nakedjen

The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life.

I must go to bed.  To sleep.  Perchance to even dream.  I think in the last four days I've gotten a total of about seven hours of sleep.  This is not at all even the tiniest exaggeration.  Cramming 23 films into four days will do that to a certain naked girl.

Those films, though, have been truly beautiful and heart-touching and life-affirming and inspiring.  I can't wait to share more about the stories that have been shared with me.  About the souls I have met. About the adventures I have had. 

I do want to say this: I am a girl who is truly meant to festival.  If I could be paid to festival, well, that would be perhaps the most beautiful life this naked girl could ever love. Not sure there's a universe where that could ever be possible, but you know, if I ask, anything, even that, is possible.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

My day was filled with stories yesterday.  I cried, I laughed, I got angry, I went on a flashback LSD trip and I was inspired and was reminded exactly why I also tell the stories that torment my own soul.  For a brief moment yesterday, I will admit, I missed DearSweetDave.  I know that may come as a very real surprise to a lot of you, it even surprised me.  But sitting there in the dark, alone, watching all those films I ached to lean over to him, more than once, and whisper this or that or another thing about a particular moment in a film.

Those confluences when the writing and the pictures and the sound and the gasps of an audience all manage to come together in rare synchronicity are what fueled our bond in many ways.  I miss sharing this festival with him.  

However, I share this festival with all of you.  And with everyone else who is brave enough to weather the blizzard that is currently dumping massive amounts of snow on Park City.  I waded through, I am not exaggerating, six feet of snow yesterday to get to my first screening of the morning.  That screening was the Shorts Program I.  Which included Spike Jonze offering, I am Here.  That little film is perfect.  It made me cry.  My own log line for it might be, "When you're here, with love, you give everything."  I will not ever forget that film. 

Rory Kennedy's film, The Fence, was next and of course I got all sorts of angry and disgusted at the Bush Administration all over again.  But realized that it isn't just the Bush Administration I need to be angry with, but truly myself.  I allow things like The Fence to happen.  I am a tax-paying citizen of the United States.  The money that is being poured into that ridiculous exercise could be used to provide necessary medical care for the uninsured children of this country.  That's all I'll share right now.  It just propelled me to think.  Which is what every good documentary should do.  

An animation offering was next, Logorama.  Which freaked me right out.  I am not fond of clowns, not fond of McDonald's and now? I really do not like Ronald. 

The final film was a short from Sweden.  Seeds of the Fall was sweet and touching and heartbreaking. A great bookend, actually, to Spike Jonze' film.  Life is always a little off-kilter.  For all of us.  We don't often realize just how much we love someone until we're truly asked.

We all know I'll talk to anyone, so of course, I spent the time between films talking to everyone.  I met some lovely people as I made my way from the Shorts to my next film at the Egyptian.  They come every year from Oklahoma for the festival.  I am happy to have met them, as they're just as passionate about film as I seem to be.

The next film for me was Vegetarian.  It is a first film from Korean writer/director Lim Woo-seong.  This is not a film for the faint of heart.  It is provocative and disturbing and made me really think deeply about my own reasons for being a vegetarian.  Why I choose not to eat meat.  However, I'm doing a disservice to this film by even really talking about vegetarian aspects as while that is a theme that is not the driving force of this film.  

It is a real psychological drama.  I honestly believe that whomever you are, your own story will quickly get caught up in the story that unfolds before you on the screen.  The score is haunting and beautiful and I would purchase it if available.  I stayed for the Q&A for this film and the director is truly ballsy.  I am still rather upset from seeing this film and actually I believe that is a good thing.

From there, I wandered across the street to the New Frontier to check out the art installations.  Of course, I was immediately drawn to LIFECYCLES which is Matthew Moore's installation.  He's a fourth generation farmer and has collected and shows the images of the lifecycle of our food from earth to marketplace.  My biggest disappointment, though, was that the free produce that is supplied as part of the installation is from Fresh Market (formerly Albertson's).  I know, I know.  A large part of our world gets their produce from supermarkets.  However, I would have loved to have helped Matthew, who is a farmer (??) support and showcase our very local and very fabulous farmers who grow great produce right here in Utah all year long.  We know this is a huge platform for me, this whole food business, so while I'm happy he's giving away seeds and getting people thinking about food, we all know for me, personally, I'm just going to have issue with the food actually not being local.

