beNaked2012

I must be settling in here, because fewer blog-worthy existential dilemmas have been pushing me to write lately.  Maybe I am just tired.  2011 has been a huge, monumental, gargantuan year in so many ways.  Most of the days instated to mark the passage of time, despite all their promise, leave me drifting in the doldrums, feeling no different than I did before.

But New Years' Eve is important to me.  It's not because of the traditional midnight kiss--I don't think I've ever kissed someone special right as the year was changing.  No one I was in love with, I mean.  It's not watching the ball drop: overrated at best.  It might be because I claimed it, because it remains relatively uncelebrated by our family traditions (no special church service).  I make sure to touch base with someone important, or to be with fun, happy, positive people as the year changes.  I'm superstitious enough, or theological enough, or emotionally intelligent enough to believe that the beginning of something colors the middle and end of that something.  Whatever the reason, the anticipation that carries me through December 31st tends to become refreshed satisfaction when the year changes.

Thrilling start to 2010.

I could trace it back to NYE 2007, Cortes Island, British Columbia.  I came to my uncle's farm in mid-late December, reeling from my first semester of college and the unfamiliar insecurity that turned my world upside down.  I was used to getting great grades without breaking a sweat.  I was used to having my crew around me, the same people who had come up from 7th grade together through all those ch-ch-changes, the people who knew all my history and all my loves and my foibles up to that point.  And suddenly I was wiped clean, and I could choose what of that to bare, with great effort, and what to banish to the Dusty Attic of Secret Memory.  I didn't know who I was or what I stood for, and most of all I was exhausted of holding myself up without the flying buttresses of people I loved and trusted existentially and unconditionally.

My cousin Maya is a year or so younger than I am.  Our reunions usually start with a few moments of awkward silence before our mothers herd us into another room and shut the door, and then shenanigans ensue.  We spent the break running wild over the farm grounds, imagining epic adventures out of the errands Aunt Donna had us run, creating photo storybooks of ridiculous incidents.  We gave each other drastic haircuts and left piles of coarse hair on the carpet ("You were TWO FEET FROM THE WORKSHOP!  That hair will NEVER come off that carpet!")  We ate an entire trunk-ful of California oranges, carted up by Gramma & Grampa in the little 2-door from Yreka, tried to weasel dirty secrets from our elders, and begged them to let us share their alcohol.

Case in point.

So New Years' Eve arrived and we were feeling restless.  I had to leave early the next morning and we were restless, because we'd already used up our wildest ideas over the past few weeks.  We had to do something drastic to ring in the new year.  2008 had to be special.

We sat around the fire outside melting candy canes in mugs of rich hot chocolate, roasting marshmallows and challenging each other to hold our feet closer to the flames for longer.  Sulking and plotting, each of us, until the critical hour.

In the meantime, one of us got the idea to burn the worst of 2007, and we Sharpied everything we wanted to leave behind onto logs and threw them into the fire with great ceremony, dancing and chanting like banshees.  Then each of us Sharpied onto another log our resolutions for 2008.  We each had long lists of very specific things to change for ourselves--but the one thing we all agreed on became our theme for the evening, and for the year: beNaked2008.

Bidding 2007 adieu

I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to carry out this tradition every year since.  It reminds me of the effigy-burning new years' tradition in Ecuador, my homeland, where people burn figures and pictures and other things to symbolize letting go of the past year.

Goodbye, 2008

We let the bonfire peter out and left our clothes inside the house, Maya and her cousin on the other side and her friend from school, and me, wearing only boots and sporting 2 flashlights, tiptoeing down the slippery patio stairs, through the horse pasture and 2 electric fences, along a rocky path down to the lake.

It was a clear night, and frigid.  Maya, of course, jumped in first, and the rest of us followed in waves.  I thought, "This must be what it felt like to be drowning on the Titanic."  (I would think that.)  The night air, after that, felt warm and soft in comparison.

We hurried, squealing, back to the house, wearing only boots and trying not to run into each other naked.  We had to count down to the new year five times because we had one bottle of champagne and none of us knew quite how to pop the cork...

But finally we cheered in the new year, and to make an already-too-long story a little bit shorter, I'll just say we spent the first several hours of 2008 in the nude.  (CUE FORESHADOWING.)

no photo

Now, the takeaway message here is not to glorify nudity for its own sake--so try not to get too excited--but symbolic nudity, and being comfortable in our own skins.  Being able to bare our true selves to really offer our best and our wholest, and be open to the best and wholest of the rest of the world as well.

All hail 2011!

This year I will sorely miss the traditional New Years' Bash in Ithaca with my Original Crew.  I will miss New Years' Eve in Hudson, WI, and those most wonderful [choir] bros.  (Also I will miss being one of 3 women honored to join the Great Sausagefest of 2010.)  I am not looking forward to hostessing on Saturday night, because we're slammed with reservations, and many large parties, from 4:00 to 8:00.  And that's just the beginning.  The party runs there until 1:00am.

But I should be out in time to do my own thing, and this year I plan to welcome the new year with the That's-What-She-Saiders, which should prove to be an all-around good time.  I definitely have some things I'd like to leave behind in 2011, and some things I plan to grab hold of on my way into 2012.  I think it could be time for another beNaked year, although the novelty of nudity has, for the most part, worn off--I could just use a refresher course in being myself, and being open and allowing myself to trust people.  To smile more, and say thanks more, and to say "I love you" more.  To try new things and meet new people, fearlessly and honestly.  To be at my best and wholest, my most daring and able and ready to take on the universe.

so the story goes

Merry Christmas, readers!  I will spare you all the "politically correct holiday season" rant, as I know we've all heard it before (at least 4,000 times this year alone), and as it says in the Bible, "Do not be [offended], for I bring you glad tidings and great cheer" and so on.

Anyway, what does it matter, because I have missed not only the actual Christmas, but Boxing Day as well.  So I am not only politically incorrect, but increasingly tardy as well.  We're coming up on New Years now.

My Boxing Day did, in fact, involve some boxing.  Of fruitcakes.  Tomorrow I intend to do the actual posting of those boxed fruitcakes, and any recipients should know that my fruitcake-boxing battle was not a particularly neat or quiet one.  Please appreciate my countless trips to the recycling bin in the freezing cold garage for packing materials.

Something about the convergence of events (and the escalation of my coffee shop book exchange) lately has me thinking about storylines.  I first saw Google's Zeitgeist 2011 video framed as a bit of brilliant digital storytelling, intentionally and evocatively constructed.  If you haven't seen it already, please take a moment.  Or, if you have, take a moment to watch it again.

More generally, social media news has been lately dominated by headlines about Storify and the new Facebook Timeline and the new Twitter app, all created to somehow "organize stories" that build our lives online and, increasingly, offline.  That's the idea, anyway.  It's making me think about what a story actually is, and how we tell them, and what role they play in our lives.  It's making me wonder whether the meaning of the word "story" is taking on new digital meaning, similar to the way "viral" has.  (In case you missed it, you can read more about my thoughts on going viral here.)

Also in that post you will find what anchors my storyline fixation in the physical world: fruitcake.

Aside from the fact that I legitimately love fruitcake, especially fruitcake from this recipe, I have been most excited about carrying on the family legacy of making and sending fruitcakes.  This is a personal storyline that crosses, now, four generations, in a very simple frame: a recipe.  (Remember Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco?  Brilliant.)  I already told you about getting fruitcakes in the mail every Christmas, wrapped in Sunday comics.  Actually I think I left out the comics before, and the fact that we always had to wait until Christmas morning to open and cut into the fruitcake.  And as we all know, waiting for something makes it taste that much sweeter.  This storyline includes not only my childhood, but the unknown plot deviations of Aunt Judy struggling to locate candied orange peel in modern supermarkets, trying different substitutes, maybe once pickling watermelon rind in the summer to use come Christmas in the cakes.  And the beginning of this story is completely blank; I can only tell you bits of the middle and the ellipsis of an end.

Consider also the cultural storyline of fruitcake.  As I churned the exotic dried fruits into the batter, it suddenly occurred to me to ask where fruitcake came from.  What genealogy does fruitcake follow in our family?  Is it British?  German?  Under what rule did it gain the honors of tradition?  In which empire?  Which traders brought the fruits to fill it?  And how did it get such a bad rap today?

