

Well, the thing is, I overestimated my audience. Two days ago, while on walking Goblin Foo through the neighborhood, I encountered a specimen of the vile flora and posted, “Daffodils are the ugliest flower.” I arrived home minutes later to at least five indignant responses, which increased to dozens over the course of the day. Even at school, my sacred space was violated by numerous unprovoked challenges to my hastily expressed but commonsensical opinion.

Had my blog been active at that time, I might have been able to expand on my initial impression and juxtapose it with thoughts on the cultural implication of werewolves or the over-prescription of statin drugs, and everyone would have been too dazzled by my brilliance to go scrounging around for the pitchforks

But I suppose prophets are never appreciated in their own time.

DENNIS: That’s a nice gourd.

BRIAN: What?

DENNIS: How much do you want for the gourd?

BRIAN: I don’t. You can have it.

DENNIS: Have it?

BRIAN: Yes. Consider the lilies…

DENNIS: Eh, d– d– don’t you want to haggle?

BRIAN: No. …in the field.

DENNIS: What’s wrong with it, then?

BRIAN: Nothing. Take it.

ELSIE: Consider the lilies?

BRIAN: Uh, well, the birds, then.

EDDIE: What birds?

BRIAN: Any birds.

EDDIE: Why?

BRIAN: Well, have they got jobs?

ARTHUR: Who?

BRIAN: The birds.

EDDIE: Have the birds got jobs?!

FRANK: What’s the matter with him?

ARTHUR: He says the birds are scrounging.

BRIAN: Oh, uhh, no, the point is the birds. They do all right. Don’t they?

FRANK: Well, good luck to ‘em.

EDDIE: Yeah. They’re very pretty.

BRIAN: Okay, and you’re much more important than they are, right? So, what are you worrying about? There you are. See?

EDDIE: I’m worrying about what you have got against birds.

BRIAN: I haven’t got anything against the birds. Consider the lilies.

ARTHUR: He’s having a go at the flowers now.

EDDIE: Oh, give the flowers a chance.

The Return

A Chinese healer who lectured at my acupuncture school taught that the secret of remaining healthy was never to blame anyone for anything, so it is in my best interests not to blame the illegal Xanax and Lexapro pushers who deluged this blog with two hundred thousand spam comments for knocking it off the Internet in late 2009, and in any case it is just as well because I have been occupied with poking surgical steel into people’s flesh, and it would not do for me to be distracted with pointy objects in my hand.

Hello.

Since we last left our intrepid hero (moi), he has not really done much of anything except complete eight ninths of a graduate program at Ye Olde Acupuncture School, sign up for (and drop out of after the first week) a second, concurrent program at Y.O.A.S., and monitor with increasing alarm the deterioration of his house around his ears. He also acquired a roommate, a roommate’s cat, and approximately eighty thousand dollars in student loans; his dog acquired and divested herself of cancer, twice; and his husband has still not divested himself of the stubborn notion that some sort of leprechaun moves the dirty dishes and recyclables he leaves in the sink to their prescribed destinations. That leprechaun (moi) has the patience of Job, but, no, he does not blame.

What’s new with you?

Photographic Evidence

When we last left our heroes, I was telling you about the opening of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. To my utter delight (and a little bit of mortification because I used my trademark irreverent tone to describe our visit), the proprietor of the museum found my blog entry and left a wonderfully good-natured comment. I love Loren Coleman.

Anyway, here are some photographs. Mr. Coleman is the one with his hand on the statue of JWER, um, I mean, Bigfoot. Rob is the one standing next to him on the other side.

