Hey ol' buddies ol' pals.
I'm on my way to Seattle this coming weekend, Friday -Monday. Why? You ask. Because Sarah's darling dad found two tickets to the ROLLING STONES and he's giving them to us. So if you're a Seattlite, let's meet up, that is when I'm not rocking with Mic and Keith and Bill and Charlie!!! You know you can't always get what you want, but I did this time!
Thank you RICHARD!

Jules is in Ghana for a semester at Legon University. She has sent numerous emails about her time there and they echo so many of my experiences! She has been to so many places that I also went to. It is so cool to think that my footsteps fell on top of Sarah's and then hers on mine. Three friends have ventured to this place on three separate occasions and it is nothing but infinite and who knows who will follow? I am toying with going back for school. It think Jules has the right idea. She is taking classes which include Twi, indigenous religions, Ghanaian history and drum and dance. And what is even cooler is the fact that Jules is visiting Orphanage Africa. When she writes about the kids and the women that work there I just want to burst. I am overwhelmed with jealousy and excitement. Africa was such a nothing. I never thought of it. I never cared and now it is so huge. The African studies class that I am taking plus Jules' emails are reminding me everyday that I have only done half the work for my time in Africa. I want to set up something permanent. Saralita and I have tossed around ideas for Engineers Without Borders and I have been trying to think of something meaningful that I could coordinate with the school. But my thoughts need to be turned into action.

Do you want to meet my red HOT crew, the North Bend Berserkers?












Chris, Kyle, Maloney, MJ, Ryan and Rachel


Do you want to see what we do?

Bake apple crisp cakes...

and clear logs off the trail ...



Scale high rock faces....






carry heavy tools...

transplant ferns...

throw rocks...

and light ourselves on fire...

It is a measurless hour,
quiet, like a stream at twilight
is quiet, murmering its own sound,
murmering its watery prose.

The yellow light is ripe
on my face, spilling
over my lap, dripping down
to my toes.

It is the kind of light meant
for empty stores
and halloween nights.

If it were not for the people
permeating the darkness,
I would be a ghost.

I have never wanted to be
so much at once. A rip
tide pulls me back
to a feeling I forgot.

It is the midnight hour,
the stillness,
the frictionless love,
that pulls me like a cord
down into this deep caldron.

When there is nothing
in the noises of night
but isolation.

When there is nothing
in my heart but a need
to be, I think the noisless
night is breathing a song.

I try not to listen
but it is not there.

I DIDN'T REALIZE THE SKY WAS THIS SHALLOW

Has life been happening? I feel so tired I could sink through the cement foundation like honey in hot water. We all know summer is over. It happened last Friday and even though the temperatures may reach 72 degrees and the sun shines with all its might, there is snow on Lolo Peak and there are dead orange and red leaves in our yard. It smells different out there; summer is broken. Sleeping with out a sleeping bag, shot down dead, alpine lake swimming, murdered in its sleep, napping in the burning hot sun, stabbed straight through. Fall rises out of summer fire. No more burning dreams. I'm not anywhere new except beneath my house surrounded by cement feeling like Fortunato, all bricked in with irony. There are three ways off a merry go round. I don't think that I'm going to let it slow down, I'm going to burn it down. It isn't Fall in Seattle...

"Recreate your heart hour after hour for the tired hearts go blind"
(from the Hadith)

the spring break of our freshman year, sarah patrick and i flew to new orleans. it was the same day the war began. i cant find my journal from that time to refresh my memory about the people and places. but i dont need to. i remember that we almost stayed. a lot of people do. half the kids in the hostel originally had a plan ticket home. we took the ferry across the mississippi dozens of times, played sharks and pirates with the local kids, tapped our feet to strumming guitar and grating washboards. this poem was for sarah now its for memories, music, travel, the kids at algiers point, the piano player, the lovely people at india house and the partiers and the circle bar and all the people who lived in new orleans.

The Big Easy

The war is starting and sticky air breaths on our faces,
arms and stomach. Snaking brown river laps our feet,
curling over each toe like sifted powdered sugar
and every breath we take fills our lungs with hot pungent
Cajun spice. We blithely chase our fears with sips of mango
and spilt plastic cups of New Orleans’ cheapest brew.