Not that you will probably be called on to share any fruitcake trivia, but if you think there is a chance of this happening I recommend this article from TLC.  I can't say for certain that it is the most accurate or comprehensive, I just like it best of all the ones I've seen.

Now, for the sake of time and attention, let's make an undeveloped allegorical leap to the Christmas storyline.  In fact, we can take it full-circle to the whole politically-correct thing and ask which storyline each of us prefers to follow at this time of year.  Is it Santa Claus?  St. Nicholas?  Festivus?  Solstice?  Kwanzaa?  Hanukkah?  The birth of Jesus?

Grampi has been featuring heavily of late, and while I fear some of you might be cringing at the apparent disregard in which I hold my elders, please take heart in knowing that any confrontation is both the result and the catalyst of important learning experiences, I dare hope, for both of us.  As Maria has reminded me over and over again these past few weeks, coming to face opposition forces us to grow in ways we might otherwise atrophy.

Anyway, Grampi and the birth of Jesus.  On Sunday morning in church he went out of his way to point out to Mutti and I that the baby in the manger had been set up directly beneath the cross hanging over the altar.  The significance of this symbolic placement brought him to tears.  I admit I rolled my eyes the way I do when he skillfully relates any topic to missionary work, but even I can't deny the brilliance of this nativity setup.  I do revere the Biblical storyline, the way it unfolds over thousands of years, the careful genealogies, the outstanding characters, the fulfillment of prophecies.  (This year I found myself wishing the Gospel writers paid more attention to Jesus' childhood, because the Terrible Twos are notably absent, and for some reason I have developed a sudden urgent curiosity about Jesus as a 6-year-old.)

I'm focusing on the Christian storyline of Christmas because it's the one I'm most familiar with, and the one that is most significant in my family tradition; but I am well aware, and fascinated by, the pagan influences on this endless tale.  I appreciate the fact that I can't escape the materialistic aspects of this holiday, and that the giving and receiving of gifts is not something I could easily extract from my own experience of Christmas.

These complicated details only make the storyline more intricate, more unique, more fascinating.  I always have to remind myself that each storyteller constructs the story differently and each listener understands it differently.  No frame is quite the same, no language holds the same weight or connotation, no scene is so well-constructed that it excludes the possibility of misunderstanding, of a wrong color in a corner or a detail slightly misaligned.

And yet I consider my storylines carefully.  I see a story in everything.  I see a story arc everywhere, a conflict, a happy ending.  I have endless prepackaged choices: fairytale, Judeo-Christian, origin myth, comedy, tragedy, series of snapshots.  But I delight most in the deviations from the predictable introduction, escalation, resolution, the allegedness of everything, the details and the soundtracks and illustrations and, most of all, the fact that in real life, the story doesn't end with a slammed-shut cover, but with a ...

rubber-banding

I'm on vacation!  Out of the office until Wednesday, and the restaurant too.  I'm definitely looking forward to having some time off, but I'm also mildly terrified about having nothing on my schedule, no obligations or anything.

...Besides carrying the star into the crèche on Christmas morning.  I have graduated from my days of playing Mary, Mother of Jesus, and my days of co-writing and co-directing overambitious nativity villages and talk shows.  I am moving into a new role.

Speaking of changing roles, my latest realization is how utterly awful I am at transitions.  The other day I walked into Bishop's after work and I must have been acting weird because the guys said, "Hey, are you OK?  You seem... distraught."

First of all, how pumped am I that that's the word they came up with!  Secondly, after they called me out, a lot of my tension evaporated, and I smiled and realized that I am often distraught when I walk in there.  I'm easily distraught from one side of a new situation to the other, and it takes me so long to adapt.  Which is a strange thing to realize (over and over again over the last few years) when "adaptable" used to be a pretty accurate descriptor of me as a kid.  Of course, back then I had to be.

And I guess, if we're being realistic, I still do, because life is basically a series of changes.  I wouldn't want to become prematurely stuck in my ways at the age of 22.  I hope to at least be 80 before that happens.

I can't knock on my need for routines, though, and on a more fundamental level, some sort of stability.  Thus my uncharacteristically vehement response yesterday morning to certain suggestions about my future...

When I came upstairs in the morning, Grampi was already up and bumbling around.  Now, first off, you need to understand that the communication centers of my brain don't fire up until I've been bumbling around for at least 20 minutes.  Also, I'm definitely not interested in small talk over breakfast.  Breakfast with other people is a time for communal basking, or important discussions.  And when I say important, I mean touchy-feely important.  Like relationship-talk.

Anyway, he asked what I studied in college (even though he totally knows, and brings it up himself from time to time) and then asked if I'm planning on going to grad school in the near future (the answer is no, because I'm sick of school, I don't know what I would study if I went back right now, and I love working).  My early morning mumbling problem also makes conversation difficult, especially with someone who doesn't understand me very well on a regular basis.  So I mumbled that question away, and then he said, "You know, anthropology has been one of the great passions of my life" (an odd contradiction to the anti-anthropology creationist sermon he preached to me on a flight to India 4 years ago).  "Have you ever considered mission work?"

I think I actually snorted, and responded shortly in a definite non-mumble, "No."  Not that don't revere the incredible work of my grandparents (all four of them) and appreciate the experiences I was able to have as a result... I just feel quite certain that the type of mission work he's talking about is not my life's calling.

"You have some skills, though, that could really serve you well as a missionary!"

For some reason it took me twice as long to eat breakfast and get ready for work.

Every semester, every vacation, every project and job I've been amazed at how long it takes me to settle into a new routine, a new way of thinking and of doing things.  I feel like it used to be a lot easier, and I'm wondering now if I'm subconsciously resisting change as a defense mechanism, to protect my seemingly fragile core and foundation.  Things--my future, my control--feel uncertain.  This is disconcerting.  It makes me act irrationally and defensively, to protect the delicate balance I have worked out to move forward.  Ironically, when I am existentially so unbending, it makes me more vulnerable to the threatening aspects of change, and I bounce back less readily.  A la bridge pose mantra, "I am vulnerable.  I am strong.  I can be vulnerable because I am strong."

As far as getting comfortable goes, I'm just now starting to settle into my jobs and my routine, after how long?  I'm starting to feel actually comfortable with the people I work with, to feel some rapport.  On Wednesday I brought a fruitcake to work to share, and--it's not too early to share this here--my top New Year's resolution is to express my appreciation more openly, to say thanks more often.  So I wrote this in an accompanying note, and it's always strange to me when people are surprised to hear that I like them, or to hear anything that I think, in fact.  It's just so transparent to me!

Speaking of saying thank you, Coffeeshopcrush finished (and loved--no surprise) The Princess Bride...  And he introduced himself, and now that I know his name, the saga is over.  As promised.

Happy Christmas weekend, Merry Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve (via @jensentweets on Twitter)!  More to come this weekend, I'm sure.

Until then, I'll get a headstart on 2012 and say thanks for reading!

fruitcake

As of today my father has officially spent half his life with my mother.

In other words, today was my parents' 25th wedding anniversary so I am sitting at the dining room table blogging in front of a beautiful bouquet of purple and white flowers.  (And when I say today, I mean I haven't slept yet since I woke up on December 20.  You understand.)

Remind me to plan that my important wedding anniversaries (if I ever do settle down) will never fall on a Tuesday.  Our house was like a sprawling, overpopulated game of musical chairs with a few inanimate players tonight.  Which resulted in, long story short, all of us sitting down for dinner at 10pm.

And now I am sitting up waiting for the raisins on top of my second batch of fruitcakes to burn, just slightly, so I know they're done.

My life has not been quite this complicated, on a regular basis, in quite some time.  This is what I get for moving back home, I guess...

This morning Grampi came down to the kitchen earlier than usual--"So I have time to eat lunch before physical therapy," he explained.  Oh, the men in this house!  The other night after dinner I passed along Time magazine's Person of the Year article, about the Protester.  His main worry, before reading the article, was about protest information getting into the wrong hands (i.e. certain religious-political groups) with a nefarious agenda, so I quickly excused myself to avoid a blowout.

Anyway, this morning, on top of his usual "time for work" opener, he says, "I've been reading that article you gave me, and you know, it's realllly interesting."  Of course he's going to get his own thing out of it, but I'll tell you he's been exploring the spectrum of conservatism a little more adventurously these days, so I don't mind discussing things with him quite as much as I used to.  He continues, "I'm really fascinated, they're saying it's like a virus, that it just spreads like an infection, these protests."

It takes me a split second to process this comment, and once I put two and two together I am struck dumb by the gaping chasm of understanding that both changes and reflects the differentness of our perspectives.  I open my mouth to explain to my doctor grandfather that "viral" to my generation has less to do with epidemiology than it does with the internet, but then I remember the hours I've already spent explaining, to various degrees of failure, social media and how it works and how I use it on a daily basis, and the moment passes.

This is a thrilling sociolinguistic dilemma: My grandfather's thoughts on protesting feed into the way he understands the use of the term "viral," and his understanding of "viral" spreading color his reading of global sharing and mobilization.  What excites me most about the protest phenomenon is almost completely lost on him.  His worldview comes pre-installed with a firewall against being able to fully grasp the way I use the internet, as well as my deep appreciation for social movements.  This is a much more enmeshed situation than you want me to get into here, but I will tell you that my brain is exploding quietly about it.

Speaking of the men in this house, I let my brother use my car today to do some Christmas shopping.  The joke in our house right now is that 50% of accidents happen to drivers under the age of 20, and 50% of those happen within the first 6 months of those drivers getting licenses.  No wait, that wasn't the joke--the joke is that my brother will be 20 in about a week, and if we can make it through the first 6 months of his licensure without him having to actually drive anywhere, then the danger zone is over!  Ha.  Yes, we are hilarious.

Anyway, him borrowing my car meant I needed him to drop me off at work and pick me up afterwards.  So last night I said, "That means we'll have to leave at 8:30."  To the guy whose usual bedtime is about 6am.  But he replied cheerfully, "OK, just wake me up 10 or 15 minutes before you want to leave so I can splash some water on my face."

He's not a bad driver, but the poor guy gets such a rap from the family.  And for some reason, riding shotgun while my brother drives my car (or any car, if I recall correctly) stresses me out beyond belief.  I may have control issues, which I expressed by letting him know ahead of time when the speed limit was about to change.  By the time I got outside at the end of the day he was already buckled into the passenger's seat so I could live out my neuroses in peace.  This might be something I should work on.

So we are a family of seven, with two cars, three jobs to work around, and a LOT of Christmas shopping to do.  This means that various family members and vehicles have been M.I.A. at random times and for undefined lengths of time, and that this happens more and more the closer it gets to Christmas.  I'm losing my mind.

Check out my muscles! Ohh yeahh...

Not to mention this week has been a series of wild goose chases for me.  I spent Monday afternoon trying to track down mace (the spice, not the spray) and never actually found it.  The fruitcakes seemed to have turned out OK in spite of that.  I love this living recipe, and I'm so excited to adapt it based on my lifestyle and the ingredients I can get my hands on.  When I was little, my aunt Judy used to always send fruitcake from Oregon for Christmas, wrapped with her other gifts in Sunday comics pages.  For the longest time I didn't like it (big surprise) and then one year I think I realized that if I started liking fruitcake I would be the only one of my siblings to like it, and this was an obvious source of superiority for me.  Then I discovered I really do love fruitcake, and as Coffeeshopcrush hilariously put it yesterday, it's packed full of energy in case you just so happen to spend a lot of time in the woods...  Anyway, Aunt Judy gifted me her simplified version of the recipe she got from her grandma Allene.  And now it is up to me to fashion and ship 8 fruitcakes.  It's a more interesting and delicious version of those dumb chain letters that were going around in the 90s (another thing I love).  (Not chain mail--the 90s.)

So, life is complicated.  And living at home is like secondary education with a major in compromise, and a double minor in patience and sharing.  I have felt blessed all throughout college to have learned these important people skills through growing up in a big family, but after four years of blatant selfishness I'm realizing how rusty I've gotten at moving in a pack, at making decisions that impact 4-6 other people, at somehow taking up both more and less space than I do as a party of one.  (Cue track below.)

I think it's doing me a world of good.

sweet nothing

My head feels a little fuzzy right now and it's disconcerting.  It's been a weird week, and one that seemed to stretch on endlessly.  This is a strange season in the adult world.  I've been watching Facebook statuses and Twitter streams about final exams and feeling very, very far away from that.  I'm gradually sending out my long-distance Christmas packages, although I may hold off on the rest of them until after the holiday to avoid the endless lines at the post office.  But getting text messages from recipients makes me ache to be there with them as they open the boxes and each individual package.  Actually, a lot of text messages in general are making me ache to speak face-to-face with their senders.  It's so beautifully devastating to have a feeling like that.

Speaking of beautifully devastating, I'm eating breakfast alone right now, on a gorgeous Sunday morning, listening to Straight No Chaser's Christmas album.  Current track: Christmas Wish.  I'll spare you the eye-rolling gushiness of any real lyrics, but the gist of the song is "I want somebody to love this Christmas."  Watching the "12 Days of Christmas" video on the lyrics website makes me miss the Limestones.  And missing the Limestones makes me miss Face and Homecoming and shivering our way down to Huggs to watch The Bachelor on Monday nights after dinner, sometimes battling snowdrifts and whiteouts.  (And so on and so forth.)

Looks like a white Christmas this year will be nothing more than a dream, if that.

So what's been weird about this week?  Plunged into it on Monday in crisis mode, which is a difficult way to start a week.  Everyone at the restaurant seems perpetually wired lately, which is not really surprising given the season and the particular circumstances.  On Friday everyone in the office dressed up, dashing and beautiful, and rode up to Philadelphia in a limo for lunch at an exclusive city club.  I had to look up online what "business elegant" is, and didn't find a clear answer--but I'm starting to realize that it's important (at least for me) to synthesize my own personal sense of style with the Rules of Professional Dress.  I work more effectively that way, and I feel more confident and communicate a little more successfully.  (How successfully I really communicate these days, with anyone, is up for debate.)

Speaking of communicating, I feel like I haven't really talked to anyone in ages.  I did get a heartwarming message last night from a really important person, someone I haven't heard from in years.  He is a person I knew for 2 months, maybe, but I do not hesitate to say that he taught me a lot about love.  Not in the way you might think, not fiery, passionate love, but how crucial it is to believe that no matter what happens, someone will take my hand and never let go, not until the cows come home, if that's how long it takes, even if we know virtually nothing about each other.  Because this is what he did for me, and has done, and neither of us will ever forget that moment in time.  I think I can still feel his hand in mine.  It's like the phantom limb effect.  It really sticks with you.

I miss those conversations.  The ones where you don't have to say anything at all and it says more than you could ever say if you kept trying to say the important things forever.

Anyway, the club was gorgeous and FULL of history and portraits of important Americans and Philadelphians since Independence.  (Strange that for some people "Independence" brings to mind much more powerful and mixed memories than for me.  This is just occurring to me, that "Independence" was so long ago that I have largely taken it for granted throughout my life.  Meanwhile, Time magazine named "The Protester" as its Person of the Year, because many groups around the world have been battling for this very thing this year: Independence.)

On my way home my mouth felt parched with a thirst that water could never satisfy, so I stopped to get a smoothie from Coffeeshopcrush.  Seriously, this boy must read constantly.  It's inspiring, and it's caused me to carry Tuck Everlasting around with me almost everywhere.  This book may well end up blowing my mind.  Anyway, he told me "not to worry about" the smoothie, and that he's been trying to come up with a book to lend me now.  I really cannot wait to see what he'll come up with.

I tried to write this post last night, but my brain was even less attached then.  I was sitting with my brother and sister in the living room, watching SNL and reading DamnYouAutoCorrect.com while Thom surfed 9GAG and Maria fell asleep mummified by her blanket.  Everyone was saying SNL was especially good last night, and every single trending topic on Twitter was SNL-related, and I definitely was laughing pretty hard, but I don't think I've ever actually watched it before.  I've also never been to Philly before.  Checking things off my very mundane bucket list.

I guess it's OK to have nothing to say.  It's just nice to have somebody to say nothing to.

scenes from a holiday home video

The International Commission of Tooth Fairies, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus has issued a spoiler alert on this post.  Not for children under 12 years of age.

Today as I handed over yet another thing I'd picked up for somebody's stocking, my mom asked me, half kidding--maybe--"So are you going to be an adult this year and help stuff the stockings?"  The question stopped me in my tracks, which was bad since I was on my way to Job #2.  She laughed, "I have some things I want to surprise you with, though!"

I asked, although it probably didn't help my case, if she manages to surprise Papa with his stocking every year. "Oh, I usually manage to sneak one thing in there...  And he usually surprises me."  (First of all, this is adorable. Secondly, I am reminded of one Christmas when she had been complaining about not having a Scrabble game for months...  So for Christmas, my parents bought them for each other.  After we spent the whole holiday laughing over the "strange coincidence," they started negotiations for who had to return the game, and whether that person had to come up with something new.  In my family, this sounded something like, "No, I'll turn mine back and get you something else...  No, no, I don't want another present!"  So cute.)

Back to the weird part of this story: "Are you going to be an adult this year?"

The obvious answer is, duh, yes, I am a grown-ass woman.  But what's the fun in that at Christmas time?  I read the blogs and look at Facebook albums of newlyweds and I'm mildly jealous of their mushy-gushy "first Christmas tree... first Christmas card... first Christmas cookies I baked that our first Christmas dog ate off the countertop while we were smooching under the mistletoe..."  And so on and so forth.  I also don't have any bitter single friends around here who will go to bars with me and get drunk off eggnog while bemoaning our impending spinsterhood.

So the only thing that remains is, stay a kid through the holiday season!

This task shouldn't be too hard, because as the oldest child I am used to clinging to my nonexistent childhood.  I had to spend a greater proportion of my life watching PG-rated Christmas movies, being the designated wrapping-collector or present-deliverer, and believing in Santa Claus than my younger siblings.  The irony here is that this obligatory childhood-clinging is a weighty responsibility, so I hypothesize that it actually made me grow up faster.

But, whether or not I physically stuff the stockings this year, I have joined the growing ranks of Household Santa Clauses.  I did my time as a Little Match Girl, spent my first two college Christmases in guest bedrooms on opposite edges of North America.  Third year, I carted sacks and sacks of Christmas gifts halfway around the world in my non-reindeer-powered suitcase, half-pretending to be surprised at what emerged from the wrapping paper.  Last year, my brother and I slept in a creaky pop-up camper in Gramma & Grampa's semi-insulated garage for 2 weeks.  Fortunately, after the first week, I discovered that wearing a hat to bed kept me from waking up with brain freeze.

This year, I handed over a few perfect stocking stuffers to my mom and apologized, "I thought about getting some for everyone but it just didn't work out."  She dismissed my worry with a wave.  "I've got enough special things for people it shouldn't matter."

This was also weird to me, because I remember the days where each stocking had to be the same exact size on Christmas morning, with the same exact number of the same exact items inside of it, or the apartment would turn into a deadly war zone.  As it was, my brother and I were known to say things like, "His chocolate orange is bigger than mine!"  Or try to trick the babies into trading, or giving up, their allegedly superior stocking stuffers.

I guess by now we've each got our own interests and we're not in as much competition.  As a matter of fact, Asha has a role in her school's Robin Hood play, which premieres this weekend.  Theater is something that none of the rest of us have ever gotten into.  (I almost said drama, but that's not quite as true...)

We also get each other cooler presents now, just in time for us to care less about the materialistic side of the holiday and more about hanging out together.  Thomas and I remember getting gifts like a neon-colored foam sailboat model from the Dollar Store, and handmade cardboard picture frames with hand-drawn pictures and touching captions scribbled on them.

You might remember from my first Christmas post that I spent Christmas break in the hospital with chicken pox back in '96.  That Christmas my dad was so happy to have me back home that he borrowed a video camera (remember what those looked like back in 1996?) from a guy downstairs and videotaped most of Christmas afternoon in our two-bedroom apartment.  I was still not feeling up to speed, and I wanted to keep my pock-scarred face out of the video.  The video mostly consisted of Maria going back and forth to the fridge pouring herself glasses of chocolate milk, Thomas jumping up and down in front of the camera saying, "Papa, Papa, look what I drew!" and Asha watching everything with wide blue eyes and a look of drooly awe on her still-hairless face.

Swanson family c. Christmas 1996

I'm not sure if it was the same year, but there was one Christmas when all the chocolate from the Advent calendar disappeared and I was convinced that evil elves had broken into our apartment, climbed on top of the refrigerator, carefully popped each individual chocolate nativity figure out of its flap, and ATE THEM ALL!  A terrifying thought indeed.

Another year, or maybe it was the same one, my dad, who had grown up in a big lovely house with a big lovely fireplace, was lamenting the fact that his poor deprived children might never get to hang their stockings on an actual mantel.  So, since we lived in seminary housing in St. Paul, he bought a roll of mural paper and carefully sketched out a line drawing of a brick fireplace.  Then he brought out the tempera paint and had all of us kids go to work making the biggest, reddest, happiest fake fireplace you ever saw.  We stuck our stockings in the right spot with tacks into the wall (I presume) and they all hung in a perfect little row.

That was the year I'd been holding my breath for a hot pink makeup kit that I wasn't allowed to have until I was in kindergarten, and then until I turned all of 5 years old, which happened exactly one month before Christmas 1994.  I found it in my stocking nailed to the wall and I'm sure everyone looked very beautiful for the rest of the day that Christmas.

I also remember my dad carefully filling in the holes in the wall with wood putty in January when we took the fireplace down.

But now my parents own our house and we have a real fireplace (although we can't burn anything in it right now).  We have a real Christmas tree.  I contributed the Christmas lights to it, and all the old Christmas ornaments are out.  My favorites are the little Buckingham guards made out of old-fashioned clothespins.  I hung them on the bottom branches, perfectly positioned to guard the presents.

Speaking of presence, my brother is about to come home from school for the holiday, any minute now, actually.  Last year he got two weeks off for Christmas and I was complaining about only having 10 days.  This is why I can't cling to my childhood anymore: I only get 2 workdays off for Christmas this year.  I've done most of my Christmas shopping online, and I'm the only one I can see so far who's managed to wrap my presents and put them under the tree.  (Ha!)  I used to write poetry on brown paper bags to wrap my presents with, but I got lazy this year.  So I guess I should be careful about my gloating.

Next Christmas break, Thomas will turn 21!  Now that is weird.  I wonder if, as we become more and more a family of adult children, if the Santa Claus ranks will continue to grow...

I could see it becoming a game of stealth, with several rounds of Santas trying to stuff stockings without running into the other Santas, and trying to make sure everyone is totally surprised in the morning when we unload the goods.  Christmas Eve has never been so complicated.

Genre: Family/Drama/Action/Comedy.

at least one fun thing

This weekend I earned myself the nickname "Constablogger," as in "Oh Constablogger... you're at it again!"  (A fond overture, I hope.)  Not because I was actually consta-blogging in the cybersphere, as you may have noticed, but I mentally consta-blogged EVERYTHING--so this could get long.  But I hope you'll love the weekend as much as I did.  Read on!

The highlight, of course, was Audrey's visit.  This just colored everything sunny and wonderful.

To the Delaware River!

Before I get to that, though, I've got to put in my customary plug for Bishop's Coffee.  On Friday I stopped in for lunch (the most delicious bowl of chili I have ever eaten) and the guys said, "Hey, where you been?"  I commented on T.'s mustache and he explained that he was growing it for charity--specifically, a children's grief center called Supporting Kidds, incidentally located right across the street from my work.  First of all, I am SO down with this charity (see my brief consideration of a career grief counseling, c. 2009) and second of all, mustaches are hilarious.  Coffeeshopcrush came in halfway through my lunch, so I ran to grab The Princess Bride out of my car before heading back to work, successfully leaving my cell phone on the table and managing to not say one single thing to anyone on my way out because I was so flustered.  And everyone was looking at me like an alien had just exploded out of my sternum.

It occurred to me that the book has my full name inside the cover, so if anyone were to do his due diligence (i.e. internet stalking) he would quickly discover my careful documentation of the Coffeeshopcrush Saga.  Blushing like crazy right now.  But I have since gotten behind myself on that front, because really it is, at the very least, a fun storyline.  Plus, this phenomenon is part of the American Dream.  Which I am not ashamed to be living.

Speaking of the American Dream, I had to work both jobs on Friday, so my mom graciously picked Audrey up from the bus station and they apparently hit it off.  (Is anyone surprised?)  They made dinner together and when I got home we all sat around the dinner table, Mutti, Papa, Maria and her boyfriend, Grampi, Audrey and me (Asha was at a friend's house).  The way I always wanted to eat supper, all crammed in, with some non-nuclear family members squeezed in there, with multiple sub-conversations going on and hilarity everywhere.  We sat there for hours exchanging stories between the generations and laughing like you'd never seen before.  Divine.

We of course stayed up way too late, drinking and watching Friends With Benefits, which is fantastic, and talking in the dark 'til all hours.  So the next day we dawdled over blueberry pancakes and leftover quiche, and headed out to do "at least one fun thing."  Destination: Historic New Castle.

We unknowingly stumbled into the Old Town's Spirit of Christmas celebration, which meant there was music on the streets in spite of the cold.  Shops boasted discounts, restaurants boasted special hours or menu items, classic homes opened their doors to visitors, tour guides in colonial garb welcomed us to historical interest points.

Again by accident, we ended up in the foyer of the Van Dyke House on Delaware Avenue, a giant old mansion previously inhabited by 17th century Delaware statesman Nicholas Van Dyke.  There was a wedding, "rumored to have happened" in the sitting room, in which the bride was given away by the Marquis LaFayette.  A portrait of his portrait hangs over the mantel in that same room--the original can be found in the White House.  The dining room was set with the same heavy, ornate dishware that set it when director Peter Weir stayed there while directing Dead Poets' Society.  Audrey and I flipped out when we learned this.  I didn't know DPS was filmed in Delaware.  That movie propelled my adolescence.  First point gained by the First State this weekend.  (Also, Robin Williams sometimes sat at that dinner table while discussing the movie.  Audrey was really in conniptions about this.)

The current owner of the Van Dyke House told us about The Castle, or Lesley-Travers Mansion, and gave us very vague directions to get there.  So we set off in search of the Presbyterian Church and its free historical open house maps, and ended up instead in the original New Castle Courthouse.

If you ever look at a map of Delaware, you might notice that its northwest border makes a perfect semicircle.  The very top tip of this courthouse is the center of that circle.  I think it's a 15-mile radius.

Inside, the courthouse looks like the set for a stage production of The Crucible.  The walls sport portraits of important historical figures: Peter Stuyvesant, last director-general of New Amsterdam, now NYC; William Penn in armor at age 22--the first and last portrait of this famous Quaker convert; and Virginia Governor Thomas West, titled Lord De La Warr, in whose honor the British dubbed the local Native American tribe, the river, and the First United State of America.  This building houses an incredible amount and array of historical moments.  The colonially-dressed tour guides greeted us jovially and told us stories about Delaware falling first into Dutch hands, then Swedish, then Dutch again, then British, and then becoming the first state to ratify the American Constitution!  (As Midwestern college grads, we were particularly interested in the Swedish occupation and their Fort Christina, named after the popular 15th-century child queen.)  All four of these flags hang outside the courthouse and on the flagpole on the Delaware River:

Flanked by the wild roses that stubbornly greeted us at every turn,
even in the chill of December.

By the time we left the courthouse we were getting hungry again, but we decided to walk to the river and then work our way back into town.  The river was beautiful (even though I told Audrey a million times it was the ocean--false) but it was weird to see Jersey's factories spewing black smoke into the air just across the water.

"Send out a signal, I'll throw you a line..."

We had taken a mental note on our way in to have lunch at Jack's Bistro, which advertised beer chili and local craft beers--both good things, obviously.  So we made our way back there and it was the best idea ever.  We asked about the craft beers in such detail that our server said, "Hang on, let me go get a beer guide."

I was expecting a sheet of paper or a brochure or something, but instead a man in business casual approached our table and listed their featured local beers: Dominion Oak Barrel Stout (they also make a delicious root beer with pure honey, which we got to try), 16 Mile Amber Sun Ale, Dogfish 90-Minute IPA, and another really hoppy one we both blocked out completely because it sounded so bitter.  We got the stout, which had this smooth vanilla bean aftertaste, and the amber sun ale, which was good but paled in comparison to the stout (literally--ha, ha).  Who would have thought I would be turning into a dark beer kind of girl?

Also, does anyone know if lip prints on glasses can be used to identify people?

Audrey and I were enjoying ourselves, and our beer and our food, so much that it seemed like half the waitstaff was hovering unnecessarily in our area, lingering over table arrangements and such.  We got a triple recommendation for the mascarpone cheesecake, and swooned over it, swooned over our server and swooned over the beer and the beer guide.  Lots of swooning going on.  (How do you get that job, anyway?)  We lingered so long it was 4:00 by the time we left there and the festivities were all winding down.

We decided to wander quickly through the streets in search of The Castle.  Aturret teased us through the neighborhood, peeking occasionally between houses and trees, but ultimately it eluded us, and all we found was this:

Sounds like part of a frat house liturgy, but I think it's just a warehouse company...

I had to work again on Saturday, but after I got home we decided to go out downtown, to Chelsea Tavern, recommended to me by Coffeeshopcrush.  We found it on Market Street, and debated far too long over whether the parking spot we found was actually a parking spot or not...  And then we entered, and we were suddenly surrounded by young adults in Santa hats.

Turns out we had walked into the middle of Wilmington's Santa Crawl, specifically a sect of Rugby Men in Hats.  It's too bad we didn't know about it ahead of time.  They explained it all to us and invited us to jump on their bus, but we had just bought drinks so we said we'd catch up with them.  A really nice girl who was with them told us they were headed to Trolley, so we finished our G&Ts and set off.

The problem is, we didn't know where Trolley Square was.  We tried to follow the Santa Crawl buses but kept getting stuck at red lights while they zoomed on through.  After several variations on a loop around Market Street, we gave up and stopped at Shenanigans, right at the bottom of the hill.

This turned out to be the best decision ever.  Shenanigans is the type of place where the old jukebox has been refurbished and there are dartboards everywhere and the linoleum floor is chipped and scuffed.  The type of place where the bartender (originally from Ireland) tops off your pint when it's looking low.  Maybe I'm behind the boat on this one, but he told us that Yuengling is the oldest brewed beer in America, which is cool.  Audrey had never even tasted it before.  And not so long ago, I used to hate Yuengling.

"It's not every day I pour the last bit of Cuervo for anyone..." - Irish bartender
Note: This is not a drunk photo--we were just laughing too hard to hold still.

We decided around 12:30 that it was time to move on.  The bartender gave us souvenir Shenanigans stress-ball footballs for being out-of-state, despite my DE driver's license.  The guys had given us vague directions to Trolley, so we decided to give it one more shot (not the alcoholic kind--unrelated to the photo) and, if that failed, to go home.

Of course we ended up driving around for at least another half hour, and ended up in some secluded parking lot with no clear affiliated establishment, so thought we'd better hightail it home.

I was sad to drop Audrey off at the bus station on that beautiful Sunday afternoon, but I felt so rejuvenated to have had her here.  My mom even said she was a pick-me-up for the whole house.  One of our themes for the weekend was that we want to work on infusing life into our families, the same way we do into our jobs and our friends.  This takes work!  And it's so easy to get complacent, to hole up on our own in these houses full of people we love, instead of feeding energy into making healthy, happy homes and families.  This is a common danger of ministry, we have seen, and a common downfall of extroverts like ourselves.

But our gift exchange is fulfilling, this trading spontaneous visits and meals and sweatpants and pillow talk.  Audrey brought a flood of rare affection to my life, as usual, and the weekend seemed to just float along like the wind through sea grass and river waves.  So easy, so comfortable, so lovely.  And as usual, we worked through some important things together.

Plus, this weekend sealed the deal for me on Delaware.  I want to keep my George-Washington-the-Explorer hat on and forge the Delaware River for myself, meet the ghosts, drink the beers, and talk the talk. It's happening.  I'm investing.  I'm going to live up to my driver's license.

First step, I should probably get some license plates to match.

...and the sagas continue

I know this is my second post today, but I'm expecting to be somewhat off the grid this weekend, so I wanted to leave you all with some nice fluffy updates.  You might want to ration yourselves ;)

So I'm battling myself over this dumb issue: Coffee.  Unlike most other coffee drinkers, my issue is not being addicted to it, but not being addicted to it.  I want to drink it, because it's really my most legitimate reason to visit Bishop's and Coffeeshopcrush, and also it's so delicious there; but it tends to make me jittery and anxious and sweaty and just in general throws a wrench in my normal physiological and psychological functioning.  (Can I just point out how precariously similar those two words are?  ...OK, moving on.)

While I intend to never stop visiting Bishop's, I have decided to cut down on my caffeine consumption.  This means that I'll have to step up my game on the Coffeeshopcrush front proportionally, if I want to keep getting a return on my investment.  So this afternoon I went in "to buy Christmas gifts" and we talked about books.

This is excellent, because I can talk about books for years and years and years.  I spent the first 14 years of my life, roughly, reading, so I've got a lot of material.  Some amusing facts:

- Somehow both of us somehow missed reading The Catcher in the Rye during our high school English careers, and when he brought this up we both felt suddenly compelled to read it now.

- He has at least 3 copies of Tuesdays With Morrie, which I already mentioned, but I was pumped, because I LOVE that book.  He said it's because he lent it to someone, and then bought another copy thinking he would never get the first one back, and then lent that one to someone else, and got another one to lend to another person, and then eventually got all three of them back.

- I said my version of that book is The Princess Bride, and he cut me off: "That's a BOOK?!  Because seriously, that's my favorite movie of all time."

...Could I be more ecstatic about all of this?

You already know the answer.

The latest episode from the Cricket Saga closely follows the weather.  Now, I feel no remorse for rubbing our 60-degree days in your faces, dear Minnesota and New York readers!  Granted, they have been pretty soggy 60-degree days, but I don't mind that much, especially if I don't have to go anywhere.  Unrealistic, I know.  But still.  And today a cold breeze bit at my neck, but the sun was gloriously golden.

Anyway, I have noticed that the crickets start to emerge at the end of a warm, wet streak.  They are still lethargic and have not been singing much, and I can squash them fairly easily--but I'd better not get overconfident because I missed one the other day that should have been such a sure shot.  I got cocky, that's all.

As the cold streaks get longer and colder, though, the black wasps suddenly appear in my living space.  They seem to be really struggling to stay alive, and a few of them just died on their own, but anyone who has been outside with me knows that I am the wasp's smallest fan.  So I am actually quite pleased with the fact that I have not lost my head over a wasp intrusion, at least in the past month.

Incidentally, months seem to be just flying by lately.  The weeks just fall after each other and everything kind of blurs together...  And as college semesters are finishing up (I ran into a post-finals UD bar crawl this evening in Newark) I'm realizing that nobody really breaks my schedule now but me.  I mean, I could pretty much go on indefinitely in this routine.  For the most part.  At least theoretically.  (See me getting nervous about falling into a rut?  It's a trigger.)  I'm not going to graduate or pass a course or have to go back to school in September ever again, if I don't want to.  That thought simultaneously saddens and liberates me.

The Christmas/Scrooge Saga seems to have hipstered and meta-hipstered its way into conundrum status, as I spent most of my afternoon listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra and trying to decide who sings the best version of Baby, It's Cold Outside.  Meanwhile, I roll my eyes and toast to the other Scrooges and Grinches, pretending like it's not eggnog in our mugs.  (So far, this is merely imagery.  Just to clear that up.)

I'm excited because tonight I met some really cool ladies, an extension of the "That's What She Said" crew from last time--Craig, you've got yourself and the crew blog-dubbed for good now!  I'm thinking we're going to get along and have some good solid fun together, and I couldn't be more pumped.

And speaking of cool ladies, Audrey will arrive by bus from New Haven tomorrow night and isn't leaving until Sunday afternoon!  It's been too long since I've seen her, partly because my last drive that direction was such a shitshow, but also I'm thinking we're both settling in a little more where before our lives were marked by some degree of desperation.  I can't say for sure, having not really talked with her in months (see, there they go again), but that's my hunch.  So this weekend I'm looking forward to just doing whatever with my good friend.  And next time, in the promising throes of 2012, I'm pulling for another CAK reunion.  Queens is calling to me: Come, my love, my faithful subject!  (Get it?  Queens?  "Subject"?)  But I'm not ambitious enough to tackle NYC at Christmastime, even if I could get enough time off work to get up there.

So I leave you, dear readers, hanging from a cliff on the Mount of Saga.  But only for the time being.  I'll be back soon enough to save you from your fate of uncertainty.  Until then, get your own adventure ;)

This might be a good time to mention that I've been considering a new feature on this blog: Guest bloggers.  Believe it or not, I know at least 700 or 800 other people who are also now taking some kind of baby steps, and thinking about them and what they have to do with the rest of their lives.  It would probably just mean an extra post every couple of weeks, depending on how many people get involved.  So keep an eye out for that coming up, and please let me know if you'd like to contribute!  There is nothing too mundane :)

my respects to marc

Last night I found out that one of the Den's kitchen guys died on Saturday.  I know I've only been there for three months or so, and some of the other employees have lived and breathed with this guy for years and years, but it still hit me.  So I'd just like to take a moment to honor his memory, my way.

Marc is one of those people you can't imagine dead.  I guess you can't imagine very many people dead, unless they're in a coma or 125 years old or something.  But he was just so vital.  My standard greeting with the kitchen guys went something like this: "Hey, how you guys doin' tonight?"  "Better when I leave here!  But such is life.  How are you, sweetheart?"  Marc would always add something like, "Better now that you're here!"  "I've been waiting all day for you to show up!  I was just about to leave here but I guess I'll have to stick around now, eh?"  Or when I said, "I'm buzzer #7 tonight, guys," he'd say, "You're number one in my book, gorgeous!"  At this point Theresa would chime in, "He says that to all the girls, don't listen to him!"

I love kitchen banter.

Anyway, as much as he complained about being at work all the time, he was really there, all the time.  You know what I mean?  He moved with confident ease around the restaurant, through the kitchen, nonchalant and rarely showing stress or exhaustion.

He was born the same year as my mom.

You can read a more official obituary here.

Now to give this more substance than the fluffy "larger than life" eulogy, I'm going to refer you back to an essay I wrote last year about my friend Chris and my step-grandma Helen, and then I'm going to raise you one.

Death urges me to reflect on life, and I know I'm not the only one.  (Coffeeshopcrush today told me he has at least 3 copies of the book Tuesdays With Morrie, which I recommend to everyone who hasn't read it yet.  An inspiring outlook on life while waiting for death.)  It's like a slap or a cold bucket of water, especially when I'm not expecting it, a hand pushed in my face by traffic police warning me to take a moment of pause.

I don't cry when I hear that someone has died.  (This sometimes makes for awkward situations, but I guess it makes me a good person to have around in a crisis.)  I don't cry and I remember all too easily that death is a part of life, that it happens to everyone eventually.  I am too quick to say that I am more afraid of living too long than dying too soon.

Still, I'm stopped short by such announcements.  Especially since, after the restaurant took a moment of silent prayer for Marc and his family last night, the band started back up again, and the servers had to start running tables again, and the kitchen guys had to get back to cooking again.  So abrupt.  Unreal.  As if I was watching from inside the old walls.

After Chris died, a friend said, "Why are you so torn up about it?  It seems like you only knew him for like 3 days."  This time, someone said, "That's rough.  It's always hard when someone dies before their time."  I'm upset by these comments, particularly the first one, because despite my tendency to take it all in stride, I do not deign to take death lightly.  I took Death, Dying, and Bereavement.  I know about role holes, or the vacancies left in the lives of survivors after the death of a loved one.  Especially during the holiday season, this is particularly paralyzing.  I know how important it is to grieve, and I know that feeling as though our grief is irrational or irrelevant is a sickening feeling and one that can send a person spiraling into very dark places.

I didn't know Marc well, and probably none of you knew him at all, but I know we've all, for the most part, suffered some kind of loss in our lives.  So I ask you all to Pause for the Universe (thank you, Liz, for the phrase); Pause for your own Loved and Lost; and Pause for Marc.

timestamp.

... hard to concentrate ... you read me like a book (I read with my hands) ... toma ... likealittle ... naked hula-hooping, the first and the last time ... snowflake extravaganza ... the time Alice spilled a cup of coffee on Brigid in government class and the poor girl had to wear a collection of everyone's gym clothes for the rest of the day ... doomtree blowout v, the two-door and the astrovan ... land shark, smirnoff ice, capital brewery, fosters ...


Yesterday I spent my evening ticking things off my list, and it was great.  But after hours of sending text messages about minor details that sparked profound memories, listening to songs that made me feel something from another time; after a conversation about staying in and getting out of relationships; after responding to the "too much reminiscing" comments with a semi-self-deprecating and melodramatic "I don't really know how to make new memories..."  Well, after all that, the thought struck me that, maybe, I live in the past.

With the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future hovering so close this time of year, this thought is not entirely a surprising one.  And as it turns out, today, all astrological signs point to an unusual fixation with these abstract divisions of time.  Especially Saggitarius--check me out: Some people are disturbed by thoughts of the future. Not you. You know it will be better than the present because you keep getting more and more savvy about how to make it so.

Sidenote: Certain person(s) like to remind me that I'm more Scorpio than I think, since I am, after all, a cusp baby, and there is no doubt some truth to this statement.  However, I have long committed myself to Saggitarius status--a la Harry Potter and the Sorting Hat.


...Please, Scorps, focus on the concept behind that analogy and not the fact that, by default, I just compared Scorpio to Slytherin.  That's not what I'm trying to say at all.


My point, to tie it back, is that my commitment to my zodiac sign is yet another lingering legacy of the Past.  So, moving on...


My dad told me once that I live so fully in the present moment that it's hard for some people to follow.  I must have been 12 or 13.  That character judgment, at least at the time, I think, reflected my ideals more than my reality.  And it perhaps became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In any case, the comment stuck with me, and I have spent years appreciating, sometimes painfully, my current situations.  I have worried whether living in the present makes me a hedonist, and whether it would be such a bad thing if I was, if it meant I could be fully in the moment all the time.  (Beneath this mostly ridiculous worry lies my ancestral moral foundation. But I have a post in the works on that topic, so I won't go into that right now.)

Yet, despite my most poetic "be here now" idealism, here I am, a Dweller.  My ghosts are swarming, Christmases Past clamouring for their place in front of the ghosts of non-Christmases Past.  It's a little hard to see them clearly through the whiteout of 22 snows, give or take; but there are special gifts and romantic moments and a few faces I couldn't see again in person no matter how many frequent flier miles I had.  A lot of tears and disappointments and a lot of Beautiful Moments too.

Christmas Present is pretty straightforward: It's wrapped up under the tree and every day leading up to Christmas, when you think nobody's looking, you shake it to try to guess what it is, and just hope it's not particularly fragile.

OK, OK, enough (lame) jokes.  My Ghost of Christmas Present is pretty sparkly overall despite the fact that many of the loves of my life are scattered far and wide (and I dream about them) and I would accumulate a space-travel-worthy number of frequent flier miles if I did manage to visit them all.  Ask me how things are going and what I've been up to lately and my mind goes blank.  I shrug and reply, "Good" and "Nothing...  Not much at all, and nothing of substance."

I was talking to my friend Steve recently and I mentioned that I've never really been able to envision my future in any of my past relationships.  I know some people who had to reconstruct their entire life in goals and visions after breaking up with a significant other.  Maybe my relationships just haven't been very long in the overall scheme of things, or maybe I've erased those visions as a coping mechanism.  I sometimes suspect, though, that one scar I bear is future-blindness.  I don't trust the future enough to depend on it.  And so I struggle to make plans.

Now, I say I'm scarred and you think the worst.  But I'm still young, and I've never undergone any major surgeries, or any minor surgeries for that matter.  Scars signify to me that something happened and you survived, and you're more interesting because of it.  If you think I'm naive for this belief, rejoice that I have not been irreparably paralyzed by hurt and try to remember what that feels like.  It's liberating.

So, my future is undependable.  My present is too dependable.  By default the past is all that's left.  We suit each other perfectly.  It's always there when I need it, but it doesn't hang around or get clingy.  It doesn't love me too much and in fact it knows just where to hit me so it realllly hurts.  On the flip side, it also knows all the best spots to kiss me and make it better.  Perhaps most appealing is that it changes to fit my needs and my current situation...

And here we get rolled up in the conundrum of past, present, and future: None of them actually exist, except in the present.  That's awesome.  Hedonist or not, I can't escape the timestamp on my perceptions.  (Case in point: I wrote most of this post on scrap paper at the restaurant earlier this evening, and by the time I got it out and got home and got to my computer it seemed irrelevant already.  Ha.)

I guess it still is relevant because I'm twenty-something and I have my whole life ahead of me and part of what is so difficult and daunting about this is that I need to know my trajectory if I'm going to be able to follow it.  Or at least that's what they're telling me.  Apparently what makes life worth living is still to come, you know, eventually having a nice house and a nice car and a nice husband and nice kids.  We could easily get religious here and say Heaven is what makes it all worthwhile, or Nirvana or whatever.  It's starting to feel more normal to think about "forever" now, to think about myself or my friends spending "forever" with some other specific person, to predict my career path as something that starts here and now and continues on indefinitely, to feel exhausted by life-extending medicine and the thought of life without death.  But can't we do things now for the sake of doing them now?  That doesn't make us aimless hedonists, does it?

I'd better stop before I get in an argument with myself over moral psychology.  This has been pretty rambling and academic and self-absorbed, but please weigh in if you have thoughts or experiences with this.  I have a hunch I'm not completely out in right field here.

scrooge

I had an entirely different blog post planned out for today, with a transition from the last one and article references and shoutouts all included.  Then I read my dear friend Stephen's latest post and it changed everything.

Let me play Grinch for a second and say that I'm not a huge fan of the holiday season.  Starting after Halloween, my die-hard Delilah fandom turns into a fiery hatred for the entire light rock radio station, when it replaces my beloved all-American hits with cheesy and repetitive Christmas music.  I hate shopping anytime and anywhere there are more than 5 people in line, which does not bode well for my Christmas shopping.

A friend of mine from Germany once confided in me that she used to think Americans were outrageous gluttons until she met me and the other SAGE students--thanks to the movie Jingle All the Way, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, about a father who pretty much destroys his city to get his hands on the action figure that was the only acceptable Christmas gift for his young son.  "Now I know that's completely ridiculous!" she said, but I cut her laughter short with a story about the time I was in the hospital with chicken pox until 10:30pm on Christmas Eve, 1996.  I had the sweetest nurse, who felt so bad for me spending my Christmas vacation in the hospital that she would always bring me baby T-shirts for my favorite doll, fun activities to do in my hospital bed, and other cute hospital paraphernalia.  She was in tears the night I went home (although I didn't find out until later) because she had bought me a Tickle-Me-Elmo for Christmas (hot toy of the year) and another nurse stole it out of her locker.

I'm STILL devastated thinking of this.  Not because I give a shit whether I have a Tickle-Me-Elmo or not (who even remembers those things anymore anyway), but because I can't believe anyone cares so much about SHIT to steal something out of a nurse's locker at the hospital!  Let's not get into pepper spray or people trampling each other at Walmart to grab something first without even knowing what it is.

Believe it or not, I could tell you other things I dislike about the Christmas season...  But I won't Scrooge you any longer about it.

Because Stephen is one of the people with whom it is impossible for me to hate it.  He doesn't make fun of me for the fact that Mariah Carey's Christmas albums are the only ones I like.  In fact, we compete for who can sing along louder.  He makes the best Christmas cookies and doesn't set limits on how many you're allowed to eat in one sitting.  He looks really handsome in ugly Christmas sweaters, and is the most cute in his chic pea coat and wintery accessories.  Also, his perpetually adorable dimples literally sparkle when they get snowflakes in them.  (Sorry to put you on the spot, Stephen, but I only speak the truth.)

