An arm and a leg. But I just saw the leg.

Last week on my walk with Pete we crossed the railroad tracks and came across a leg.

It was a deer leg, not sure if it was a front or hind, but it was small. Half of it had been picked clean to the bright, white bone but the lower part still had fur and a hoof.

There's really no better reminder that you live on the edge of civilization than coming across a body part.

A lot is written about Marfa, the art, the restaurants, the hipsters, the hipsters, the hipsters...the hipsters. But beyond the predictable line about "a tiny town centered in the middle of nowhere on a vast desert plain" (or something similar), not a lot is communicated about how far out there we really are.

A brown chihuahua used to hang out on my porch, a flea- and tick-ridden little stray who was terrified of me but would hang around anyway. Then one day he stopped showing up. Sure, the one dog catcher in town could've picked him up, but more than likely something else got him: coyote, javelina, snake bite, hawk, feral hog, bobcat, fox, any number of things will eat your dog here at night. Especially one small and sick. I believe that's called "thinning the herd."

No matter how much art or how many beef tongue sandwiches offered, people here live on the edge. As my friend Dirk says, "this is the island of misfit toys." And what makes this desert really special is not the people passing through town or the girls in top knots with platform sandals at the bar, but the people who have come here to learn and adapt and be completely OK with the edge of wild.

And not "wild" in the way that the new "party like a rock star" cliche saying is wild (which, in my opinion, heralds the death of the "rock star"), or "wild" in the bed-head tousled hair pinned into a messy bun is wild, or even the "wild" in the way my mother used to say it, "Those girls are WILD and you are NOT hanging out with them." No. I'm talking you need to be OK with a drive-too-far-into-the-desert-without-a-survival-kit-and-you-will-die type of wild.

For example, not too long ago, my coworker almost died. He owns land down in Terlingua Ranch and was down there when a monsoon rolled through. For reasons unknown to me, he hopped in his truck to see if Terlingua Creek was rising. It was and he got swept down in it. He sat in his truck for hours with the water rising, boulders and debris pounding against his doors until he realized he could just as easily drown in the truck so he opened the door and abandoned ship, in the middle of a moonless night in the desert.

He washed downstream until he could grab the edge of the creek and pull himself out. Soaking wet with no resources, he had to find shelter. During his aimless trek he said lightening flashed and he saw a pair of eyes behind him. Mountain lion, coyote or bobcat, he doesn't know, but something was hoping he wouldn't make it. But he did. He found an adobe ruin, crawled inside and waited out the storm and for rescue.

Needless to say, the guy was pretty shaken up.

But the funny this is, when I posted the story on Facebook, the closer my friends lived to the border, the more "meh" they were about the whole experience.

From Connecticut I got, "Holy cripes. Come move in with us. It isn't safe where you are."

But the folks from Terlingua were more nonchalant.

"Welcome to the desert," wrote one.

Author and journalist Michael Pollan was here this weekend as part of the 2012 Marfa Dialogues and he spoke to a packed house at the Crowley Theatre.

"There is something wrong with our assumptions of the natural world," he said.

Which is true. We approach the outdoors with thoughts, as Pollan said he first did, of Thoreau ("Simplicity! Simplicity! Simplicity!") believing bucolic Walden will show us on the meaning of life once we're able to live without pesticides and margaritas (Author's Note: I do not want to live in a world without margaritas). It's a bit much, that approach. But then again, so is treating nature as a giant X Games. Both are simply unrealistic.

Pollan said the urbanite seeking the full nature experience "can go to the wild, go to the woods, go to the desert, but my feeling is if they'd just go to the garden, that has a lot to teach us." Just getting outside and digging in the dirt does a lot for advancing understanding of how the land and animals respond to the elements. It is, as Pollan was saying, critical knowledge we've lost.

Take for example the perfectly innocent question asked by a young hipster before the Marfa Dialogues nature walk at Mimms Ranch.

"So, do you water the ranch?" she asked. She really didn't know.

"No, we rely solely on rain water, which is why the drought effected us so deeply," answered a very gracious Dr. Bonnie Warnock.

The young hipster's idea of land management must be rooted in suburban lawns with Bermuda grass and sprinkler systems. It reminded me of the time back in college when we visited the Grand Canyon. A friend knew a park employee there and he told us that very often tourists would ask him at night, "so what time do they turn the lights on?"

Living on the edge out here, the edge of the manicured, civilized world and the untamed natural one, teaches you things-- well, it teaches things to those who pay attention and leave the center of town every now again-- it teaches you to always know your surroundings, manage resources wisely, and understand the signs of danger so that you don't end up surprised.

Because surprise in the desert is a bad thing.

Just ask the deer who lost his leg.

Just because you can't hear them, doesn't mean they're not partying.