The other installation that I spent the most time truly investigating is called BORDERTOWN.  Tracey Snelling incorporates film, photography, collage, architecture and sound to take us to the Mexico/American border.  After seeing The Fence that morning, of course this amazing art installation gave me even that much more to consider.  I really loved it and appreciated the absolutely truly visceral experience.  I was even more pleased to actually meet Tracey while I was standing in line for my next film.  That is the serendipity of Sundance.

Next up?  Pepperminta.  I am not sure what to even say about this film.  It is a feast on all levels and for me was like taking an LSD flashback without having to take any drugs.  Is that good?  I'm not certain if I can answer that for you, yet.  I think I'm still working it all out.  There's very little plot.  It actually feels like one very long, strange trip.  Truly!

So, I walked out of that film, dazed and a bit frazzled and into a full-on blizzard.  Of Utah proportions.  My task, should I accept it, was to get myself from Park City to the Sundance Resort for my next screening at 6:15.  I was standing on Main Street at 4:15 p.m.  My car was parked at Sundance Headquarters.  I know most of you have no clue about what all of this means, but those of you in the know are right now shouting, "ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?!"

Yes, as it turns out, I am.  I am the woman willing to truly risk her life for a film.  When I die, we can put that on my tombstone.  "She risked her life for a good story."

I sloshed through the falling snow to the bus terminal, waited with everyone else, hopped on a bus headed for headquarters, chatted with a really and truly lovely critic from Bloomberg News about the films he had seen and I had seen and then found my way to my very snow covered car. 

It was now 4:45 p.m.  Blizzard conditions.  On a non-blizzard day it would take 60 minutes to get to Sundance.  I am a girl that lives her life dangerously, obviously.  The film waiting for me on the other end was HOWL.  

I'll share now that as a rabid English and Writing and Theatre major at Trinity 25 years ago, I took an entire semester course that was devoted to HOWL.  Just that.  Nothing else.  I've dissected that poem.  Backwards, forwards, thoroughly.  I've written lots of words about it.  I really wanted to see this film.

So off I went.  SLOWLY.  Because everyone else was driving very SLOWLY, too.  As you're wont to do when you can not see five feet in front of you.  I was literally going less than 10 MPH for most of the way to Heber City.  There were so many accidents.  Cars littered the sides of the highway.  The cars in front of me were sliding and slipping and just careening off the road.  All this at 10 MPH.  I was so grateful for Wanda the Honda.  Honestly, I'm blessed with my little dog transport vehicle.  It serves me very well in Utah.

Once I was through Heber City, I turned onto the road that winds you through Provo Canyon.  A road that had not been touched by snow plows at all yesterday.  I had trouble even finding the road.  I followed behind the car in front of me, slowly, again.  At this point it is now 6:00 p.m. and I know I'm pretty much fucked in terms of seeing the film, but I'm determined to get to Sundance so I can go to their box office, at least.  There's no sense in turning around now?!

I continued.  The car in front of me got a bit too cocky and as the road curved one direction, he curved another direction and off he went over the side.  I pulled over, deduced I couldn't actually help him, called 911 and reported his accident, removed all the accumulated snow from my windshield and then kept going.  Slowly.

At 6:30 I made it to the entrance to the resort.  There was a policeman there who informed me that the only way I was going up that hill was if I had 4WD or snow chains.  I actually DO have 4WD.  So hooray, again, for Wanda the Honda, the dog transport vehicle.

However, even with 4WD, the drive up the winding, hairpin turns to the resort?  Not so fun.  But I had made it this far, I was determined to get up to the screening room.  I thought I might get them to allow me to sneak in the back and at least watch the film since I had risked life and limb.

So, I get up there.  I park.  I make my way to the Sundance Screening Room.  I am 1000% discombobulated and harried and just.plain.stressed.

The film has not yet started screening.  Which, honestly, shocked me, but they said they were waiting because of the weather. 

