My first squid

I have a dead squid in my refrigerator.

It was given to me by a guy named Mike at Tagachang beach.

He waded across the shallow reef with a spear slung over his back and dozen squishy dead squids hanging down to his knees.

It was sort of hard to avoid conversation.

I was the only one on the beach, sitting in a few inches of warm water, with my dogs frolicking in the sand and my soaking dress billowing around me.

He had squids.

He made his way over to me -- squids and all -- and told me about how he hunted the cephalopods by poking his spear into tiny holes in the ocean floor.

Apparently it's better hunting in high tide -- but the tide was low.

Being a vegetarian, I felt very bad for the squids. Although I eat fish, I have avoided squid since I mistakenly ate calamari on a school trip to a French restaurant during my year abroad.

They have little heads, and eyes, and are smart -- relatively, for sea creatures.

But when someone offers you a squid, it's sort of hard to say no.

So Mike, the squid hunter, disentangled a medium-sized squid from his hook, cleaned the ink sac, and gave me directions on how to cook it (put in boiling water for a few minutes on each side, cut off the head, don't eat the teeth).

It seemed easy enough, and for a moment, I thought -- maybe I'll try squid.

Today, seeing it float around in a bowl of ice water in my fridge, staring up at me with glazed eyes and frozen tentacles, I am not so sure.

Maps, again

Like many things in my life, the first attempt at map-hanging didn't quite work out.

The whole thing collapsed in on itself within hours of being affixed to the wall with tape.

Try two seems to have been more successful, so far anyway.

Maps

I had a map of the world once. A really big map, with all the countries of the world well-detailed and color-coded.

It took up a whole section of my shoddily decorated bedroom wall in my first attempt at a post-college Brooklyn apartment -- and then filled the overwhelming white space above the secondhand couch in the living room of my shoddily decorated attempt at a couple-dedicated Brooklyn apartment.

It was a present. Possibly the best present I got at that time of my life.

I loved it.

Since childhood I have had a fondness for maps. I used to collect them from copies of National Geographic Maganize, which in middle school seemed like the most sophisticated and exciting magazine on the planet.

It was glossy, and full of big print hinting at magical places and things around the world, and they would give you free maps of places my middle-school mind could not really contemplate.

During high school, among the posters of forgettable movies I ganked from my job at the local cinema, photo montages of mostly myself and glued-together puzzles I for some reason felt motivated to hang on my wall, I had an odd collection of maps gathered from hastily devoured copies of National Geographic.

I remember distinctly a map of Ontario, another of central America, which in my post-modern college phase I graffittied during a late-night giggle fest with my little sister with a permanent-ink marker pen in order to identify exactly what part of the mysterious region from which the stereotypical 25th century Native American Star Trek Voyager crewman hailed.

I can't exactly remember what motivated me to do this, but I have a distinct memory of drawing the words "Chakote [sic] Belt " on a region approximate to Guatemala.

When I was younger and still collecting experiences like little pieces of lint, I would put little pin pricks on the places I'd been, which seemed much more interesting than the scene of cars and street lamps and infuriately mundane tract housing outside my Topeka bedroom window.

After a while I got tired of defacing the world with an ink-smudge of myself, and just wanted to look at the planet whole. To have a view of all things, terrestrial at least, is a comforting feeling.

You can almost see yourself in it, use it as a way of keeping track of exactly where you at any moment.

I abandoned many things when I left New York -- my cat, my hoard of assorted kitchen implements collected from Midwest garage sales, to-do lists, winter wear and torn fishnets, crestfallen ambitions for social justice and a career, people I loved, subway staircases I groggily trudged up daily, Batman and Legos and homemade t-shirts. Too many things to count, and which seem now pointless to catalog.

I miss my map though. Something about it made me feel balanced, and like the world was there for me to explore.

I'm pretty sure that map isn't coming my way anytime soon.

But I now have a new map now -- freshly resurrected from the bowels of storage and posted on my previously very blank wall.

A reproduction of the world before all the edges were defined -- where North America was still just a jagged coast and a shapeless hinterland, where the southern polar region had been unfortunately, and I assume briefly, dubbed Magallanica, and the tiny little island on which I currently live had not yet lived down first impressions -- this world is not one on which I can easily and concretely place myself.

It is old and, undefined and surprisingly accurate, and full of possibility.

It was also, fittingly enough, printed by National Geographic.

