So, I think it's time for the tongue ring to go. I knew this day would come, when I'd wake up and decide I didn't really want it anymore, and I always wondered what I'd be thinking at the time. I think mostly I'm thinking that I'm tired of being taken for a 22-year-old, and while there aren't a lot of aspects of that within my control, this might be one of them. It was fun for a while, and I still remember getting it done on Telegraph Avenue, squeezing Andrew's hand nearly hard enough to yank it off and then realizing it was over and it hadn't even hurt. I lisped for a week, which made Natalie laugh, which is one of my favorite sounds in the whole world.
There's also something cathartic about taking it out. I got it right after I quit Westminster House, and for some reason the tongue ring seemed to mark my freedom from the job I had been letting suck my soul dry for two long years (thankfully, at least it wasn't another tattoo). But as you Berkeley folks can attest, the next two-plus years of wandering around aimlessly didn't make me feel any more free. Let's face it, I've been miserable for a really long time. So now, as I realized in a conversation with a friend last week, for the first time in a loooong time, I'm doing really well and I'm grateful for every minute of it.
I talked to Andrew a few weeks ago on the phone and shortly thereafter got an email: "I was just surprised to hear you so happy." Maybe I will take the tongue ring out to mark the occasion.
My mother will be elated....
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
The Random San Francisco Craigslist Roommate Circus
I was reading Hannah's blog and was recently reminded (as if I could have forgotten) of all the strange stories that she, Natalie and I collected during our three years living together in Berkeley/Oakland/Alameda. Most of them surrounded the perpetual search for someone to fill the revolving roommate position we always seemed to have open... so with no further ado, let me introduce you to the wacky cast of characters.
S: my first bay area roommate, getting her PhD in Chemistry, who was wonderful, but -- being in the agonizing throes of a dissertation -- spent every evening despondent over her laser that never worked right.
R: R, Natalie, Hannah and I moved into a fun little four-bedroom apartment in South Berkeley (where Hannah kept getting yelled at for being white). Shortly into our move, R's boyfriend broke up with her, while the rest of us were all out of town for the weekend. When we returned, she had redecorated the entire apartment, and then proceeded to "bill" us for everything she didn't want to take with her when she got back together with her boyfriend and moved to LA, whether we wanted it or not.
Tracy: After R moved out, Tracy moved in, and proceeded to complain. About everything. All the time. For eight months straight. She was one of those people that you wanted to love, because you knew she needed it, but you had trouble being in the same room.
After a while, Tracy moved in with her new boyfriend and we found a really cute house in Alameda. Total strange-roommate-free bliss for six months. Then Hannah sublet her room for the summer while she went to Brazil.
Nancy: Nancy was really nice... and liked to talk... alot. She was a Jewish Buddhist who was living with us so she could be closer to her boyfriend while her divorce was finalized. Her husband and her boyfriend helped her move in -- together. She had a little massage practice on the side, and asked me if I minded if she worked on clients in the living room. Let's see... naked people I've never met hanging out in my house? Luckily, she realized how bad of an idea that would be before we had to tell her no. We actually ended up really liking Nancy, and her fun British boyfriend Alan, who lived at the marina down the street, working on his boat. She had this fun paper-mache camel from Africa that would scare Sadie the pug whenever I was dogsitting. Anyway, Nancy left to go sail around the world with Alan, and Hannah decided she needed to live at home to save money while she was in grad school, so it was time for a new roommate.
Hannah put another ad on Craigslist, and we met Humuu, Haystack, and LoveSong (all real names), who all didn't work out for various reasons. Then there was the family of 3 that wanted to move into Hannah's room. Then some guy named Daniel (or something like that) came by. He described himself in his roommate ad as a "sensitive, affectionate guy, with an interest in 'wimmin's studies'." I made Warren come over to meet him with me 'cause it just sounded weird. He drove a big white van, and he kept telling me that he could tell it was going to work out because I "had such good energy." Plus, he was, like, 40, and he described himself as "affectionate," and he was interested in living with two single 20-something women? Uh uh, I don't think so. Natalie and I were not very happy about Daniel, but by this time we were getting desperate and we only needed to make it through three months before our lease was up.
So on the eve of having to say yes to sensitive-ponytail man, Hannah called with one more potential Craigslist roomie. Brian came over to meet us and he was quirky, like the rest, but he was kind of like a little kid and for some reason Natalie and I were a little bit won over (well, especially in the face of the competition). He was a white hip-hop gangster wannabe from Brooklyn who just needed a place to crash for a few months while he figured out where to plant himself in California. "A place to crash" turned out to mean for himself and enough stuff to fill his room AND the three-car garage. He worked on a goat farm in Santa Rosa, and when his license got suspended his friend moved in too, "to drive him around," he said, only she never drove him anywhere 'cause his car was broken down too and I don't think she had one either. He stopped going to work, and shortly thereafter stopped paying rent, and was actually really sad when we told him we weren't going to pay his rent for him and let him stay. This story could go on and on, but the highlights are that he moved out but left all his stuff, moved back in with even more stuff in the middle of the night, and started punching out the guy who was nice enough to rent him a moving truck on the day we were supposed to be out of the house, so once again we enlisted our guy-friends (and the crew of large roofers next door) to come over and watch out for us. In the end, he ended up stealing Natalie's computer, ditching his broken-down car on the street in front, spackling his walls brown so the place had to be repainted, and leaving us with mountains of garbage, which we then had to drive all around Alameda in the middle of the night trying to ditch in dumpsters without getting arrested.
Ahh, the joys of communal living :)
S: my first bay area roommate, getting her PhD in Chemistry, who was wonderful, but -- being in the agonizing throes of a dissertation -- spent every evening despondent over her laser that never worked right.
R: R, Natalie, Hannah and I moved into a fun little four-bedroom apartment in South Berkeley (where Hannah kept getting yelled at for being white). Shortly into our move, R's boyfriend broke up with her, while the rest of us were all out of town for the weekend. When we returned, she had redecorated the entire apartment, and then proceeded to "bill" us for everything she didn't want to take with her when she got back together with her boyfriend and moved to LA, whether we wanted it or not.
Tracy: After R moved out, Tracy moved in, and proceeded to complain. About everything. All the time. For eight months straight. She was one of those people that you wanted to love, because you knew she needed it, but you had trouble being in the same room.
After a while, Tracy moved in with her new boyfriend and we found a really cute house in Alameda. Total strange-roommate-free bliss for six months. Then Hannah sublet her room for the summer while she went to Brazil.
Nancy: Nancy was really nice... and liked to talk... alot. She was a Jewish Buddhist who was living with us so she could be closer to her boyfriend while her divorce was finalized. Her husband and her boyfriend helped her move in -- together. She had a little massage practice on the side, and asked me if I minded if she worked on clients in the living room. Let's see... naked people I've never met hanging out in my house? Luckily, she realized how bad of an idea that would be before we had to tell her no. We actually ended up really liking Nancy, and her fun British boyfriend Alan, who lived at the marina down the street, working on his boat. She had this fun paper-mache camel from Africa that would scare Sadie the pug whenever I was dogsitting. Anyway, Nancy left to go sail around the world with Alan, and Hannah decided she needed to live at home to save money while she was in grad school, so it was time for a new roommate.
Hannah put another ad on Craigslist, and we met Humuu, Haystack, and LoveSong (all real names), who all didn't work out for various reasons. Then there was the family of 3 that wanted to move into Hannah's room. Then some guy named Daniel (or something like that) came by. He described himself in his roommate ad as a "sensitive, affectionate guy, with an interest in 'wimmin's studies'." I made Warren come over to meet him with me 'cause it just sounded weird. He drove a big white van, and he kept telling me that he could tell it was going to work out because I "had such good energy." Plus, he was, like, 40, and he described himself as "affectionate," and he was interested in living with two single 20-something women? Uh uh, I don't think so. Natalie and I were not very happy about Daniel, but by this time we were getting desperate and we only needed to make it through three months before our lease was up.
