truth is stranger than fiction.

Yesterday evening, my boss gave me a ride home because i had a metric ton of paperwork to do for the shop (i am the new accountant, apparently). In addition, i had 2 bags of groceries and a delicate little pot of climbing jasmine. Just call me Pack Mule. i headed for the elevator (normally i take the stairs), super excited to get to my apartment and put all the stuff down, tired after a long day of prepping flowers. Glancing down the hallway, i can see that a girl, also laden down with packages, is heading towards the elevator with me. Great, i think antisocially as i step inside. Commence awkward silence.

i hit the #2 button, and she shuffled in and asks me to hit #3. After a minute of painfully slow ascent–our elevator has always been a little hinky–she blurts, "oh my gosh that smells good...!" and i realize that i'm still holding the jasmine. "yeah!" i say. "i got it for like five bucks at Trader Joe's! They sure know how to get me." And she laughs, while i silently berate myself for over-combating my painful shyness.

Then we begin to realize that we've been at floor #2 for quite a few moments and the door is not opening. i hit the DOOR OPEN button a few times; nothing happens. We smile nervously at each other and i say, "well, if we get stuck in here, at least it will smell good!" Ha ha ha ha, we each offer. Nervous laughter. But seriously. Nothing is happening. The elevator feels dead. i start pushing more buttons, DOOR OPEN, 2, 3, DOOR OPEN again... The lights are not even lighting up on them: the elevator is completely unresponsive. i am starting to get a little scared. "Oh, no. You've got to be kidding me," she says, and leans over to push one herself. Her eyes get wide and she stares at the doors uncomprehendingly. Our eyes meet. At that moment we both realize that we are stuck in the elevator. It's probably been about three minutes at this point, but it's kind of felt like forever.

She puts the shoes she's been holding (some strappy gold pumps) on the floor of the elevator and says pleadingly, "what are we gonna do?" i consider pushing the button with the firefighter's hat on it (CALL), but then decide that i'm being overdramatic.

"do you have a phone?" i reply, suddenly extremely grateful to be in there with someone else (i do not have one). Meanwhile, it is starting to sink in, that powerless and trapped feeling. My legs suddenly feel leaden and weak. We might fall three floors, my brain says to itself matter-of-factly. Shut up! i retort. Panic is creeping in at the edges, and my breathing feels wrong. She is fumbling around in her bag for her cell phone, muttering that she can't find it, she can't find it.
"Fuck!" she says. "Do you know the number for the security office, though?"

i do. Thank lucky stars for my photographic memory right now. Guess we were a good team.

"It's 272..." i wait as she dials with panicky fingers, "...0172."

She holds the phone up to her ear, eyes darting around, as i close my eyes and silently will the elevator not to fall. You'll probably just break a leg, or an arm, my brain is trying to process rationally. "Wait, is it 619 or 858?!" She has dialed the wrong area code. "Oh, it's 858..." i say, trailing off. This is like a Three Stooges routine. i begin to get used to the idea of being stuck in this tiny space with a complete stranger, one who actually might be more scared than i am. And, i am realizing how fortunate we are to be in a building with only three floors. Sweet.

Before anyone can answer the line, though, we hear the blessed ding!. We look at each other, incredulous, as the doors slowly open. i look to make sure that we are not between floors or some such ridiculousness, but we have somehow made it to floor three! i leap out, and tell her that we're at her stop. She smiles, in a daze, and hangs up the phone as she steps out of the elevator. i tell her with great relief and sarcasm that i'm taking the stairs down a level, and she says "have a good night!" i wave goodbye and we are each alone again.

