nights of the (sort of) round table

I started this post last night right after getting up from the dinner table. A particularly full dinner table, with 8 chairs crammed around it.

We've always been a family of 6, and we've always been an infamously spirited family of 6. Tonight we were discussing the possibilities of a superpower that would allow us to switch off gravity in a predefined period of time within a certain area. Then Maria said, "People who have more birthdays live longer." And while we were all chuckling about that, Papa chimed in, "And odds are, if your parents couldn't have kids then you won't be able to either."

And then Mutti said, "...Didn't we have this same conversation a few days ago?"

On other nights we talk about linguistics, or architecture, or theology, or medicine. Or we talk about books we're reading and movies we've seen or want to see. We try to make plans and usually fail because of how impossible it is to coordinate 6 busy schedules full of life and ambition. We tell funny stories and bad jokes. We work through our issues, personal or collective. As cliche as it may sound, the dinner table is the place where our family status gets resolidified. Sitting down to eat, and, more importantly, to laugh together, does the same thing for our family as renewing vows does for married couples. It's like checking our vitals, syncing our personal devices to the familial network.

Sometimes other people join us at the table and we realize how completely strange our dinner table conversations are, and how intense we can be to people who don't yet know the ropes.

Case in point, my sister's boyfriend got an essay published in Teen Ink about meeting the family, his first supper at our house. He talks about feeling justifiably intimidated as we all haphazardly gathered around the table (typical) and then how that anxiety melted away as he realized we were just real, raucous people. Now he verbally spars with the best of us, rises to the occasion.

Another friend of my sister's was lucky enough to be present at a family dinner where the conversation somehow got steered to the logistics of a career in pole dancing, with side stories about the time my dad had to guess a Sensosketch (drawing with your eyes closed) of a "string bikini" at a youth group game night. (He didn't guess it.) Our visitor sat at the head of the table looking mildly shell-shocked, but laughing; and on the way home he mentioned, with typical quiet intellectualism, that we are "interesting" people -- but in a good way.

Friday was J's birthday, so on Saturday I went to have family dinner at his house. I was struck, as a relative outsider, by the warmth of the family table, the passing and sharing of food and, again, laughter. I don't think this is mere coincidence. That kind of intentional time spent together, gathered in a place, facing each other, is an opportunity for care, to nourish not only our bodies but our souls.

My family has been known to sit literally for hours after all of us are full, after all the food is gone and all the plates are clean and the clock strikes whatever ungodly hour. (We have also been known, on more than one occasion, to sit down to eat after 10:00 pm, so I guess the "after dark" thing isn't really a surprise.) Despite all the ruckus lately about headlines reading, STUDIES DEBUNK "FAMILY DINNER" MYTH: CHILDREN WHO EAT DINNER WITH THEIR FAMILIES STILL GET ADDICTED TO DRUGS! ...I still think that our family is a functional one because we eat together.


Because we enjoy our food together. We share our gratefulness that there is something on the table, and that it is usually delicious, and that we have people we love to share it with. I really think it boils down to the fact that we laugh together. And my sisters have mentioned on multiple occasions that the dinner table is where we hash things out. That's where we make plans, and work through issues, and take votes on major family decisions, like when and where to go on vacation, or whether it's time to move. It's the only time and place we all set aside (at least one or two nights a week, now that we're all older and busier) to be present with each other. When we were little dinnertime was the only time we didn't answer the phone, on principle. Our family has committed, for 25 years, to being with each other as we share the gifts we have been given.

And what I like about this now is that we have spent a long time building up our family dinner foundation, so that now we gladly invite others to join us, to be grateful with us, to enjoy food with us, to laugh with us. They bring new jokes and facts and topics of interest and even new tastes to the spread.

We are all infinitely richer for it.

elements

I am feeling pretty all-American this week. Friday afternoon I went to a baseball game, courtesy of work. I spent yesterday at the beach with the fam, and today is Father's Day. We're not planning on grilling, and we're not beer-drinkers, but we ARE ice cream people. So to Woodside Creamery it is.

Yesterday I also got stung by a bee (my worst fear) on the inside of my right wrist (most tender spot ever). It's not as stiff or swollen or red as it was yesterday, but now it itches like the dickens.

The cool part about this is how resilient our bodies are. Bee-stings irritate our skin, and even inside our skin, because they have poison in them. They are strategically designed to protect the hive, kamikaze-style, by doing damage to intruders who are often much larger than the bees themselves. I am fortunately not allergic to stings, but that tiny stinger embedded in my wrist laid out my dominant arm for an entire day. The inside of my wrist hurt. I imagined the bones and muscles screaming against the venom, and felt my body rushing to the aid of the injured limb.

But today, I woke up to find the sting pinched up zit-style. Overnight, while I slept, my body collected the venom and pushed it toward the injury site. "Thanks for coming, see you never!" my immune system calls out after it. And I've been awed once again, as I am continually since the extraction of my wisdom teeth: Every morning I wake up and feel more normal, feel my body rushing to get the evidence of trauma cleared up and back to business. I'm sure I've shared this before, but my grandfather the doctor once comforted me by saying, "Our bodies are pretty amazing. They can mostly take care of themselves... It's just sometimes they need a little help."

That being said, I've been looking forward to going to the beach all week. I always feel cleaner after a run-in with salt water. I always feel fresher and haler and tougher. Maybe because my mom always said salt water (and kisses) have healing powers. I wholeheartedly believe that, and will testify in an exhilarated heartbeat to the truth in that statement. And in spite of bee stings and bird poop (yes, I got hit with that shit yesterday too) and humblingly huge waves, I do feel healed and re-energized.

Speaking of humblingly huge waves, and of being re-energized, and Father's Day, my dad always says the beach is where he feels most alive. He pines for it 12 months out of the year. He makes career decisions based on proximity to the ocean. This year, he even suggested we take a family trip down to Rehoboth in Februrary. His eyes light up any time he has the chance to tell stories about a half-century's worth of trips to beaches around the world. Even though a lot of them are sobering testament to the dark side of water and its overwhelming power.

Yesterday he brought up a conversation he'd had with someone about the duality of every element, the constructive and destructive powers held by water and fire specifically, but by all the elements. "It says something about us, which element we identify with," he said. "I definitely identify with water." We both turned silently to watch the uncharacteristically huge waves crashing on top of each other and across each other and in quick succession, and the dwindling number of beachgoers who dared to face them or ride them in. My brother joined us a moment later, having fought his way back to the foaming shallows, warning that the undertow was getting stronger.

While I let the salt water soothe my sting and buff my tiredness away with every crashing wave, the lifeguards had a busy day dragging bold swimmers back to shore against the stubborn sucking tide. Fewer and fewer bodysurfers dared catch these waves as the afternoon wore on and I, a strong swimmer with strokes built in ocean waves, feared the currents I knew I couldn't fight. I went out once but stayed in knee-depth water after I had to tumble into shore on a big wave since I couldn't face the drag otherwise. This roiling sea, like the floods of Hurricane Irene back in August, perfectly pared the element's soothing qualities against its disturbing ones. We regard both sides of that divide with awe: It cleans and it drowns. Same with the other classical elements: we have campfires and forest fires; windchimes and tornadoes; gardens and earthquakes.

There is also duality in deadlines. The limitations they impose help us to get things done, keep us moving forward; but they also cause stress and, sometimes, bring good things to an end.

I created this blog in May of 2011 and promised to update it a few times a week for the first year after college graduation. That year is over. So do I stop writing in the name of discipline?