This is the part of the story where we will all just nod our heads and go, "Of course." It is the part of the story where I share that like a complete and utter idiot, I left my ticket for this film, this film that I risked life and and limb to attend, on my bed side table early that morning when I left my house.  This is the part of the story where I am standing at the Sundance Screening Room pulling all manner of 2010 Sundance tickets out of my bag, tickets for screenings at theatres in all kinds of places and locations and days of the week.  Tickets for EVERYTHING except HOWL.  This is the part of the story where my special luck comes into play because at that moment the woman who manages the Sundance Screening Room just looked at me and said, "Jennifer, we're so glad you're here.  Just come right in."  This is the part of the story where I remember that the Universe is always kind and where I thank Sundance for being so lovely and generous and for making me smile all kinds of smiles.

I went in to the screening room and found a seat right near the front.  I chatted with my seat neighbors who are from Palm Beach, Florida and had no idea that there are even films being screened anywhere other than the Sundance Screening room.  They were lovely people, by the way. 

I also learned that the director and cast would not be in attendance as they had attempted the drive from Park City but had had to turn around because the roads were impassable.  I should have put them all in Wanda the Honda.  I made it, they didn't.  Not at all surprising given the apocalyptic storm I had just endured.

The film?  I'm sure you might be curious?  It's perfect.  For me.  Is it perfect for you?  Maybe.  James Franco embodies the young Allen Ginsberg, the Ginsberg who is still figuring out just whom he is, the one who has just written HOWL and isn't quite sure where he even fits in this world, with perfect nuance.

Using the actual poem as parts of the script was just, well, fabulous for me.  This film is the poem brought to life in so many ways.  It isn't a biopic as much as it is a love song to the Beat poets, to HOWL, to our freedom of speech and to all of us who ache to tell a story from the depths of our souls.

My soul is better for all those stories.

"Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being."

Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it.

Each one of us, some where deep inside, or perhaps just lying there right on the surface, shouting even for some, have extraordinary and beautiful and, yes often tragic, stories to tell.  My story is not your story.  His story is not hers, but no matter whom is sharing, whom is doing the telling, if we listen carefully, there is more often than not a moment, a tiny spark of recognition where we all say, "Oh, yes, I know this story."

It is our common bond.  We share our stories, our tales, our lives to stay connected to each other.  To feel a part of the larger community.  To contribute and to know that we are, yes, alive.

In a few moments, I'll be leaving to begin my festival of all festivals.  To sit and share in a multitude of fascinating stories.  It's the telling of the story, the very human story, with pictures and sounds and words in new and special and important ways that makes my brain and heart and soul sing.  That's the best way for me to share exactly what this is experience is for me with you.  It feeds me.  Inspires me.  Makes me, me.

Give me a really good story.  I'll give you everything I've got.  I can't wait to see what Sundance has got especially for me this year.

When the world says, "Give up," Hope whispers, "Try it one more time."

"We are all made of stardust. As brothers of the wild beasts and cousins of the flowers in the fields,we all carry the history of the cosmos. Just by breathing,we are linked to all other human beings that have lived on the planet. For example,still today we are breathing in millions of atomic nuclei from the fire that burned Joan of Arc in 143, and some of the molecules from Julius Caesar's dying breath. When a living organism dies and decays, its atoms are released back into the environment, and eventually become integrated into other organisms. Our bodies contain about a billion atoms that once belonged to the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment." - Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan

I woke up this morning and of course there's more news about aftershocks in Haiti. Children are starving, are without water or food, are searching in massive rubble for their mothers and fathers, lives that were teetering on a brink already were, in a matter of moments, completely shattered.

When the earthquake hit Haiti last week, my first thought was of my own experience of the earthquake I experienced while living in San Francisco in 1989.  Buildings fell down.  The Bay Bridge collapsed.  The Marina was on fire.  At my own flat, in the Haight, all the windows that faced the street broke into thousands of tiny shards of glass and fell the two stories onto the sidewalk below.  

I know I was both lucky and privileged.  Privileged.  The infrastructure of this country did not collapse simply because the walls of the city came tumbling down. My life did not crumble, I did not truly suffer.

