thanksgiving restrospective

this picture was taking on thanksgiving morning at my new home, The Sassy Shack. After my roomies, Paula and Naomi, and I realized we were all wearing blue hoodies, we decided to take a few pictures.

A Decade of Thanksgivings

1998: Sioux Falls, SD

I don't remember much, okay anything, about this Thanksgiving. To be honest, I am not even 100% sure that I was in Sioux Falls. There is a slight chance that my family and I drove up to St. Cloud, Mn to spend the weekend with my mom's niece and her family. All I know is that this was the last Thanksgiving I spent with my mother, father and brother to date. I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.

1999: Whittier, Ca

I was a freshman in college at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I drove down to So-Cal with one of my crazy roommates. I spent the weekend at my Aunt Amy's house in Whittier. I was stoned for most of the weekend. I remember eating lots of food and listening to Radiohead on my Discman. I went to Hollywood one evening with my cousin Teo, his girlfriend Valerie and their friend Johnny Socko. We ended up going to several different clubs and getting really drunk. The details are a bit blurry, but I do have a vague recollection of being in the backseat with Johnny at the end of the night and having to tell him to leave me alone. My cousin and his girlfriend were in the front seat and didn't really do much to acknowledge the situation.

My aunt sent me off with a few joints. I had a really awkward ride with my uncle to meet my housemate. He is a man of few words. I don't think we exchanged more than a few sentences during the hour plus drive. This probably would not have been such a big deal if I wasn't stoned and super self-conscious. On the drive back to Santa Cruz, my housemate and I were in stop and go traffic for several hours. I convinced her to let me stick my head out the car window and take a few puffs off of one of the joints that my aunt gave me.

2000 Whittier, Ca

My friend and housemate Lauren flew down together. Lauren is terrified of flying and I had her nails digging into my arm for the entire flight. My uncle Tim picked me up at the airport. On the way to my aunt's house, we talked about politics. George Bush had just been elected. I think I said something about not seeing a huge difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. I didn't have much to back up this statement, except for that I was a second year college student surrounded by radicals and trying to figure out my own beliefs. 

My cousin invited me to go out with him and his friends again, this time I said no. I stayed at Lauren's family's apartment in L.A. the night before we flew home. We ate sushi and hung out on the roof of her apartment building. Although we didn't start hooking up until a few months later, there was still quite a bit of sexual tension between us at this time.

2001 Palo Alto, Ca

I decided not to go down to So-Cal this year. Instead I spent the day with my friend and housemate Julia (pronounced Hoo-lia) and her family. They made tamales. I interviewed her mother for my Spanish class. Hoolia got really embarrassed because her family talked lots about pets they had buried during dinner. I thought it was hilarious. I decided to drive back to Santa Cruz that evening. I had the house to myself. The heat kept coming on and made the shutters to the sliding glass door make all sorts of noise. I got kind of spooked out and had a hard time falling asleep.

2002 New York, NY

My friend Sarah and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We were both in New York doing internships for school. We had lucked out and found an amazing space in a central part of town, right above a subway stop even. The only downfall was that her bedroom doubled as the living room. 

We had all gone out the night before. I was sharing a bed with Jeff, a friend visiting from California. Sarah was sharing her bed with Neil, another visiting Californian. Sarah was working at this Internet cafe in the East Village. She always had to work long hours and was only getting paid $5 dollars an hour under the table. She was supposed to be at work at 6am. She kept hitting the snooze button on her alarm, which meant the radio went off every 5 minutes, blaring booty jams. Along with this, the unpredictable radiators kept turning on and off, making lots of noise and spewing hot water.

All of this made it hard to sleep. We got up fairly early and decided to make french toast. Jeff stayed behind to try and get some more rest. Neil and I navigated our way around the huge supermarket by our place, which was quite bumpin' on the morning of Thanksgiving. We had decided to order some pot through a delivery service (very new york). When we got back from our shopping adventure, this guy showed up to deliver the goods. We were still making breakfast. He sold us an eighth of weed in a plastic container with Bob Marley stickers on it for $100. We offered him some french toast, he politely declined. 

In the afternoon, we took the subway over to Devlin's grandma's house. Grandma had other plans for the day so we had to apartment (and the very small but well stocked kitchen) all to ourselves. We spent the next several hours drinking mate and preparing our Mexican-inspired Thanksgiving feast, which included beans and rice and roasted vegetable and mashed potato enchiladas.