The Marfanoia began the weekend of July 4th, which also happened to be my first official weekend in town; I went to the Pueblo for some milk and there were throngs of young, hip people filling baskets with salsa, beer and meats. Aisle after aisle people were preparing for a good time and all I had was my scheduled was my organic milk purchase and a date with my couch.

The next day while getting a latte at the laundromat/coffee shop/ice cream parlor, a stream of people stumbled in hungover and over and over again told the tale of THE MOST EPIC PARTY EVER TO TAKE PLACE held at a house known locally as "the chicken coop" in which Beyonce and her crew showed up and danced with the locals until the cop (not a typo) showed up and tried to bust up the crowd, at which point the drunken party guests threatened to turn the guy into sausage.

GOD DAMN IT, I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING AWESOME GOING ON.

Marfanoia.

Marfanoia, I should explain, is a term coined by a local guy named J.P. to describe the feeling a Marfa resident gets when they just know there's a cool party going on somewhere and you weren't told about it and have no way of finding out.

Marfanoia happens to the best of us (and probably plagues the worst of us). But it goes beyond parties and openings and, for me, digs a little deeper.

See, it's really not all that rare to casually bump into a guy in his 20s who is from California but currently living in Denmark, back in town to finish up his newest show, a series of handmade chapbooks exploring the cultural relativism of rural West Texas Latinos. And he's good looking.

In fact, I would say that's probably the most common thing that can happen to you here in Marfa.

Because right after you meet him, you'll meet a woman in her 40s who quite recently retired from a modern dance career, made name for herself styling movie sets and now is planning to open her own business. Plus, she's good looking. Or you'll meet a nice guy in his 30s, in town via a MacArthur Genius Grant shooting a documentary that will air on HBO. And you know what? He's pretty good looking. Or, hey, the people moving across the street from you? Don't be surprised when you find out they are the designers behind a well-known indie fashion brand. And happen to be good looking.

My point is that there are a lot of accomplished people in this town (incredibly good-looking, accomplished people) and I think part of the Marfanoia stems from an awe of the general prolificness of work here. (That's a word. I looked it up.)

Like when Fiest was here, I don't know if she was kidding or not, but she said she spent the day in Marfa writing songs and then performed one for us-- with full band and backup singers. She did that in less than 8 hours. I leaned to my friend and said, "That's nothing. Today I took a three-hour nap." I know when I said that I was not kidding.

Look, I understand now that when I moved out here originally, I needed a break. I was fried to the end of my fingertips; utterly spent. I went into hibernation. I needed to. You know what happens when you've had your heart broken 8 ways to Sunday? You want to sleep. You want to curl up like a fat, smelly bear in a cave and eat burritos and watch costume dramas while you look at the mountains. And then you want to climb those mountains, a lot of them, over and over, and celebrate with a burrito.

Thank god I moved to Alpine first and not to Marfa. Marfa is not where you go when you need to hibernate.

In Alpine I was at my least creative, but I was content. For some reason, 8 months curled on my side watching costume dramas didn't bother me one bit. I had to detox from toxic people, toxic places, toxic air. Meanwhile I hiked, I met people, I observed. Did I mention the costume dramas? Because, honest to God, I've seen every single one catalogued on Netflix.

Then, slowly, I began to wake up.

So many people I meet here blew up their life and headed for the Far West Texas desert. This place really does call to people. I am not the only one that dropped everything and moved to the desert because it felt right. People are here because their spouses died suddenly or they had scandalous affairs with the true loves of their lives and had to book it out of town. People come to the desert on dares from stupid ex-boyfriends who said they weren't brave and end up staying. People come here because they don't fit anywhere else. People come here because they fit in too well everywhere else and want to be left alone. But most of all, in Marfa, people come to produce work; some of it extraordinary.

So, right now my particular strain of Marfanoia is that I will never live up to my fellow citizens' talents. I feel like I'm the Gap version of a Peter Beard photograph; maybe instead of half-naked Peter, furiously writing while inside the carcass of a crocodile, I'm Sarah Jessica Parker with a cutesy stuffed snake and a hair bow, giggling. The people here get shit done. They get published. They record. They go to Africa and come back EVEN BETTER LOOKING. Meanwhile, I've learned to cook tagine meatballs and desperately need a facial.

But I'm trying not to beat myself up too much (which I am really, really good at, btw. I wish that was considered a legitimate talent because I'd win).

Did you know that bears take three weeks to wake up from hibernation? And that is totally without the added fat and lard of copious breakfast burritos, which probably adds weeks or months to grogginess. One study by a guy who I'm pretty sure is the Swedish Chef said this of awakening bears, which I think is pretty apropos:

Øivind Tøien, author of the study, said: "[Bears] have an almost-normal heartbeat when they take a breath. But, between breaths, the bears' hearts beat very slowly. Sometimes, there is as much as 20 seconds between beats."