The Crypto Keeper

Oh, you thought that just because I am neck deep in graduate school that I would not be bringing you the latest in Bizarro Living? Today, I went to the grand opening of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. I have never been to Maine or to a cryptozoology museum before, so this was a rare convergence of stellar influences. Founded by author Loren Coleman – world-renowned expert on Bigfeet, Loch Ness Monsters, and other camera-shy beasties – the museum is more like a bedroom crowded with action figures and random paraphernalia than a gallery at the Smithsonian. It is also one of the most excellent places I have visited in all of my days, and this is coming from someone who has prowled the pyramids of Mexico, the volcanoes of New Zealand, the geysers of Iceland, the tombs of Scotland, and the ruins of Rome. Oh, I just remembered I need to prowl somewhere in Africa to make my life complete. But no life would be complete without a visit to the International Cryptozoology Museum. If you go, you may well meet Mr. Coleman, a jolly fellow who will attempt to disabuse you of any notions you may have had that the chupacabra is a force to be reckoned with. He is also not a fan of living pterodactyls, the Jersey Devil, and other of Rob’s most cherished notions. In particular, I will never forget the look on my husband’s face when he gathered his courage to inquire about the Mokele Mbembe and was informed that this noble creature was most likely an unknown kind of aquatic rhinoceros and not a surviving dinosaur. People want to look for fanciful explanations for creatures that may simply be unusual mammals, said Mr. Coleman, as if there was an unknown aquatic rhinoceros in every pot. He also said that the Loch Ness Monster might only be a duck or an otter or something, which does not explain the Loch Ness Monster salt and pepper shakers arranged prominently on a shelf. (I’m just kidding: there were no actual salt and pepper shakers. The salt and pepper shakers were implied.)

Possibly because he or she is a mammal, Bigfoot was the star of this show. There was a life-sized Bigfoot inside the front door of the building and a dozen plaster casts of Bigfoot footprints on the museum shelves. There were also Bigfoot hairs and Bigfoot poop less prominently displayed, which was an odd choice because if I had Bigfoot poop in my possession it would be the first thing you saw when you walk in my front door and the subject of every single conversation I had until I die. Also featured was a shelf of stuffed Yeti toys, most of which are based upon the template of Bumble, the Abominable Snowman from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “THE YETI IS NOT WHITE” read a sign on this shelf. If I had to pick a color for the Yeti, it would be a cheerful olive green, but I am not god.

Mr. Coleman and Bigfoot were not the only luminaries on this trip: sharing our train on the way north was Jason Hawes, the gruff host of TV’s “Ghost Hunters.” Jason Hawes was watching a movie on his laptop in the same train car in which I was watching a movie on my iPhone. I don’t know what he was watching, but my movie,Capote, was about the predatory nature of art. As far as I know, Bigfoot is not a predator, and the chupacabra is, and the jury is out on the unknown aquatic rhinoceros.

My Point, And I Do Have One

I just realized I haven’t written in my blog in about two and a half months, which is a lifetime for a world that clamors for my every pearl of wisdom. I suppose we are all fortunate that such a world does not actually exist. Hello, internet! How are you? I am well. Did you know that I completely upended my life and started going to acupuncture school? Six weeks into it, I know a significant percentage of bones and muscles in the human body, fourteen real-life acupuncture points along the Heart and Pericardium meridians, and the mating habits of several friendly crickets that have gotten into the building. One was watching me go to the bathroom the other day, I swear.

A friend, in commenting about my sudden disappearance from the rest of my life, requested that I write a little bit here about what acupuncture school is like. He may be under the impression that I have been whisked away to a secret castle and sorted into Gryffindor, where I am learning esoteric magicks and mystical remedies. He may be under this impression because that is what I told him, but please understand that SOMETHING has to get me out of bed at six-thirty in the morning, and it might as well be the conviction that I have some chance of running into Professor Snape.

Seriously, I could go into what we do, but it may lose a little in the decontextualization. It is, most unfortunately, not Hogwarts material. Five Element acupuncture (our discipline; there are lots of other kinds, too) is based upon the five very basic phases of energetic movement in nature: the gestation, the growth, the full bloom, the harvest, and the letting go. These are also called the water, the wood, the fire, the earth, and the metal; or the winter, the spring, the summer, the late summer, and the fall. While these are, to a large extent, made-up concepts, the phenomena they describe appear to be intrinsic to all life and every situation. The simple goal of Five Element acupuncture is to encourage the patient to experience these energies in a balanced fashion in his/her body, mind, and life experience, because things can get ugly on the wellness front if they are out of balance.

This master’s degree is based upon making that simple goal infinitely complicated by introducing all sorts of organs and muscles and pathways and points and pulses and what-not, so if you want to know where I’ll be for the next three years, look behind a stack of books and flashcards.

Now . . . any other questions? We might as well clear all of this up now because in about two years when my time in the student clinic starts and I have to start generating patients to graduate, everyone reading this is going to be marched at needle-point into my clutches . . . my clutches of healing love.

