Nothing More Than a Poet

It's been awhile

2010-07-09T08:31:00.000-04:00

I haven't written in a long time. I'd like to change that.

Pittsburgh: It's not as bad as you thought.

2008-09-02T18:05:00.005-04:00

(And potentially not bad at all.)

It's all happening!

First this:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/travel/06hours.html

And now this:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/getaways/09/02/pittsburgh.market.ap/index.html

Blood and Guts and Very Little Glory: One Woman's Violent Struggle with a Pop-up Sponge and a Collins Glass

2008-08-04T20:57:00.002-04:00

*disclaimer, this happened at least a month ago, I was just really delayed in writing about it. But I bet you knew that by the fact that it wasn't riddled with typos from my once errantly bandaged pinky.

I was washing dishes in my sink, as I so often do, when I knew something bad was going to happen. I knew, maybe 5 or 10 seconds before this happened, that this was going to happen. I had my hand wedged all the way in a Collins glass, scrubbing (I'm an aggressive dishwasher) when I heard a loud crunch, and my hand went numb.

Three guesses.

As soon as I couldn't feel my hand I began to slowly fill with panic. I was too afraid to look down and survey the damage. It felt like I stood there for minutes, but in reality it was only a few seconds. I finally looked down and saw blood everywhere. Just everywhere. Still no feeling in my hand. I let out an animal-like groan. I vaguely heard my roommate ask what happened as she started toward the kitchen. Then I started going south.

"Rachel" came in and caught me as I started to slump over toward the kitchen window. Good thing, too, or else I'd have cracked my head open on the dog bowl, or windowsill, or microwave, or some other hard thing that you're not supposed to fall on. She lifted up my hand to assess the cut(s) and in doing so I saw the damage, again -- and then I slumped, again.

Let me, in my defense, tell you that I am not afraid of blood or pain. I have never come close to passing out at the sight of blood (okay, I witnessed a birth up close once and I got a little light-headed, but I held my own, thank you very much). I've also suffered some impressive injuries, and I am still the reigning concussion queen in my peer group.

What I think was so terrifying about this was the fact that I couldn't feel my hand. Also, the bleeding wouldn't stop. Rachel sat me down in a kitchen chair and started squeezing and lifting my hand (did I mention she's certified in first aid?) and telling me everything was okay. About five minutes after I cut myself I began to feel the pain. Awful, awful pain. And then I got this unmistakable burning in my stomach. I told her I was going to be sick and lurched my way to the bathroom, making a mess as I went along. I didn't throw up though. The body is a funny thing, especially when you're frightened.

As I sat heaving 5-year-old-like sobs and trying to wipe my nose I told Rachel that I thought I needed stitches. All of this blood. All of this pain. Stitches, right? Well, in order to get stitches you need stuff to stitch together. And when you take a niiiiiiice chunk out of your knuckle, well, the effectiveness of stitches is questionable. Especially when you run the hypothetical inevitable finger bend through your mind and see the stitches tearing open. EWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Sorry.

When I finally calmed down Rachel went to clean the mess out of the sink. Interestingly enough, the glass had only broken into three large pieces. I can't tell you how many wine glasses I've broken with my aggressive dish-washing style -- they leave little nicks, not unlike paper cuts. This glass was thick though, and basically turned into three knives as it broke. Ugh, I still shudder thinking of that awful noise.

Anyway, bottom line is I didn't get stitches. Partially because I became obstinate from the pain, and partially because I was afraid of my insurance deductible. A few days after I ran out of the bandages Rachel bought for me, I went to the pharmacy to buy myself more. I bought myself a sweet box of Animal Planet animal print bandaids. They were absolutely pointless because I was using those big absorbent pads and gauze and surgical tape. I have two nasty scars to prove that I didn't get stitches. And we're down one Collins glass. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre, as Rachel would say.

The positive side of all of this is that the next time I break a wine glass and get a "paper cut," I'll be able to bandage myself in style. That and, for the time being, that big, white, neglected Amana dishwasher in the kitchen is my new best friend.

Robert Plant and Grass Clippings?

2008-06-19T21:03:00.004-04:00

Today as I was walking toward my house a maintenance man started a leaf blower to clean grass clippings off of a parking lot. I immediately started singing "In the Light."

I thought I would lose interest after the first verse but I made it all the way to the point when the guitar and drums kick in, and before I knew it, I was at my front door.

On a similar note, the phones in my office sounds just like the background sounds/synth-noise/mind-numbing chaos that is "Technology" (you know, that overplayed song by 50 cent and Justin Timberlake). I find myself saying "Ayo, I'm tired of using technology" without a hint of irony, and that's just sad.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to the synth that kicks in at around 30 seconds. If you don't know what I'm talking about in the first part, go read a book or something.)

I always thought at this age my imagination would be tamed. It isn't. I'm glad.

PS- That video for "technology" is the worst, in case you don't have eyes to see that for yourself.

PPS- Here you go, lame-os, some high school senior hippie (or so it would seem) worked super hard to set all 8 minutes and 41 seconds of this to stills of the Northern Lights. A+.

PPSS- (6/23/08)My roommate vacuumed last night and son-of-a-gun if I didn't start it again.

The International: A Prelude

2008-06-15T17:04:00.002-04:00

I have been a fan of the Carnegie International since 2005, when I first encountered the 40+ exhibits during a writing class. With my student ID in hand, I went back every chance I got, sometimes studying difficult paintings, trying to find meaning that was, to me, furtive, and sometimes sitting in the octagonal room filled with 8 projectors, each showing slightly differing clips of a man and a woman wandering the streets of an abandoned Paris train station while Philip Glass scores seemingly colored the black and white film.

I have eagerly anticipated this newest International. I had the opening marked in my date book and have been salivating at the chance to go. I finally went today, with my father and boyfriend.

It is fantastic. I am startled by how this International is simultaneously so similar and so different from the last one. It is, as was the previous one, ruthlessly fulfilling for any visual aesthete. This new one is both less provoking and more in-your-face. I'm wondering if the provocation will come with a second, third, etc., visit.

The first piece I encountered, an interactive wishing exhibit, set the mood for the visit perfectly. The wall is covered with ribbons of different colors. On each ribbon a wish is printed (some in German, some in Spanish, some in French, some in English). You remove the ribbon with the wish you want, or like, and tie it to your wrist with three knots. As you make each knot, you wish. Then you take a little piece of paper from a table nearby and write a wish of your own, which you slide into a hole in the wall. The artist collects the written wishes and prints them on new ribbons. I am wearing another person's wish, and someone else will wear mine. When this ribbon breaks, or falls off of my wrist, the wishes will come true.

I imagine that the artist prints multiple copies of some of her favorites because a few messages were peppered frequently among the others:

I wish for no more political crimes in Lebanon.

I wish to win the lotto.

I wish a vacation en la playa.

I wish I could have chosen my religion.

Je désire mourir en dormant. ( Translation: I wish to die sleeping.)

When I read the last one aloud, and then translated for my boyfriend and dad, a woman standing near me looked up and said "that's a good one, I should have taken that one."

I took the ribbon that said "I wish to always be overwhelmed by love."

In the spirit of this blog, which is really just the spirit of myself, I left one that said "I wish love for you all."

And I do.

This Heat Has Got to Be Kidding

2008-06-10T07:03:00.002-04:00

Heat, are you serious? As if "Thermostatkrieg 2008" wasn't bad enough already in my office, and now we've got weather so hot it's making my dog toss her cookies. It's also making people very grumpy.

I feel like such a failure--I always hold out as long as I can before turning on the AC and it went on June 9* this year. Pathetic.

*It would have gone on sooner but we were out of town draining someone else's** AC.

**Comfort Inn, Presque Isle***.

***Not my favorite hotel.

Question: How Many Liberal Arts Majors Does it Take to Program a Heart Rate Monitor?

2008-06-02T21:02:00.003-04:00

Answer: I don't know yet.

(Nike Imara HRM)

It is a very, very cool piece of equipment with too-cool-for-school instructions.

In other news, I got sick at work today. It was not at all awesome like getting sick in grade school school used to be. I was sitting in a meeting and all of a sudden I felt a vaguely familiar sensation. "This feels odd," I said to myself. "What does this feel like? Hmm. This feels kind of like having a fever, if I remember correctly. Hang on, wait, yeah, no--yes, I've actually got a fever." And then the room started swaying a little bit and I had to apologize and leave the meeting.

I promptly came home and went to sleep, which is exactly what I am about to do again right now.

Slow Burn

2008-05-29T19:35:00.003-04:00

So I just came back from a run. It wasn't a big run, or a hard run. I just did a mile medium/hard and then a mile of fartleks. Not grueling but worthy of enough effort to justify spending my (currently tiny amount of) free time doing it.

So I walk into my house and my downstairs neighbor, who I will call "Hank," and I start chatting about various things (drilling, cell phones, moleskin notebooks, family) and he pauses to show me his new briefcase (re: Swiss Army messenger bag). As he was showcasing the versatile mesh pockets, I said "What's it mean if your hips hurt after you run?" He looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow and said, "it means you haven't run in awhile."

"It's only been two weeks!"
(with a little bit of judgment) "That's enough."

Hey now, "Hank!" We can't all be Eagle Scout marathoners with sick distance times even though we smoke like a chimney and eat nothing but red meat and potatoes with the occasional capellini aglio olio.

Or can we?

All Apologies (and some appetizers, if you will)

2008-05-28T18:54:00.007-04:00

I lied. I totally lied. April 23rd I promised new posts soon. It's been more than a month! In my defense, work has been really crazy. Working extra hours - through lunch, staying late, extra days - the works. I'm not complaining though, I love my job.

Anyway, I took a vacation last week. I have a lot of stories. What comes to mind first is that we rescued a sweet-ass feral cat. We didn't keep her (everyone I know is allergic to cats, 2 dogs in my apartment, trying not to get evicted, etc.), but she got adopted into a cat colony (did you know such a thing existed?). We named her Miss Boots. Her nickname is Nancy Sinatra. She was all black but with white front paws and white "boots" (you guessed it) up to her haunches on her back legs (ala Nancy Sinatra). I'm not really a cat person, but if I could have found a way to adopt this cat I totally would have.

For now I'm happy with getting her a home, medicine, food, shelter, and making sure the fish hook she managed to get stuck in her mouth was (surgically) removed (many, many thanks to the vet, the vet techs, and everyone at Friends of Felines).

On another note, my dog actually flipped when she saw Miss Boots on the deck. Literally. I got her a travel crate (it's pop-up, like a tent) and she, while inside of the crate, flipped it end-over-end and rammed it into the sliding glass doors when she saw Miss Boots on the deck. I almost peed my pants and my dog actually peed her pants(?). I had to wash her blanket (bedding). Twice.

Also, I ate a cinnamon roll that was bigger than my face. Seriously, it was probably more than 12 inches long and 6 inches wide. And I ate it. Because I was on vacation.