My heart is still beating slowly too. Some days I'm sure there are more than 20 seconds between the time I breathe in all the darkness, cynicism and anxiety and remind myself to be present and content and that I am loved, and then exhale. But here I am, still breathing.

I have a long way to go before I'll be fully awake. And some days lately I just feel old. But I am waking up. I am. I'm even pretty sure the GREAT EXISTENTIAL CRISIS OF 2009-2011 has closed up shop. Finally. It's been at least a few months (OK, weeks) since I've smashed a bug then ruminated over the meaning of life and what constitutes a sentient being. Progress!

I'm glad I moved to Marfa. This place will be good for me, I think.

I hope.

Now I'm just waiting patiently for my creativity to reappear, my thoughts clear up and for someone to invite me to a really sick party that ends up told and retold as local lore.

A natural resilience to fire, and other things I learned about myself this weekend.

I am a writer.

Or, I guess I should say I was a writer.

I was a journalist for years back in Dallas and I loved it. I loved meeting people and hearing their stories, sometimes good, sometimes bad. As a friend of mine from college said, “everyone has a book inside of them” adding, “it’s just that most of them you’d rather not read.”

I loved finding threads of meaning in seemingly innocuous details (hey, I have a BFA in theatre, I’m dramatic; it’s what I do). Like when a copywriter asked me why I liked being the home and garden reporter. “Because the way you decorate your house is a clue to who you are and who you want to be when you’re totally alone.”

“God, I’m never inviting you over for dinner. I’m color blind,” he said.

But I got laid off four years ago, and I’m not exactly known for my discipline, so here I am: a sometimes-writer who has forgotten what to say.

My creativity, even while surrounded by the majesty of this high desert, seems to have taken that long-past pink slip and decided it was a ticket to watch as much Masterpiece Theatre while eating burritos as humanly possible. That is to say, my muse abandoned me. Even selling my TV didn’t bring her back (because, let’s be honest here, everyone in Big Bend says they don’t have TV, but you all know everyone’s hunkered down anyway watching Netflix and Hulu on their computer screens. Same diff, people.)

Thank god I was accepted into Tierra Grande Texas Master Naturalist class of 2012. It has helped me remember that I don’t have to say anything at all.

"In a fire, not everything burns," we were taught. Along with, “not every tree gets to grow up.”

Over the course of the weekend we hiked Mt. Livermore and tried desperately to soak up the knowledge of The Nature Conservancy’s Associate Director of Field Science John Karges, Texas Parks and Wildlife Botanist Jackie Poole and CDRI Executive Director Dr. Catherine Hoyt. And what we learned from them sounded like prose flowing effortlessly to the page:

"Rattlesnakes can taste the air."

"Trees have living libraries, you just have to know how to read them."

"A worry of ravens is the same as a murder of crows."

Through these lectures I suddenly remembered that Mother Nature has her own language that hangs like fruit all around us. Everything she does serves as the template we use inside our own private worlds. Love and heartbreak, fear, vice, narcissism, humiliation, triumph, and perseverance, it’s all there, playing out in the natural world over and over serving as a sentinel for us, like the play inside the play of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

"This 'Tripod Tree' is an Alligator Juniper that has had its heart burned out and is still alive” or “males in the lizard family heighten their colors and/or do push-ups to attract the females” and "Most Texas rivers are dammed." (Remind you of anyone?)

What’s the old quote? “There are no new ideas, there are only new ways of making them felt.” Well, did you know that, like the wolf, the Grasshopper Mouse howls at the moon? Or that a female frog of one species will never respond to the calls of male frogs from different species?

The window into our behavior doesn’t come from laying on a couch endlessly answering, “Tell me about your mother.” In fact mysteries are revealed everyday inside the biologies of wind, rain, fire, plants and animals. "Fire makes its own weather, makes its own wind."

I’d forgotten that somehow.

So thank you Master Naturalist class of 2012. I am awake and aware again. I await your next move.

After all, “nature bats last.”

This essay appears in the August edition of The Big Bend Gazette.

On zombies and chili.

I'd like to tell you about my experience at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, but first I need to explore America's current love affair with the brain-eating undead known as zombies.


Zombies: your loved ones back one last time to make that one horrible Thanksgiving in '83 that lives in family infamy look like game night in the church basement. 


There are two sides to the zombie narrative, if you will. The zombie side: the mindless, gore-fueled grossness of something that was once beautiful, now rotten. And the human-running-for-one's-life side: the side that must grab a sawed-off shotgun or a Waterford crystal paper weight, whatever's convenient, and send those mofos back to whatever netherworld first summoned them. The human side definitely has a pissed-off air about it, doesn't it? And that's where I begin.


