The Forever Tourist
Photo by Kait Herzog on Unsplash

“I’m going to paddleboard at the lake this weekend, I’m so excited!” The grocery store lady told me as she loaded the groceries into the back of the car.

“Oh fun! What lake?” 

She froze for a split second and looked at me with her face all scrunched in confusion and I felt a little like a time traveler or something that just asked what a computer is. 

I grew up here. Just down the road about a mile and a half. I lived the first 20 years of my life here. And then I moved to California for another 20 years and now I’m not from here anymore. All the local references have been wiped from my brain. I remember none of my life here. I don’t remember any of the local things, lexicons, street names. All gone. But I can distinctly remember what the lilacs in my grandma’s garden smelled like. And the feeling of the butterfly landing on my bare thigh when I was 5. I remember what a crawdad feels like when you pick it up out of the creek and the itchy feeling of wild grass hitting your bare shins in the summer. I remember the way an early Saturday morning in springtime smells and the way the mountains look on a clear day. I remember picking those little navy colored berries out of evergreen bushes and getting tiny, microscopic splinters in your thumb. I remember the smell of Leah Farrell’s basement. I remember the afghan Mrs. Teemsley had on her couch that day we found out where she lived after the principal died, and asked to hang out with her for a while. I remember the dried food on the black wrought iron chandelier that hung in the house my mom was renting. I remember the clogs I was wearing when I was 3 and I remember stretching my legs out straight ahead of me on the couch so everyone would see the heels on the clogs when I was having my picture taken in the den. I remember hanging out at the bowling alley with all the other kids whose dads were in a league and making hickeys on our necks with those rubber poppy things from the vending machines. And then in the summer, I remember hanging out at the softball fields with all the other kids whose dads were on softball teams and buying candy from the snack tent thing and hiding under the bleachers and getting sand stuck to my sticky fingers. I remember telling Heather Staroscik I was allergic to water because I didn’t want to run through the sprinkles and I remember watching “V” at the sitters house waiting for my mom to come pick us up. 

“I thought you were from here” someone will always say. 

I am and yet I don’t know how to make that relevant. My memories don’t include anything practical, unless twisting your ankle in a snake hole is practical. I remember the way my pink room would turn peach in the early morning sun. I remember reading Huckleberry Finn on my bed looking down the hallway to the stairs. I remember thinking I would remember that precise moment for no other reason but to see if I could. I remember trying to fly off the fireplace and I remember thinking it was possible if I thought about it hard enough. I remember eating a walnut from a glass dish at Christmastime and hating it and having nowhere to spit it out. I remember reading a book in the living room about a ghost while it rained outside and I remember the way the turquoise and red line printed on a shampoo bottle jumped into each other when you looked too close. I remember the feel of the knitted blinds in my parents’ bedroom and I remember prank calling 911. I remember where I was when Freddie Mercury died (in the backyard playing paddle ball with my sister) and I remember where I was when Ronald Reagan was shot. I was at someone’s grandma’s house. I think. The house was blue. I remember that my 4th grade teacher moved to the United States when she was a little girl and learned to speak English by watching Sesame Street and reading comic books. I remember the smell of her perfume. 

Isn’t it like that with everyone, though? Who could possibly remember the name of the street some lake is on? The name of the video store that sold beta and vhs? Where the fish store was that smelled like cigarettes. I just realized that the cigarette smell is so much a part of my memory of it, that I expect fish stores to just smell that way. And I suppose they do not. 

And if I’m no longer a local because I don’t remember where the haunted farm was or that it even existed until I got lost one time trying to get to the Butterfly Pavilion and happened upon it, where do these memories belong? I know the wild grasses and snake holes were in the field behind my house, but that particular field isn’t this vast space full of my childhood anymore, but only a small strip of overgrown land behind some houses I barely recognize. Or it was last I drove past it. I don’t like going over there anymore. 

So no, grocery lady, I don’t know what lake you’re talking about, but it sounds really fun. And I’m going to nod my head and pretend I knew of a second lake that’s even cooler than your lake and I was making sure we were thinking of the same lake. You know, so I look cool. Like a local.