In other news, congrats to my LA poet for having a master's degree, and for being almost 24!

Thanks

2008-04-24T17:13:00.004-04:00

To the girl in the cute sundress and flip flops on East Carson:

Thanks for telling me that I looked very nice, I needed that.

soon

2008-04-23T22:14:00.001-04:00

new post(s) soon.

Finally Fixed-ish.

2008-04-13T16:14:00.008-04:00

They finally fixed the sinkhole in front of my house. After numerous comically erroneous decisions on the part of the city, and multiple grand street collapses, the street on which I live is now mostly level (except for, you know, the storm sewer that is caving in on the corner). Allow me to remind you that I first called about this sinkhole in July 2007. I'll be generous and say that it only took them 9 months to fix something that started out being relatively minor (I'll dig up pictures) and then turned into something that could swallow a few houses.
before:

"Isn't that just a pothole?" No, my friend, absolutely not. If you look at it in the right light you can see the hollowness that is occurring in its depths. Also, potholes, in my experience (and allow me to remind you that I live in Pittsburgh, the champion of potholes) are not 2 feet deep, with a 4 foot by 4 foot expanse of hollowness hiding beneath a roughly 1 inch layer of asphalt. This thing was no pothole. To further prove my point, I'll show you the "after" picture.
after:

Yes, that darker asphalt shows the extent of the repaired damage. Pretty impressive. The original picture of the small hole was taken about 2 feet behind the jeep's rear right tire. Obviously that little hand-sized guy was a harbinger of doom. Fantastic.

The day after the crews packed up and went home, I found an elderly man (who can be seen chatting with another elderly man every evening on our street corner around 6 or 7pm) shuffling around in the street, looking at the caliber of the work.

I was entering my house after walking my dog and stopped to talk to him. I said something like "Pretty impressive, huh?" He looked up at my slowly, assessed me, and then replied "I wouldn't say 'impressive' but it's something." He paused and then waved me over to him, all the while eyeing my puny dog suspiciously.

As he pointed out the errors the construction workers had made, I looked at his outfit. He wore khaki high-waisted (old man) pants, a short sleeve button down, worn tennis shoes, and a mesh-fronted baseball cap with a veteran's patch on the front (I couldn't see which branch he was in without being rude). As I inched closer to him, he showed me the tiny slits in the concrete they'd neglected to patch with tar, and then explained to me how the rain would collect in the slits before eventually eroding the pavement in the same place all over again. As I stood next to him, I caught wind of the scent of my grandpa. There's really no way to describe the scent but "clean" and to say that it's only something I've ever smelled on my grandpa. Maybe it's a vintage aftershave, or some really old bar soap. Or maybe after a certain amount of years, veteran's just have a common scent. I don't know, but it was the same. I practically stepped on this man's toes filling my nose greedily as memory after memory poured over me. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and say "I miss my grandaddy terribly and I don't get to hug him nearly enough, please ignore me while I hug you." But fortunately, I exercised some self-control.

I wasn't able to pay attention to everything he said to me, but I heard him say that they'd dug for a gas leak by his house and that, after they found and fixed the leak, they left the holes open and they collected with water and caused all sorts of trouble.

"That's so frustrating," I said to him.
"Frustrating? I think that's putting it pretty mildly."

I paused. "I was trying to be polite."
He stopped and thought to himself for a moment and then said "Oh, well, thank you," and then he smiled and nodded at me as if to say "you're not so bad."

The dog was getting antsy so I started toward the house and wished him a goodnight. He replied in kind and then he did something that took me by surprise--he thanked me for talking to him, and said that he had enjoyed talking to me. I told him likewise and I really wanted to explain to him about my grandpa and how I was so grateful to him, but I knew I couldn't do it without sounding crazy and getting emotional, so I waved and walked inside, choosing to keep the thoughts to myself.

Except that now I'm sharing them with you, whoever you are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make a phonecall to a sweet-smelling blue-eyed veteran with a voice like Southern butter.

Sweet Sunrise

2008-04-08T21:19:00.004-04:00

I just looked at the weather forecast and saw that the sun is set to rise at 6:50 tomorrow morning. I am so excited not to the wait for the bus in the dark. I think this means my days of moon-lit commutes are coming to a close.

My boyfriend will be done with finals in less than a month. Sunny mornings and my favorite boy: two things I love coming back into my life at the same time.

I Get Satisfaction Everywhere I Go*

2008-04-06T14:38:00.009-04:00

I bought my boyfriend Clutch tickets for his birthday. The last time they came around, the show sold out (as it did this time) and he was unable to go so I was pretty excited to remedy that with this gift.

Unfortunately for me (and he), Clutch (who put on a fantastic show) came to town on a Thursday (re: work night, with another work day to follow). We were so very tired by the time 7:00pm rolled around, but he got some dinner and I put on one of my favorite pairs of ripped (authentic, not Abercrombie) jeans and a camo t-shirt and attempted to transition from "office building" to "distorted-Southern-rock-lover" as quickly as possible. Luckily for me I own the aforementioned ripped jeans and a camo t-shirt, and the bags under my eyes made me look appropriately heroin-chic; needless to say, I was pretty pleased with my 5-minute transformation.

When we arrived, one of the openers was already on stage (bonus points to us for not having to listen to bands we don't care about), and there was no line outside. The notion that Clutch fans could potentially be a rowdy bunch was reinforced by the fact that the venue had beefed-up security - re: an extra man checking people who went in.

Over the years, I have become sort of a master of eluding security. I don't ever intend to do it, nor have I ever done any harm, rather I just forget to take stuff out of my bag that venues don't want inside (most often mace).

I was going to explain what I got past security and how, but I feel that could potentially allow people to abuse the system. And actually, let me set something straight, I didn't actively hide anything from security - I just didn't point out anything either. Anyway, I was pretty disappointed, because while it saved me the hassle of having to return to the car, I realized (as I have at every venue where this same thing has occurred) that if I could inadvertently get something past security, so could someone with bad intentions.

When we finally entered the building, the crowd was exactly what I imagined it would be, but more extreme. At least 50% of the concert-goers had Neil Fallon-esque beards (whether it was in tribute, I cannot say), and there were lots of flannel shirts, baseball caps (both forward and backward), mohawks, faux hawks, leather jackets, and an unbelievable amount of tobacco. Every guy there seemed to be smoking a cigarette and holding a beer, and every girl there appeared to be wearing black eyeliner and some sort of Fox Racing apparel.

Later, as we stood listening to Murder by Death (who put on an amazing performance as well), I looked mournfully up at the ceiling fans that the venue refuses -always- to turn on. The place was so smoky that the air seemed foggy.

A group of of guys stood in front of us shoving each other and generally have a good time goofing around. They were all probably in their late 20s and quite drunk and it was amusing except for that the fact that they kept bumping into me, and one began to gesture wildly forgetting that he had a lit cigarette in his hand and I had to dodge the cherry a few times.

I felt sentimental for the days when coming home from concerts with cigarette burns and bruises was like coming home from battle with scars. For years my friends and I remembered our great concerts by the tiny reminders on our bodies. Sometimes when I am at my parent's house I look through my ziploc baggy of concert ticket stubs and inevitably come to the small white piece of towel that belonged to Anthony Kiedis for a few minutes when he wiped off his concert sweat before throwing it into a chaotic crowd. It was at that Red Hot Chili Peppers concert that I crowd surfed for the first time. It's hilarious to me how brave I was when I was younger - I wouldn't think of doing that now. It seems so stupid and dangerous - almost everyone is dumped unceremoniously onto an unforgiving concrete or dirt floor after their short tenure on top of the world. I was lucky enough to make it up to the security barrier between the stage and the crowd where some really, really big security guard gently plucked me and set me down in no man's land before shooing me away.

As you can see, this show made me pretty nostalgic and thoughtful. I worried that I was aging too quickly. 23 seems awfully young to have hung up my crowd surfing shoes. I wondered why I felt so tired after a day of work when everyone else seemed so vibrant and eager to take on the night.

Just then, one of the goofs in front of us pushed someone who was trying to cross our paths. He didn't do it aggressively, he did it because he was looking on the floor. He frantically got out his lighter and started hopelessly pawing through the cigarette butts and broken glass. I saw him squeeze one of his fingers in a helpless gesture. I realized he'd lost a ring.

While most of the people around us were still trying to figure out what he was doing I crouched on the floor and calmly looked for the tell-tale reflection. I found his ring, touched his shoulder and pointed. He picked it up and screamed "thank you" several times although I only know this because of the shapes his lips made. It was too loud to hear him.

When the next song ended my boyfriend leaned over to me and said "God, wouldn't it be awful if that was his wedding ring." I laughed really hard.

After a few more songs, the guy (whose gestures had become significantly more subdued) turned to me and said "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much trouble I would have been in." I laughed a little and then had to ask him the obvious question - "was that your wedding ring?" I shouted the question across the noise of the background music and indistinct chatter. His eyes widened and he nodded his head vigorously before slowly shaking his head in disbelief and saying something like "phew" before turning around to his friends again.

How hilarious is that?

"Honey, I'm sorry. I lost my wedding ring at a Clutch show while I was drunk."
"What?!"
"Well, technically it was Murder by Death, but you know I went to see Clutch."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No no, they weren't bad at all - they have sort of a horror-flick rockabilly sound. Quite good. They have this hot little cellist, but that's really neither here nor there."

I guess my concert-going days aren't really over, they, just like everything else, have changed. Instead of being the stupid blonde girl whose well-being is completely dependent on the good will of others, I am now more like the security guard who helps people when they get in over their heads. I'm still a part of the show, I'm just playing a new role.

I was at an outdoor concert once, in which I was in the full-sun 90 degree weather for 6 or 8 hours, and I became terribly dehydrated. I made my way up to the water buffalo (only by the grace of God, I imagine) but didn't have the where-with-all to get a drink of water. I sat down with my head between my knees and tried to go to sleep. Two strangers came along and got me water and forced me to drink it. Eventually my friends found me and sat with me and gave me water enough to rehydrate me. Thinking about that time is scary for me. I try never to be dependent on the goodwill of strangers. Oftentimes, strangers don't have much goodwill. I guess though, that for every person who gets in over his/her head, someone has to be there to help.

I find that at concerts, there are generally far too many of the former and far too few of the latter. As such, I guess I'm okay with being at a point in my life where going to a concert now means being the person who helps find the wedding ring, instead of being the one who loses it.

After Clutch came on, a very tiny girl teetered over near me and the boy, and began taking very sloppy swigs of a domestic pounder. She seemed to be getting drunker by the minute. I leaned over to my boyfriend and sarcastically told him that I just wasn't up for being vomitted on. He rolled his eyes at the girl and we started to venture away from her. For a minute I considered getting her a cup of water or asking if she was okay, but seeing her behavior and the behavior of the friends around her, I quickly filed her into the "not worth it" category. I wasn't in the mood to be vomitted on, or yelled at by, a girl who couldn't hold her booze.