We're at the end of 2011 here. The sun spots are going nuts (confirmed by a lovely tour of the McDonald observatory telescopes the other weekend- everyone should go!), people are out of work and protesting and being pepper sprayed for it (which makes them more pissed-off), and to top it off, we're going into an election year. But not just any election year, oh no! This election year has once-dead politicians and/or unnaturally immortal individuals (Newt, Perry et al.) grabbing headlines. Meanwhile the image of the Shepard Fairy "Hope" poster seems to be tattered and torn on a building's plywood facade somewhere on the wrong side of tracks of Detroit, just after the apocalypse hit town. No one's buying a cool graphic design of change this time around. Shit's about to go down, y'all. 


I'm just saying people are angry and they're not going to take it anymore. 


Which leads me to the Terlingua Chili Cookoff. 


So, in the zombie equation, when it comes to politics and protests and law and order, I think most people would imagine themselves on the side of the humans-- the ones fighting the brain-eating zombies. Makes sense, right?


Down at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, I'd say the folks there would find themselves having more in common with the undead numbskulls emerging from the dirt. 


Things I saw at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff: a modified Astrovan, it's top removed to resemble a driving boat with the words "SHOW US YOUR TIT" spray-painted on the back (just the one?); a sleepy-eyed drunk guy named Manny driving a Hummer in a circle handing out mini-beers; someone's great-grandma topless, fat oozing down and around her flaccid boobs, dancing and posing for photographs with strangers like it was baby's first day at school.


Thing I didn't see at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff: Even one bowl of chili.


Let me try to explain, if I can get this right, how this whole cookoff fiasco started and maybe then I can paint the picture of how it became, in my own words, the world's foremost "Skankapalooza."


So the Terlingua Chili Cookoff has an illustrious history. At least if you are a Phelps kid from Dallas, HOME OF THE WORLD'S FIRST CHILI'S RESTAURANT! (which was located IN LAKE HIGHLANDS. A point of pride for Lake Highland-ites), and you frequented Chili's as often as we did (mostly because they allowed gaggles of teens and pre-teens to pile into hunter green booths under faux Tiffany lamps and get free refills on soda all night, and because IT WAS IN LAKE HIGHLANDS, parents didn't have to go to far to pick up said teens to make curfew). There in that WORLD'S FIRST CHILI'S was row upon row of what may now be referred to as, but at the time was revolutionary, "flair," most of which had to do with this weird chili cookoff out in the desert of East Jesus.


The real story is that a humorist H. Allen Smith challenged a chili aficionado, Wick Fowler, to a chili cookoff in the desert of Terlingua in 1968. The two wacky guys were having fun! And it just happened to get covered in a major magazine.

From a chili website: "The results of the first cookoff were reported by Gary Cartwright in an article in Sports Illustrated, February, 1968. According to the legend, there were three judges. One declared in favor of Smith, one declared in favor of Fowler, and the third judge declared it a tie and required everyone to return a year later to repeat the contest."


Oh, ho ho ho! Hilarity and hi-jinx! Nothing to see here, officer! It's all perfectly silly and tame fun with chili... or so you would think. 

It's just, I'm pretty sure no one was prepared for the reckoning of Krazy Flats.


First of all, of course it's "Krazy" Flats, right? Because the "C" in crazy makes it NOT CRAZY ENOUGH. I wish it were "Krazee" just to fuck with me. Like it wanted to pick a fight. Bring it, Krazee. Bring. It. 


But anyway, Krazy Flats. 


According to the Krazy Flats website, (where you will not see any topless senior citizens, which I think is a LIE and MUST BE STOPPED) the Flats are were the spectators of the CASI Cookoff go. (There are 2 cookoffs, 4 miles apart from one another that weekend. CASI is the one I attended.) The actual chili cooks retreat to a place called the Old 320 area by the stage, just beyond the EMS tent. 


The rest of the folks, the ones who are there to take their tops off (only if you are a woman) and drink themselves silly (open to both sexes) retreat to this circle of hell I now know as "Krazy Flats." 


Please keep in mind that as a spectator to the spectators of Krazy Flats, I did not spy any chili, nor did I see anybody else spying anybody else's chili, either. So really the "spectator" moniker is a bit overblown. I think I heard the term "Chili Heads" and I think that suits the crowd I witnessed much better. Like, you know, they love chili and they probably even cook up a batch during the couple days they are there, but they are really more connoisseurs of chili cookoff environment. They are there to espouse the traditions of their fellow chili brethren, with or without a bowl of red nearby. In other words, these are people who like to get drunk, drive around in Mad Max-modified vehicles and tell girls to take their tops off in the desert near Mexico. Chili Heads.


I'd like to say here that no one, not once, violated me in any way and 100% of the people in attendance seemed pretty darn happy about the nuttiness around them. I am obviously a prude, white-bread rookie when it comes to this brand of fun. I'd also like to say that I'm sure there are plenty of respectable, gastronomically-gifted folks who cook chili fully-clothed when they attend each year's cook off, and then retreat to their giant motor home of luxury when the going gets weird. And I'm also sure these same behaved party people also make chili that will knock your socks off and praise Jesus at the same time. I did not see said people. I can only report on what I saw. And what I saw sure did feel pretty rapey to me. 


