It's Christmas on Guam...

To save me from the fate of spending my first Christmas on Guam eating hard-boiled eggs alone in my apartment, a colleague of mine invited me to his annual Christmas gathering.

The thing about Guam I am quickly figuring out, is that everybody knows everybody, and chances are, it's because they are related.

That being said, I was still surprised to arrive at a family gathering to find out that I was attending was actually a very large, seemingly public party, held at the regal, cliff-side estate (above) of one of the better known local patriarchs, who owns a beer distributing company on the island.

There were large outside tents decorated with lights, a live band (or at least, one guy who spent the whole night singing on a stage on the side of the property), a sprawling front-yard parking lot lit by stadium floodlights and attended by a group of 12-year-olds, who had either been stuck with the task of chauffeuring the many attendees parked in the far away regions of the property, or were just incredibly fond of the golf cart someone had loaned them.

There was a roasted pig (left) and the governor (apparently), a mixture of people who looked like family and people who were clearly not, like myself, and the young white guy from D.C. who is heading up the 2010 census on the island.

When I asked my colleague (I will call him "Jojo Santo Tomas") about the gathering, he said something about "65 first families." I thought maybe it was like, a Guam heritage thing, until he explained that no, in fact, it was literally the 65 families that made up his wife's side of the family. Apparently, her mother's family had 11 kids, who had among them 65 (or so) kids. Hence, the tents, the parking, the copious amounts of food, and well, the everybody.

It was pretty fascinating for me to think that the gathering, a veritable who's who of islanders, was actually one extended family reunion.

Other than that, the party was lovely, and much like parties everywhere, I talked to a drunk guy, who seemed to have story to tell me, but then forgot it, and then refused to carry on the conversation until I had seen the movie Avatar.

Toward 10pm, I found Jojo, who was busy in an large, open-air kitchen. There were still trays of unfinished desserts, main courses, a half-eaten pig and appetizers lying about, but he showed me a fully baked, brand new ham in a roast pan. Apparently they used to make sandwiches with leftovers for the second-wave of gorging, only for it to become a tradition on its own, thus requiring a ham.

Jojo started chopping and deep frying it, while a couple of women sliced open reams of Hawaiian rolls, still attached to one another, slathered on mustard and mayonnaise while shaking themselves to the music of the band.

Being a vegetarian, and somewhat sick with my usual Christmas plague, I couldn't actually eat the sandwiches. But I still enjoyed watching Jojo deftly slice and fry, and was reminded of my own somewhat smaller and quieter -- which is sort of a feat given my family -- holiday gatherings.



And it was nice.

the view from the tower...

It may be the wall-to-wall commercial radio that plays an endless rotation of songs about drunken girl brawling, suicide games and cartoonish sexual longing, but I think I might be getting into Bob Dylan.

Having previously scorned all Bob Dylan songs because the sale his album of contemporary hits at Starbucks deeply offended my post-college ideologically purist impulses as a member of the proletarian barista class, my change of heart stems mainly (entirely) from the one song I heard this weekend about tarot.

The song was introduced to me not accidentally, as it features lyrics about the moon, and swords and Kings and Queens, the burning of Eden and the Tower, evoking obvious tarot interpretations, that or Christian religious revelation, whichever.

I started reading tarot cards after I graduated college, having ganked a deck of Victorian-themed cards I had bought for a former friend with whom things were not working out.

At first I read for myself -- timidly laying out the cards in repetition while trying to read into them the things I wanted, only to find out that no, actually, tarot does not just tell you the things you want to hear. It then turned into sort of a party trick; it allowed me to both avoid social interaction, and gain access to the intimate details of the lives of people I was otherwise too awkward to make conversation with.

And then, I don't know, it became a habit, a frame of reference, and later a kind of shorthand for the things in my life I couldn't quite express or explain any other way.

Certain cards became stand-ins for people -- the Sun, the King of Wands, the Emperor, the Dilettante.

I could quickly sum up other people's convoluted emotional dramas with pat phrases: the "slutty girl" card, the "first date" card, the "boon" card, the "wandering up the hillside by yourself" card, the "doing stuff you're not supposed to be doing" card, the “orgy” card.

Cards whose more esoteric meanings had been lost on me at 22, suddenly became clear as I walked my way through those experiences you think you understand until you actually have them, and realize, that yes, it's just like everyone said it would be when you rolled your eyes at 15.

I got lost in the rituals of labyrinthine institutions (the Hierophant), tried to be the change I wanted to see through sheer force of will (Temperance), and when that failed, I tried more rigorous methods (Justice), and repeatedly had to move myself instead of the mountain (Death).

The Tower, however, is a card that I always understood, even in the first days of experimenting, probably due to my proclivity for burning down my life every three to four years.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Tower, it is best explained as being less like death and more like an earthquake -- a shattering force that cannot be reasoned with or controlled and must be ridden, down to the bottom of the burning rubble pile, to see what is left.