When we reached our new spot, a big guy in front of us was dancing and shoving the crowd happily. Big guys seem to think that they can forget they're big at concerts. Hey big guys, you're still big. Big enough, it turns out, that your elbow, once thrown, will meet my eyesocket with remarkable accuracy. I cringed and told the boy I was fine. I rubbed my eye a few times throughout the night wondering if he'd left a mark.

When I got into the car after the concert I was surprised, not by the fact that I had a cherry red mark under my left eye, but by the fact that I was proud of it. I smiled at my boyfriend that night as I changed out of my smoke-saturated jeans and t shirt, and laid out my button down and pencil skirt for work the next morning.

*The title of this blog comes from the song "Electric Worry" by Clutch. You should also check out "Burning Beard" by Clutch and "Brother" by Murder by Death.

Flattered

2008-04-03T21:25:00.003-04:00

by the fact that I reached the big 1k in hits. New post soon.

Alphabets

2008-03-23T22:14:00.006-04:00

My body is trying to tell me that I need to write again.

A few nights ago, as I was going to sleep, but not quite ready for bed, I dozed off with my face in my pillow. For a few split seconds I saw a carousel. As it turned silently in my mind, I narrated the scene to myself in short lines of poetry. I awoke suddenly and said aloud, "I need to write again."

I was startled by the words. I don't know why I said it, but it left me unsettled.

I have a confession. I'm kind of mad at my poetry. Around my senior year of college we began to develop an adversarial relationship. I think this arose, at least in part, because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but I knew what I desperately wanted to do with my life, which was write poetry.

One day I decided that I wasn't going to dedicate the rest of my life to writing. I decided that I was going to do something else and that, to spite my writing, I'd be very happy with my decision and very good at my chosen career (luckily for me, the first part of this is true, and as for the second part, well, I guess my boss would be the judge of that).

I've tried to explain a poet's relationship with words, but I just can't. The only people I've met who sort of understand are musicians. Even people who prefer prose don't seem to feel the same way about writing as poets.

All of this confusion and emotion and anger and pain that comes from this mad passion can leave one feeling quite isolated. I grew tired of the isolation. The only thing that made it bearable for a few years was having a close friend, another poet, nearby to talk about these things that no one else understands. When she moved to California to go to graduate school, my entire poetic support network moved with her. I began to resent my writing.

When I angrily decided that I would not pursue writing as a career, I felt as if I had KO-ed my writing love. I was proud of myself. I felt strong. Poetry could not defeat me if I were simply to quit.

Still I find these moments of pain. I feel an emptiness. I hear phrases, names, fragments of conversation that I want to save and use in my poems. Indignantly, I refuse to claim them.

I feel as though I had a small lover's quarrel with my soul mate and, because we are both stubborn, we both refuse to come back to one another. Each is waiting for the other to yield.

It's a conundrum. Intangibles can't really yield. As a result, I'm always the one to come crawling back. I'm tired of crawling back. I'm ready for the writing to come to me.

But it won't.

A few months after I'd made this quiet decision, my LA poet started to catch on. She started to ask me about my writing. Ask me if I was writing and what I was writing. I kept telling her I didn't have the time. "Make the time," she said, "you need to write." I brushed her off. I grew annoyed with her for reminding me of something I was trying to forget.

She'd try to coax me and encourage me by telling me how I was better than almost everyone in her master's program. I told her she was exaggerating.

Then one day, for some reason or another, I sat down, and almost against my will, almost without my own consent, I wrote two or three poems. They were amazing. They were the flawless sort of works that are so perfect you feel they could almost fly off the page. The kind of poems that have no "process" and so can't be explained. The kind of poems that make poets crazy because they don't know how or why they write them, they just do (every poem I have written that has ever won an award has been this kind of poem).

I showed my LA poet. She said, "Oh my God, you need to write. There are so few good writers, I can't sit by and let one of them not write."

Here was my friend, trying to be the best friend and fellow writer she could be, encouraging me, giving me feedback, being supportive, not nagging - approaching the situation in the best way she could - and I wouldn't listen.

I was (and still am) really mad at my writing.

I'm still mad at my poetry.

I used to be in a place where reading a good poem brought me unbelievable joy, but now I'm in a place where it angers me. I've become something I loathe: a jealous writer.

Jealousy always seems a sign of mediocrity to me, especially among writers. Those who are great should not envy talent, they should admire it. Those who are great need not envy greatness, because they have it themselves. My jealousy showed me just how pitiful I'd become.

So I buried myself in outside things. I became so busy and so "otherwise occupied" that my once feigned excuse of busyness became a truth. There were a few months where I thought I might never write again. I even began reading some good fiction without having pangs of regret.

Then came that dream.

I have been uneasy since that dream, but I've left room for the uneasiness to persist.

Two nights ago I dreamed one of my dead friends was secretly still alive and disguised as another of my friends. The dream was long and involved. I was overjoyed. I felt the invisible scales of life's justice had finally tipped in his favor. I went along with the ruse. The dream ended with my friend fainting unexpectedly. Someone was coming, and I didn't know who. I sensed we were in danger. I picked up his motionless body and began to carry him. I carried him up flight after flights of stairs. I reached the top of the building with his body in my arms. There was no where else to go. I woke up.

I don't know what that dream means, but it is a clear message that I need to write again. There are too many things that, left unsorted, will explode out of my mind in confusing and painful ways, and rather than turning into something creative and beautiful, they will fester and hurt. I can't keeping pretending I don't need this. It's ridiculous.

A famous professor of mine once spoke of the magnitude of the poet's "fucking ego." "We all want to write all good things all the time," she said, "we all have this big fucking ego." She's right. This unspeakable trepidation I feel is fear that I will write something unsatisfying to me.

How shameful of me to have succumbed to my own pride in a way that ultimately ended up destroying the very pride I was trying to protect. What a stupid poetic thing to do. How deluded must I have been to believe that stopping the outlet I use to release all of my ideas and creations, good and bad, would stop the ideas and creations themselves?

Awakening with the feeling of the weight of my friend's body still lingering in my arms was a good reminder that, I guess to put it simply, I am who I am. Frustration, anger, indignation, pride - nothing will change that.

So LA poet, if you read this, "thank you" and I'll see you soon.

Happiness Is Not a Fish You Can Catch (?)

2008-03-18T17:21:00.010-04:00

I read a couple of articles today that contradicted something I have preached for years. The article said that at least half of our happiness (if it can be measured in halves) is out of our control, and is linked to genetics. I say that we are in control of our happiness.

I say we are in control of our happiness because I've seen evidence of this in myself. When I make an effort to be happy, I am happier. I'm not saying I can control bad things that happen around me. I certainly can't control the sad things that happen around me. I'm not even even advocating that happiness is in the way we handle the bad things around us; I believe that we must strive for happiness at every opportunity, and welcome it from every possible source.

Simply stated, the little things add up.

I learned a few years ago that if you laugh at every opportunity - if you see the humor and absurdity in life - your days are immensely more pleasant. I laugh at myself when I trip over my dog. I laugh at myself when I forget that I didn't turn the nozzle to "hot" in the shower. I laugh when I tuck my skirt into my underwear. I laugh at the absurdity in life (I have a picture on my cell phone of a piece of paper I found sitting atop a stack of magazines in an apartment lobby that read "free/ $1" - and it's not even the inherent absurdity in the sign - it's the fact that (and I know I have stated this before) I thought that only happened in movies). I eagerly welcome happiness.

And I believe that everyone can do the same.

I can't control the things I see on the news. I can't control when loved ones die. I can't control when I, or someone I love, catch(es) a bad break.

But I can play with my dog. I can read Calvin & Hobbes. I can listen to funny stories anytime anyone offers to share them. I can look at myself in the bathroom mirror and laugh at the fact that I sometimes resemble a sad-looking Bridget Jones. I can laugh at the fact that my sister just discovered that my youngest niece really enjoys throwing things in the garbage can - so much so that my sister now has some mateless shoes. I can laugh at the fact that I once heard my mailman confiding to another mailman that "some days I just don't deliver the mail" (and come on, that's wayyyy annoying). I can laugh at the fact that some drunk stole a piece of my porch furniture, and a month later my neighbor saw it about a mile away while he was on a run, veered over, picked it up, and carried it over his head as he ran it back to me. I have to laugh about the fact that my boyfriend got two flat tires in two weeks (Pittsburgh roads SUCK!).

So I guess this study would argue that I am, genetically speaking, one of the lucky ones. That I have personality traits that allow me to find happiness where others can't. I am all of those things that they say most happy people are - social, compassionate, at least mildly extroverted - but I don't like the idea that unhappy people will dismiss the work I put into being happy, the choices I make, the deep breaths I take so as not to lose my cool over stupid things, the lessons I am constantly trying to learn - I can tell you right now, happiness didn't just happen to me.

I had a conversation with my parents a few months ago about the way they raised me and how appreciative I was of their parenting. I grew up believing I could do anything. Okay, now, I know that sounds like rhetoric cause every kid says that - every mildly successful person says that, and it annoys me. But for me, I really, really believed it. I still believe it. I fully believe that even though I am not working to be a published writer right now, that if I decided to I could absolutely be successful (with a ton of hard work). I even believe that even though the sciences are not my passion, I could, say, go to medical school if I wanted to. Maybe that's delusional, but no harm done because I don't want to go into medicine. Anyway, I explained to my parents that, because of them: "I don't believe that the world happens to me, I believe that I happen to the world."

And I apply that to a lot of situations where I see myself differing from other people. When I see things that don't work properly, I try to fix them, and most often do fix them. If something is making me unhappy, I try to get to the root of it and fix it. When I feel down for no reason, I make an effort to get more exercise (endorphins!) and get outside for longer periods of time (vitamin D, baby).

As such, I'm confident that, even when bad things come my way, I'm going to stay strong and find my happiness again.

This brings me to the second thing I read today - and I read so much today that I don't remember if it was in the same article as the previous one - that stated that if your happiness were to be plotted on a graph (with level of happiness on the x-axis and age on the y-axis), it would form a "U" shape. The study found that people's happiness declines until the age of roughly 44, wherein it bottoms out, and begins to ascend again.

How depressing is that?

While I could personally refute the first study (at least to my own satisfaction, I'm not actually dismissing it completely, I'm just saying it doesn't hold true for me and I don't think it's cut-and-dry sentence of unhappiness to those people for whom it might apply), I have no idea what it's like to be 44! Frankly, getting old scares me. Maybe this is what will eventually unravel my happiness. But I really hope not.

I hope that even if, when I'm 44, things are not at all what I foresee now (which is that I will be married, mothered, jobbed, and housed), I can find happiness in whatever life I'm leading.

Ultimately though, I think that the thing that will most ensure my future happiness is to not worry about stuff like this. This is the kind of thing that could be my undoing, so this is the kind of thing I should ignore. I can't change the fact that I will someday (most likely) be 44 years old. I can't change the fact that I am going to lose more people I cherish.

