Mail Me
Ok, last year, I wouldn't have asked because I was down here such a short time. But this season? I am having such a thrill from opening packages and mail I SENT MYSELF before I left, that I am going to ask anyone to send me stuff. Anything you want to send me. Fancy underwear, mix music CDs, Mike & Ikes, Hot Tamales, chocolate bars, tea, pretty pictures, toys, books, magazines, etc. Ok, maybe not the fancy underwear...but use your imagination. =)
Only restriction: don't pack anything in ghost poop. Also known as packing peanuts.
Genevieve Ellison, RPSC
McMurdo Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP 96599-1035
Send stuff flat mail, padded mailer, regular post and it'll get here super quick (ok, 2-3 weeks). UPS & FedEx don't deliver here. No, really. I know they say they'll get things anywhere, but Antarctica? Not anywhere, have you ever found me on a map?
If you send a box, it'll be deemed package mail and will take about 4 months to get here and I'll either receive it the day I redeploy, or they'll bounce it back to you. The packages I received this week and last? I sent them to myself in early August. Yeah. But the flat mailer my Mom just sent me with the calendars (Georgia O'Keefe!!! Yippeee!!! Flowers! Colour! Gimmie some Kandinsky!) was mailed on 10/15/05 and here it is 10/28/05. That's pretty fast, eh?
Sunset
Well, I looked at the weather forecast for McMurdo, and down at the bottom where it indicates sunrise sunset? There is nothing under sunrise, and under sunset it says:
February 20, 2006 1:38am
We are now on 24/7 sunlight, our last sunset was last Friday, and according to the nightshift janitors it was 7 hours long and the most beautiful thing they have ever seen. I have seen their photos and I would have to concur. I spent Saturday night, the first night the sun did not go under the horizon, watching the sun skip along the horizon before coming back up. It lit the clouds above it up like liquid seething live gold. I watched from the windows of Hut 10--where the Housing Party had ended hours before--ensconced in the bay window of the hut, curtains behind me. For hours, as my boss, drunk as a skunk, hid in the warm bathroom. Some of us had shitty weeks and dealt with it that way, others of us watched the sun go down and cried quietly for our losses.
Sunday, though, was spectacular, and a jolt of adrenaline. I woke up late, having not gotten to bed until 2:30am. I had stayed on to do the dishes and clean the kitchen, listen to some music loud, watch the sun not set. But I had a date, as I mentioned in previous comments, to go out of town with the generator mechanic, Eddie Q. The generators out at the airfields and other camps around McMurdo must be checked every 24 hours, which means someone has to do the Sunday run. This time around it was Eddie, and I tagged along.
It was again, overcast & grey over Mactown, with some intimations of blue horizon out on the ice, but not much. I knew I would not see my beloved Erebus while out of town, but I was so craving out-of-townness that I was fine with that. I dressed appropriately in windpants, Big Red, etc, climbed into the truck with Eddie and a southbound Polie, Darren, and out we headed. First to the Sea Ice Runway.
Now, anyone can walk out the road from town to the Sea Ice Runway, hitch a ride back with the Shuttles, or vice versa. That's a way out of town. But with Eddie checking generators, I got to go all the way out to the end of the runway itself. In other words, we drove on the runway and moved beyond the groomed area into wilder ice.
When they say Sea Ice Runway, they are talking...ICE. Almost SlushyTM blue bubbled & cracked & smooth ice. It was the most unbelievable colour up close. Darren & I walked out to this huge patch of ungroomed ice showing through the drifted snow and played on it. We slid & skated & laughed & lost our balance, out here on 6 feet of sea ice suspended over 1200+ feet of Antarctic waters, looking out onto forever. Who cares if we had a view or not, I was out of town and it was spectacularly uplifting to have this freedom to play where we are never allowed to go.
The runway itself is groomed and combed into ridges like blue ice corduroy by the large machines that run over it constantly. But we found the smooth patch beyond it and played.
We headed back into Sea Ice Airfield "town" & Eddie checked the generator there, while I wandered over into the piles of snow off to the side of the apron, where the dozers had pushed all the extra snow. I sat in the lee of a big jumble of blocks, outlines almost softened by blown ice crystals collected on every surface. Each tiny crystal clung sharply outlined, yet in aggregate it was a smoothing effect. I looked out onto the horizon and gloated at being alone on the Ice, even for those few moments, sitting on my ass in the snow in Antarctica, "town" behind me, the illusion of solitude hanging strong around me.
