Move Over, Venice.

This morning, while I was riding the bus across the Birmingham Bridge, I got blinded by a ray from the most beautiful, perfect, pie-in-the-sky sun. As I watched the light bounce off of the downtown skyline on my right, and the steam rise from the coal barges on my left, I was grateful to live in this city.

I know not everyone feels this way about Pittsburgh, but realize that Baltimore, or San Franciso, or Seattle may be to you what Pittsburgh is to me- and it's the moments like this that remind me why I love Pittsburgh the way I do.

Concerning the UFO Sighting*

My freshman year of college, in the first few weeks of school, I awakened one night to blood-curdling screams. Bloody murder screams. Hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-standing-up screams. I had been sleeping in the top bunk of standard dorm bunk beds, and my roommate had been sleeping below me. In the first few instants after I had awakened I was actually terrified that someone was killing my roommate. In the next instant I jumped out of my bed, perhaps with an idiotic lack of fear, to see if she was okay.

My roommate was upright in bed, with tear streamed eyes, screaming. I said her name and shook her shoulder and told her it was a dream. Her eyes were strangely vacant, and as the screaming stopped, the tears grew heavier.

I had no idea what to do. I barely knew her at the time; I had no idea why she was crying, or why such a normal person in the day would act so strangely at night (and so suddenly, too). I sat and talked with her, calming her and repeating that it was only a dream and that she was okay, while every-so-often asking her if everything was alright. She never responded to my questions or really acknowledged them, but she finally went back to sleep, and so did I.

The next day I didn't say a thing about it because I was afraid she might be embarrassed or ashamed. We yammered over the noise of our hair dryers in the morning, like we usually did, and we got lunch together when our afternoon classes were over.

A few weeks later, when we were having a typical "getting-to-know-you" roommate heart-to-heart, she told me, with lots of laughter, that she was a horrific sleep walker, and when she still lived at home, her little sister would often give her reports on her nocturnal activities in the morning. "Fortunately," she said, "I haven't had any sleeping problems here."

"Except for the other night, you mean"

"What other night?"

"When you woke up in the middle of the night...screaming...and I talked to you and told you it was only a bad dream."

"What?"

So began my knowledge of night terrors.

I've never had a night terror, and I'm seriously thrilled about this. They sound absolutely horrific. According to Wikipedia (which I just used to refresh my memory about all the symptoms), night terrors are non-specific dream-like things, that are sometimes so bad and frightening that they cause temporary amnesia. Often times the person experiencing one cannot be awakened (because they are in slow-wave sleep). As it turned out, my roommate, who I had so lovingly comforted, had not been awake at all, and had no memory of the occurrence.

Despite my lack of personal familiarity with night terrors, my normally amazing sleep has started to take a slow turn for the worse. About every six months now (starting with one of my best friend's birthdays in 2006), I've been experiencing what the doctor diagnosed as sleep paralysis. I told my young doctor about my symptoms in the course of a check-up and she said (in a very thick Romanian accent) "Yeah that happens to me sometimes. You wake up and you are like 'oh shit.'"

Kind of.

It's more like I wake up and I have no idea if I am awake or asleep. Everything I've read says that people who experience sleep paralysis are actually awake when it happens, but your brain doesn't know you're awake so it acts like you are still in REM sleep, making for a very surreal and disorienting experience. It's so disorienting, in fact, that people hallucinate while it's happening (which is, apparently, what leads them to believe they are dreaming).

Last night I "awakened" to the feeling of being shaken violently from my waist; like the world's strongest man was trying to break my neck through whiplash. It was absolutely horrible. I tried to get to my phone to call for help, and was so disoriented and uncoordinated that the effort was futile. Shortly afterward I felt like people were absolutely beating the tar out of me. The kicker is, you're always where you went to sleep. In dreams, you might be on a cloud, or in a swimming pool, or in a park with purple grass; with these, you're always where you went to sleep. Things are always the way they are in real life (which coincides with the reality of wakefulness).

Last night I was so frightened that I actually tried to get my dog's attention, to see if she could help me. I'd condemn my dog for being a crappy companion, but I don't know if I was actually making noise, or even moving.

Suddenly, it was like a screen was lifted from in front of my eyes. I pushed myself with all of my strength and was able to, very sloppily, reach for my phone, next to my bed. With a lot of effort, I made a phone call. In all honesty, I called my boyfriend just to be certain that I wasn't still sleeping (there really isn't an easy way to make a distinction when this happens).