The only thing I can do is take each day as it comes, and suck as much happiness out of it as I possibly can - spend time with the people I love, try new things, fix problems, and live my life in such a way that, each time my alarm clock wakes me up, I look forward to the day ahead of me.

I choose happiness ( regardless of what my genes dictate, or the number of years I have lived), and I have to say, I am pretty happy with that choice.

Here is a link to at least one of the articles I read: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1721954,00.html

-I'm thinking about my heart, I guess you've heard sometimes it's heavy - but I just keep moving, when I hit a wall I look up at the sky-

2008-03-04T23:03:00.007-05:00

As I was searching out those other Ben Lee links (below), I came across this link to "Begin"
and all of a sudden I remembered how this song changed my life. Maybe someday I'll tell that story.

Self-Control is a Funny Thing. (Now with music!)

2008-03-02T18:51:00.011-05:00

As I'm getting older, I'm noticing more and more that I'm very good at exercising self-control, but only in certain ways. My self-control, which a lot of people describe as "impeccable,"* usually involves a lot of workarounds. The perfect example of this is my speakers.

My speakers are blown and have been for years. One of my vices, and probably my worst habit, is listening to loud music. I mean loud. I know people who listen to loud music, and they complain about the volume of my music. I just can't help it, and I know this.

Ergo, I have not purchased new speakers. Why? Because I know I'll blow them too and it will be a ridiculous waste of money. Everyone tells me to turn the music down and buy new speakers - and people have even offered, neigh threatened, to buy me new ones, but I still refuse. I know myself. I know I won't be able to turn it down.

Why is this?

Why do I have enough self-control and sense not to buy new speakers, but not enough self-control and sense to turn down the volume (or geez, just not turn it up in the first place)?

I'm annoyed with myself as I ask this question, and as I sit here listening to "Search and Destroy" at a decibel level that could quite possibly annoy my neighbors too.

I'm not planning on having these speakers forever. I'm assuming that one day I'll grow out of this "need for loud" and be able to listen to music at a reasonable level. But what if I don't? I know at least one adult who never did, and who only started to turn things down when his hearing got so bad that loud music began to hurt his ears.

The most ironic part is that I value my hearing. About a year ago, at a time when I was still going to a lot of shows, I started wearing ear plugs to hear live music (probably one of the best decisions I ever made), and yet in an environment where I can control the noise level, I choose not to. I almost feel like I would wear ear plugs in my bedroom before I'd turn it down. Am I the only one this crazy about loud music? Am I the only one this crazy?

There are a few songs, in particular, that are not properly appreciated unless listened to at high volume**:

-"Reptilia" by The Strokes
-"The Revolutionary Politics of Dance" by An Albatross
- "Watch Out" by Atmosphere (and also "Smart Went Crazy")
-"Ah! Leah!" by Donnie Iris (this, my friends, goes without saying)
- "Us" By Regina Spektor
-"Search and Destroy" by Iggy and the Stooges (unfortunately the only decent version I could find is set to a montage from Platoon which is too violent for my taste, albeit tough and pretty well done.)
-"Laid" by James
-"My Name is Jonas" by Weezer (especially the 4-party harmony toward the end -- this is also an amazing song to listen to at the beginning of a run because of the way it builds)
-"Sex Type Thing" by Stone Temple Pilots (oooh early 90s videos.)
- "Starlight" by Muse
-"District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by The Postal Service (especially starting at 2 minutes 18 seconds - and I hate to be such a girl but "Brand New Colony" belongs on this list too)
-"Wish" by Nine Inch Nails (I don't think this is the version I have, but you get the idea)
-"Let Go" by Frou Frou (another girly one)
-"Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2 (the video and the story behind it are both amazing, this linked video gives a little backstory before the video itself.)
- "Pyramid Song" by Radiohead
-"Staring at the Sun" and "Wolf Like Me" ***by TV on the Radio (and "Let the Devil in," too -- which I also believe to be the best song to listen to while speed training)
-"Here Right Here" by Sensefield. (Believe it or not, I could not find a copy of "Here Right Here" on the Web. I did find an acoustic cover by a kid with a surprisingly nice voice who adds a few nice, personal touches to the song (despite having listed the title wrong). Bear in mind the original isn't unplugged and probably wasn't recorded from a laundry room sink.)
- "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin (and I don't even want to start thinking of others because there a million)
-"Twilight" by Elliott Smith
-"XYU" by Smashing Pumpkins (and most definitely "Cherub Rock")
-"What You know" by TI (amazing)
-"I'm not Talking" by The Yardbirds
-"Tyler" by The Toadies
-"Blood Red Summer" by Coheed and Cambria
-"Take Me Home" Reggie and the Full Effect
-"A Stroke of Genius" by Freelance Hellraiser (hah!)
"Cigarettes Will Kill You" and "Apply Candy" by Ben Lee (even though "Apple Candy" breaks my heart)
-"The Woman in You" Ben Harper

This is list is longer than I thought it would be, and I'm sure I'll think of more. I guess I still have a lot of growing to do before I buy those new speakers.

Is that such a bad thing, though? Aside from the hearing loss, I don't think it's so bad that I enjoy music this much. I guess it's a shame that I'm so picky about the way I enjoy it, but assuming I don't actually bother my neighbors as much as I sometimes imagine that I do, I think the pleasure is worth the pain. Although, I say this now and I'm sure that when I'm half-deaf I'll kick myself repeatedly for not listening to everyone - but then again, if that happens, I won't be able to hear them complaining anyway.

* I say this with a hint of irony, or sarcasm, or humor - because I don't think my self-discipline is all that great, it just manifests itself in very visible ways so people seem to think it is (I could be onto something here).
**Feel free to mock my musical taste. Also, by way of a disclaimer, none of the songs I put up are censored versions.
***Does anyone else feel like TVotR really dropped the ball on the "Wolf Like Me" video? I was so disappointed.

I Don't Like Losing Things.

2008-02-26T12:15:00.011-05:00

In one of my previous entries, "Dear PAT, I Hate You," I mentioned that I lost a pair of my gloves during the commute from hell. They were cheap gloves, the stretchy once-size-fits-all kind, and they came in a two pack for under $5. Anyone else would have cut their losses and bought a new pair (or used their second pair), but no, not me, because I don't like losing things.

One time, in my younger days, after a night of debauchery, I awoke to discover that I couldn't find my favorite necklace, which I was certain I'd been wearing the night before. After digging around my apartment in the odd little places in which we sometimes place things unexpectedly, I discovered a single bead from my necklace in the bottom of my purse. Finding a single bead from a necklace that is comprised of glass beads on a string is never, never a good sign. I thought that maybe by some miracle of science it was possible that one bead had come off of the necklace with the rest of the necklace remaining in tact (impossible, I know), so I went out into my neighborhood to retrace all the possible paths I might have taken home the night previous.

On my way, I found a few beads scattered on the sidewalk and a bunch in the gutter. I started to pick them up and collect them in my pocket until I reached my friends' apartment, where I found the only other beads I could, buried in their sofa. I told myself I would restring the necklace and everything would be as it was - except most of the beads were chipped and part of the beauty of the necklace was in its intricate pattern, which I could never recreate, and I didn't have nearly enough beads anyway.

I also found four of the five pieces of one of my charm bracelets on the same trek. The missing piece, a silver ball that screwed on one end, remains hidden somewhere and will likely induce much head-scratching when it is discovered by the next, or next-next occupants of my friends' old apartment. The charm bracelet sits, useless (because without the secure ball on the end all the charms can fall off), on my desk as some sort of reminder that I should be a responsible human being. I look at it any time I want to feel guilty.

I gave up on the necklace however, realizing that two homages to guilt were a bit much and instead of making a shrine to all of the broken pieces, I crossed my fingers and went back to the shop where I bought it and bought the most similar necklace I could find, except that the colors aren't nearly as pretty (the old one was blue and green, this one is white and yellow). For some reason though, having the replacement necklace makes me feel a little better about breaking the old one, like I was able to partially replace something that was irreplaceable (or at least able to replace something that was handmade and imported).

So, I'm ridiculous.

Anyway, a few days after the commute from hell, I decided to retrace my footsteps from bus stop to front door and see if I couldn't find my missing gloves. I knew I'd opened my bag on the bus just before my stop, seen them buried among my things, closed my bag, and then exited. I figured I had a pretty good chance of finding them.

I figured out a way I could get to the bus stop and retrace my footsteps making a perfect loop through my neighborhood so I wouldn't have to make any u-turns or re-walk the same path once I reached the bus stop.

About a block from the bus stop, I saw a little black mound in the snow. Sweet nectar, my gloves migrated! As I reached the little black mound, I discovered a pair of black gloves, but they were not stretchy, they were fleece. Damn. I thought about taking them in lieu of my missing gloves but decided, ultimately, that one of the greatest small joys I experience is finding a lost item, and so to deny someone else that potential joy seemed unfair. I continued on.

A couple blocks away, retracing my footsteps, I saw another black mound sticking out of the snow. Success! I approached the second black mound only to discover that it was a pair of leather gloves this time, instead of my stretchy gloves. The only notable thing about these gloves, other than the fact that they were the second pair of black gloves on my path that weren't mine, was that one of them had been filled with snow, which then melted and later refroze so that it was filled with a block of solid ice. I tapped the ice hand on a retaining wall as I contemplated the odds of finding two pairs of black gloves that were not my mine. Since I couldn't remember a thing from stats I settled on guessing that the odds were pretty low, but higher than I would like to imagine, simply because most adults wear black gloves.

I walked home, defeated and gloveless, but content in knowing that I had at least tried.

Two days later I found my black gloves stuffed in my sock drawer, no doubt placed there by me when I was feverishly unlayering all of my many layers after the commute from hell.

Yep.

Also, if anyone knows where I can get those strings that kids wear to connect their gloves to their coat sleeves, I'd be much obliged if you'd tell me.

UPDATE:

Amazing! I just googled "don't lose your gloves" (trying to look for those little glove strings) and the first hit I got was for a CNN article about a Web site that a Carnegie Mellon student started in Pittsburgh, www.onecoldhand.com, to reunite people with lost gloves! Apparently it has branched out to other cities since it's inception so go ahead and check to see if your city has one.

You can read the article here.

I am off to see if those gloves are still where I left them, and if so, to take them to a drop box. This made my day.

Lessons Learned (Or, "When Life Proves a Point").

2008-02-18T15:32:00.010-05:00

There's this family that rides my bus in the morning. They have been riding my bus for maybe two months now. The first time I got on the bus and they were there, I was pretty taken aback. I saw a mother and three young children scattered in three different seats. The mother was somewhat sprawled with a toddler in the handicapped section. The 3- or 4-year-old was sitting two seats behind her. And the 5- or 6-year-old was sitting maybe two seats back and across the aisle.