Its emergence in one’s life usually has to do with the destruction of things we cannot maintain, whose collapse is inevitable.

Like a forest fire that, you know, renews the soil or something, I've always told myself this was a healthy and natural process. And like that other song that appeals to adolescent girls everywhere, I have always found the jumping to be easy, and falling fairly fun.

This has never sat well with my boyfriend, who has always had a less cavalier attitude toward change, especially the painful and destruction kind (go figure), than me.

I met him when I was 22, as I was assessing the Rest of My Life working amongst the dusty tottering bookshelves and the rotating cast of grungy post-college wanna-be hipsters, whose ranks I had just joined at the Strand bookstore.

He was 23-year-old slouching former film student, still recovering from dashed college aspirations and coasting into the surreal world of adult disappointment, unable to grasp the grinding day-to-day reality of being untethered from the hopes of what would be, for more concrete tasks, like reorganizing window displays.

He was the first person I recognized as a person, someone who was not just an object to be scrutinized, but with whom I would actually have a human relationship. And, as I told myself when we briefly passed each other pushing Strand carts down the crowded aisles, I would have an affair with him.

I remember that I used that phrase exactly, in my mind. I still wonder why, because I didn’t have affairs at the time, let alone with boys. Maybe a day later, when I learned his full name, an honest, no frills Anglo-Saxon name, I thought to myself, "I'm going to marry someone like this."

I have told this story many times, somewhat apocryphally, with a twinge of irony and a sly smile, but I still believe it, I think.

Because from then on I chased him, and he dodged and occasionally came my way, and then changed his mind often enough to keep me interested. And I kissed him often, in parks and on corners, and in the rain and the back of the Strand.

And the first Towers I received in readings from circa 2004 had to do with him. But even as far back as those days, he was part of my Plan. He was my only plan.

I moved away; I came back. We moved in together, and survived New York apartments, unemployment and crazy retail bosses and temp jobs, bed bugs, cockroaches, film school roommates, anarchists and academics, each other, and, until now, my propensity for jumping off things.

I've burned down things before -- things I knew I was too young for, things I realized I never wanted, things I knew would never be mine -- but it has never occurred to me, until now, I think, that there could be important things, things that we are meant to do, that might not survive the ashes.

I still don't wholly believe it.

Last year, he and I ran into a gypsy on a subway car. We assume she was a gypsy because she looked vaguely Eastern European, and also spoke a language I didn’t recognize to what we presumed to be her daughter and grandson. Plus, we had just seen that Sam Raimi movie about gypsy curses, so, it seemed likely.

At any rate, she offered us palm readings, after Keith volunteered to help her redesign her home-computer-made psychic reading flyer, advertising “tarrot” readings and other illuminating psychic services.

For some reason we acquiesced, and there on the subway car she told him things he had heard before, about difficulties and strife, and overcoming challenges, after which there would be celebrations and parties. And she told me things I assumed she thought I wanted to hear: that I was still learning, was particularly sensitive to the need for the sun, and that I was going to move someplace tropical.

He last prediction, which I dismissed out of hand, and to which Keith scoffed disdainfully, "she can say whatever she wants..." was that I would be married in a year.

Things in my life have worked out differently than I have expected in almost every way possible, and none of my Plans have really ever worked out the way I wanted them to.

But, now I am living on a tropical island, and learning new things, and actually enjoying the sun.

So, at least for now, I am going to believe that there must be some truth in gypsy palm readings, and in those flashes of insight we have, even when we’re too young to know what they really mean.

The flame tree

Not to be confused with the native and almost extinct fire tree, this is one of the many flame trees growing around the island.

According to wikipedia, the knower of all things, they are native to Madagascar, but grow well in tropical locations around the world.

I noticed them because they are often barren, making me wonder if all the island trees had been stricken by some terrible disease, or if Guam experienced a tropical autumn I was unaware of.

Not so, someone explained, they just bloom after it rains and then immediately drop all their leaves.

Also, they are pretty:

because I have always been fond of institutions of higher learning...

I visited the campus of the University of Guam today.

I've been there before, but I was extremely late for what felt like a very important appointment to photograph Japanese dolls the last time, so I forgot to take pictures.

Today, I was in a little bit less of a hurry.

The campus is surprisingly far from the downtown centers of activity and commerce. It sits on a cliff on the far west side of the island, I think -- I can't really tell direction on the island.

Not having gone to like, an actual school where people learned useful things (non-useful things, however, abounded) I think I've always felt like the most valuable aspects of institutions of higher learning tend to be the aesthetic appeal of the architecture and/or sculptures, and the availability of places to lie on one's back and look at the sky, leaves of trees, etc.

By those standards I would say UOG definitely gets a pass, plus bonus points for the view of the ocean.