In the past year, I have wrestled publicly with moving, at least twice; looking for jobs, twice; starting new jobs; dating; getting over; missing people and places; traveling; making new friends, and taking old friendships into a new context; being robbed; car trouble; money trouble; medical trouble; church; and perhaps a thousand other things. I have written about these things in part to process them, to figure out life as I now live it, to separate the things I know how to deal with from the things I don't even know how to begin to deal with.

But more importantly, I have written a post-grad blog to maintain connections with those scattered souls who are doing the same things as I am doing, or variations of the same things, at least. I hope to put words to our common struggles and victories, to remind my peers and myself that we are not alone. I have continued to post these past few weeks because little has changed: our post-grad experience has not ended. We continue to face unfamiliar situations, and we continue to take in new things we need to figure out. We continue to be hit with the duality of elements, we continue to rejoice and to mourn, and life goes on.

I could pose the same question about life as I did about reading a couple of posts ago: is it better as an individual or a shared experience? But it would be futile. Life is a shared experience.

A lot of us are facing a second round of changes, as service corps placements wrap up, leases run out, grad school approaches, knots get tied (this summer brings a hearty round of weddings for Class of 2011 grads). Is this our third set of baby steps? Maybe we are starting to walk more confidently, to take longer strides. But in my opinion it's still nice to fall into step with someone else. And as long as it is mutually helpful and joyful for me to share my footfalls, I don't see how I can quit. Writing is my sanity.

Over the next few weeks I'm hoping to make some changes to the blog, the way it looks, the features and labels and organization... I'm thinking about making a Facebook page. I might try to write shorter/more on-the-fly posts, and I'm trying to figure out blogger for mobile, which so far proves pretty un-user-friendly. I want to stay true to the core spirit of the blog, but to grow it up a little to match the steps we've taken since graduation. Some things will definitely change. But don't worry -- I'll keep you posted.

love in the time of fists and choler

When you look back on your college years, you won't remember doing homework. You'll remember studying abroad, volunteering, playing sports, participating in student organizations, [not remembering at least a few "last nights,"] and spending time with your friends. 

- American proverb

I woke up yesterday morning on a crinkly bedbug-protected mattress on the floor in a guest room of what I know as Karin's Convent. Audrey rolled over on the mattress next to me, and instead of getting up and booking it over to Brooklyn Bagel, we talked for at least an hour about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

And then we got up and booked it to Brooklyn Bagel.

Anyway, somewhere in the course of that conversation it occurred to me that I really don't remember doing ANY homework.

Those who know me might legitimately question whether that's because I really didn't do any homework or if all the papers and projects and case studies and readings just melted into the hectic humdrum of the Life of a Lib Artiste.

Judging by the fact that I did in fact manage to pass college, and by the blank look on Audrey's face that mirrored my own awe at the sudden, tangible truth of this cliche, and the fact that my grandparents are still (for some reason) proud of me and also read my blog, I'm going to say it's the latter.

And yes, I will begrudgingly acknowledge that there are some other, more notable experiences throughout my college career that overshadowed the time we spent doing homework. (I almost wrote, "time spent in the library," but to be honest I don't even remember where I used to do my homework, and I remember the library pretty well. Using the logic I gained presumably from doing my homework, I can infer that my time spent in the library was not homework time. Weird...?)

In the process of writing this post I made a list of a few things I do remember from my college years, which I will not share because if I do then none of you will buy my memoirs in the future, and also because you would get pretty bored pretty quick. But my favorite thing on the list so far is watching "The Bachelor" with a living room full of friends at a house called Huggs.

The name of the house was entirely coincidental; but it is not a coincidence that our driving subject of conversation this weekend was love. Specifically, open-handed love. Inviting-the-fickle-and-fateful-whims-of-the-universe love. Agendaless love.

The kind of love my mind doesn't like to wrap itself around.

But, as Audrey so wisely and beautifully put it, "You have such a range of motion when your hands are open. When they're closed, the only thing they can do is punch."

I would like to add that closed hands tend to grab things. Like a baby who gets hold of a chunk of your hair. Infant vice grip = pain.

Closed hands don't really facilitate the most love-inspiring activities.

And as I discovered this sunny Sunday morning, I struggle to understand and accept open-handed love. Which is ironic since as a baby I used to sleep belly-up, hands fallen open at my sides. Now, though, they spend most of their time in various degrees of curled up. But throughout the course of this conversation Audrey gently took my hands (literally and figuratively) and opened them up, smoothed out the crinkles and the clenched knuckles and the terse palm.

And just in time, too.

By evening I was back at home and on my way out the door to see Jason when I noticed some dental insurance letterhead sticking out of the pile of mail on the kitchen counter. I pulled it out, expecting the relief I'd been promised the week before my surgery, but what I saw shook my hands and closed my throat and churned my stomach. I felt like I was going to puke. Covered by insurance: 0.00. Patient responsibility: Over $2,500.

Now, this is really getting to me. I am upset that the original estimated amount I would have to pay, and a condition of me going ahead with the surgery, ended up being less than one third of the final amount that now falls under my responsibility. I am upset at the fact that it will take me months to pay this off, even if I give up every penny of my paychecks until I'm out of the red. I'm upset that at the very least I will have to give up some things I wanted to do this summer and into the fall because of this outstanding balance. These are my selfish complaints.

On a fundamental, societal level, though, I am angry that a fairly routine and preventative procedure is so financially out of reach for me, someone in a stable financial position, to say nothing for the millions of people in this country who struggle to make ends meet. I am angry that nowhere in the surgery office is there a posted list of prices: anesthetic, single tooth extraction, extra dose of anesthetic, stitches, markup for skill and precision. Nowhere in the pharmacy nor the GP's office are those costs posted either. I am angry that income influences so many doctors' decisions to enter the medical field, and that income influences so many families' decisions to stay out of those doctors' offices at all costs, until they can no longer put off a trip to the emergency room. By this time it is too often too late.


[Note: For an easy, enjoyable read that addresses a lot of these societal factors, check out T.R. Reid's The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.]

I'm angry for the people I know bearing the burden of exorbitant medical bills on top of the burden of pain and illness those bills could not cure or even ease. I'm angry for families left with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills to fill the void left by the death of a loved one who couldn't have been saved with millions. I'm angry that health insurance is so expensive, so exclusive, and so apparently worthless (if my personal experience in the last 8 months is any indication). I am angry that business owners oppose healthcare reform because of the added cost it will place on their straining bank books. (I understand the threat this added cost can pose, but where does the cost come from? Something is wrong here.)

I'm angry that this country is growing increasingly obese, increasingly over-medicated, and increasingly polarized in political debates about public health. Public health. The very title indicates an issue that affects every constituency in the nation. People in every party die of cancer, stroke and heart disease. People in every party get colds and break bones and live with chronic diseases.

I am saddened by all of these things, and perhaps most of all saddened by the fact that there is no easy fix, that there is something broken in our system that I can't pinpoint, cannot package into the perfect legislation, cannot encapsulate in a widespread activist campaign. There is something broken in our system and it is too broken to fix itself. And I don't know what to do about it.

Anyway, I tried to contain this wave of anger and sadness and general unrest by fleeing to the basement to gather my things and my thoughts. But it wasn't going away. It's not just going to go away.

A few moments later my dad came down the stairs after me, and my impulse was to push him away. But I thought of Audrey opening my hands, and tried not to resist.

"You're not going to have to pay that," he said. And I launched into all the health-related angers and sadnesses and general upsets I just spelled out here. And his reply was something along the lines of, "Yes, but don't lose hope yet. Don't lose control. Just go there tomorrow and try to sort it out."

"But I don't have TIME!" I broke down.

"I do," he said. "I don't have to work tomorrow. Let me go for you."

I shook my head. "I don't have time or money to deal with this right now!"

