Part I: Karma Is My Boyfriend

Anyone who’s ever rummaged for snacks at my house inevitably finds themselves wondering, what does she even eat? I don’t keep a lot of food by design. It feels unnecessary. I live one block from a grocery store, a few blocks from the Tuesday farmer’s market and steps away from several tasty treats prepared by someone other than me. Plus, walking and breathing in the neighborhood check at least two of my prioritized boxes. 

If I need something from the store, I’m fortunate to have the time, money and freedom to just go and get it. I rarely leave with a list or a plan which is also why I sometimes come home without the one thing I actually need. It’s not uncommon to make two or three trips to the Festival up my street to successfully grab milk. Or coffee. Or girl dinner, which is (since you asked), usually a Screaming Sicilian frozen pizza, whatever Ben & Jerry’s I’m willing to struggle to digest that night, and a bottle of wine.

I don’t mind. I like going to the store. On my slow days, sometimes it’s my only outing. They know me there. And you know what? It’s neat to live in place where I know my grocers. People notice when I haven’t been around in a while, and that feels nice.

A few months back as I was checking out from the liquor section with my girl dinner, one of my regular cashiers looked up and smiled. 

Oh hey! It’s you! You know, I think about you a lot. 

Oh! Curiously confused. You do?

Yeaaah. I once asked if anything extraordinary happened to you today, and you said EVE-RY-THING**. I wasn’t doing so great, having a real time of it, but you just saw the beauty in everything. Thank you for that. I really needed to hear it.

_{**(99% certain I then listed all that comprised of everything, of course.)}

Well sheeeeeet. I remembered that night. Swinging through my own little mental jungle, tossing a vine to everyone in my path. This dude was on the same treetop immediately and indefinitely. The fact he got something out of it too destroyed me with that good kind of destruction, the one that kicks self-defeating thoughts back to square one. Maybe this time life won’t give them a reason to grow. I cried all the way home. Don’t worry, it’s just a block.

Part II: Karma Is A Breeze In My Hair On The Weekend

A couple of September’s back, I was brutally attacked by an iron nail from a poorly hit hammerschlagen target in a game I wasn’t even playing with the velocity and force of whatever that physics equation is, if those two words can make an equation. I had no idea what happened or exactly how I had been punched by the air or why it felt like I was pulling my left front tooth back from the roof of my mouth. But the moment everything into clicked into place, I threw my hands up in gratitude and shouted “WHAT A GIFT!” to all the witnesses at Dog Dad Steve’s 40th Sunday birthday brunch. I answered their confused stares with the story still materializing as my brain assembled the facts.

A nail hit me in the face. I mean that sucked. And it hurt like a bitch. (It still hurts.) BUT!! I must have been smiling because it didn’t even graze my lip! It could have taken out my eye! Punctured my cheek! My esophagus! Whacked off my ear! Smacked my brain! But it took out the lower part of my left tooth, the one thing I could fix today! (Or tomorrow. The emergency dentist deemed it less of an “emergency” than I did.) WHAT A GIFT!

I even stayed at the party for like another hour with my snaggle tooth just so everyone could see I was fiiiine, and so Steve’s girlfriend-at-the-time wouldn’t feel bad for her shitty ‘Schalgen skills, though after they broke up, I was remarkably fine with him deeply cursing her involvement. Did I go home and cry in bed for the rest of that Sunday? Absolutely. I’m not perfect. I looked ridiculous. But the whole time I held space for my good fortune.

Part III: Karma’s A Relaxing Thought

Unfortunate things happen to me sort of all the time. Though it may be less “they happen to me,” and more “I play in a significant role in their occurrence.” I lose track of everything. My wallet. My credit card. My phone. My mind. But more often than not, something good happens pretty quickly to negate my bad fortune. Like that time I left my credit card and ID wrapped in a rubber band outside the Rite Aid in Virginia while hiking the Appalachian Trail, and another hiker Facebooked me to tell me he had it after I was already eight miles up the trail. I hadn’t even realized I lost it. The day before I had shared my snacks when he really needed some, that’s how he recognized me.

Last spring, my mountain bike was stolen from my garage. Not in the someone breaks in and steals it kind of way, more like a crime of opportunity. As in, my garage door was left open all night. Allegedly. My stomach dropped the moment I noticed it open on my poop walk with Fred. Not my poop walk, I poop in the toilet. Usually. I knew it was gone even before I saw the gaping hole where my bike used to be, though my mind took a few minutes to fully register.