Hagatna at night

I took this tonight from the top of the hill at Saint Vincent's friary. It's a view of Hagatna and Agana Bay -- you can see Two Lovers' Point way off in the distance, and in the very far left corner, that building that says "DNA" is the building where I work.

a summary

My friend Judi (hi Judi) found me on skype today, and we had a long conversation in which she enthusiastically peppered me with questions about my life on Guam.

As I have thus failed to provide any thrilling accounts about my daily life here, I thought I would indulge Judi (who may be the only person who finds this interesting) with a summary of my time here to date.

So, I live in a pretty normal apartment complex (above).

My favorite thing about it, besides being a place I can sleep and afford the rent is the plumeria trees outside my building. (below) I didn't know anything about plumeria until I wikipedia'd it about five seconds ago, but, apparently, they are indigenous to tropical and sub-tropical areas of the Americas, have spread to tropical locales all around the world, including Hawaii where they are used to make leis, and are poisonous.























My apartment is a fairly normal suburban unit - I have carpeting, an air conditioner and a place to hook up a washer and dryer, if I were ever able to afford one. (Not likely).
















I also have a really awesome veranda, or something, that I never use due to the fact that it seems, of late, to have been colonized by a couple of reproducing spiders. But the view, when I enjoy it, is a lovely scenescape of jungle and a few wayward chickens who seem to have moved in.
















My kitchen (below), however, feels like a palace. I have more counter space than I could have ever dreamed of in New York, a stove and more cabinets than dishes, which makes the fact that I don't have a dishwasher tolerable, as I don't own very much stuff to wash.
















I still spend a very large amount of time baking (see below), because it is pretty much all I have to do in my apartment, as I have yet to invest in furniture (also below).








































I do have a bed now, however, compliments of a very nice guy I work with, who gave me a mattress he had in storage. It kind of didn't occur to how weird that sounded, that I had a random co-worker with a mattress in storage until just this instant. But then, this guy lives in a shack in a jungle, being one of those free-spirited world travelers who eschew all things material (including, I hope, the internet).

At any rate, yes, all the worldly possessions I have are stacked delicately on a few cardboard boxes I have left over from my purchase of kitchenware in my mostly empty living room. I'm sure at some point I will get furniture, but right now it seems like less of a priority than say, buying a plane ticket to Thailand to see my little sister.
















Oh, and also, making car payments, as I am now the proud owner of a mostly working Toyota Echo, which I have to drive to work in downtown Hagatna (below).































And yes, I realize that is mostly a picture of a parking lot, but it is also, incidentally, downtown Hagatna.

feasts and saints...

I took this photo last week during the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the annual procession in front of the Hagatna cathedral-basilica.

All the villages in Guam have catholic feast days to honor their patron saints.

In this case, thousands of people show up outside the Hagatna cathedral (downstairs from where I work) and walk the statue of Santa Marian Kamalen, the patron saint of the island, around a circular route of a few city blocks, while singing songs and reciting rosaries (or something like that, my understanding of Catholic traditions is particularly lacking.)

It seems that the statue is a stand in for the Virgin Mary, and the fiesta marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season for Catholics (pretty much everyone).

Local legend says that the statue of the saint, which is this somewhat small wooden figure adorned with real human hair (it's donated, apparently), floated onto the shores of the island on the back of two candle-wielding crabs, sometime during the Spanish-forced conversion of the all the local inhabitants to Catholicism. This is, apparently, just one of several origin stories related to where the statue came from, according to the above very helpful link from my new favorite Guam history and culture encyclopedia, Guampedia.

In any case, the statue seems to originate from the Philippines, and could have sunk with a Spanish galleon off of the coast of Merizo, where it was supposedly found three hundred years ago.

Being somewhat fond of ritual, with my undoubtedly misguided proclivity for mystical thinking, I was intrigued by the event, and lingered along the edges of it for a little while listening.

As I bopped between crowds of families huddled under umbrellas in the half-rain of mid-afternoon, I found myself reminded of my life in New York, running around at protests between armies of puppet-wielding anarchists, liberal moms and dads pushing strollers, moaists in jaunty caps and those guys who always seem to wear the same orange anti-torture t-shirts.

Despite the somewhat different objectives, it seemed that at least on a surface level, the two kinds of events, one a gut-wrenching yell of opposition against forces too large to be embodied by a single person, the other a call and response of soft hymns repeated back in old tongues and newer ones to venerate the icons of a God too large to comprehend, were achieving a similar effect.

In New York, when I was still new to the whole protest scene, before I knew exactly what it was I was protesting or how exactly the aims of the demonstration would achieve the ideals I had set forth to realize, I rationalized my participation by realizing the greater good, generally, that can be achieved by putting people in a space together, to commuicate, share and organize.

I liked that protests made people walk -- and made businesses shut their doors, out of both lack of patronage and perhaps a healthy fear of rioting. I liked that I talked to people I would never have talked to before, and that streets and lampposts and garbage cans and corners, when used as vantage points and lounge chairs, took on a significance they lost when simply passed by the tsunami of daily traffic.

