For some reason the ink from my pen flows more freely when I'm on vacation. Whether my muse is awakened, or I'm so unoccupied that I have nothing more pressing to do than write is beyond my powers of speculation. But let my reassurance suffice that I am not always on vacation, even though my most thorough communications come from parts of the globe I don't normally inhabit. (A brief aside: the life, in Santa Fe, of a graduate student is not wholly unlike vacation, I will admit. Perhaps the reason my dispatches from the southwest are not more forthcoming is that my muse is pretty distracted by the likes of school, work, etc. In short, as idyllic and far removed from the 'real world' as my life is here, it is still my everyday life, and I seem to be busy enough living it without devoting the added expenditure of time to describing it to people like you, whom I love.)

So the wheel of Fortune-- the four wheels, rather, attached to a Honda Accord-- have brought my boyfriend, Adam; my dog, Cally; and myself, Megan, even farther southwest than we already were to an unknown town called Bahia de Kino, on the coast of the Mexican state of Sonora. Besides a trip to Mexico when I was 11 or so, and of which I for some reason have utterly no recollection, but which my mother assures me took place, I have never visited this fascinating country. We departed Santa Fe at around midnight on Monday-as-it-became-Tuesday, full of exuberance. Of course, by the time we hit Albuquerque (50 miles down the road), Adam had converted the passenger seat to a bed, and I spent the next several solitary hours singing to myself every song I've ever learned, in the attempts at warding off sleep at the wheel. At sun-up we were both snoring at a rest stop in Arizona somewhere, making it to Tucson for breakfast and a check-up at a vet for Cally, who needed certification of her good health before crossing the border. This crossing took place at Nogales, which, according to my trusty Lonely Planet guide, is the easiest, most convenient place to cross. There's also the least chance for corruption among immigration officials at that crossing, which, well, you know-- take your relief where you can get it. We whizzed on through. Without a second glance from any immigration official, crooked or straight, we found ourselves transported instantly from Nogales, Arizona to Nogales, Sonora. [This experience was not repeated upon our return to the States. After waiting in a vehicular line for over an hour, we reached Border Control who proceeded to pepper us, for some reason, with lots of questions and suspicions about the dog food in the trunk.] Don't let the similarity of Nogales nomenclature fool you for a minute; we were brought to another dimension. Adam, stoutly at the wheel, negotiated our way through jam-packed streets organized by no discernable lanes or laws. Colors, sounds, and smells were vivid-- we in the front seat watched, rapt, while Cally in the back sniffed enough for all of us. The less pleasant aspects of the shock and nervousness soon wore off, and the thrill of an excited observation remained, and remains now as I write this while waves crash and pelicans dive-bomb into them before me. [Waves are no longer before me as I type this-- I'm transcribing from a notebook. Right now I'm looking at some whining Santa Fe children at the next table in my local coffee shop.]

A six hour tour through country which can only really be described as barren, hostile to anything but cactus, interspersed with a few funky towns, brought us to Kino. Bahia de Kino, a seafood scented, poor but seemingly happy, pardise by the sea. Thanks to our St. John's friend Lalo, we were let in on the accomodations of the century-- the exotic Islandia. For $45 a night we have our own house, not eight steps from the beach. Our own house! Complete with its own playa-facing porch, bathroom, kitchen, table, chairs, deck furniture, and a few pet cockroaches, all for the price, as Adam wisely pointed out, of a motel room on a bleak midwestern interstate. It has been rather difficult to find a more exciting topic of conversation than the luxury and inexpense of our good fortune, even three days after our arrival. Which is just fine-- there's not a thing wrong with sounding like a broken record as long as you and your interlocutor are perfectly giddy doing it.