"I have time!" he said again, more forcefully this time. "Let me do it."

"But I want to take care of it MYSELF!" I wailed, collapsing like I was 6 again and feeling like the world was caving in on me.

At which point my dad just burst out laughing, and squashed me into his arms. "You've been taking care of everything yourself since you were 15," he said. "You've been taking care of some things since you were 2." (That's the year my brother was born.) "I want to help you. I want to take care of some things for you. We are a community and a family and that's what we do. We help each other and take care of each other. You don't have to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, all by yourself."

And suddenly I felt my hands unclench. Literally and figuratively. I felt this wave of universal whim swirl around us and it made me dizzy, so dizzy, but in that corkscrew I caught a glimpse of love sans agenda. Hands spread wide, flat, open. Reaching out toward my fists and waiting. Just waiting, so patiently, for my stubborn flailing fists that might just keep pulling farther and farther away forever.

I'm still terrified of this. I'm still working on faith and I'm still working out the kinks in my palm, tied up in there from years and maybe even decades of clenching and punching and pulling. I still cringe when someone approaches me open-handed. But I am starting to understand. I am circling closer every time, and I am finding it easier to resist biting the hand that feeds me. Open. Agendaless. I know that I am very lucky to have many sets of open hands around me, despite my thorns and bristles. There are too many hands to count.

pressing questions of a word nerd

I want to run something by you guys.

Months ago, I read an article on PRdaily.com called How to improve your writing in 15 minutes. I read articles like this because they keep my wordcrafting muscles toned and agile, and sometimes there are good tips. (Tip for my fellow writer friends: PRdaily has a lot of good articles about writing, so if you want to stay sharp, check out their writing exercises and word-nerd features.)

Anyway, leave it to me to get more out of the example than out of the article itself. I got hooked on the example topic: "How to become a better communicator." In particular, the third talking point under step 1, "Read often so you're able to speak confidently about a number of topics."

At the time it struck me that I OD'ed on this in college, being able to speak confidently on tons of different topics, because at any given time I was taking 3-4 classes in which that was how we spent our time: reading (or in my case, "reading") lots of books and articles, and talking about them.

Actually, I've been doing this my whole life. My lifelong book addiction hooked me up with a love of language, an outlandish vocabulary, an atrophic social life up to age 14, the most random pockets of expertise you can imagine, and something to contribute to almost any conversation. The difference has been mainly what I read. As a 6-year-old, it was Babysitter's Little Sister; at 8 I devoured Encyclopedia Brown; the summer before middle school I burned through the juvenile fiction and into the YA section at my local library, and then housed Harry Potter interspersed with the entire bibliographies of Madeleine L'Engle and Philip Pullman, and the misadventures of Georgia Nicolson, until I graduated high school. In college it was a lot of heavy academic stuff, philosophy and social theory and ethnographies (a genre I still get jazzed about even though most academic literature makes me gag and pass out).

Now? I read PRdaily meta-articles about writing. I read post-grad and travel blogs. I read vampire novels bought as a ploy to get me to go on dates with coffeeshop crushes. I read Facebook terms and advertising guidelines, New York Times and Huff Post articles about the impending apocalypse, and interview tips. And I read the nerdiest book you would have never heard about if Borders hadn't gone out of business and madly sold their entire inventory for $2.

It's called The Great Typo Hunt and it's about two dudes who go on a Pan-American road trip documenting and correcting typos in the name of better communication across the nation.

Yes, I'll be the first to admit what a honking big word nerd I am.

So a few weeks ago I was sitting in my car on my lunch break, reading this book, and I thought, "This is pretty good for a mediocre book." And then I realized what I had just thought and my head snapped up. I am loving this book. It makes me laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis, and I've actually had to close it a few times on something that blew my mind so I couldn't focus on reading anymore, and I needed to process it for a few days before picking the book back up. Also, I kind of love travel writing. Holy Cow!: An Indian Adventure, for example, or Eat Pray Love, in spite of all the criticism. (Yes, those are Goodreads links. Feel free to friend me.)

So why would I file it away in my mind as "mediocre"?

In that moment, I decided I put it there for its obscurity. The fact that I didn't hear about it through the grapevine, and in fact I had never heard about it before, and didn't know anyone else who had read it either. I couldn't talk about this book. It would be complicated to reference in conversation because I would have to explain the whole principle, or give a synopsis and include a link to its webpage if I wanted to mention it in a blog post.

Is it prior text status that takes a book from mediocre or good to great? Does the shared experience of having read some 300 pages, the shared familiarity with characters and plotlines and settings, make a book a favorite? Is this why we recommend books to fellow lit-lovers? So we can talk about them, and thus bump the book we enjoyed into greatness, among the monuments of our formative experiences?

Tell me what you think. I'm dying to be back at school to be around people that like talking about such things, but I'm not. So PLEASE hit me up with thoughts and comments.

"There's 2 parties in here, and us.
...We're a party. Let's be honest."

Meanwhile, I will mention that I spent Sunday in Philly's Chinatown in search of flaming drinks, lotto tickets, fortune cookies, and a great birthday for my girl Kristy. We found all of those things. Like a boss.

Also, my phone (i.e. my life in device form) decided to go swimming in the cat bowl on Monday, and I've just now turned it on after a 2-day rice bath. It's just graced my ears with a symphony of message alerts, so here's hoping there will be photos in future posts.

Though I will never admit this if you ask me in conversation, my life is never boring.

when things go up in flames...

Today my sister graduated high school.

Congrats, Maria & Brandon!

I have enjoyed recently being the Enforcer of Rites of Passage. There is something compelling to me about the cliches of prom, graduation, and all the photos and speeches. I made sure Maria took the obligatory Awkward Prom Photo, and I took notes on the speeches at her graduation ceremony.

The principal found a fan in me with his message: "Find your own definitions of success." I appreciated the recognition that different people need different things out of life, and that there are many respectable ways to live well. Mr. Murphy offered 3 definitions of successful people:

1. Those who dedicate their lives in service to others
2. Those who find their call, do what they love, spend their lives doing good work and doing it happily
3. Those who get up every single day, no matter how tired or out of sorts they feel, to go to work and support their family, to care for the people they love.

I know that many of my fellow St. Olaf graduates feel pressure to fulfill a certain definition of success; scathingly, "getting a high profile job, making enough money to give generously to the College, and changing the world."

I also read a commencement speech referencing a quote that really stopped me short:

“One of my favorite quotes is this: ‘For every 10 people who can handle adversity, there is only one who can handle success.’” – - Dom Capers, Green Bay defensive coordinator, University of Mount Union (Ohio)

Only 1 in 10 people who become successful can handle it. What a strange and frightening concept, when much of the world spends lifetimes working to achieve this Pinnacle of Societal Acceptance. Working to Win.

Dom Capers explained that once a person reaches his or her ultimate goal, ultimate success, that person has to spend the rest of their life defending that position, protecting themselves against those who would try to take it away, trying to avoid the pitfalls that accompany wealth and the anomie of no longer having something to work toward.

But to me, success is a process, a state of being. It requires maintenance and awareness and alertness, and it changes just like everything else. The danger is thinking you've made it, letting your guard down, failing to continue doing good work. Live well, do good work, be successful.

The district superintendent's core message was this: "The most important thing you will have in your life is your name." He continued, "What people think of you will define the course of your life."

It is important to consider how our actions will affect our social standing, and thus our access to social resources and opportunities. I agree with him: "The most important thing you will have in your life is your name." But more important than what people think of you is what you think of yourself. Your name is important because it reminds you who you are.


And that is what will define the course of your life.