Even as other, more concrete motives drew me further into my work with grassroots media and activist organizations, I think it was that larger idea that motivated me to continue.

While listening to crowd sing Catholic songs on the streets together last week, I got that same feeling I got during the best moments of protest.

On island where so few people walk anywhere anymore, even the effort of making a trip of a few blocks on foot seems to be a revelation. And, instead of the sidewalk in front of the cathedral being filled with a handful of Japanese tourists undocking at scheduled times of the day, there were people gathered together, families, long lines of school girls in matching blue uniforms, current and former choir boys, some still clutching their own miniature saint replicas well into middle age, people with heads bowed, people repeating prayers or talking, people waiting impatiently in lines to march.

And instead of the silence of the humid empty air, I heard something older, something deeper -- a communal cry recalling a shared space beyond K-marts and car dealerships and empty streets.

Or, well, I think anyway. I'm new here.

'People of Guam You're Still the One'

I pass by this sign every day on my way home -- it's located at the mouth of the road to my apartment complex.

I'm told that it's a leftover from one of the last governor's races -- which one I am unsure. Although, I guess there are a limited number of options since it's from sometime in the last decade.

At any rate, I haven't been on Guam long enough to figure out exactly the ways in which this is ironic.

Still, next year is an election year, so I expect I will shortly.

the things we pack...

I got a box -- six actually -- in the mail this week, belatedly from New York.

My boyfriend (whom I love and appreciate deeply for all the hard work he did packing) sent these boxes a few days before he finally got out of our apartment in Brooklyn.

Some had been hastily packed by me -- others by him.

For my part, what I decided to send, versus what got left was always going to be a bit of an arbitrary process. Some of it depended solely on what fit in the box; other stuff made it through simply because I didn't want it to get thrown away or end up languishing at a box at our respective parents house.

Still, having spent more than a month away from the things that I decided I needed enough to send them across 7,000 miles of ocean, I couldn't help but be a little shocked by the ill-fitting pieces of my life, as I unraveled them on the floor of my empty apartment.

There was an odd assortment of clothes, some long-missed, like my favorite blue dress, a purchase from a midwestern department store that always made me feel pretty, during the most dull and most Important of moments, a pair of well-worn pajama pants that are too hot for Guam anyway, a stained frilly shirt I am not sure what to do with, underwear, which is always useful. Others were less missed than aspirational: fancy shirts that I never quite had the heart to where while working office jobs in New York, which I will no doubt have use of in Guam, a vintage green 1970s top that I meant to put back in the Goodwill from whence it came, but did not.

There's my pair of laced up leather boots, which I really meant to throw out because who needs winter boots in Guam, but they remind me too much of Xena Warrior Princess, and days spent wearing torn stockings and inappropriate skirts to temp jobs to be able to do it.

There were books -- things I'd read (the book on SDS organizing in the 1960s, something on the philosophy of morality, a tarot book), things I haven't read (Mark Twain, Hunter S. Thompson, that really long book on racism that I've been meaning to get to) and things I will probably never read but wanted them with me no less (Ulyssess, a zine on anarchist organizing, an analysis of sexuality in Emma Goldman's writing -- I tried on that one, I did.)

I found the self-published 70s book on herbs (thanks Maxine) called "Let Herbs Do It", right next to the self-published 70s book on actual doing it found years ago on the dollar rack of the Strand (thanks Keith).

And lest any of us forget my propensity for self-reflection, there were the host of journals I have kept -- or at least the ones I have carried around with me -- in different notebooks, and in different hands as I have gotten older.

I found a blank notebook of Strand paper, which I used to lift injudiciously from the front desk when I worked there, the King Arthur baking sheet I got for my birthday this year (thanks again Maxine), which is much lighter than the actual King Arthur baking book that I had to excise from my luggage before coming here, and which I hope to be reunited with at some point.

And there were all sorts of papers in enevelopes -- collected over the years in lieu of journal entries, because, well, I'm prolific where these things are concerned. My favorite collection is a manilla envelope labeled: 'Shitty Corporate Temping 2004-2006', which is awesomely specific as far as titles go.

It's not like I've actually forgotten any of this stuff. It's all mine. It all shuffles around in the back of my head the way all the things we own do.

Now that I have it though, I feel compelled to do something with it, or add to it, and it makes me think of everything else I have left behind. And it occurs to me that it might have been easier had it all stayed in a box somewhere.

But then, things have a way of finding their way back to us, I think, until we are ready to let them go.

the only Joan Didion essay I have ever read...

was posted in a link on gawker this morning.

When I read this at the age of 21, and only at the behest of a non-fiction writing teacher in college, I rolled my eyes and wondered what all the fuss was about, and I think I skimmed to the end, and wished someone would give me something to read that MEANT something.