The beautiful people of Haiti are suffering an unimaginable crisis.  Most of us can not begin to imagine having our entire world literally crumble around us and to be left with nothing and wondering if even our own family members are still alive.  It is a mirror for all of us, honestly, of our own fragile lives.  Because, honestly, it really could happen to any of us.   Perhaps not on that scale, but yes.  Worlds can crash down, lives can crumble.  Each day we are here is a gift.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I am blessed, as always, to have lived and celebrated another beautiful and inspired trip around the sun this past year.  It is, quite honestly, amazing to me each birthday just how much a single year can bring to a person's life, to my life specifically.  Unexpectedly, but with joy, my heart has expanded, my mind has opened, there is joy and hope in places I did not even know before.

My birthday wish this year is to extend that hope, that small amount of joy, to the people of Haiti.  I have already given to Partners in Health and Doctors without Borders because they are both organizations that I support strongly.  Partners in Health has been on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years and they do incredible work providing critical medical care in the poorest countries. 

This blog gets over 5,000 individual hits every single day.  I know that most of you come for the naked pictures.  I'm not going to kid myself and think otherwise.  That said, if all of you who come donate just $1, that would provide $5,000 to directly help the beautiful people of Haiti.  Help those children and their mothers and fathers with critical medical care.  Not just now, but going forward.  This is a tragedy that will not just end when tomorrow's news finds something else to report.  This is a tragedy of epic proportions.  When just one of us suffers, we all suffer.  We are always, always only as strong as our weakest link.  We can not ignore, nor forget, those who do not have what we so often take for granted.

I hope, truly, that you'll join me in extending just a very small offering of hope to our brothers and sisters in Haiti.  $1, $5, or whatever you feel is appropriate.  You have been so generous and lovely as my readers for many beautiful, heartfelt years.  I know that together we can offer hope. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Bring Aid to Haiti

Thank you for joining me to bring aid to the people of Haiti

The scope the disaster is truly enormous, and a tremendous influx of immediate aid is needed to avert an even greater loss of life. Partners In Health has been working in Haiti for nearly 25 years. Our local team is already working to ensure PIH’s coordinated relief efforts, leveraging the skills of more than 120 doctors and nearly 500 nurses and nursing assistants who work at established sites throughout Haiti.

Please help me make sure that this skilled team has the resources it needs to address the crisis at hand.

Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.

Wow.  So while many of you decided, of course, to hop on a fitness wagon and eschew all things white in your diet and to give up ice cream for the whole year and to join the gym because the entire blogosphere has shamed you and chastised you and declared that YOU ARE FAT if you're not exercising as if you're training for a fucking marathon and eating only birdseed and carrot sticks while sucking down funky green juices only to then injure yourselves on the treadmill on day three because, oh wait, you haven't exercised since last January and damn it to hell now you've to go to a chiropractor just so you can snap all those bones back where they belong because no one, NO ONE, is going to call bullshit and tell you you're fat.  Not when you're eating birdseed and exercising six days a week.

Meanwhile, those who are a size 2 naturally (I know they exist!) or perhaps are just very comfortable in their own skin and know how to have sex with the lights on as well as wear a bikini happily on their jaunts to tropical destinations, flab or no flab, or gasp, even just parade around naked while reading McSweeney's 33 on a lazy Sunday afternoon, have become obsessed instead with a makeover.  Not of themselves, gosh no.  Remember, they're already a size 2 and will sport the bikini without the sarong. 

No, they're busy making over every room in the house.  Starting with the bedroom, of course, because these people have sex with the lights on and if you're having hot sex with all the lights on and the shades up and the windows thrust wide open even in Utah while the snow is falling all around, you need to have something lovely (other than you) for the neighbors to peek at while they're discerning if what they thought they just saw was really what they did see and, well, you don't want it to look like a bad porn movie now, do you?

No. Not at all.

Of course, I would like to make over my own bedroom.  Here in my small rented house with all my furniture that I acquired post-divorce from the kindness of strangers.  The things I could do with a beautiful bed.  And luscious Egyptian cotton sheets.  Curtains that call out to my neighbors with the suggestion of really hot sex. 

Problem is, honestly, that I am moving.  I am uncertain of the destination.  I've left it rather open to the Universe to decide.  I know, I know, you do not need to remind me.  I am the master of my own destiny.  I've already taken probably eleventy steps in the direction of this unknown and undecided and undiscovered future destination.  I get up, I breathe and celebrate each new day, I share my life with anyone who happens to just nod or smile in my direction.  These are all steps towards my own destiny, even if they're unplanned, unknowing, unintentional. 