(Rapey: the atmosphere portrayed in such cinema classics as "The Accused" or "Taxi Driver." At first it just seems seedy, but at any moment it could change and be a nightmare for any women involved. See also: college bars, the creepy West Stacks of SMU's Fondren Library, and wherever Ben Roethlisberger hangs out.) 


One example of this adverb would be the gentleman who assessed (correctly!) my bra size and said I could have a t-shirt if I just took off my current shirt. "Nothing's gonna happen that you don't want to happen, ok? You just go back there and we'll help you get into a t-shirt. My wife takes off her top. It's no big deal. All breasts are beautiful, we like to celebrate them here." 


Or the fact that I was wearing a shirt and refused to take it off caused cat-call after cat-call and so much commotion that at first it was comical, until it just-- it just really wasn't. 


There was also the incident, that I did not personally witness (thank god) but saw later in a photograph, of a young chubby topless woman suckling the breasts of the aforementioned senior citizen topless woman while men stood around and cheered. 


So back to zombies.


You live your life. You do good. You make people laugh and then you leave this world a little better place. Mr. H. Allen Smith and Mr. Wickford Fowler cooked some chili 44 years ago and I'm sure they got rip-roarin' drunk and everyone had a great time! So a tradition begins, innocently. Then it all gets turned around and the next thing you know, people are invoking your name as the reason they must party like the metal cover band talent at a Bat Mitzvah in the wilderness. 


Alas, we do not know how things will permutate through time. 


One year there are guys hootin' and hollerin' about how there's "no woman qualified to cook chili," and the next thing you know, the women have gone done taken off their tops to show you what they're really qualified for! Which leads to the idea that it would be super cool to alter cars for party surfing (put chairs on the roof! make it half a convertible!) and let's get out the ATVs (I cannot trace the timeline on how this evolved, please don't ask me to), which leads to an EMS station where the workers explain that "this year's pretty tame compared to other years. A couple of years ago, two brothers got really drunk and started beating each other with hammers." Then, BLAMMO! You have the chili cookoff of today that resembles very little of its roots and yet remains...alive...somehow.


But really, is this chaos any different than our current reality of arresting journalists, hiding secret bank loans and Congress declaring pizza a vegetable? 


I'm telling y'all, as Kim Catrall's character famously said in "Big Trouble in Little China" when she was being held captive in an underground lair by Chinese mafia-slash-dragon sorcerers, "All is strange."


So zombie lovers, get your fix! Now is the perfect time to indulge in that genre! Because here we are, a nation in the midst of great change with a population on the verge of something if not big, then definitely noteworthy. 


The zombies are HERE, folks!


It's just that some just might be a little less metaphorical than others. 

Pardon our dust.

I moved to the desert in the middle of a drought.

The old-timers are saying this might be like the drought of the 1950s and it might not rain again for five more years. All I can think about is my friend Jim who told me he hadn't been out this way in years, "And of course, back then the desert was a rose garden."

Last night my friend Juliana noticed the light is changing. "It's got that golden tone to it now," she said. Summer's ending, today it was in the 80s all day, and that means the rainy season has passed.

"Oh yeah, that's it. That's all the rain we'll get," Juliana said. 

"What does that mean for us?" I asked.

"I means to pray we'll get snow."

Oh, I know this feeling.

Growing up in Dallas I was two classes ahead of my brother in school. When I went to elementary school, I remember road construction expanding lanes, adding bridges, causing headaches. It ended when I went to Junior High, where it began again in front of that school. Of course, the same thing happened in high school and in college. When I went to SMU, they tore up Central Expressway for all four years of my university experience. 

"God, Paige. Construction just seems to follow you," I remember my brother saying. 

My brother always seemed to catch the tail end of it, when things were beginning to come together, the plan was apparent and the whole thing was practically wrapped up in a bow. Not me. Potholes, traffic backups, the concrete clutter of all the debris; all the flotsam and jetsam that occurs from tearing up one road to build another right on top of it and all the delays those bring, they were always- have always been- right in my way.

The big news is, right on cue, they're tearing up the streets in Alpine. Steamrollers, tar trucks, flag men, gravel and dirt, it's sort of second nature to me now. I guess you could say I'm an early adopter-- most of the time against my will.

So, I don't know, the drought, the construction, this all seems second nature to me: Make due. Be resourceful. Wait a little longer to bloom. Conserve. Reserve. Protect. Proceed with caution.

What will it be like when the desert is a rose garden? God knows if I'll ever see it, even though my friends and family tell me to just believe it will. That seems like a bunch of hokey shit that is based on no empirical evidence to date. But what the hey! I'm a dreamer who loves pink and glitter, right? (Yes, but still...no.)