Singularity

5th grade was a really important year for me, I’m learning. Except I’ve known it. The books I read in 5th grade have stayed with me for a long time. I remember exactly what seat I was sitting in when I read The Bridge to Terabithia. I remember what seat I was sitting in when I read Where the Red Fern Grows. I remember making the diorama for The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I do not remember my 5th grade teacher, but, looking at the list of books we were reading, I do think she might’ve been going through some soul searching. And good for me.

There has always been one specific book that settled itself so deep within my soul and yet, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the title or author or any detail google-able enough to light my path. All I could remember was it was about twin brothers and one gets locked in a shed in the backyard of some house and when he comes out, he’s significantly older than his brother. And it has perched itself on the edge of my brain like a dream that slips out of focus as soon as you realize you’re thinking about it. I had spent years looking it up, asking everyone I knew if they had ever heard of it and I ended up with no leads, no one that had ever read such a book, nothing. A ghost book. Maybe it was a dream.

UNTIL!

I asked my Facebook friends. No one, as expected, had read it. I was about to give up and declare myself the new author of a cool book I knew I had read but no one knew of. My own Yesterday. And then a friend named Nissa, who I imagine has read every book ever written by this point goes, “Is it Singularity by William Sleator?”

I doubted it. For one thing, I didn’t recognize the title. I didn’t recognize the author. I know I had never seen the cover.

The only other brief fleeting feeling I had was that the cover was blue and someone with a badly drawn face was naked, which didn’t make a lot of sense to be on the cover of a book I was reading in my 5th grade classroom, 4th desk from the front, 2nd row in on the right. The description of Singularity sounded vaguely like the book I was remembering, but like, vaguely? I didn’t remember a toothy eel or whatever those Saved by the Bell looking boys were trying to make me look at, but there was a lot about this thing I couldn’t remember, so I bought it on the off chance I could close that chapter and move on.

And then I forgot about it.

Until yesterday when I was putting my kid’s Harry Potter book back on his bookshelf. (Side note: Thankfully we already own all the HP books and I don’t have to make the moral decision to financially support that woman’s horrific viewpoints or make my kid stop at book 6. Anyway) I saw Singularity sitting, dusty on the shelf and having just finished a book, I knew what I had to do. I had to finish what my 5th grade self had been yelling out to me subconsciously for 30 something years. I decided to read the book to find out if this was the thing I couldn’t let go of, but could never find.

It’s a funny thing that where you were at at the age of 11 can be exactly where you’re at when you’re 43. It was the year that I knew I wanted to be a writer. I have written poems and stories since I could pick up a pencil, but when I knew was in 5th grade. When I wrote a book about witches that my teacher turned in for some contest. And I won. Only a couple kids from my school were able to go, and I was one of them. The Young Writer’s conference. I didn’t go, but that’s for another day. The point is, I knew. I heard my dream crack into focus that year. The same year I fully realized my love for reading. The same year I read Singularity by William Sleator.

And here I am. 43 years old. In the middle of a pandemic, locked inside my house for the past 3 months, even though we’re officially allowed to leave. Here I am. 43 years old. Thriving in quarantine, reading a book for young adults about a boy who voluntarily locks himself in a shed for a year or 3 hours depending, and thrives.

Here I am, having read a book that has haunted me for 30 something years and was as completely enjoyable today as it was 30 something years ago. Here I am, remembering that I really, really want to be a writer. Here I am, happy that my brain saved every tidbit of that book that it did.

Except I could’ve actually lived without this.

The Back Garden

Day 2. You know how Picasso or whoever went through his Blue Phase? Maybe this period will be known as my House Phase.

Something about this picture, the white picket fence? The tree? Something about it reminds me of the warmth of being completely lost within the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like, I feel the same feeling about this picture that I had when I was reading that book when I was 15 or however old I was. Normally white houses give me the creeps, like a feeling of trapped angst. It’s like a past life trauma or something. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, wasn’t that house white? I don’t know. They all look like you’re going to walk into them and it’s going to be dark inside, and you’ll be surrounded by a smell; that mixture of urine and stale cigarette smoke, and like, mildew. The kitchens all have that white painted wood cabinetry with cut out embellishments and the paint is so thick that it almost feels sticky. I hate the very thought of it.