Then we were off again, this time to Willie Field, whose environs I had not visited since last year as a Shuttle Driver. In fact, I had not been on the Scott Base transition & the road since last season. So it was a treat to ride that route again. Out we headed with the wind rising & the snow starting to blow. Yeah. Weathuh movin' in.
Willie was, of course, a ghost town, as all the airfield buildings were over at the Sea Ice Runway being used there. So there were a few buildings, the generator building among them. There was also very little clearing that had been done and the snow had built up into actual drifts. Soft drifts into which my boots sank. None of this crunchy squeaky dry snow that you walk on top of thinking with all your senses that you are suspended over a hollow echoing hole. The temps had risen such that the snow no longer squeaked, and this was fresh. Darren & I tried making snow angels, but the light and the snow was such that we could barely see them. Very flat light, lotsa blowing snow that got blowier & blowier. We started losing our landmarks. They faded in & out with the blowing snow. There was no horizon, no shadow, no light but the white we were deep inside, stumbling over the drifts we could not see.
Yup, it turned Condition Two as we were out there. We drove over to the LDB (Long Distance Balloon) buildings--that had been built on giant skis over the winter by Scott Base transition and towed to just outside Willie the week before--to check their generators. All the workers there were packing up to head back into town, hoping not to get caught out at Willie if it turned Condition One. Condition One means NO Travel, not even between buildings, stop your vehicle where you are (you can't see the flag 5 feet in front of you anyway) and radio in your location. Then sit it out. Darren & I both confessed to the wish that we would get stuck out at Willie in one of the LDB buildings during a Condition One. No such luck, we made it back into town without issue before they called it. Damn.
Eddie kept apologizing to us about the lack of view, as he has done this route so many times it is always the view that wows. But for me & Darren--playing in the snow with real Antarctic Weathuh! looming over us, view completely obscured, sliding on blue sea ice, making snow angels--that was just as fun. We were gleeful & grinning.
Kudos to Eddie for making the extra space available to us. Maybe not an official Chalet-sponsored boondoggle--or "Morale Trip" as they'd like us to call it--but nifty fun nonetheless. Polie Darren was good company for the play.
It was fine weather in town, as they called One at the runways. But a few hours later, when I emerged from the library, I emerged into Condition Two in town. I rushed over to my room and woke my roomie up from her nap. This was the first real storm I'd experienced here and it was on a Sunday, so I could go out & play in it. Marsha was just as excited.
So we dressed and out we went into the wind & the blowing snow, the whistling & moaning of the wires, the stuttering hissing spitting sounds of wind & snow snarling through town. The whole world was static, not as in unchanging, but like static you hear on the radio and see on TV. It was loud loud loud with snap crackle pop and the vertical hold was shot all to hell as snow whipped by so fast it showed as lines all side to side. We struggled to stay upright, to cover our few inches of exposed face. The snow blew hard & stingy pinging against our cheeks.
Marsha & I ventured out between dorms to the bayside until the wind grabbed me and I had to crouch to maintain a hold on the planet. We retreated, neither of us wearing enough rocks in our pockets to hold us down in that wind. We were ecstatic, laughing & skipping & smiling & whooping it up. This is what we had come for, some challenge to the weather, some adrenaline rush to going outdoors. None of the sneaking up on you and freezing your fingers cold danger, but this immediate pounce on your ass weathuh! A blizzard. Though that is not a word heard down here.
We ducked shining & laughing, red-faced & loud, into the coffeehouse to warm up. But cut off from the outside we could not stand it long and headed back out again to play more.
I was so pumped full of good cheer by the awful, terrible, dangerous weather that I was puppy-like in my enthusiasm. I headed over to supper (one of the best meals I've had here, perhaps the food, perhaps the circumstances) and grabbed a few people to hug and do a few dance steps with. Met up with Keith Martin after supper and he had the same red glow, gleeful satisfied pumped up look on his face as did Marsha and I. One of the reasons I made contact with Keith over the winter was because he expresses the same joy in playing outside in Antarctica in bad weather as I do. He was also the only winterover at the Pole or McMurdo who still had two neurons to rub together and maintained comms with me all season.
He flew North yesterday. I urge you all to read his blog and check out his photos, specially if you are looking for a more accessible-to-school-children description of this place.
It was a glorious day. I was full of happiness and humming with satisfaction.