Later, after my extreme case of the jitters (hello, adrenalin!) had worn off, Nat and i went to a friend's house to watch The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (bloody brilliant film, that). During Japanese food beforehand (smoky noodles, green tea, banana sushi and mochi aftewards), the conversation suddenly turned to strange afflictions such as the ability to squeeze one's phlegm out through one's tear ducts (i knew a guy once), people who bite their nails down far that they begin to actually eat their own fingers (this is true, sorry :/), and children born with no mouths (so, teeth and gums completely exposed), at which Nat and i both started, because last night i'd had a bad dream:

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in the first scene, i was staying overnight at a ramshackle hotel in some sort of grungy western ghost town, right by a railroad track where each night a train loaded with terrifying people who'd had their lips eaten off (by who or what, i didn't know) would begrudgingly tease and seduce us to their cars for gallons of potable water (for some reason our hotel had none); the man i tentatively approached held the water out to me then quickly took it away, over and over, until finally i had to be bold and grab for it, at which point he made a point of touching my hand with his– something i had not been aware that i was avoiding. He gave me a bitter smile and i broke free and ran away pell-mell with my water.

Later in the dream i was in one of the topmost floors of the same hotel (except now it was all clean and pristine and white and i believe we were in Tokyo) with Nat and our friend Allison. We were unpacking and getting ready for bed when a huge earthquake struck. Our building began to rumble and shake, then sway from side to side, more and more each time. i screamed and Allison tried to console me: there, there, heather, it's just a bad earthquake. everything'll be okay.
No! i screamed, and bolted for the other room to find Nat. This is for real!
i tried to run to him, but when i got to the couch i had to grab it so i wouldn't fall over. i could see him on the other side of the room; white as a sheet, trying to use his own body to counteract the swaying, to keep the building from toppling. i joined him in this motion desperately, keening, until suddenly the building began to crack and break apart to our left and i realized that the whole top of the building was falling off. We were going to die. As the world collapsed all around us and we raced toward the ground, i looked to him and screamed at the top of my lungs over the roar and chaos and falling walls and furniture: i love you! but then i lost sight of him and as the debris whirled and screamed and weighed down all over me, i had no idea how long it would be until we hit home and then i tried to take one last deep breath (why?) but there was no air anymore, it was like being in a vacuum.
Then i woke up.

i had initially attributed them to lingering worries over the situation in Japan, but who knows? Maybe we are being told, all the time, what the future holds, only we don't yet quite have the capabilities to decipher these messages. Beats me.

i want to break free

...Just returned from a ski weekend in Big Bear. Lovely place– lots of carved wood grizzlies and guys in trucker hats. Also notable: pines, pines, pines. The lake sparkled, the snow was man-made, and the aching joints and sore muscles are real. Haven't been downhill skiing in twenty years! Madness. Be back soon with more interesting things to say.

halloween wrap-up.

As Halloween approached, i realized that i was completely and totally uninspired, for the first time ever. No costume seemed at all appealing. Tragedy! Finally Nat suggested that i dress as a fairy (which of course i practically do every day as it is), and immediately i knew that that was it.

Years ago, i did this, and it worked well. All i did was make a wand (a piece of curly willow covered in glue and then sprinkled with glitter), cut some ivy and leaves from behind my building for a head garland, and wear some twee clothing from the farthest recesses of my closet and drawers. (Oh, that was the year that Nat wore a huge kabuki wig, long black trenchcoat, and self-made frightening black-latex-covered surgical mask. We were quite the pair.) At the time, the thought of wings didn't even occur to me. This year, though, it was foremost on my mind.

Images of the flower fairies (above) swirled around in my head, but so did Oona from the movie Legend. Not likely to pull off that hair, though:



What i ended up with was a so-so amalgamation of these two aesthetics. My skirt, while frayed, was quite a bit longer than hers; i powdered and glittered my face to the hilt, and Nat drew curling vines around my eyes and temples with green eye pencil. i wound a long piece of ivy around my body, and grabbed every wired butterfly i could find in the house and attached it somewhere. Made another wand, and grabbed my small bottle of fairy dust (just glitter in a cute, tiny bottle) and tied it around my waist with ribbon. Easy peasy.