Night falls slowly in a lazy southern city and street bands
play for old men, young girls, witch doctors, palm readers,
accountants, homeless and wonder lust teenagers alike. Dance
in the moonlight, swing our arms like monkeys and skip
around, through and under while jazz strums and girls yelp
and raucous laughter spills under the moon’s streaming beams.

Catch the rainbow beads dripping from the torrid sky,
wring the strands from our hair and watch the dripping
puddles form on the cool, cement floor while piano players
tap out an easy pace and children scramble like sharks over
yellow and red and blue metal. We call it life and let it slip
away into peyote smoke. We call it home and never leave.

So...Yesterday, the 27 of August was my 21st birthday. But the good birthday vibes seemed to have soaked into the entire week. My last trip with the NBTC was amazing. We hiked into the most beautiful glaciated valley I have ever seen. The jagged mountains were laced with snow and glacier remnants. The river was clear, so clear I could not see it. The only evidence that it really existed was the steady rumble of water flowing. The work was fun and challenging but not killer. We secured a floating bridge and did drainage work. On evening MJ and I took off up the steep side of mountain, scaling talus slopes and gaining ridge after endless ridge to finally arrive at the most beautifully juxtaposed barren high alpine lake. We could see for miles and miles including my old Skykomish playing grounds. We hiked home in the dark and the night was so cold and clear you could taste it. In the morning, we had back country baked apple crumble cake with a single candle in it to celebrate my birthday and Rob's anniversary. We worked half the day and took the rest off to play in the mountains. I feel like I could dangle them from a string and bat them about like a cat does with a mouse. We went straight up. I had to schmear. I had to pull myself up with whatever I could grab and when we finally emerged on a talus slope we were below jutting granite cliffs and below was a glacial valley full of morains and rounded boulders and cobbles. The valley looked like a waste land and I stayed there while my boys hiked even farther upward and onward. That evening we played the most incredible game of pinochle and Kyle and I won by the skin of our teeth. It was a roller coaster game with us in the lead and then trailing by a devastating number and then sprinting towards the finish line and barely pushing our chest through the red tape before Chris and MJ. The drive from the trail head takes around 1 and half hours and we rocked to the Killers and George Clinton and I could not have been in a better mood. On Saturday, my birthday, I was assailed with happy birthday wishes from my bunkmates. Willow and I went to the NB farmer's market. I took off for Seattle to meet up with my aunt and uncle who fed me lunch and a lemon drop, which made me dangerously loopy. Then I met up with wonderful friends, Sarah Patrick, Chris, Aaron and Dan. I love my friends, I do. We hung out at Pike Place and Discovery Park. When I walked into the bunkhouse in NB, my entire crew plus some were sitting around the table with 21 small shot bottles full of a variety of drinks. Baileys, Kahluha, Absolute Peach, Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort etc...21 different kinds. We stuffed some in our pockets and purses and headed to the Mount Si tavern to have beers and play horse shoes. A band was playing all the country rock classics like Sweet Home Alabama. The band got word it was my birthday and had me come up on the stage. We all sang happy birthday and then they gave me their pitcher of beer to chug. I didn't though. Not good at that kind of thing. We moved on to the NB bar and grill and I had a birthday cake. Which is some kind of mixed shot that you guzzle and then chase with lemon. It didn't taste good but it smelled just like cake batter. I was very reluctant to drink it. Our last stop was the Pour House, a common hang out for my boys. We had beers and arm wrestled. I didn't win once but what can I expect? The music was spiced with Imagine by John Lennon. I can't help but wonder about that song. It has been played at every keystone point in my life. Paris, Ghana, Birthdays, last days, sad days...I started to get very sleepy around 1:30 so the mile or so walk home was a bit of a challenge. I could walk a straight line, no problem. It was staying awake that was difficult. And as we all looped our way home, laughing and reminiscing, the crescent moon rose over Mount Si. It was all so very ethereal and I felt strangely transcendent (probably just drunk). What a wonderful ending to my season.

it is finished...

the sleepless nights have returned and i once again find myself in a time of transition. for the first time, i am able to identify the changes in my attitude and energy that come with certian types of stressful situations. the real me has been exposed and i'm not sure i like it. i am finally recognizing how self-conscious and critical i am. my physical and mental inferiority on the trail crew has really given me a lot to think about as have recent interactions with my peers. i am passive in certain circumstances and assertive and in control in others. i like that fact that i can interact with a lot of different people but not that i can't be the same person for all of them.

and that was all leading up to this announcement...drumroll please...i will be turning 21 on saturday! no that wasn't the real announcement. i finally decided to move back to missoula and embrace all of the wonderful opportunities that the u of m has to offer. i'll be home sunday.