The salutatorian is going into the military and his speech was little more than a review of the past four years at John Dickinson High School. The student speakers in general appealed to the sense of class-ness on the floor, over the past four years. They told in-jokes that would naturally go over my head, a head which had never even passed the threshold into the school building.

We heard the typical messages: Thanks to my friends and my teachers; Learn from your mistakes and move on; Your failures are as important, or more important, to your success. And a beautiful speech from a student who transferred from a dangerous situation in southern California two years ago.

But the valedictorian repeated wholesome, inspiring messages from some of their teachers. And then she said, "But the most important thing I learned was that when Mr. Peck sets a table on fire in chemistry, you grab your best friend and run."

Perhaps the most poignant tribute to friendship I have ever heard: You grab your best friend and run.


I will leave you with that, and with best wishes to the Class of 2012: May you define success and achieve it, every day of your lives. May you discover beautiful things. When things go up in flames, grab your best friend, and run.

Always forward.

medicine and memoriam

Happy Memorial Day, dear readers! I hope you all are spending your national holiday outside, preferably poolside, with a cocktail and some sort of grilled meat (or faux meat, for my veg friends). Or perhaps more reverently, placing bouquets on a loved one's grave.

I have spent mine so far in bed, or weeding out my email inbox, still full of "unread" messages transferred from my stolaf.edu account. The irony here is that they have ALL been read at some point, but still are marked bold for attention. I suppose this is a somewhat fitting way to spend Memorial Day, as I am unearthing a ton of messages that start me reminiscing about countless group projects in college, hilarious web videos, stumbleupon suggestions, emails planning meetings to plan spring break or interim trips. It feels like a barrage of time capsules catapulted into my present from another dimension.

That being said, it is one day short of one year since St. Olaf's Class of 2011 walked the stage in commencement of this next year of our lives. And therefore one day short of one year since I have been writing on this blog.

I don't think that's real.

Best of luck, though, to the Class of 2012, who yesterday embarked on the same journey I and my classmates have taken by the horns over the past year, and will continue to conquer in the months and years ahead.

That being said, I don't plan on sitting here all day. It's apparently 90 degrees outside, and I have plans to hit up a barbecue later this afternoon. I will not be eating burgers and drinking Summer Shandy this evening, however, because I got my wisdom teeth out on Friday and have spent the holiday weekend recovering. Which mostly entails watching tons of movies, planning my day around taking meds (although I have happily avoided the hardcore painkillers), trying to avoid busting my stitches by being perpetually unsatisfied on the hunger front, sleeping all day and then feeling restless and guilty about it. My ancestors are the type to break their hips and get back on the ladder a mere 6 weeks later, but I have apparently inherited the recessive whining and moping genes.

I hate sitting around.

I also hate not being able to distinguish the taste of blood from salt water, having to make that distinction in the first place, and not being able to open my mouth more than I need to put a spoon between my lips.

It gives me an appreciation for good health.

Also, it's upsetting how much I've spent on medical bills this year. Between me and my car, my medical bills easily outpace my student loans--which is particularly upsetting since I just looked at them yesterday and, although I've been making payments for 6 months, they have hardly a dent in their individual amounts. I would love to be able to skip getting my wisdom teeth pulled and instead direct that money to knocking out a couple hundred off my highest-interest loan.

This is a notable part of post-grad life. Like more than a few college students, I would imagine, I literally did not go to the dentist for over 4 years. Nor did I get any regular checkup by a GP or family doctor. I went to the health center on campus a few times, until I realized I rarely left there feeling more confident about my health than when I went in. I went to the eye doctor maybe once or twice, but only because I had to if I wanted to order more contacts. Which I definitely did. I still wear the same shitty glasses I ordered online freshman year of college, and I wear them as infrequently as possible.

I'll tell you why this is upsetting. The bill for getting my four wisdom teeth extracted, even after 80% of the surgery was covered by my insurance, still exceeds what I make in two weeks at work. That's after taxes, but not counting bills I have to pay, and gas three times a month. And I have a good job, and my dad's insurance, and I live at home. I know that there are families in this country who get no benefits, possibly don't have health insurance at all, and whose mediocre wages must cover food, rent, and healthcare for multiple children. My wisdom teeth were already starting to give me headaches and to make my jaw hurt. I have no doubt that if I left them in much longer my life would get a lot more miserable in a hurry.

And yet it's probably going to take me at least a month and a half to pay off that surgery plus my hand, and I need to get the timing belt replaced in my car ASAP, and definitely before the summer's over. There are other things I need to pay for as well, and I would love to knock some off my loans, and I was hoping to move out by the end of the summer. My social life has already taken a bit of a hit from these financial straits, because I've had to prioritize, and this is something I will need to keep in mind moving forward.

Medicine and healthcare is a capitalist system, at least in this country, and in my opinion they are not widely considered as such. Public health falls into an odd crack between services and industry, although it's not alone down there. In an ideal world, we could all take care of ourselves, and take care of other members of our communities, and we could avoid getting into sticky situations with our health, and get out of sticky situations when they do arise inevitably. Money wouldn't play such a giant role in whether or not we can afford to get care right now, or whether we are taking the appropriate steps to care for ourselves before an issue comes up. Not to mention the real and apparent impacts of money worries on our health itself, and the fact that this type of stress can, at the very least, slow our recovery processes.

I know finances are a bit of a touchy subject, and for many reasons you don't want to know too much about mine, but it's a big part of post-grad life, one of the many ever-present factors we have to think about as we navigate this territory. And it has been on my mind a lot this weekend, and last week leading up to the extraction.

That, and are the gaping holes in the back of my mouth bleeding, and what can I eat.

I am so unamused.

Also, I still look vaguely like a chipmunk.

Today I have not felt like eating at all, which is not a good idea because I really need to keep my energy up if I am ever going to heal... But I suddenly got a hankering for Bon Apetit's cold strawberry soup. I used to wait for this every spring, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to consume at least one entire tray of cups, bowls, and mugs full of the stuff.

I didn't quite pull off a perfect imitation of the caf version, but it was close enough.

Cheers to you, dear readers. Happy Memorial Day. Be safe, be happy, be reverent but not too reverent, appreciate your good health and, just for today, shove the ledger out of sight, out of mind.

My best wishes to you and your loved ones, and congratulations as we "commence" living the next segment of our lives.

milestones

It occurred to me today that 2012 is a monumental year in a lot of ways. As we are all too aware, it is the last year ever (although National Geographic reports that we may have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar...go figure). And if the world fails to end in December, 2012 will be my first year filing an independent tax return. (Death and taxes both certain, but mutually exclusive? There's a brain-bender for you...)

But no, what really sparked this epiphany was my Facebook post in honor of my middle sister's 18th birthday this morning. I remembered recently posting for Asha's sweet 16, and realized that I have long launched the countdown to my brother's 21st (assuming the apocalypse slips by unnoticed). Maria will also be graduating in less than two weeks, and in a mere 4 days I will be four molars shy of wise, and no doubt in a considerable amount of pain. So among us, we mark a lot of rites of passage this year.

Speaking of rites of passage, it is OFFICIALLY Graduation Season! While I don't remember anything our speaker said at graduation last year, or even who our speaker was, I love watching commencement addresses by illustrious, intelligent folk at other colleges and universities thanks to youtube. And because I have an awesome job, I got to spend some time today watching commencement addresses and ferreting out nuggets of wisdom from them.

Without even neglecting my day's work.

I would like to share a few of the best I found today, in case you have a few hours to spare, or you have a few hours that would otherwise be spent languishing in an ambient lack of inspiration. I will leave my mined nuggets--inspirational ore, as it were--off the table so you can enter the fray tabula rasa. (Not sure I used that right, but it's so beautiful and you get the picture.) If you don't have hours, or would rather your time outside (no judgment, trust me) then watch the last 5 minutes or so of the first two. My keen research skills tell me that a lot of chill-inducing advice gets relegated to the last few minutes of speeches, and these top two are just great.