And then I moved to New York, chased a boy around the Strand, and kissed him in the rain, and was broke, and broken hearted, occasionally. And left and came back even more broke. And worked shitty jobs for crazy guys at sketchy retail establishments and glossy temp firms. And discovered the dirty corners of the activists world, which seemed both better and worse than any other parts of New York I had been in, until I was broken for real and done with it. And then decided, at 28, to move to Guam.

And I always thought, at the very least, I could turn all my myriad adventures into a weary-eyed tale of hard-fought wisdom about the way things are.

But, if I had paid better attention in my non-fiction writing class, I probably could have forgone all of that.

I have always gotten the feeling that I am walking through one long series of cliches, which I am experiencing slowly and painfully, one day at a time. This does not help.

But still, it's a lovely essay.

And I'm glad that I came to it, and New York honestly.

A walk to the store...

Even in its most wild places, in the hilltops of forests belonging to national parks, or in under-utilized clear glassy reservoirs upstate, New York, the entire East Coast really, has the feeling of a place where nature has long since been conquered.

It realized this, belatedly, only after visiting my sister in San Jose, after more than a decade not living on the West Coast. This was a few years ago and my boyfriend and I spent a week wandering around the San Francisco Bay area, proudly mooching off my sister's honeymoon absence by crashing in her apartment, much to the chagrin, we suspected, of our new in-laws.

We walked through San Francisco, and visited a lonely and empty beach on a gray day, just next to Golden Gate Park. I think we were hiking up a small hill, looking at juniper bushes and a pond with an Asian pagoda next to it, and I realized I felt this almost imperceptible tingling. It was vague, but familiar, and seemed now and then to be a sort of throbbing, like the air itself was vibrating.

Everything in California felt that way, and had, I realized, informed what I thought the whole world felt like as a child growing up there.

Being fond of anthropomorphizing natural phenomena in all ways, I immediately decided it was the last remnants of an angry, but-not-yet defeated earth god, still reeling from hundreds of years of being pushed this way and that by the settlers who dug for gold, among other things, pillaging natural resources and exploding outward in concentric circles until they eventually built strip malls and suburban enclaves of tiny, identical houses.

This, of course, explains all the earthquakes, I thought to myself. And mudslides, and fires, and droughts, and occasional pummeling Pacific storms. Of course.

And, of course, New York, having long ago killed any remnants of its gods, with skyscrapers and subways trains and the artificially branching networks of apartment complexes and streets, would remain free of those things, if somewhat denser and duller.

Being fond of creatively applied self-justifying mythology, it seemed a good explanation to cover any myriad number of half-baked descriptive theories I have about the world.

In the Midwest -- where no one walks, and life quickly becomes a pattern of moving from house to car to job to car to store to car to house again, where one immediately plugs into a media device and forgets that outside exists at all -- the sky is the only thing that seems left untouched by the blight of Hardy’s and Wal-mart. Thus, tornadoes.

The South, what parts of it I have been in, feel old, but unguarded in an inexplicable way, as if the residents there know they have lost the battle, but go on anyway, in that demurely gothic fashion awaiting the apocalypse, which could come via hurricane, or flood, or ironically devastating slew of coal muck pouring from long ago raped hilltops.

Texas, not quite the South, not quite anything else, felt different. I once spent an afternoon in the hot sun exploring a suburban enclave of Houston on foot. I got lost, almost immediately, after having brunch at a highly recommended, though somewhat obscurely located, diner. The taxi having reluctantly taken me to the outskirts from downtown Houston, I decided to try my hand with the bus system. I asked about four people at various local establishments -- including a vintage clothing store and several tatoo parlors -- and got nothing but blank stares.

I realized that if the crunchy, alterna-retail employees didn't know where the bus stops are, then there was probably little hope of finding one. Still, I wandered, hoping to avoid the $30 cab ride home, and tripped over broken concrete growing up with weeds, and tried to navigate my way through moving streams of air-conditioned SUVs, worlds unto themselves in a city where places had been replaced with the well-worn roads of getting to and from.

Houston represents itself on postcards showing a tangle of downtown traffic, architecturally dull buildings, and a stadium named after orange juice -- a nod, according to a friend of mine who used to live there –- to the unremitting war the city had placed on the snaking growth sidling its way into hard-fought civilization.

Walking along the sidewalks where so few people actually walked anymore, I saw green things sprouting, uprooting concrete and pipes as if in a quietly planned rebellion, which will, someday, I have no doubt, take back the land and overturn the SUVs in a coordinated strike of moss and tree roots.

I'm thinking about Houston, in particular, because I had to walk to the store tonight -- or well, decided to -- because it's Sunday and I am both bored and lacking a car, mine being back at the dealer for the second time in less than a month of ownership (ah -- used cars).

