Electrolicious

It’s one of those gorgeous days out today. The sky is a brilliant shade of blue (deep, not pale) and the sunlight is filtering through the boughs of cedars and maple trees around my house. Birds are in full chorus, and earlier I think I heard a squirrel get its clock cleaned by a raccoon. It’s warm out. The ferns are uncurling and are at their greenest. It’s my favorite time of year, in my favorite place.

It’s moments like these when I wonder why I would ever leave this gorgeous area. I mean, really: I live in an amazing house in a beautiful forest…Why would I ever want to leave?

(Oh, did I forget to mention that Andreas and I will be giving up the house when I leave for NYC? We will. Then I’ll be New York until early August, back long enough to pack my shit and go for a couple hikes, and then it’ll be off to LA, SF, or NYC for work. Dre will stay here to finish his last year of school.)

Then I have to remind myself that I want to do more than sit in a beautiful place. I want to bring inspiration to the masses, and to do that I need to spend some time working (whoring?) my magic in a place where there’s a higher ratio of people to trees than we have here in Olympia, WA. It’s not that I don’t appreciate this place. Every morning I wake up and drink in the forest sounds, every night I enjoy the complete darkness and silence (I’m the girl who had to move out of a loft last year in part because I was convinced that the evil orange streetlights outside my window ate my soul while I was sleeping). I love it here.

But I’ve got the curse of being acutely aware of my purpose, and it’s to publish: bringing the inspired words of geniuses to the appreciative public (how’s that for industry idealism?). I might eventually be able to do that from a place as beautiful and verdant as where I live now, but I’ve got to put in some urban time.

That’s why, in one month, I’ll leave behind my house, my forest, my family, my boyfriend, and my security. It’s all very exciting, but (and?) some days I feel only terror.

This blog will track the plight of an urban warrior who has moved back into the woods. I was raised by two loving hippy parents, living in a cabin they built on a wooded island in Puget Sound. My bedroom in highschool was, in fact, a school bus. But, the pendulum swings, and as soon as I was done with highschool, I headed for the city.

Boston, Seattle, San Francisco…I spent 7 years scuttling under freeways, dancing on sidewalks, breathing concrete and loving it. I went to college, I went to raves, I danced my ass off, I was a hipster, I was a scenester, I used my charge card. It was all very exciting, and very stimulating. When I started writing for magazines (while living in San Francisco in ‘96), I felt that the citychaos was my fuel, it was the soul gatorade that kept my writing muscles strong and bulging under my laptop.

And, for years, it was. It was fun, screaming down alleyways, finding hidden bastions of nightlife, working for large corporations, feeling the grease around me as I enjoyed my life as a citycog. I liked it. Nay, I LOVED it.

Then it started bothering me. Couldn’t I walk down the street without being harassed by others’ eyes? Does everyone ALWAYS have to make all that noise? Why should I have to breath what came out of the asses of commuter’s cars on the six lane double decker offramp outside the window of my rotting warehouse loftspace? My boyfriend conveniently decided it was time to go back to school, at The Evergreen State College in the woods of Olympia, WA.

I work for Lotus Magazine, electronic music magazine published in Los Angeles. I also write product reviews for Amazon.com. Other than that, there’s not much work for a web writer and editor down here…I tried to apply for a job at some crappy place, and called to ask what address I should email my online resume to. The secretary clucked “I wouldn’t email it–that’s so unprofessional!” Dear Lord, these people are living in a different millennium. sigh.

So, this blog will be a way to track the movements of what happens with a girl raised in the woods, who ran to the city, runs back to the woods. Hippy / raver / clubber / professional / hippy again.