As always, I have a pretty good list of reasons I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like and at the very tip-top of that list is “Sculpting a replica of a deceased human’s head for my restorative art class”. And if you know me in real life then you can probably understand why attempting to sculpt a human head? Out of wax? Might take so much of my time.

This is partly because this is my first attempt at sculpting anything ever and partly because I am less artistically inclined than the people responsible for creating the “art” that hangs in places like dental offices and having less talent than someone who makes a few pastel-colored swipes on an otherwise bland canvas is really saying something.

As if my own insecurities about my profound lack of ability weren’t enough, I have friends who feel the urge to nudge me over the proverbial edge. For instance, a girlfriend stopped by the other day to pick up a lens she had left in my camerabag. On her way out she gazed at the progress I had made and declared, “It looks good.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yeah. It’s your friend’s head your creating right?”

“Yeah.”

“The black girl?”

“My subject’s Filipino.”

“Oh.”

Sound of running. Front door slam. Tires squealing.

I can’t wait for this semester to be over.

Recently, my restorative arts class presented a problem unique to the funeral service major. I needed someone to pretend they were dead. Then, while they were laying around all un-lifelike I needed to take a bunch of photos of them. Then I needed to use said photos to reconstruct their lifeless likeness in wax, all the while convincing them that There Was Nothing Creepy At All About Any Of It.

Identifying an available pool of candidates has been difficult at best. I was lukewarm on picking a celebrity for reasons unclear to even myself. My brother the archaeologist seemed like a natural choice - as his occupation involves digging up dead people and has long since overcome the “ick” factor associated with death. But he lives too far away to make taking photos of him practical. And the though of recreating his viking beard gives me a headache. Also, he’s a goofy goober.

My sisters both looked at me and backed away slowly after the request had been made.

My husband crossed himself and then did some weird thing with his hands to ward off the evil eye.

The neighbors ran into their house, chased me off with a broom and installed new locks on their doors before arming themselves with pitchforks and organizing a torch light parade to my door.

Ok, not really.

Still, picking someone who would be comfortable going along with this project was pretty difficult. Then I remember my friend Cindy. Cindy, the doctor. Cindy, who has a fascination with the coroner’s office. Cindy who has spent a ton of time around cadavers and – in her work with AIDS patients – people on the verge of cadaverhood.

So I asked Cindy if she’d mind being used for my project and she agreed a little too enthusiastically. Now it was my turn to be weirded out.

At any rate, a couple of my classmates and I had the idea that we should document our progress in photos. Therefore, if you’ve ever been interested in how a group of people whose modeling skills barely qualify them to make ashtrays develop the skills necessary to rebuild a human head, stay tuned.

Since that time, however, I’ve noticed that I rarely write about my experiences in school.

For instance, before the end of last semester I was granted the opportunity to participate in an embalming at the coroner’s office. Now, while the experience was fascinating and I’ll admit that I very much appreciated and enjoyed the opportunity, it brought to the fore an ethical dilemma:

Where is the line between “acceptable disclosure” and “encroaching on the privacy of the deceased and their family”?

On the one hand, it seems apparent that a discussion of embalming should be limited only by the public’s tolerance for details of something that most find frightening and unsavory. On the other hand, morticians don’t practice in a vacuum. The subjects on which they learn and exercise their talents were at one time real, live people deserving of discretion. Also, lest we forget, the deceased will most often be survived by friends and family members whose pain would only be exacerbated by a lack of discretion regarding the treatment and care of their loved one’s remains.

So, when I was asked to join one of my professors and a few other students at the coroner’s office last semester I found myself on shaky ground blog-wise. Obviously, there are many details that simply should not be shared. Period. In the event of a cataclysmic lack of judgment, each of us were given a packet of information that explicitly stated as much.

However, while discussing specifics was out of the question there were more general facets that I personally find fascinating and believe worth sharing.  I had a grey area.

In the end, I decided so long as I had even the smallest doubt about sharing an experience I would refrain from doing so. After all, when a person dies they are no longer capable of speaking for themselves, defending themselves or voicing a preference. They are completely vulnerable, and the last thing I want to do is exploit that vulnerability. So I censor myself now and will continue to do so in instances where I have doubts.

