June 28, 2004

• Alaska is burning.

  The first thing I did when I got a chance to sit down at the computer after I came home tonight was go to the geomac.gov
  site and look at the wildfire map.  Fires were a big topic of
  conversation at the barbecue today and at the Double Trouble meeting I
  went to afterward.  Today, suddenly, our valley was cooler than it
  had been in weeks, because the sun wasn’t getting through the smoky
  haze. 

  One person spoke of a fire, hundreds of thousands of acres, that had
  the highway on both sides of the town of Chicken, northeast of here
  near the international border with Yukon Territory, cut off. 
  Tonight
  I read that the 150 residents who had been trapped there were taken out
  by air today.

  Somebody else mentioned a big fire up by Fairbanks.  Geomac shows
  nine fires in all, in Interior Alaska, but a news story I read from the
  Fairbanks News-Miner said that accurate mapping was impossible because
  of smoke.

  As I drove toward home tonight, the further I got, the more my eyes
  burned.  I started smelling smoke after I came through
  Willow.  Ahead, to the north, I could see a few shadowy
  columns between clouds and ground and I couldn’t tell whether they were
  smoke going up or rain coming down.  The sky and clouds were
  brown.  I started wondering how close to home those fires were
  getting.

  Then, about five miles from home I crested a hill and two fat drops of
  rain hit my windshield.  Within a hundred yards I was on wet
  pavement, then rain was falling so hard and thick my wipers had trouble
  keeping up.  It was hitting the pavement faster than it could
  drain off, and traffic slowed as we all started hydroplaning. 
  Suddenly all I could smell was the wet, green, rain smell.  The
  air at ground level was washed clear of smoke, but overhead was a solid
  layer of smoky brown cloud.

  I saw lightning and heard thunder.  That used to be rare
  here.  Now with global warming it has become just unusual. 
  Old sourdoughs around here say it never used to thunder and
  lightning.  I lived in this valley five years before I saw my
  first thunderstorm here, and in the intervening fifteen years I’ve
  probably been through fewer than ten of them.  It takes heat to
  make thunder and lightning.  Southwest U.S. tribes call winter,
  “the season when thunder sleeps.”  We once did not have enough
  heat in this area to generate summer thunderstorms, but now we
  have.  We’ve even had a few hailstorms, which require even more
  heat.

  This weather didn’t feel “natural” to me, just didn’t feel right. 
  As soon as I came in the house, I went to the barometer.  It
  hadn’t fallen any from this morning, but was up a hair–not at all what
  I’d expect with a change from fair and hazy to heavy rain.  Now
  it’s quiet outside, little breeze even, no birdsong–eerie.

  Well, enough talk about the weather.  What I really wanted to blog about tonight was my day.

  ---

  GAUCHE: 
  
  lacking social experience or grace: tactless: crude: awkward.

  When the barbecue ended this afternoon around four, I drove out to
  Felony Flats and told Greyfox about a couple of “stupid” things I’d
  blurted out in conversation.  He said they weren’t stupid, that
  I’m not stupid.  I’m just gauche.  He nailed it.  Gauche
  is just what I am.

  My host and hostess had been telling us at meetings for several weeks
  about their new puppy.  He was getting into things a lot, making
  messes, being a pup.  Also, the family was having a hard time
  agreeing on a name for him, and the only thing they ever called him at
  meetings was, “the puppy.”  So, when I got there today and met the
  friendly little pug and someone called him “Nemo,” I remarked what a
  clever solution they’d come up with for settling the naming
  debate:  naming him “nobody” or “no-name”.  That’s what Nemo
  means, in Latin.  But until today, they hadn’t known that. 
  As far as they knew, they were just naming him after a movie
  fish.  So, in trying to tell them how clever they were, I came off
  like I was showing off my smarts and showing up their ignorance. 
  It was an awkward moment all around.  

  Later on, in a relaxed conversational group, talk was centering on a
  job two of the members were doing for a man who is an engineer. 
  They’d been talking about how hard it was taking instruction from him
  on how he wanted his landscaping done, because he used engineering
  jargon and generally talked over their heads.  One of them said
  the man and his wife are, “both very smart, their IQs must be 150 or
  so.”  Right off the top of my head, out of my mouth comes,
  “One-fifty’s not that smart.” 

  Shit!  Will I never learn to think before I speak?  One
  person looked hurt and said it sure seemed smart to her.  I then
  compounded my gaffe by saying (feeling nothing but sympathy, trying to
  recover and smooth over the gaffe), “It depends on your point of
  view.”  Then someone else said, “What did you say!?”  So I
  repeated it and elucidated, “point. of. view:  perspective.” 
  Then, belatedly, I realized what that “What did you say!?” had really
  meant.  I’m too damned literal-minded, I tell you.

  It is crap like this that caused me so much trouble in childhood and
  earned me names like “Egghead” and “Brain”.  It’s not as if I
  didn’t learn long ago that nobody likes to be reminded that they’re not
  the sharpest knife in the drawer.  When I was a kid, sometimes I
  threw my “weight” around in the only way I could, by showing off my
  intellect.  That was because I didn’t like being made fun of for
  my physical defects, and wanted to get back at the bullies.  By
  adolescence, I’d gone to the opposite extreme, playing dumb because
  that was what my mother had told me would attract boys.

  Since then, I’ve developed some true compassion and humility.  I
  know that this intellect is none of my doing.  I was born with it,
  like some are born beautiful, or strong, or with a good singing
  voice.  I cannot take credit for creating it, and there is
  precious little that I’ve done with it for which I can take any
  credit.   Mostly, I’ve accumulated a vast store of trivial
  information.

  I never did adopt the derogatory term used by many Mensans for “normal”
  people:  densans.  Greyfox used that word tonight as he was
  trying to console me for my gaucheries at the party.  I don’t feel
  superior, but I know it often comes off sounding that way.  Nor do
  I feel ashamed of my gifts.  I feel blessed.   I feel
  that the mind has helped me survive in this defective body, and the
  body has helped keep me from getting carried away with arrogance. 
  It balances.

  I feel like shit when some tactless remark of mine makes someone feel
  stupid.  And when that happens and I see them withdraw from me, I
  know I have no one but myself to blame for my isolation.  Thank
  God that when I’m alone I’m in good company, anyway.  It’s some
  consolation.  And right now, I’m beginning to feel like I’m
  bitching about being the poor little rich girl.  Time to quit.

  ---

  I’m back to the same dilemma I was having a year and more ago, when I
  was doing frequent memoir blogs:  I’m wanting to do both memoirs
  and current journal entries.  Life is rich right now with
  blogfodder, more things in my days and my thoughts than I have time to
  put in my journal.  I’ve also broken through whatever had me
  blocked on the memoirs, and have been giving a lot of thought the last
  few days, not just to a continuation of my sexual awakening where I
  left off, but also to my very earliest memory in infancy.  All
  that is totally beside the point right now, because I’ve had little
  sleep in the past week and must stop right now and get to bed before I
  start bleeding from the eyes.  Maybe I could blame my gaucherie on
  sleep deprivation….
  

  • 3:42 am
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