The bus was filling, and all three kids were taking up more room than was necessary or courteous. People were standing in the aisle when there were a perfectly good seat next to stretched-out middle child and oldest child. I became ridiculously annoyed and started brooding about the hundred things I'd like to say to the mother or the bus driver or even the people around me, but I didn't say anything and continued brooding as one, then two, then all three kids started crying and/or screaming about something. When I neared my stop, I couldn't get off of that bus fast enough. Eugh.

I came home that night and complained up and down to my roommate and boyfriend about this discourteous, loud, annoying family that had ruined my once quiet (and usually peaceful) bus ride. I couldn't believe how much it bothered me. The next day the same thing happened, except the bus was even more packed. But, there were these children, sprawled across perfectly good seats, and the baby was given room to lay on the handicapped section, rather than being forced to sit in his mother's lap so someone else could sit down.

That day the bus was so full that I wasn't sure I could make it up to the front door to get out (as least without sticking people with my bag and stepping on toes), so I shouted to the bus driver to please open the back door, and of course she didn't because they almost never do, and so when no one approached the front door she quickly shut the doors and continued driving. I was unbelievably annoyed.

Then I heard a child's voice shout out "SOMEONE WANTS TO GET OFF THE BUS!" and the driver turned around, bewildered, and stopped the bus again so that I could actually disembark this time.

"So," I thought to myself "I'm obviously meant to find the good in this situation." I decided this was obviously a lesson that life was trying to teach me, so I devoted some time to looking for this lesson. Obviously, I knew, I should be thankful for the little (I say this with a hint of sarcasm) set of lungs that prevented me from missing my bus stop entirely. But, I knew there was more than that.

Each day, when I encountered the family on the bus, I searched for the good and appreciable in them. I knew this was more than just an exercise in maturity. I've worked with kids, a lot of kids, and I've learned (and continue to learn) that patience always has room to grow. But, again, it seemed like there was more to it than that.

So over the next few days, and then weeks, I observed them. I learned the kids' names (from the numerous times they are shouted on my ride). I've learned what they like to do, where the younger ones go to daycare, and the neighborhood where their mother works. One day, I even learned what kind of lunches they got as, on the rare occasion that the two older ones actually sat together, they decided to look at the contents of their lunch boxes.

The examination started simply enough with squeals and giggles, but the giggles shortly turned to shouting when the middle one smashed the oldest's sandwich, and then the oldest smashed the middle one's Little Debbie cake, which was followed by a great cry of despair and very brief, yet mournful, temper tantrum. For the first time, I actually found myself laughing at their antics instead of being annoyed. I looked over at their mother who, despite scolding them for the squished food and yelling, was laughing too.

One day, the middle one, once again in her own seat, turned around to the pair of adults in the seat behind her and stared intently. They paused to look at her curiously, but continued their conversation.

Obviously she was not content with the attention she had received so she began to lean toward them, closer and closer, until she was straining over the back of her seat. As if this weren't enough to garner the attention of the two now very confused people behind her, she smacked her bubble gum loudly and began to blow a bubble. She was so close to them that I was afraid the bubble would touch their faces (my mouth must have been agape) and then she reached out and popped the bubble leaving strings of gum hanging between her hand and mouth. The people behind her were now staring wide-eyed, as was I, and I guess this was the attention she had wanted because she turned around and sat back down in her own seat.

After I got over my sheer disbelief, and the nagging "where is your mother" finally stopped echoing in my head, I started laughing. The scenario was so ridiculous and over-the-top that I had to laugh. I decided not to even bother telling anyone about the latest escapade because I knew that if someone told me the same story, I probably wouldn't believe them. This kind of stuff only happens in movies, right?

Then one day, to my surprise, the moment of truth arrived. I walked onto my bus and found that the only available seat was next to the oldest child. Should I force her to scoot in, and appear to make a point? Should I walk past her and appear to deliberately avoid her? Either way I feared it would appear I was making some kind of point, and this wasn't my goal. What the hell. I walked up to her, peered down, and waited for her to move in. She looked at me, a bit surprised, and half-heartedly scooted toward the window.

I removed my hat, adjusted my headphones and leaned back in my seat, trying to ignore the fact that she smelled like baby wipes and telling myself that babies smell like baby wipes, and she lives with a baby, and she's a kid, and you're an adult, and stop being so damned judgemental.

Just as I had settled into breathing through my mouth a little body leaned across my lap and yelled "MOM!!!!!!"

I sat up, wide-eyed.

"MOM!!! I NEED HELP WITH MY HOMEWORK!"

"You should have done it at home."

"There's only one page and I need help!"

"You should have thought of that at home."

She opened a work packet of vocabulary words and synonyms and such, and stared intently at the instructions. The mother backed down a little and asked what the instructions told her to do. She read them aloud haltingly and with some trouble. She looked upset and said "I can't do this."
The mother responded "Yes, you can."

She looked down at the sheet and began sounding out the instructions again. She glanced between her mom and the worksheet a few times and then hunched down. I paused for a minute thinking of all the kids I have taught and helped and said "You can do this."

She looked at me with a good deal of surprise as I told her to match the words in the first column with the words in the second column that meant the same thing. I helped her sound them out and then talked through the possible answers with her. She came to one that baffled her and I said "Want to know a trick? If there's one you don't know, do all of the other ones first and the leftover answer is the answer to the one you don't know." She smiled happily and drew the line to the confusing word with pride when all the rest were done.

She looked at the next section of the work sheet and then looked at me. I told her to read the instructions, several times asking her what sounds certain letters made when she got stuck on longer words. It occurred to me that she was enjoying my attention when she had trouble sounding out words that, in previous sentences, she was able to zip through - but I didn't point this out and diligently reminded her to break long words into smaller pieces. We finished the last problem on her work sheet just as the bus reached my stop. She smiled happily at me and I smiled happily at her and told her "good job" and started to get off the bus. As I walked past the mother, who was holding the wiggling baby, she shouted back to her daughter "Did you say 'Thank You'?" The little girl, lost in thought, did not appear to hear her. The mother turned to me and mouthed "thank you" and I saw genuine gratitude in her eyes.

When I got off the bus I hadn't had the grand epiphany I thought I would when this situation came to a head. As I sat waiting for my next bus, I thought about how it was really nice to see a family, even a loud one, spending some time together in this hectic world. I thought about how nice it was just to see a happy family together.

The lesson I learned, and continue to learn, is this: Patience and kindness in all things.

The next time a situation like this presents itself in my life, I'll try not to be so quick with annoyance, and I'll try to be more understanding without taking weeks of introspection.

When they first popped onto my bus, I kept hoping and hoping that they'd switch to an earlier or later bus and I'd get my quiet bus ride back. Then one day, they weren't on the bus and things seemed too quiet. I found myself hoping that someone wasn't sick, or that they hadn't missed their bus. I breathed a sigh of relief when they were back on the bus the next day.

Patience and kindness in all things; even the things that bother us have the potential to bring us joy if we are open to receiving it.

Illinois

2008-02-15T17:18:00.004-05:00

Stay on the road.
Night has fallen for you.
Perhaps at dawn
we shall see each other again.

-P.N.

Greetings from -

2008-02-15T06:23:00.004-05:00

Listening to "Michigan" (or "Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State") I can hear that Sufjan Stevens still had some "Enjoy your Rabbit" to get out of his system. What's more, I can hear snow in this album. I walked outside with my headphones in and I just happened to be listening to one of the many songs with a section devoted to chimes, and as I saw the snow falling past the street light I felt like I was watching and listening to the same thing.

Dear PAT, I Hate You.

2008-02-12T21:53:00.005-05:00

Today it took me 2 1/2 hours to get home from work. I fell. I missed several buses. I wasn't let onto a bus I was running for and got the driver-favorite shrug that says "what can I do?" and "screw you" at the same time. A driver wouldn't let me off of a bus. And, the PAT customer service line had a busy signal for a straight hour. I'd go into details but then I'd get all riled up and no one really cares because this has happened to everyone in one fashion or another... except that I think my coat is ruined, I definitely sprained my foot (minor), and I rediscovered (IN FULL FORCE) my hatred of the Port Authority. The icing on the cake was being sprayed with coffee-colored sludge by the 30 million buses that zoomed past me that weren't the buses I was waiting for. And I lost my gloves somewhere. And oh yeah, it took me 2 1/2 freakin hours to get home today.

The only bright spot in this whole day was helping an older woman cross the street.

When I reached for her hand, she took mine and confided that she "should have kept [her] ass home today, but Bobby needs his prescription."

Oh Pittsburgh, you push me away and push me away, but your unparalleled charms will always pull me right back into your big stinky embrace.

The Birmingham Bridge is Sinking

2008-02-10T12:27:00.003-05:00

Friday morning I woke up at the usual un-Godly hour of 5:45am and flipped my radio dial from the most obnoxious station in Pittsburgh to the ever-pleasant NPR.

I find that waking up to absolutely mind-numbingly stupid DJs (who, like most dull and obnoxious DJs, fancy themselves more clever than they are - far more clever in this case), and plastic over-produced pop trash, provides pretty good motivation to actually get out of my bed so that I can change the station.

This system has worked to my advantage for years, with only slight modifications. (When I was in high school I had a complex alarm on my stereo that would, upon engaging, gradually climb to the volume it had been set to. At the time I had it set to -20 (negative 20) decibels and my motivation to get out of bed was to turn it off before it reached full volume so that my parents and neighbors would not want to kill me. What can I say? I know what I need get up in the morning.) Anyway, the point of this is that I was tired and glad to be listening to the ever-soothing NPR DJs describe the latest in both culture and global atrocities.

At about 5:50am, while I was still in a good bit of a daze, I heard the DJ state that the Birmingham Bridge was closed. "Impossible" I thought to myself and went into the kitchen to turn on the tea kettle. I sauntered back into my bedroom to start dressing myself for the dog's morning walk when I heard it again (something to the effect of): "The outbound lanes of the Birmingham Bridge are completely closed down as engineers assess a structural concern that was discovered early this morning."

Whaaaaaaat?

Impossible.

As a resident of this city, I absolutely despise when people refer to major roadways through "inbound" and "outbound" designations because, much like the system of when to pay your bus fare (sometimes it's entering the bus, other times it's exiting the bus -- and yes, yes, I know when to do what now), it makes no sense. Finally another DJ explained it in a way that made me realize I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get to work.

I called PAT customer service and the conversation went as follows:

Customer Service: Hello, Port Authority customer service.
Me (cheerily): Hi, I heard the Birmingham Bridge is closed...
CS: We don't know anything until we have the foreman report!
Me: Huh? Well...Okay, if I were to get onto the 54c right now, where would it take me?
CS: I don't know.
Me: Is the 54c running?
CS: Well, yeah.

Dear PAT, you have once again been the absolute epitome of help. I can only equate this to the time I took the bus to a 5K, and, because of the 5K the bus was taking a detour, when I tried to ask the driver what kind of detour we were taking she repeatedly told me "I'll tell you when to get off," and because I knew that I wanted to warm-up before the race, this was absolutely useless and quite frustrating.

So I weighed my options and decided that it was better to get onto a bus not knowing where it was going* (with a seemingly small chance of making it to work on time) than it was to wait for the fella to take me to work (with a 100% chance of not getting into work when I wanted to).

The buses were, not surprisingly, pretty devoid of passengers as most were either delayed by the snow (oh yeah, it had snowed the night before), or had decided to find alternate transportation in order to avoid the SINKING BRIDGE (I'll get to this later).

When I boarded the 54c one of my favorite drivers was driving and when I asked him what detour we were taking he didn't really know but he said "You get off at ----, right? I'll make sure I get you there." And I laughed and thanked him and told him I'd called customer service and he excitedly (and not joking) asked me if they had told me what he was supposed to do, and when I said no he looked a bit disappointed but smiled and reminded me that I would get to work.

The majority of the people on the bus had absolutely no idea that the bridge was closed and were startled when the driver whipped past it and headed downtown (taking us on a crazzzzzy detour). After finally getting us across the river, the driver decided the best thing would be for him to drop us 4 blocks from the normal stop and have us walk the rest of the way so that he could keep his route as close to normal as possible, and while this was absolutely fine for me, it was definitely harder for some of the older folks and one, in particular, who had a cane (and I don't blame the driver, I blame PAT for not having an established/ better detour system in place).

So, ironically, because so few people were on the bus, and because I was able to catch an earlier transfer (partly because of the lack of people and partly because the bus before the one I usually catch was running a bit late), I got to work right on time (the world is a funny, funny place sometimes).

My coworkers, however, were not so lucky. I was only the second person into my office and I am usually the 5th or 6th (and those who arrive before me are usually on their second cup of coffee by the time I get there).

I talked, at length, with my (only other present) coworker about the bridge (I realize this may sound minor but when there is some sort of mysterious damage done to one of your city's major-thoroughfares - one you use daily, no less, well it's a pretty bid deal) and we both realized we knew almost nothing.

As it turns out (after many, many vague and ambiguous statements by many, many PR reps) a portion of the bridge had suddenly fallen almost 8 full inches, and this was noticed and reported by a civilian who called 911! Holy crap, did the bridge drop while he was driving/walking on it!? Did he just happen to look up and see the Birmingham Bridge sink into the Mon?!

"They" think it's because of our wacky weather ups and downs (that sounds like something a local meteorologist would say) and the frequent sudden expansions and contractions of the rocker beams. (I have no idea what a rocker beam is, but I saw it written in the paper repeatedly).

So what in the world does this all mean? I really have no idea. The only conclusion I can come to is that had this person not noticed this drop by sheer luck or coincidence, we could have had another Minnesota bridge tragedy. I guess it's just really bothersome that the only reason anyone knew about this was by luck. I'm not one of those people who believes that things work themselves out for the betterment of all (things work themselves out in certain ways, but if history has taught us anything it's that public safety is a pretty haphazard beast). I'm upset that Penndot and the Department of Public Works (or whoever is responsible for helping Penndot keep an eye on this stuff) didn't even know this was a possibility!

Actually, I take that back. How could they not? After Minnesota, some organization somewhere (I don't remember who or where) mandated that all of the safety assessments of bridges be released to the public. So, here we are knowing we, Pennsylvanians, travel on more than 6,000 structurally deficient bridges (the highest number in the country) each day, but what choice do we have? For people like me who ride the bus (and can't choose buses that take different routes) the answer, I guess, is that we have no choice except to cross our fingers and hope that good samaritans continue to call 911 when they see that one of our bridges is sinking.

Another thing that bothers me is how this person noticed the problem with the bridge. Did they actually see a break in the construction of the bridge, or did they notice part of the roadway sink, or one of the supports sink? The only situation in which I can plausibly imagine myself calling 911 over the fact that a bridge might be breaking is if I were driving on it and the road sank underneath me. If I were just looking at the road, and thought I saw it shift or sink, especially in the early, early morning (meaning at least an our or two before I was awake), I'd definitely blame it on my imagination and not call the police. I bet a lot of people feel the same way, and that is also bothersome because it makes the luck of the near-miss even greater.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the Birmingham Bridge is sinking, and to whoever it was that took it upon themselves to call 911, I'd like to say "thanks."

This is a link to Penn Dot's info on PA bridge assessment:

http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Internet/web.nsf/Secondary?OpenFrameset&Frame=main&src=InfoBridge?openform

Sample news report on Friday**:

PITTSBURGH -- Early Friday morning, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials closed the outbound (southbound) lanes of the Birmingham Bridge for an emergency bridge inspection.Around 10:30 a.m., all lanes of the bridge were forced to shut down after a possible structural concern was identified. The on-ramps from Fifth Avenue and Forbes Avenue are also closed.PennDOT spokesman Jim Struzzi told Channel 11 they received a call overnight from a maintenance worker who noticed a drop in one of the bridge spans. Struzzi said at first it appeared that one of the rocker bearings that supports the beam and deck of the bridge slipped, causing the road to drop seven inches where the outbound ramp leads to the bridge. But further inspection showed that the beam which holds the pad and rocker has fallen onto the bridge pier.Bridge engineers and PennDOT officials are working to figure out if the pier moved and caused the damage, or if it was a beam failure.The bridge will be closed until further notice.

* - I'll be the first to admit I was also quite curious and just the slightest bit adventure-hungry.

** - As is clear from this WPXI news brief, some news sources reported that it was only 7 inches and that it was a maintenance worker who discovered the drop. Most reports I heard said something like 7 3/4 inches (which I rounded to 8) and that it was a passerby who called 911.

Fragile Things

2008-02-03T23:35:00.001-05:00

"There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts...As I write this now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill."
-Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things

Listening to Elliott Smith Again.

2008-01-25T18:50:00.002-05:00

You died just before noon on Wednesday morning. From the time I woke up that morning I was almost doubled-over in pain. It didn't make sense, but all of my insides hurt. My neck and back had been hurting me for days, and I'd been battling a strange headache (something with which I have little experience). On Wednesday my guts started to hurt so much that I worried I might have appendicitis.

On Thursday nothing hurt anymore. My body knew it was your time even though my mind refused to admit it. I guess pain is the logical result of a serious disconnect between mind and body.

When I got the unmistakable midday phone call, I thought to myself, "You're better. You're better. You're better. He's calling because you suddenly got better," and my esophagus grew tight like someone was inflating a balloon inside of it (kind of like it feels now).

I left the office right away, throwing things around so quickly and carelessly that I squashed a fly in one of my folders (which I found the next day).

I cried as I walked to the bus stop. Cars let me cross in places they don't normally and people kept their distance from me. A little boy, I'd guess he was about 4, stood staring at my intently. His mother kept trying to redirect his attention, but he kept looking at me, and finally she gave up. I thought about what I would say if he asked me why I was crying. Nothing seemed right, and I finally settled on "someone I love went to heaven."

I worried a lot about saying something that would scare him or make him sad. I worried that seeing a stranger cry on the bus might scare him or make him sad. I worry about children so much. I worry too much.

As I drew closer to my stop, I pushed more and more of my sadness inside until finally I wasn't crying anymore, except for the occasional rogue tear which I quickly wiped and denied. I imagine a great body of water building inside of me from all the tears I'm not crying and, like a dammed lake or river, sometimes a little leaks out to relieve all of the pressure.

I haven't let myself have a big cry - a red-faced, on-my-knees-cry, yet. I'm always afraid of hurting other people with my sadness. Listening to Elliott Smith, I think of the line, "I'll fake it through the day" (and never mind the next line about Johnny Walker Red, I'm too tired to drink).

I know I'll grieve in my own time in my own way. I know it's still too soon.

Today is the anniversary of Cliff's death. I can tell I'm in defensive mode because every year on the anniversary of Cliff's death I cry, and I haven't cried for Cliff today. That will come in due time too.

This morning when I woke up, I thought about you teaching Cliff to dance. I imagined you wearing a white shirt and black pants, and Cliff wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt and a bandanna. You were both smiling and laughing. You were both so spry. I imagined Cliff saying "You're the woman" and you replying "don't I know it," as you danced together. And I laughed and felt happy for a little while. As the day went on, I thought of that image again and again and it brought me some happiness and some relief.

I want you to know that you filled an empty place in my heart. I know your family is experiencing unimaginable pain right now because they love you so much, and even though I have the utmost sympathy for them, I keep returning to thoughts of how lucky they were to have had you in their lives, and how lucky I am to have had you in mine.

Lost Souls

2008-01-22T18:36:00.001-05:00

I am so upset to hear of Heath Ledger's death.

I suppose I have a secret expectations from the celebrity world - that they will always provide entertainment without reality. That they will always provide diversions from my reality.

About a week ago Brad Renfro died. I was shocked. I know he'd slipped into the oblivion of most American minds (if people even knew him at all), but I'd never forgotten him, nor the first time I saw him in The Client. He was the ultimate heart-throb material - a southern bad-boy and anti-hero. Even as he aged and he acted very little, and when he did act he took really risky roles again and again (I have to shut my eyes for many scenes in Bully), I still cared about him as a human, and when I heard he had trouble I always hoped he'd get better.

So when he died, after so many months or years of silence, it felt like all my hope had been in vain. I thought again and again that he couldn't die, it would be far too James Dean for the real world. I don't know him. It seems silly. But I was sad that such a talent, albeit a troubled talent, had died so young. More than that, I was sad because I had cared about him, whether I knew him personally or not. He'd had an impact on my life.

And now Heath Ledger. It seems ridiculous. I don't know Heath Ledger. I know nothing of his character or even of his person, and yet I'm crying. I'm crying because the movies, and all of the celebrity diversions help me to forget my troubles sometimes. That's the point of movies and the entertainment industry. Sometimes movies are about troubles of one kind or another, and make you think, and hurt you, but they always pull you away from your own life and into someone else's.

And now I am sitting here thinking of how much pain Heath Ledger must have felt. How sad he must have been, and it reminds me that I have my own sadness, and that other people - all other people- have their own sadness - even the ones who are meant to keep us from ours.

I sat here hoping and hoping that someone somewhere was wrong. I read the story of his death like a novel, thinking that it might have a happy ending even though I knew it didn't. When I read that his housekeeper tried to revive him, I rooted for her to bring him back, all the while knowing he was already gone.

I sit here writing this knowing that someone I love and cherish is not going to be with me much longer, and I can't help but realize that the way I'm feeling over the death of a stranger is a reflection of the fear and pain I haven't let myself feel for her. Heath Ledger won't let me ignore the pain anymore. So I sit crying tears for Heath Ledger, that are hidden tears for someone else. Someone I'm not yet ready to cry for.

On Dogs and Chewing Gum

2008-01-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

They are, as it turns out, a bad combination.