The wings, on the other hand, proved to be a bit more... involved than i'd surmised. Following this basic template from Threadbanger, and modifying a bit along the lines of this video (which is much more palatable to watch with the sound off) these babies certainly tested my patience at times. But i just wanted to show that it is definitely doable (please excuse the bad photography):





~Bent 4 wire coat hangers. (Note: if you use thick wire instead, you will have much more shaping freedom. i was going for a dragonfly look, so the hangers were perfect.)
~Stretched one knee-high hose over each and tied them off. (Took a chance on these shorter ones; they were the cheapest, but they absolutely fit! Although, i wish white had been available instead of beige. Color-wise, they ended up a bit darker than i'd wanted.)
~Stared at them, unhappily, for a couple of days.
~Electrical-taped the wire ends and figured out how to attach the 4 pieces satisfactorily.
~Spray-painted them green. (Used this method because we had spray paint at work, and because no green tights could be found anywhere. Alternatively, you can hand-paint them if you have the time.)
~Spray-glittered them. (Don't be stingy, now.)
~After a failed attempt to paint veins on a test piece of stretched hosiery, i made a stencil and laid it over each wing, then spray-painted with silver. (This was very trying, as i used thin cardboard and the paint wanted to meander underneath the stencil. Pushpins in strategic places helped, but only a little. If you can, use something pretty substantial for your stencil.) Then i did the other side of each, too, because i realized that that would be the side visible to anyone looking at my directly. However this caused strange, see-through, incongruity issues because i only had the one stencil. Whatever. i'm not perfect.
~Using a stick of lit incense, made some decorative holes. This was actually really fun, but i wish i had done it before the spray-painting. Probably not the best thing to be inhaling.
~Added some glue/glitter accents and waited for the whole thing to dry.
~Wrapped the unsightly midsection with ribbon, then affixed my gigantic-est butterfly to cover it all up.
~The night of the party, i forgot to bring extra ribbon for arm loops, so i had to just use the dangling ends of the pantyhose (thank goodness i had not cut those off yet!). It was not ideal, but ended up working great.

Only downside? Walking through a crowded apartment filled with other people wearing costumes.

Let's just say that i spent a lot of time on the back porch. And walking sideways.

In conclusion: i hope this inspires someone for next year. It felt really good to make everything, and to not spend $45 at a crappy Halloween Superstore filled with dudes on the prowl for wigs and smoking jackets and girls looking for 'sexy' nurse/maid/pirate/devil/cat costumes.

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A few more photos from the night.

Next year: Dia de los Muertos! Sugar skulls, altars and marigolds... i can't wait.

My boss brought in a bunch of branches of silver-dollar eucalyptus that she scored from a neighbor's trash bin. i was removing it from the back of her van when a tiny glint of crimson caught my eye, shimmering in the dusty light. It was a tiny hummingbird, stiff and still and lifeless. Did that glimmer, that great color, cause me to have a burst of energy? i felt it, and sensed it.

So, something from nothing.

i wanted to bury him (her?) that night, under the meteor shower. Instead it was cloudy and we stayed in. i will inter that tiny body under dirt that weighs ten times more than it. The color will go dark, and feed the worms who will nourish the soil that will spring up flowers, full of nectar for the next little hummingbird.

dreamscapes.

Last night i dreamt of a spider killing a chicken... it was huge, horrid, brownish-yellow spider and the chicken was someone's pet who was returning home for the evening. It flapped up to the person's bedroom windowsill, and the spider saw its chance and sunk its fangs into the chicken's right leg. The poor thing flapped and then fell, slowly, [as if in a dream] to the ground below. It was pitch night, and we were on a farm. i just happened to be smoking a cigarette outside and watched, horrified, as the whole thing unfolded. The chicken floated downwards and the spider fell with it. As i watched, the spider turned into a froglike creature with iridescent blue and green hind legs. When they hit the pine-needle-covered earth, the spider/frog creature dug in, tearing great big chunks of flesh from the chicken's legs. i couldn't watch anymore, so i turned back to the house.

There were five or six small boys there, all playing with matches. They lined up to show me their amazing and daring feats... the first (and smallest) boy bowed his head and concentrated intently on lighting his match. Once ablaze, he watched it burn, holding the match below (and dangerously close to) his face. i started, and pulled his hand away from his head. Never hold a match like that! i yelled at him. He looked upset, and i showed him how to light it away from his body, and hold it aloft so that he could view the flame safely.

Weird, eh? (To say the least).