I have the most bizarre dilemma and it is one that I am most ashamed to admit. Over the course of the past couple of months, I have been trying (but not very hard) to decide whether to attend school at the University of Montana or Seattle Central Community College. Now deadlines are approaching and the shit is about to hit the fan. My dilemma sounds fairly black or white, easy to decide right? WRONG. I have a whole host of factors, pros, cons, desires and fears attached to each school. To summarize, and believe me, this onion is chalk full of layers:

UM has home, family, comfort, personal space, is in state, long term possibilities, friends, personal refocusing possibilities such as getting back into yoga, exercise, guitar, planning Nepal, getting some Ghana projects started and NOLs.

But it also starts earlier, I'm not registered and have a lot of hoops to jump through to become registered.

SCCC has a later starting date(so I could work for the forest service longer and go out on fires) and shorter quarter length, friends, new living arrangements, excitement of a big city where I am no longer a minor, a really cool 18 credit collective learning on Southeast Asia, possibility to work at Great Harvest again, I have already registered and paid and Ghana project options.

But it costs more, would be a lot of intense courses that don't offer much in the way of a career, a dead end, more stress and personal compromise, harder to work on planning Nepal and not home.

Two days ago, I was planning on SCCC but yesterday and this morning I was dead set on going to the UM. Right now, I'm staying in Seattle and just finished paying my tuition at SCCC. I'm playing both sides of the field here folks and I just can't make up my mind. I'm sure everyone is feeling so sorry for the poor little girl who has options and opportunities and the financial capabilities to screw around like this but just for laughs and sympathy and shear curiosity, where do you, dear reader, think I should go and why?

I'm too lazy to write coherently so I'm going to streamline.

Summer So Far
a beginning and an end, school morphed into the woods
an evergreen dish loaded with boys and tools and fireschool
hotspring secrets, bubbling water spilling with a pumpkin breeze
fireworks with family, the queen called for her lemonade
we stirred the lake with long sticks,
magiked fish sizzling in sauce
mud covered, wet and tired, building bridges to Eden
mosquito bites covered in chocolate pudding
bikers and chicks, studs and choppers
blues in the middle of Washington.
others and feet,
music and beats,
German lessons, pensions and religion
leave without pay to I can heal.
long open roads and quiet empty woods,
nights at rest stops and coffee spots,
Safeways and thriftsways
Spicing friends with curry and naan
rooftop performances, the curtain opened
with chocolate and spells.
Undefeated pinochle champ and unsullied swimmer
Biking to the sea and salty tears, letting go
Peppered with salsa and BBQs, I wore a toga
and crowned myself with ivy.

Dim red light permeates the room and smoke floats in a striation about six feet off the ground. A bean bag is positioned under a large green umbrella tree. The tree has ornaments hanging off of it. They are fairly indistinguishable but the set dresser should use ultimate care when choosing them. They are perhaps the most important and integral element. Voice from the darkness begins and then character in a rather brackish colored bunny suit strolls in. The irony of the bunny discussing the qualities of people should not be forgotten. The actor should be directed to emphasize the importance of tragedy in relation to the genocide occurring on our highways as cars drive through bug hatches. The actor should also keep a picture of a durian in the back of his mind, because the audience will subconsciously be reacting to this. It is most important.

People are fascinating. The past month has been packed and the general theme has been experiencing people both physically, mentally, verbally, from a distance and right up close. Amazing business...This field work. Some people are horribly dull to look at and maybe at first conversation but give them some effort and their life slowly unfolds as an amazing tapestry of deeds and dreams. Others are wild, they put everything out on the dance floor. Both personality and body type are displayed and your imagination only gets to fill in their past. The present is all they care about. But even here, these people have a story, amazing stories, inspiring stories. Sometimes it's hard to really listen to other people but its better than reading a book though a bit more exhausting. I highly encourage random conversations and bouts of selfless conversation. Fascinating stuff, Burns, fascinating stuff. Yes...hmm...(takes a large drag on a vanilla tobacco filled pipe)

Lights fade as curtain closes.
The End

That was a fopping kickass play, by the way!!!