How disappointing to go to bed and wake up the next morning to clear blue skies overhead. I had hoped it would go Condition One in town and we'd have a snow day. We are now back to the perpetual sun & blue skies that I marveled in last season, but coming ont he heels of WinFly and it's mutable weather & views, it can only be less exciting to me.
Still, several days later, after a few days of good sleep, I wake up now two mornings in a row, inexplicably happy. I am brimming with good cheer.
Home Brew Root Beer
I broke into my first bottle of winterover home brew root beer, left for me by Deb & Glenn when they left at WinFly. I hadn't found an occasion I deemed right enough to open it, until a few days after hearing about Sue's death, with an unexpected half day off in my room to do laundry, clean sheets, vaccuum, and put up a colourful string of lights in my room, and open the boxes that arrived on the last flight.
I was feeling somewhat down, and I thought I deserved this special root beer. Well, my goodness. Who knew that home brew sodas could be so...volatile? I suppose anything you put yeast in and then stick into a sealed container is going to get rather stroppy in its confinement. I tried to pop the top cleanly, but failed and got it half off, the root beer exploded out the opening and foamed up brown & seething all over my hand. I ran for the trash can and waited for it to calm down. And I waited for it to calm. I waited some more. Still foaming. With it still foaming I picked up the trash can and headed down the hall holding this bottle over the trash can, still foaming, to the loo. After a a long time it finally stopped foaming and I was able to wash my hand & the bottle of the sticky root beer. The bottle was about a third empty by this point. Once cleaned I set the bottle down on the table next to the sink, a tad abruptly, roiling up the contents once more to explode up out of the bottle. Cleaned that up, gently gently handling the bottle. Once clean & calmish, I tried the root beer.
You've tried pop rocks, right? That fizzy explode in your mouth candy that sizzles & fizzes & feels like firecrackers on your tongue? Yeah, like that, like several packets & a mouthful of water that. Try swallowing that. I did, finally, after a few startled moments of tongue funky weirdness. And what happens when you swallow fizzy exploding liquid? World Class Belching & Burping. I'm talking, for every tiny sip I took throughout that bottle, I was burping great bellowing urps of air immediately post-swallow. It was more fun than a roller-coaster, as I dissolved into giggles between swigs & burps. The Rumanian judges would've given me a string of 10s for these Olympic-level burps. Gold medal belches, every last one for the whole bottle.
Deb & Glenn probably want to know how it tasted, but I was having such fun with the sensations I'm not sure my taste buds were anything but tickled & astonished by what was going on in my mouth. There was a definite root beer flavour, which came out more in the burps than the swallows. I tasted a bit of the yeast, but not enough to put me off the funhouse in my mouth experience.
I have several more bottles to go. I need to pace myself, and find someone to drink with, this much fun cannot be kept to myself. It needs to be public, belching like that is best shared with an audience.
Better, Thank You
I walked outside last night after work and dinner, headed for my dorm and an evening of sadness & grief, alone in my bed missing people dead and alive but too far away to hug. I walked outside and there was the shocking beauty of Antarctica right up in my face beckoning me to follow it down to the shore of town, where our dirt & industry meets the sea ice.
With my camera I walked, remembering Sue, thinking of Mr Harris, missing my mother and Joyce and all my families: blood, loved & chosen. In that sky was wonder and comfort and a reminder of why I came here. Because deep in my soul this place soothes me, uplifts me, satisfies me, welcomes me. It also endangers me, when I am so foolish as to follow, underdressed & underestimating the weather--it has felt so damn warm lately, above 0 F with so much sunshine I feel giddy--the view to the shore where the wind is stronger and colder and still of the Antarctic no matter my illusions of safety.
I stood there taking photos until my fingers lost feeling. The rest of me was not cold, not even chilled, but my fingers in their thin white glove liners working the camera were quite soon no longer fingers but heavy sausages just out of the freezer, with some thick pain but no ability to feel anything but numb like the dentists novocaine on your lip. I lost the feeling of individual fingers; putting my camera away and pulling my hands inside my sleeves was not quite sufficient to reintroduce movement & warmth to my benighted fingers. So I walked back up the hill sooner than I had intended and popped into the one warm building I knew: the chapel. Which seemed appropriate to my mood, despite my utter disinterest in anything even remotely resembling spirituality or religious belief. I don't lack it. It's just not part of my make up. It was a shelter for me from people, and from the cold. And it has a wicked great view from behind the alter under the stained glass window. The chapel & the library have provided me with much needed solitude here, time not spent weeping in my room. The chapel is all view, warmth & silence; the library is warm with all the books whispering their secrets to me under the whistling of the wind in the eaves. I prefer the views of the chapel, as long as I am alone there. I will not enter if it is occupied, because then I cannot make of it what I will. But I prefer the comfort of the library for its intentions and opportunities.
