Week One

I live in New York.
It's been a week.

I think I was expecting quicker results on my apartment, job, and life search.
I want decisiveness! Ingenuity, courage! Luck, even. Maybe a little bit of faith.

My far flung assumptions about my own entitlements knock the wind out of me when revealed. How silly! Silly, silly girl.

Dad, in response to my request, says, "Maybe." Followed by, "I have to see the whole picture first."

I can't say that I blame him. I have been unreliable, non-committal, so many shades of flakey it turns my head on its side, with tears.

To be honest, I am terrified.

In the real world I flounder. I put up spikes against possibility, defend ego more than honor; I anger easily over my assumptions when they reveal themselves as false.

The word that characterizes my last few years is one: paralysis. For years, only this. The 'free spirit' with no ties or boundaries, shouting of wisdom and spontaneity, hope and a life fully lived, was always only paralyzed. A rolling stone, yes, gathering no moss, but only because she's mired in mud.

I regret speaking.

Lyrebird Unbelievable Jungle Bird Mimics Bird and Human Sounds

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3433507052114896375

Unintended circumstances

"Everything has an unintended circumstance," he said.

It prods, somewhere around my cerebral cortex, poke, poke poke. What unintended circumstance will I exude into the world? No doubt a lot of death and destruction, what with two showers a day, frequent hand washings, walking around and placing high amounts of pressure on ants, cockroaches, things of the like (I use humane traps for mice though. But I also occasionally feed them to pythons.) Thinking more globally and long-term, if I were to choose a long-term career, is the 'Unintended Circumstance' something to consider?

Think of examples. In which the agent does a perfect job but of course, cannot control what the rest of the world does once the job is done. You could be a doctor and save lives. Population probably agrees: this is good. But what if you're Osama's doctor, and by saving him you subtract a few thousand lives? I think it's not your decision at that point, once you're a doctor, to decide who to save and who to leave. Only Unintended Circumstance.

You could be a field worker and work in international development. Population probably agrees: this helps, and I feel better that you do this. But what if the population you try to help doesn't really want change, or you funnel money into a system that eats it to feed corruption and war. Are you still forgiven your actions? If you do your job knowing about these consequences, are they still Unintended Circumstances?

In the other direction, you take a less drastic approach to life. No more life/death stuff, so far. You work at Dunkin' Donuts (unintended circumstances: distribute immeasurable amounts of joy to countless denizens; alternately: feed Mr. Smith a donut a day for 40 years, Smith dies of heart complications without life insurance leaving a family of four to fend for themselves), you work as a Legal Secretary (unintended circumstance: support someone to be the best they can be; alternately: is there an alternate ending? Do Legal Secretaries REALLY hurt people?), or say, you're a Yoga Instructor; you align chakras, are vegan, ride a bicycle. Unintended circumstances? Where?

I'm sure everything DOES have unintended circumstances. Their severity by profession is debatable. Am I advocating a less risky career? Not necessarily. Perhaps the more risk of failure, the greater the possibility of change, success, triumph. Do you choose the path of more resistance and hope the rest of the world doesn't let you down by being mean? Or assume it will be mean, and choose the path with fewer bad circumstances?

Can we be part of a system that does not end in destruction? If we can't, does it matter that we've considered the unintended circumstance? More significantly: does it matter that we've considered?

Ruminations

I moved back to New York. I think it was a decision I made subconsciously long ago, like maybe the day I left it for San Francisco. They don't tell you, when you first move to New York, that the love-hate relationship you forge with this city is forever; or sadly, that it will always feel more like home than anywhere else; that each time you return it levels you like a stern mother, but simultaneously bewilders you to the point of inspiration. A city of foreigners! and it feels like home.

This last year of traveling and being with my family has been excellent; I feel grounded, calm, maybe even peaceful -- all these with little justification for feeling so. I've come back armed with a renewed sense of self and a 'wholeness' that I never had before. No doubt the city will slowly chip away at those things, but I'm hoping for the best.

I'm excited about the next two years. I didn't understand that committment was necessary, that it was something only I could do, and then, only in my own head. So once I did that -- made a decision, and stuck with it -- I felt a sudden peace. I can't say that I have figured out what my longterm goals are, but I don't think I can go wrong with just getting a good job right now. As long as I stay self-aware and honest, I think I'll be ok.

9 Hours till take-off

I'm brain dead and my heart is ripping. I pack, organize, unpack, reorganize, pack, think think think think think until I'm thinking myself in circles like usual and then thinking about everything I will miss and exactly why my heart is ripping, no more: mom, dad, root, prae, p na, danzig, swimming in a warm open sea, hot sun, mango trees, elephants, cheap food, beautiful drag queens, som tam lao, po dag, fresh kung, FRUIT, an entire population with easy smiles, happy children, waves, tropical storms, MOM, DAD, ROOT, no more, no more, no more of these for a while. How I will ache for them....

Python Feeding

Watched, no, served another python feeding today. Danzig eats two medium-sized mice, once a week. We buy them at the snake market, transport them home in a paper bag, or sometimes a clear plastic tupperware box like a TV dinner. They sit in this sombre paper bag until nighttime, when Danzig wakes up. They shit a lot. The scratch of their tiny mouse claws on the hollow paper bag makes them sound bigger than they really are. Once, a mouse died in the bag from unknown causes -- maybe an assault by one mouse brother upon another? Maybe the bag jostled too violently, and the miniscule skull cracked saltine-like? Danzig ate him anyway, cold and dead.