Emerging blubber and flubber, six feet and drowning in mass media. Dreams of silicon marmalade but I have Aphrodite and Cleopatra, strong ancient beauties, lingering in these veins.
-Joellen Buccat

It has been a long time coming. Funny how my muse comes and goes like a carnival or a rainstorm. It's bright and flashy, a party for awhile and then my mind is a veritable desert and I have fragments that pop around like a ping pong ball. My emotions were on hold but now that I'm out in the woods my freedom to think is also my freedom to dwell. Getting to know people always makes me wonder who I really am...I think I constructed myself out things that I thought were admirable and artsy and pensive and intuitive and beautiful. But I think I misinterpreted those things somewhere along the line which is okay because now I'm just that weird girl that wanders with the wind. I can deal with that, it's artsy... so that isn't what this poem is about. I am a big fat hypocrite. Writing this poem is the very act of contradiction to my poetic resolution. And I don't think the title of my poem is at all appropriate and I need to dwell on it a bit more so it is absent.

Silver clouds are far
behind that icy stare
and love is a stupid
thing all wrapped in jealous
gauze. A hopeless wish,
a rainbow fish flashing
beneath the foam,
too big for the line,
too vibrant for death to dull.
I waited on the horizon
for a gale to hurl me
off the edge of the earth,
space goggles on
and adrenalin high.
The plunge was near
and oxygen zero but I
could breath and I knew
the abyss was an idea
you made. It was a depth
masked by the stars
in my eyes but I saw
the moon last night,
emerge from the haze
and nothing but my laugh
on the wind will tell you
that I have gone cold
and rigid on the rim.

no words, just music...

What Happens When The Heart Just Stops
The Frames

So what happens when the heart just stops
Stops caring for anyone
The hollow in your chest dries up
And you stop believing

So what happens when the heart gives up
But the body goes on living
The blood crawls to a slow and stops
And flows away
Well we got no-one to meet
No love we would beseech

We only have ourselves to blame for everything
There was no answer in the dust
And I'm missing you so much
And now you're sleeping
And I'm leaving
Empty-handed waiting
Time it will subside and we'll agree
It was a given

Well there was no standard we could set
And the world it does regret
To have to leave you in this state of bereavement
You see I'm feeling everything
Nothing gets by

There is a hollow in my chest
The time I won't forget
There is no comfort in the eyes
They put us always to the test I can't prepare myself for that
But I work it out in time

There is a love that flows between us
Ever-changing everyday I worked myself up to a crawl
But I'm not fearing it at all
I have no reason left to stay

And that's why I'm leaving
And there was no answer in the dust
And the one I feared to trust
There is a lie that drags me
Beating and pulling into disappointment

You might think that my life, or at least my outlook on life, is pretty bleak. However, things are not always what they seem (like Aladdin, the diamond in the rough). I thought I would share a diamond, not to make us all feel better about myself but because it is so funny. Names, dates, locations and actual events have been altered to protect all involved, including myself.

Fact 1: My friend, who shall forthwith be known as Anna studies early in the morning in a public quiet place that shall be known as the X Spot. Generally, she studies until her friend, commonly known as Friday arrives. They procede to chat and then she goes to class.

Fact 2: Friday lives in what shall be called Boulder Snout, about 30 miles out of Seattle. This just happens to be the very same village that I will be based out of this summer on my trail crew. Anna and I thought it would be cool for me to meet Friday and bond over our similar summer digs.

So here's what happened: I was at the X Spot at 7 am but Anna apparantly has no self control when she sleeps and turns off her alarm without actually waking up so she was a no show. I worked on my paper while casually wondering if any of the boys around were Friday. I had no idea what he looked like. After a while, I started squirming around on my chair and at one point I was squating and then stood up on the chair to reposition and when I tried to sit back down in a sort of half pigion pose, the chair tipped and slid backwards. I flailed my arms in an attempt to save my fall and the momentum twisted me into a rather sideways position. I crashed to the floor and lay there like a stunned beached whale for a moment. The whole ordeal made a huge racket in the solomn silence and I made matters much worse by laughing histarically. I was horizontally spread on the ground with a toppled chair under me and scattered papers fluttering about and I certainly was not alone in my laughter.

The next morning, Anna actually got up and we managed to convene at the X Spot. Friday came right on schedual, introductions were made and we bonded a bit over our mutual residence. But time was such that I had to leave and I made a quick exit, leaving Anna and Friday to their conversation.