At any rate, the walk from my apartment complex to the very large, brightly lit supermarket is five minutes at most. It's only just up a hill, and then across a somewhat perilous strip of highway, which doesn't have a crosswalk or pedestrian-friendly sidewalks to speak of.

Actually, no roads have sidewalks here. No one walks anywhere, unless they have to. Thus, you will occasionally see a gaggle of teenagers, well below driving age, walking dangerously along the median at odd times of the night, much like in Midwestern suburbs. And I'm sure some people walk in the villages -- where the roads are smaller and more similar to pathways leading between clustered houses.

On the main roads though -- they're all called routes here and have unevocative numbers instead of names -- walking is done at one's own risk, and almost no one does it.

I got offered a ride from someone almost immediately after taking off up the hill, which I declined. Even so, I would have preferred to take my car. It's not just that it was hot and muggy and dark, or that I had to carry my groceries home by hand.

Going outside feels like an intrusion, almost. At the very least, being outside in the unregulated spaces draws a sharp contrast to the spaces where civilization has built walls, or roads, or parking lots and housing complexes. It's not quite the same as stomping around the boonies with a bottle of water and backpack. Those places you know don't belong to you, and the trails are marked, even roughly, to accommodate the fact that you are a visitor in patches still accessible on foot, and you tread warily.

But it's a different feeling to have the wild encroaching upon all the spaces that have been dug out, and cleaned and made to be square and concrete. When you look out the window, it's always there, the ever-increasing jungle, which must be pushed back and tamed constantly, to avoid overtaking even the most staid of buildings.

And the air here feels neither tamed nor as if angrily revolting against foreign invaders. Nature clearly has the upper hand. And outside does not feel fenced out. It's everything else -- cars and the concrete -- that feels fenced in.

People here seem to know that they cannot win against the elements, so they whiz past on highways, headed to shopping malls, or air-conditioned workplaces or homes, as if whistling past the graveyard.

I made it back perfectly fine from the grocery store -- if hotter and stickier. But, I am eagerly anticipating the return of my car.

spiders

I'm afraid of spiders. Really, really afraid of them.

I don't know when it started, exactly. I like to rationalize my fear by telling myself, logically, that I was a small insect in my last life, who met its demise being consumed by an eight-legged predator. But, my mom swears that I wasn't afraid of spiders as a baby, having once casually thrown out that I liked to play with them, now and again.

My favorite book, for years, was Charlotte's Web. I think I read it more times than anything else, until I reached the age where I was reading historical fiction about girls abducted into the wilderness by Indians and Southern gentlemen.

It wasn't until older that I realized that they were terrifying. It may have been from an on-again, off-again relationship with the Lord of the Rings, which were read to me as a child, and which feature a particularly nasty spider.

In any case, somewhere along the way, as I formed my very burgeoning perception of what is real and what is not in my early childhood, I learned to be afraid of spiders.

And not just afraid of them. It became a thing. I once dedicated an entire self-penned monologue, performed by a fellow thespian in my high school drama class, to my relationship with the "phantom" spider that liked to haunt the bathrooms of my house. No one else, apparently, saw the spider. I would, occasionally, during the most inconvenient moments, see him -- definitely a him -- lurking in one of the corners. I have distinct memories of the thing, black and shiny, breathing. Yes, because I could see him breathing.

No one believed me, of course. Other, less mythological spiders also haunted me, occasionally sending me into fits of hysteria that had to be broken by a cliched slap from my dad. If there were a spider in a room, I would avoid it until I could rationally convince myself that the spider had lived out its natural lifespan and died.

If that was impossible, I had to call in one of my brothers to remove it. The removal -- usually involving someone brusquely killing it while I pretended not to look -- never quite worked. I was always left with that creepy, crawly sensation -- the one of being invaded, and being watched -- and being unprepared for the horrors that lurked somewhere unseen.

And I didn't like killing them -- or being responsible for their death. I still don't.

As an adult, I have learned not to see spiders. I have occasionally even behaved myself quite well -- or, at least not freaked out -- when in the inevitable and unsolvable presence of a spider.

I once slept in the spare room of an activist homestead -- converted from a Southern Baptist ministry, in the poor, neglected rural suburbs of Atlanta. There were large spiders, black, and long-legged, but not without the bulbous middle that keeps me awake nights. Six legged spiders -- although not technically spiders -- or those lacking large centers I find less terrifying. Don't ask me why.

It was during the only activist conference I have ever attended, in the deep and humid regions of Georgia. My hostess was a wild and not-unpleasantly aged 40-something activist, with a funky garden and garage that still had pews and that characteristically sloping roof of churches.

Sleeping arrangements were limited. By the time I arrived a handful of anarchist teenagers had taken over the garage, a roaming anarchist videographer slept on the couch in a thong and a t-shirt, and my host's still politically developing daughter -- whom she feared would grow up to be the next David Brooks in protest of her mom forcing her to hold Cynthia McKinney signs along the highway -- slept in the bedroom.