Sarah Palin Has a Bright Future

Last night, while watching a TiVoed episode of “The Colony,” I realized I have absolutely no survival skills. “The Colony” is a reality television show about how a prescreened panel of overachievers copes with the end of the world by drinking water from the oil slick known as the Los Angeles River. You may not have known Los Angeles had a river, but it does: it’s that empty cement gulley featured in many an apocalyptic media event. In other news, the colonists also made beds out of shipping pallets, showered using only rain water, and performed other beauty-destroying actions. It’s no wonder I would not do well at the end of the world because I’m used to organic cotton sheets, although I think my naturally youthful skin might hold up a little better than the average face if some of those lizards are any indication.

After “The Colony,” Rob and I watched “Paranormal State,” which is becoming less and less describable. It used to be about how that funny-looking guy and his friends investigated reports of haunted houses, but now it’s I don’t know what all. Last night, the team helped a hillbilly family fight off a demon, a werewolf, and a ghostly drag queen in a battle complicated by several conflicting pacts with Satan. It’s nice to know that people in rural America have not lost touch with the can-do spirit that made this country great.

Over and Over Again

Say Cheese

I wonder if I even know how to write anymore.

Well, the previous sentence answers some portion of that question: my fingers still work. I was having a rough time of things, but now, except for some extensively unanswered questions, I feel quite good. I just don’t have anything to say, and I haven’t really cared about anything enough to form opinions beyond my reflexive standbys. For a while, that was a generalized apathy, but now I hope that it is more of a zenlike detachment; whichever, it’s not as if I feel like pontificating, you lucky thing.

One area in which I have caused movement is that I bought a really nice camera that I couldn’t afford because I wanted to see the world in a different way. I took some good photos of people when they didn’t know I was doing so, and I have shots of one or two random flowers. One of the flowers has a bee in it, but it was not a particularly photogenic bee. My designer’s eye allows me to compose things, but I barely know how to operate the bells and whistles of the bloody camera so you wouldn’t necessarily know this from my work to date.

As for the rest of my life, I realized today that I’m waiting for something to happen. Not a specific something; it’s just that certain situations either need to sort themselves out or, if they’ve already sorted themselves out behind my back, they need to send up some smoke signals so I know what’s going on. I don’t think I’m in the waiting mood, however. I am taking steps. I am making decisions. If any of those decisions make things worse, well, at least I can boast that I avoided stagnation.

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Washington State, Part Two

I haven’t felt like writing in a while, which signifies several things in myself but also means that I left you hanging in middle of a story.

We had just seen Person Seven. Person Five posited that it was some sort of bird, but it was not a bird. It may not have been a genetic Bigfoot, but it wasn’t a bird. It wasn’t a deer or a bear. The clearest thing to me was the shape of the creature as it ran: were it just a silhouette, I would have thought I was seeing a jogging human, one elbow sticking out behind it, but the full-body fur sort of throws a damper on that analysis.

Back at the compound we had other things to focus on. I was to attend a writers’ group meeting there that evening, featuring Person Three, Person Five, and a few other persons whose numbers are not vital to the story. This particular writers’ group was formed by Person One’s grandfather (the father of Three and Five and the husband of Person Four) before he died. I think they had sold me as some sort of expert writer and editor because my opinion was much sought after, and the meeting ran late. Afterwards, we all sat in the living room discussing how the meetings used to be. “My father ran these things with an iron fist,” announced Person Five. Conversation turned to the dead father and grandfather with all of his quirks, and never having met him, I listened in appreciative silence until I felt one of the dogs poking my back with its nose. I was sitting in an open-backed chair and assumed that one of the ever-milling dogs was trying to attract my attention by nuzzling my back three times, slowly. I reached out to pet the invading muzzle and banged my hand on the wall. My chair was against a wall, and there was no space behind it for a dog or even a cat. There were no dogs or cats in the room. Before I could say anything, Person Five said something like, “Hmm, there was just a weird shadow behind your chair.” I had seen nothing but explained what I just felt. “Oh, that’s just Dad. He’s still around,” said Person Three. The rest of the family then took turns talking about the footsteps, voices, and full-bodied apparitions manifested by Ghost One since his death a couple of years prior. “He must like you,” said Person Three. Yeah, he must.

Bigfoot and a ghost in one day. When do I get interviewed by Connie Chung? Hey, whatever happened to Connie Chung, anyway?