I watched the wind whipping great white smokey clouds of snow off Koettlitz Glacier from behind Bratina Island, hundreds of feet high dervishing devils of snow billowing downwind, following this narrow streak of light laid out on the ice in front of the Royals by the light shining through the clouds. Clouds were gathered in such variety last night, tropically full & portentious, thin, cold & Antarctic, wispy, poofy, foggy, streaky, cigar-shaped, plate-shaped, bunny-shaped. So much variety antithetically drifting liesurely across the sky to the north, barely perceptible movement, yet every moment I lost track of one cloud another would have transformed itself in the absence of my attention and was begging to make me smile in pleasure. All the while McMurdo stood in shadow, this beauty only available to us from the distance of this Ice between us. The glaciers coming down from the mountains occasionally lit up like the ice flows they are as the clouds moved to allow the sun on them, ice suddenly alive & cold & swooping majestically down from the hills.
I felt immensely better for having this moment here. The day had been long, the week had been longer, and I had to go to bed and sleep. I have been achy with tears shed & unshed. There was healing of a sort, a reminder of the world turning, beauty in the oddest places, and that I had known and loved two wonderful people. Despite missing them, and those alive, I was more peaceful than before. Antarctica had hugged me back.
Mr. Harris
I don’t know how to write this one. It hurts a lot, but words are my solace, just as they can be a weapon or a sharing. So I will try.
Joyce, honey, I am so sorry I was so far away from you when your father was dying. I am so sorry I left you this time. With this one I regret coming here this year, though, you too would have been angry with me making my life smaller for this. You have so much more capacity for understanding the rhythms of life than I do, and you are my strength when I leave, my comfort when I return.
My hug is reaching to you all the way from the bottom of the world and holding you tight right now. I am whispering in your ear “I love you, Sister. I am so sorry.”
I just got the news, though not unexpected it still stopped my heart & chilled my being as I thought of your family. Death is always a surprise, even when you are the lucky ones who get to herald its much sought for arrival after much pain, confusion and exhaustion.. But I feel far away and helpless when I think of you. But I know the strength of your hug.
Your father was a man strong of heart and strong of mind, a quiet man but not really. I knew him in the center of your rollicking family each Thanksgiving for 12 years now, at weddings and funerals. Yours is what I imagine families should be like, imperfect, loving, forgiving, entangled & extended, several generations moving up against each other around the crowded rooms of your homes. Since that first Thanksgiving you invited me I have been in love with your family. Your mother and father were the pillars around which so many people gathered, as they kept home together, as they kept community alive in your neighbourhood. And you welcomed me in, and I have never stopped being grateful for knowing you all. I have seen the family grow each year with new children, new marriages. I was there after your mother died and all seemed unbearable and hard. I still miss her, and see her smile, hear her laugh when I visit the heart of your family. You all have pieces of her in you.
I was blessed to have spoken so many times with your father, as he shared stories of his courtship of your mother, of the past in Portsmouth, both military and black. I could feel the ties that bind and the webbing of community when he spoke, at the same time as he made me laugh to imagine his youth and daring. I could see him flirting with your mother in my mind, and I am sure they are together now young & dancing, flirting again.
He was a tall handsome black man, with much American Indian in his features, to make him appear harder than he was. Then his smile and his tender greetings, and his sadness once Harriet died. He gave of himself, offered help and cared to hear people were doing well for themselves and most of all, that you were in a safe car. I think he worried more than my mother about that car I drove to college & back those first years I knew you.
Yours is a strong family, and you will survive this. With forgiveness of each other and the demands people will make on you in their grief, not always recognizing yours, your family will right itself and sail strong in any storm. Together. I trust that Thanksgiving will take place, with new children, infants just born to treasure and to occupy us from our griefs with new life and never ending needs. There will be diapers to change and when I come home I will meet these new additions into your family just as I was welcomed by your family so many years ago.
Mr Harris, you were a good man. I will miss you, and I promise I will stay with your family, holding them from here. I treasure having known you. I thank you for being the father of this tribe who are so close to my heart. I love you for having shared them with me for so long now.
