For the past month, I’ve been driving one hour each way every day from ABQ to Santa Fe and then on top of that working a twelve hour day. That didn’t leave much for doing anything except going to Starbucks every morning, high-tailing it to Santa Fe, working and coming home. It even hurt to stop and get gas . . . . which of course, I had to do quite often.

I noticed the beautiful countryside of the high desert on some days, but most days I was just inside my own head, hoping to get to work on time, dealing with lack of sleep or feeling a little miffed that I didn’t have any time to do any real life stuff. The beauty was surrounding me, but I never could be in the moment and actually enjoy it.

I will be going back to ABQ and most likely to Santa Fe as well at some point and I will enjoy all that the wide sweeping vistas of New Mexico have to offer. But for now, as I told myself while I was zooming away the hours on the freeway between ABQ and Santa Fe, constantly scanning for the numerous police cruisers that frequent the area, I am going to enjoy the lesson that my month long drive time taught me - - I have two whole hours of my life back every day!

Am I going to be working long hours in South Carolina? You bet your sweet shugar ass I will be. But the perspective on suddenly having two extra hours every day to do . . . well, whatever I want is not lost on me now. It is a gift.

I don’t want to jinx myself by proclaiming out loud what I will do with my new found time, but let’s just say that the results will show, besides I’m still figuring out the ‘what’ part. Case in point - I slept in this morning . . . . a needed and quite necessary use of that precious time.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit unstable. I knew I was moving, but wasn’t sure where or when or how . . . . my roommate and I finagled our way out of our lease, so whoo-hoo! I’m free to roam again . . . and that’s exactly what I’m going to do . . .

Sunday morning, Frank, the cat and myself will fly from ABQ to Columbia, South Carolina for a short bit of work. It’s going to be seat of the pants living at it’s best. We will be living in another fine hotel and may stay two weeks, maybe four and I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing or where I’m going after South Carolina. My stuff goes into storage in ABQ tomorrow and the car gets parked at the airport and I am done thinking about it all for a bit.

My granny’s 90th birthday party is in July, so until July, I’m not so worried about being in any specific place at any certain time. I’ve got lots of options, but as life has recently taught me - I have no idea what will pop up - and that’s OK - even exciting. Maybe Frank and I will kick it in Santa Fe for June, maybe Chicago, maybe LA, maybe Peru (ok, Frank can’t go to Peru). . . . maybe a shack in a redwood forest. Who knows?

I’m sad to be saying good-bye to G-unit so soon, but it’s time to move on . . . do what I do best. . . be an artist adventurer . . . keep livin’ the moments.

I’ve been doing research into stress and the chemicals that stress pumps into your body and how some people get almost high on it.

I get edgy and my heart beats fast and I feel like I’ve had ten cups of coffee . . . my nasal passages open up so I can breathe fast, shallow breaths. Everything moves like sound that is sped up. But it’s the electricity firing off in my brain that really creates the buzz. Brain spins so fast, it’s like it’s doing jumping jacks, thoughts moving, flicking so fast that you aren’t conciously processing any of them anymore . . . it’s just like a steady stream of color or a cloth.

And you are focusing somewhere with your eyes at a tangible fixed point in front of you, but you aren’t seeing that fixed point - you are seeing that colored cloth pipeline that only exists in your sped-up spasming grey matter.

Somewhere up there in your noggin you know every single stitch and molecule of that rapidly moving, dazzling tapestry, but conciously, it’s just moving, flicking through your head like film at 24 frames per second, never seeing the gaps between the frames. You cannot hold a conversation or be present to another human.

It takes a long time to cool down and unwind. Sometimes it takes days or weeks. Sometimes months. Sometimes sleep patterns are disrupted; sometimes not. The managable peak, the worst I’ve ever experienced without cracking is the conversation point where when you are talking with someone, your end of the conversation is a hurried, broken, stuttered, “Um huh. um hm. uh huh.” You’re shaking your head uncontrollably like some kind of drug addict.

Because you are. That’s stress juice, baby.

Sometimes I get visions of a needle in my arm. That’s my inner voice, showing me that stress is my junk. And then . . . there’s the unmanagable kind of stress. ABQ has shown me mountains of it. I just want my regular stress level back!