So our time has been spent, as you may imagine, loafing about, rolling around in the highest hedonistic pleasure like a certain dog rolls around in dead ocean creatures in the sand. The schedule, with variation each day only in the order, consists of waking around seven (having fallen into bed around nine the previous night), walking on the beach, tossing the frisbee, reading on the porch, swimming (Cally's favorite), sunning in the sand, and then repeating the whole routine until it's time for a shower and dinner. The seafood is exquisite-- broiled fish with onions, tomatoes, and chilis; shrimp tacos; ceviche; margaritas with fresh lime juice whose glasses more resemble serving bowls in volume. Then the day is wrapped up with a Tecate on the beach, watching the sun sink into a darkening ocean, leaving, for a few moments, a fiery orange and purple horizon.

After four lovely days of this, we packed up and headed back north. The next night we spent in Sedona, which boasts utterly gorgeous red rock formations (the picture of Cally out the car window), and an utterly irritating culture consisting of shopping and spas. We very intelligently arrived in town on Memorial Day weekend and nary a hotel reservation. (One kind La Quinta clerk put us in his last room.) Next morning we drove a couple hours north to the Grand Canyon, which neither my words nor my pictures can justly describe. Having given you plenty to read, and hoping you'll still browse the photos which follow, I'll leave off here. Those of you who have visited the Canyon know what I'm talking about, and those of you who haven't, well, there's an idea for your next vacation! Sorry, too, for the random order of the photos-- the G.C. shots are first on the list, even though they were taken the last day. Enjoy the best you can.

Some musings on being 25 and about to enter the "Career World," whatever that means. The career of my choice, I THINK, is teaching (high school English), and here are the seemingly insurmountable roadblocks thus far encountered in my job search. So, I've got some impressive degrees (as long as you don't look at my undergraduate transcripts too carefully-- hey, "C's get degrees!"), and have a minimal amount of experience. Well, if you describe tutoring community college students as experience, then I'm an old hand. However, if you're like every prospective employer for whom I've already labored over a cover letter, then this is not how you'd define experience. Ok, so fine. No experience. But tenacity! Enthusiasm! A crazy love of reading and writing! Responsibility! These are things I have in bulk! Is a C.V. really all that matters in this world?

As the prospect of moving to Washington D.C. has recently been brought to the table, I have begun the search in this new area. Which is probably for the best even though the weather is total crap in D.C., for I've already milked Portland dry. (As I told Adam-- moving partner-- just today, I can find the Employment Opportunities link on a website faster than you can fire off a rejection email.) I came across a list of schools (and no, aspiring-English-teacher competitors I will NOT tell you what they are), every one of which is hiring one of what I want to be. Discovering this the other day in my Dad's office who was in the room at the time, I groaned. Three months ago I would have been gleeful and confident (12 schools hiring? What are the chances of NOT getting a job?!). Dad said empathically, "The good news is, they're hiring. But the bad news is, they're hiring, huh?" Well said, oh Father Mine.

So, I suppose on that note, I should go and start the arduous process of writing some more smarmy cover letters. Any tips, those of you with great jobs?

Tomorrow morning I go home to Santa Fe. I would like to point out the word "home" referring to Santa Fe. Which is funny, because I can't wait to move somewhere new in four and a half months! Not to mention I have no idea where that will be! Not San Francisco, and not for a long time. I love it here-- what a beautiful fucking city!-- but you can't go home again they say. Maybe I can't come back till it's no longer home. So... maybe D.C., maybe Portland, probably not Spain. Maybe somewhere I've never even thought of. I wish I were on my own computer so I could enclose pictures. That would make entries more interesting. I shall be back tomorrow afternoon, and none too soon.

Here we are, our first time in New Orleans. This was a year ago, pre-Katrina, and the city was just gorgeous. Green and viney, with lots of ghosts. Cally liked sniffing the gutters on Bourbon Street. How do I get this picture by my name so it's always visible?

I hope my wide readership (if I decide to tell anyone at all about this blog) will not be turned off by the melancholy of my very first entry. They will not always be like this! But yesterday I had my first real exposure to human mortality, and my head would just be too unforgivably plunged in the sand if I didn't face it.