So on the eve of having to say yes to sensitive-ponytail man, Hannah called with one more potential Craigslist roomie. Brian came over to meet us and he was quirky, like the rest, but he was kind of like a little kid and for some reason Natalie and I were a little bit won over (well, especially in the face of the competition). He was a white hip-hop gangster wannabe from Brooklyn who just needed a place to crash for a few months while he figured out where to plant himself in California. "A place to crash" turned out to mean for himself and enough stuff to fill his room AND the three-car garage. He worked on a goat farm in Santa Rosa, and when his license got suspended his friend moved in too, "to drive him around," he said, only she never drove him anywhere 'cause his car was broken down too and I don't think she had one either. He stopped going to work, and shortly thereafter stopped paying rent, and was actually really sad when we told him we weren't going to pay his rent for him and let him stay. This story could go on and on, but the highlights are that he moved out but left all his stuff, moved back in with even more stuff in the middle of the night, and started punching out the guy who was nice enough to rent him a moving truck on the day we were supposed to be out of the house, so once again we enlisted our guy-friends (and the crew of large roofers next door) to come over and watch out for us. In the end, he ended up stealing Natalie's computer, ditching his broken-down car on the street in front, spackling his walls brown so the place had to be repainted, and leaving us with mountains of garbage, which we then had to drive all around Alameda in the middle of the night trying to ditch in dumpsters without getting arrested.
Ahh, the joys of communal living :)
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Is it just me...
... or is 6th grade getting harder?
I tutored a kid in math today, and he was working on one of those logic puzzles that you have to do at that age, where it's got the grid you put all the X's and O's in... and I got so stuck I had to give up. I do Sudoku puzzles in the NY Times, and I couldn't figure out an 11-year-old's logic homework?
Oooh, also -- 'cause I know you were all wondering what happened to the philandering Peruvian trekking guide... Jeanne forwarded the emails we got from his girlfriend back to him, so he knows that she hacked into his email to track us down halfway around the world to find out if he was cheating (seriously, it's like Where's Waldo meets Melrose Place). But... apparently they worked everything out, because they're starting a trekking company of their own. So, if you are ever in Cusco and you need a great guide to places few other gringos go, look him up. Sure, he'll pick you up at 5am with a hangover, get too tired to speak English a mile into every day, and hit on you while he explains the astrological designs of Incan ruins -- but playing soccer at a UNESCO site with peruvians at 13,000 feet is worth it.
I tutored a kid in math today, and he was working on one of those logic puzzles that you have to do at that age, where it's got the grid you put all the X's and O's in... and I got so stuck I had to give up. I do Sudoku puzzles in the NY Times, and I couldn't figure out an 11-year-old's logic homework?
Oooh, also -- 'cause I know you were all wondering what happened to the philandering Peruvian trekking guide... Jeanne forwarded the emails we got from his girlfriend back to him, so he knows that she hacked into his email to track us down halfway around the world to find out if he was cheating (seriously, it's like Where's Waldo meets Melrose Place). But... apparently they worked everything out, because they're starting a trekking company of their own. So, if you are ever in Cusco and you need a great guide to places few other gringos go, look him up. Sure, he'll pick you up at 5am with a hangover, get too tired to speak English a mile into every day, and hit on you while he explains the astrological designs of Incan ruins -- but playing soccer at a UNESCO site with peruvians at 13,000 feet is worth it.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Unmasticated regurgitation
Seriously... that's what a TA wrote on one of my friend's papers: "this is pure unmasticated regurgitation." Ouch. Couldn't he think of a more appropriate way to offer his criticism?
Anyhow, that's also what I have for you tonight -- mostly unmasticated regurgitation, with a healthy dose of idealism thrown in for good measure. I had hoped to have more blog entries digging in and writing through issues, to offer up some food for thought and to give myself a reason to process. But right now the sheer volume of information my brain is taking in means that trying to put a coherent thought or argument together feels like trying to build a spaceship at a garbage dump (except for the fact that the information I'm learning is actually fabulous, and nothing like garbage... that's where the analogy breaks down). Can it be done? Maybe. Do I have the energy for it on this particular night after 11 hours of class? Hell no. What I can do, instead, is rummage through the heap and hold up a few shiny objects.
Warning: begin soapbox.
The latest issue of the Semi (Fuller campus weekly paper) was on the topic of the environment, and why it is both the responsibility of individuals, and of the church itself, to take up the cause. Slightly, oh so slightly, close to my heart, especially after working as a backpacking guide for Sierra Treks for several seasons, where I was consistently awed by the creativity exhibited in wilderness, and the ways we have desperately mistaken the priviledge of dominion over the earth with domination of it.
Anyhow, I had hoped to write an article for this issue of the Semi, but that was before I came down with Death for a week before Christmas. So I was quite pleased to see the lead article, by a Fuller professor who talks of her unlikely conversion to environmentalism, addressing the issues I would have written about, and much more articulately than I could have mustered. Three things struck me, both for how she presented them in the context of environmentalism, and also in the context of what it really means to care about all the other things God cares about -- which is pretty much what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me."
She writes of how it is hard to love what we don't often see. This applies to spectacular places like Rainbow Canyon in NE Yosemite - where there are no roads and no trails and the only way to find them is to learn to read a topographic map - as well as to kinds of people that we don't spend time with on a regular basis. Maybe our roads don't naturally "go" to those people and we have to pull out a map, or enlist a guide, to get to them. She writes of how, while it's important to have ideals and opinions, it's a problem when we're not ready to be personally uncomfortable. Maybe this means taking the bus, maybe it means learning how to love people when it's inconvenient - which, if we're talking about the kind of love God asks us to have for each other, might be more often than, say, every third Tuesday. And she writes of how this is a justice issue, because the comfortable will not change until we feel a pinch, and because we are the comfortable we are the last to feel the pinch, and by then it may be too late.
But I won't convince anyone of anything, and neither will she, as we sit and write from our comfy Ikea chairs. And she knew it too. So now I will move from regurgitation to full-on plagiarism:
End soapbox.
Anyhow, that's also what I have for you tonight -- mostly unmasticated regurgitation, with a healthy dose of idealism thrown in for good measure. I had hoped to have more blog entries digging in and writing through issues, to offer up some food for thought and to give myself a reason to process. But right now the sheer volume of information my brain is taking in means that trying to put a coherent thought or argument together feels like trying to build a spaceship at a garbage dump (except for the fact that the information I'm learning is actually fabulous, and nothing like garbage... that's where the analogy breaks down). Can it be done? Maybe. Do I have the energy for it on this particular night after 11 hours of class? Hell no. What I can do, instead, is rummage through the heap and hold up a few shiny objects.
Warning: begin soapbox.
The latest issue of the Semi (Fuller campus weekly paper) was on the topic of the environment, and why it is both the responsibility of individuals, and of the church itself, to take up the cause. Slightly, oh so slightly, close to my heart, especially after working as a backpacking guide for Sierra Treks for several seasons, where I was consistently awed by the creativity exhibited in wilderness, and the ways we have desperately mistaken the priviledge of dominion over the earth with domination of it.
Anyhow, I had hoped to write an article for this issue of the Semi, but that was before I came down with Death for a week before Christmas. So I was quite pleased to see the lead article, by a Fuller professor who talks of her unlikely conversion to environmentalism, addressing the issues I would have written about, and much more articulately than I could have mustered. Three things struck me, both for how she presented them in the context of environmentalism, and also in the context of what it really means to care about all the other things God cares about -- which is pretty much what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me."
She writes of how it is hard to love what we don't often see. This applies to spectacular places like Rainbow Canyon in NE Yosemite - where there are no roads and no trails and the only way to find them is to learn to read a topographic map - as well as to kinds of people that we don't spend time with on a regular basis. Maybe our roads don't naturally "go" to those people and we have to pull out a map, or enlist a guide, to get to them. She writes of how, while it's important to have ideals and opinions, it's a problem when we're not ready to be personally uncomfortable. Maybe this means taking the bus, maybe it means learning how to love people when it's inconvenient - which, if we're talking about the kind of love God asks us to have for each other, might be more often than, say, every third Tuesday. And she writes of how this is a justice issue, because the comfortable will not change until we feel a pinch, and because we are the comfortable we are the last to feel the pinch, and by then it may be too late.
But I won't convince anyone of anything, and neither will she, as we sit and write from our comfy Ikea chairs. And she knew it too. So now I will move from regurgitation to full-on plagiarism:
"Only changed hearts will willingly bear real costs, and hearts are rarely changed by arguments, whether from the pulpit or elsewhere. Thus, I suspect that what the church can do to carry out its responsibility to the environment depends less on what policies might be advocated Sunday morning in the sanctuary, or on what sort of coffee is served in what sort of cups on the patio, than on what God's people are taught to love. Oh yes, by all means show the moral costs of policies; by all means choose coffee that does not destroy lives and rain forests; but even more, be as creative and concrete as you can to help people to love God's world and God's creatures, human and nonhuman - the world God himself, who made it, loves. Then they will steadfastly support the policies and pay more to buy the less destructive coffee."May my heart be changed, that I might remember the world doesn't revolve around me, and that I may learn to bear real costs with grace and humility.