I can hear you now giving thanks as we stand in a circle holding hands around the Thanksgiving table, voice strong and loving. I can hear your laughter. I can see your quiet sadness. I say good-bye to you from the cold white place of incredible beauty where I stand, loving your family.
A Moment of Beauty
We are in Condition Two and I have hopes that I will finally experience my first Condition One down here. Everyone promised me a Condition One for WinFly, since it is most common to have "bad" weather & big storms during WinFly.
This Condition Two is quite beautiful actually, with the blowing snow from yesterday's snowfall swirling up & around all the buildings, obscuring all this mining town construction industrial town feeling that has crept up on us as the snow cover disappears from the hills and roads around here.
Yesterday we had some snowfall that did not cover the emerging brown of the hills around, but laid down a layer of tiny white balls in the crevices of everything, none of which stuck to anything not even together, they just collected. They floated around town like the crumbs from a styrofoam box. McMurdo looked like it had been liberally sprinkled with kosher salt. We were the prettier for it, though it made footing a bit slippy. It remained sunny most of the day, and warm (okay, relaitively warm to my Winfly-adjusted body: -5F), but with a brisk wind that could chill your face quickly as it blew the snow into it. Later in the evening the snow that had fallen was picked up and swirled around us in the bowl of town, up to about 5 stories, with the blue sky easily visible above, clouds thin & wispy. The sun shone into this dancing white snow and lit us up like a live white haze. It was absolutely stunning. I stood in the middle of DJ grabbing folks as it danced around me ephemeral & mystical, exclaiming how beautiful it was out tonight.
Later in the evening it had calmed down a bit but when I looked up to the Sea Ice & the horizon, all was obscured in white blowing on the ice, except a glimpse, a hint, a vague impression of Mt Discovery like a shadow in the white.
Today, I awoke to more snow falling. By the time I was dressed it was blowing, but still with the white daylight shining on us making figures appear from the blow like friendly ghosts as people headed to work and to eat. Not cold, warm out. +12F, which feels like some kind of miracle. I want to go out & play in it. I want a Condition One to happen when I am not stuck in my office like a blind lemming chasing the cursor on my screen and smiling at people while wishing to be fiercely elsewhere.
It has been a long week with the Polies (South Pole Station folks) parked on us until they open Pole. The first flights of Southbound Polies are expected to be today, but all is weather dependent. And today's weather here in McMurdo doesn't mean diddly really, it's the 800 mile away Pole weather that has a larger impact. They cannot fly the LC130s (Hercs) down there until the temp gets above a certain degree (I think -40F) because even with the planes on idle liquids like oil & diesel & other lubricants in the engines can solidify & become more viscous. Making take off iffy. The planes don't stick around the Pole, they land, offload, upload, take off. All in about 25-30mins from what I've heard.
Why they park the Polies on us for up to a week before they even send the Hercs down from Christchurch to fly them South, I don't quite understand. It's not like McMurdo has the cold or the altitude extremes of the Pole, so we're not being used to ease them into the experience. They do some training while here, but mostly they eat a lot, line up for booze, drink a lot and try to get laid. Not to tar all Polies with the same brush, but they do make McMurdo feel awfully full. They do not disappear into the work centers during the day so much and there are lines everywhere: at the computer kiosk, at the bars for beer, at the store after the alcohol has been stocked.
Shit. More bad news. Fuck fuck fuck.
I'm sorry folks. I need to go home (back to my room) and make some phone calls.
One Death
I am sorry, Sue, that I did not call you after I reached the Ice. Though I know you lost your voice soon after we last spoke.
I am sorry I did not stay around while you got worse, and died.
I am sorry that I was not there for our movies and conversations, your hugs and smile and curiosity.
I know you loved the colour purple, you loved good books, you loved women, your family, your independence. I know you were my favorite movie date for several years. I know we were separated by 30+ years, and often an hour or more drive time.
I am happy to have known you & cared for you and shared in some part of your life, even excited you in my adventures, vicarious pleasures for you to see me go so far. I know you would have died faster if you thought I was going to not come back here in order to be with you. I know you know I loved you.
You always had an umbrella because when you didn't, it was sure to rain on us. I recall the pills you took and the small indignities of age that crept up on you these last few years. You got slower up & down the stairs at the Music Hall. Until the final surprise diagnosis, and still you stayed to speak with me on the phone, with pain in your voice as we spoke, and encourage me in my journey, my dreams.