A few friends came over. Mostly folks that we knew from California. And my Australian co-worker, Illie. She was a little drunk when she arrived and was taken aback by how "civilized" my friends were. I think she was surprised we weren't all wasted and was a bit embarrassed for showing up drunk. 

We ate and played dominoes. I remember at one point saying that I had no idea where I would be living in a year. That felt scary and exciting.

2003 Portland, Or

I had just moved to town a little over a month ago. I was living in a house in Northeast Portland with several friends from South Dakota and a guy named Joe. We had decided to have a vegan thanksgiving. Unfortunately Morgan had gotten really drunk the night before, and she was the main one planning the feast and I think she was too hungover to enjoy it. We had other South Dakotans come down from Seattle and up from California. Our friend Dave missed his flight. Somehow he managed to get a ride to the bay area and our friends drove down to get him. I had just adopted a cat, Mister Sister. He spent most of the day being freaked out and hiding under the bed in Ian's room. I remember laughing a lot with Kim and her friend. 

2004 Pichilemu, Chile

I had been traveling with Sarah and Breagan for a little over a month. We ended up in Pichilemu, a small beach town south of Santiago, because we wanted to go surfing. We had had our first lessons with Elvis, the Chilean surfing instructor, the day before. We had gone out to dinner that night. Sarah and I had ordered the same thing, which ended up being super cheesy. Sarah had diarrhea most of the next. She opted out of going surfing that morning. 

That evening we went out to a different restaurant. It felt like after being together for a month straight, we didn't have much to say to each other. I think we were all feeling a little homesick. I was also concerned about my health because I hadn't had a good bowel movement in over week. I would head to Santiago to seek medical assistance a couple days later.

2005 Portland, Or

I was living at a house called the Squirrel Ship. My housemates and I had invited a few folks over for dinner. I made squash soup. My friend Rachel who had just moved to town came over late and I was kind of upset/disappointed. Frannie came over later on with pumpkin bread. We played line picture line picture. I am pretty sure Finn and Morgan were there too.

2006 Portland, Or

I was getting ready to move out of the Squirrel Ship. We had another feast. This time Frannie was living in the house. Our friend Kari came over with a lentil loaf, stuffing and at least one pie. I made butternut squash and millet cakes as well as a baked acorn squash and apple dish. Tuesday was there. So was Chelsea. Chane came over later. It was cold and we walked around on the front porch. We played Apples to Apples.

2007 Olympia, Wa

My original plan was to spend the day at my friend Finn's house. But then Frannie had received an invitation to a Spanksgiving extravaganza in Olympia. I had had a difficult couple months and decided that getting out of town would be really good for me. This caused some ripples in my relationship with Finn but we have managed to work through it.

We left for Olympia on Thursday afternoon. I hadn't seen much of Frannie lately and we had a nice talk on the way up. About mental health. About making (and not making) decisions. When we arrived one of the first people we ran into was a mutual friend from Seattle. There were lots of people there and the majority of them were drinking alcohol. 

The feast was delicious and we did a go around before we ate. We all said our name, where we were from, what dishes we brought and what animal we were most like. I said I was like a bear, or a whale. The evening was a bit debaucherous. Some people were wasted by dinnertime. We never even got to dessert that evening. Later we had an impromptu dance party and I read a children's book with a group of people before going to bed.

2008 Portland, Or

This year my new housemates and I decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner at our house. It also doubled as our housewarming party, since 3 out of 5 people have moved in in just the past couple months. We spent all day preparing food and listening to music. I took a lot of pictures. We paused from preparing to conduct a ritual for the new moon at 11:55am. We all wrote down wishes for the next month. We chose one to read aloud and then burn. I smudged everyone with sweetbrush. We held hands and hugged. It was special.

Everyone came over around 4. It was a little overwhelming to have so many people show up at once. We were almost able to fit everyone at the table. We did a go around where everyone said there name and one thing they were grateful for. We also acknowledged that the original Thanksgiving was based on genocide, colonization and appropriation, and that we want to recognize that while also acknowledging that we are re-creating this day for ourselves.

After dinner we played line picture line picture and celebrity password. At the end of the evening we ended up cleaning up the house so well you could barely tell we had hosted a gigantic feast. After everyone left, Naomi and I put in Harold and Maude but she started falling asleep so we turned it off. It was an epic and delightful day. Perhaps the best Thanksgiving yet..

Siren Nation Festival

I have officially moved into my lovely new home, aptly named 'the sassy shack'. my room is coming along, still deciding whether or not to paint it...