I was relegated to the spare room, which contained little more than a bunkbed and a mattress on the floor. And spiders in the corners, large and black ones, edging in between the wooden wall frames.

I held them at bay for a whole night, with only my good thoughts of socially worthwhile deeds and sacrifices for the greater cause to comfort me.

I'm thinking about spiders for two reasons this week. One, I found myself perched on the side of waterfall this weekend, facing a perilous ascent and possible (though unlikely) death from climbing a 10-foot rock face at the top of 500 feet of sheer cliff, or scrambling up a muddy and dirty path, totally accessible to the uninitiated hiker, except for a brambly patch of nasty cobwebs with a plethora of spiders taking their respite inside.

It's the jungle. It's not like one doesn't expect to see spiders. So I tried. I really, really did, to take the less dangerous path. I made it half way up the hill -- only a few feet really -- on my hands on knees, looking at the spiders in a web above me, aiming for the clear patch of air between me and the gauntlet of webs.

But I couldn't stop looking at the largest of the spiders, a black one, with a painted yellow and red back, lying in wait along the hillside.

After ten minutes of groping my the green weeds in a panicked asphixiation in front of my perplexed co-worker, who had just watched me brave the side of six waterfalls, I gave up.

I slid down the hill, dove in the pool at the bottom of the falls to get the spider feeling off, and then took a deep breath and climbed a wet, rotting rope up the side of the waterfalls. And it was easier than facing the spider.

The second reason I am thinking about spiders, is that later that day, or the next, it's hard to tell with the time difference, I came home and talked to my boyfriend. He is very far away, entertaining himself in New York while I have my adventures here.

He and his friend, either a recovering mormon hipster with an unfortunate h and y in her otherwise normal name, or his out-of-town former internet pen pal from middle school, I can't remember which, had explored the West Village together. He found one of those crystal-selling, incense-burning shops, I think, or imagine, and bought a deck of cards he and I have wanted forever.

It's the animal power medicine deck, or whatnot. And in it are a bunch of cards, sort of like tarot, but that tell your fortune through animals.

Apparently, you can also use the deck for a one-time only reading to give you your nine power animals, which align you with animal soul guides, or whatever. The catch is, of course, that you only pull seven cards. The other two come to you in a dream, apparently, and are the animals that are with you throughout your life's spiritual journey. You know.

The first card Keith pulled was the spider.

I don't know if he has had any dreams about animals since them. I, however, have dreamed about spiders every night.

onward toward banalities...

It might sound odd, but the only thing I really miss here in Guam (besides boyfriends, cats, statues, that lovely feeling of being in the center of the universe while passing through Grand Central Station) is seltzer water.

Yes, I mean that stuff that is exactly like regular water, only it comes in sexy green bottles and is bubbly enough to be able to add it to things like juices and milk to make concoctions that taste almost like soda, without that gritty carrot taste in the back of my throat and the feeling of wanting to wretch from the burst of high-fructose corn-syrup induced mania.

Like any almost-bouegie person living in New York City, I drank a lot of seltzer water. I'm pretty sure the guy at the Mexican bodega in Bushwick stocked it only for me - because I'd buy all the bottles one after the other until they ran out.

But seltzer water is not a luxury they apparently have in Guam. Seeing as most things have to be shipped in via container ships, I can see why most stores probably don't carry it. Still, I've checked every grocery store and gas station that I've been to for something resembling seltzer water. The closest I came was a six-pack of club soda at Pay-Less.

So, imagine my giddiness when I found one lonely bottle of Pellegrino wedged in between bottles of Kirin and Sapporo beer at Island Fresh, which seems to cater to an Asian clientele, with lots of sushi and puffed rice and freeze-dried Japanese products in store.

I'm pretty sure it might be a mistake - a stow-away somehow carted here in the bottom of a crate of beer. The check out girl couldn't find the price tag, and there was no label for it on the shelf. But, I bought it anyway, and now have one bottle of fancy seltzer water to be pondered and savored whenever I decide to indulge myself.

I'm sure there are better things to write about here - but I'm killing time before the very important World Premiere of the new Twilight movie, which I must cover this evening. So this is the best I could come up with.

Also: chocolate chip cookies and geckos (a very, very tiny one).

Sugar cane and boonie stomping

I rode in the back of a truck - an actual moving one - today. Somewhere I know that my mom (hi mom) is shuddering, but, if my little sister can ride around Thailand on a vespa with her slight man-child boyfriend, I must be able to join in the local custom of riding around in the back of beat-up pick-up trucks.

This is, after all, what they do here. I was headed to my first boonie stomp, which is exactly what it sounds like.


You go to the boonies,













you stomp,













wade,













thrash,



















walk past the remnants of latte stones,













go through a little bit of jungle,



















occasionally grapple,



















and hopefully make your way to some kind of particularly gorgeous piece of sort-of-unspoiled wilderness,













where you take off your clothes and sit in the falls to cool off for a while.