You were happy to see me so happy. You made me happy to come home and tell you stories, sparks flying from the heat of my words as I described how lovely it was down here, how madly in love I was with this place. How excited you were to hear this passion I have. How so many other people just ducked in the face of my excitement, for perhaps it cast so much light on their life they were left in shadows. I did not mean to be so intense, and I dampened my enthusiasm, canned my anecdotes, learned to get myself under control. But you, you wanted full force me telling you. I thank you for that.
Tonight, today, I will look on the sun over the Royal Society Mountains and I will say hello to you, and good bye. I will hug the sky for you.
I will miss you.
I feel very far away right now. Very very far away.
On Quilting, A Farewell and a Sunset Shared
We are up over 900 people now. I am not adjusting to the noise in the galley, I run back to the back room and hide there. People are thinking it's because my job is so hard and I'm in Housing (the source of much bitching & moaning & griping here). It's not. It's because my job requires too much interaction, intense multi-tasking interaction, with so many people. It isn't the people or their attitudes. I take my meals and it's supposed to be a break from that kind of interaction, but it isn't. I am faced with lines of people, strange faces, loud voices, groups of strangers, competition for the seats at the tables. I want to eat in peace, or with a few people I know are calm & quiet & a bit frazzled too. Those of us who are shell shocked are hiding out.
But I am also making a concerted effort to get some one on one time with the people who I want to spend time with. I learned how to play cribbage (there's a game invented by the Brits) the other night. Caleb, the aforementioned firefighter whose ass I kicked at shuffleboard at the start of Winfly, took on the burden of teaching me. Apparently it was quite the burden because it took him half a bottle of wine to accomplish and he still skunked me bad. Who were the shitheels who invented anything with a scoring system that obscure? Game of kings my arse.
But completely worth it. We walked out of the Coffeehouse at 9:15pm and the sunset was just starting its decent over the clouded horizon and we were so stunned we were drawn down the hill to it. It was cold, the wind whipping by & chilling us as we stood in awe. Underdressed as we were we found cover in the chapel (Chapel of the Snows) as the only open warm building. We stood behind the altar under the stained glass window speaking quietly, alone in there but for the view out the window, which changed constantly and subtly and sometimes unnoticed parts of it appeared completely transformed in the few seconds we were focussed on another cloud over there. There, that little bit of glowing orange cloud above Mt Discovery with its rounded cap of white smoothing the top over the sides like foggy icing. We were about an hour watching this sunset. I was glad to have company for it, and Caleb was good company. I had spent much of the day in tears or on the verge after saying goodbye to another friend.
It's all about who you can steal away from the crowd with, and it's also about the people who leave. One of the calm, good people who enhance my life no matter where I meet them or when, left the other day, in fact that day of the sunset on Tuesday. I had quilted for hours on Saturday after writing the previous entry, knowing he was leaving soon, with him in my mind. Usually when I think that much about one person as I quilt it means that there is so much memory of that person in the object that I give it to the subject of my thoughts. Mostly I create something knowing from the get go that I will be giving this person the item I make. So I invest a great deal of thought in that person as I construct with my hands & heart the item in my hands. But this quilt, it is my biggest project yet, and all along it has been destined for me, no one else. I feel greedy to be keeping it after so much time thinking of John, but it will be worth it. There will be so many people from here in it, and not only will I approach this quilt with all the little histories of the many fabrics to make me smile, but now I have the tears I shed as I thought about John leaving the Ice. There will be many different people in the construction of this quilt. He will be a significant part as I joined the many colours & textures of the fabric together with a rainbow of embroidered crossstitches. That will make me smile in the future, to know he was a part of it.
I miss him already. He made my Ice experience the greater for being here the short time I shared it with him. He has his dreams and they no longer involve the Ice. I am selfish to want more of him than I had.
Before y'all go thinking this was a lover of mine, stop in your tracks & back the fuck up. It was not that. He is one of those people you always crave to be with because they have this huge warm heart in the center of themselves and they welcome you in to this heart and give so much of themselves simply by their attention to you. Seemingly without effort. A good good person. With a hug that wraps around you forever and a day.
I will quilt him something someday. Some people just have that kind of impact on you. I want to give back to him some of what he has lent me of himself for my sojourn here.
I am still sad that he will not be here for the rest of my summer season. He wintered, it was time for him to go.