1. Neil Gaiman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and a really great roundup of this address by the Christian Science Monitor. For ye readers fighting the Economic Forces Against the Arts (EFAA), this might give you a little shot of hope. Also he's just dry and hilarious.
2. Aaron Sorkins at Syracuse University. What I like about this one is that he talks about struggles. It's a little dark at times, like when he talks about his cocaine addiction at around 9:43 or one of his roommates who later died of AIDS somewhere in the 10:00-11:00 minute range. But he pulls it up for the end.
3. Am I about to share something from Sports Illustrated? Yeah. I am. It's a Monday Morning QB of highlights from commencement addresses across the country. Definitely a few gems, even though Peter King, who compiled the list, offers the disclaimer that he pretty much just writes about football. Which I neither understand, nor care about.
4. An awesome blog post by my friend and St. Olaf classmate Liz Lampman, about where she is (meta)physically almost a year after graduation. Framed like a commencement address. I majorly dig this post.
5. Aaaaand back to the root: the speech I hoped would make me senior speaker, but instead became the first post of this blog, back on May 29, 2011. In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't have to deliver this at graduation, because I was falling asleep through most of the ceremony. I really didn't think I would make it. I feel mildly sheepish admitting that fact, but I wouldn't reorganize my priorities at that time for the world. My speech was about celebration.

If you're still reading, or if you scrolled down in hopes of unearthing some profound wordbombs, I would like to leave you with a video I think is hilariously fitting to my (and my general peer group's) current stage of passage. Not sure being 22-24 can technically be considered a rite, but it's relevant. So enjoy. And please share your favorite commencement clips. I need them for work.

P.S. While I was finishing putting this post together, Maria walked in and asked for advice writing graduation advice for her creative writing class, a la Sunscreen (1998). Apt.

where did you come from, where did you go

I spent today at the Fair Hill Scottish Games watching dudes in tartan skirts play bagpipes and throw logs (theoretically) in flying arcs through the air.  More accurately, kilts and caber tossing.  And as kilts and caber tossing are outdoor activities, and it was a nearly perfect day outside, I spent today in the sun and my brain is fried.  I make bullet points about different blog topics throughout my week, and maybe I should transition my post-grad blog to a "daily thoughts on" format after the 1-year mark.  But I do enjoy reflective essays.

It didn't occur to me until we were waiting in line to pay the exorbitant entrance fee that I have Scottish blood!  Last Christmas, in fact, Granma was emptying out an old Ross steamer trunk and found a tie made of our clan tartan, which she gave to my brother, much to my dismay.  Yes, I am aware that I am not a man and therefore have little use for a tie (since Avril Lavigne slipped out of fashion) but I have a lot of use for heritage, and for the stories often couched in artifacts.

According to the "find your name" booth at the fair, the first Rosses set foot on this side of the pond in 1651 and '52.  Assuming that my Ross ancestors were not unrecognized stowaways, carriers of my blood have been shaping their corners of U.S. History for 350 years.  And now some of us continue to dip our pens in that pot--for example, the pen that inscribed "Ross" in the "middle name" slot on my brother's birth certificate.  Cool.  The clan lives on!  Although sadly it does not appear to have an active faction in the tri-state area.

I've been thinking about heritage and origin a lot since coming back from the Midwest this week, feeling myself lock into place as part of that landscape, and feeling that landscape lock into place within me...  And then being rudely ripped from that landscape, with a pair of psychological bolt cutters, and feeling disoriented upon my return to the Philly airport and to my house and my job and my life in Wilmington.  Jason said I didn't "come back" to Wilmington until Wednesday--2 days after my physical arrival.  Not coincidentally, I think, 2 days is approximately the amount of time it takes to drive (fairly comfortably) from Minneapolis to Wilmington.

Thesis: Jet planes fuck up our biological/psychological clocks.  You know how our eyes take about 45 minutes to fully adjust to darkness?  And the "twilight" part of the day lasts about 45 minutes.  (At least that's what my freshman year senior counselor told me, and I am inclined to believe it.)  There's some beautiful ecological symmetry there.

As much as I would like to dwell on ecological symmetry forever, I'm straying from the crux of the current issue.  Which is, eternally, belonging; originating; coming and going.  Pinpointing the location of my heart at any given moment.

I will probably never find complete security in this realm, and maybe that's just an occupational hazard of being human.  At some point I may also stop realizing new aspects and explanations and solutions to my rootlessness.  But I can never deny value in realizing the same thing over and over and over again: Love is a decision, and homes spring up where you invest in them.

For a second there, back in Delaware and not even able to pretend I was happy about it, I toyed with the idea of cutting all ties and heading back to Sunny V, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  To the physical embodiment of my ideal life.  The place I felt most happy, most at home.

But life is not ideal.  In fact, as we have found, the most beautiful moments are bittersweet.  The most beautiful moments are the ones that mix tears and laughter, the ones that finish chords of sadness, anger, disillusionment, with a flourish of hope.

And I have to remind myself how long it takes to turn a new place, new people, into home.  And how much energy it takes on my part, how many moments of feeling certain I would, finally, once and for all, give up.  Funny enough, it is those moments that make new homes possible.  Those moments slap me in the face and tell me straight to get a grip and work out the situation at hand.

I almost give up a lot.

And those aren't moments of weakness.  They lay the foundation for the moments I look back on and say, "Thank God that happened."  They lay the foundation for moments of glory.

hook, eye, and sinker

I just got back from four and a half days of vacation in the Midwest.  I am writing now because I am due for a post, overdue in fact, and while mere mortals might be unfazed by the calls of a self-imposed schedule, I am the Pinnacle of Self-Discipline.  Sometimes to a dysfunctional degree.  But mostly, without this characteristic, I would have spiraled irrevocably into the deepest circles of the inferno.

But there is no good place to start.  There is no way I can share every activity, every discovery, every crucial moment even of the past five days.  There is no way to fully express exactly how much this time means to me.  So I am loath to write anything at all, knowing I can never do it justice.

My mom said, driving me back to Wilmington from PHL, "You said it earlier, when you were talking about going back: Closure."

There it is.  Closure.  Did I go back for this?

It has been just shy of one year since I pulled the loose threads of my college career into a quick and careless knot of necessity.  Part of me feels that if I had postponed this trip by just a few weeks, certain things would have hardened into unfortunate eternal truths.  I didn't really know that up front, but I think it's good I went when I did.

I went to see Ann, and the apprentice art show at the NAG.  It's strange to me that I haven't seen her in 9 months.  That feels wrong.

I didn't make plans, I told about 3 people in advance that I was coming, and I vowed to keep a low profile.  I was going to avoid campus at all costs.  Anyone I did speak to while in Northfield heard my apprehension about running into any of my ghosts should I set foot on The Hill.  This is something I may never feel prepared to do.

But places get under your skin.  I love St. Olaf.  I am proud of the place I chose to get my (invaluable) education, and awestruck by the relationships that grew out of that place.  Of course I would go back.

I got in on Thursday, which as any Ole knows is Froggy's night.  Froggy's flooded last fall, weeks before I turned 21.  So I never got to experience this particular tradition.

Of course I had to go.

And of course some ghosts appeared to me there, and it was expectedly mundane, and we drank (and sloshed through) cheap beer and danced a little and laughed at how normal it felt to be at Froggy Bottoms on a Thursday night.

