Seasons

The last, slow moving moth of the season landed on my glasses frame tonight
It reminded me of the first time we kissed
     unsucessfully hiding from the spring Texas rain
You tasted of cigarettes,
I wanted to keep your lips forever----
     the rain kept the moths away

Uncountable, pristine, exquisite moments later
I nearly verbalized recently discovered emotions during a trans-atlantic phone call
Now, I am studying the topography of your life on Google maps
Geography may be the death of this

Inside my heart
Like thousands of moths
Captured for a moment in floodlights
Hopeful uncertainty
Captured for a moment in possiblity 

Albania; Comparisons are Odious

I was sitting in my hotel room in Cotulla, TX, attempting to nap after working nearly 24 hours straight when my boss called me on my personal phone, my first thought, "uh-oh, what now?!" I answered the phone with a cautious "hello" and learned that I would be leaving for Albania (like the country in Europe?) for a core handling job. I flew home from Texas, was in Colorado for literally 14 hours and then began the 24 hour journey here; Denver to Washington Dulles, Dulles to Vienna, Vienna to Tirana. Whew! I had never been to Europe and I must say I prefer traveling south, the jet lag killed me!

It was nearly one year ago exactly that I first traveled out of the U.S. to Argentina and I am reminded daily that comparisons are odious, but I cannot stop making them. When I started this job someone told me "enjoy visiting all the assholes of America/the world." I laughed them off, and still do. But I think what they were really trying to tell me was that no matter where you go in the world, oilfield towns all bear a startling resemblance to one another. The town of Fier, Albania where we are currently working bears an uncanny resemblance to the town of Neuquen in Argentina where I spent a month and a half this winter. Comparisons are odious.

Albanian is a very foreign language for me. It is not a romance language so my rudimentary understanding of Spanish is no help at all! So far the only word I can remember how to say is "thank you" and that took about 3 days of practice to master! Italian functions pretty well as a second language and I am quickly figuring out what phrases/words are similar in Italian and Spanish. And there are quite a few people who speak a little English. I am struck, here, with the realization that English is a lazy, sloppy, un-beautiful language. We have no accents on syllables and the structure of our sentences is so bizarre. However, I am slowly mastering the art of non verbal communication and learning to love the challenge of communicating with only a few words in common. El mundo es muy linda; the world is so beautiful.

Comparisons are odious; the culture here is saturated with age and history, wrapped in technology, tetering between communism and capitalism, at the same time vibrant and muted; comparisons are odious. We visited the ancient ruins of Apollonia and I saw my first olive trees and my first really old artifacts and structures. I found myself wandering through an orthodox monastery, realizing just how old Europe is. I think we get brainwashed in the U.S. (and probably other countries as well) with the importance of our own history. But we are such a young country. Wandering these ruins, I was saturated with the age of the country, the multiple cultures and occupations, the ancient/new history of it all. It was an eye opening experience I struggle to put into words.

We spent yesterday at the beach in Vlore, on the Adriatic Sea. It was one of those days where I wanted to pinch myself repeatedly because it seemed too beautiful to be reality. The beach was a little cove surrounded by limestone cliffs dropping into crystal clear water. We climbed and jumped off of cliffs, swam around in the calm water and I explored the geology a little. One of the first papers I ever wrote about geology was about the tufa towers at Mono Lake in California. I remember reading that in Greece and other countries tufa was a common building material. On our first night here we walked into an underground restaurant with walls made entirely of tufa, I was SO excited. Swimming in the Adriatic there were fresh water springs bubbling up, deliciously cold, and many meters below my feet, living tufa being formed. In that moment I was first a geologist, second everything else!

More to come later. Here are a few pictures!

Love,

Pinky

Taste

Once, we were backyard neighbors with a man who had a cat named Cat

In the winter, when the shrubs were all sticks,
we would laugh as we watched Cat stalk man from the roof
The man wandering his yard calling,
"Cat...Cat...Cat...Cat..."
It was infinitely amusing                                                                                                                                      

I found myself recalling that duo and wanting to laugh
as your too eager lips traveled over my sun drenched collarbone
I kissed you then, instead of laughing
You tasted of my sweat; it tasted like summer

There have been moments, periods of time,
when I have forgotten the feel of your fingers on my skin
But even in my dreams, in my deepest sleep,
I remember and yearn for your kisses
In my dreams your kisses always taste like ice cream.

Sizzling Forecast

In lava topped mesas

baked ocher in summer's heat
I see your eyes

The heat here is comforting, reassuring
I embody my mother
Stride from room to room
Opening windows following afternoon showers
The house becomes cool

It is with mundane tasks
  the small monotony of folding clothes
That I notice the passage of time
  faded lettering on college t-shirts reminds me,
I will never see him again

In the blazing, glaring, sizzling mid-July sun
I search for adjectives
Peach juice running down my face
In this heat, my fingers are instantly sticky

6 weeks in south Texas, Spring 2012

6 weeks in south Texas, Spring 2012

Day 33

I now measure time

In daily toothpaste usage

my teeth are quite clean

Day 34

My tongue in your cheek

Irony is all I feel

for Mesquite blossoms

Day 35

X-Mas eve ‘02

Ziggy Stardust playing loud

John was still alive

Day 37

Cancer is pretty

Iridescent death glimmers

My pockets are lined

 Home

I chased the sunset

West. Plain to valley to peaks.

Possibilities.  

Land of Many Lands

A land of diesel fumes and gas flares
Cactus and longhorns
Beauty as unexpected as the occasional liberal
Live Oaks in the east 
Limestone mesas to the west
Big guns and bigger egos encompassing vast stretches of mesquite
Droughts so consuming they leave cactus gasping for water,
until they drown in the next monsoon
Wildflowers blooming under border patrol trucks
Derricks rise and fall beside vast roadways nearing extinction
Swim through humidity
Gasp in heat

    Texas 2012

(In) Memories

I

On the night I learned he had died I collapsed in grief; later opened the bottle of Malbec Brad brought from Argentina; turned 20 the next day.