This house doesn’t give me that feeling though. This house makes me feel warm and childlike. I want to wander in that back garden and pretend I’m in a forest. I want to explore and pretend that I’m in a different time.

This art project is probably not going to improve my drawings all that much, but it is forcing me to slow down. To stare at an image again. To figure out what that image wants to tell me. And I love that it’s giving me a chance to explore that in a medium that I am not personally invested in the outcome of. I highly recommend it if you’re trying to figure out a way out of a creative block.

On to the art

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
Lol

The Art Challenge

Everyone is doing some kind of learn a new hobby thing right now, and I’m finishing my novel right now. But I feel like I need a creative outlet that is not writing, and not sewing because I just made a gazillion masks and I need a smidge of a break on that. And more thread.

You know what I can’t do that I’ve always wanted to? I cannot draw. I mean, I can pick up a pencil and make some lines on a paper, but my skill level hasn’t improved beyond 6th grade. So I’m doing it. Everyday, I’m going to look at a picture of something, and I’m going to draw it. Maybe I’ll do it for a month, maybe I’ll get bored of it after 3 days. BUT, I’m going to attempt it. And then I’ll blog about it so I can look back and see if I got any better. Or get a good laugh. Hopefully that gets me out of my head enough that I’m able to write my way out of a very serious issue that is popping up in my novel that I absolutely do not know how to tackle yet. The reason I ever started writing is because I had these very vivid images in my mind when I was a kid and I wanted to put them out into the world somewhere and I couldn’t draw what I was seeing. So I would write it down in exacting details, just to get it out of my head. And then I fell in love with it.

So, today is day one.

I found this picture of a red house in a field. The colors in this picture lured me into a feeling, like that creative bubbling feeling, so I decided I would draw this. Looks easy enough.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

LOL

Nailed it.

Day 62

Day 62. 62 days ago was the last day I went out in public. I went out on my weekly Saturday brewery lunch with my mom. We knew the day before that schools were starting remote learning, but we went out to our normal lunch. Probably well aware that it was the end. Before that we met a dog. My mom was in the middle of adopting a dog and we met him at a farm a couple miles away. I do not live at a farm, unfortunately. That’s kind of an ultimate dream. In theory. Because in reality I’m a city lady. But we went to a farm and met my mom’s future dog.

That was 61 days ago. 61 days ago I was super nervous because I had chaperoned a middle school trip to the Buell Theatre in Denver and I had standing reservations for my grandma’s birthday party coming up. News of the shutdown was rolling in, but I still felt foolish telling my family I had to cancel because I didn’t want to get grandma sick.

62 days. Only like 2 “fights” with my husband which is miraculous because this might be a record! I really think we’re better as a family. Which makes me feel awful because I read something that said this was Ayn Rand’s dream scenario, and while I know NOTHING of Ayn Rand’s writing, I know that people absolutely HATE her take on stuff so, I’m super worried about how easy this thing has been on me. I worry that my desire that everything STOPS potentially puts me in Ayn Rand territory.

I worry about my friends that have to work with the public. Whether for moral issues, financial issues, health insurance issues, mental health issues. I want all of you to get not only hazard pay, but paid insurance. Like zero out of pocket.

I am super proud of my teacher friends that are holding it all together so that I don’t necessarily have to.

I am PRAYING for my nurse friends. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU’RE ALIVE!

And yet here I am. Day 62. And my daily distraction is my awful haircut. Because I cut my hair a few weeks ago. Or days. Or months? And it is a situation. And all I’m focused on is maybe cutting it more and making my hair into Debbie Harry hair or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag hair. Currently, my hair looks like 2008 Kate Gosselin hair, minus the chunky highlights. Also, it should be noted, I am not a stylist. It won’t work. I’ll cry even more.

But then there’s the realization that my normal “summer mood” is basically my current “lock down mood” and I’ve come to realize, they are the same thing. I cut my hair now because I have the safety net of seclusion. But what if I’ve always had this passion for bad hair. My privilege allows this. I am in a place that allows me to Tiger King my hair. Or Debbie Harry it. Or Fleabag it. What’s the worst thing that will happen? Now? But what about later? What would happen in the event this was normal times? Would I be immediately shunned? Immediately put into a box? Is this even something I care about now?

