Joyful Girl

I do it for the joy it brings, because I am a joyful girl. - Ani DiFranco

Drunk Co-eds live next door and have a propensity to wage battle with the gate that the landlord has put up to protect the garbage and recycle bins from pillaging City dwellers. I’ll hear screams from the gate being conquered and holler out my window to remind the Co-eds that they’re welcome to use my key anytime. They’ll stumble up the stairs, weaving serpentine and bouncing off the banister and stand before me happy and glassy-eyed, slurring that they’ll return the key shortly. A few moments later, predictably, they’ll present themselves on my doorstep with key in hand, breathing heavy with a bit of sweat glistening on their upper lip and brow, to explain how they’d locked themselves out, they’d lost their key or some other crisis, adventurous tales of climbing the fire escape, squeezing through partially opened windows, a story that grows in fury with each passing word.

They depart grateful and beaming. I fancy myself an icon of salvation and redemption in that hazy moment – the benevolent benefactor. I savor the notion that it’s entirely possible that one or the other of the Drunk Co-eds take a moment of pause and think to themselves, wow, she’s really got it together. Part of me anxiously wishes that they’d say it out just so I can tell someone. Hey. I’ll take it where I can get it.

Yesterday I went hiking the Steep Ravine trail on Mount Tamalpias. It feels like forever since I’ve trekked those paths and being among the wet mossy green towering redwoods was very sublime. Above the fog line it feels like I’m walking through heaven and I can look through the clouds at the ocean below. I brought my digital camera along such that if the day turned out to be a fateful day when I encountered another Mountain Lion I could take a picture. When the Park Ranger raised that skeptical eyebrow at me, when he pulled his we’ve-never-seen-a-Mountain-Lion-in-this-area-but-people-like-you-see-them-all-the-time attitude while I filled out my Mountain Lion sighting report I could whip out the proof. I fantasized about being mauled by the beastly creature and showing the ranger tattered and bloody photos of the cat gnawing on my arm. Ah! I’d like to see what he writes down about witness credibility on that stupid form after I leave this time!

Alas, no Mountain Lion. But I did see a Banana Slug. For all I know it was a rare and dangerous poisonous and carnivorous Banana Slug. It’s possible. After all, Lawyer-babe was afraid of it. Who’s to say it wasn’t a deadly Banana Slug? I could have died! Excuse me Mr. Know-it-all Park Ranger man, I’d like to fill out the Banana Slug sighting report. I admit that I feel shunned and dismissed that there is no Banana Slug sighting form. One day the world will rise to my expectations.

Cassie and I went to see the lovely and talented Ani DiFranco at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Friday night. Ms. DiFranco is going through her Chia Pet phase and is wearing her hair tied up like a little troll doll. It’s fabulous. Anyway, there was all this girl energy rising from the center stage audience and I kept imagining someone letting the lion’s loose in the pit. Cassie said, it’s Greek not Roman. And I said, and it’s a theatre not a coliseum but it could happen. She contends that couldn’t happen and that by the way she doesn’t like hippy chicks, she likes earth girls, and how the way I say it makes it sounds like a bad thing so if I must categorize her tastes at the very least I have to say intelligent earth girls and I can’t laugh when I say it and how I have to say it like it’s a good thing. Rules schmules. Earth girls, earth girls, earth girls.

At the concert I sat next to a Catwoman with mousy brown hair. Not Cassie (who doesn’t have mousy brown hair at all), but the woman on my other side. The mousy-haired Catwoman batted the air with an open palm (not at all in time or synch with the music), like a cat trying to catch a fly (that wiggled and jiggled and giggled inside her). When she was excited she’d stand up and pull the hood of her sweatshirt off her head and flail around in jerky seizing motions while she batted the air with her open cat palm. It was frightening. The first time it happened, I was startled and feared she’d started to seize into a diabetic coma. I demanded that Cassie retrieve the apricot oatmeal bars from her satchel and shoved the bar under Catwoman’s tongue and yelled for orange juice. “Chew woman, chew!” Catwoman’s date looked on in utter horror and ran looking for security. It was an honest mistake. It could have happened to anyone. Under any other circumstances I would be a hero for saving her life and yes, forchrisake, I’m sorry. So we all made nice but Catwoman and her date gave me sideways glances the rest of the evening – which I thought was totally uncalled for.