When this first happened to me in Washington DC, on Blake's birthday, I was asleep in another friend's guest bedroom, and Blake was in a bed across the room from me. When I began to feel the shaking motion, I said to Blake "Help me, help me." He rolled over and said "No one can help you."

This was all a hallucination, of course, but take a moment to think about how you'd feel if you asked one of your best friends to help you, in a moment of terror, and they replied "no one can help you."

It isn't real, but the memories are really there. It's hard to tell your mind that a "real" memory isn't there. It's in the repository. You think of it like a real memory when someone says something associated with that memory, but it never really happened.

It says on Wikipedia that doctors think most people's alien encounters are actually just sleep paralysis. I have to admit, I don't judge "believers" so harshly now. It's hard not to believe in something that even your brain seems to think is true.


* This title was inspired by (and obviously derived from) the Sufjan Stevens song title "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois" - I know it seems a little ridiculous to credit this, but I always try to give credit where credit is due (call it a writerly nod of respect).

Public Service Announcement

Consider this a Public Service Announcement:

To all you folks out there who love the song "Son of a Bitch" by AC/DC, I have some bad news for you: "Son of a bitch," by AC/DC, doesn't exist.

"But wait a minute" you say, "just wait one minute."

Now you're messin' with - a son of a bitch

"It has to exist, I know the words and everything!"

Again, no, it doesn't.

The song you, and so many others, call "Son of a Bitch" by AC/DC, is actually "Hair of the Dog," by Nazareth.

"Wait a second, every-rose-has-its-thorn-Nazareth?"

No, that was Poison.

"Oh riiiight. But wait, are you sure? Cause I know lots of people who love that song. I even downloaded 'son of a bitch' by AC/DC off of Napster, and my friends all have it on their ipods."

The other "ugly" side of illegal file-sharing is that it propogates misinformation - like attributing one band's song to another, better known band, because the lead singers kind of sound the same.

"Look I'm not sure you're right, cause I love AC/DC. I can even tell the Bon Scott stuff from the Brian Johnson stuff."

And for that I am truly sorry. Look, I love AC/DC as much as any red-blooded, true-American, freedom-loving, terrorist-hating,Western Pennsylvania girl, but the minute I can start to tell Bon Scott from Brian Johnson (or want to), I'm kicking this love affair to the curb. But seriously, check the internet, it's on my side, and the internet never lies.

Pretty Houses

As I was walking my dog on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I noticed something that I have long suspected, but have never been able to confirm.

I live in one of prettiest neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh (some would argue the prettiest, but I would disagree). The houses are generally old, and impeccably well maintained. Actually, "maintained" is the wrong word. "Primped" is closer to the word I am looking for, but still not right. Anyway, the houses are not just maintained, they are a step above maintenance. To me, maintenance implies fixing things when they break, mowing your lawn, keeping the trim painted, taking out your garbage - things of that nature.

The owners of these houses go beyond maintenance, though. They hire landscapers, many hire landscape architects (and anyone who knows anything about landscaping doesn't need to see a truck outside of a house to see the difference between amateur and professional yard design*), owners are constantly renovating or remodeling, porch furniture is always being added or removed, holiday decorations are perfect (*cough* almost as if a professional selected them), and people are rarely enjoying the fine house on which they spend so much money and time.

It's expensive to live here. People say they want to live here. But after all is said and done, I'm not sure very many people actually enjoy living here.

There isn't much of a neighborhood feel in this neighborhood of mine. There are plenty of people in the streets, but none of them are particularly friendly. It's difficult to strike up a conversation with your neighbors (I've encountered one exception, a family of transplants, who, after living here for a few years, have decided to transplant themselves right into another neighborhood in the city).

One time, while I was walking home from a run in the evening, I apparently frightened a woman walking her dog so much so that she felt it was necessary to cross to the other side of the street while I passed (and crossed back over after I was gone)**.

This is a far cry from my old neighborhood. My old neighborhood was ugly to all except two kinds of people: the immigrants who'd built it (and were really still imagining it in its glory days), and people like me who, hokey as it sounds/is, can find beauty anywhere. The houses were mostly run-down and ugly. Slum lords did the bare minimum only to ensure that they would pass inspections. Almost all of the rental properties were disgusting and soggy and cracked. It was cheap to live there, and that fact was written out in the peeling paint and sagging gutters of the houses.

