Carmen of the Martyrs

Life is like Alyssa Milano's career -- It starts off so shiny and full of promise and ends up flakey and smashed, lying in the bottom of some dumpster somewhere forgotten.

For all of my talk about Alaska I'm not really that into bears using my limbs for chew toys. My focus is more north, as far north as it takes to see spring flowers washing up in eddies of ice and glaciers so clear that you can chip off a large chunk to use as a new window on your new igloo. Real estate is cheap up there.

In 10 years, everything else lacking and tired of hearing about sports, I'll probably be a north poleian. Picture my life then: A small wooden fence surrounded by snow men guards, a vegetable garden below my window, planted in a thermo-dome that I built myself and filled with extra zucchini and rosemary. Recycled air inside, green carpet. A lizard named Henry for a touch of the surreal. Notice that my bathroom is papered entirely from the Missed Connection section of the Springfield News-Leader.

Notice that my nightstand is filled with stacks of incorrectly solved Soduku booklets.

One day, tired of bailing the water out of my living room and in desperate need of shampoo and conversation, I will put a large fur on Henry and begin walking southwards towards Manitoba where I will buy the largest cup of Miso soup I can find and drink slurpees until I pass out from the sugar or my lips can form vowels again.

I might fling myself as far as possible but I'm not fooling anyone, least of all myself. I consist of concentric circles that are leading me to I don't know where, probably someplace where the fruit is canned, where dirt roads lead to a mailman that only comes once a week. Like a sailor, I am compelled to leave every place I've ever been and touch down on distant shores where the locals keep baskets of bones and rocks to mark god-blessed territory. Like a sailor I am reminded that there's no prison quite so final as the Earth, the people therein both jailors and salvation.

Patty Hearst has nothing on my Stockholm syndrome.

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