Posted by tee in photos, sense of place
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

At the train station I heard the “All Aboard!” at 11:55 a.m., just as I bit into my meatball sub. Carrying the suitcase, laptop bag, binders and camera gear, I had no hands left for food so I had to chuck the sandwich and root beer after about three bites and sips and head down to the train.

I was lucky enough to find a seat with an electrical outlet, but my phone was nearly dead and the trip from New Haven to New York was spent just charging the phone and scribbling notes from transcription onto a cheap notepad.

It works.

Loved the ride, passed a lot of old, familiar neighborhoods and enjoyed the peace and quiet. Coming into New York was delicious. Graffiti, roadside garbage, a clogged but towering and intimidatingly beautiful skyline. Strangely, these are all a welcome change from the sometimes-homogenous landscape of suburban Santa Fe. I took what shots I could from the opaque train windows as we rattled along.

Sitting now at a cafe table in Penn Station, having a smoothie and nursing a small headache. Signal keeps cutting in and out, but plugging in will give the laptop a little charge anyway. I need to find a bathroom, and the ticket kiosk, and then I’m on my way again.

Posted by tee in sense of place, wandering
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

On the approach into Hartford it was dark, inside the plane and out, and I was in the very back of the cabin where every pocket of air feels like a big sea swell. After reading more than hour’s worth of The Brendan Voyage, I put it down and closed my eyes and imagined I was afloat in a leather boat in the volatile north Atlantic. It almost worked.

We arrived in a shroud of mist and rain, which later returned to downpours (this area has received 15 inches of rain in the last seven days). But I remembered the airport. Walking through, I was a tiny little girl again, and on the way home from visiting my Dad.

Posted by tee in de la vida, wandering
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

In Atlanta, en route from New Mexico to my best childhood friend’s wedding in Connecticut. I’m having a combo lunch/dinner at the net cafe - a Santa Fe Chicken wrap and some Georgia sweet tea. Best of both worlds.

Worked in the truck all the way down from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and into the airport terminal and managed to transcribe another interview and get myself situated with priorities. I didn’t, however, get to work on the plane. For all its utility, because it does get the job done, commercial air travel just isn’t my thing. I really love the idea of flying, but being packed like sardines into a steel hot dog and hurled through space, missing every detail, every story, every photo, every nuance of the land 30,000 feet below, does very little for me. And from airport to airport, I always want to get out and go explore, feel the differences in the cities I drop into. But from inside a terminal, Atlanta looks the same as Boston, which looks the same as Chicago, which looks the same as Denver.

Compared to the feeling of wheels on a road and funky rest stops and impromptu roadside campgrounds - the air is soulless. Unless of course you’ve got your own wings.

Posted by tee in de la vida, wandering
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

Sometime overnight our bed turned from a summer bed to a winter bed and then covertly spread the propaganda throughout the rest of the house before we could object. The light summer throw blanket was replaced with the thick, soft winter quilt, the wood stove was lit, windows that had been open almost continuously since we moved in were shut. The coffee maker got more action than the iced tea pitcher. Things are falling apart all over and it’s barely halfway through the second week of October.

I’ve spent most of last night and this morning looking from notes-to-screen-to-notes trying to find a direction for today’s feature; text kind of moping along on the page, lost and distracted. This is my own fault for taking on so many multiples of monthlies this season, the schedule just isn’t flexible enough to accommodate creative road blocks. Luckily I found the very elusive vein I wanted to tap a little while ago, and it started gushing. I should be done for the day by early afternoon.

Sarah plucked another tooth from her face yesterday afternoon, and promptly placed it out on the shelf for the tooth fairy to come in the night. Around 10:30 or so, I, curled up in bed reading, reminded myself many times not to forget about the tooth, and then forgot about the tooth and fell asleep.

This morning a mildly distressed Sarah asked from her bedroom why the tooth fairy didn’t come. Shane and I, in the kitchen, looked at each other. Oops.

I went in and told her that maybe it was a big tooth-losing day for kids all over, and the tooth fairy was probably SO tired after all that traveling that she probably just fell asleep by accident, and would finish up her rounds tonight. Sarah nodded in agreement and said it was a good idea that the tooth fairy not drive if she was that tired.

Later, she came in and held up the shiny white tooth, grinning, and said: “But just in case she didn’t wanna touch it ’cause it was too dirty, I cleaned it!”

Posted by tee in de la vida, favorites, freelancing
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

I’ve been trying to feel well enough to say what I need to say about this all day, and it’s 5:40 p.m. now and if I haven’t felt ok about it by now I’m not likely to anytime soon. So I’ll just go ahead with it, so I can start putting it to rest.

Last night after dinner we drove to Albuquerque for the last night of the 2005 International Balloon Fiesta, and its signature glow show and fireworks. After the show, we decided to avoid the mobs of traffic and head up into the footills to get some shots overlooking the city lights before heading home.

We were on Tramway, and had just passed Live Oak, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I grabbed Shane’s arm and said “watch out!”.. it was a dog, wandering out into the road right in front of us from the sidewalk. Shane skidded to a stop inches from the dog, which I could now see clearly in our headlights. It looked like it might be an Akita/Chow mix, large.. very fuzzy, such a pretty dog in its charcoals and light grays and whites. But older, in fact it was hobbling some as if it had been injured, or was recovering from a surgery.

Very slowly the dog moved across the four lane road, and we quickly looked behind us to be sure no cars were coming in our lane. It was empty. And the lane on the other side had headlights approaching, but they were far enough off and so the dog hobbled along, and we waited there in the middle of the road up ahead, looking behind us to be sure it got across ok.