My new housemates are lovely and overall, I am really happy to be here. I experienced a short bout of insomnia, i.e. waking up at 4:30 in the morning 2 days in a row and not being able to fall back asleep, but fortunately that seems to have subsided. 

Last weekend, which feels like a million years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop entitled "Start Your Own F*cking Writing Career", facilitated by Michelle Tea. It was part of the 2nd Annual Siren Nation Festival and it was completely free.

I wasn't really sure what to expect. I've seen Michelle read before, at the Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco, and I've read "The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America", her first book . To be honest, I appreciate all the amazing organizing she does, but I am not always wild about her writing, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

She started off the workshop by reading an article she had written on starting your own spoken word event. Michelle was one of the co-founders of Sister Spit, a lesbian-feminist spoken word collective that started in 1994 in the bay area. The ladies of Sister Spit eventually took their show on the road, going on a month long cross-country tour, bringing 13 writers and performance artists (and a roadie) with them in 2 vans. 

Although the original Sister Spit has now disbanded, Michelle has recently started Sister Spit: The Next Generation. The next crew of seven fabulous writers and artists is hitting the road in April 2009. You can check them out on myspace, www.myspace.com/sisterspitnextgen. 

The workshop ended up being really fun, informative and interesting. Michelle spent most of time answering audience questions. She is a witty and charasmatic person. It was exciting and inspiring to hear about her life and the process she has gone through to become a full time writer/organizer/artist and to be able to collectively pick her brain with fellow Portland writers and queerbos for an hour and a half. 

I mean, the woman co-organized a nationwide spoken word tour before internet and cell phones. She is teaching a beginning fiction class at Mills College right now even though she herself does not have a college degree. And she has recently started her own non-profit, RADAR Productions, so she can continue to organize literary events in the bay area and beyond with the financial support of grants and state funding.

She did have some words of wisdom to share, her main point being that if you want to be a successful writer, you have to put your writing first, always. before your shitty job, before your shitty relationships. She also emphasized the importance of building a literary community and putting your work out in the world as much as possible, which is one of the main reasons she and Sini Anderson created Sister Spit in the first place. 

The Siren Nation Festival itself was really well organized and had quite a variety of cool things to check out. There were musical showcases on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Wonder Ballroom, films being shown earlier on in the week, free workshops in the afternoons on Saturday and Sunday and a craft fair on Sunday afternoon. Some of the other workshop topics included; canning and perserving, building a rocket stove, electronic music, zine-making, and much more. This was the festival's second year and it appeared to be quite a success.

Word Stock, a weekend long writing festival, was also happening this weekend, but between moving and attending Siren Nation events, I wasn't able to make it. Oh well, there's always next year. I am so grateful to live in a city with so many amazing people putting on such fabulous events! Yeah Portland!

bittersweet beginnings (and endings).

Oh dear world. I don't even know where to begin. It has been ages since my last confession. I returned on Monday evening from a glorious trip to Vancouver, B.C. I love that city! I had so much fun and left feeling like I could have stayed much longer. My friends and I arrived in the evening on Thursday, to a delicious Ethiopian inspired birthday feast prepared by Milo. The dinner was in honor of my dear friend Frannie, who turned 33 years old on October 30th. Dessert included cardamon butter cookies and rose flavored ice-cream. Appreciations were shared and my heart was warmed.

 Highlights of the weekend included; morning stretch parties, lots of singing and sharing of yummy food, some dancing, a delightful walk on the beach, checking out the Wham! Feminist Artist Exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery (aka the Vag). We were also able to attend a samhain (pronounced sow-en) ritual on Halloween. I have never been to a ritual before and was quite impressed by the intention and energy put into the event by the folks organizing it. 

A lot of time was spent explaining what we were doing and unfortunately we were unable to do everything they had intended. Some folks returned later on in the evening to finish the ritual, but my group was not a part of that. We were able to participate in a spiral dance, where everyone in the group held hands and moved around in a circle, pausing to make eye contact with each person. This was a very powerful exercise. 

Two of the organizers had gotten married in a giant blanket fort earlier that day. They spent some time talking about their situation. The bride is a Canadian citizen and the groom is American, and their main impetus for getting married was so that they can live and make music together. They initiated an exercise where we all wrote things that were holding us back on pieces of paper that they created a chain out of. Then we broke the chain. This was meant to symbolize that although they had signed a contract with the government in order to be together, in their hearts they refused to limit or confine their love for each other.