I just want to acknowledge that Spain is on this list.  Of possible destinations.  It has been sitting atop the list for months and months and my family is tired of me talking about it.  Only I need to get over myself and my own fears of intimacy and the possibility of sharing my life with a kind and generous and beautiful soul who just so happens to actually be a smidgen older than me.  Spain can only happen if I can truly allow love.  Real love.  Like Velveteen Rabbit love.  Love that will rub all my fur off and leave my heart aching for more.

There's a deep and sordid past that haunts my heart.  I have put the shards and broken pieces back together, fitting this memory with that memory and trying, without a whole lot of big success, to discard the hurt.  It is the hurt that is somehow last to unwind its deep tendrils, to break apart, to let go and to be cast off.

I think we also know those voices, the multiples that live in my head, can sometimes make my life rather noisy and upsetting and difficult to navigate.  They spin me, whirl me, they make me dance like a marionette.  I feel like there are times, honestly, where I spend entire days trying to negotiate with all of them only to have the day slip into night slip into wee morning hours and I am still just attempting to get them all to agree, to shut up already, to sit in quiet solitude and to allow me to just love and be loved.

It's the loving, actually, that is truly the most difficult.  I want to love freely.  I want to be loved completely.  If I could just wish for only one thing, it would never be to be thin.  Or to have a bedroom made just for hot sex.  Oh no, not at all.  My wish is to know love and to understand love. 

My birthday wish, my resolution, is to embrace, to embody, to truly be love.  It's going to be a beautiful and amazing year.

Seth Colter Walls Should Date Me. For My Brain. And McSweeney's. And Hot Sex. But He Won't. I'm Old.

(I mean, just to make my point a little more overt: my dream, as a currently single person, is that I could share the different sections of McSweeneys 33 over a pot of coffee with a smart woman man on some soon-to-come lazy Sunday morning. And then after passing it back and forth for a couple of hours, we'd go have hot sex. Because I'm pretty sure that would be an ecstasy I'm not at all "too cool" to admit wanting as a twenty-nine-year-old forty-five year old.)

I'd call him up right now and ask him for a long, lazy Sunday morning date if I didn't think he'd freak the fuck out.  But he would.  Because, quite suddenly, I'm no longer seventeen.  I'm old.  When did that happen?  Don't even bother answering that question.  

p.s. i think if i could convince him that our friend, David Foster Wallace, would be applauding our reading of McSweeney's 33 (and all editions after) and even more so, our hot sex, he might not be so put off that i'm nearly a senior citizen.  or not.  again, when did i get this old?

Are You My Mother?

The following is a verbatim email conversation between Emily Gilmore and me that happened just this afternoon:

Emily: 
The word is spreading.

Nakedjen: 

see mom?!  you've known since i was five that i've always been very precocious.  it only took 40 years for the rest of the world to catch up with me!

 

Emily:  no honey - the rest of the world will never catch up with you.  Robin will be here March 10th - 15th   

Nakedjen:  yes, i know.  she announced it on facebook!

i'm choosing my sundance tickets at 5:00.  so, i could get you some of the same tickets (maybe) for you on saturday.  should i try to do that for you.  for the films robert thinks you might like to see??

Emily:  i have been looking at the film list for a while - it is QUITE overwhelming - it sort of becomes a process of elimination.  I know I do not want SHORTS or documentary stuff or animation.    No gays, no alcoholism, no infidelity, no divorce, no cross-dressers, no violence, no TOO MUCH NOISE,   do they have any musicals?    i think i should just wait to see what to buy on day of   ???   we'll see how it works out.

Nakedjen:

Mom, in other words, NO FESTIVAL.  your email just made me laugh.  out loud.  because, honestly?  you just eliminated nearly the ENTIRE list of films at sundance this year.  i think the festival you want is showing at leisure world.

 

xoxo

Honestly, people, there are days, like today, where she truly earns her Emily Gilmore reputation and I shake my head and have to wonder is she REALLY my mother?  I hope Robert can find her something she might like because goodness knows I'm going to be seeing a lot of documentaries about divorced gay alcoholics who cheat on cross-dressing spouses while toting machine guns.  Somehow, I don't think those are the films Emily wants to go see with me, do you?