These doubts are not helped at all by the constant blurring between the “real world” and the atmosphere created at school in which my classmates routinely discuss things that would send most people scurrying for a barf bag. You don’t have to be a super-genius to be aware of the fact that what is normal and mundane inside the funeral industry has the potential to be regarded as macabre and disgusting by people outside of it.

Hopefully that will clear up the questions I’ve been receiving from folks who e-mail me to find out what is going on in school and to ask that I write more about it. I will definitely make an effort to return to my former focus on school – because really? It is a very fascinating field to go into with a lot of very cool stuff the share. I just ask for a little patience in return as I negotiate my way through a potential blogging minefield…

It’s an endeavor I have pursued on and off for a good chunk of my teen years and those adult years after 1998 when my college-related beer haze wore off. Up until now my attempts have basically gone something like this: Take a class or two. Study hard. Get an “A”. Skip a semester or two. Start back at the proverbial first square.

Anyway. Since my fat mouth and I have worn out our welcome with the English speaking world I figure it’s time I to get to work annoying foreigners. But which ones? I have several years of high school and college German under my belt but unless I wanted to start hanging around white supremacist types it’s a pretty useless language here in Northern California. I tried taking French seriously enough to finish a class once before I realized that it was even more useless than German and the people who speak it make the white supremacists look positively charming. Russian? Now THAT would be useful here in the Sacramento area but it’s been so long since I’ve taken a class that the only phrases I remember are “Good night”, “thank you” and “that is a house” or “that is my house” or “those are my wet leg warmers” because my ability to inflect correctly is hopeless.

So I’ve decided on Spanish. Not only is it crazy useful here in California, but it doesn’t involve reading The Turner Diaries or re-memorizing the Cyrillic alphabet.

I started about a month ago by digging out my old college texts and a set of cd’s I had purchased when I was still living in San Jose. Since then I have spent a couple of hours every day brushing up on basic vocabulary, feminine vs. masculine articles and conjugating various verbs. Today I hit the mother lode when I discovered several large stashes of old flash cards I had made while at DeAnza College. Eureka!

I grabbed the stack and settled onto the couch where I spent the better part of the afternoon staring hard at each card before flipping it into my lap and going on to the next one. I had made it through three separate piles before I came upon one that said “hockey”.

Q: There’s a Spanish word for hockey?

A: Well, kind of. El hockey. Being a cognate it’s hardly a truly Spanish word but seeing as how the coldest thing that comes to mind when I think of the Spanish speaking world is the ice in a margarita, los eruditos del espanol can most certainly be forgiven for not having their own original word for a game that involves a bunch of white people armed with sticks ice-skating ferociously after something the size of my fist.

Still, the fact that at some point in my prior education there was a need for me to create a flash card with the Spanish designation for “hockey” begged a question:

Does the Spanish-speaking world really need a word for hockey? Really?

And that question had a sister question: While I sit here and memorize words that I will never use in the event that I find myself lost in Mexico City, what would I prefer to be taught?

Which is how I came to write a list of words and phrases that I wish my Spanish teachers would have taught me but didn’t because even if they had wanted to they probably would have been fired:

How much is the ransom for my husband?

Even for a donkey that’s rather large.

Officer, I have no idea how those drugs got there.

Where is your nearest public restroom in which I can reasonably expect not to find small children pilfering the toilet paper and selling it back to me for $5 American?

I’d like a lawyer who speaks English please.

No! I don’t want any fucking chiclet already!

If I blow you will you let me out of jail? (No? What if I blow the donkey?)

You know? I think I have a good start to a pretty useful new phrase book even if I do say so myself.

The problem is this whole twenty-four-hours-in-a-day thing. It disappoints. It is a woefully inadequate amount of time for me to accomplish everything I want to do. Like take photos. And go to school. And bathe my husband in GHB-laced pudding.

Which is why I’m considering a move to Mercury since a single Mercurian day is the equivalent to 59 earth days which should be long enough for me to knock out at least two-thirds of my to-do list if I cut out items like eating and parenting my offspring.