Two days later, Anna mentioned that Friday had recognized me because he had seen me tumble of my chair the day before. He found it odd that he should see me participating in mildly unsuccessful acrobatics one day and then meet me the next, having never known or seen me before. But it is even funnier because as I reflect on the people present, he certainly had been right there in front of me, he just hadn't fit the Friday description. He even asked if I was ok and gave me a somewhat sympathetic smile. So it boils down to my incredible ability to make a fool out of myself and laugh over it and my horrible feature recognition and I am laughing as I type this. What fun...
I guess you had to have been there...

Well, here I am.

I have been sitting in front of my computer constantly for the past week and now that I only have two reflection-type papers hanging over my head and have successfully handed in two grade defining papers, I find myself sitting (or rather hunched on the floor in an awkward zen pose that is not only making my left foot fall asleep but is making the waistline of my pants cut into my stomach significantly) in front of my computer wondering what to do now. The thought of any physical activity is way too much to even bare. My exhaustion seems to be an all-encompassing one that manifests in my lack of enthusiasm to even go for the simplest walk or make a simple bowl of soup. I have not been very healthy lately, but I'm not really complaining. I cannot complain about something that I do intentionally. I am very poor at balancing work, school, friends and myself. Instead of holding even one up and forsaking the others, I let them all drop. I am like a giant snail with a rotten foot and I am stinking up my own shell with my puss. I am most unhappy about how I have been treating (or not treating friends) and how I have been bolled over by the American way of life with out so much as a backward glance at Africa.

But today I am thankful for my family and friends who have taken so much of their time and themselves to buoy me up these past few weeks. I am thankful for my lap top (monsieur ecriver) and Microsoft word. I am thankful for the wonderful hugs that have been sent my way and I am thankful that other people pay attention when I am driving. I am thankful for music and jam sessions and the wonderful emotions that flow over me and I am thankful for strangers who invite me in and I am thankful for sunny days when my mind is in shadows.

I wish it was raining. I realized just this second that I have been listening to an unprecedented amount of music that mentions the rain lately. Coincidence...?

10000 Maniacs
If I were you,
defiant you, alone
upon a troubled way.

I would send my
heart to you to
save it for a rainy day...

The Killers
We took a walk that night,
but it wasn't the same
We had a fight on the
promenade out in the rain

Maroon Five
I don't mind spending
every night out on the
corner in the pouring rain.

Nora Jones
And I want to wake
up with the rain
falling on a tin roof.

Wallflowers
I'm bringing down my suitcase now
I'm shining up my good shoes brown
cause no-one knows my name
Now, no-one knows my name
So look out into the morning rain
cause I'm on the mourning train

It's raining men, halejula
no just kidding... I don't even know who sings it!

According to Mohammed, Anthropology Professor extraordinaire:
When we say I romantically love you, we mean a host of things including, but not limited to, I care about you, I will be loyal to you, I will protect you, I like who you are, I can rely on you and you can rely on me, I admire you, you inspire me, you make me feel good...etc.

But we also mean, I like being physically intimate with you. I like kissing you and having sex with only you. Physical intimacy is a defining factor because in its absence, we could be describing how we feel about our best friends. When physical intimacy is a factor, jealousy is a factor. We are jealous because, according to Freud, humans lapse into mental psychosis. Romantic love makes rational human beings irrational.

All of us twitterpated, romantic fools are on the pathway to mental psychosis where a good majority of us have already gone. Mohammed and Freud aren't saying anything new here. We already knew that love drives us crazy. But I think that being sane and out of love is much worse.
Crazy? I was crazy once...

Not Talking

Storms brewing on the western shore
with clouds of doom, precognoscente
of a fatal electric strike. Thunder echoes
in between glassy towers streaming
with sleeting peril. Tears of rain, tearing
like a knife.

Storms brooding like an old maid
rocking, rocking...
darker, darker
threatening to read my mind
threatening to take me down

Storms of screeching birds, plummeting
wings on an ashy wind. Smelling of intense
fear like a musty, threadbare tree,
a slinking cat with wide, yellow eyes, tail
tucked in howling fear.

Storms ripping chemical rain and steely ice.
hotter and colder
There is a life cracked open and bleeding,
sweeping down the metallic streets
with green downpour. Charcoal dreams
are muddied dust in a quivering sky.