And yet, Day 62. I’m worried about my hair. I’m worried that I want to sound too much like some celebrity who is posting a bunch of social media nonsense to stay relevant. I am not relevant. I don’t want to be relevant.

I am happy. I am content. I know this gives me privilege. I feel awful about it.

Quarantine

I feel guilty.

Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash

I feel content and happy and comfortable and I don’t want this lockdown thing to end. But then I think about the people who need to leave. The bad relationships someone must be in. The kids that are having a hard time with remote learning, or even worse, the ones that are locked in with violence, and no one is looking after them to make sure they’re okay and being fed.

I need to stop. I don’t want to think about this time this way. I know all of that is out there and happening and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s stressing me out. I have to live my own time. I have to choose to enjoy my time. I am enjoying my time. I love not having to put on pants or look presentable. I love not having to drive the kids to school. I love having my husband home. I love not feeling pressured to go out and do something. I love not going to restaurants and I love not having to put on pants.

My hair is growing out and showing how much older I am than I thought I was before this whole thing began. But there’s something so comforting about the loss of beauty and youth for an entire culture. The entire world. We are reverting back to our physically ugly selves. And that’s so calming. So relaxing. We’re forced to do our own hair and our own pedicures and we’re all stuck. We’re all ugly and old and stuck. All of us have crusty heels and badly painted toes. I don’t want this time to end. Partly because I cut my hair and I need it to grow back a bit before anyone sees me looking like this.

I know I have this time easier than others. I know that I’m lucky that my husband and I are getting along. I know that I’m lucky that my kids’ school district has been amazingly well organized. I’m lucky that I have wifi and my kids are able to remote learn without me having to do much, although I do suspect that my middle schooler is just reading Harry Potter books the whole time, but I’m fine with that. I’m lucky that the boys have an xbox and they can play Fortnite and Minecraft with all of their friends. I’m glad that they facetime their friends and that both of the boys are forced to get along. I’m glad that we can “meet” my mom outside from a distance and walk our dogs together at least 6 feet apart while we yell through our masks about our day so far. I’m happy that we eat three meals a day together. I’m glad that the boys entertain themselves for the most part.

I had a breakdown around Day 25. I was a stay-at-home mom before the shutdown and we all became stay-at-home and I didn’t realize how much I needed the silence of everyone off and doing their real life things everyday without me. Of how much I thrived in my solitude until I was forced into the daily group setting. And on Day 25 I yelled at everyone and I cried and I wrote an emo post on Facebook about my “hard time”. Quite frankly, I had my own Ellen on Instagram from her mansion-jail moment. But honestly, I just needed space. I was overwhelmed and overstimulated and it wasn’t anyone else’s fault but my own. Because I wasn’t taking my space. I was expecting everyone else to just give it to me. So I got a glass of wine, apologized to everyone for my nonsense, and told them I needed an hour alone. Just like that. And just like that they told me they loved me and told me to go to my room. I’m loving that I’m learning to take care of myself. I’m learning to communicate better. I’m learning that I don’t have to yell. And I think my family is better for it. I do still have to yell at the dog for barking inappropriately. But this forced space has made us closer as a family.

And I’m writing. I’m reading and I’m writing and I’m pretending that the outside world is stopped. I can pretend that people are being kind to themselves and to each other. I can pretend that we just don’t have a government right now. That everything is fixing itself. That nothing bad is happening outside of my windows. My dog disagrees and would like me to tell to everyone that life is NOT okay outside the windows, because she saw the neighbor’s dog, Mister poop on our lawn last week. But everything in my little bubble is fine.

And I know I’m lucky. I know I have it better than a lot of people. But I’m having my John Locke on the LOST island feelings. Because I’m a better me here.

