Happy Halloween!

There are delightful Halloween cartoons and sassy vintage pin-up witches over at Retrocrush. (The Crazy Pumpkin Dance is a new seasonal favorite for me.)

Super-genius Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com is sweeping the local costume contests again this year with his latest creation.


If you can't decide what to haunt tonight, apparate over to Luna's Cafe around 9 p.m. Christopher Fairman, Frank Andrick and I will open the show before the supernaturally talented David Houston serenades our restless spirits. For a preview of David's music, check out this video.

Happy Hauntings everyone!

Who was your perfect monster?

In Lynda Barry's amazing book "What It Is" she writes about her fascination with Medusa, or the Gorgon, as a child.

"I made plans for how to defend myself from her. I'd scare myself with the thought of seeing her behind me in the mirror--of accidentally looking at her face. She paralyzes you. You have to cut off her head without looking at her face. Sometimes I managed and other times she got me. I'd practice being paralyzed and turning into stone. Sometimes I did this in front of my mother to see if she would notice."

Barry believes most kids have one specific monster that scares them more than anything else, something they have to practice fighting off. And her theory is that kids need these monsters - these imaginary threats - to work out the real fears in their lives.

"I sat through The Gorgon twice," she writes, "because the first time she got her head cut off, I looked away -- and I realized it was something I needed to see. Something I needed to know how to do.

That I had a very gorgon-like mother never occurred to me, and if it had, I would have been lost... We never need certain monsters more than when we are children. And a furious woman with terrifying eyes and snakes for hair was the perfect monster for me.

What was yours?"

My monster is probably pretty familiar to all children of the 1980s.

Freddy Krueger kept me awake for more nights than I can count. I was terrified of him, but that didn't stop me from seeing all of his movies. I even had a poster from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 with Freddy's sneering face peering out over his razor fingers. I hated looking at the poster and I kept moving it to different corners of my room so I couldn't see it from my bed, but I didn't take it down for years.

I started writing about Freddy this week, for my upcoming performance at David Houston's Halloween show on Saturday night at Luna's Cafe. In the process, I've become a little obsessed with asking everyone I know about their childhood monsters.

Which monster scared you the most as a child? Why do you think that was?

Manuscript Monday: Welcome to Mumbai. Now leave.

Welcome to the first Manuscript Monday! Every Monday I'll post a little excerpt from the roughest of rough drafts of my book about traveling in India. I have no idea if any of these will make it into the finished draft, but they're here for you, nonetheless.

Today's tiny morsel is set in the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. I'd been in Mumbai for about two minutes before someone told me to leave:

Still dressed for foggy London Town in khaki pants and a turtleneck sweater, I stepped off the plane and into the humid monsoon heat of October in Mumbai. I walked to the baggage claim, sweating off about 25% of my body weight in the process. I stared at the rickety black-rubber conveyor belt, praying my orange backpack—which I’d last seen in the arms of a baggage handler at LAX—would return to me.

Heat and sleep deprivation had decimated my critical thinking abilities. A small, but vocal portion of my brain began pointing out obvious sights, like an overzealous tour guide. “That’s an Indian security guard!” it yelled. “And over on your right, those are genuine Indian luggage carts!”

A young businessman standing next to me interrupted this useless orientation to ask where I was from. I recognized him from the plane. He’d sat one seat away from me for the last 9 hours and I was pretty sure I'd accidentally elbowed his skull on my way to the bathroom, but we hadn’t spoken a word until now.

“I’m from the U.S.,” I said, trying to smile politely as sweat poured down my face.

“Really?” he said, sounding disappointed. “If I had known you were from America, I would have talked to you before.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but he just continued talking. He was from Mumbai, he told me, but he lived in California now. He was visiting his family, but as soon as possible he was going to ditch them to vacation with friends in Goa.

“Have you been to Goa?” he asked.

I shook my head no. Everything I’d heard about the Indian state of Goa involved raves, drug overdoses and crowded beaches full of jet skis and Western-style bars. Goa was third on my list of places to avoid in India, right under leper colonies and religious riots.

“Isn’t Goa where all the tourists go to party?” I asked skeptically. I inflected the word “tourist” with a subtle disdain, to demonstrate that I considered myself a more serious, soulful kind of traveler.

“Yes!” he said emphatically. “It’s great! You should meet me there!”

“I don’t think so,” I said carefully. He was already writing his phone number out on a slip of paper.

“No, you must! What else are you going to do in India?”