But I had friends in my old neighborhood. I knew my neighbors' names, and some of their stories. I talked with Jimmy about his old Irish Setter, Lady, and the Pirates' teen-aged losing record; I talked with Chester and Angela about gardening, and brought them their newspapers when their legs started to fail them; I shared cake and tea with Rose - I talked with her, I planted her tomatoes in the summer, I knew her children's names and faces, I met her grandchildren when they visited, I checked on her when the power went out, and I knew how and when her husband died. I shoveled all of their sidewalks when snow fell. I didn't see any of this as a matter of a pride. I saw it as my way of expressing my thanks for living around people who cared about me, and would take the time to talk to me.

I think I also saw it as showing respect for people who would not abandon their home, despite the broken glass, and scattered garbage, and occasional gunfire. Maybe I even saw my actions as a way of telling them that there was still something there worth holding on to.

Returning to last Wednesday: As I rounded the bend to my block, I was struck by its emptiness. My usually filled street was almost devoid of parked cars. I had nearly asked myself where everyone had gone when I realized that everyone had gone home for the holidays. I stopped shortly after I reached this obvious conclusion. If everyone (including me) goes home for the holidays, then what do the people who live here call this place? I don't know, but the obvious answer is, not home.

I have this theory that too much "pretty" in a house, or a neighborhood, or a city, is indicative of a certain kind of artificiality. To give you an example, I often say that NoVa has no soul***. The roots are shallow there, if present at all. I walk through my neighborhood now and I don't see roots. All of the histories and stories have been stripped and sanded out of these houses, and the people who live here haven't lived here long enough to create their own stories (and probably won't, either).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the human soul isn't always a pretty thing. There is a lot of ugliness inherent in humanity - and if not ugliness, then certainly turmoil and pain. And I think this is evident, like it or not, in any real home. A complicated soul, like a complicated home or neighborhood, gets bogged down with a little garbage every once in awhile.

I'm not saying that a true home has to be ugly; I'm saying that a true home isn't pretty all the time. And maybe people can't really make their own home until they accept, and even embrace, this idea.


* The owners of a specific house in my neighborhood purchased the empty lot behind their house, tore it to shreds, and commissioned a giant cascading stone staircase that descends from their house to the street behind them (the likes of which I have only encountered at large hotels).

** It's true that I don't wear matching tiny shorts and tops, the way most female runners in my neighborhood do. However, I don't think that my t-shirts, running shorts, and bandanna are all that intimidating. When this happened, I laughed at first. Then I was angry and hurt. Now I'm reassessing the way I feel others perceive me - I guess what they say is true: you can't be too careful. For all I know, one of her loved ones was maimed by a 20-something, mediocre female jogger.

*** As with everything, there are exceptions to this.

Today

Do you ever wake up and get the feeling that it's going to be a wonderful day? I woke up this morning and got that feeling. Even if the day doesn't live up to that expectation, waking up that way is beautiful.

I look forward to attempting to cook my first solo Thanksgiving dinner this evening, and seeing lots of old friends at home tonight.

Mr. Big Stuff

I've seen a bothersome man on the bus for the past few days in a row.

I couldn't decide what bothered me about him, until I realized that every time I see him I ask myself, "Who do you think you are?" and then mentally scoff. This led to me calling him "Mr. Big Stuff," when referring to him in my mind. After giving him a smarmy nickname (and patting myself on the back for giving him said smarmy nickname), I started putting the name with the melody, so now everytime I think of Mr. Big Stuff, I hear the chorus to the song in my head (which, as it turns out, is simultaneously entertaining and annoying).

Mr. Big Stuff is obviously riding the bus to get to work (there's no crying in baseball, and there are no colleges in the South Side). Despite this, he carries a Marc Jacobs bag, and is usually adorned in a puffy vest, J. Crew jeans, and a self-righteous smirk. He chews his gum with dramatic satisfaction, and every day he exits the bus after me, but somehow speed walks past me, a block or two after the bus stop.

This is infuriating.

I speed walk after him when this happens, but he has the distinct advantage of not wearing heels.

This morning, when he walked past the available seat next to me, only to sit with another stranger in the back of the bus, I imagined how his gum would go flying down the bus aisle if I stuck my foot out at just the right moment.