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Washington State, Part One

According to the walrus, the time has come to talk of many things. I don’t know what that walrus is doing in here, nor what precisely he happens to know about one thing or another, but in this case he happens to be correct. The time has come to talk of the many things that happened on my recent visit to Washington State; that I promised to change the names to protect the living, the dead, and the cryptozoological beasts I encountered should not hinder the tale overmuch.

Last Monday night, I flew into SeaTac airport to visit one of my oldest friends, whom we shall call Person One. Person One lives on a rural compound within easy view of Mt. Rainier with her three-year-old son, Person Two; her mother, Person Three; her grandmother, Person Four; her filthy crazy uncle, Person Five; and her autistic crazy uncle, Person Six. Also wandering around the premises are Dogs One through Three (a series of interrelated pit bulls), innumerable cats, and various other creatures, such as Mosquitoes One through Infinity, that feature tangentially in the telling.

I should describe this rural compound further, and I will, but there is the matter of Person Seven to contend with first. Person Seven was spotted on Tuesday just after noon, as Person One and I were picking up Person Two from nursery school. This was the occasion of my first sunlit view of the area, surrounded by hills and scrub trees, with snowcapped Mt. Rainier looming volcanically over it all. It was also my first sunlit view of Person Seven, who crossed the road in front of the car.

There was a slight pause as it registered, then Person One asked quietly, “Did you see that?”

“It was Bigfoot,” I said. It was Bigfoot, or some other species of Furred-American, although this had not quite sunk in at that moment. Here is what we saw:

As our car descended a decline in the road, a box truck approached from the other direction, about three hundred feet ahead of us. Between the two vehicles (but much closer to the truck, against which it was silhouetted for a moment), a humanoid creature, seemingly between five and six feet tall, ran across the road. It was covered in relatively short fur of one solid color, a dark grayish-brown, and did not appear to be wearing clothing. Person Seven emerged from nowhere on the left side of the country road, from our point of view, and disappeared behind a tree on the right side about three seconds later.

I wish I hadn’t been so stunned by this appearance that I forgot about the approaching truck. As the creature was much closer to it, observing the driver’s behavior in its wake would have been informative. I’m not even sure if the truck slowed down (I know it didn’t stop) because Person One and I were so intent on figuring out what we had seen. “It was Bigfoot,” I said again. There was no disagreement. Person Seven had vanished behind a tree, but it was one of only two trees in a field. A driveway cut between them, and a house stood about 1000 feet back from the road. There were livestock pastures to the left of the driveway, and the grass everywhere was long. Coming abreast of the trees, we could see nothing and nobody . . . even if it had been a regular person or some other animal (as Person Five suggested later), it would have had to have been visible just a second after crossing the road, but it wasn’t. The low branches of the trees were scanty and we didn’t see anything behind the trunks. My current thought is that it dove into the long grass and hid, but that is mere speculation after the fact. In truth, I don’t know anything more than what I have related in writing here and, moments after our return to the compound, audibly to Person Five, who was loitering in the driveway. Person One corroborates all of these details, but I must disclose fully: at the time, I was transitioning off two very strong anti-anxiety medications. Most likely, this fact also colors my perception of subsequent events, however it is significant that a Bigfoot sighting, real or imaginary, is still one of the least bizarre things that happened to me last week.

I wonder what the walrus would have to say about that.

Friday Chupacabra Blogging

You know those moments when something you absolutely didn’t intend to happen has indeed happened, and it’s over, and you’re just sitting there absorbing that, and you just KNOW, down into your core, that you can’t move a muscle, because as long as you sit absolutely still, it sort of DIDN’T happen, like you don’t have to interact with the world in which it happened, but then you eventually have to move because life goes on and also because you have to go to the bathroom?

Yeah, me, neither.

Here’s a chupacabra.

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Rome, Day Seven

DAY SEVEN

We were, or at least I was, still determined to get to the Vatican museum, and this was our last day to attempt that journey. My previous visit to Rome, my ex and I had saved that attraction to the last day only to find out that it was closed and that the stupid pope was holding a mass. As if he owned the place! This time, after a bit of subway navigation, we found it awaiting us.

Father Craig had suggested we find an English-speaking guide, who could get us in for a private tour while avoiding the impossibly long lines, so we promptly engaged a cute American boy who was hawking that very thing. I forget his name, but he hooked us up with a group led by Stan, a laconic George Clooney lookalike who didn’t really come to life until much later, while explaining the artistic treasures of the Vatican. But first, he had to deal with the horrors of American tourism in the form of fawning Texan women who couldn’t believe his English was so good for a non-American (he was Canadian and spoke more intelligible English than they did) and one Angry Man who could not even be satisfied by one of the most significant collections of Western culture ever assembled and kept barking about how long the tour was taking.