I’m still trying to work out exactly why I want the world to continue to stay paused for a bit longer. I think part of it is the shared experience. The entire world stopped. Most of the world. But I know that I’m speaking from a place of privilege. The world paused for me. It didn’t pause for the doctors or the nurses or the lady that has to go to work at the grocery store or the person that still has to work at McDonald’s because rent is due and they need health insurance for when they get sick. It’s such a baffling feeling. A selfish one. But when the responsibility to live in a society has been taken away, I feel myself thriving. The pressure to conform to something, the insecurity of not measuring up, it’s all paused. All of it. No one is coming to my house so my bed remains unmade. My bed is usually unmade but now there is purpose to it. Now I vacuum for me and not because I worry what my mom would think.

My roots are grey, my heels are rough, my eyebrows are a mess, my legs are unshaved, I’ve gained 5 pounds, and I’m just really at peace.

I think I just want a break from everything for a little bit longer. I want to stay inside and I want the world to stay inside and I want the system to fall so it can be rebuilt from scratch. So that it will be rebuilt by the people who will work to do it for all of us. I want it to be controlled by the people who need it to be better. I’m not ready to go back. I don’t want to go back to rules. I don’t want to go back to forced small talk and bedtimes and appropriate drinking hours.

So here’s to Zoom happy hours and my awful haircut and my self-pedicure. And my new solitude.

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Isolation Day #6 (maybe?): The Writing Group Dilemma

I have a novel that I’ve been writing and rewriting and rereading and deleting and starting over and writing and rewriting for like 5 years now. It’s super exciting and I love it and I also think its a steaming pile of crap that should never see the light of day.

But it should. Because I love where it’s going. But I’m bored of it and how awful it all is.

But I figure I should use this self-isolation time to be productive. No excuses.

There’s also the fact that Camp Nano is coming up and I like doing that AND that I just joined a writing group which I’ve always been drawn to writing groups.

The dilemma with this new writing group however, is that I hate my above mentioned grand opus. Then there’s a story that I have partway written, that I DO like, but it came to me fast and furious, in a dreamlike way and I have no idea where it wants to go and so 10,000 words just sit there like Whitney Houston in sunglasses staring at me from across the fountain. The writing group is going to kick me out for being a waste of their time, probably.

While logging into the laptop in my efforts to have a productive writing isolation, a link came across my attention that Scribd is offering a free 30 day membership to read and audiobook as many books and magazines and whatever else you can find there as is your want. No strings attached. I’m taking this opportunity to finally read (well listen to) Save the Cat because apparently I am scrapping all of my efforts to finish something and I’m going to write a screenplay! Because of course I am. After I listen to this book and maybe a few others, because 30 DAYS FREE BOOKS!!!!

But seriously, what should I do about this writing group? Do I submit something I really like with no signs of an ending, or do I submit the mess that is my novel that I really want to finish but I don’t know that a writing group will be able to help me with, or either that, they’ll collectively tell me it’s a pile of crap and needs to be immediately scrapped with a promise I never write again? I know that won’t happen, no one is that mean. Right?

Alright, if anyone has advice, I’m here for it. In the meantime, I have a book to listen to.

Things to do in Denver when Old You is Dead.

I’m from Denver. Well, like 20 minutes northwest of Denver. Denver adjacent. I moved back about a year and a half ago from a 21 year stint in Sunny Los Angeles and I feel like I left a whole chunk of my heart and my soul back in the Valley when I moved.