The next day Ann had some work to finish in the ceramics studio on campus, so I went up there with her and sat next to her workstation for most of the day.  Again, I felt content.  I snuck out the back door to do some yoga, and tried to work on a stagnant poem, but predictably I got restless.  My respected fellow anthropologist William had suggested to me the night before that I stop by the Soc/Anthro office (Ye Olde Stomping Groundes) and say hi to some of the professors there.  If there is anywhere on campus I do want to visit, it is Holland Hall suite 400.

I undoubtedly chose the right course of study at St. Olaf, and I was glad to be back.  (I did miss the Bananagrams set that used to be the focus of my Friday mornings in the Soc/Anthro office, but things fall by the wayside.  We all know this.)  Mid-May is a hectic time on campus, but I snagged some really good chats with a couple of professors.

Professor Tom Williamson of Anthropology Lore invited me to walk with him to Buntrock, where he was going to a meeting.  Buntrock.  The center of campus activity.  My kryptonite.

Of course I went.  He mentioned the chances he's had to catch up with a few of my classmates lately and said, "What strikes me about seeing all of you is that, in 8 or 10 months, you've got this confidence.  You're just so confident."  He seems a bit awed, as always, with us and with the world at large.

"We have to be," I reply, and launch into a description of the requirements of professional conduct.  But I get this weird feeling he understood better than I did that I was really talking about something much broader and deeper than just self-presentation.  It's about survival, and self-discovery, and the truthful uncertainty of the post-grad world.

I ended up on campus one more time, the next afternoon, to see Grace, who refused to let me escape unscathed.  She recalled the place she saw me in last spring, wild and desperate and even delirious, and she said she understood then to give me space, and she understands now what I felt like.  I was amazed by her perceptiveness of a situation I myself was barely aware of, but I remember feeling the same way in the spring of my junior year and the spring of my senior year about my good friend and peer mentor Jon.  I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her for knowing, all along, and for not letting me leave without a hug, a conversation, and a St. Olaf Cookie.

I ran into a few more people while I was there, all of them important.  For all my fears about having to tell all 2500 campus denizens a blander version of my year, I only suffered encounters with people I think about often and with whom I could have hoped to share my time.  It felt normal, sitting on the quad in the sunshine, being the Enabler of Work-Shirking, just like I always have been.  Talking about nothing in particular.

We did talk about their plans for the impending eternity, and I did find myself spinning my life story with a bit of a didactic touch.  I have learned so many lessons this year and I want to talk about them so much more than I have opportunities to do so; I guess what I'm hoping is to set up the stage for a continuing dialogue, and that maybe someone will pick up the dangling thread a few months or a year down the road.  Or tomorrow.

Feeling sun-tired and almost overwhelmed, I headed back downtown to breathe before Ann wanted to leave for our camping trip.

We were pretty quiet in the Rover, winding between cornfields and trying not to speed too much on those classic U.S. highways.  Both of us alone with our own thoughts, but once Ann said, "I was wondering why this feels so normal, and then I remembered that we did this last summer, 3 days, all the way across the country."

So normal.  We crossed into Wisconsin as the sun sank slowly from its piercing peak.  I didn't know until we crossed the old bridge spanning the St. Croix River, and my heart sped up erratically before thunking back into a slower, deeper rhythm, how normal.  Without a doubt there is a piece of my heart melted into the wild Wisconsin landscape, molded to the river and the hills and the dark green trees.

We stopped just over the border at St. Croix Liquor to pick up the New Glarus Wisconsin beer I've been craving for weeks now.  The proprietor spoke with such a warm, thick Wisconsin accent, was so friendly, helpful, knew the trails and the beers and the importance of a good campfire.  "Beautiful night for camping!" he said, waving us out.  "You girls have fun!"

I didn't know how much I missed it.

I still am not a through-and-through Midwest girl, but my loves are in Wisconsin, Northfield, Minneapolis.  I got my fill of Bread Belt witbiers at the Lowry in Uptown, drank cold press coffee at a hipster coffeeshop on a high-traffic corner.

Most importantly, though, I got to touch base with my loves and with the parts of myself I left with them in May, June, August.  I got to access that deep, unspoken, unspeakable click that happens when we reconnect, which is as simple as a smile and a touch and a minute of quality time.  This is my love language.

guest post: getting off the couch

I think inspiration is circular.  Scratch that, I know it is.  I have certain friends who habitually respond to my posts in ways that completely floor me.  For example, today I got this message on Facebook: "I just read your blog in ITALY!"  Awesome.  I want to highlight every person I know, because you all are incredible.  That particular person has a several-month-long gig playing cello on a Mediterranean cruise!  I also have friends in France, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, India, D.C., and pretty much anywhere else, who wrestle with the same exact issues I wrestle with here in the State-That-Was-Never-Really-Supposed-To-Be-A-State.

One person I have a really involved, ongoing, and absolutely invaluable dialogue with is my friend Andy, who is conquering the world from Seattle, Washington.  He contacted me out of the blue back in October with a pretty freaked-out text message asking for advice about moving to a new, unfamiliar place, a place that offered him his dream job, a place located several thousand miles from home.

Ever since then I have found myself wondering, regularly, why he asked me for advice.  Because everything I can think of to say, he seems to have already taken to the next level.  I admire his gumption and apparent fearlessness.  Every day there is a new adventure.

I have been meaning to share this exhilarating email he sent me, and subsequently blogged on his own site, for weeks now, but I only just remembered after a fantastically adventurous weekend here in the mid-Atlantic.  Granted, my adventure (a hike at White Clay Park on Saturday, and Sunday spent cheering J and his twin brother in Philly's Broad Street 10-miler) doesn't quite measure up to Andy's thrillers, but the point here is that we inspire each other.

Here's the moment of truth: What is your Reaction?

Reaction: a study in touch

This post is my reaction to "a study in touch" by Clara on secondsetofbabysteps.  Check it out, take the message, run with it, maybe naked.  Anyway, this is part of an email I sent to my friend Clara after her post reminded me that there's stuff going on right outside the door, maybe in your own back yard, maybe just a 2 hour drive away.

Clara,

Love the post about touch, it really played into what is going on in my life lately and I dig it.

I've been trying to soak up life like it's water and I'm a sponge, but the sponge needs to get off the couch to find the water (funny thing is, it's as easy as getting off the couch!).  After I went snowboarding in Canada, I realized how easy it was to check things off my bucket list ... My life got 5 times more interesting the other day when I bought an avalanche shovel.......

So the story goes:

After an inebriated weekend at the TELUS Ski and Snowboard festival in Whistler, British Columbia, it was an intensely unproductive week at work.  This week was interrupted by meeting during (and after) work with my peers to work on a proposal that was due Friday ... we were all stressed out wearing suits and everyone was wishing us luck when we left to make the presentation.  Our boss showed up in the audience for support and the judges really liked our entry proposal.  Not being able to concentrate after that, we went to check out happy hour at a new pizza place that two of my friends from work found.  Dollar beers and $5 pizzas, clutch.  While relaxing, I brought up an idea that I had tossed to them the week before. 

     Me: "We really should grab our boards and hike up Rainier, find the snow and make a little kicker."

     Mike: "What are we doing tomorrow?"

And then that not-awkward-but-epic silence when we look at each other and realize that this shit is going down tomorrow.

We broke and headed to REI to get an avalanche shovel.  Walking out with that thing is like putting on a parachute at an airport, anyone who sees you is going to know that you plan to do something intense.

The next morning when we needed to decide who would drive, it happened that Garri was taking the windows and roof off his jeep wrangler.  If he didn't want to drive, that was the kiss of death because honestly, top down for a 2 hour drive to the highest peak in the (contiguous) United States?  I think so.  