I’m happy to report that the third time was the charm. I finally got inside the Sunshine Theatre last night after two failed attempts which you can read about here and here. Last night’s show was my first heavy metal show ever. I went straight from work, not really looking like a head-banger, but I felt relatively safe in my chunky boots and I tried really hard to wipe the smile off my face and look all dark and scary and use my long black hair to my advantage, but I still kinda stuck out. I tried to stand in the fringes and enjoy the show near the pit, on the edge of the chaos, which I enjoyed very much. But I still wanted to be incognito . . . just to be safe . . . just to avoid any rumble.

I liked the raw energy coming out of the crowd, the showmanship of the musicians, the intricacies of the music, the lighting, and the artwork. I enjoyed the fact that I remembered my earplugs. While the roadies were setting up the headliner band, whose name I can neither remember nor pronounce, we pushed as close to the stage as we could. Pretty soon Michael and I found ourselves jam-packed inside a mob. We were in the worst possible spot - the middle, mashed right up against a bunch of thick dudes with long hair and black Slayer t-shirts who were looking to start shoving and pushing and unloading all their pent-up angst by forcing a head-cracking, giant mosh pit to open up oh . . . right about where we were standing . . . I could tell they were just waiting for the band to start, waiting to get nuts. I was on-guard, but too naive to be scared.

That is, until Michael looked at me and said, “I’m spooked. Are you?” At first I thought he was joking around. Then I realized he wasn’t. Then I got scared. Then I remembered I had on some shit-kickers for boots and regained composure. I was still having trouble looking ‘dark’ enough; I could barely wipe the grin off my face, and I’m not sure why.

The first intricate chords of heavy-metal guitar music erupted with steam and smoke and lights and shit flying through the air and suddenly, I was part of a pulsing crowd, losing all sense of control of my own ability to move. There was a massive thrust forward as the weight of layers of people pressed into me. Sure enough, the group of grumbling dudes just to my right began pushing and shoving. At first, I allow myself to go limp and the shoving gets more intense and maybe even on the razor’s edge of violent, so I tense up every muscle in my body and push back HARD with everything I’ve got with my arms, my legs, my back, my neck. I get my boot ready to come down and deliver a crack in the shin at a moment’s notice and then, suddenly, all aggresiveness ends with them. I’m just moving and straining and fighting and living and part of it all.

I went to a yard sale a couple of weeks ago here in Albuquerque that some UNM kids were having. I spend a long time digging through CD’s and silverware. As I pay, one of the girls looks at me with her head cocked to one side and slowly says, “Hey, weren’t you Lydia’s roommate?”

I was shocked for a quick moment. It was strange because I was thinking, “Who’s Lydia?” yet at the same time the name was so familiar . . . I hadn’t heard her name since . . . god, it seemed like so long ago, so far away in the distant past . . . but no . . .

“Yeah,” I answered. “For like the first four days I was in Albuquerque. How did you know?”

“I was at their house-warming party,” the girl answered.

I smile and throw my arms in the air exclaiming, “Yes! Only been here two months and I’m already infamous in Albuquerque!”

Wow, ironically, that title sort of sounds like a bad accounting pun, I realize, but here are the truths and the stats and the low-down and the what-for.

First, let me say that the past couple of months, even before I took this job, I kept finding myself in situations where I could and many times did use the power of my words to hurt, harm and invoke. I’ve decided not to do this here. Yeah, I’m human; therefore, I’ve got feelings and opinions and all that other drama whipping around inside my head about this whole entire shit-storm. But I’ve made a choice to not spread or perpetuate that poison anymore. This means that you, my dear readers, will not be getting the dramatic deets of my recent choice of unemployment.

The only thing worth mentioning is that I’m heart-sick that this job didn’t work out and I can only believe that my choice was the best for all involved; the proof I have of this is that here I am, sitting with this choice I’ve made.

So, here I am . . . Albuquerque has not been easy. I’ve been here about six weeks and in that time I’ve endured moving half-way across the country with a cat, getting asked to leave my new digs, living in a hotel, moving two more times, being really sick, getting news of my granny being really sick, car breaking down, (happily, but still heavily) getting the whammy news of my 100% sis-tah, and now, making the difficult decision to quit my job. Allow me to re-iterate. Six weeks! Endure has really been my word lately.

I give it up. I’m trading ENDURE for another word, a nicer word. How ’bout this for my new word: EXPANSIVE. (And no, I’m not talking about weight gain.)