Photo by Neil Soni on Unsplash

I moved to California, when I was 20 and obnoxious (probably because I was 20). I was shy, and angry, and wrote embarrassing journal entries that I was sure would win awards once I died and they were found and published. I knew everything and as I whined about the world through pages of angsty words I threw together about living alone in this world (dramatically with cats and adoring fans of my works). I couldn’t stand to be alone. I couldn’t do anything on my own. I didn’t know how to do anything on my own. I didn’t know how to do anything. And I didn’t ever have to. And then I moved to Los Angeles. Studio City to be accurate. A mile from the Brady Bunch house to be even more accurate. A couple of blocks down the street from Universal Studios, actually. Thankfully. Because I got a job at Universal Studios (CityWalk) and on my first day of work, my car wouldn’t start, so I had to walk those couple blocks (and that REALLY BIG HILL) in end of July, Valley heat. Valley heat isn’t like anywhere else I’ve ever been. Valley heat is sticky and it smells faintly of car exhaust and dirt. Sometimes garbage, depending on where you happen to be. And your head sweats under the hair you just straightened, making it rise in volume by 2.5 units. I’m not a math person, so just believe me and pretend you know that I’m right and hair units are a real measurement. I walked into my new job, a helmet of hair that now smells like the street, face hot and flushed bright red with exhaustion and being out of shape and it’s now itchy because of the sweating and I’m in HOLLYWOOD (adjacent), my roommates hated me because they had to live with the awful version of me that was now completely depressed, and, the icing on the cake, freshly car-less. I had to make friends. And quick. I knew no one. And that lasted about 20 minutes, because let me tell you something about Los Angeles. Everyone is obnoxious. And lonely. And insecure. And alone. People cling to other people like life rafts in Los Angeles. And it’s wonderful. Sometimes it’s awful, like being stalked by a stuntman awful, but most of the time, it’s amazing. And I wouldn’t be who I am now if I didn’t have to kill off pretentious, emo queen, “Denver Amy” to survive. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Like Personality Boot Camp.

I moved back to Denver (adjacent) on an opportunity and while it’s been a great move for all the California boys I brought back with me, which is really only a husband and two kids and not like actual back-up dancers, which I didn’t realize I needed until now, there’s a feeling about moving back to a hometown where nothing has changed except there’s now a church that’s taken over the old movie theater that I saw Beetlejuice in. It’s suffocating in a way that I imagine is a lot like that one Tom Hardy movie with the black ink demon thing that people draw porn and write fan-fiction about. Anyway, I feel like “Denver Amy” haunts the streets where I grew up, reminding me of how awful I can be; my own personal Ghost of Christmas Past.

It’s entirely possible I just grew up, but throwing myself at a huge city I had only ever seen on tv and then loving everything about it for 21 years has a way of making you feel a part of something bigger than you. And I think that my reluctance to fully re-embrace Denver adjacent has more to do with my fear that if I let LA go, I can never get it back again. If I embrace my new, I’m allowing back in the old. And I made a pact to pretend that version of myself was a bad fever dream. However, recently I’ve been coming to refreshing feelings, and maybe it’s because it’s been warm for like 3 days in a row and I’m getting hopeful. I’ve decided to embrace and fall in love with my new home as if I had never sat in that new church down the street laughing at Michael Keaton in his striped suit, or been in that grocery store a mile the other way that allegedly had a make-over but I can still hear inky demon/high school me thinking about Anne of Green Gables in the frozen food isle that used to have greeting cards in it. So If I avoid those two places – the church will be easy because I don’t do the church thing, and the grocery store is where my demons seem to congregate so that one is out, then I can pretend I never lived here before.

You know what it is? When you move away from your home town, you create a new life. Like a Witness Protection kind of thing. And you can completely erase all the bad, embarrassing character flaws like Peggy Olson did with Pete’s baby. You just Don Draper it. But I’m at the Priest Colin Hanks calling me out in the Lord’s house part of the show and I want to skip ahead to the roller skating in the office part. You know? The walking down the hall carrying all my stuff in a box with octopus porn art under my arm in sunglasses with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth part of my journey. I think that I’m actually pretty close to strapping on my roller skates, though. I have made a conscious decision to actively love where I live with such vigor, that I single-handedly become the Denver Adjacent Tourism Board. I can still love Los Angeles, fiercely, but I’ve seen Sunset Boulevard. It doesn’t work to shut the world out thinking it still loves me; demanding that Hollywood not forget me while I rot away in my self-imposed exile.

But you see, as I wrote this, several friends from LA have randomly and unknowingly sent emails and texts of love and gossip, reining me back in.

OMG! Mr Deville, I’m ready for my close-up.

Molly, you’re in danger, girl.

Last night I saw a medium.

I was skeptical. But my uncle is hands down ALL IN ON THIS. She was 100% Uncle Buck certified.