After the ritual there was a potluck/party and it took me a while to transition from a more spiritual space into party-mode. I felt pretty ungrounded for a while and ended up buying a bottle of wine. Not that this was the most grounded decision but it did feel nice to get all warm and fuzzy. My friends and I ended up going to a queer dance party. We had to stand outside for a while, waiting to get in, which gave me an opportunity to show off some of my newly learned thriller dance moves. The dance night itself was rather anti-climatic, but we were able to get in for free, thanks to a generous genius with a bottle of black eyeliner. And there were some amazing costumes, including two monsters from Where the Wild Things Are.

Lack of sleep, the bit of alcohol I had drank the night before and the random combination of foods I had eaten left me feeling pretty haggard and out of it the next day. The morning was spent bumming around the house we were staying at, doing yoga, making breakfast. In the afternoon we all piled in Milo's car to get donuts. Although I was tempted, I opted out of the donut feast which in the long run, was a really good decision for my already compromised digestive track. After the donut run, we went to the ocean. It was rainy and beautiful. Huge maple leaves fell onto the sand. We examined a beached jellyfish and gathered rocks. 

That evening we hung around the house. Made dinner. I went to bed early. The next day we went out to breakfast. Prepared for the dinner party that evening. We decided to make enchiladas. Enjoyed the sun breaks by taking walks in the park across the street from Milo's house. The dinner party went well. I got to see my dear friend Max. Ate more delicious food. Including espresso chocolate cupcakes which made it harder to fall asleep.

On Monday morning Paula and I said our goodbyes and headed south. Crossing the border before 10am, we decided to stop at the highly recommended Olympus Day Spa on our way home. There we spent several hours wearing nothing but shower caps and bathrobes; alternating between hot tubs, the dry and wet sauna and rooms of sand, salt, charcoal and jade. We poured mugwort infused water over our naked bodies, read magazines, ate delicious soup and shook our heads in disbelief that all of this was real. 

Unfortunately after all of this, we spent the next 2 hours in out of rush hour traffic between Seattle and Tacoma. Although we felt relaxed and rejuvenated, this was still a trying experience. We got drove into Portland a little after 7pm. 

Being in Vancouver was a delightful experience for many reasons. Good food, good company, you can never go wrong with this combination. Even though being with a group can be trying at times (I fully admit to extreme crankiness around the time of the donut mission), I really enjoyed spending that much time with friends, really feeling like part of a family. 

I am in the process of moving, yet again, and a huge part of why I am letting go of a wonderful (warm) house with a beautiful piano, nice people and great location is because I want to be part of a team, part of a family. In my new home each person makes dinner once a week. There is a chore wheel and shared food. A free box. A garden. When I have spent time with my soon-to-be housemates we talk about politics as well as self care, about being queer, about thriving as well as surviving.

I spent a lot of time in Vancouver questioning my decision to move. Because I like the house I am in now. Because change/transition is always hard. But this move is my why of deepening my connections with the people in my life. I want more intimacy and vulnerability in my relationships. I have spent the last several years getting to know and understand myself better. Healing my heart. I am ready to let people in again. From this moment on I commit to being an active participant in life, to being fully engaged with the world.

On Tuesday evening, the American public and the electoral college elected a new president, Senator Barack Obama from Illinois. I was at home, doing some organizing in preparation for my upcoming move when I started hearing cheers from outside. Jinny, my housemate, hollered up the stairs to tell me that "they" had just annouced that Obama had won the presidential election. Shortly after that, fireworks were exploding outside, more cheering. I wanted to hug someone. I wanted to be held. 

I also was really fucking tired and just wanted to sleep. I spent some time before bed in my room, noticing and honoring the emotions I was having about the election results. Realizing that part of me has been entirely shut down ever since it was announced that Bush "won" the election in 2004. Ever since the war in Iraq started. 

Its going to take some time to adjust to having a president elect who I can relate to. who i can believe in. I don't think that Barrack Obama is going to solve all of our problems. I don't think we are ever going to go back to "the way things were...". But, like Mr. Obama, I am hopeful for our future. I am also scared of what's to come.

I am also trying to navigate through feelings of disappointment and devastation around all the anti-gay measures that passed. Proposition 8 in California. The Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban in Arkansas. 

I am relieved that voters in Colorado and South Dakota rejected proposed anti-abortion laws. 

I am doing my best to remain hopeful while being realistic. Being cynical/apathetic is an easy pattern to fall into. I am committed to moving forward. To continuing my quest to find what it is that I believe in. And from there, asking myself what I am willing to sacrifice/let go of to move towards this goal..