End soapbox.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Freegan
Meet Matt. He's a guy I play ultimate with. In the last week I have learned that he lived on a bus for a while (a decommissioned city bus) and the reason he lives in SoCal is because that's where he was when he got tired of driving the bus around the country. Matt is 25, and he's marrying his 34-year-old Italian girlfriend so she can get a visa. Since Matt doesn't have a car, he brings Nicole (another ultimate friend) and I large bags of tangerines from his tree in exchange for rides to winter league games.
Matt is also a Freegan. When Nicole mentioned this on the way home from our game on Monday, I hesitated to ask what that meant, since it sounded kind of sketchy and I didn't know what the reply would be. Turns out it's just a better name for Dumpster Diving. Matt eats for free. He "shops," and takes anyone who will drive him, behind the Trader Joe's on Arroyo. So I went with him and one of his friends the other night. When they picked me up in the getaway car, I felt like I was one of the characters in Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," except I was taking garbage out secretively in the middle of the night rather than putting it in. . According to Matt it was an "average" night at the dumpster... on a good night, apparently there's lots of cheese. I happily trucked home two bunches of flowers.
I'm not sure if there's a point to the story, but it's been an interesting week.
Matt is also a Freegan. When Nicole mentioned this on the way home from our game on Monday, I hesitated to ask what that meant, since it sounded kind of sketchy and I didn't know what the reply would be. Turns out it's just a better name for Dumpster Diving. Matt eats for free. He "shops," and takes anyone who will drive him, behind the Trader Joe's on Arroyo. So I went with him and one of his friends the other night. When they picked me up in the getaway car, I felt like I was one of the characters in Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," except I was taking garbage out secretively in the middle of the night rather than putting it in. . According to Matt it was an "average" night at the dumpster... on a good night, apparently there's lots of cheese. I happily trucked home two bunches of flowers.
I'm not sure if there's a point to the story, but it's been an interesting week.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
more verbatim
"I mean really, if you're trying to kill yourself, lithium's the way to go. I'll tell you how in a little while." -my psychopharmacology prof
"Before this class is over, you will have lost your innocence. If you're still naive about people, and you want to stay that way, you are not in the right program." - my psychopathology prof
Ahhh, now we're getting to the juicy stuff. It's not exactly "weed-out" material in the academically rigorous sense, but it is causing us all to ask if we really want to open Pandora's Box any further. As Thomas Cardinal Woolsey said, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." We started up Psychopathology and Ethics after the break, and even those of us who still feel like we made the right decision to be here can't help but wonder what it will be like to undergo a course of professional preparation that gives us unceasing awareness of the pathology and dysfunction of everyone from our best friends to our bus drivers. It's like X-ray goggles that you can never, ever take off.
I may have lost much of my naivete about people a while ago, but I still feel a bit like Eve, about to chomp on that apple and get smacked with the knowledge of good and evil.... :):)
"Before this class is over, you will have lost your innocence. If you're still naive about people, and you want to stay that way, you are not in the right program." - my psychopathology prof
Ahhh, now we're getting to the juicy stuff. It's not exactly "weed-out" material in the academically rigorous sense, but it is causing us all to ask if we really want to open Pandora's Box any further. As Thomas Cardinal Woolsey said, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." We started up Psychopathology and Ethics after the break, and even those of us who still feel like we made the right decision to be here can't help but wonder what it will be like to undergo a course of professional preparation that gives us unceasing awareness of the pathology and dysfunction of everyone from our best friends to our bus drivers. It's like X-ray goggles that you can never, ever take off.
I may have lost much of my naivete about people a while ago, but I still feel a bit like Eve, about to chomp on that apple and get smacked with the knowledge of good and evil.... :):)
Sunday, January 08, 2006
verbatim
Actual comment made to me by stereotypically LA-looking girl while Barista-ing tonight, referring to the fact that we had only 2% milk (no nonfat) with which to make her hot chocolate:
"Ugh, I can't drink THAT! Chocolate and fat at the same time?!"
"Ugh, I can't drink THAT! Chocolate and fat at the same time?!"
Saturday, January 07, 2006
people I love in faraway places
As usual, the highlight of the break was hanging out with fabulous people who are all currently spread all over the globe. I spent some quality time with my family and big bro (we had better outfits in '78 in the photo at left); my college roommate Ruth dropped in from Ukraine (where her name is spelled PYT -- and she finally gets the michael jackson references we heap on her) and we daytripped to Dungeness Spit; I caught up with my spunky preggo friend Jessica, with whom I share a tattooed nickname and the scars of surviving middle and high school together; I caught up (in Seattle) with Berkeley friends who now live in Seattle, Berkeley, and Montana; and finally flew back to Oakland to pass a lovely New Years Eve with former roommates Natalie (enjoying a break from shoveling her car out of the snow in Boston) and Hannah (about to travel the world as a rock star), and our dear friends Phil and James, who cook us gourmet dinners an
d reveal far more than we ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the male mind, and we love every minute of it.
more photos from the holiday travels here....
d reveal far more than we ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the male mind, and we love every minute of it.
more photos from the holiday travels here....
Friday, January 06, 2006
The winter of our discontent
OK, so really I like quotes like this because they make me feel better about the general state of discontent my 20s have turned out to be, like maybe it's OK that sometimes the world just seems like a messy place to be.
"You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come." - henri nouwen
In practice, I'm still working on finding a balance.... and I suppose if I had to choose I'd rather be content being discontent that discontent with contentedness, because in the first one you ultimately get to be content at the end of the day but still hold out hope for people and try to be a change agent in whatever small way you've been given to influence. But to get there I have to figure out the content thing. So maybe life is a long process of figuring out which of your discontent to be content with and which discontent you should either do something about or get over and just be content. Another cool quote on the topic, via Becky D:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a deep desire to enjoy the world. And that makes it hard to plan the day." -eb white
But speaking of the winter of my discontent, will someone please tell LA that 85 degrees is a totally inappropriate temperature for January?
"You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come." - henri nouwen
In practice, I'm still working on finding a balance.... and I suppose if I had to choose I'd rather be content being discontent that discontent with contentedness, because in the first one you ultimately get to be content at the end of the day but still hold out hope for people and try to be a change agent in whatever small way you've been given to influence. But to get there I have to figure out the content thing. So maybe life is a long process of figuring out which of your discontent to be content with and which discontent you should either do something about or get over and just be content. Another cool quote on the topic, via Becky D:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a deep desire to enjoy the world. And that makes it hard to plan the day." -eb white
But speaking of the winter of my discontent, will someone please tell LA that 85 degrees is a totally inappropriate temperature for January?
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Miles to go before I sleep
I had 382 miles to make peace with LA last night.
At 5:30, I sat in Berkeley on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, watching the sky squeeze out the last of the light and the last of the rain for the day, and I had no desire to make the six-hour drive south on dark, wet roads. I had offers for two dinners, one movie, three beds to sleep in, and even the pair of guest pajamas at Phil and James' place so I wouldn't have to unpack to stay the night. And I didn't have anywhere I had to be today in Pasadena. I kept trying to talk myself into staying, but I kept pointing my car south. I even pulled over on MLK and sat with my car running for 10 more minutes, trying to will myself to turn around and stay the night. But stronger than all my reasons for staying was the inescapable urge to wake up in LA today, even if I had to drive all night to get here.
To use a totally non-dinner-table analogy, revisiting the past is a bit like poking at a wound. If you pick at it too much while it's still fresh, it takes a lot longer for new skin to grow in its place. Once you've got a scar, you can stay there longer. In a little while, further through transition, I'll be able to go back to Seattle and Berkeley and appreciate each for what it is, but this time I was spending too much energy appreciating them for what LA isn't. Four months into starting over, staying another night in fantasyland (which is what each place was, considering half the people I spent time with don't even live in those places anymore) was starting to feel masochistic. Or maybe it's less dramatic than that -- maybe revisiting the past is more like baking cookies... the oven is a necessary place to be but when the timer goes off, ding! Stay any longer and you'll burn on the bottom and get dried out and crumbly. Either way, it was time to hit the road.
I-5 ended up being closed in two places, and the drive took nine hours. I rolled in around 3am and caffeine kept me up until 5. But I woke up at lunchtime today a little more at peace with LA, having drawn up a tiny truce with everything Berkeley is/was and isn't/wasn't, and with a new appreciation for the scars that cut across the landscape of my arms, legs, and hands, reminding me not to poke too much right now.