I told him I’d planned two weeks in Mumbai, followed by a 14-day silent vipassana meditation course in the mountains. After that, I wasn’t sure.

He made an exasperated noise and shoved his phone number in my hand. “Mumbai is dirty. People live on the streets,” he said. “Come to Goa. It’s beautiful.”

“Look! Our bags are here!” I pointed to my orange backpack inching its way down the conveyor belt. His determination to change my plans after two minutes of conversation was unnerving. I felt grateful for a distraction.

I slung my hefty pack over my shoulder and nearly toppled sideways from the weight as he looked on with amusement. His bag was nowhere in sight, so I took the opportunity to part company. I stuffed his phone number, already damp with sweat, into my pocket. I waved goodbye and wobbled purposefully towards the nearest exit.

I'd staggered most of the way across the terminal before I heard him shout my name.

“Becca!”

I turned to see him standing with his feet apart, holding a black suitcase, as hundreds of Indian families and businessmen rushed by in all directions. Our eyes met.

“Don’t waste your time in Mumbai!” he yelled.

I nodded, completely befuddled by this anti-welcome, and made my way outside.

Real-life Job Conversations: Part 1

I quit full-time journalism a couple of years ago to experiment with a new strategy: working relatively mindless part-time jobs to free up my brain for creative writing projects. Since then, I've paid the bills by packaging books for a mail-order company, handing out food samples in supermarkets, selling organic soda, manning the admissions gate at a lake near my house, buying and re-selling used clothes, making nachos at a concessions stand, and a number of other gigs on the less-glamorous side of the employment spectrum.

This has given me more time for writing - especially because I have much less money to go out with. It's also brought me a new appreciation for the bizarre interactions that happen in customer service. Thus, I present to you the first in an occasional Fool's Compass series: Real-life Job Conversations.

Today's RLJC takes place in a Raley's supermarket in Placerville, CA. I was distributing free scoops of Ciao Bella chocolate hazelnut gelato when an elderly woman approached my table...



Woman: [stares at the samples on my table] What is it?

Me: It's Ciao Bella gelato. This is the chocolate hazelnut flavor.

Woman: But what is it?

Me: It's gelato. It's like Italian ice cream.

Woman: But what is it?

Me: Ice cream. It's just ice cream.

Woman: What do you do with it?

Me: What do you do with ice cream? Well, it's a dessert. You know, ice cream?

Woman: But what is it?

Me: It's ice cream. It's... um, a frozen dessert. It's sweet.

Woman: But what...

Me: [interrupting] Do you want to try it?

Woman: OK. [takes a bite] Eww! It's cold!

Me: Um, I think it's time for my break now, so ... yeah.

Ask and ye shall receive

I got a God in the mail today!



I've started writing a book about my experiences in India. It's my first serious attempt at a looooong piece of writing and, frankly, it's scaring the ink out of me. A couple of weeks ago, I woke in the middle of the night with only one thought in my head: "If I am writing a book, I need Ganesh."

Ganesh is a Hindu deity, a jovial elephant-headed boy often called India's most popular God. He is "the remover of obstacles" and he's also the God of Writers. Ganesh is usually depicted holding a broken piece of his tusk in one of his four hands, which he uses as a writing implement. Like all artists, he creates from parts of himself!

I e-mailed my friend Erin, who lives in India and chronicles her life in the amazing blog Bindi Girl. I asked her to please mail me a Ganesh. The Indian postal system can be fraught with difficulties, but Ganesh lived up to his reputation as the remover of obstacles by arriving in perfect condition and record time.

Even better, my Ganesh is POP-UP! Check out the 3D trunk and ears!



I am truly grateful to Erin for helping connect me to India and to her own travel-writing badassery. This week, I've been writing about our first meeting in India. She helped me cross the insanely busy streets of Mumbai and bought me my first masala dosa!

May you all be blessed with such patient guides when you step out on your adventures.

Leap of faith

There's more than one way to jump off a cliff. Sometimes you have to stuff your world into a backpack and hop a plane, but often, life's biggest leaps are internal shifts in consciousness. They happen when you suddenly realize the life you're living is too small for who you've become.

Take stand-up comedian John Ross. He spent two years touring with the Coexist? Comedy Tour, a team of five comedians who tell jokes about their respective religions. Ross was the Christian comic on the tour, until he lost his faith.

I had the opportunity to interview Ross for the Sacramento News&Review about his decision to surrender his Christian identity and search for a new way of relating to God.