You had mentioned that you try to remove the barriers between your senses and the world.  This is a great thing indeed, so I tried to take off my sunglasses as often as I could.  We eventually were down to t-shirts and no gloves.  The result is an incredible sunburn.  I never though I would see 75 degrees with snow under my feet, but there I was, exhausted and working my way about a mile or so up the mountain with my board and all my gear.  We stopped a few times and scoped out a place to build our jump off a natural ridge.  We took less than a dozen runs.  They mean so much more when there is no chairlift, plus, it's exhausting.  I thought about you and what you said when I was up there, you'd be a good guide, maybe not for hiking Mt. Rainier specifically, but a guide through life for sure.  Not because you're old and wise, way better; you're the best of us at groping in the dark (she is, read her blog).

After a hot and sweaty ride down one of the longest runs I've done, we jumped in the Jeep and enjoyed the sunshine and the wind beating against our ears with our arms outstretched.  High-fives were had by all.

Cheers,

Andy

Video games might not desensitize us because of high-fidelity murder and explosions, but it might be because we are inside on the couch when we play.  Take our advice and go for a hike.  Send pictures.

Cheers,
Andy

maintaining friendships

I'm going to try and make this quick, because I'm heading out to hang out with some local friends.

The distinction is only important because of the topic of this post.  And I can't believe it's taken me so long to write about this.

I think I have mentioned before that I could not have predicted my post-grad long-distance social network, and the varying degrees of keeping-in-touch.  Some people I talk to most now I never, or rarely, talked to while we were at school together.  Some of the people I have the most important conversations with, too.

Granted, these conversations tend to happen on Facebook chat, but that doesn't make the subject matter less important.

That being said, I would like to reiterate Kyle's (incredibly salient) point that a 10-word text message can be enough to maintain a relationship with a good friend you haven't seen or talked to in awhile.  This can make all the difference in the world.  I was inexplicably happy to get a text from J the other day that read, "I'm finding that people really like it when you reach out to them via text."  And a minute later: "You taught me that."

One of my favorite ways to stay in touch regularly is with my famed #LunchBreakPhoneDates.  I have 30 minutes for lunch most days, which is by no means long enough for a satisfying long-distance conversation, but I am the queen of working healthy activities into my daily or weekly routine.  If we keep waiting until we have enough time to have a satisfying conversation, we will never have any conversation, and eventually we'll just stop trying.  There is no way I will let that happen.

Now, the 30-minute time limit also means we can't waste time worrying about what to talk about.  I don't care to talk about "what's new in my life" because it's just another day to me.  But, as you may have noticed, I ALWAYS have something on my mind.  So what do I talk about on a typical #LunchBreakPhoneDate?  Here is a brief sampling and synopsis of topics.

1. Hair care and no 'poo.  Yes, this is some hippie shit.  But you all know I love it.  Also, I have a lot of hair, so there's a lot to talk about.  This particular #LunchBreakPhoneDate also has quite a lot of hair, so between the two of us, we're set for AT LEAST 30 minutes.  If not 30 hours, or 30 days.  Or 30 years.  I'm sure we'll still be talking about hair when we're 50.
2. Objectification, to-be-or-not-to-be a feminist, and Take Back the Night/sexual assault.  This, of course, is part of an ongoing conversation, which I have been meaning to write about, but it's an armful to take on.  I'm not sure yet what approach I want to take.  But here's a teaser: I promise to consider the complexity of these issues, every time I consider them.  Which, as a woman, is pretty much every day.
3. Relationships, theoretical and otherwise.  Yeah, pretty much every conversation I have has something to do with relationship theory, but since most of my friends are negotiating the minefield of post-college relationships, our specific experiences come up a LOT.  Also the weird number of our peers who are suddenly engaged, married, or popping out babies.
4. Work.  Sometimes this topic has a "what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life" kind of spin on it, but in my case, I like my job and I'm happy here at least for now.  And most of my friends are at least somewhat satisfied with their current status.  So we also talk about how much money we make, and where we see ourselves going, and what we're passionate about that we'd like to push more into our work now or in the future.  (Work.  Is this what adult life is all about?!  It often seems that way.)

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list, but none of you care about my day-to-day conversations anyway, unless you're having them with me.  Or you only care about them to the extent that they often inspire me to write about some topic or another right here on the blog.

I know I don't have to tell you this, but every conversation and every relationship is different.  Some relationships need more careful curation than others, more time and energy and demonstration.  I thought of this yesterday when I was (as usual) chillin' on Facebook and someone I haven't touched base with in awhile popped up in my top 6 friends.  I am not a habitual Facebook stalker, but I read my news feed, and every once in awhile I give someone's timeline a skim just to make sure they're apparently alive and happy.  And usually I'll drop a line.  In this case, the line I thought to drop was a simple "<3".  But right before I hit "Post," I remembered what a mutual friend said about her once: "You really have to reach out to her, because she likes to do things, but she doesn't like to call.  She feels like she's imposing."

And so I sat there debating whether I should feel guilty for not writing something more substantial, until the most obvious epiphany hit me like a water balloon: That's how Mutual Friend is friends with Her.  My friendship with Her is not that way.  My friendship with Her is incredibly comfortable with a <3 from time to time, and in fact, is more comfortable with that than with obligatory extensions and "catching up."


That may have been a little obscure, but the thesis of my story is that each friendship, and even each individual friendship within trios and groups, is different.  Some of my best friends (as much as I cringe to use that word, there isn't really any use denying it) are people I don't feel the need to have big catching-up conversations with every day.  Because our friendships depend on the fact that we each lead our own separate and active life, and that's something we like and respect about each other.  It makes the time we do spend together that much richer and more worthwhile.

Now, speaking of spending time together, I'm off to curate my present relationships: it's ladies' night!  (By the way, if you were wondering, my love language is Quality Time.  You don't have to act surprised.)

Thanks for tuning in, as always!  Each of your comments continues and enriches my conversations with you, and that's why I keep writing.  So keep writing back :)

picking up the storyline

It's getting weird seeing all the posts on Facebook and Twitter about finals, about people going home for the summer, about people GRADUATING.  My brother is home for the summer, looking for cars to drive to the job he's got set up, and my middle sister is in the throes of AP exams, put in her enrollment deposit to ST. OLAF (fram fram!) and is looking forward to graduating in about a month.

Meanwhile, my parents and Asha are looking at this huge house and thinking how empty it will be in a few months, with the two middle kids away at school and me (fingers crossed) in my own apartment somewhere in the city.

My friends, the ones I graduated with, are feeling the ends of their one-year commitments closing in on them, issuing ultimatums and maydays about the long-awaited "rest of our lives."  They are frantically scouring Craigslist for plausible careers, submitting resumes and cover letters and wondering what they really want to be doing with their time.  It's throwing into pretty sharp relief the fact that I am no longer a student (and perhaps nevermore) and that I have in fact been a graduate for almost an entire year now, and I have worked in my current position for more than 8 months.  My story has taken a different turn.  Maybe we're onto a sequel now.

This is making me think about the passage of time.  It seemed to take awhile to hit 6 months, but after that the months just fell like dominoes behind me.  Just as I start feeling tired because it's Tuesday, I'm playing Loverboy's Working for the Weekend on repeat and putting in my last posts on Friday afternoon.

Kristy and I measure the passage of time by Tuesdays and Thursdays and girls' nights.  We always laugh because when someone asks what day it is, Kristy looks at her watch, and I use relativity to figure out what day of the week it is, and then which week it is.  "Well, two days ago we went to yoga, and last week you were in Chicago, which is the week my parents went to Boston to pick up my brother..."  But looking back, the days and nights and big events and boring afternoons and the mornings I didn't think I'd make it through all melt together into this blurry, psychedelic GIF that is my life.