At 5:30, I sat in Berkeley on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, watching the sky squeeze out the last of the light and the last of the rain for the day, and I had no desire to make the six-hour drive south on dark, wet roads. I had offers for two dinners, one movie, three beds to sleep in, and even the pair of guest pajamas at Phil and James' place so I wouldn't have to unpack to stay the night. And I didn't have anywhere I had to be today in Pasadena. I kept trying to talk myself into staying, but I kept pointing my car south. I even pulled over on MLK and sat with my car running for 10 more minutes, trying to will myself to turn around and stay the night. But stronger than all my reasons for staying was the inescapable urge to wake up in LA today, even if I had to drive all night to get here.
To use a totally non-dinner-table analogy, revisiting the past is a bit like poking at a wound. If you pick at it too much while it's still fresh, it takes a lot longer for new skin to grow in its place. Once you've got a scar, you can stay there longer. In a little while, further through transition, I'll be able to go back to Seattle and Berkeley and appreciate each for what it is, but this time I was spending too much energy appreciating them for what LA isn't. Four months into starting over, staying another night in fantasyland (which is what each place was, considering half the people I spent time with don't even live in those places anymore) was starting to feel masochistic. Or maybe it's less dramatic than that -- maybe revisiting the past is more like baking cookies... the oven is a necessary place to be but when the timer goes off, ding! Stay any longer and you'll burn on the bottom and get dried out and crumbly. Either way, it was time to hit the road.
I-5 ended up being closed in two places, and the drive took nine hours. I rolled in around 3am and caffeine kept me up until 5. But I woke up at lunchtime today a little more at peace with LA, having drawn up a tiny truce with everything Berkeley is/was and isn't/wasn't, and with a new appreciation for the scars that cut across the landscape of my arms, legs, and hands, reminding me not to poke too much right now.
Monday, December 12, 2005
living and dying in LA
... because really, dying is what I felt like I was doing last night. And most of today, too. After a pickup game yesterday, I found myself doubled over coughing on the side of the field for a few minutes before I could make it to my car. I made it home fine though, and thought it would calm down. But it wound up getting worse throughout the night, and this morning I felt like an elephant was sitting on my head. My whole body was aching from hacking the whole night through.
Anyway, I went in to urgent care today to see if I had pneumonia, and it turns out I've developed asthma. My body seems to be rejecting living in LA.
Anyway, I went in to urgent care today to see if I had pneumonia, and it turns out I've developed asthma. My body seems to be rejecting living in LA.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
relative adulthood
Hmmm... for more on the recurring theme of "adulthood," start with Becky's post on Twixters (but don't forget to come back!). Emerging adulthood is actually a recently acknowledged stage of development (I had to answer a bunch of questions about it for a final last week). So it's been on my mind, and I actually hounded my prof about research into urban tribes for a while (there's not much).
One "official designation" is that emerging adulthood lasts from 18-25 (I disagree). The hallmarks of emerging from emerging adulthood are when one begins to make commitments. Maybe that means marriage or kids, maybe it just means picking one job and sticking with it for a while rather than trying something new every six months. It means being able to engage in intimate relationships (friendships or otherwise). It means entering a period of (relative) stability.
So do we count as emerged? What does it mean to make commitments in the current urban landscape, where even if I choose to stay, maybe no one else will? What if "starting a family" looks more like an urban tribe for an extended period of time? And why is just deciding to be present somewhere (instead of mentally being where we were in the past, or where we want to be in the future) so much harder than it sounds?
They say we're commitment-phobic, and perhaps in some senses we are -- but I don't think it's because we're always waiting for something better to come along. I think it's because we don't know how to say yes to anything. First, we have too many options, which should be a blessing, but winds up being a paralyzing curse when we fear squandering any of them. So one day we figure out that ultimate choice is not ultimate freedom, and we think about making some commitments. But we can't afford houses, or condos, or even monthly parking spaces, which precludes the physical aspect of attachment to places we're trying to call "home." Marrying someone no longer just means that we have to compromise on which movie to rent this weekend -- now it likely means we have to compromise on which state to live in. And TV news (which you should all stop watching, if you haven't already, unless you need to know the weather) has us convinced that if we have kids they're going die by some obscure petrifying household scenario, like suffocating on a teddy bear. So we put it off, we live in limbo for a while. That's our relative stability.
I think many of us are the model of the new"emerged" adult, where changing jobs every few years is part of a developed career path, and where intimate relationships are no less strong for lack of blood ties or civil sanctions. Or maybe I'm really full of crap, and I know nothing about commitments and we really don't have any.... But I don't know a single person who doesn't crave roots, depth, and commitment of sorts. We're wired that way. So I think what we're really afraid of is vulnerability, which is a necessary byproduct of hitching your wagon to something outside of yourself, like spouses and kids.
One "official designation" is that emerging adulthood lasts from 18-25 (I disagree). The hallmarks of emerging from emerging adulthood are when one begins to make commitments. Maybe that means marriage or kids, maybe it just means picking one job and sticking with it for a while rather than trying something new every six months. It means being able to engage in intimate relationships (friendships or otherwise). It means entering a period of (relative) stability.
So do we count as emerged? What does it mean to make commitments in the current urban landscape, where even if I choose to stay, maybe no one else will? What if "starting a family" looks more like an urban tribe for an extended period of time? And why is just deciding to be present somewhere (instead of mentally being where we were in the past, or where we want to be in the future) so much harder than it sounds?
They say we're commitment-phobic, and perhaps in some senses we are -- but I don't think it's because we're always waiting for something better to come along. I think it's because we don't know how to say yes to anything. First, we have too many options, which should be a blessing, but winds up being a paralyzing curse when we fear squandering any of them. So one day we figure out that ultimate choice is not ultimate freedom, and we think about making some commitments. But we can't afford houses, or condos, or even monthly parking spaces, which precludes the physical aspect of attachment to places we're trying to call "home." Marrying someone no longer just means that we have to compromise on which movie to rent this weekend -- now it likely means we have to compromise on which state to live in. And TV news (which you should all stop watching, if you haven't already, unless you need to know the weather) has us convinced that if we have kids they're going die by some obscure petrifying household scenario, like suffocating on a teddy bear. So we put it off, we live in limbo for a while. That's our relative stability.
I think many of us are the model of the new"emerged" adult, where changing jobs every few years is part of a developed career path, and where intimate relationships are no less strong for lack of blood ties or civil sanctions. Or maybe I'm really full of crap, and I know nothing about commitments and we really don't have any.... But I don't know a single person who doesn't crave roots, depth, and commitment of sorts. We're wired that way. So I think what we're really afraid of is vulnerability, which is a necessary byproduct of hitching your wagon to something outside of yourself, like spouses and kids.
Friday, December 09, 2005
I'm down with heresy, yeah you know me
Being that Fuller is a non-denominational evangelical school, there are a few key things everybody here agrees on and we have (mostly) healthy disagreement on just about everything else, from drinking and dancing to doctrines of atonement. Basically, everybody thinks that what somebody else thinks is heresy, but we do a pretty good job of dialoguing about our differences and hanging onto our commonality. Recently quoted in the Semi, the campus newspaper:
"I'm a heretic, you're a heretic, we're all heretics. Can't we all just love the baby Jesus?"
"I'm a heretic, you're a heretic, we're all heretics. Can't we all just love the baby Jesus?"
Thursday, December 08, 2005
question:
In department stores, why do they call it the "sportswear" section, when it's full of skirts and satiny things, and there's not actually anything there that you could play sports in?
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
It's a rough winter
Shoes
OK, I've gone and done it. Filled my brain full with details about the major theological themes in the book of Luke, and John's relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. So I'll talk about shoes.
I was invited to a Christmas party this weekend where lobster is on the menu. I do not think that I own any shoes nice enough to eat lobster in. I have "sensible shoes" useful for running around shooting weddings -- they're quiet (no squeaking) and low (no falling over), but they are also no fun. So I went shoe shopping.
Ladies with small feet, I do not ever want to hear you complaining about shoes. At least they make cute shoes in your size. When you wear an 11 1/2, you get stuck with men's shoes and the leftovers at Nordstrom Rack, usually mustard-yellow pumps. Every once in a while I find cute shoes in my size, but the problem is that they're not really cute in my size. I look like an oversized four-year-old playing dress-up. And in the rare case that a shoe exists that is cute, even in my size, nine times out of 10 it has a four-inch heel, and until I start dating a Laker the last thing I need is to be 6'2".
Can I hear a little sympathy, folks, for the tall women with big feet?
I was invited to a Christmas party this weekend where lobster is on the menu. I do not think that I own any shoes nice enough to eat lobster in. I have "sensible shoes" useful for running around shooting weddings -- they're quiet (no squeaking) and low (no falling over), but they are also no fun. So I went shoe shopping.
