I Was Hoping The Car Would Last Until My Mom Died

Least you think I'm a cold hearted bitch, my mom is almost 82 years old and had a severe stroke in 1999 rendering her completely dependent on me for everything: meals, potty breaks, getting dressed, answering the phone, making doctors' appointments, bathing, and moving around the house. We do have the wonderful Samantha who comes in five days a week and helps my mom with her exercises, helps me with the laundry and is always calm and cheerful - even when I'm not.

Six years ago, we bought a used 1995 Ford Contour with the wonderfully bubbled roof - perfect for transferring mom in and out of the car without banging her head on the ceiling. The trunk was low and folding up the wheelchair and putting it in the trunk hasn't been too painful on my back. The car has gotten good gas mileage, been great for transporting commodes and stockpiles of pillows and it's an easy to see turquoise.

But alas, after a trip to the mechanic with yet more problems, I'm having to face the truth. The blue car is on the way out and will need to be replaced as my mother is still alive and wanting to go to the pool, to school, to the every popular Crown Point Shores.

Cars are money pits. I should know I have three. It didn't used to be this way. I didn't even own a car until I was 28 and determined to travel across country with my dog Ziffle. So a 1971 VW camper van sucked my money for a few years although I did learn to work on it myself and even rebuilt the engine after it blew in Big Sur on New Year's Day. The red van committed suicide after the dog died and that brought me to car number two - a 1956 Ford Step van camper. Car number two also obliged in liberating me from my money but has hung in there and is still with me.

When mom had the stroked she lost her driver's license. Which meant she lost her insurance. Which meant she could no longer register her car. Which meant she could no longer own a car. So I inherited a large gold Ford LTD with only two doors and an engine that sucked gas, couldn't be parked anywhere and created bruise after bruise on my mom's forehead.

Then came living in the suburbs and commuting to work. I tried it for awhile in the step van, but three-speed-on-the-column, all manual brakes and stop-and-go traffic on the interstate for an hour each way was brutal. So my roommate lent me his '74 VW van and I used that to shift from first gear to second and back again. That didn't last long and I bought a 1991 Red Geo Metro hatchback - 50 miles to the gallon on the highway, 35 around town. It too has been kind enough to remove dollars from my wallet.

Then in 2002, the gold cruiser started crumbling and was replaced by the very Ford Contour that is now gimping down the driveway. Will it never end? Probably once I'm dead.

On Tea with Writers

Yesterday I spent a fantastic afternoon with my fellow UCLA Extension Novel V classmate, Sharon Steeber de Orozco, who is writing a fantastic novel of love across borders and finding our place (space) in the world. I was surprised to find out that Sharon is !GASP! a published author. Her novel, The Jews, was published in 1982 and was written in five months. The book is currently out of print, but seems to be floating around on the Internet used book circuit and hopefully a copy is headed my way as I type this.

I was way too talkative, but the opportunity to spend a few hours commiserating with another struggling writer is like indulging on dark chocolate. In fact, I was so amped when I came home that I stayed up way way past my bed time working on my novel's synopsis. And in one of those completely serendipitous events, her children went to Bonita Vista High School - the very high school where I took courses such as Rock Music Appreciation and learned to make milk carton bongs. Although rumor has it the smoking area disappeared along with the seventies.

Meeting people online is fun, but the satisfaction of spending face to face time with another human being who shares some of the same hopes and dreams is the difference between watching a snow storm on television and walking through it.

On Talking to the Forest Service

Anarchists and the United States Forest Service (USFS) don't seem to get along. Not that this should surprise anyone. The USFS is a paramilitary operation and anarchists tend to refuse to take orders, object to organization and resist any strategy that includes following the party line.

So a group of anarchists I go camping with every summer have a long running feud with the USFS over the right of the people to peacefully assemble, permits, and guns. We support the first and oppose the last two. By the way, the use of the word "we" is always in question as some anarchists feel "we" implies representation - but I use it more rhetorically so don't be sidetracked by the use of the collective "we" to indicate some random group of people who may or may not attend gatherings.

The long running saga has many twists and turns but there's no room for a book here so I'll cut to the chase. Some gatherers have been dis-organizing a series of conference calls with the USFS mucky mucks - the current Undersecretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, Mark Rey, and some of the law enforcement staff that often include the number one honcho, John Twiss as well as an assortment of flunkies.

So in the crazy world of Usenet, Mailmain and other internet communciation tools, I sent my two cents around on the value, or lack thereof, of talking to the USFS about our differences and the Forest Service's escalating violence towards people camping in the woods.

So here's my two cents.

The greater the diversity of peoples that interact with the USFS, the better off everyone is and the stronger we all get. Each of the wonderful bellies in this world has unique ideas, concerns, and thoughts and it's important to share those with USFS and with each other.

I realize that talking today may change nothing in Wyoming or wherever we land in 2009. But I have faith that by 2072, the journey we are on now will still have Rainbows and a peace trail. Talking to people today about concerns, issues, ideas helps all of us better understand what we are doing and is creating the future we all want.