The amazing thing about working with your hands on something, be it pottery, baking, sewing, quilting, knitting, embroidery, gardening, is that it leaves your mind free to wander in the crevices of your mind unfettered by the need to mentally focus. You can float in there visiting memories old & recent, people you love, things you want to know. There is no pressure to accomplish, to do, to finish something, just to stitch & form & create. Reading is too challenging for me down here. I haven't the mental wherewithal to focus on stories not Antarctic or immediate. I am all up in my head with thoughts unbidden and I turn the pages without taking in a thing. My eyes track the words and I reach the next chapter with no memory of reaching there because the story in my head was so much more compelling. Quilting forgives me of the guilt of not paying attention.
People come here for the place, and I think I understand them now when they say they return for the people. Though, still it is the place first and foremost. If the place ever faded in my heart such that I didn't notice it anymore when I walked outside between buildings, I would not come back solely for the people. I would be dead by then. Dead inside for having stopped seeing what I have around me here. Please let it not fade in me the way it has for others.
Too. Many. People.
***I wrote this on Sat, Oct 8th***
Holeeee Sheee-it!
You guys may consider yourselves lucky I am writing and you may thank the planeload of people who arrived today, 137 strong, for chasing me out of the galley back to my room at 6:25pm on a Saturday night.
Since Tuesday, first flight of Mainbody, we have gone from a population of 400 to a population of well over 700, I would guess. I don’t know, it feels like 4000 to me. I don’t care about the exact number because the abstract mass of them, the newness of their energy, is imposing.
I have tried mixing tables, Winfly + Summer people, and so far it isn’t working. We are not vibrating at the same frequency. They have too much…brightness. I have tried to speed up my frequency to meet theirs, but I cannot sustain it. I lose ground quickly and go into a brown study, having lost the thread of the conversation. I begin tilting in my chair and gazing off into the distance.
I am also exhausted. It has been a long, challenging week in the housing office. Only three flights, and we were supposed to have a 4th today. Thursday’s flight was delayed 24 hours due to weather, and then the next day those poor suckers were flown all the way down here, 5 hours, to get so close they were eyeballing Erebus, only to boomerang and be turned back to Chch. That would be called the Worst Case Scenario Boomerang. Flights can be boomeranged at any point in time between your hotel room at 3am in Chch and flying over McMurdo. The hotel version is much preferable.
I have never boomeranged. So far.
But since Thursday’s flight was cancelled, and then they boomeranged on Friday, the Saturday flight (today) was forced to double up on the plane with the Thursday flight pax. Low on the totem pole folks got bumped, people most needed were sent down today. So we got 130+ people in today.
Then I have to go in to the office tomorrow, on Sunday, my one day off in the week. Why? The people who got bumped from today’s flight by the Thursday flight addition, get to fly down tomorrow. It’s a work day for housing. I get to sleep in, but after brunch (which will be a fucking nightmare of lines of people and noise) I go to the office. Guess what? We have another flight on Monday, and then one on Tuesday.
Have I mentioned how much I don’t really like people? You may skoff at this, as I seem a very socially adept person. But, no, I don’t like people. I may take jobs that depend on my people skills, but I live like a fucking hermit off the Ice. I go home and I revel in my time alone, healing from the rigours of the day, and the efforts to communicate with people. I don’t even like to be in a relationship because it requires too much time to be spent Not Alone.
I can’t do that here. My roommate is here, I eat with 700 people at every meal, I shit in company, I pee in concert with 3 other women most times, I sleep with someone every night, I deal with everyone’s unhappiness at work because Housing is the one thing people need most to control down here. If you are unhappy in your room, or your roommate is difficult, we will hear about it. Why not? If you can’t feel relaxed & safe in the one place you lay your head and go to sleep, then how vulnerable must that make you feel?
Oh, I just deleted a whole bunch of complaining & bitching & moaning. And I sounded just like the worst of the people who come through our door. =)
Right now, I’m tired (12 & 13 hour days) and hiding in my room. I’ll face them tomorrow. It’s Saturday night and there’s a new crew in town, they have Sunday off, and there will be drinking all over station. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to hear it. I am overwhelmed right now.
But, y’know, the job doesn’t suck, I like my co-workers, 99.2% of the people who come in the office are great people, and get this: I. Am. In. Antarctica.
Yeah. I really am. And it is beautiful here. It would just be so much more beautiful right now with fewer people.
Roommate
So, her first morning here? I farted, woke her up. She started laughing, woke me up.
Doesn't get much better than that.
I missed her.