Ladies with small feet, I do not ever want to hear you complaining about shoes. At least they make cute shoes in your size. When you wear an 11 1/2, you get stuck with men's shoes and the leftovers at Nordstrom Rack, usually mustard-yellow pumps. Every once in a while I find cute shoes in my size, but the problem is that they're not really cute in my size. I look like an oversized four-year-old playing dress-up. And in the rare case that a shoe exists that is cute, even in my size, nine times out of 10 it has a four-inch heel, and until I start dating a Laker the last thing I need is to be 6'2".
Can I hear a little sympathy, folks, for the tall women with big feet?
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Signs of the apocalypse
Somewhere back in October, just two weeks into the quarter, my mother was visiting. I wandered into my room to find her making my bed one day, and joked that she shouldn't bother, it was going to get unmade in a few hours and probably never be made again. The funny thing is, in the two months since she left, I think I've made my bed every day.
I think probably this is just a feature of the changes in my life that have taken me from using my room for sleeping only, to being in my room, reading in the IKEA chair in the corner, using my bed as a bookshelf, every waking moment that I'm not in class. OK, so maybe this is a slight exaggeration, I do try to wander to the fridge a few times a day, and I have maintained a steadfast commitment to play ultimate, but other than that, I kind of feel like all I do is read and write. I don't really have a social life. The irony of sitting in my room alone, reading all about how our development only fully occurs in the context of relationship, is not lost on me. It's not that my intitiation energy is gone, it's just operating at about 49%, and usually gets trumped by the 51% of me that thinks it's easier to chip away at the reading list so I can be an informed therapist someday. And yes, the irony that I am holing myself away alone so that I can be better at helping people with their relationships is also not lost on me.
I need help convincing the 49% to riot.
I think probably this is just a feature of the changes in my life that have taken me from using my room for sleeping only, to being in my room, reading in the IKEA chair in the corner, using my bed as a bookshelf, every waking moment that I'm not in class. OK, so maybe this is a slight exaggeration, I do try to wander to the fridge a few times a day, and I have maintained a steadfast commitment to play ultimate, but other than that, I kind of feel like all I do is read and write. I don't really have a social life. The irony of sitting in my room alone, reading all about how our development only fully occurs in the context of relationship, is not lost on me. It's not that my intitiation energy is gone, it's just operating at about 49%, and usually gets trumped by the 51% of me that thinks it's easier to chip away at the reading list so I can be an informed therapist someday. And yes, the irony that I am holing myself away alone so that I can be better at helping people with their relationships is also not lost on me.
I need help convincing the 49% to riot.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
deconstruction
I am having one of those days when I think coming back to grad school is ruining me, making me unfit for human interaction. Learning all of this stuff about counseling is stamping out any feeling of ease or genuineness, now that I'm some twisted combination of hyper-observant, armed with new knowledge, and being a bit of a psychological hypochondriac, thinking that I suffer from every new dysfuntion I discover the name for.
It's probably the experience of a baseball player who, after a long stretch of feeling like a "natural," has a batting coach come in and deconstruct every minute detail, from his grip on the bat to the rise of his knee to the placement of his feet. While the intended result is that he become an athlete whose natural inclinations are refined to near perfection, the interim effect is that he can't find the sweet spot to save his life, and bats .050 for a while.
So the unintended consequence for me these days is that the combination of awkwardness and self-consciousness about my competence is making it a little hard both to make friends and to relate to old ones, and now that the novelty of living in LA is wearing off, I'm pretty lonely this week and I feel like I'm pretty far away from the figurative sweet spot in a number of ways. So for those of you who are getting strange bits and pieces of me now, thanks for your grace, and your encouragement to cut myself some slack, while I get my swing back.
It's probably the experience of a baseball player who, after a long stretch of feeling like a "natural," has a batting coach come in and deconstruct every minute detail, from his grip on the bat to the rise of his knee to the placement of his feet. While the intended result is that he become an athlete whose natural inclinations are refined to near perfection, the interim effect is that he can't find the sweet spot to save his life, and bats .050 for a while.
So the unintended consequence for me these days is that the combination of awkwardness and self-consciousness about my competence is making it a little hard both to make friends and to relate to old ones, and now that the novelty of living in LA is wearing off, I'm pretty lonely this week and I feel like I'm pretty far away from the figurative sweet spot in a number of ways. So for those of you who are getting strange bits and pieces of me now, thanks for your grace, and your encouragement to cut myself some slack, while I get my swing back.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The United States of Wal*Mart
I haven't seen it yet to have much of a review, but for the store I love to hate and hate to love, find yourself a free local screening of the full-length documentary Wal*Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It's cheap, it's easy, it's one-stop shopping for the budget-minded, from midwestern housewives to LA grad students. But it also drives wages down, stamps out local businesses, promotes homogenization and convenience over character and creativity, and lives on government subsidies, either directly or indirectly (see here for a by-the-numbers list of alleged infractions).
Truly, there is never just one side to any story. Of course there's another one here we won't see, and likely there are other businesses whose practices would be just as heinous on such a large scale. But I'm not sold on Walmart's party line either, the one where it claims to build community and provide good jobs and that whole load of crap.
Also recommended: The Corporation. An extremely biased, one-sided, doomsday-predicting documentary which aligns the modern corporation with the DSM IV definition of a sociopath. Absolutely ridiculous ending (in which it suggests that the world would be fine and dandy if everything were under public ownership instead) but entertaining (if a bit long), thought-provoking, and worth the price of admission just to see a ditzy ad exec gloat over how her company uses psychological research to get kids to nag their parents for new toys.
So what's a girl to do? I can, and will, boycott, but as one reviewer pointed out, the people who are promoting and watching this movie are probably the ones who can afford to boycott Walmart anyway. So getting enraged (and witholding the $8 I usually spend at Walmart annually) is only gonna go so far, when current economic realities have created a massive base of people who don't have the luxury of passing up the blue-vested hegemony.
Truth is, I don't know how to put my money where my mouth is much more than that. But I have to believe/hope/pray that when Jesus said he had been anointed to preach good news to the poor, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, it didn't have anything to do with rolling back prices.
Truly, there is never just one side to any story. Of course there's another one here we won't see, and likely there are other businesses whose practices would be just as heinous on such a large scale. But I'm not sold on Walmart's party line either, the one where it claims to build community and provide good jobs and that whole load of crap.
Also recommended: The Corporation. An extremely biased, one-sided, doomsday-predicting documentary which aligns the modern corporation with the DSM IV definition of a sociopath. Absolutely ridiculous ending (in which it suggests that the world would be fine and dandy if everything were under public ownership instead) but entertaining (if a bit long), thought-provoking, and worth the price of admission just to see a ditzy ad exec gloat over how her company uses psychological research to get kids to nag their parents for new toys.
So what's a girl to do? I can, and will, boycott, but as one reviewer pointed out, the people who are promoting and watching this movie are probably the ones who can afford to boycott Walmart anyway. So getting enraged (and witholding the $8 I usually spend at Walmart annually) is only gonna go so far, when current economic realities have created a massive base of people who don't have the luxury of passing up the blue-vested hegemony.
Truth is, I don't know how to put my money where my mouth is much more than that. But I have to believe/hope/pray that when Jesus said he had been anointed to preach good news to the poor, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, it didn't have anything to do with rolling back prices.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Little Old Ladies in Pasadena
It's so refreshing to hear a perspective on life from someone older than 35. We had a "senior panel" in my Development class tonight, with three rockin' old ladies between the ages of 63 and 82, and an 84-year-old man (who appeared to be past his truly rockin' days, but still had quite a bit of zip). But they were no ordinary senior citizens. The prof warned us ahead of time that they wouldn't be a representative sample, and one of the panel members even admitted she doesn't usually hang out with people her age, "because they bore me most of the time, to be quite honest."
Bob gets up at 5am every Friday morning and gets in his new Toyota Prius, goes to pick up Lydia, and they go to an activists group in LA that has met every week since 9/11. They've both been arrested. Helena grew up in the depression, has traveled to over 60 countries, and - having seen life from a less indulgent perspective - said that she often wants to follow the garbage trucks in a truck of her own, pulling out the things we waste that are still perfectly useful. Barbara started out teaching preschool, hated it, and worked her way up through nearly every grade until she finally found her niche teaching GED prep classes at adult school. They all, either explicitly or implicitly, reminded us that who we'll be at 85 is a continuation of who we are now.
Best quote of the evening? When someone asked if they had any regrets in life, Lydia grabbed the microphone from Bob and blurted, earnestly, "I could have gone to jail more often."