But watching the approaching headlights, I realized after a moment that they were coming fast, and I panicked that the dog wouldn’t make it across in time. He was barely past the median and taking one very slow step at a time. Making sure there were no cars coming from behind, Shane pulled the truck over as close the median on the other side of the intersection as he could, well beyond the dog, and began flashing his lights and honking the horn to signal that something was wrong, hoping it would get the approaching car to slow down before it got to the intersection. We were waving and flashing and honking.. and the dog was almost to the shoulder… surely the driver could see it up ahead, it was walking right underneath a streetlight now.

But that car, sustaining at least 55 mph, didn’t so much as tap the brake. It blazed through the intersection, and we watched in horror as it slammed into the dog. And kept speeding away. The dog lay motionless on the shoulder, and I screamed and kicked the truck repeatedly and shouted, though I don’t remember what, as Shane slowly pulled the truck out of the middle of the road, climbed it over the median and drove back to pull up on the shoulder beyond the dog’s body.

I told everyone to stay there, and I got out. Crying, shaking. I walked over and crouched down to see if there was anything I could do. Nothing. The dog was split open, insides draining out around that beautiful, charcoal and gray fur.. now matted with blood. Eyes open, fixed on the streetlight beyond me. The soft gray hair around his muzzle confirming his age. I walked back to the truck with my hand over my mouth, barely able to see enough through tears to re-find the door.

I wanted to say that we were helpless, that there was nothing more we could have done. But I could have gotten out of the car. I could have gotten him moving along a little faster, or even coaxed him into the back of the truck. But I didn’t, and I don’t know why I didn’t. I thought he would get across in time. I won’t forget the mistake.

For the hour-long ride home I sobbed, quietly and then heavily, hysterically, with my head against the window, not only for the dog but for the anger I felt at the car that didn’t stop, that didn’t even turn around to see if perhaps the dog might still be alive and in need of medical attention. And for the dog’s owner, who I didn’t know if I should be furious with or sorry for, not knowing the circumstances of how the dog got loose to roam. And for the ease and quickness with which a life can be snuffed out. And at my disdain for a culture of vehicles, of which I too was a part. Every headlight, every tail light, every revolution of the tires along those fifty-some miles making me feel ill. And the paranoia, in the dark on the highway, watching the road sides for anything moving. Afraid of a coyote or another dog or a deer to wander out up ahead.

Coming home I slipped inside and closed the bedroom door. I sat on the floor and clutched my own dogs, burrying my head in their fur. Trying to sleep, I could only stare at the approximation of the end of the room in the dark, until my eyes involuntarily shut and the exhaustion from screaming and crying took over.
Naturally, we didn’t drive up to Taos today. In fact I couldn’t even make my bed, because I couldn’t stay away from it, retreating back into it every half hour or so to read and try hard to escape the scene that kept replaying over and over again in my mind. The horror of the instant before when I knew it was too late, the loud thud, the fresh damage to the body. I’m having a hard time letting that go, I’m hoping that writing it out will help.

I did decide today that I’m grateful the driver didn’t come back, I don’t think I could’ve guaranteed their safety or mine had they gotten out of the car into the light, given the state of mind I was in. And there are people, I’m sure, who have no idea what it’s like to love an animal.. to love and respect animals in general.. so much to warrant such a strong reaction to something that happens every day, many times a day, in every city in every culture more obsessed with speed and convenience than with the care and protection of living things.

And if that’s you, if you can say with certainty that you’d be able to look on as a helpless dog is struck and killed so carelessly and not be at all sunken and debilitated by that, then please just move on. Roll your eyes at me if you must. But please us do us both the favor of refraining from telling me to settle down, to calm down, to not spend so much energy on the loss of a dog’s life. You’ll do little more for either of us there than to expose yourself as someone I’d likely never care to know, and I’d rather you just save us both the grief of another unnecessary loss.

To everyone else, if you have pets, please leash or fence them at all times. Don’t be the person who says “my dog would never wander off”. I’ve no doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of dead animals whose owners thought the very same thing. And please, keep your eyes on the road in front of you. Always.

Posted by tee in de la vida
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

When I’m conducting phone interviews, I laugh. A lot. Aside from the fact that it’s just my nature to laugh and enjoy conversations, I do this deliberately during interviews sometimes because it loosens up the interview subject, and, frankly, me, when I start noticing myself get a little too owl-rimmed-glasses-serious, which will occasionally happen as I’m brewing the story in my head while we talk. For the most part it works; I get a better interview and they hang up having enjoyed the experience.

But once in awhile, as is the case with my most recent interview, there’s a conversational anomaly that even I can’t explain away.

I asked: “If you had to look closely and identify a single quality about your work that has contributed, consistently, to your success over the last 13 years, what would that be?”

He said: “Just one? I’ve got four!”

Apparently I found this hilarious. I laughed. And I laughed and laughed and laughed, in varying tones and pitches and decibles, far beyond what even a dingbat trying to get a second date might have pretended to find funny in that answer.

In fact I laughed so much that as I’m sitting here transcribing and listening to myself, I’m rolling my eyes at myself and waiting (and waiting) until I’m finished, which takes probably a full 45 seconds, and every time I think the laughing is nearly done and I get re-poised to resume typing, I have to sit back and sigh again as I listen to myself continue to blurt out various noises of amusement - over which he too is now laughing, though faintly, as if he had to hold the phone out well away from his ear for fear of permanent injury.

And it wasn’t even funny.

Posted by tee in freelancing
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …