Pride

I often travelled the 405 "towards Santa Ana," for no larger reason than I was going south, and the sign indicated I was heading in the direction of SA. Once one would get to Santa Ana, the signs swap to "towards San Diego." On the way home you repeat the same in some reverse pattern. "Towards Santa Ana." "Towards Los Angeles." "Towards Sacramento." Such in this way. It wasn't until I found a pretty awesome man, dated this awesome man, and met his family - that I found a reason to go "towards Santa Ana" for the purpose of going to Santa Ana.

There's a lot of things I like about Santa Ana, and only one of them has to do with the Long John Silver's. I enjoy his family and I'm pretty lucky they include me in a lot. The pressure to support the Dodgers with intense Angels pride, bears strong on my soul, but it tests my fan hood and Angels fans are sort of endearing to me.

Had I not found said awesome man, and such explained to you enjoyable family, (and a nearby Long John's Silver), I'd never a cause for exiting the 405 or giving the 22 a whirl. And because of such an occasion, in Santa Ana, across from a freeway, in an unassuming strip mall, I found the first "Moose Museum" I've ever seen. And believe me I've looked.

The next portion of this story is going to read a lot like a movie critic who didn't get an invite to the premiere - or a movie studios feared would tank never letting it be reviewed prior to opening day. In sum, I've never been. See I've always been on my way to something - dinner, lunch, for some grander purpose, and explaining I was two hours later because I've been wandering around a moose museum doesn't seem like proper acceptable sort of rationale, that while I'm endeared to them, they would become in anyway anymore endeared to me. So I like to pass by, seeing it through my drivers side window, and in my best three year old girls whine I want to go.

I've driven by it now five times. Or could is be half a dozen? Irrelevant perhaps that is to the effect it has on me at each passing. Like counting sheep to usher in sleep, or like my friend did once to bring her back from a bad pot-brownie trip, I like to start counting things.

Brunette actresses with names starting with S
Ethan Hawk movies
The number of obstacles set up by Kevin in Home Alone
All the baseball movies I can think of
European countries alphabetically backwards
Animal nouns with identical singular and plural - deer sheep bison salmon trout fish swine.

Moose.

It's uninteresting to anyone that isn't me, I will profess in all honesty, but I do it. And the same three year old whine that wants to go to the moose museum, thinks it's cute to call them mooses and fishes and sheeps. Again, un-hilarious, to anyone that isn't me.

I'm an LA girl with two housecats and as much beastly knowledge as I get from watching Animal Planet, fraternizing with PETA workers in front of KFC, and visiting the zoo. I know about as much about moose as I do Ethan Hawk movies as I know about lion. Which isn't enough to have an opinion about, let alone write about, let alone create something meaningful to say. But I like to look things up and have been reading up as of late about lions. And lions are much cuter than moose, so let's talk about them.

The regular plural of lion is still lion, but when organized in communities, the lion becomes a pride. Prides or nomads, depending on the amount of lion in the group and the sex. Many times when the adolescent male lion is outcasted at reaching certain age, it joins a nomad. But traditionally, when discussing the lion in groups of more than singularity, pride is how it is referred.

If you leave out the violent, and the searching for food, and most of what's on Discovery Channel, I find the lion to be beautiful, regal, strong. One with nature and caring of each other and their young. (Cuddly, if only in my own head). The name pride to describe a group of them sounds appropriate.

Last night, with a slit of moonlight through my vertical blinds, and the comfort of reaching bed after a long day, I started counting and thinking of this word which comes to me at times, now more often than it ever did before, more than discussing lion, more often than simply to reach sleep at days end - pride.

I cannot define pride in any grander way than you can find it under the P's and before you get to Q in the dictionary. Instead I tell you only what it means to me.

In youth, pride to me was arrogance.
In teenage years, pride was know-it-all-ness.
In early adulthood, pride was independence.
And in my life now, it means none of those things.

You could, for all practical purposes, move pride from after P and before Q, to B or L for what it's worth - because it's radiating definition in my reality has shifted so dramatically off its axis, it's rotated itself around the sun. In the me of the now, pride feels a lot more like humanizing. And the closer I come to shattering pride, the closer I come to the common human condition: needing help and not feeling pity for asking for it. Doing as much as I can, and then accepting of help, knowing that my selfness is rooted strongly, in the belly of something that is radiating, expanding, nomadically changing, as to loose interest in maintaining a youthful clinging to any need in pride. It stings at times, more often than not to remind that growing pains means humanity, and fear does guard it, masking it, but as the lion is the strength of the wild, and moose dominate that strip mall, to lose pride, is only to gain in what I've always wanted.

To be.