I think part of the problem is this congested mindset keeps me from acting decisively, unless it's an act of defiance or desperation (like this little move of mine). I keep waiting for everything to line up just so. It seems that's when I've got it in my head that it'll be OK to pounce like a kitten on my prey. All this makes me a late bloomer. I don't jump in unless forced. I was never that tweener in the bikini at the pool party, plugging her nose and giggling, "You *better* not push me in, boys! You better not!"

I've always assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that if someone wants to push you in, they don't need encouragement from you to go on and do it.

You know, when I lived in New York, it was maybe a year after 9/11 and my sister had died and I was just not doing well. Just not at all. I was working for this horrible woman with a bad weave and a bipolar mood disorder who would scream at me constantly and my eyesight started to blur in my left eye. Then it just stopped working & I pretty much went blind on that side. So I went to the doctor and they immediately ordered me to get a CAT scan. "You have all the signs of a brain tumor," the doc told me.

"Yeah, I don't have a brain tumor. I'm just seriously stressed out."

"Well, still, you should prepare yourself."

"Sure I should," I said with a roll of my eyes (eye). "Whatever." (I was most likely hungover.)

It turned out I did not, in fact, have a brain tumor and I was just seriously stressed out. (Vindication!)  

And, by the way, the doctor told me, did I realize I lacked peripheral vision?

You know the phrase, "what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?" This was the universe's engraved invitation.

Of course I lack peripheral vision! Anybody who's known me for 10 minutes can tell you that! 

But I gotta say, it was nice that it was being pointed out to be so literally because I was pretty confused and without direction at the time. You're my boy, universe! Fist bump!

Makes you wonder about those guys in the Bible who saw a hand writing on the wall. Old-Testament God wasn't exactly subtle (burning bush? tacky!), but the disembodied hand story is almost like he threw in the towel and was like, "JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH (WHOM YOU HAVE NOT MET YET), WHAT I'M TELLING YOU NOW IS THAT YOU ARE SERIOUSLY FUCKED. DO YOU GET IT OR NOT? CHRIST!" 

My strange diagnosis was a good reminder that I have a tendency not to take in the whole picture and just zoom in on the one option in front of me and if I can't have that, I go wonky (or, in some cases, blind). There's more than what I can see. There's more just to the side of me, just out of my reach, and it could be vast. I keep forgetting that.

A couple years ago, after watching this couple, who are friends of mine, weather a million storms and come out on top, I told the wife, "God, you know, you guys make me see that you don't really have to have your shit together to be in a good relationship." (In hindsight, that didn't come out as complementary as it sounded in my head.)

But my friend was a good sport and knew what I was trying to say. 

"God no, Paige! You've just got to jump right in and hope for the best!"

You know, just outside Alpine there are hours and hours of roads untouched still by construction. And luckily, out here, the vista views always surround me. From the tip tops of the clouds to 30 miles in every direction and not always in my sight lines, I am enveloped in the experience.

I don't necessarily need to see it to know that it's there. 

The tarantula that loved me.

Tarantulas and Love. While it's not peanut butter and jelly, they go together better than you think. 


Try and move past the fact that they are hairy monsters the size of a grown woman's palm and weigh as much as a damn hamburger patty. No, let's forget that for now. Let's think about love. 


See, tarantulas live most of their lives underground. Except once a year when something clicks deep inside the males' furry, creepy little hearts that says, "I gotta find THE ONE." It's like a Sex and the City episode without the bad puns. 


In fact, says some scientist on the Internet, 

"The males will continually search for mates until they run out of energy or until a female eats them."

Ain't that the truth, sister. Ain't that nothing but the dang truth.


So, yeah, these male tarantulas, they start out on a vision quest, searching for something to complete them, something hidden somewhere in the vast, arid desert mountains. Something that drives them to ramble on with no clear ending point and no guarantee of success-- they just know they have to go. It just feels right. 


Wait a second. That sounds a little like me. 


Oh shit.


So apparently me and the tarantula guys are simpatico; which is real sweet and all, but this does not make me feel any better reflecting upon the fact that I walked into my house at 1:30 a.m. last Saturday to be greeted by a crab-sized tarantula hanging out on my living room wall. 


Now let me tell you a little something about the movies:


In the movies Jason Bourne jumps from a bridge, sprains his leg, winces, gets up, and continues his chase. 


In real life, Paige walks in her Dallas condo's courtyard at 8 a.m., falls between two stupid, flat rocks, and sprains her ankle so bad that she can't hear or see straight for about 10 good seconds. Then her breathing goes shallow as her vision returns and, this is when she's like Jason Bourne, she hobbles up the stairs to elevate her leg and call her mother crying. 


What I'm trying to tell you is you may see something in the movies or maybe you imagined something in your confident, precious little head, but it doesn't mean that's the way it will go down in real life. (Tell this to your children, my pupils. Let the generations learn.)