Last year I lived and breathed with half of the St. Olaf Orchestra's cello section, so I couldn't really escape the Christmasfest spirit even if I wanted to.  (I'm not that much of a Scrooge, though, don't worry.)  We invited a ridiculous number of our closest friends to a Snowflake Extravaganza in our pod, and I actually had a really good time, although I think I was late...  I might have to work a little harder to bring that kind of Christmas spirit to my life this year.  My family isn't really that big on traditions that don't involve some sort of oddly-timed church service.

SO MANY LOVES OF MY LIFE IN THIS ROOM <3 

One thing I do like about Christmas is coming up with awesome gifts for people I love.  I started gathering gifts at least a month ago, which I'm very proud of, although I haven't made much progress lately...  I have a few excellent items on my shopping list this year, and in my craft box.

Right now I've got a lot of things stashed around my room and I've been meaning to wrap them all--but last week it suddenly occurred to me we don't have a Christmas tree yet!  Which is odd since the tree, and all the boxes of decorations, were overflowing the Greco's living room last weekend.  So, in a familiar pattern, I made a passing comment to my dad about it, who took me very seriously and made plans to go pick out a tree today.  I'm really excited actually, and I am not ashamed to say that I spent some time this morning thinking about what I would wear on this holiday-themed excursion.  Oddly enough, it's been sunny and warm more often than not lately, and this morning (December 3rd, if I might remind you) I was driving around town in a T-shirt with all my windows down in the car.  What is going on around here?!

Anyway, I decided that my hiking boots, which are still covered in mud from frisbee last weekend, would be the most practical footwear for this job.  Plus, they match my leather jacket which looks awesome with a red scarf, hat and gloves that I also plan to wear.  You can make fun of me if you want, but we all know that Christmas tree farms pose an unusual fire hazard, with all that romance sparking among the pines, so it's important to look your holiday-movie best when completing this ritual.  You know, in case someone has to put out the blaze with his lips or something.

Ahem.  I am not so delusional, but this is the first year I've managed to stay awake to the end of Love Actually since freshman year, when I watched it pretty much every time I did laundry.  Let's just say I'm starting to believe in love again, and I dare to hope again that, someday, I will kiss someone under a streetlamp in a dusting of snow.  I remember freshman year, Thanksgiving break, driving with some friends to the Cities, where all the trees along the sidewalks downtown are wrapped in coils of Christmas lights, and little fires are lit inside of street corner pedestals.  Mang Boy jumped up to light his cigarette in one of them, and I felt momentarily paralyzed by one of the Beautiful Moments that comprise my life in images.  There was something so raw and real and imperfect about his cigarette in the cold and the brand-new snow that made Christmas, in all its hypocrisy, feel relevant and true-to-life.  And I guess that's what I'm looking for.

My spirits are high now.  I'm going to go with my family to pick out a Christmas tree, and then I'm going to wrap the presents I already have and stick them underneath it.  I'm not going to drown out the Christmas music with complaints or by breathing fire or anything, and sometime today I'm going to dig up the Christmas lights from the bottom of my yet-to-unpack boxes and hang them around my room.

Thanks, Stephen.  Even from thousands of miles away you still share Christmas better than anyone I know.

As a matter of interest, St. Olaf's Christmasfest will be simulcast nationwide TOMORROW, Dec. 4.  Find it in a theater near you.

getting social

So today I finally started the Conversation with Coffeeshopcrush.  I mean, after the customary enter-and-talk-small, and after he remembered that I like 2% milk, even though I haven't been by in over a week.  I said, "So I've got a question for you.  Where is your favorite place to drink beer?"  Get right down to the point, I say.

In the middle of the conversation I turned around and there was this small boy glaring up at me like an angry cartoon child, so unfortunately we should hurry it up.  But before I left he got out of me that I went to school in Minnesota, and he said, "You don't have an accent..."  I love when this is the first thing people say when I tell them I went to school in Minnesota.  I laughed.  "That's because I've tried to cover it up."

"It's not bad, though," he said.  "It sounds so wholesome!"

Wholesome.

I talked to Lisa on my birthday and she accused me of talking like an East Coaster, though, which I'm tickled about.  I will acknowledge the fact, for accuracy's sake, that she has been holding her breath for me to get my East Coast Twang back, so she might be rushing it a bit.  But I've started calling people "hon," which is what people do around here, so I may blend in yet.

Anyway, I got a scoop on places to go outside the college 'hood, which is also positive.

I also hit up my second Wilmington open mic last night, and got another scoop from a Wilmo native: "Have you been to the Valley?"

Now, I will just say that calling something "The _____" is a great way to get me interested.  It's just so beautifully mundane.  Doesn't "The Valley" usually refer to someplace in California?  I'm not sure, but there are valleys EVERYWHERE.  On the other hand, when I went to Maryland that one time I said, "I'm just surrounded by highways," and everyone there said, "Yeah, and it's just so flat."

The Valley in the Flatlands.  So intrigued.

It's on my list.  Sounds like a good place for a picnic.

I think I might have actually driven through there, and it's a part of Delaware that is so lush, with old winding roads and crumbling stone bridges.  He said earlier in the fall, when the sun still comes through and the leaves haven't dropped, is the best time to go.  "Just drive around back there for awhile and you'll see what I mean," he said.

This is exactly why I wanted so badly to find an open mic.  Because I went there, got myself a drink, and slid into an empty booth.  And after about 2 minutes, a couple of guys burst in the door and suddenly my booth was full of guys and coats and books and even a guitar.

It wasn't totally random, because we'd keyed into each other last time.  We liked each other's words.  This is one of my favorite ways to connect with people.  That creative circuitry is just so exhilarating.  And it makes me feel more grounded and comfortable with loving language when other people are twirling the shit out of it too.

There's something about poetry that opens up your soul to the other people in the room.  It's like, these people know what it means to love.  And what it means to suffer.  I remember reading this Kafka essay senior year of high school--I mean, let's be honest.  I don't remember reading that essay, but I remember this one line, at the bottom of some random page in the middle of all that depressing existential babble, that basically claimed that poets feel the world's suffering in an intensity far beyond the experiences of an average human being.  I think he meant "poets" in a loose sense, but I don't think he was that far off.  A lot of the poets I know are really intense people.

I realized suddenly, as though my pages slapped me in the face, that I have mostly performed old pieces.  And the more time goes by, the older they get.  I haven't written a lot of new stuff in years, nothing worth performing, anyway.  What I have written can mostly be found on scrap message paper, kitchen slips, paper bags, and napkins, and they're all clipped together next to my bed and none of them are finished.

I feel like I'm on the verge of decoding a new Rosetta stone, except this one is a message sent from my future self that I have to crack.  Like all of these little snippets of poetry will somehow, not literally, but conceptually get taped together into the True Revelations Of My Life As It Is Now.  Which is definitely different than it was in 2008, when I wrote Confessions.  I'm not trying to be condescending to the earlier versions of myself, but there is at least one new layer to me now.  Probably a few new layers, considering everything that has happened since I was cranking out all kinds of cadenced masterpieces with widespread appeal.  I'll get there eventually, I guess.  Until then, I've got a new genre to work through.  So enjoy, my lucky readers ;)

So, in reverse, that was Thursday, Wednesday...  Tuesday I went to the Y with my mom and we just chilled in our own little elliptical worlds for awhile.  As Mutti said on our way out, "There was a lot of testosterone flying around in that room tonight."  True.  I was kind of loving it, to be honest.  But there was this one kind of small guy bouncing around looking really chipper, with those South American laugh lines I find so comforting.  All those guys in the free weights area always look so stiff and serious, but this guy was almost dancing.  He walked in front of me, caught my eye, and smiled.  Such an easy, open smile.  Unassuming.

He was lifting next to the paper towel dispenser when I finished, so I threw caution to the wind and said, "You have a really nice smile."  He flashed it again, looking delighted.  Then he casually lingered while I put my rainboots back on, cleared his throat, "You also have a... beautiful smile."  And then he pulled out my favorite line: "Do you come here often?"  Except it was a legitimate question.  The best.  Really.  His name is Daniel, and that's the story of my first non-staff introduction at the Y.