I’m staying here in ABQ - no, not forever - ABQ isn’t my long-term bag, baby. Just for the terms of my lease. I have a great sublettor in my bungalow. Why not? Life’s my adventure. I’m here right now and I’ve got some shit planned and I’m in a beautiful part of the country. So, watch out world!

Special thank-you’s go out to all my friends who’ve given me boundless love, encouragement and support about my decision. You all know who you are and I could not have made it through this without your accolades, kind ears and non-judgemental boosts to my nearly broken spirit. You’ve all helped me find Anna again, and quite quickly, I must add.

Here’s a quote from Nan Terrell Reed about life. “They told me that life could be all I could make it, life could be fashioned and worn like a gown. I, the designer, mine the descision, whether to wear it with bonnet or crown . . . .” Or in my case, heeled boots, cute little dresses and occasionally a rhinestone-studded kitty-cat collar.

As promised . . . .

My wake up call was a couple of weeks ago - the evening I drove home from work actually believing that it would probably be a good idea to drive my car over the edge of the ravine and down, down, down into the dust and the cacti and the rattlesnakes below. At that moment, the mind-body connection subconciously kicked in and my foot hit the gas pedal and the steering wheel kind of stuttered in my shaking hands. And I knew then that I was in potentially big trouble. Then my inner voice gave stern warning, “Sister, you’d better watch yourself, because it’s easier to make this kind of thing happen than you might think . . .”

And, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been crying alot in the past few weeks. Uncontrollable, spastic, choking on my own long hair kind of heaving sobs. My mother suggested I get on Vitamin P, but popping anti-depressants is not an option for me. When I wasn’t crying, I was doing everything I could to paste a fake smile on my face and not crack up into tears.

There’s alot I don’t remember from the past few weeks. Blank spaces of time. That’s when I was angry. I’ve also been very, very angry . . . just a blind kind of rage that I certainly didn’t recognize as . . . . ME.

Then I began to envision myself ‘falling’ down flights of stairs . . . . and I knew. Something had to change. What was causing all this stress in the form of facial twitches, a strange rash in the area of my third eye chakra and chest hives?

My job, that’s what. So, I did the only thing I could do. The scariest thing I could imagine. In Eleanor Roosevelt’s words I did that thing I thought I could not do. I quit my job.

Yes, it was scary. This coming from a girl who has spent the night in the middle of jungles with marauding panthers. But in order to be reborn, one must first suffer a small death.

Those first moments were the most difficult ones after I hung up from that late-evening phone call on Thursday night to my boss. The fear creeped in, but I saw it creeping in. And so, I just began to say “Thank you, thank you, thank you . . . ” over and over again with outstretched arms toward the kitchen window and the fear melted away and I had a private conversation with the universe and I re-programmed my mind to know and believe and live with the absolute knowing that not only was everything going to be OK, but that everything would be indeed wonderful and beautiful.

At that moment, I looked down and realized I was wearing my New Person Being Born monkey shirt. I began to run around the house, yelling, “New Person Being Born! New Anna Being Born!”

Our expansive Albuquerque pad is dubbed by my roommate Michael and I as “G-Unit,” because our unit is “G.” (For an apartment letter, it’s definitely the best one to have, - so gansta. . . yo.) G-Unit sits smack in the middle of sort of an odd space. Adobe house on one side, an alley on the other, the Christian Science Reading room on the opposite side of the street and a large bank with a drive thru on the north side. I’ve seen Christian Science Reading Rooms before and always wondered what they are. Hmm. . . I spy an adventure - and possibly a shenanigan - on the horizon.

But first, meet my neighbors across the alley. Phil and Diane. Their houses are connected. Except Phil’s is nicer with a huge tree in the back yard that is glowing in the springtime morning air with magical new green buds. The day the buds first popped was last week. I had a personally and professionally difficult week last week, but still managed to notice the popping of the buds. No matter what is going on in life, no matter how hectic or crazy, I try to notice the subtle change of winter to spring. . . those first moments of the earth waking up from it’s long winter’s nap are complete magic.

And as I was headed to the dumpster, I ran into Phil and introduced myself and we just stood there together in awe and amazement of his budding tree in the pink morning sunrise. We chatted a little about the neighborhood. He’s lived here twenty years. Seems like a cool, older hippie dude. And he drives an old Jag - not that what sort of car someone drives impresses me, but when I happen to notice not one but three older Jags sitting behind the houses in the alley across from me, I tend to perk up and notice quirks like that.