If you haven't participated in one of the conference calls, please plan on joining in on March 17. If you're at the gathering in Wyoming, make sure to stop by INFO and find out when the daily cooperations council happens and show up and listed to what people are saying - both those
who work for the USFS and those who don't.

Peace comes from love, openness and communication.

Create peace. Find ways to communicate with those whose opinions differ from yours.

Be the change you wish to see in this world.

Sundays Suck

I’ve never been a big fan of Sundays. Oh sure Sunday morning is great. I have an overnight caregiver on Saturday night, so Sunday morning I sleep in. Wake up when I want to instead of when a bleeping alarm jolts me out of the sweaty dream and the naked man beside me turns out to have been whisp of wishful dreaming.

Then Sunday evening drops itself on my heart and I am lonely. In lifetimes past, Sunday sunsets were spent surfing at Black’s Beach or catching some late night tunes at the Covered Wagon Saloon and not fucking Michel Dean. Now it’s dinner at six. Every night it’s dinner at six. My eighty one year old disabled mother is an early bird. So we eat at six which in my lexicon is the middle of the afternoon while I’m still trying to plant purple needle grass between the pebble pavers on my strip or dreaming of the evening glass off.

She goes to bed at eight and then I’m all alone. Lonely. No friends. No music. No pelicans gliding past my head. Alone to contemplate yet another week of being alone. For 450 Sundays, I haven't had a life. I know other people socialize, attend poetry readings or workshops. There’s even a drum circle down the street from my house; I never go.

Sunday evenings I think about things like having a lover or meeting some grrrls at a bar for drinks or even going for a long bike ride in the evening so I can collapse into bed and fall asleep in a heart beat instead of thinking how this is yet another Sunday when I’m alone. Sunday evenings I watch trashy television, try to forget that I’m alone. That the world outside my front door is off limits to me. That the only people I know are murdered on the million and one detective shows. Sunday evenings are when I get scared I’ll always be alone. At least the murder victims get to spend time with the detectives.

Sundays suck.

Bad (Fake) Review of Falling From The Moon

So my assignment of the week for my novel class was to write a bad review of my novel. Given that my classmates got a chuckle out of it, I thought I'd share.

"Karin Zirk’s first novel is a sentimental look at a fictionalized utopia that does not exist. Her primary characters are needy and pathetic and can’t seem to manage their own lives let alone help anyone else. While the setting is unique, few readers can be tricked into believing that anarchy is about community building or that this bunch of loosers has any concern for the earth. Furthermore, the plot is unplausable and leaves the reader as confused as the characters seem to be. The scene with the Mexican grandmother helping to heal a rapiest is demeaning to the woman who was raped. While Ms. Zirk certainly has some nice images of nature and human cooperation, the fairy tale of people working together to solve community problems is the same old sixties dogma that has been recycled ad nasuem for the last forty years."

On Critiquing Other People's Novels

I had to come clean on a fellow classmate's novel. I find it tedious.

Now it's not because the person can't write. I've read a few chunks of his work where he writes in scenes and brings characters to life, but....

Most of what I've read isn't written this way. At first, I tried to make suggestions on improving it, then I tried to figure out what I was missing that other people seemed to get. But the fact was, if my goals weren’t to provide an aspiring novelist with honest feedback to help improve the book, I wouldn't have had the guts to say what I did.

His idea is that if someone reads the entire book, it will all make sense. Well, the bad news is I would never keep reading because the third paragraph on page five doesn't have any connection I can ascertain with the second paragraph on page six and so it goes.

Now I have to wait to see how our instructor and the author react. I hope I can sleep tonight. The only justification I have is that nothing I wrote was done from a point of malice - just this humble novelist wanna be's attempt at providing some thoughtful comment on omissions, fallacies and paragraphs guaranteed to put me to sleep.

On Volunteers and Coolness

OK. I admit it. I suck as a volunteer recruiter. Maybe if I was recruiting volunteers for a cookie eating contest I might have some success. But, I am a failure at getting people in my neighborhood or any neighborhood for that matter to volunteer to help pickup trash, plant natives or water the recently planted black sage or lemonadeberry along Rose Creek.

I think it’s because I’m not a bouncy cheerleadery type of person. I don’t jump up and down with enthusiasm. I don’t wear cute outfits. I’m middle aged after all and cute outfits make us older women look slightly pathetic. So I stick to the basics for outdoor work: Levi’s 501 jeans and a t-shirt from my last environmental volunteer opportunity.

On Wednesday of last week, I went to the California Coastal Commission (CCC) hearing to protest Orange County’s attempt to build a toll road through the Donna O’Neill Land Conservancy and San Onofre State Park. Don't forget, the proposed road would have put a six lane highway twenty feet from Panhe, which is an ancient Acjachemen village, currently used for ceremonial purposes and as a burial site for the Acjachemen people.