The entrance to the Vatican museum is an enclosed space half the size of a football field, filled almost shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists. We congratulated ourselves on bypassing most of this, although not fast enough for Angry Man. We finally navigated our way in and saw all of the loot, including a bathtub (Nero’s) that is probably worth more than the whole of Baltimore, if not the state of Maryland. Each individual item was exquisite, but taken together, these treasures were dizzying if not, on many levels, nauseating. I’m thrilled beyond words to have spent fifteen minutes in the Sistine chapel, of course, and to have had the chance to bask in the works of some of the greatest artists who ever lived. And I also appreciate the fact that a major religion like Catholicism, especially back in the days before easy transportation and communication, needed to create a spectacle worthy of pilgrimage, which would then be glorified throughout Christendom when the reverent souls returned to their homes. But to stand amidst that incalculable wealth, where almost every visible square inch is quite literally priceless, really gave me a sense of what the Protestants were protesting. A church that had been truly interested in spreading the philosophy of Jesus and taking care of the sick and poor, instead of amassing as much worldly power as possible, could have changed the course of history (in a good way, I mean, not in the bloody, violent, tortuous way it actually did).

There’s a difference between capturing the imagination and controlling the mind. At best, I can accept that the generations of popes aspired to the former by building sanctuary worthy of the first of their number, Saint Peter. (And Saint Peter’s actual tomb, by the way, was the most awe-inspiring part of the place, actually radiating a palpable energy I could feel with my whole body, although I’m not sure if it originated from within or was only a reflection of what was projected from without.) But as they began to style themselves as opulent kings rather than disciples of a wise Jewish peasant, they chose to increase and maintain their power by doing the latter. I suppose, if he had a sudden change of heart, the one thing in the way of Ratzinger selling the whole place now to feed the hungry and solve other worldly problems in Jesus’ example is simply that not enough money exists in all currencies combined to do so. But I suspect that his highness is not so inclined, making the Church’s increasing irrelevance to the modern world an irrevocable trend. There’s a reason why literally all of the monks and nuns and a good half of the young priests we saw in Rome were African, East Asian, or South American. “Indentured servitude,” muttered a tipsy Father Craig when I mentioned this to him. Of the stomach, I suspect, and also of the soul.

But I’m a terrible guest, to enter the pope’s country only to complain about it. The Vatican is truly magnificent and, whatever their reasons, everyone in the world should see it in person. It’s just that my cynical mind can’t help but to make connections with another seat of earthly and spiritual power just across the Tiber, the Palatine, which, unable to withstand the forces of history, is now mostly dust.

*

The remainder of our last day in Rome was for the most part lovely. We ate lunch on the Piazza Navarone, site of the famed Four Rivers fountain, and watched the passers-by and the open-air art vendors. Soon after we sat down, however, I made Rob aware of the danger in our midst: a clown wearing a yarmulke and a red nose began setting up shop directly across from us. “A mime!” I warned, much in the tone of Admiral Ackbar’s “It’s a trap!” (Like Admiral Ackbar, I know when things are a trap.) But as in the case of Admiral Ackbar, it was too late. As we waited for our food, we were forced to watch the spectacle of the clown mocking everyone in sight, including police officers and old ladies. Most took this good-naturedly. As I was observing a different culture, it was unclear as to whether the yarmulke was Jewish pride or an anti-Semitic jibe, so I tried not to succumb to what humor there was, but luckily I was too far back from the action for my schoolmarmish attitude to attract his attention.

After our long lunch, we made our last daylight stroll across Rome back to our room. Cognizant of this, I tried to appreciate every step of the way. I also tried to talk myself out of purchasing the snazzy laptop bag I had seen the day before at the Apple Store clone near where we were staying, but powerless against my American consumerism, I knew I was going to do so. While Rob napped, I slipped out and made the transaction, my first entirely in Italian (because, until then, everyone spoke English instantly upon seeing me). Jet-lagged up until our last day, Rob continued to nap throughout the evening as I got hungrier and sleepier (I was tired but couldn’t sleep), and my blood sugar crashed. We had planned on traversing the city once more to a restaurant housed in the ruins of a theater, but once I finally roused him, Rob wanted to rediscover the corner of Pope Joan’s monumental revelation because his previous photos had not come out. Getting hungrier and sleepier by the moment, I was in short temper as I trailed after him, and prevailed upon him to find someplace closer to eat. We got into a short argument and ended up in a wonderful restaurant, on a balcony overlooking the illuminated Coliseum. Other occupants included a strolling minstrel, a guitar player, and a bridal party giving a small reception at a nearby table. The view was breathtaking, and I tried to absorb everything in my last few Roman hours, including the massive plates of food that we had ordered, overestimating our hunger.