Dark waters

It turns out that swimming around in murky water on the edge of a waterfall you can't see is sort of scary.

Especially if some unseen creature tries to eat you.

I went out the other night with friend of mine, the well-prepared sailor -- in an attempt to provide him with a memorable last night jaunting around Guam exploring things before he headed back to the states to figure out The Rest of His Life.

Having a very limited knowledge of Guam's adventure spots -- especially compared to someone who hikes to unexplored caves by himself AT NIGHT -- the best I could do was Priest's Pools.

Oh, and also I was incredibly late getting off work, which limited our adventure capabilities, and I had to check my email every few minutes to re-read a story I had written at work.

After a few wrong turns, I managed to navigate us through sword grass to the pool, which is slightly more picturesque in the daytime.

And also warmer.

Floating around in a dark pool, preoccupied with looking at constellations I couldn't recognize, I felt a sharp tug, like a hand grabbed me under the water, and the distinctive feel of teeth.

Later, my friend and I saw a moss-covered lobster-fish thing, and a two-foot eel slithering under the rocks in the pool's shallows.

I'm thinking it was the eel that bit me.

I hope so anyway.

Pagat revisited

I visited Pagat with a friend several weeks ago.

I meant to post something whimsical and cutting -- about the hallowed ground strewn with beer cans and coolers, and the experience of dragging a body (literally a pair of old pants and shirt stuffed with garbage) up a tree-lined path in the fading evening light.

But somewhere along the line I got distracted, and never got around to posting it.

And now, weeks later, it's all sort of fuzzy, so the best I can do is a prosaic summary:

I visited the village for the first time, and went beyond to the coral cliff line where green fields of moss and vines had sprung up on rocks. I sat in extended silence with my friend -- the well-prepared sailor -- and looked down at the blue ocean swirling through a cliffside crevice.

Navigating the dark black interior of the cold cave was more and less scary this time around. Less nerve-wracking because I knew what I was getting myself into, but more unsettling for the repeated faint knocking that was definitely not an abandoned beer can gently hitting the side of the cave wall.

And I heard singing in the forest as I played with the water collecting in the hollow of ancient dug-out grinding stones.

At first I thought someone was with us in the forest, doing some kind of latter-day Chamorro ritual. But after a while I realized we were alone. My friend couldn't hear the singing, only the sound of traffic at the nearby raceway.

But I could hear the sound of a woman's voice, faintly, singing something I didn't recognize.

It was odd. And then again -- not so odd.

The last Japanese tank on Guam

I followed a guy I met on the Internet through a labyrinthine golf course on an expansive patch of jungle to a World War II-era Japanese tank yesterday.

Supposedly the only Japanese tank in Guam -- and by that I mean it's the only one I've seen so far -- the tank was lying only a few dozen feet off a conveniently mowed grass access road splitting off from a private golf course on a large and mostly empty resort confusingly located in the island's interior.

Rusted and crumbling, the surprisingly small artifact more closely resembled a flower pot -- with weeds and plants growing up through its body -- than something that once held multiple (?) people.

We got there after meandering our way through a small paved road along the course's driving ranges, which were literally cut through jungle.

Despite having hiked in the vicinity of LeoPalace, and having enjoyed its always empty bowling alley, I was surprised to see that the actual extent of the grounds was huge. The area seemed to be its very own artificial community, complete with villas and bathroom facilities, located in what is otherwise an isolated expanse of wild land.

We had started early, so luckily there were few people on the course to yell at us.

Once we left the golf course, the "hike" was actually a fairly comfortable stroll along a muddy back road.

Surrounding the course, large concrete bridges connected dirt roads rimmed by head-high sword grass.

I sort of assumed we were just kind of wandering, but being a crewman on a Navy nuclear submarine who routinely bikes around the island discovering new and interesting things, my new friend came prepared with a GPS tracker and a Google Earth print out of our target.

And within minutes, we found the tank, sitting along the side of the road, mostly shrouded by sword grass. What was left of the vehicle was decomposing. Metal and rubber and the insides of the thing all seemed to be disappearing.

On the way back, we saw delighted golfers pitch balls across river gullies and steep waterfalls, which had been littered with the white round fallout of holes missed.

As they made their way along the road in carts toward the next hole, several golfers passed us along the way, and seemed none too happy to have their pristine recreational experienced sullied by the presence of sweaty hikers.

Moon rising

One day late for the "super moon," but still, close enough.