He met this woman during a ghost hunting expedition like 20 years ago and swears by her. He took his girlfriend to one of this ghost hunting friend’s medium readings and she was sold and at Thanksgiving dinner this year, we all sat around the table talking about ghosts. Well, that’s all dinners when I’m involved, but ghosts were discussed. And then this medium lady was brought up. My mom was sold.

I was intrigued. She is said to have spoken of things no one could know. My mom wanted in. I wanted in, because, you know, ghosts.

Quick aside, if you’re ghost hunting and you’re a medium, do you need all that fancy equipment? EVPs? Heat maps? Night vision goggles? Ouija boards? I’m serious. Where’s the line between like, my super haunted apartment in Denver and Oda Mae Brown? Although, she seemed spooked a lot of the time, so, SAME. Okay, take Long Island Medium. She’s always laughing and snapping her nails on the granite counter tops in her fancy home and blaming farts on her clients’ dead loved ones. Allegedly. But I know what I saw. A scam of farts. (By the way!!! I heard farts last night, more on than in a minute.) See, when I lived in Capitol Hill with a super nasty early 1900’s Denver socialite ghost that hated me, I rarely laughed. Well, I still laughed, but I also peed myself more times than I care to admit out loud.

Point is, mediums are super relaxed and laughing about farts, while Zak from Ghost Adventures is always yelling and getting scratched and possessed. To be fair, if I was a ghost, I would be more likely drawn to the blonde lady who’s laughing and farting, but I would also love to scare the crap out of Zak Bagans. But also as a ghost, which adventure do you choose when a group of charlatans rolls through your spooky abandoned parlor with cameras and tape recorders?

Okay, back to me. We walk into this metaphysical book store that smelled like patchouli and random purple and yellow aura. There were several stones for sale, candles, and a lot of books with levitating yogis in front of expanding light and galaxy brain meme looking backgrounds ranging in topics from my dead loved ones to constipation. It sounds like I’m knocking this. I’m not knocking this. I was just friends with a lot of potheads in the late 90s and well, this is similar to what hanging out with them was like.

We are escorted into the back room which was painted in a light purple hue, floral curtains on one wall, fold up chairs lined up in rows on the floor, and a Christmas tree set up in the back. It kind of felt like where the gangsters held their meetings in that funeral home in The Wire. We sit down, My Uncle, his girlfriend, my mom, and me. And we wait, and wait. People start talking about who they hope will come through. And we wait. The medium ghost hunter lady is milling about. I like her, she’s got a good vibe about her. Like I could be friends with her. But I’m skeptical, right? Like, I’ve watched those debunk videos on youtube about mediums and their cue reading skills. How they plant people in the crowd to make themselves look legit. So the whole time I’m hearing everyone talk amongst themselves about dead people, all I can think is, you idiots. She could be taping this somehow! You’re giving her everything she needs. At this point, my mom turns to me and starts talking to me about the very minute details of various dead people she hopes come through.

Good job on the stealth op, Mom.

Here’s the thing. I know, scientifically or logically or whatever, that ghosts don’t exist. Like it doesn’t make sense. I also HIGHKEY believe in ghosts. Because I’ve seen them. I have lived with ghosts. Like, I don’t wish ghost living on anyone. And yet, at the same time, I don’t know how it’s possibly a thing. Like I get the whole thing about energy transference and how energy doesn’t just go away, like it has to go somewhere. And where else would it go other than ghosts and ouija boards? But I also get the whole thing about how an energy field being off in your home because of negative ions or leaking water pipes, or something else that makes scientific sense that I’m not looking up right now or I will never finish this post, how our human brains interpret this fluctuating, abnormal, unbalanced energy as danger! but since we can’t physically see danger, our brains form hallucinations on the interpretations trying to make sense of the whole thing and we see ghosts. Or something. But I’ve seen ghosts live in the ghost flesh and if what I saw was only my mind’s hallucinations, give my brain an Oscar.

So we’re in this room last night, at the back of a psychic book store and about 45 minutes after we sat down, our fun medium lady stands in front of us, cracks some jokes, says hi to my uncle, hugs a guy in the front row, waves at a lady in the back who drove over from Aurora, which Long Denver Medium knew either through paranormal or non-disclosed normal means, and off to the races we went. Apparently the ghosts chose me to go first.