My boyfriend says I'm ridiculous and that it's is all in my head*. I hope he's wrong.

Who do you think you are, Mr. Big Stuff?






PS: I imagine I will eventually befriend this poor young man and delete this blog, full of guilt and embrassment.


*My father, as it turns out, is in complete agreeance with the boyfriend. Is anyone on my side?

Keep the Faith

I'm writing instead of getting to bed at a reasonable hour for work tomorrow. However, much to my adult side's chagrin, I think this is a good thing.

On Friday at work, my boss told me the story of an elusive co-worker (I've yet to meet him, but his was both the first name I heard, and the name I hear most frequently in the office). She told me how he and his brother both immigrated (she thinks from Serbia) to go to school in Pittsburgh. He (the coworker) went to Pitt, and his brother went to CMU to study music. After earning a master's in music, the brother, in a fit of frustration (and I'm sure some despair too) because he couldn't find a job, gave it up. He stopped playing music. He went back to CMU and got a master's in computer science.

My boss told me she imagined his instrument (which remained nameless in the conversation) sitting in a corner gathering dust. She found this especially sad as the brother now has a young child who could be blessed with his father's playing.

I am in total agreement with her about the idea of exposing young children to music. Hearing music as a child is fantastic. Hearing someone play music passionately is fantastic. When I was young, my parents took me to the symphony a few times a year, and while I didn't understand the music, I loved going. I loved seeing the symphony in Chautauqua when I was little, too. (to be honest, I even loved hearing the symphony practice in Chautauqua - but then, Chautauqua is a lot like the Walgreen's commercials: perfect.)

My mom took me to see Ray Charles when I was 5*, and my dad taught me to use the cd player and drag a chair into the living room so I could play my favorite Beatles' bootleg, Backtrack, at around the same time. So anyway, yes, exposing young children to music is important.

However, I disagree with my boss about the finality of all of this. I maintained at the time (and I still do) that this is temporary. He is frustrated. Being an artist is frustrating. Being an unsucessful artist (when you have the potential to be, or already are, great) can be mind-numbing. It's obvious to me that the brother is just numbed right now. But it's not permanent.

Loving art is a lot like loving a person, except without the benefit of talking. It's always a one-sided conversation. Writing sometimes leaves me dying for my writing to respond to me. It never does. After some subconscious cost/benefit analyis, you decide whether the relationship is one worth keeping or whether to scrap it. Here's the thing: you can never really scrap it. You can never really make a clean break from writing or music (or painting, or drawing, or composing, or singing, or dancing).

He will play again. He's in the midst of a lover's quarrel. They will kiss, and make up. He will play again.

And Michelle, even though you haven't written in four years, and you hate what being a journalist did to your feeling about the written word, you can write again too.


*Not that I was a saint at these performances- I once (and I gained notoriety for this) fell asleep in the front rows watching Carmina Burana when I was 7, or 8. I also fell asleep in the front rows watching a huge Motown reunion (and my mom still teases me about it).

Dear PAT,

(Dear PAT,)
PAT (Pittsburgh Port Authority Transit) has officially announced that they are raising their fares. Zone 1 fares are going to be raised from $1.75 to either $2 or $2.25. This means that fare hikes for Zone 2 and Zone 3 are going to be ridiculous - but I'll leave that be since it doesn't immediately concern me.

Currently, I ride two buses to work each day (and the same two buses back). Fortunately, I am in Zone 1 for both of my rides, but because PAT's bus routes are inefficient, I have to transfer which means that on top of my $1.75 bus fare each way, I have to pay an additional 50 cents. This means that I am spending $4.5o on inefficient public transportation each day.

I just used gmap pedometer to figure out the exact distance I ride the bus: 3.7 miles. The argument for public transportation (economically) is that it saves you money for gas and for parking. Even the least fuel-efficient cars in the world get better than 4 miles to the gallon, hell they get better than 8 miles to the gallon (to be honest the least fuel-efficient car I have ever encountered is a 10-year-old Lincoln Navigator that got a whopping 10 miles to the gallon).

This means that, were I driving 8 miles a day, my travel costs would be less than the cost of one gallon of gasoline right now (which, we'll just say is $3.50/gallon). Parking is free in my building, so as-is, it would make more sense for me to drive to work. In addition, my little, not-even-4-mile, trek takes me, on average, 45 minutes (one way). I could cut that in half driving.