Walking from my father's car to the front door of the convalescent hospital, I found a row of women (no men for some reason) sitting in their wheelchairs lined up behind the wide glass sliding doors leading to the lobby. They looked as if they were waiting for the door to open so they could make their mad dash of an escape, but then the door would open to a periodic visitor like me, and they wouldn't even see their opportunity. Their eyes were open but I don't know how much they really saw around them at all. Perhaps the contents of their minds' eyes were far more beautiful. Speaking of not seeing, I walked right by without a glance back. I must get in to see Papa, I excused myself.

Grandma stood in the hallway outside his room, beaming as I approached. I hugged her and tried to prepare for Papa, a man once virile and stoic. From photos and stories I have gleaned facts about his past; he was second in command of a submarine in World War II. He was a mechanical engineer in a naval shipyard. He fathered two children, and grandfathered three. In his retirement he drove a beheamoth motor home to all states but two. Now he needs two people to help him stand up, and one to help him eat. I want to protect his dignity and not reveal too much about his condition and emasculating limitations. But I also don't want to hush up the unpleasantness just to keep our comfort levels intact. When reading about learning disabilities in preparation for my job (tutoring L.D. students at the Community College), I came across an interesting point. Healthy, "normal" people look at disabilities as if they will never have one. The implication being that, we all WILL have one. So, this is my goal in showing some extent of Papa's infirmities.

He lay on a bed bound on the side by metal bars. He used these bars once or twice to push or pull himself into a more comfortable position. I also imagine they would stop a person from falling out of bed. He looked tiny and frail. He sank into the bed and his skin hung off him like thin papery cloth. But he smiled! And he chatted and smiled again, and make visible and arduous efforts to laugh at my dumb jokes. I wanted to touch him a lot. I wanted to want it. Grandma kept doing it. But this was a man who never made any advances toward physical affection in my whole LIFE! Why should he want it now? I kept putting my hands on his shoulder and arm and hands anyway. I needed to know and feel him. I wanted to have this touch in my memory; maybe someday I will need to refer to it. I have other impressions in my mind-- certain qualities of his face and demeanor which were recently acquired and which it hurt to see. I will keep them. But as it was time to leave I leaned down and he gave me the small hug of a person who can barely move. "I love you," I told him, trying to swallow the ball of grief in my throat. He said back to me for the first time in my life, "I love you, too."

I sat in the car and wept, wondering if I would ever see him again, cursing my fear and sadness. If he could have such an attitude, then why couldn't I, twenty-five and healthy? I called Claire and sobbed a bit, but had to go follow Grandma back to her house, so I stanched the tears and wiped my eyes. The last thing Grandma probably wants to see is me blubbering after one brief visit.

Later, driving back to San Francisco, I was listening to a book on tape I gave to Dad for Christmas about Buddhism. Once, when Buddha was having a discourse with the people of one village, a woman clutching a child charged to the front of the crowd. "Give me medicine for my child," she command him. "I have a cure," Buddha told her, and an incredulous murmur spread through the crowd. What is this cruel hoax, people wondered, for anyone could see that the child was dead. Delirious in her grief, the woman did not see, and would not give up the little corpse. "You must find a single mustard seed, but it must come from a household where no one has ever died." The woman ran off to begin her search. At each house she asked first for a mustard seed and only as an afterthought asked if anyone had ever died under that roof. But each family said yes, a family member had died there. She began to listen to their stories about lost loved ones. Some wept and some were able to laugh about their stories of the distant and irretrievable past, and soon the woman forgot to ask for a mustard seed at all. The mother was exposed to so many stories about the dead, she was able to detach herself enough from her delusions and see her child in his real state. She began to see it is the inevitable state for everything alive. She went to a field, buried him, and let him go. "All compound things are impermanent. With mindfulness, strive on."