She looked me directly in the eyes and asked me who the female with the J name was that was sitting on my lap and saying we were very close. Was she a friend? A sister? And my heart pounded and my neck did that tightening, painful thing right before you bawl and I bit the side of my mouth hard so I wouldn’t cry in front of everyone and then I took a deep breath and gave out a shaky “My sister, Julie” as she went on about how funny she is and she was with my great-grandma and grandpa and a whole slew of other accurate details that I can’t remember.

Then she went around the room for the next 2 hours, making other people cry with her questions and remarks about smells and inside jokes with the beyond, a murdered ghost came through, a ghost that spoke only Spanish, a ghost asking about a lady’s new hairdo just like in the real Ghost, a ghost telling a woman babies were coming, I don’t know, it was a lot. Someone kept farting loudly, a lady behind me burped. Everyone laughed together, cried together, passed around a community tissue box, it was great. I could’ve done without the farting though, but maybe that’s just a thing that summons the ghosts! I’m not here to judge the process.

But here it is, the next day and I feel like maybe it was all a scam. I mean, it was worth it, I had a great time, but maybe the emotions flowing through the room, the comradery, the ill-timed farts, maybe these were all a dripping pipe in the house type thing. The emotions made us hear truths that weren’t there. Made us believe in hope from the other side. Helped out by tidbits of information Long Denver Medium was able to pick up from the people she knew and the things she over-heard as we sat in around gabbing during the pre-show. I don’t know, but she likely made a TON of money doing this thing.

New career goal. Maybe I can get fake acrylic nails, work on my stand-up routine, and charge people to sit in a room with me and cry about stuff. I don’t have a psychic ability, but I do have ghost apps on my phone that are a hit at parties and I am a professional Ouija board user. This could totally work. Alright, who’s in?

The Demon in the Magritte Hat

There is this thing bubbling up under my heart, in my soul, my dreams, and I need to do something with it. I need to make something with it. Part of it might be having just come off NaNoWriMo, which started out great for me and kind of fell flat at the end. I was writing this mystery story, that I still really like, but I fell out of routine and started doing other things. But this thing, this demon, that has been lurking for a good 6 months now has been ignited.

It feels like I have to solve a mystery, even if it’s not going to be my own, but that Nancy Drew drive could be because I got sucked into the Visit Eroda hashtag on twitter a few weeks ago and I began piecing together clues, and reading along with others’ clues and figuring it out it was some scam Harry Styles was running about a fake island. And look, it looked like he was pulling some Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass, Magical Mystery Tour thing. I was invested. And now that I’ve seen Harry Styles’ Adore You video, I have nowhere else to put my sleuthing. I also really wish this Eroda thing was like an album film thing like, well, like Magical Mystery Tour or Head. Because I have been yelling for months to no one who cared, that that’s what Harry Styles was filming in Scotland back in August or something. His own Magical Mystery Tour. And I was wrong. I’m not a great sleuth, turns out.

But there’s still this energy lingering in me and it’s causing my anxiety to wreck my sleep and stomach lining because I’m not doing anything with it. I’m not creating anything. I’m not thwarting bad guys in masks at a haunted amusement park, and I’m not following an art thief through a museum in a Rene Magritte hat.

I think I’m trying to write a play or start my own improv group or something. I don’t know what this drive in me is, but until I figure out what I’m supposed to do with it, I won’t get any sleep and I may end up moving to New York or Chicago and I’ll wear all black and I’ll listen to jazz and pick up smoking again. I have a family with a husband and school aged kids and a mortgage and a dog and a cat! I can’t be stupid and 20 again.

Because when I was stupid and 20 and I got this same vibey feeling, I decided to be a rock star because I learned about CBGB and I wanted to be Debbie Harry levels of cool, so I bought a guitar and moved to LA and worked a lot of retail and joined the pta and then moved back to Denver. But at least I did something with the demon. I fed that demon. And now there’s a new one and I don’t know what it wants from me. Except maybe a Beatnick lifestyle, I don’t know. I’m a middle-aged, suburban mom, Demon!

Stay tuned, I guess. At least all black is slimming.