One thing I won’t underestimate, now that I am home, is my desire to return to Italy. Despite the fact that it is basically a third-world country tacked on to Europe (mostly because of its wackadoodle political antics, incalculable bureaucratic corruption, and lingering patriarchal attitudes), there are few places in my travels that I’ve felt so drawn to as this classical Disneyland. I know that America’s history extends as far back as Rome’s and is equally fascinating, but the Native Americans, for better or for worse, didn’t leave as much of a palpable historical record. On the other hand, Italy is the land of much of my ancestry. I’ve studied the Roman Empire and can read a bit of Latin, so what is preserved of these entities leaps out at my approach. I meditated on the spot that Julius Caesar was murdered, walked the halls of Octavian’s home, stood on the very mosaic tiles that once supported Cleopatra’s feet (or more likely, those of her litter bearers). In general, I am not a fan of historical preservation as a force of glorifying the past. The past sucked, and being confined by its art and architecture is a way of being trapped in antiquated attitudes and limitations. But there’s something about seeing these ancient wonders and even the religious works, of being reminded of the capabilities of humanity when inspired by various kinds of earthly and spiritual power, that is awe-inspiring. Even that which has fallen to pieces is more interesting in some ways than anything we create today, not because the past is more interesting, but because it was built by people who couldn’t conceive of what would happen to it. No one today expects a shopping mall, for example, to last for two thousand years, and it’s not built to; it’s built to be inoffensive for a couple of decades and then paved over. But Rome was created by hubris, and Romans live under its crushing weight on a daily basis. The builders of the forums and of the cathedrals will live forever because, even when their creations are dust, they can be forever known and appreciated in a way nothing made today ever will be. By feeling an ancient marble column, we can touch two millennia of history and know that, in two millennia, if it isn’t underwater, others will be doing the same, wondering the same things. We can only hope that the future people will be able to appreciate these relics from a position of even greater social evolution, and that the lessons of history will finally be understood. That’s what history is for, and that’s what Rome is for, really.

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Rome, Day Six

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Rome, Day Five

DAY FIVE

We had intended to go to the Vatican museum on Tuesday, but we got a later start thanks to the previous night’s ministrations of Friar Whiskey. Instead, we walked over to the Quirinal toward Piazza Barberini, where we had enjoyed lunch the day before. Today, our goal was skellingtons, notably those bones on display on Via Veneto in Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. The whole thing is freakish, but I suppose we must be forgiving of the people who brought cappuccino to the world. If they want to line their rooms with the skulls and femurs and cowled corpses of dead monks and other random bodies, who are we to argue? (Actually, I don’t know if the Capuchins invented cappuccino, and I don’t even like cappuccino, but are you going to argue with five thousand skellingtons? I don’t think so.)

The church features a series of tableaux made out of human bones, the point of which is apparently to remind the viewer that he is going to die and decompose, and also that there is more to life than the physical. Although, as Rob noted, it’s rather zen, it’s also spectacularly ugly and unpleasantly musty. I was feeling dizzy afterward and we had an expensive lunch across the Veneto. Mine was a caprese salad with a huge hunk of fresh mozzarella. Take that, bones.

Afterward, we felt invigorated enough afterward to walk for miles to the Trastavere neighborhood, which is across the river. This would not have been my first choice for a destination, but Rob wanted to see this quaint area, and in fact, it was quite beautiful; much more laid back than the central part of town. We had Second Lunch at a sidewalk café, and when a thunderstorm threatened, ducked into the Museum of Rome at Trastavere to see some watercolors of Roman daily life in the 1800s. I’m not a big fan of watercolors, but it was interesting to see paintings of what some of the areas we had already visited looked like about a hundred fifty years ago (mostly the same except for colorful peasants lounging around in the foreground). This is also one of those museums that sets up terrifying manikins in life-sized dioramas of days gone by, and the viewer spends so much time being repulsed by the manikins that they don’t notice the other aspects. In general, I would say this was a FAIL, except it did keep us out of the thunder and lightning.