I asked him what he thought of our little art loft complex, brand spankin’ new. And he slowly said, “Well, it looks better than it did. Used to just be an empty lot. Kinda ugly really.”

A couple of days later, a lady cut through the parking lot with her two large dogs. She headed to the house next to/connected to Phil’s and I stopped her. We talked for awhile and she mentioned she’s lived in the neighborhood for twelve years. “Oh you know Phil then,” I said. “I met him the other day.”

“Phil’s my ex-husband.” She smiled.

“I knew it!” I said. “I knew something was up when I saw the cool old Jags.” I told her. That you were family or something.”

“Yeah, something.” She laughed.

Ha! The joke was on me yesterday.

I’ve been to the Sunshine Theatre here in Albuquerque twice now. And have not gotten in either time. The Sunshine Theatre is known for it’s awesome shows. I’ve seen many a night where the line to get inside the door is wrapped around the block and down the street - people shivering in the cold, just waiting to get inside. The Sunshine Theatre is supposed to be the best place in all of Albuquerque to see a show. I wouldn’t know.

The first time I went, it was to see Winger. And as you can read about here, apparently 11 PM is too late for Kip. But yesterday was a show I’ve been anticipating for a week now. A cat circus! Now that’s entertainment.

And we got there, braving the whirling spring time winds and . . . . stood in line with a bunch of kids who were maybe just old enough to be in college. And we rocked that line anyway. The bar was closed. Barstools up on the bar kinda closed. No humans in sight. Certainly no performing pusses. We’d even called before we left work early to go to the show.

“Hey!” The kids in line were asking people as they walked by, “Are you here to see the cat circus too?” And people would kind of stare with a big deer in the headlights kinda look, quickly nod their heads ‘no’ and scuttle on down the street. Suckers! We know they were totally there to see performing cats, too, but didn’t want to be caught standing in line . . .

The radio station had been promo-ing this thing all week. Hey! Wait just a minute . . . .

We knew then that we’d been duped. And my first inclination was to look for hidden cameras. Also don’t you know, there were three pay lots, all with attendants, happily waving people over to take their six bucks to park.

Even though I’ve never actually set foot inside the Sunshine Theatre, I know that I like the place already. Two times trying to get in; neither time successful. And I still laugh. I will never forget that The Sunshine Theatre in ABQ has a sense of humor. Priceless. Thanks for getting me out of work a half an hour early, Sunshine Theatre!

I worked in The Burque for one week last November. When I was here that last time, I splurged and purchased a fine silver and turquoise Pakistani necklace from a Swedish woman with an intense handshake who runs a new-age type crystal shoppe/bookstore. I wore the necklace to my next destination, Chicago, whereupon, the very next day, one of the platelet hinges snapped. Admittedly, this happened while I was dancing super-hard with a bunch of friends in front of a juke box at one of my favorite Chicago beer joints, Estelle’s. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed, but also, kind of impressed with myself that I was able to break a hundred dollar necklace simply by some crazy booty-shakin’.

Yesterday, I was in Inga’s store again, this time purchasing a hard-to-find book. I re-introduce myself and mention that I purchased a necklace last fall - and that it broke two days later. Inga pauses, looks at me over the top of her bifocals with a gaze equally as intense as her soul-stroking handshake and says very evenly, “You know, dear, zat vhen someting like dis happens, it is because zat necklace has protected you from some-sing.”

“What?” I ask. I don’t really know what I was expecting her to do about the busted merchandise, but I truly wasn’t expecting her to tell me that the necklace saved me from some sort of attack - psychic or otherwise.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s true. Once, I was coming home across a darkened parking lot, and my necklace broke.” She shuddered. “I know it protected me from some-sing!” She smiles. “I can recommend someone to fix it . . . ”

For the record - I do have a tendency to believe these sorts of things, but that belief system certainly has limitations. The only thing that I can’t shake about her explanation is that . . . . OK, let’s pretend that she’s correct and that it did “save me” from some-sing. Why did it break whilst I was dancing, surrounded by friends? I have to hand the prize of proprietary excuses to my local crystal shoppe owner, Inga. I’ll be back to her store; it’s a good store. I just won’t buy any more jewelry there.