For instance, just a few weeks ago, when I walked into my new home and realized I had not called to turn on the electricity or water and that the place was filthy dirty even though my landlord swore up and down he paid someone $100 to clean it, my mother began to worry. And at some point that weekend she asked me, "Aren't you nervous about finding a tarantula in your house?" 


This is almost an exact quote of what I answered back:


"A tarantula? No way. That won't bother me! They're harmless! They don't bite. No big deal."


Cut to a week later. I had just driven in from Marfa where I'd seen David Garza play (who kept coming up to me to talk. "I think he thinks you're someone else," said my friend Kirsten, especially after he says he's sorry he didn't bring any CDs he could give me. "I don't care. Shut up and go with it," I told her.) and afterward we headed to The Museum of Electronic Wonders and Late-Night Grilled Cheese place, where vintage TVs glow and gourmet grilled cheeses abound. There I met a lovely woman named Tigey, who is known for wearing silver horses' asses as earrings and never shies away from voicing her opinion. Basically, I was having a terrific night, and the drive back to Alpine was so pretty and clear and easy that I was feeling pretty great about life in general.


Then I walked in.


I immediately spotted Mr. Tarantula because he was like a new thing in my living room; a painting or a sculpture, and that was unexpected. I certainly didn't remember leaving a HUGE, BLACK ARACHNID when I left earlier that evening. This was a welcome-home surprise and he was taking up a shit-ton of wall space. It took me approximately .08 seconds to identify the humongous spider and assess the situation. So here's what I did: I screamed.


Petey, my dog, btw, was just chilling on the couch. I think he was happy to have a friend to potentially play with. For Christ's sake, the thing was just big enough to get away with playing tug-of-war with my dog & his toys and maybe even win. 


So I screamed, then I hyperventilated. Then I picked up the phone and woke up Genie in Dallas. Because that was a rational thing to do. Then her husband got on the phone and tried to talk me into getting it down with a broom, but I was scared it was going to scurry off under my couch and I wouldn't be able to live here anymore. I would have to abandon my furniture and my home and take my dog and leave West Texas forever, never to return. And during all this the tarantula and I were kinda staring each other down, and he was saying, "Your move, bitch." And I was like, "nuh-uh." So I hung up the phone and did the only thing I could've possibly done at the moment: I went next door and woke up my neighbor so he could catch it.


Please keep in mind this is Alpine. The restaurants close at 9. Really late-night gas stations close at 10. My neighbor was sound asleep and peaceful when I knocked on his door, close to tears. 


"What's going on?" he said, the door cracked.


"I'm so, so sorry, but there's a tarantula in my house and I'm terrified. Can you help me? Please?"


There was a pause. "Yeah, now's about the time they migrate," he said. "I'll be over in a minute."


Now, the rest is pretty simple and this post is much too long as it is, but suffice it to say that my neighbor Jeff is my hero. He caught the tarantula in a big, plastic cup and released it outside and didn't point and laugh at me (or even yell at me for being a sissy) once. He did say this, though, "You know, in all my 30 years out here, I've never once seen a tarantula in someone's house!"


That struck me as odd. Then, when I told my dad the next day about it, he said something similar. "In all my years in Laredo, I've never heard of one inside a house!" (This was after he laughed and told me he used to love to catch tarantulas as a kid. Weirdo.)


The next day my hero neighbor explained to me the details on the male tarantula's love migration. 


"So the females live their entire lives underground, but the males will come out and, about this time of year, they'll start walking. And it's like an internal compass is guiding them because they'll walk almost in a perfectly straight line looking for their mate. So what I'm guessing happened is that he was on his path in a straight line and it led right up to your door and he walked right in and was headed out the other side but he couldn't find the exit, so he crawled right up the wall," he said. 


"By the way, I'll be by to fix the weatherstripping on your door today." 


So I've been thinking about this, this strange phenomenon of a tarantula hiking its way in a straight line through the desert simply to land at my back door (and then under my door and up my wall). Listen guys, let's face it, I moved out here to change my life, and part of that change meant the hope for meeting new men, but this is NOT what I had in mind. I bet the tarantula and I are of similar minds on this one. That is, if they think, and god help me but I cannot deal with the idea of them thinking. My friend Janie said this of the tarantula, "He was looking for love in all the wrong places."


It's all so silly, but still, it's odd, no? So I'm taking it as a sign that I'm charmed. Or bewitched. Something like that. That little (HUGE) guy found me while on his life's quest. I wish he hadn't, sure, but he did. So let's reframe the horror and make it into some teen goth girl's Wiccan dream. Hooray! Love spiders! Maybe this is foreshadowing of a real love that is also headed for my door. Someone who also is looking for love, doesn't bite, and is sufficiently huge. Spider Man, where are you?!?


And as my neighbor Jeff left my house with a cup full of tarantula at 2 a.m. that Saturday morning, I asked him, with no uncertain sense of panic and urgency, "So what do I do in the meantime to keep other tarantulas out??" 