With a turnout of between two and three thousand people protesting the building of roads through parks and open space preserves, I want to know how Surfrider does it. They consistently turn out crowds for clean ups, paddles and now a recording breaking crowd for a CCC meeting. And what a turnout it was. Babies and ninety year old grandparents. Tweens and teenagers in body paint. Even Ronald Reagan was resurrected for the event. Not only was February 6 his birthday, but as Governor of the State of California, he signed the legislation creating San Onofre State Park. This is the first rally I’ve ever been to where Ronnie spoke out to protect the environment. But speak he did from t-shirts and cardboard signs and even human lips wearing Ronnie masks.

Not to go off onto a tirade against our former governor, let’s get back to the matter at hand. How to recruit volunteers? Was it the t-shirts? The free food? The surfing legends like a gray-haired Shaun Tomson who spoke in opposition to destruction of parks?

I’ve wrote newsletters, flyered the neighborhood, held ice cream socials and even provided a band – and a few people did show up, but …. At any rate, I’m decidedly uncool and not succeeding in getting the community to rally around Rose Creek.

So is there a cool event school I can go to? Maybe I should show up at cheerleading camp this summer and get a few pointers on being enthusiastic. Is there a secret handshake to get people to care about their community and volunteer to pull a weed, pour some water, pick up a piece of trash or attend a meeting?

If so, can someone please provide me with the key?

On Trees and the Future

Yesterday was the big day! Eleven trees in all planted along Rose Creek. It’s amazing how much bureaucracy goes into planting eleven trees.

First, there’s the permit. Luckily, that one was easy as the City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department had a permit and approval from the California Coastal Commission to remove invasive plants and replace them with natives.

Then there’s the matter of the trees. So this grass roots group I’m involved with, the Friends of Rose Creek, decided we would raise two thousand dollars to purchase ten 24” box trees – trees about eight feet tall. Given that we were planting Coast Live Oak and Torrey Pine and they take forever to get big enough to throw a shadow, we wanted to start as large as we could afford. After all, if I die of old age, I only have another thirty years left; I yearned to see the oaks looking regal and majestic before someone tosses me off a boat into the sea or composts me in the backcountry.

Unfortunately, our dreams were a lot stronger than our fund raising skills and our funds amounted to ten percent of our target. So then what?

Environmental Services hooked us up! With trees and labor to plant the trees. The local utility company, Sempra, paid for seven trees. The youthful crew of the San Diego Urban Corps dug holes, planted trees and picked up trash – they even yanked a very dead duck out of the weeds. San Diego Earthworks and the Friends of Rose Creek united to purchase the two 24” box Torrey Pines that were not donated. Two small Mexican Elderberry trees were donated by me.

The tree dedication ceremony was a success with local business owners promising to donate trees in the future, local residents volunteering to help water the trees, and the local paper sending out a photographer to capture the event on film. I even discovered that one of my neighbors is also an aspiring novelist.

Yesterday was the culmination of endless meetings that seemed pointless at the time. Efforts to outreach to the community had failed to inspire people. Quarters thrown into a glass bowls at public events amounted to purchase of branches not trees. And all along, I tried to remind myself that process creates progress. One foot in front of the other with a goal in sight creates the momentum needed to move if not exactly mountains, then at least eleven trees from a nursery to Pacific Beach and eventually into the ground between Bayview Terrace Elementary and Rose Creek.

The oaks won’t mature for another twenty five years – a very long time in our instant gratification culture. While some might consider me sentimental, knowing that the children of today will explore Rose Cree and climb trees with their children in the year 2033 is one small step in my feeble attempts at creating a positive future for the seventh generation.

I know that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai changed the course of history by motivating thousands to plant trees in Kenya and across the African continent. Well as I learned yesterday, even the planting of eleven trees has a galvanizing effect on the community.

Chocolate and Me

So when I tell people I'm a chocoholic, they laugh.

But it's not all fun and games. Sure that first bite of the day is heavenly, like I just plugged my finger into the outlet of the universe and felt the jolt of life surging into my heart. And I feel human and loved and capable of jumping over Engelmann Oaks with a single bound. But then I have a second bite and a third and that's where it gets tricky.

Then I'm too hurried, too rushed, too impatient and I barrel through my to do list with a vengeance and without enjoyment. Sure I get things done, but not with the sense of wonder that I would otherwise. My writing gets done and a chocolate high is great when I need to be ruthless and edit the fluff out of my writing, but I can't find the story when I'm high on chocolate. I can't listen to the words in the wind and pluck them out of the air.

So I try to just have one piece and that works some days. Some days the loneliness takes over and I fill it with chocolate. Sometimes I'm just too tired to do yet another load of laundry or mop the kitchen floor or make dinner and so I self-medicate ~~ pop a piece of chocolate and I'm off and running.

These days, I'm trying to take it one day at a time. One piece at a time. Trying to skip chocolate as much as I can. Vowing that tomorrow is another day. Another option to brave it out in the mind of the universe. And as for today, I think just one more piece is in order.