Last night, while watching some crappy Sunday night programming, my roommate, let's call her "Rachel," got up from the sofa to get something out of her bedroom.

To provide a little back story, Rachel's chihuahua has been spending some decent amount of time confined in her bedroom as of late because the dog has become, how shall I say, "testy" (to put it politely, and so as not to be offensive to sensitive ears) in the past 6 months. Why the bedroom? Why the confinement? Let's just say, to quote one of my favorite Steve Martin movies, "to prevent [her] from hurting [herself], and others."

Shortly after Rachel left the sofa I heard her growl the words "YOU LITTLE SHIT."

Keeping in mind the back story, I was not taken aback as these are words I hear often.

"Carter!*" (Rachel's significant other) "Did you have gum in your bag?"

"What?!"

At this point I became curious enough to motivate myself off of the sofa and into Rachel's bedroom. I imagined entering the bedroom to find the dog with so much bubble gum in her mouth that she could barely close her jaws. I imagined her blowing incidental bubbles from the struggle, but refusing to relinquish the gum when commanded to do so.

Instead, there in the midst of Rachel's spotless white carpet, sat the shreds of what had once been a new pack of Orbit peppermint gum. The gum itself was nowhere to be found, and only the remains of a few paper gum wrappers lay strewn about on the floor. The package and the tinfoil seal appeared to be in tact, save for some serious gnawing. The chihuahua, Costello*, sat stoically atop Rachel's pristine white down comforter with her body facing us, but looking out of the adjacent window. She would not make eye contact.

I glared at the dog, "you're an idiot."

Carter entered the room behind me. "My bag was closed!" Costello had opened a closed Timbuk2 messenger bag, found the gum, and then opened the seal before eating every single piece of gum in the package.

Rachel picked up the remains of the chewing gum package, aghast. As she turned the gnawed remains over and over in her hands, I lost interest and went back into the living room.

A few minutes later Rachel stormed out of her bedroom, once again holding the gum package, and said "Do you think this is bad for her?!"

"Check the internet."

A few minutes after that Carter shuffled into my bedroom and asked for the telephone number of the emergency vet I had taken my dog to a few months back (when she decided that a cigarette butt she found on the sidewalk looked like a tasty treat**).

Apparently, sugar-free gum contains a sugar alcohol called Xylitol. Not only was the vet concerned about liver and kidney damage because Costello had ingested so much of it, but she was worried about her going into hypoglycemic shock (from my understanding, the gum had essentially made her a temporary diabetic).

The Wikipedia entry on Xylitol states:

Xylitol, like most sugar alcohols, can have a laxative effect, because sugar alcohols are not fully broken down during digestion. It has no known toxicity, and people have consumed as much as 400 grams daily for long periods with no apparent ill effects.

Dogs ingesting foods containing high doses of xylitol (greater than 100mg xylitol consumed per kg bodyweight) have presented with low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) which can be life-threatening. Low blood sugar can manifest as loss of coordination, depression, collapse and seizures as soon as 30 minutes after ingestion. Intake of very high doses of xylitol (greater than 500 - 1000 mg/kg bwt) has also been implicated in liver failure in 8 dogs, which can be fatal.

One reported death occurred in a standard poodle who ate five or six cookies sweetened with xylitol.

Dogs that have eaten products containing high levels of xylitol might need immediate medical attention even if they are not yet showing illness. Sick dogs (vomiting, weak, seizuring, etc) are likely to need aggressive veterinary treatment and close monitoring of blood values.

Carter and Rachel hauled Costello off to the emergency vet at 11pm last night. Once there, Costello received epomorphine, an iv, and had her glucose levels and liver enzymes monitored for the whole night. Before they went though, Animal Poison Control told them to feed her a spoonful of vanilla ice cream (soy cream in this case), and a slice of bread -- the ice cream was to give her glucose and the bread was to absorb the Xylitol, thereby slowing her body's absorption of it too. Costello probably thought she'd hit the mother load until she realized she was going to the vet.

Costello returned bright and early this morning, largely unscathed except for the place where the vet shaved her leg to insert the IV.

As Rachel prepared to take Carter to the airport this morning, she asked if I would watch Costello (I have MLK jr. day off). I hesitated. Costello and I have a colorful past that includes, but is not limited to: urinating on beds, urinating on carpets, biting, urinating on clothing, urinating in closets, biting, pooping in front of a policeman, dropping, kicking, biting, squealing, screaming, biting, bruising, and bleeding - but I'm not going to say who did what or anything.

"Fine."

So far Costello has stayed curled in her bed, being absolutely lethargic and unresponsive to anything I say to her. I tried to give her a treat and she growled and tried to bite me (but lazily, so she didn't get anywhere near my hand). I'm glad she is back to her good-old self.

*The names have been changed to protect the innocent and stupid.

** Bear in mind both of our dogs weigh 7 lbs, respectively, so little bits of bad things can be toxic to them - ridiculous as it sounds.

(I have no idea why the leading is messed up after the Wiki entry, but I'll keep trying to fix it.)

Sassy Speed Limit Signs in Montgomery Village!

2008-01-21T10:50:00.001-05:00

#1 on my list of Pet Peeves/ Annoyances. "Speed Limit 35 On Our Main Street!"

Love Forever, Love is Free*

2008-01-19T15:04:00.000-05:00

For the past few months, I've come to appreciate the "community" of regulars who grace my presence on my daily trek to work. The most interesting people, by far, are the people who wait for their bus at the stop where I wait to transfer to my second bus.

Only one bus travels the route where I catch my first bus, which means that the only people who are ever at that stop are people coming from my neighborhood and going downtown (or somewhere in between).

At my second bus stop, at least 10 busses (and probably more like 15) stop in front of the building where I catch my second bus. They are busses from all different neighborhoods, and even some coming from outside of the city. It's amazing what you can tell about someone by looking at the bus they get off of, or onto. It's even more amazing what you can't tell.

One of my favorite people (who is really part of a pair) who I get to see is a high school-aged boy who waits in the bus shelter with me everyday for about five minutes (it's just the way our schedules coincide).

When I first noticed him, he got off of a city bus with a group of four or five other high school kids. The group proceeded to walk toward the nearest high school, but he stopped and waited in the bus shelter. I was baffled, but didn't really pay attention to his comings or goings except to notice that he had always disappeared by the time I boarded my second bus.

As this continued, I started to pay more attention. I noticed one day that he had his name embroidered onto a varsity sports sweatshirt (I won't be so inappropriate as to state it, but it made me happy that it was a good Irish name). As I looked at his sweatshirt one day (trying to be inconspicuous), trying to figure out what he was doing and why he was always frowning, I noticed his eyes light up. A high school girl was getting off of a another city bus. Love.

She stopped and smiled coyly as soon as she descended the bus stairs, and then quickly ran over to him, latching onto him around his waist in an embrace. He tried not to smile but couldn't help himself. After about 10 seconds of coat and bag shuffling, they walked toward the school together.

This happens every day. The boy stands, stone-faced, in his varsity sweatshirt, listening to his headphones. Sometimes he gives me a curious glance when he catches me taking a picture of the city in the morning (a hobby that brings me a lot of joy), but he never makes eye-contact and he never smiles. The girl's bus always comes about 5 minutes after his bus, and she always does something cutesy and lavishes love and affection on him before they depart for school.

I wondered, for a few days, why she was so outwardly affectionate, and why he was so stoney-faced, and why that didn't worry her at all. It seemed so obvious by their interaction that there was a discrepancy in their care for each other.

But a few weeks ago, as I stood trying not look at my bus shelter companion - who was trying not to shiver in the snow and wind in his sweatshirt - I realized that this boy was standing in the snow and wind and cold because of her. He waits for her every day without fail. He never has a coat on**. He has to put up with some strange girl staring at him. It's also probably the case that he could take a later bus and get to school on time, but he doesn't so they can have their little rendez-vous every morning. Now that is love.

She may jump up and down and hug him and squeel and give him kisses everytime she sees him, but I can tell by the look in his face that his day begins and ends with thoughts of her. His whole world revolves around her. Giving kisses is easy, standing outside in the cold isn't.

I know she loves him too, but it's just so obvious that it's not the same way he loves her, and because of that I want to protect him. There are days when I want to turn to him and say "I know. I know what you're feeling. I know what's it's like to love someone so much that it scares you."

But I know I'm past the age where it would mean anything to him. To teenagers, anyone who wears dry-clean-only clothes and gets up to go to work (and not school) every morning just doesn't get it. And in a way, I don't. Remembering what it was like to be a teenager in love*** is not the same thing as actually being there.

More than anything I want to tell him to be careful. I want to tell him that he is going to have his heart broken, by her and by other girls, but that that's okay. I want to say "I know because I was there! I was that girl who showered kisses and affection on her stoic boyfriend!" And even though that relationship ended, and it hurt, if you mature the right way, and learn from your mistake (and don't get too battered along the way), you'll grow into an adult who can experience love in a way that a teenager never could. I survived that battled, and I'm the better for it.

But I can't tell him that. Even if he would listen, it wouldn't do any good. These, like so many other life lessons, are the things you have to learn on your own.

Looking at them is like looking through a telescope into my past. Every day I am reminded of the things old boyfriends did for me and it hurts because I remember that I didn't always return the kindness or devotion. But then I think of all of the things I do now for love. All of the things I can do now for love.

And I am grateful. I'm grateful that I've become the person I am, and I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to watch them and learn from them in ways they won't be able to, until they've lived and loved like I have (and do).

*From "Feel Good, Inc" by Gorillaz

**At first I romanticized it in my mind, thinking perhaps he came from a poor family who couldn't afford a coat, but it's far more likely that he has a perfectly good coat at home and a mother who shouts "aren't you going to wear your coat?!" every morning, just before he shouts "no!" and slams the door.

*** and I'm sure that statement will cause some chuckles from people who read this, and who see me as currently being young and in love, because I am young and in love, but I'm not a teenager anymore.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! I've been really busy, but I promise new blogs will be here soon.

Poor me...Pour me a drink.

2007-12-18T13:57:00.000-05:00

Last night, after a very random series of events, I happened to meet a recovering alcoholic who is 35 years sober (I'll call her "Sarah" for simplicty's sake).

I used to think that it was unfair that a person was labeled an alcoholic for life even if they only drank heavily or abused alcohol for a year (or a few years, in this woman's case), but now I see that it's not a matter of fairness; the lifelong label "alcoholic" is a matter of honesty and an abandonment of wishful thinking. If you were ever an alcoholic, you still are; the only difference is that recovering alcoholics are alcoholics without booze. Add booze to the mix and it becomes abundantly clear why they still wear that badge.

One of my friends asked Sarah "Do you ever miss it? Is it hard?"

"You know," she said, "no, it isn't. Every once in awhile I walk into a restaurant and think to myself, 'Boy, it would be nice to have a glass of wine with my meal like everyone else.' But I never had a glass of wine, I had 10."