On the way back, we were accosted by some friendly kids living in the housing just at the mouth of the trail. They asked me to take their pictures - and offered me some sugar cane. One of the older boys wielded a machete and passed out the treat to the other kids. They showed me how to peel it down, and then bite down and suck out the juices. They also asked me when I was coming back - which I thought was a funny question.

But, maybe they're friends with all the hikers. At any rate, if I can ever figure out how to get to the trail on my own, I might go back and interview them for the kids' publication I used to work for in New York.

For now, I thought I'd post their pictures. Because these kids were sort of adorable.

in praise of knock-offs and painted cows...

Whenever my boyfriend and I visit upstate New York, where he is from, I always ask the same question about why every village seems to have a different-colored painted ceramic horse hanging out in their downtown. Either I don't ever remember the answer, which is possible, or all I've ever gotten from my boyfriend is a disconcerted shrug, what with the horses not being a landmark in any way associated with places where he made out with girls, tried to make out with girls, was in bands, or had existential teen-hormone fueled crises.

I was very excited to find out that Guam also seems to share the middle-American need to put painted, four-legged plastic creatures in front of buildings, adding to my increasing suspicion that the midwest has somehow been packed up and transported on a container ship here. I noticed several in downtown Hagatna a few weeks ago, and finally asked one of my co-workers about them. I think he gave me the same disinterested shrug that my boyfriend usually does - something to do with an initiative providing these customized cariboa to local businesses.

Also a few weeks ago, while I was wandering the wilds of the Micronesian Mall, I noticed that there was a KD toystore about to open up. I was pretty sure that this was some hilarious local curiousity with an unsavory tale behind it, much like the Dimple Donuts in my hometown of Topeka, which, rumor had it, was disenfranchised from Dunkin Donuts (they just changed a few letters in the sign) after some health code violations resulting from hijinks with dough, and uh, frosting.

So I took a picture (above) - on the hope that either there was a good story, or that the promise of an endless supply of probably real toys would somehow compel my boyfriend to move to Guam.

At any rate, my suspicions proved correct, at least about the first part, when I heard my boss snicker to himself at work after reading a story in the paper about a local businessman opening up a "KD Toystore." There was actually a large feature on it in the daily newspaper.

"Dude, I've known this guy since fifth grade, and he is a total fraud. I bet he's going to ship in all the knock-offs from Hong Kong."

KD toys, not to be confused with KB toys, is the Dimple Donuts of Guam. Apparently, there used to be a KB Toys, but, since it went out of business, the new proprieter is opening up his own branch, complete with the same color scheme, and layout. And, we suspect, will be stocking his shelves with lead-filled imitations of our favorite action heroes.

I'm not sure how these two stories are related - however - I'm pretty they must be.

Long live knock-offs and plastic cows.

In search of stamps and a laundromat

It seems in Guam all roads lead to Marine Corps Drive, literally, because all the roads are really just a series of intersecting loops. I keep getting lost, and then realizing that I'm not lost, because if I just keep driving I end up, inevitably, back along the same strip of chain restaurants, hotels, car dealerships and gas stations.

For now, it's convenient; I'm sure at some point it will become like some sort of gratingly familiar race track. But, again, I can find my way back to my hotel, so it's working for now.

It's Friday night, and I got out of work early. I haven't really explored anything beyond my hotel and the parking lot across from my work, so I went driving in search of stamps and a laundromat. I swear I've seen about a dozen laundromats while driving around looking for other things - like Supermarkets and local businesses that have no address - but of course I didn't find one when I was looking for it.

I did find the micronesian mall, which looks like a mall from the outside but seems to only sell things people don't need. And by people, I mean Japanese tourists. I actually parked in a lot with these huge parking spaces, and thought I was in some kind of weird world of giants until I read the sign that said the whole lot was dedicated to Japanese tourist buses. I guess any tourist buses, really, but the Japanese are the only ones who bother visiting Guam. At any rate, they had stores selling fur coats and puffy jackets, and those little cheap knick knacks, and a Macy's, and a "Fiesta Court" with a bunch of horrible fast food restaurants, which, to be fair, may be for the locals as well.














I also found the beach, which isn't hard. I actually drive past this incredibly aquamarine blue beach every morning that I'm sure was once prime real estate on the island. Someone had the brilliant idea of building a giant highway on most of the bay though, so instead there are only a few abandoned parking areas and steps leading down to the beach.

I'm always incredibly confused in the morning when I see this long beautiful beach practically abandoned. I figured it was something the locals just took for granted, or ignored due to the proximity to the highway.








Alas, further investigation proves otherwise.




















Apparently everything within 400 yards of this sign is infected with some sort of bacteria, which makes the beach somewhat hazardous, and empty.