So! How about I skip this post and do my normal lazy thing and throw up more photos, brought to you courtesy of the field trip that I took with my funeral education peeps last Friday…

Here is a group photo of all of us, taken in front of Cristy Vault Company’s world headquarters in Colma, California. Know why I don’t have any photos taken inside Cristy Vault Company’s world headquarters? We all had non-disclosure agreements foisted upon us prior to our tour in which we signed away our right to tell the public that their vaults are constructed by a magical army of unicorns and leprechauns that sprinkle fairy dust everywhere. Pity. The leprechauns especially seemed to like having their picture taken.

This photo was taken in the Neptune Society’s columbarium. It is a pile of cards, notes and letters written to both the deceased and visiting survivors.

This is a photo of a companion niche with the remains of a Chinese couple inside. California is home to the largest Chinese population outside of China itself. Therefore it is never a surprise when you run into the various expressions of this expansive culture. This niche, like many others inside the columbarium, had food left outside of it in a nod to Chinese custom.

Here is one of the many rooms that surrounded the bottom two floors and were formed of floor-to-ceiling niches.

Another niche before which food had been left. The packaged stuff next to the persimmons was unidentifiable as anything other than fuzzy balls of mold.

For obvious reasons, a niche provides limited space in which a person’s life, personality and values can be summed up. It is always  interesting to me to see how people condense the essence of their loved one into ten words or less. The plate on this individual’s niche is inscribed quite simply with the words, “Gay and proud.”

An incense holder on the floor outside the niche of a Chinese man.

A statue of St. Ignatius stands inside the Church of St. Ignatius on the campus of the University of San Francisco. The campus is one of the west’s oldest Jesuit universities.

 A tribute to La Virgen de Guadalupe stands inside the Church of St. Ignatius on the University of San Francisco campus. The photograph really doesn’t do this display justice, as the flash destroyed the ambiance created by the candles that surround her. Kneelers can be seen in the extreme foreground.

Interior of the Church of St. Ignatius. Architectural proof that we Catholics are good for more than just lopping heads off and drinking. Woo hoo!

Candles sit before a statue of St. Ignatius. The lighting of candles and offering of prayers is probably one of the loveliest – and more misunderstood by non-Catholics – practices within the church.

Here is the cornerstone to the synagogue we visited – Temple Emanu-el in San Francisco, California. This tour turned out to be quite wonderful as it was led by a pair of Jewish women who were more than enthusiastic about showing us through a gorgeous building while sharing information about the history of their faith.

An outside view of the sanctuary of the synagogue taken from the interior of the courtyard that surrounds it. I was surprised by the presence of a metal detector and security guard outside the temple’s entrance, and we were informed during the tour that the courtyard surrounding the entrance to the sanctuary had been constructed as a need for security made itself more apparent.

Here is a photo of stained glass and a chandelier inside the main sanctuary of the synagogue.

A menorah stands above and to the front of the congregation in the main sanctuary.

Books sit atop one another next to the ark in the Temple Emanu-el.

A flower spray sits at a grave on the grounds of Cypress Lawn in Colma, California.

This question, which really is a very good one, was not done justice by the fact that it came up at 8:30PM - roughly half an hour after which all of us had begun to drool on ourselves.

“Well?”

Blank stares.

“Not really, right? Joe Public can call a florist, talk to clergy, get stuff, right? Check costco’s website, you can buy a casket online. They can dress up their dead, put ‘em in a casket. Throw a funeral. So what does the public need from us that they can’t get for themselves?”

Blank stares.

At this point the instructor questions aloud our ability to find our way home at night much less identify and properly dispose of a dead human being.

“How about an EDRS number? They probably won’t have that. They’ll need us to file a death certificate for them. What else?”

Confused murmuring from the class.

“How about embalming? Your average person isn’t going to know how to embalm. So they’ll need us to do that if they want it. Anything else?”

Finally, someone in the back of the class threw out the word cremation, to which the instructor responded:

“Oh please, anyone can build a fire.”

I always get pretty depressed about the end of my summer. Not so much the weather part of it. That is guaranteed to hang on for another three months in these parts. I’m a little bummed about the end of Official Summer during which there is no school, no PTA and therefore no obligation to set down the tequila or put on clothes. I’m not ashamed to admit it: summers around here are kinda sorta clothing optional. 

Not strictly speaking of course – we don’t run completely naked through the hallways of Matulich Manor – it’s just that short of a presidential visit, I rarely find occasion to dress myself or my offspring up in anything more formal than swimsuits. I even managed to start my own salsa company last July wearing nothing more complex than a stringy tie-dyed number.