Most poignant moment of the evening? Bob reading a piece he wrote during the Korean war, predicting that at the end of the current conflict, the vacuum would be filled with further conflict. "I hope," he said, "that you won't be too hard on us for the way we left the world for you."
Bob gets up at 5am every Friday morning and gets in his new Toyota Prius, goes to pick up Lydia, and they go to an activists group in LA that has met every week since 9/11. They've both been arrested. Helena grew up in the depression, has traveled to over 60 countries, and - having seen life from a less indulgent perspective - said that she often wants to follow the garbage trucks in a truck of her own, pulling out the things we waste that are still perfectly useful. Barbara started out teaching preschool, hated it, and worked her way up through nearly every grade until she finally found her niche teaching GED prep classes at adult school. They all, either explicitly or implicitly, reminded us that who we'll be at 85 is a continuation of who we are now.
Best quote of the evening? When someone asked if they had any regrets in life, Lydia grabbed the microphone from Bob and blurted, earnestly, "I could have gone to jail more often."
Most poignant moment of the evening? Bob reading a piece he wrote during the Korean war, predicting that at the end of the current conflict, the vacuum would be filled with further conflict. "I hope," he said, "that you won't be too hard on us for the way we left the world for you."
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Top Ten Reasons You Know You're Not in Berkeley Anymore
Becky D posted her top 10 reasons here on the B-Did Blog, but she's in Boulder now and I can't say any of ours overlap. In contrast, here's the LA version (hint, this may not make much sense unless you read Becky's first):
10. It was 85 degrees today.
9. I regularly encounter a 12-lane freeway on my way to work/school.
8. Craigslist exists, but you're more likely to find a job as a personal assitant to a minor celebrity than you are to be cold-calling to save the environment.
7. I've stopped adding the possibility, "if there's traffic" to driving estimates.
6. I was almost run over by a herd of Hummers on a recent bike ride.
5. Ditto on the lack of oxygen, but for different reasons. It is disturbing to be unable to see mountains that are 5 miles away.
4. There are still homeless people, but instead of holding signs that say "Money for pot?", they've each claimed a cart from the 99-cent store one block over, and push them up and down the street collecting cans, so I bring my recycling out to them every week.
3. The Metro Gold Line is impossible to find and doesn't have a parking lot. I tried to take public transportation and they seem to be trying to keep me on the freeway!
2. White people are a minority.
1. OK, can't comment on the governor thing, so I'll just add that I may be the only person within 50 miles who still eats bread.
10. It was 85 degrees today.
9. I regularly encounter a 12-lane freeway on my way to work/school.
8. Craigslist exists, but you're more likely to find a job as a personal assitant to a minor celebrity than you are to be cold-calling to save the environment.
7. I've stopped adding the possibility, "if there's traffic" to driving estimates.
6. I was almost run over by a herd of Hummers on a recent bike ride.
5. Ditto on the lack of oxygen, but for different reasons. It is disturbing to be unable to see mountains that are 5 miles away.
4. There are still homeless people, but instead of holding signs that say "Money for pot?", they've each claimed a cart from the 99-cent store one block over, and push them up and down the street collecting cans, so I bring my recycling out to them every week.
3. The Metro Gold Line is impossible to find and doesn't have a parking lot. I tried to take public transportation and they seem to be trying to keep me on the freeway!
2. White people are a minority.
1. OK, can't comment on the governor thing, so I'll just add that I may be the only person within 50 miles who still eats bread.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Spiritual Boob Jobs
Got your attention with the title, eh? You'll have to read the whole thing to figure out where it fits in :) .
Zoinks, I don't even know where to start. Ever have two very different themes running around in your head for weeks, or months or years even, and you can't make sense of either of them? Then one day, for better or for worse, they collide and begin to fuse in ways that give each the power to interpret and make sense of the other. I've had twin obsessions with grief and adulthood for a while, and somehow being here now has heightened my awareness of both. Studying human development, on the brink of turning 30, emerging from "emerging adulthood," feeling vulnerable and lonely in a new city, reading the news, reading the bible, trying to reconcile it all and make sense of any of it. And every once in a while, along the way, something punctuates the chaotic mess and illuminates, just for a moment, the point of collision. Today, it was an article on adolescence by Frederick Buechner, in which he writes:
I'm turning 30, in nine months. This fact does not bother me. In fact, I think I am the only person who actually rounds up already. I don't look 30. I don't feel 30. I don't act 30. Yet I find myself constantly trying to convince people that I am. You'd think I could just let it go and start being glad I don't look my age, since it will probably come in handy to finally look 30 when I'm 45. But for some reason I get hung up on wanting to assert that I've lived long enough to have lost my idealism (as if anyone could spend five minutes with me and not figure that out). Perhaps that is why I hang on to my cynicism, why it's hard to shake. It marks me as someone acquainted with grief.
I just finished reading last week's issue of the LA Weekly. The articles were diverse and typical: the Catholic church's obsession with virgins and whores; a profile of the activist father of the first Mexican soldier to die in Iraq; a review of a book of short stories by the author of Found Magazine, who writes about items found from lives left behind as he rummages through the wreckage of New Orleans. It is full of the reality of life. But surrounding the articles, the ads: Botox. Breast augmentation. Colon hydrotherapy. "Massage" with hot asian girls. Are we in denial about the reality of life, or are we so well-acquainted with grief and loneliness, and so ill-equipped to deal with our own - and others' - that we seek relief in places we'll never find it: fitting in, looking the part, intimacy-free sex, and, um, what exactly is colon hydrotherapy for? A quote from the book review struck me: "Rather, [the author's] worldview is distinctly old-fashioned. It recalls Fitzgerald and Kerouac, writers for whom sadness wasn't the product of historical accident, but simply a condition of American life." When did an understanding of sadness as inherent in the human condition become "old fashioned"? When did we get so far from our grief that we have only two options for dealing with it - to be shocked by it or to insist that it doesn't exist?
I recently trained as a hospice volunteer. During my interview, I was asked why I was interested in working with hospice patients and their families. I actually hadn't really thought through the answer before, so it mostly came out as a jumbled string of experiences and interests and training that led me to this point (the coordinator, in fact, mentioned it was the longest answer anyone had ever given to that question). In hindsight, I think I did it for the same reason I came back to school to be a therapist - to be there as people integrate their grief. There is reality in grief, and meaning. People are not defined by their grief and loss - there are still groceries to be bought, and work to do, and conversations to have, about love and politics and football teams - but it's part of us; a part we can't cover over with fake boobs and clean assholes. The funny thing seems to be that if there's nowhere to deal with grief, it does become us. It becomes the undercurrent, the pirate radio station in our head. I don't just mean "big grief" -- death and divorce, trauma and tragedy. There is plenty of that to go around in the world, but there is also the little grief, that's not so little: transition, loneliness, fear of hope, loss of idealism, and the realization that it doesn't go away when one "grows up."
I think that as Christians we're supposed to live lifestyles of integrated grief. I don't really know what that means but I want to think about it. Maybe grief is like a prosthesis: at first, it is painful and obvious, but slowly it becomes part of you and you learn to live as fully as possible in the world again. Some days you may be limping more than others, some day you may wake up and realize that even though it hasn't gone away, you stop noticing it every second of the day. Maybe if we're lucky we have days where we take it for granted, and we might discover there are even some things we can do with it that we couldn't do before, like roast marshmallows on our toes. But we can't get there by pretending we still have all our limbs... and I'm irritated today with the Christians who have spiritual boob jobs, saying, in essence, don't pay attention to those scars over there, take a look at these instead! Aren't they fabulous?
I recognize I'm probably being a little intense about all of this. It's just hard not to be right now. I tire easily of surface conversation, and when I am denied a chance to tune in to pirate radio as background noise, I usually find it stuck on volume 11. So that is why Grief and Growing Up (with capital letters) are a big part of what's on my mind these days when I write. I miss my church in Berkeley, which sometimes felt like a combat-zone war hospital, where those of us who were currently free of shrapnel did our best to help keep the recently wounded from losing too much blood. But then we'd go get beer and talk about other stuff. I'm looking forward to having a few friends here that I'm sharing life with, so that it's not a case of going from small talk (with new people) to cathartic release (with old friends who know me). I'm looking forward to having depth and whimsy overlap again, and feeling a little more balanced. In the meantime, I'm starting to figure out what I want to do with my degree and that's not all bad.