Best case scenario, with the new hikes: my daily costs will be $5 a day (assuming PAT leaves transfers at 50 cents, which they say they will, but I'm skeptical).

[Something else to keep in mind, is that a monthly (and especially yearly) bus pas is not economically feasible for me at this time, especially when the monthly passes are supposed to go up to $75 a month with the fare hikes. What is in my price-range is what PAT calls a "10-trip ticket." However, despite the fact that one is essentially purchasing tickets in bulk, PAT offers no bulk discount (one 10-trip ticket currently costs $17.50 and will increase in cost accordingly along with the fare hikes)] .

What's sad is, I believe in public transportation. I believe that it's an important part of, and necessity in, cities. I like the sense of community it builds, and the notion that by riding the bus (or metro or subway or T or ferry), you're not only not contributing to overall shitty metropolitan air qualities, you're helping to eliminate city congestion, as well as bringing the costs of travel down (the more people who use the bus, the less it should cost, ideally). I actually feel like I'm helping the city when I'm riding the bus (and I think that's the point: the idea that you're helping things - or at least engaging in the lesser of two evils- is supposed to outweigh all of the obvious negative parts of using mass transit).

With all that being said:

Dear PAT,
you make me want to buy a car. At least a car will be mine, and will run on time, and won't be rude to me when I ask questions, or slam the door in my face, or smell like urine, or stink of exhaust, or make me hold my purse tighter, or cost me more than it's worth.

Windy City

Yesterday, while waiting to transfer buses on my way to work (in the midst of the first good Pittsburgh snow), I encountered a little old lady who was waiting for the same bus as I was. The bus we wanted sat a block away from us, apparently broken down. I struck up a conversation with her - or rather, she with me - after asking her if she knew anything about the state of the bus. The only thing she knew, she said, was that she'd been waiting for another 54C for nearly 30 minutes. After repeatedly placing my headphones in my ears, and then removing them after long pauses in our conversation (each pause causing me to assume she was done talking), she said "I wouldn't want to walk across the bridge on a day like today. No sir, not in this wind." Wide-eyed, I replied "I wouldn't want to walk across the bridge ever." *long pause*

"You know I walked across the bridge once."
"Really?"
"The day of the mayor's funeral, though I didn't know that at the time."
"I remember that day."
"I stood here wondering why the buses wouldn't come, and I had to get to work, so I walked."

She asked me where I worked, and guiltily but guardedly, I only revealed the name of the complex in which my office is located. She told me the address and name of her employer: "Elderberry Junction", better known as the Goodwill Senior Center. She spoke of Elderberry Junction with such pride that I congratulated her, with genuine happiness, for having a job that sounded so wonderful.

A few minutes later the bus came, and when the door opened she eagerly shuffled toward the bus and then stopped unexpectedly. The bus driver seemed perplexed at first, and then knowingly lowered the bus (it is what they call a "kneeling bus") and she barely made it up onto the first step. I actually had my arms out behind her because I thought she was going to fall. A young man sitting in what I like to call the "a little farther back" section (also known as the front) immediately vacated his seat for her.

15 minutes later, we exited the bus at the same stop. I began walking toward my destination, and she hurried off in the opposite direction, perhaps to get a cup of coffee before heading to Elderberry Junction.

All day long, I thought about this woman, and I'm not sure why. I can think of a few reasons, but none of them seem to fit. It's not necessarily the image of this hobbling woman walking across a long and dangerous bridge, though that's part of it. It's not the idea that a spirited older woman has more tenacity than I do, though that's certainly part of it. I'm not even sure it's her passion and her pride in her job, though that is something so beautiful and rare that I hope to never forget it. I am really not sure what it is.

Maybe it's her will. Maybe it's her will in all of these things combined. Her will to wait in the snow; her will to get onto the bus; her will to walk to work; her will to be a good employee; her will to be kind to, and connect with strangers. It's so rare to see an unblemished (I guess "barely blemished" is fairer, as I don't know her story) will in a person anymore - most people my age are so downtrodden and dejected, and self-pitying (not through-and-through, but every young person I know pities him or herself in at least one way). She had no self-pity, only drive. And --I was going to say in spite of, but I think "because of" is more apt -- maybe because of this, she is happy.