My first reaction wasn’t anger, although a NoooooOOO, NoNoNononono Nooooooo did seep out as I mentally picked up the pieces. It was more a feeling of regrettable acceptance. I live in the city. And I left my garage door open. Again. Like teasing a child with a toy or a dog with a treat, I basically invited it to be taken. I even began my police report, “Sooo, this is probably my fault, I must have left the garage door open…”

To which the volunteer working my case responded:

Dear Ms. Kowalski – Perhaps you got my voicemail today. I was calling to follow up with you about the incident you reported to the Madison Police Department. Someone entered your garage and took your valuable Trek mountain bike. I’m sorry this happened. It was NOT your fault that somebody helped themselves to property not belonging to them. Thank you for reporting it.

What a gem. To process, accept, and move on, I told myself (and everyone else) how lucky I was to have nice things to lose. I got a little drunk, posted a picture of my lost bike with Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You dramatically playing in the background (you know, the one reserved for starving children and puppies in kill shelters, or in my case, middle school graduations) and drove off to New Mexico the next day as planned.

A few days later on some ridge in New Mexico with spotty service, I got a voicemail from the police department saying THEY HAD FOUND MY BIKE. I climbed a few dirt mounds to ask the officer where she found it: It’s a long story that ends with finding two dudes we were looking at for unrelated reasons living in a warehouse with too many fancy bikes. It didn’t add up, we checked the first one, yours, listed as stolen. She understood the reality of the situation, tacking on, this literally never happens. Might want to go buy a lottery ticket.

Part IV: Sweet Like Justice, Karma Is A Queen

I’ve been obsessed with moving to the desert since I discovered the desert. My house has a weird/ charming southwest in the midwest vibe. But my old friend Tom screamed NO! NO WATER! every time I tossed a new potential city his direction. It took walking the L.A. aqueduct on the PCT to realize what NO! NO WATER! meant. Holy shit guys, what it takes to deliver water to places the planet doesn’t naturally support us. I attempted to ween myself off my desert dreams by adopting a firm personal belief that’s been known to waiver: If you aren’t native to the area, don’t pile onto the problem. If you love the west, don’t live there.

Dramatic? Sure.

But I do feel for those who experience these manmade natural disasters whether by choice or circumstance. Hurricanes. Droughts. Earthquakes. Wildfires. The west is on fire. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. The only thing worse than witnessing the destruction, seeing memories burn, is watching some people of the internet rejoice. To wish this kind of destruction, to feel gratitude for this type of loss, to express joy or any sort of positivity with a flippant “who cares, they’re rich!”

It’s everything that terrifies me about everything. 

No one deserves that. To lose everything you worked for, no matter what your definition of “work” is or what you choose to do with your reward. All those carefully curated museums, all the memories, plants, art, music, life. Gone. We live in a capitalist society designed specifically for there to be people at the top and people on the bottom. Don’t hate the player dude, hate the game. Malibu, Palisades, California, they’re not curse words. They have depth, layers, facets. So many lives across the income spectrum were forever altered by total loss. Wildfires don’t ask how much money you make before they roll through.

What you breathe out into the world, that’s the energy coming back to you. You get to choose.

Part V: Karma Takes All My Friends To The Summit

One of my spin classes last week was themed confidence boost, which is basically our instructor pushing positivity in our direction nonstop for 45 minutes. Chicken Soup for the Soul, exercise edition. I mean these ladies branded their studio Joy Ride and I am here for it. My favorite reminder this class:

Real queens fix each other’s crowns without telling the whole world it was ever crooked.

They aren’t looking for acknowledgement or credit, they’re simply there to pick you up when you’re down because that’s what people should do. It takes a village. After class I thanked her for it all.

Months ago you were shouting all these wonderful things at us and I was kind of going through it at the time, and at some point you said inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit and it really changed my world. I basically made it my mantra, it’s still on a chalkboard in my kitchen, and I’ve been meaning to tell you. I really needed to hear that.

I doubt she cried all the way home, but I could tell it made her day a little brighter.

It’s free to be kind. And it all comes back to us in the end. 11/10 recommend.