Sundance starts on my birthday this year.  Isn't it nice of Robert to always schedule Sundance for my birthday?  I can't think of a better or happier way to celebrate it.  For reals.

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

I am blessed, honestly, that she still thinks I'm cool and actually wants to hang out with me.  I consider that a win for both of us. 

These are My People, This is My Tribe

Just one more thing.  I know, I know.  I've blogged my brains out today.  Clearly.  They're splattered there on the floor and the only real reason Stella is not lapping them up is because she prefers the first edition words of famous authors on archival bound paper.  Not splattered brains.  Lucky for me.

We all know, or those who have been paying attention at least know, that I followed those boys who called themselves the Grateful Dead around for far too many years and way too many brain cells.  I spent many a New Year's Eve celebrating with the band until the wee hours of the morning and I am still, honestly, at a bit of a loss when New Year's Eve rolls around each year and I realize that I will not be spending it in jam-packed arena with all my best friends writhing and grooving to songs I've heard at least a hundred times before.

Given all of that, you'd think that I'd be sharing with you my favourite moment, my favourite song from all those nights spent grooving with my very favourite of bands.

This isn't about all those New Years Eves, though. 

This is about another New Years Eve.  Spent with one of my other most favourite musicians.  A man who sings with passion and soul and a glory that makes my spine tingle.  This is about a New Years Eve spent in an intimate coastal lodge, before a roaring fire, dancing with angelic children and earth goddesses and mountain men.  This is about a New Years Eve that made me realize that music, all music, is a gift that will transcend even the most heartbreaking and saddest and loneliest of personal moments and remind us that life is still beautiful, that it is still a gift, that it is to be, well, lived.

This is about a New Years Eve spent wrapped and embraced in the arms of my people, of my tribe.  They really and truly love me.  Just as I am.  Then, now and forever.  

10 Glorious Peasant

Conversion

Even now, even two years later, I still feel like my ass was kicked sideways by the events that took place that quiet unassuming Monday morning in October.  Of course if I was a woman who gazed deeply into her own crystal blog, I might have predicted that it was coming, that the storm had been brewing for months and months, that it was only a matter of moments before David was going to truly find the bravery needed to wake up and say, “I’m done.”

Yet, if I allow myself to stand in the shoes I was wearing on that Monday and the days and weeks that followed, in that spot of broken hearted sadness, of snot filled sleeves, of tears licked lovingly from my cheeks by sloppy dog tongues, of moments spent just trying to remember what it was to breathe, all I can feel is wonder that I’m still here.

What I am not, in so many ways, is still there.

Two years ago, this week, I landed in Utah with a shattered heart, broken dreams, a shadow of myself who spent her very first night wandering naked in the snow in a post-epileptic fog testing the tolerance of the fine men of the Salt Lake City Fire and Rescue department.

After a tearful and wrenching goodbye to Santa Cruz, I had arrived to frozen water in my toilet, no heat in my house, shattered windows, a room splashed in Barbie pink and Astro turf, ninety years of neglect and sadness and a blustery snow storm.  Utah had one helluva way of rolling out the red carpet!

I have said, often, that I came to Utah for a reason.  I have always looked outward while saying that, believing and thinking that the reason was something that I had to offer, to give, to show or to teach to the people who call this place home.

The reason I came, however, was really for my own conversion.  From deep inside my heart, out.  I can’t truly put my finger on the hows and the whys of the healing that has happened here.  This salty valley, nestled deep among the majestic mountains, is a vortex that holds you tightly and may truly be as so many say, "the place."

Slowly, I have remembered how to breathe.  Deeply.  I have allowed myself to love.  Madly.  The me that is truly me, my spirit and soul, have found their ways back from the dark scary places where they were hiding and have infused my whole being with life.  

My conversion from sad to happy, from broken to whole is owed to the generous spirit here of genuine love and kindness.  It is truly beautiful, infectious and healing.

I’m not still there.  I am here.  One of the converted.  It is me who had a gift to receive, it is me who had something to learn, it is me who now calls this place home.  Thank you, Utah, for embracing and loving this crazy naked girl from California, for giving me back to me.