“From the beginning I had questions,” Ross said, “but I would just write them off with ‘Our understanding is not God’s understanding.’ Until the last few years. It’s hard to keep doing that.”

You can read the rest of that story here.

You can catch Ross' post-Christian comedy when he hosts Comedy from the Couch every Friday night at the Sacramento Comedy Spot.

And you're welcome to share your own cliff-jumping, life-changing stories at foolscompass@gmail.com. Those of us contemplating big jumps always appreciate inspiration from those who've leapt and lived.

Missed calls

In India, most cell phones are pre-paid. Phone calls cost 1 rupee per minute, so if you want someone to know you care without spending money, you give them a missed call. Just call and hang up, so your friend's phone registers the attempt.

I met lovers who did this every hour, all day long. One of my friends bragged that he and his girlfriend, who was hundreds of miles away in Kashmir for the winter, had never gone longer than 4 hours without a missed call.

For a handful of rupees, you can also buy a song for callers to hear while they wait for you to answer. The man I dated bought a favorite love song from a current Bollywood hit - Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi - and renewed his subscription faithfully each month of our courtship. He wanted me to call and listen several times a day, but I resisted carrying the phone he gave me. I needed to unplug in India. I wanted to wander the beach, get lost in books, or stop for spontaneous chai with fellow travelers. I refused to be accountable at all hours and often forgot to return his missed calls.

During our morning beach walks, he patiently taught me the Hindi words to our phone song. He asked me to sing it to him over and over.

"I like it so much when you sing, because you don't sing properly," he told me. This embarrassed me - I was trying to sing properly - but I'd still squeak out the lyrics whenever he asked. If I couldn't remember the missed calls, it was the least I could do.

Once I returned to America, it took several days to connect with him overseas. The first time I called and heard the theme song to Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi tinkling through the phone lines, my chest felt suddenly vacant, as if I'd only just realized I'd forgotten my heart at the other end of that call.

Months later, after I canceled my international calling plan, I wrote this poem. You can find it in the most recent issue of WTF?.


Missed Call

Women and men
do not hug
in public India.
Even when one of you
is technically American
and actually flying
to the other side
of the world
from the other one of you.
I want to leap
up on your hips
wrap my arms
around your neck
and cling
until women hide their faces
in embarrassment
and airport security
separates us
with bamboo blows.
Instead I brace myself
for a chaste handshake,
culturally appropriate
in its formal brevity,
but personally
romantically
devastating.
I pull my pack from the idling taxi
and turn to extend my hand.
The driver slams the door
too fast
its metal edge
knocking me dizzy
before our fingers touch.
Your face is already a blur
and I’m not even moving yet.

See what had happened was...

I haven't updated Fool's Compass in forever. A whole summer. A lifetime in the blogosphere.

I needed a break from writing about India. I fell in love with India when I lived there last winter. More specifically, I fell in love WHILE in India, with a wonderful man I've been too shy to write about here. Then, while spending this summer in California working three jobs and studying Hindi and dreaming only of getting back to him, I fell out of love.

That's not it. There is still love. It's more like I fell out of faith. I could not figure out how to make us work on a practical level. The gap between cultures, languages, and shared dreams is just too large. I can't become someone I'm not -- even as much as I might want to, even for love.

My heart realized this before I did. After I'd been home a few months, I began waking up with tears in my eyes, before I'd even had any conscious thoughts. I sobbed my way through several long-distance phone calls to Himalayan landscapes, much to the confusion of my beloved. "But how will it work?" I'd ask over and over across a crackling phone line. "What will I do there? What will you do here?"

And then, at some point, all the crying stopped. Everything inside me felt still and heavy. I knew it was over. My dream, the love I was throwing all my resources into nourishing, had died. Without my consent.

I no longer found comfort in recounting my India stories here, once I knew I would not return. I retreated into the soothing inactivity of movies and television. I retraced my past with old friends. I rediscovered the American magic of rock shows, frozen yogurt, county fairs, and vintage sundresses. I taught myself to play the ukulele. I read trashy novels and took road trips.

All the while, I wondered, "What on earth am I going to do now?" I kept working my temp jobs and nodding vaguely when people asked about my travel plans.

Now my temp jobs are over. My bank account is full and my plans are uncertain. Thankfully, my heart is lighter. It's been a rough summer, but I've come out the other side with a story to tell. It's a love story. A travel story, about a female adventurer in exotic lands. And it's a true story. My favorite kind.