Each birthday since, preceded by the day of his death.

I am a quarter century old. He is five years dead.

Inspired: my own world explorations began with Malbec at the source.

II

Fleeting memories stay with me:

When I was 8 you gave me a guitar; Muggy summer visits spent catching fireflies in Mason jars while you sang of sealing wax and other fancy stuff

Distance swimming in a great lake; I learned to snorkel with guppies on sandbars inspired by tall tales of sea urchins and shifting tides. Years later, snorkeling in a tropical ocean I saw my first sea urchin and was instantly transported backwards in time.

III

Grief is isolating even when it is necessary; grief is isolating

Memories inspire
even when they are painful

memory is sweet
no matter how fleeting

memory is sweet

Argentina: Visitas Uno y Dos

I spend the last three weeks of September, 2011 in Mendoza, Argentina. The well we were supposed to be working on hit an unexpected and thick igneous intrusion so most of the job was spent visiting some of Mendoza's 2,000 wineries. We also managed a day trip up to Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas at 22,841 feet. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconcagua) September is spring in Argentina and the parque was mostly still covered in snow. We did manage to hike about a 1/4 -1/2 mile and scramble up onto a large rock for great views of this majestic mountain. Not to mention that I collected some andesite from the Andes to smuggle home for my rock collection.

The Andes overwhelmed me absolutely. As you look west from Mendoza they crown the horizon, as tall as the Rockies appear, but with intermittent volcanoes like the Cascades. Subduction leads to orogeny folks. On the Argentina side the Andes are bare, at least in Mendoza Province. This is a geologist's dream, nothing in the way of the rocks! As we drove up to Aconcagua I was constantly overwhelmed, each time it seemed that the mountains could not possibly get bigger, we would round a bend and there would be a new breathtaking range of peaks. The foothills of the Andes put the mountains I have known to shame.

Coming to Argentina was my first experience traveling outside of the U.S. I don't really speak Spanish, a few years in high school and a year in college taught me just enough to get myself into trouble. I was so nervous getting off the plane, but of course trying extra hard not so show that on the outside, after all I was there for work, I needed to be professional. I was relieved to meet up with my coworkers, one of whom spoke fluent Spanish and acted as our translator. As the nerves subsided I began to take in the people and the culture. No spicy food, dinner at 10 or 11 pm, and the clubs were everyone danced till the sun came up. Oh the feeling of stumbling from the dark to find the sun already risen! Argentina stole my heart so quickly I hardly noticed it had happened at all.

Besos Secreto (Argentina Uno)
I could kiss you forever
Until my lips were blue with bruises
Until I could not find my breath and did not want to
Until Orion was no longer upside down
Only to find myself unsatisfied; longing for more
Porque mi alma conoci tu alma al instante

I dreamt of your touch
And woke with only a memory
Sticky ice cream
Sweet laughter

Tuvimos un momento bonita


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I am back in Argentina. In theory I was supposed to pick up 900 samples in Buenos Aires and then bring them down to our lab here in Neuquen and organize and supervise as they were run. In practice the permission to access the samples (which are the property of YPF, the government run petroleum company) never materialized. Typical and awesome as I got to spend nearly a week being a tourista in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is easily the biggest city that I've ever been in, 13 million people. At first I was a little nervous about exploring by myself, but since it is such a big city it was easy to blend into all the people. My very dear friend had studied abroad here and sent me a wonderful long distance tour guide email. With her suggestions for places to visit I started each day by taking a taxi to one of these locations. I visited MALBA, the amazing art museum and saw a Frida Kahlo painting and many other inspiring works of art. This was my first visit to a major metropolitan art museum and I was not disappointed. All of the artists there are latin american and I noticed that so many of the paintings, sculptures and photographs contained a theme of revolution, or suppression or celebrated the working class and the oppressed. Additionally many pieces seemed to be odes to the color of life and the beauty of women. That day seemed to be a day for art, as I left the museum I wandered into the Palermo neighborhood and into a fair in a square there. I ended up buying two pieces of art at this fair, one by a man who was clearly enamored with revolution and portrayed this with wonderful comic style drawings, the other by a woman who was just as much of a romantic as myself. They both spoke enough english that combined with my poor spanish we had wonderful, inspiring conversations. The conversations were as awesome as the art.

The thing about travelling alone is that it is both freeing and isolating. You have the freedom to do whatever you want, your schedule is your own. But you eat every meal alone and without mastery of a language making friends is daunting. I really wanted to go to a disco in BA, but I was too nervous to go by myself. I got my dance on instead at La Bomba del Tiemp, a drumming concert held in a venue that was little more than an empty lot between two buildings with grafitied walls. It was fantastic; the performance becoming a  giant dance party as the sun went down and the beer lines got longer.

There was so much to see everywhere I looked in BA. I definitely walked miles and miles through that city, each day easily spending at least 4 hours just walking, wandering. There are so many little plazas and parks and neighborhoods. Even though I was always aware that I was in the center of a huge metropolis I also felt at times like I was in a town smaller than K__________. There were so many street fairs and hidden alleys that were lined with painted walls. Perhaps vibrant is the best adjective. I would love to return to Buenos Aires with a friend and explore even more.

Now I am Neuquen. There is a huge oil boom here and the town is growing, although at an Argentine pace. Less people speak english here, which is good as it is forcing me to really try and use my spanish, although I still get so tongue tied and nervous at times.

Peace out!

Pinky