Zoinks, I don't even know where to start. Ever have two very different themes running around in your head for weeks, or months or years even, and you can't make sense of either of them? Then one day, for better or for worse, they collide and begin to fuse in ways that give each the power to interpret and make sense of the other. I've had twin obsessions with grief and adulthood for a while, and somehow being here now has heightened my awareness of both. Studying human development, on the brink of turning 30, emerging from "emerging adulthood," feeling vulnerable and lonely in a new city, reading the news, reading the bible, trying to reconcile it all and make sense of any of it. And every once in a while, along the way, something punctuates the chaotic mess and illuminates, just for a moment, the point of collision. Today, it was an article on adolescence by Frederick Buechner, in which he writes:
"... the word adolescent derives from the latin verb adolescere, which is made up of ad, meaning toward, and alescere, meaning to grow. The word designates humans who are in the process of growing up.... I am sixty-four years old. I have fathered children. I have written books. I have letters after my name... but to call me an adult or grownup is an oversimplification at best.... Let me put forth an alternate etymology.... Let me suggest with total innacuracy that the word adolescent is made up of ad, meaning toward, and dolor, meaning pain. Thus adolescent becomes a term which designates human beings... trying to come to terms with pain, to figure out how to deal with pain, not just how to survive pain but how to turn it to some human and creative use in their own encounters with it."This post is mostly just a purging beginning. There is nothing succinct about it. I want to start processing this stuff and in the absence of humans to do it with at this particular moment, I need to get it all out so I can start picking and choosing and finding the connections. So I'm throwing it all out there and I'd love to know what hits home, so that I can focus in on some of it.
I'm turning 30, in nine months. This fact does not bother me. In fact, I think I am the only person who actually rounds up already. I don't look 30. I don't feel 30. I don't act 30. Yet I find myself constantly trying to convince people that I am. You'd think I could just let it go and start being glad I don't look my age, since it will probably come in handy to finally look 30 when I'm 45. But for some reason I get hung up on wanting to assert that I've lived long enough to have lost my idealism (as if anyone could spend five minutes with me and not figure that out). Perhaps that is why I hang on to my cynicism, why it's hard to shake. It marks me as someone acquainted with grief.
I just finished reading last week's issue of the LA Weekly. The articles were diverse and typical: the Catholic church's obsession with virgins and whores; a profile of the activist father of the first Mexican soldier to die in Iraq; a review of a book of short stories by the author of Found Magazine, who writes about items found from lives left behind as he rummages through the wreckage of New Orleans. It is full of the reality of life. But surrounding the articles, the ads: Botox. Breast augmentation. Colon hydrotherapy. "Massage" with hot asian girls. Are we in denial about the reality of life, or are we so well-acquainted with grief and loneliness, and so ill-equipped to deal with our own - and others' - that we seek relief in places we'll never find it: fitting in, looking the part, intimacy-free sex, and, um, what exactly is colon hydrotherapy for? A quote from the book review struck me: "Rather, [the author's] worldview is distinctly old-fashioned. It recalls Fitzgerald and Kerouac, writers for whom sadness wasn't the product of historical accident, but simply a condition of American life." When did an understanding of sadness as inherent in the human condition become "old fashioned"? When did we get so far from our grief that we have only two options for dealing with it - to be shocked by it or to insist that it doesn't exist?
I recently trained as a hospice volunteer. During my interview, I was asked why I was interested in working with hospice patients and their families. I actually hadn't really thought through the answer before, so it mostly came out as a jumbled string of experiences and interests and training that led me to this point (the coordinator, in fact, mentioned it was the longest answer anyone had ever given to that question). In hindsight, I think I did it for the same reason I came back to school to be a therapist - to be there as people integrate their grief. There is reality in grief, and meaning. People are not defined by their grief and loss - there are still groceries to be bought, and work to do, and conversations to have, about love and politics and football teams - but it's part of us; a part we can't cover over with fake boobs and clean assholes. The funny thing seems to be that if there's nowhere to deal with grief, it does become us. It becomes the undercurrent, the pirate radio station in our head. I don't just mean "big grief" -- death and divorce, trauma and tragedy. There is plenty of that to go around in the world, but there is also the little grief, that's not so little: transition, loneliness, fear of hope, loss of idealism, and the realization that it doesn't go away when one "grows up."
I think that as Christians we're supposed to live lifestyles of integrated grief. I don't really know what that means but I want to think about it. Maybe grief is like a prosthesis: at first, it is painful and obvious, but slowly it becomes part of you and you learn to live as fully as possible in the world again. Some days you may be limping more than others, some day you may wake up and realize that even though it hasn't gone away, you stop noticing it every second of the day. Maybe if we're lucky we have days where we take it for granted, and we might discover there are even some things we can do with it that we couldn't do before, like roast marshmallows on our toes. But we can't get there by pretending we still have all our limbs... and I'm irritated today with the Christians who have spiritual boob jobs, saying, in essence, don't pay attention to those scars over there, take a look at these instead! Aren't they fabulous?
I recognize I'm probably being a little intense about all of this. It's just hard not to be right now. I tire easily of surface conversation, and when I am denied a chance to tune in to pirate radio as background noise, I usually find it stuck on volume 11. So that is why Grief and Growing Up (with capital letters) are a big part of what's on my mind these days when I write. I miss my church in Berkeley, which sometimes felt like a combat-zone war hospital, where those of us who were currently free of shrapnel did our best to help keep the recently wounded from losing too much blood. But then we'd go get beer and talk about other stuff. I'm looking forward to having a few friends here that I'm sharing life with, so that it's not a case of going from small talk (with new people) to cathartic release (with old friends who know me). I'm looking forward to having depth and whimsy overlap again, and feeling a little more balanced. In the meantime, I'm starting to figure out what I want to do with my degree and that's not all bad.
Talk Nerdy To Me
I had a sad 20 minutes this week. Not really a sad week, it was actually fine, it just had a sad part. And I happened to call Andrew during my 20-minute pity-fest, thinking it would help, but somehow it didn't. After a minute or two of talking about me, and realizing that was just going to make me cry, I insisted that we stop talking about me and talk about something else. So what did he pick? Economics and Sociology statistical research. After a few minutes, I really was crying. "You're making me lonelier," I said, "because there are no nerds in Los Angeles."
Time to infiltrate Cal Tech...
Time to infiltrate Cal Tech...
Friday, November 11, 2005
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Deja vu, again
Apparently my name means "youthful." I shoulda seen all of this coming...
Neighbor: "what do you mean you worked with college students, you're, like, 21!"
Me: "WHAT!?? We had this conversation already."
N: "You're turning red and the cords in your neck are popping out. Why are you upset?"
Me: "Because I'm not 21!!"
N: "You had students? Did they call you Julie Brown, like the VJ?"
Me: "I know who both of the Julie Browns are... the redheaded one with the obnoxious voice and Downtown Julie Brown! Does that prove it?"
N: "So what, are you.... ummm.... 26?"
Me: "I'm TWENTY-NINE!"
N: "Oh... I was even guessing up, too. I thought you were gonna say 24 so I gave you the benefit of the doubt."
Neighbor: "what do you mean you worked with college students, you're, like, 21!"
Me: "WHAT!?? We had this conversation already."
N: "You're turning red and the cords in your neck are popping out. Why are you upset?"
Me: "Because I'm not 21!!"
N: "You had students? Did they call you Julie Brown, like the VJ?"
Me: "I know who both of the Julie Browns are... the redheaded one with the obnoxious voice and Downtown Julie Brown! Does that prove it?"
N: "So what, are you.... ummm.... 26?"
Me: "I'm TWENTY-NINE!"
N: "Oh... I was even guessing up, too. I thought you were gonna say 24 so I gave you the benefit of the doubt."
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Top Ten.... funniest quotes from Christian online dating sites
So, taking a break from thinking about the historical, theological, and psychological implications of the death of Judas for a few minutes (for a paper, of course... not like I sit around and think about such things for kicks -- except when Andrew and I get on a roll), I was surfing through the profiles on online dating sites, which is not nearly as entertaining without Natalie and Hannah around, but it was a nice brain-break.
Anyhow, tonight I happened to run across a Christian online dating site. However, while acknowledging that one of my most impervious bad habits is judgment-as-self-protection, I have to say it was a scary sight. I feel horrible that I seem to be selling out my peeps, and there were certainly a few exceptions, but mostly the men seemed to fall into two categories.
First, we have the idealistic, verbose, closet-poet-who-works-in-sales type. His photo shows him hugging a small child that he is quick to point out is his niece. He frequently mentions that his deepest desire is to be a doting husband/father to "the woman God is preparing" for him and the children who will be "vessels of God's love to the world." His response to the type of woman he hopes to find is seven paragraphs long and includes a frighteningly impossible plethora of yets: laid-back yet driven, tough yet tender, adventurous yet nurturing, playful yet serious, shares his interests yet has a mind/life of her own. His site name is something like "greatguy883" or "live4him".
