Clinchday Zen

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Routine

If I were a betting girl, I'd bet this: people are really sick of me talking about baseball.

While the nature of my obsessions may not be predictable, the fact that I am obsessive by nature is. And so I leap from one to the next, each more intense than the last. This is what I'm into now. Now this. Ooooohhhh, now THIS. Find a way to combine them and I explode into a million shimmering pieces of light.

Most other obsessions fade without the constant contact of commitment. I can't be at every Todd show. I can't go to Latvia every month. So my focus wanes: and onto the next thing.

But I can go to baseball games. At $5 a ticket, it's hard not to just go on a whim. A friend asked us if we were going to the game again tonight. He said it seems as if we're ALWAYS going to the game. I'd be okay if that were the case. There's something in the routine of it that is comforting; knowing you'll be there for the 7th inning stretch (or the 14th inning stretch, as the case may be), the fireworks that follow a home run. Knowing the jumbotron prompts to clap, even if you don't always clap because you're too busy with your own rituals.

So I apologize for talking so much about baseball.

But as you can see...

...it's kind of become a routine.

(Related to routine: please forgive the prolonged absence/unpredictability of Sunday Zen; I'm preparing for a big trip and most of my Sundays have been occupied with erranding. More on this soon...)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

More Mall Zen

This past Saturday I returned to the nearly empty mall with my proper camera to try to get better pictures. I made it halfway through the Fashion District when I heard someone coming up from behind me. "Ma'am..."

I stopped and turned around. It was mall security on a Segway. ("Like Paul Blart Mall Cop?" "Yes, like Paul Blart Mall Cop!") "Sorry, but you're not allowed to take pictures in here."

"Really?" I knew this was bound to happen when I turned up with a professional looking camera. "Aw, that's too bad. It's so beautiful."

He looked up at the skylight. "I agree. It is beautiful. But sometimes these things show up on YouTube with derogatory comments about it being a 'dead mall.'"

"Well that's too bad; I think it's beautiful. Do you want me to take this back to the car—" I gesture to my 20mm lens "Or..."

"No, I trust you. I'm sorry to be the messenger..."

"Don't worry, I won't shoot the messenger." I smiled, nodding again to my camera to acknowledge the pun. "I understand; it's your job."

I circled the rest of the mall, its hallways full of light raining in from the skylights. I watched families circling the central courtyard, with its flying pigs buttressing a gazebo, turned down halls where teens held hands and children squealed as their sneakers squeaked across the tiles. My friend on the Segway, silently whizzed through the lower level now, smiling at the families, blinking up at skylights. I leaned over the railings, stoking memories. A place so full of possibility, inhabited by my imagined stories, looking for its potential future. Dead mall. Sure.

We were all there making it alive, weren't we?

(And for the record, I didn't take another frame. These shots were all taken before I was told to stop taking pictures. I still think it's beautiful. Related: Modern-day Cathedrals)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Fear of Flying

The fear began a little over ten years ago. Panic attacks, tears on takeoff, the need to consume alcohol, Xanax, Valium while flying. A foggy landing in London where we couldn't see the runway below the wing, a turbulent ocean crossing where the flight attendant herself looked terrified. An aborted landing, circling back around only to land safely again. 

I used to be a great flyer. The rush of the speed on take off, the lift of the wings and the dizziness of banking. And the views: one of my favorite memories is flying over Greenland at sunset, seeing the long shadows fall behind mountains of ice for miles and miles. 

I don't know what caused the fear to come out, but I know this: to get to there — LA and a friend's baby, a little bundle of smiles, cuddling and swimming, eating and laughing, basking in the dry California heat, shielding our eyes from the sun on walks around the bright bougainvillea-lined streets — I first need to be here:

And so I battle the fear. On takeoff, I gripped the arm rest, but then watched the earth slip away, into fields, mud flats, canyons, and deserts. And I looked down. And it was so beautiful.

What a privilege this is. What sorcery. Seeing the Hoover Dam from such great heights, the sand-hugging suburbs of Las Vegas, the Great Salt Lake, our country spread out from sea to shining sea. The earth from above: who gets to see this? Which of my ancestors could have possibly even imagined getting to see the earth from up that high?

(Dedicated to Jennifer Lopez, whose first lines in What To Expect When You're Expecting were so ludicrous that I decided to look out the window instead.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Sunday Zen: California Time

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.