"Put a towel up against your door stop. It'll keep the bugs from getting in."


So, to the magical love of my life that will one day appear at my door: I hope you don't think it's too weird that I've got about eight towels shoved up against each door in my house at the moment, and probably always will. 


Just consider it West Texas weatherstripping to keep out crawly wayward souls and lovesick desert spiders. Consider it charming. And DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING IT.

The dirt and the sky.

I've been trying to figure out what to write since I got here. I can feel another post coming, but until then, there's this: what I have learned so far, is that in Big Bend you can look up at the beauty of the sky, but you can never, ever take your eyes off the ground.

First off, opened-toed shoes here are a joke. I don't know how you could walk around in them without your feet becoming completely gray from dust. And oh! The dreaded goat head thorns! They are like beige Medieval mace hiding under rocks. Petey is still trying to dig one out of his paw. And today the plant that grows them was described to me. Holy cow! I've seen a couple! I thought they were vines growing melons*, they are so big. But they do look sinister. What's a lush, green sprawling plant doing way out here? It's up to no good, I tell you. Beware.

And then you must look down because the red ants, which are about the size of your knuckle, and they are everywhere. What might be mistaken for bike tracks in the dead grass in a city are actually trails made by these fuckers. THEY MAKE TRAILS. And they don't make mounds, oh no, not in West Texas. That would be too easy. They burrow deep into the earth and emerge from sinister looking holes that, dad says, go three and four feet down into the colony. It's like the fucking matrix underworld down there. He and I walked around with Amdro killer when he was here and sprinkled their nests with tiny yellow nuggets that they'll deliver to the queen to kill her.

And it makes me wonder, what on earth is down there, beneath my feet, beneath this dry dirt? Because all I can imagine are millions of long, red ants. But it doesn't seem to bother anyone else, it's just normal occurrence here. And, truth be told, I'm getting used to it. Plus I have my Amdro. "Now, your job isn't to kill every red ant in Alpine," dad said. (That's what he thinks.)

And of course there are snakes and scorpions and for all I know, chupacabras out there, so you must always be looking down as you walk. Always. I told my mom that the landscape is insane out here and it makes me wonder how humans ever were able to settle in this place at all.

Then you look at the sky.

When it rains, the storm rolls across the horizon like a wall cloud of dark smoke and, especially on the first rain, the wind kicks up more dust than water, so a giant ball of orange dirt forms in the atmosphere and slowly rolls across acres and acres with a definitive beginning and end. It's an awe-inspiring to see. And the rain here smells different, too. It's a mix of dirt and water that hangs in the air for hours, even if the rain is miles and miles away.

Then there's the night sky. Night here literally drapes down like a velvet curtain over everything. And it happens at such a pace, it's like a parent who has quietly shut the last bedtime book of the night, whispers goodnight, and exits the room of her dozing child. The blackness seeps in through a sieve at the tip top of the rounded globe straight up above your head and the inky darkness slides down the sides of your periphery vision very slowly, like a cracked egg. And as it drips down, it eats away at the dark navy hue that was the night sky (the color most of us city dwellers would consider midnight), and continues, engulfing the deep purples until it has spilled over the last of the light the sun left behind.

Maybe I can describe nightfall like a the puff of a picnic blanket as it's shaken out to its full size, then gently glides down to the grass below-- if that makes any sense. It's the most calming transition I've ever experienced and it's stupefying to think I've spent so much time on this planet without ever seeing the night fully make its entrance. That guy is a scene stealer. Not to be missed.

Which reminds me, in a way, of those ants. Because they also move down, down, down into their dirt labyrinth below us, filing in and spreading out below ground. Really, they're just a mirror image of what's happening overhead. In this landscape, it's all about the sky above and the ground below, and you best not forget either one.

I'm getting a great refresher course in Life 101: there can't be beauty without ugly, just like there can't be light without the dark. You cannot move forward without first figuring out where you stand. Apparently it's easier to grasp this out in the country because you see it on display everywhere. Remember, we're told that the devil fell from grace because he loved god so much he lost himself. This desert reminds me you cannot lose yourself for a moment if you want to survive. I think we forget this stuff in the city. We're too busy running around on concrete that we forget the basics of how the world works, the next thing you know, we've created Hummers and Affliction t-shirts. And didn't the Bible warn us of this too, my children?

Yes, beauty surrounds me, so much so that I haven't quite stopped gasping or saying "Wow" on my long drives to the center of nowhere. But danger is out there too, and the combo is making for a very powerful, present experience so far.

"Everything out here will either sting you, bite you or poke you, including the cowboys," said Ty. "So watch yourself."

Warning heeded. Now get rid of those sandals.

*later I learned I was looking at coyote melon, not the deceptive sweet fern-like plant that produces goat head evil.