The second type of guy doesn't spell, punctuate, or write in complete sentences (sorry, I'm a little hung up on grammar). His photo is either tilted at a funny angle from where he tried to cut out his ex-girlfriend, whose arms you can still see around his waist, or it's a head shot that looks like it could get him a job on General Hospital circa 1983. He uses all caps whenever he writes the word GOD, and his ideal woman, if he bothers to answer any of the questions, is some type of cross between Betty Crocker and Mother Teresa.
So, without further ado, I present 10 (OK... 11) direct quotes from a cursory search of our eligible bachelors.
10. "i think im funny when i dont try to be funny i am when i try to be funny im not."
9. Describing a perfect first date: "Anywhere That we could look into eachother's eyes....to witness the truth of our beings."
8. Describing hobbies, presumably attempting humor: "I like shooting beer cans with my beebee gun. Oh, and Ima trainin' the dawg to get beers from the frig"
7. Regarding prior relationships: "What you put into a relationship, you might as well kiss goodbye, you won't be getting it back. Have I learned anything?... Crap, I am not THAT stupid."
6. Also regarding prior relationships: "I was just such a pain."
5. Describing his faith: "In the words of Jerry Maguire - 'JC Completes me.'"
4. Regarding the ideal woman: "think Drew Barrymore meets Janice from the muppets"
3. Regarding the ideal woman: "im looking for a talented,witty beautiful lady that compliments me with her bieng there with me. Not a woman whos has my back from way back."
2. Regarding the paragraph he had just written about the ideal woman: "Wow, this is really boring."
1. "I would love to be a father and a husband, but just having a relationship with a woman would be a great start." (OK, so this guy seemed really sweet, I feel bad putting him in here)
0. "And yes, contrary to popular opinion, engineers are people too!"
Anyhow, tonight I happened to run across a Christian online dating site. However, while acknowledging that one of my most impervious bad habits is judgment-as-self-protection, I have to say it was a scary sight. I feel horrible that I seem to be selling out my peeps, and there were certainly a few exceptions, but mostly the men seemed to fall into two categories.
First, we have the idealistic, verbose, closet-poet-who-works-in-sales type. His photo shows him hugging a small child that he is quick to point out is his niece. He frequently mentions that his deepest desire is to be a doting husband/father to "the woman God is preparing" for him and the children who will be "vessels of God's love to the world." His response to the type of woman he hopes to find is seven paragraphs long and includes a frighteningly impossible plethora of yets: laid-back yet driven, tough yet tender, adventurous yet nurturing, playful yet serious, shares his interests yet has a mind/life of her own. His site name is something like "greatguy883" or "live4him".
The second type of guy doesn't spell, punctuate, or write in complete sentences (sorry, I'm a little hung up on grammar). His photo is either tilted at a funny angle from where he tried to cut out his ex-girlfriend, whose arms you can still see around his waist, or it's a head shot that looks like it could get him a job on General Hospital circa 1983. He uses all caps whenever he writes the word GOD, and his ideal woman, if he bothers to answer any of the questions, is some type of cross between Betty Crocker and Mother Teresa.
So, without further ado, I present 10 (OK... 11) direct quotes from a cursory search of our eligible bachelors.
10. "i think im funny when i dont try to be funny i am when i try to be funny im not."
9. Describing a perfect first date: "Anywhere That we could look into eachother's eyes....to witness the truth of our beings."
8. Describing hobbies, presumably attempting humor: "I like shooting beer cans with my beebee gun. Oh, and Ima trainin' the dawg to get beers from the frig"
7. Regarding prior relationships: "What you put into a relationship, you might as well kiss goodbye, you won't be getting it back. Have I learned anything?... Crap, I am not THAT stupid."
6. Also regarding prior relationships: "I was just such a pain."
5. Describing his faith: "In the words of Jerry Maguire - 'JC Completes me.'"
4. Regarding the ideal woman: "think Drew Barrymore meets Janice from the muppets"
3. Regarding the ideal woman: "im looking for a talented,witty beautiful lady that compliments me with her bieng there with me. Not a woman whos has my back from way back."
2. Regarding the paragraph he had just written about the ideal woman: "Wow, this is really boring."
1. "I would love to be a father and a husband, but just having a relationship with a woman would be a great start." (OK, so this guy seemed really sweet, I feel bad putting him in here)
0. "And yes, contrary to popular opinion, engineers are people too!"
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
No time to be clever myself, I'll let someone else do it....
OK, so, falling under the "things I shouldn't be doing when I have a midterm tomorrow" heading... I was looking for something online and found this instead: a blog on why men shouldn't be ordained. Might only be funny to people who regularly hear these excuses about women in ministry...
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
I (heart) Red Tape
So, I read last night AND this morning and somehow I think that grants me a blogging break, despite the fact that I have nothing of note to say today.... so I will talk about parking.
Pasadena has this law, which they only have posted on one sign somewhere on the outskirts of town, probably behind a tree, that there is NO PARKING on any city streets between 2-6am, except by exceedingly-difficult-to-obtain permit. Hence, the ticket on the moving van on night #1. So, I go down to the city permit office to obtain a permit. This, however, requires some rather pesky obstacles. First, you must submit the auto registrations of every registered automobile at your residence. So, for me to get a permit, I had to make my roommate copy her registration and fill out a form too. Second, your registration must reflect the address at which you are applying for a permit. Well, funny now, but when you change an address with the DMV they don't send you an updated copy of your registration which reflects your new address. So I only have one with an Oakland address on it. When I call the city to bring the extreme difficulty of this procedure to their attention (because I am sure I was the first to notice, and do so), they tell me to get a second copy of my change of address form when I go to the DMV. I mention to them that I was a good citizen this time and submitted my address change before I moved, via the mail, and have no intention of returning to a DMV anytime soon to fill out a form I already submitted, just so they can stamp it. So, they decide they will accept my Oakland registration and a copy of my student ID (???).
In the meantime of all this, until I gathered all the requisite pieces for my permit application, I had to call a phone number every night and leave a recording describing my car and stating where it is parked and where I lived, so they wouldn't ticket it. Now, I have a temporary permit that is hanging in the window while I wait for them to decide whether or not I deserve a real permit. My temporary permit expires on Thursday, so I have to go back to the parking office by then to renew my temporary permit so I don't get ticketed while I'm waiting for my permanent permit, which will then expire on 12/31 and I will get to do this all over again for next year!
Pasadena has this law, which they only have posted on one sign somewhere on the outskirts of town, probably behind a tree, that there is NO PARKING on any city streets between 2-6am, except by exceedingly-difficult-to-obtain permit. Hence, the ticket on the moving van on night #1. So, I go down to the city permit office to obtain a permit. This, however, requires some rather pesky obstacles. First, you must submit the auto registrations of every registered automobile at your residence. So, for me to get a permit, I had to make my roommate copy her registration and fill out a form too. Second, your registration must reflect the address at which you are applying for a permit. Well, funny now, but when you change an address with the DMV they don't send you an updated copy of your registration which reflects your new address. So I only have one with an Oakland address on it. When I call the city to bring the extreme difficulty of this procedure to their attention (because I am sure I was the first to notice, and do so), they tell me to get a second copy of my change of address form when I go to the DMV. I mention to them that I was a good citizen this time and submitted my address change before I moved, via the mail, and have no intention of returning to a DMV anytime soon to fill out a form I already submitted, just so they can stamp it. So, they decide they will accept my Oakland registration and a copy of my student ID (???).
In the meantime of all this, until I gathered all the requisite pieces for my permit application, I had to call a phone number every night and leave a recording describing my car and stating where it is parked and where I lived, so they wouldn't ticket it. Now, I have a temporary permit that is hanging in the window while I wait for them to decide whether or not I deserve a real permit. My temporary permit expires on Thursday, so I have to go back to the parking office by then to renew my temporary permit so I don't get ticketed while I'm waiting for my permanent permit, which will then expire on 12/31 and I will get to do this all over again for next year!
Sunday, October 23, 2005
God: guaranteed to work, or your money back!
... soothing baroque music.... Prayer Power(tm) audio technology... that's right folks, get prayer results faster and with less effort than you ever dreamed possible! Golly, did you know that you have a right to be rich? Just click here to get started.
Maybe we can ship a few of these CDs to Somalia, so we can spend their aid dollars on X-boxes and Hummers instead.
Maybe we can ship a few of these CDs to Somalia, so we can spend their aid dollars on X-boxes and Hummers instead.
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