My brother has a policy that mice should be served one by one, so no one mouse must witness the carnage and endure the stress of such a sight alone. As I'm in charge at the moment, I let the first mouse out of the bag onto some newspaper, python ready to strike. But two mice slipped out. The first, a long, light grey mouse was instantly taken; the python whipped his long, brown-spotted body around him in a tight knot. The mouse's two back legs warped awkwardly, then pattered the floor in panic, tail flinging itself across the newsprint.

The smaller mouse, a chocolate colored nugget with a clean white band across his back, had been eagerly sniffing his new environment. But he stopped as if struck when the python nabbed his partner - the predator's bloodthirst electric across the dead space. The chocolate mouse curled into a tiny ball, paralyzed, perhaps begging in his soul for forgiveness of all the bread crumbs he stole, the fuzzies he trampled, the sawdust he soiled. Only inches away, the deadly coil was unraveling.

The python had begun to swallow his prey. Head first, the warm corpse slid through his elastic jaw, down a narrow throat and propelled southward with each curl of the python's contorting body. The little chocolate mouse was now at ease -- the killing had ended and the troubling thoughts vanished like peanut butter at feeding time. His downy nostrils poked the newsprint, eyes like garnets strangely stationary on either side of his snout. He approached the snake as if greeting a neighbor. We flinched. But he scuttled away again, further this time. Danzig was busy stretching out his jaw, demonstated the curved fangs nestled in his baby-pink gums - it seemed as if he had finished for the night.

A new tension in his neck heralded otherwise. One furry, warm-blooded creature remained and he could sense each delicious beat of its precious little heart. The chocolate mouse examined an article on Koizumi. Moved on to obituaries.

The python caught him by the soft skin of his left thigh, releasing a shriek of outrage from the tiny body. He coiled squarely around the mouse's midsection. At first, there was only silence. The mouse perhaps, did not understand why he had such trouble breathing. His oblong mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His eyes glared at the lightbulb miles above him. For a moment, there was no movement from either party. The mouse, suddenly comprehending that death itself was upon him, sputtered for air, lungs wrenching inside his chest. The pain of suffocation finally ripped through his body causing his tail to straighten into one long obstinate blade before limply giving way, the crush of death escaping into the still air.

Danzig just held him for a while. Then, sure that death had again worked, he unclenched his jaws to show that no blood had spilled -- the mouse's underbelly was rumpled and wet with saliva but otherwise unmarred. The python lifted his head and glanced around him, disoriented. He tried to get at his prey head first, but had trouble finding its head -- his own body obstructed the view. He seemed confused. His triangular face poked, knocked, shoved at his own coiled length until finally flipping over itself, upon which he found his mark, and swallowed it whole. When most of the corpse had disappeared, the python reared as if standing, elongated his neck and sucked down the last two translucent pink feet, claws and all. The mouse's long tail being the last to go, it reached from the python's lips like a tongue - thick and muted - before finally slipping down - one long, furry spaghetti choking in his throat.

Danzig, the Python

This is Danzig, my brother's python. He's an African Ball Python, or Royal Python, so named because he rolls up into a ball when sleeping or threatened. Or eating. Or really just anytime. Either way, I love him.

It's hard to tell what a snake is thinking. He can't complain about his weight, tell you why he's so sleepy today, or give you a thumbs up if he approves of the cuisine. Before I met Danzig I assumed all snakes were dirty slithery things, but this little python is different. He, in fact, is CHARMING. He moves slowly -- takes life at his own pace. He's often seen cocking his head in all directions and staring for minutes at a time. We believe it to be a characteristic of his inquisitive nature, but it may also be because he can't blink. He has a keen sense of smell and an appreciation for different cultures -- he thoroughly enjoys both my old sneakers and my bag of dirty gym clothes. If you're lucky, he'll pulsate on you -- he curls around your arm like a bracelet and squeezes -- one long muscle in waves of flexing and unflexing. I like to think it means he loves me, but it could also mean he's practicing for when he gets bigger and can kill me.

Though he is now a toddler, Dannie may someday be six feet long. His jaw 'unhinges' into four pieces and he 'yawns' often to stretch it out. This means that if he ever learned to think of us as food, he could suffocate us to death and swallow us whole if so desired (though he'd be extremely uncomfortable for a very long time). Pythons are one of the few snakes that still have remnants of their legs -- they're called "anal spurs" -- but they're on either side of his genitals so it's not like you want to be handling them all the time.

We feed him live mice. It's possible to ween a snake off of live feed -- you can feed them Mice-icles, but Thailand has yet to carry such delicacies. Another option is red meat, but it has to be the right temperature and moving, which means you put a mouse-sized piece on the end of some tongs and make it dance so the snake thinks it's live prey. If this doesn't work, you can rub the meat on any spare dead mice you may have lying around to impart the smell of the snake's favorite dish. The mouse-killing thing saddened me, until I remembered that I eat meat too -- I just have other people kill it for me.

The only time I've seen Danzig move quickly is at dinner. Some Ball Pythons are finicky eaters, but not Danzig. When Dannie was smaller, my brother once held him above a box of live mice to say, 'Look, Danzig, see what I got for you?" when suddenly one mouse was gone, Danzig was rolled up in a ball with four little mouse legs sticking out the top, and my brother was hurling the whole package across the room in fright. He's like lightning, Dannie is.

Egg-bearing animals often have salmonella on their skin, so though it really may be the kiss of death, we kiss him goodnight anyway. I usually do a nose rub instead. He probably hates it but has learned to love us back in his quiet way.