Pajamas. Bikini. Pajamas. Bikini. Pajamas. Bikini. Sunrise. Sunset.

Therefore I figured that I’d mark the final morning of Official Summer by jumping into the ocean for a swim over and through the massive kelp forests of Monterey Bay. 

I even wore a bikini for the occasion because I’m sentimental like that.

And I wore a wetsuit over the bikini because dude, that water’s freezing.  

If a better way to spend time has ever been devised I have yet to discover it. There is nothing more enjoyable than treading water offshore in the lift and roll of swells, pulling oneself through kelp beds in a half swim half crawl and watching the tourists watch the sea from the sea. Where else but a kelp bed can you lay around and watch the harbor seals pop their cat-like heads up close enough to cop a whisker feel?

And when it was over I was kinda bummed that this really, truly was IT. The End. Adios. Over. Gone. The period at the end of a well-loved quote.

I tried to be ok with it. And I was for a little bit, until I found myself sitting at the top of the stairs at my in-laws house in Santa Cruz where I could still smell the saltwater and seaweed coming off my sand-covered flip flops.

And that’s when I realized that I need to sell a ton of salsa or begin a life of high-paying white collar crime so I can just hang out at the beach year round.

Still, my online presence has been next to nill and I have been neither posting nor visiting other blogs which, I realize, makes me A Very Bad Person And Flaky Blogger and really? After such prolonged neglect who could blame my laptop if it decided to break up with me and move on to a more dedicated end user who would caress it with soft kisses and a tender upgrade to Windows Vista? Not I.

But I’m back now and boy, I have to say that after several days of choking on smoke and ash from wildfires in Monterey, Big Sur, Watsonville and Santa Cruz it sure was refreshing to return to the Sacramento area and find that it too was a charred and smoke-filled bowl of Hell.

…and I’ll bet a $20 Starbucks giftcard that every televangelist in America is gleefully proclaiming that these wildfires are proof that God is still in the smiting business and legalizing gay marriage is as good a reason as any for him to convert every Californian’s home to ash.

At any rate, I’m back. But not that back since I am going to have to further neglect my laptop while I complete a huge project for my summer accounting class and if the words “summer accounting class” didn’t cause whatever was in your hands to fall to the ground and shatter while you crossed yourself and said a Hail Mary for me then you are a black-hearted and soulless being beyond salvation.

Also, in case you’re wondering, that top photo is a rather large jellyfish that my husband and I found washed up on the beach in Marina last week. I’d love to say that I picked it up and relived my glory days by starting a jellyfish fight with my husband using that hamburger-sized monster but I’d be lying.

Nah, I was feeling rather kind that day so I picked up this little half-dollar-sized jobber and hucked it at him instead. 

Jellyfish fights… good times!

In fact, the head in which I dwell is home to a big fat love-in and if there was a soldier holding a rifle around I’d put a flower in the end of it.

Whoa, hippie image overload. Forget I typed that. Shake. Erase. Start over.

Anyway. During the last little while I’ve discovered that I have the ability to absorb copious amounts of chemical equations and anatomical concepts without my brain liquefying in protest and leaking out my ears to stain my shirt.

What’s more is that I am finding I actually enjoy the science coursework. As in I really get a kick out of it. Like, I’m getting A’s and everything. Who’da thunk?

I could not be more confounded right now if the skies had opened up and the great forefinger of God himself were to point down as he boomed, “You, with the bad haircut! You’re not nearly as dim as you thought you were!”

…and caused the great ball of deathly black discouragement that has been “the sciences” all my life to morph into a subject area that I can grasp with some ease and holy crap! The notion that I might be capable of succeeding in an area more technical than Play-Doh would undoubtedly cause all of my ex-boyfriends and most of my extended family to have a collective aneurysm. But I digress.

To this end, my husband – the ever patient patron saint of Encouraging One’s Wife to Pursue Whatever Schizophrenic Path She Pleases – has suggested that upon completion of the funeral services program I leisurely pursue a BS at UC Davis.

So I think I’m going to do that. Maybe I’ll even pursue a masters. Why not? I may be 50 before I graduate but I figure I’m going to turn 50 someday anyway and I might as well do it with a degree in microbiology