Between the two of us I think we create a pretty workable narrative.

I'm picking up the storyline now of this blog, of my life as a post-grad.  I'm picking up this meta-story from December 27, when I talked about the storyline of the history of fruitcake.

Here's a story I like, about watches making their way back into fashion after being shut out by the cell phone revolution.  I like it because it's tangible.  It's built out of images.  It pulls in history, economics, fashion, practicality.

It's essentially about hipsters.  I am haughty of hipsterdom, but I will be the first to admit that it's all a ruse because, in fact, I am the Worst of the Hipsters.

Also, the composite storyline is the reason I am so obsessing over public radio these days.  The long reports and interviews, the multiple subjective insights they reap over the course of days, weeks, or months digging into the same story.

I value this storytelling style as a counterpoint and a complement to the flash news we get as we go through the day.  To be fair, our brains really have an incredible capacity to process information.  Part of the reason we are able to take in so much is the fact that people make snap judgments that are completely and unavoidably subjective.  Sam McNerney (a classmate of a friend of mine) writes this often mentally-straining but always jaw-dropping psych blog.  In a post I read today, The Irrationality of Irrationality, connects subjectivity to the narrative in the passage below:

[M]ental shortcuts are necessary because they lessen the cognitive load and help us organize the world – we would be overwhelmed if we were truly rational. 

This is one of the reasons we humans love narratives; they summarize the important information in a form that’s familiar and easy to digest. It’s much easier to understand events in the world as instances of good versus evil, or any one of the seven story types. 

...In the process, hooking up my inner anthropologist to my inner writer for some serious intellectual fireworks.

Anyway, McNerney first raises our hackles and guilts us into recognizing our inevitable bias in every decision we make--and then promptly soothes our smarting egos with the assurance that "It’s natural for us to reduce the complexity of our rationality into convenient bite-sized ideas."

He wraps it all up with a warning: Take every new story as a new side to the same story, a new puzzle piece.  Life in society is complex; court cases are complex; arguments and fights between friends and lovers are complex.

And what do I get out of this?  Acknowledge your story.  Own it.  But let it change.

8 or more things making me happy

Yesterday I discovered a weekly talk radio show called Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR.  Fortunately since I’ve never heard it before there are literally YEARS’ worth of past happy hours for me to listen to, so I’ve been scrolling back to listen to the incredibly intelligent crew discussing trendy cultural tidbits in a way that reminds me more than a little of my liberal arts education.

Each show ends with a segment about what's making them happy this week.  Something pop culture-related, of course.  It vaguely reminds me of All Good Things, the KSTO radio show I hosted last year with my girl Cassie, in which we played feel-good music and ad-libbed our list of the week’s Top 10 All Good Things.  Sometimes serious, often totally random, but always an exercise in not taking things for granted, in picking out the silver lining even of the toughest weeks, and a reminder to enjoy life always.

I have missed this show, and missed Cassie, so often since May.  And from time to time I feel that nagging urge to make that list.

But today, the urge is driving me to distraction, and I am unavoidably inspired to host my own Pop Culture What's-Making-Me-Happy Give-or-Take-an-Hour.

#1

The show is first on my list, since I have not stopped listening to it for 2 days (except to watch a video of Sophia Grace and Rosie’s return to The Ellen Show), and since I love pop culture, and intelligent people discussing pop culture.  Also, people laughing a lot and un-self-consciously.  They have really good laughs, too--good the way Audrey and Karin and I just feed off each other's really contagious laughter forever.  And just positive energy in general.  Here's a good episode (2012 pop culture resolutions) to get hooked on.

#2

Sisterhood Everlasting.  Since my original mention I have actually started reading this book, and it’s been, true to form, un-put-downable.  I can’t honestly say the book is a happy book, and I also can’t say that I haven’t cried or felt my throat close up at least a few times, and in fact it’s a really sad book so far.  But it’s deeply evocative, and when I think about it, any real depth of emotion qualifies as happiness for me.  There is something beautiful about empathy, about allowing myself to be touched by the world, which maybe neurologically is no more than a thrill, a hit of brain chemicals, but to me feels like being happy.

#3

California 37.  You may have realized that I. LOVE. TRAIN.  And I am not ashamed of this fact.  I've had this album on some degree of repeat since I bought it on Saturday, and I think it may be my favorite Train album ever.  Speaking of pop culture, the album features an incredible array of pop culture references; "This'll Be My Year," which people are calling a reprise of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" (except less tiresome to listen to); "Bruises," a collaboration with Ashley Monroe about the occupational hazards of living; and "You Can Meet My Mom," which just makes me really happy.

#4
Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, and there's an exhilarating melee going on around the #pocketpoem hashtag on Twitter.  It makes me want to Twitter-jam, bad.

collage beginnings

Anyway, probably not one single person will be surprised to learn that my #pocketpoem is "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)" by e.e.cummings.  I'm sure I could finagle some horrible wordplay about carrying poems in pockets out of that line, but I will spare you.  I also have a line-by-line collage representation of this beloved piece in the works, but it's not done yet.

My fellow poet and Soc/Anthro major Julia may have stumped this holiday, though: "I dunno if I can fit 'howl' in my pocket..."

Asha, age 4

#5
Today my baby sister turns sixteen.

Yeah.  Sixteen.

It's hard to believe.  I swear I look at her (and Maria) every day and get surprised at how big, and grown-up, and mature they are.  And hilarious.  And beautiful, and smart as hell...  The list goes on!  If there is one reason I'm glad I moved home this year (and there are many) it is that the time I'm getting to spend with my sisters is priceless.  I even enjoy picking them up from school or dropping them off somewhere, or hitting up the mall together on a Saturday.  I value the opportunities I have gotten to share my experiences with them, and to hear about the things they struggle with and the things that make them happy.

It is a great joy and responsibility to be a big sister, and despite my complaining, I wouldn't give it up for the world.  And I wouldn't trade my sissies for any other sissies.  So don't even ask.

#6
The unbelievably delicious chocolate chip cookies Asha made to take to school for her own birthday.  They are so good, and I love how she loves to bake.  And also it reminds me of the time last year when Timmy got up at 8:00am on Lutefest to make himself a very, very chocolate birthday cake.  There is something bittersweet (but very tasty) about this style of self-celebration.  Something important, I think, something poignant with a Dust-Bowl-vignette quality to it.  I can’t say it’s sad because both Timmy and Asha have plenty of people who will gladly share their baked goods, and more importantly their company, but almost.

#7
As of tonight, my brother will be home from school for the summer!  I'm pumped.  He's got a sweet summer job using some of his architecture skills, and I'm hoping to take him out and introduce him to people--and maybe even meet some new ones!  OK, I'll be honest: I'm secretly plotting how to make him fall in love with Delaware too.  Plus, I just love him.  He's my first best friend and we've been in cahoots for almost 21 years now.

#8
Oranges.  (Is anyone surprised?)  I've had one for lunch every day this week, and every day I look forward to the orange at the bottom of my lunch bag.  It makes my fingers sticky but I love the smell of them and I hate the color orange but somehow I love it when it's on the fruit.  It's so bright and cheerful.  I love how juicy they are, how sweetly tart.  I love peeling them, both intrinsically and in anticipation of what's to come.  I love the texture, and how they're naturally packaged in little bite-sized pieces.  I love what I remember about them, and the people they remind me of.  I love vitamin C.  And for a whole host of other reasons I probably couldn't even begin to name or recognize, oranges just make me really, simply, bottom-of-my-heart happy.

Note the absence of oranges in this fruit bowl
(I have eaten them all)