It was still raining when we emerged, however, and unable to get a cab, we walked the two point two miles back to our room, fending off the hoards of salesmen who sprung up out of the cobblestones to sell five-euro umbrellas. I don’t know why we turned them down because we were both soaked to the core, but there was something creepy about the way they materialized and shoved umbrellas in our faces as the first drop of water hit the pavement. The walk was somewhat romantic, but my advice would be to avoid Roman rain if at all possible: the two white shirts I was wearing turned brown upon exposure to that mysterious element, and I’ve been unable to get some sort of greasy fog off my glasses ever since.

That night, we had dinner at a place recommended by Father Craig. Once again, we went late, and my blood sugar was at an all-time low, but I did cheer up a bit over helping Rob decide whether he had just ordered meatballs or baby octopus. They turned out to be meatballs, but the gods of irony were watching, and it wouldn’t be long before they had their revenge.

TRAVEL JOURNAL: Rome, Days Three and Four

DAY THREE

Walk walk walk: that’s what we did on Sunday. That morning, we swooped down past the Coliseum again, this time turning away from the Corso and heading out past the Circus Maximus to the plaza of the Boca de la Veritas. This is the famous two thousand-year-old manhole cover that is rumored to bite your hand off if you tell it a lie. (I’m starting to think that the fall of the empire was not a mystery for the ages.) We were not in the mood to wait in line to test this Judge Judy avatar; instead we hung around the adjacent temples for a few minutes then sauntered down the riverbank toward the part of town that contains the Protestant cemetery. This walled-off park featuring overlapping monuments and lush gardens is so gorgeous that I might just have to convert to some wackadoodle sect of Christianity to get in when the time comes. One end is anchored by an oddly scaled pyramid tomb, and Rob found an unassuming grave toward the other end that we believe was either a gay couple or business partners who were uncommonly fond of each other.

Trekking back through the Avatine toward our bed and breakfast, we discovered first that it was the wrong time of day to eat lunch (the restaurants didn’t open until one) and, further along the route, that there were no restaurants to be found. At all. This must have been the only such route in all of Rome. I was famished when we finally found a seafood restaurant that was friendly to my no-seafood requirements. After a two-course lunch, it was back to our room for another epic nap.

Because we didn’t do much else that day except eat dinner, I will take this opportunity to complain about a few aspects of Rome that have been pissing me off. The first is the shoes. Last time I came here, nine years ago, everyone said that I would be spotted as a tourist a mile off if I wore sneakers, so I purchased a pair of stylish black shoes that gave me blisters the size of asteroids. This time, I went out of my way to buy a new pair of non-sneaker walking shoes and break them in, and when I got here I discovered all of the Romans have changed their tune and become sneaker freaks. All of them. This casualness goes for the rest of their wardrobes, too. Most of them have foregone the fashion of my recollection in favor of looking just as dumpy as I usually do; except I only packed nice clothes and look wildly out of place. I would hate them all except I’m getting some good ideas that I will try and duplicate from the Banana Republic clearance rack.

The other thing is the racket. There is a lot of it, especially when we’re trying to sleep. I bought ear plugs, but poor Rob has been tossing and turning as motorcycle and other diesel motors roar past, tires rumble over cobblestones, ambulances and cats howl their general displeasure, horns shriek, crazy people yell, and jackhammers jack. Of course, if we didn’t try to sleep so much, this phenomenon would be less noticeable, but it’s been particularly hard to get past our jet lag this trip. We slept the rest of the day and crossed town for dinner at a restaurant Rob found on the Internet. Nobody here eats early so we had a twenty-minute wait even after ten o’clock, but it was worth it because I had artichoke pie and chocolate mousse.

We’ve walked about ten miles a day and I’m fatter than ever.

*

DAY FOUR

I know you are wondering how we fit all of these wild frenzies of sleeping, naps, and jetlagging into our otherwise uneventful days. It does get better: I think we only slept for about a half an hour on Monday afternoon. In the morning, we had struck out in a completely different direction, stopping first at a Michelangelo-designed church that has been transformed, at least temporarily, into a mea culpa exhibit honoring Galileo Galilei (the church having four hundred years too late decided that he might have been on to something). We then had an early lunch at the Piazza Barberini and then wandered over to the Spanish Steps, site of what will forever be known as the String Bracelet Incident.

It’s funny that it happened because between myself and Rob, I’m usually the Bad Cop who would have no problem telling someone where he could shove his ball of string, but perhaps I was lulled off my game by being at this intensely beautiful location or because I was not used to being awake during daylight hours. What happened was, as I was taking a photo of an azalea flower, I heard Rob talking to someone and, not realizing that it was some sort of argument, turned around to join in. It turned out to be some guy who wanted Rob to put his finger in a loop of string so he could make him a string bracelet in the colors of Italy. Rob kept objecting and the other person kept insisting. Eventually, he asked me, and I just did it. I don’t know why. As the guy wove the colored strings together, he kept mumbling something in unintelligible Italian-accented English. At one point, he said something about this string bracelet making my wishes come true and bringing me ten children, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to any wish I may have ever had unless these ten children were tied together under a falling piano, but I suppose an allowance must be made for a cultural divide. I ended up paying five euros for the thing, which pissed Rob off because he thought I was being taken advantage of, but really, I thought it was nice and I’m still wearing it. Bad Cop though I may be, I think that it is a good idea for an American in a foreign country to allow himself to be occasionally taken advantage of for the sake of international relations and life experience and colorful bits of string.

After the Spanish Steps, we wandered across town toward the Pantheon. It was an enchanting, maze-like journey through alleys that, while only as wide as my living room and lined with restaurant tables, still channeled thousands of pedestrians, cars, and scooters to their destinations. The Pantheon has got to be my favorite thing in Rome and maybe the world; I wish I could have seen it in its heyday when it still had all of its carvings and before those blasted Catholics had converted it into a church. Of course, I have mixed feelings about it since it was built by Octavian’s general Agrippa, who defeated Marc Antony at Actium and set the stage for Rome’s annex of Egypt. As someone who is generally sympathetic to Cleopatra, it’s hard for me to appreciate the actions of her enemies, Octavian and Agrippa. (Octavian is sort of the George W. Bush of Ancient Rome: they gave him an inch and he took a mile.) But oh my gods, the Pantheon is simply the most stunning thing ever, even moreso because it is so unassuming amidst the other beauties of the city: wander down the right alley, turn a corner, and there it is in its own little piazza. I kept wanting to hug it. The guy who built this knew Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Octavian, and any number of other figures from that tumultuous era, and he was grandfather to the notorious Caligula and great-grandfather to Nero. (Actually the building Agrippa built burned down and was replaced with the current one a few years later, but his name is still on it.) The inside is just as breathtaking if you ignore all of the baroque Christian crap around the edges; the dome is just jaw-dropping with light pouring in through the hole at the top. You simply have to go here.

We walked back to the bed and breakfast for a short nap then pulled ourselves together to meet one of Rob’s high school teachers, Father Craig, who has been living in Rome for twenty years and coincidentally lived just a few blocks from where we were staying on the Esquiline. Father Craig is an authority in Aramaic and teaches that language at university; he also lives and works at an old church that was built over the two thousand-year-old ruins of a Roman market. These ruins, which have never been excavated, are historically significant because they also housed Pope Sylvester I in the days of Constantine in the third century. Father Craig took us on a private tour, pointing out ancient frescoes and mosaics, as well as features that were added later. The church above had apparently been using the tunnels as a dumping ground for centuries, so there were also toppled columns, millennia-old ceiling tiles, and sarcophagi just lying around. From the basement, we went up to the roof for two bottles of wine and increasingly drunken conversation. Craig then invited us to dinner and up to the community’s recreation room, where he lined up four bottles of whiskey in the order of their smokiness and ordered us to appreciate them. We did, as did some of the other monks and priests and whatnot, who wandered in and created a mild cacophony of at least four languages.

Long-time readers will be aware that I have no patience whatsoever for Christianity in any form, but I confess it was a joy to be a part of that fellowship, and that’s not just the wine and whiskey talking. Craig travels the world, has the best Macintosh computers money can buy, drinks like a fish, knows all of the best places to eat, and can maintain a deeply intellectual conversation on almost every topic (skillfully, I noticed, turning said conversation away from those areas he is more fuzzy on). If this is the life of a priest, I want in . . . I’m just going to cross my fingers when those pesky vows of celibacy come up.