That's when she said, "I lived by the motto: Poor me...Pour me a drink." And it dawned on me that every alcoholic I know lives by the same motto. Sarah recited, verbatim, some of the things my very own friends have said to me, when she told me the excuses she used to make - most notoriously "if you had my life, you'd drink too." She was the first person to remind me that she had money, two beautiful children, and a loving husband and family.

Sarah believes she has a disease. She believes that she inherited the genes for alcoholism from some of her numerous alcoholic relatives. She said "My husband used to say to me, 'Why are you doing this?' That's not how it works. You wouldn't ask a cancer patient why they have cancer."

This is where we disagree. Yes, alcoholism is a disease, but not like cancer. Most cancer patients have absolutely no choice in their disease (the exception would be people who develop cancer after making repeated bad lifestyle choices - smoking, drinking - but even then, genetics play a role). Alcoholics, on the other hand, know - and I don't care what anyone says - they know, at some point or another that they have a drinking problem - that the alcohol controls them and they depend on the alcohol. Most alcoholics realize this long (years and years) before they get help. It is unfair and deceptive to lump alcoholics and cancer patients together.

Let me put it this way, if a cancer patient took a pill everyday, and the doctors said "this pill you are taking is causing your cancer. If you stopped taking this pill, you'd get better," then you bet your ass people would ask cancer patients "why are you doing this?" too.

A couple of weeks ago I went into the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine. As I was checking out, I noticed the man behind me setting a bottle of cheap bourbon on the counter- plastic, gallon-size, bottom-of-the-barrel, couldn't have cost more than $11. He had the shakes. His face was bloated and his skin was pocked, wrinkled, and scarred. His nose was bulbous and red. He wore dirty khaki pants and a red plaid shirt. He looked 70, but I'd guess he was probably closer to 50. He had a look of pain on his face as he pushed his bottle to the cashier. She smiled at him nonchalantly as she read his total and bagged his bottle.

I thought to myself "how can you live with yourself?" and I wasn't thinking about the man, I was thinking about the cashier.

It's illegal for doctors to give an obvious drug addict pills, so why is it legal for a clerk in a liquor store to sell an alcoholic booze? I know there are obvious answers here, but if you think about it, it's really not that different. A doctor would refuse to prescribe medication based on the patient's behavior and demeanor - I guess he could run a tox screen, but I doubt that happens in these situations. Doctors make a judgement call based on experience. Why is it that supplying an addict with their drug of choice is illegal in most situations, but commonplace in others?

I'm not condemning that clerk, or any clerk, nor am I condemning the tens of thousands of bartenders who knowingly and unknowingly pour drinks for alcoholics each year. I am pointing out that we live in a society riddled with not only addiction, but hypocrisy.

I know prohibition is a bad idea. I know prohibition will never work. But come on, the U.S. is so tough on drugs based on this notion that they are bad for the people who take them, and bad for the people who are affected by the people who take them. What about alcohol?

Throughout my years, and the comings and goings of various friends of mine, I have always known people who were touched by alcoholism, whether personally or in their immediate family. I've also known numerous people related to, or affected by other types of drug abuse (my freshman year of college the girl who lived across the hall from me dropped out after developing a heroin addiction).

That number would be exponentially larger if I counted non-nuclear family members and friends. The times when we've talked about it, the conversations were almost always preceeded by tears and painful memories or recountings of interactions with their drunk loved one. Alcoholics cause the people around them infinite pain. They harm and harden good and loving people. They ruin the lives of their families and friends. And they don't care.

Most alcoholics will insist that they do care, but alcoholics are constant liars. Sarah repeated the old adage, "How can you tell if an alcohlic is lying? Her lips are moving." And that's the truth. She admitted, and who knows how long it took her to admit this, that when she was drinking she didn't care about anything. She didn't care about her husband or her children. She admitted she didn't care about her children. I imagine that's the case for most alcoholics. Many arguments end with the impassioned cry "You wouldn't do this if you cared about me!" to the addict. Make some minor modifications and that statement becomes the question and the answer: You do this, and you don't care about me.

Once you come to this realization, dealing with the addict becomes easier, but not any less hard (and I realize this statement is a contradiction, but if you've had any experience with an addict, you know what I mean).

I asked Sarah how she finally decided to seek help, and she told me that her sister came to visit (her family lived across the country) right after she (Sarah) had been prescribed valium for her "nerves" (she used air quotes when she recounted this). Later that day, after Sarah drank some vodka (she doesn't know how much) and took a valium, her sister found her in a coma. Sarah said that she wasn't trying to kill herself, but at that point she really didn't care if she died.

After that, her sister told her parents and her husband and they all got together to try to help her. When she was faced with losing her children, she finally pulled herself together enough to go to rehab. She explained that it wasn't so much the thought of losing her kids that motivated her, but the thought of what people would say about her if she lost her kids. I guess when love isn't enough, societal judgement is.

Not too long ago, I was riding in the car with someone (I don't remember who) who said "I don't think I could be friends with someone who uses cocaine." I laughed immediately and said "You are friends with people who use cocaine, and you don't know it." She eyed me suspiciously.

"No, not me."
"Who?"
"I don't know, but I guarentee you know at least one person who uses cocaine either recreationally or abusively. You probably know lots of them."

The same is true with alcoholics, except multiply that number by 10. Or more realistically, 50.

I know this sounds dire, but this will never get better until people start recognizing the reality of the situation. If you see someone with a problem, don't ignore it. Say something. Say something to that person, or their parents, or their friends, or their spouse. Admitting there is a problem really is the first step.

I think about how different Sarah's life could have been if her sister had visited a year or two earlier. She might not have cerosis. She might not have osteoporosis. She might not have lost her marriage of 8 years (and her relationship with her husband of 16 years). I'm glad she told me her story, and in honor of her courage and her efforts to right those wrongs she committed so many years ago, but still haunt her, I promise that I will not keep quiet any longer.

Things That Make Me Happy

2007-12-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

1) The sound my dog makes when she eats cereal I've dropped on the floor

2) My first sip of green tea when it's a little too hot, but not too hot to drink.

3) Waking up in the middle of the night and being COLD. I'm always hot when I sleep, so being cold when I sleep is the greatest.

4) Cherry vanilla soy cream (especially the chunks of cherry).

5) Riding my bicycle on any summer day, and especially any summer night.

6) Being thirsty and remembering that I carry my Nalgene everywhere with me.

7) Walking through Schenley Park late at night (and especially going to my secret place in the park).

8) Going to the outdoor movies in Schenley during the summer (even crappy movies are great when you're lying on a picnic blanket and eating a Scooter Crunch).

9) When the police chopper flies overhead during the movies and the lights startle everyone and you catch a glimpse of faces that are otherwise invisible in the darkness

10) Being surprised with dinner when I get home frome work

11) Being reminded that my old friends still think about me

12) Great Lake Swimmers

13) Peepers (they're really summer frogs, but I call them peepers).

14) The tradition of making homemade sangria every summer, and then having an excuse to invite my close friends over to share it with me (usually for several weekends in a row).

15) The homamade apple cider tradition that we started this year.

16) Dicsovering that allspice comes from a berry! (courtesy of the cider recipe)

17) Hearing my Grandaddy's voice

18) Remembering the way my grandpa laughed when he watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

19) Getting enough sleep

20) Picnics - even if they're only with canned tuna and pieces of cheese.

21) Swinging on the swingset at Anderson playground

22) Getting at least 8 hours of sleep

23) Running a good 3 miles and having the energy to run more

24) Christmas lights (especially those on the Ronald McDonald houses).

25) Laying on a blanket on the beach and falling asleep in the sun.

26) Forcing my fellow vacationers to turn off the central air in the beach house and taking it back old school by opening up all of the windows and turning on all of the ceiling fans.

27) Salad with homemade ginger dressing

28) Salad with Greek dressing (especially from Ali Baba and Aladdin's)

29) Any fresh salad!

30) To be continued (refer to #19).

List of Pet Peeves/Annoyances

2007-12-11T12:46:00.000-05:00

About nine months ago, I started a list of things that annoy me, while visiting family with my Dad. I only added five things to the list, but a few weeks ago I guess you could say I was in the "annoyance zone" because they came quickly, like channel 11 news anchors to a fire. Any fire. The results were surprising, and more poetic than I would have anticipated. Here goes nothing:

Pet Peeves/Annoyances

1) Sassy speed limit signs i.e. those in Montgomery Village. (At the time, I drew a picture of the signs in my notebook - the Arabic numerals look as though they were written by a carefree, self-assured architect signing a check. They are like italics, but only if "italics" could drink apple-tinis and then criticize your outfit.

2) Saying "heidgth" or "heigth" instead of "height"

3) Houses with brick front and vinyl siding - who are you fooling? (And no, this isn't a result of snobbery. Houses with all vinyl or wooden siding look fine, it's the literal facade of brick that kills me.)

4) When people say "foward" instead of "forward"

5) The way my dad says "wah wah wah" like a baby, when I'm complaining about something.

6)Super passive-aggressive conversations that culminate with the phrase "can you repeat the question?"

7)Eudora

8) Trying to do anything logical or practical in Excel. Not gonna happen.

9) "Lil" - in any place, or any context; at any time, and before, or after, any word or phrase.

10)People who whole-heartedly (and often passionately) believe that freedom of speech only applies to thing they like to hear, want to hear, or agree with.

11)People who think "Hair of the Dog," by Nazareth is "Son of a Bitch," by AC/DC.*

12) People who assume Pittsburgh can't possibly be cool because they grew up there/nearby.

13) People who assume that people who stay in Pittsburgh do so out of some short-coming, failure, or fear - and not out of choice.**

14) Getting an earache from sitting in a smokey bar too long.

15) The (proposed?) smoking ban. It's a slippery slope. If the government is truly concerned about the harmful effects of smoking, they ought to ban cigarettes. Until that day comes, I'd encourage you to wonder who is lobbying for these freedom-reducing measures (and they are, crazy as that sounds), and wonder if isn't some powerhouse health care provider, interested in decreasing the amount they have to spend on health care coverage for smokers...

16) Non-profits that turned half of one billion dollars in profit last year.

17) Take a minute to think about that.

18) People who walk on the dunes and wonder why their $8 million cottage washed away in "hurricane nickelback" last year.

19) People who walk on the dunes (period).

20) Nickelback.

21) That bald ADA who made a snide comment about my job when I was summoned as a juror in a murder case.

22) Getting a 76 cent travel stipend added onto my $9 jury pay, when the city government knows very well that it costs $1.75 to ride the bus to the courthouse, and $1.75 to ride the bus home from the courthouse (and at least - and I am being so generous here - $5 to if you decide to drive, and then park downtown).

23) Having a chat with a guy who likely shot someone in the face, so he can assess my character.

24) Realizing I don't actually believe people are innocent until proven guilty.

25) Knowing people assume what my political affiliations are, based on some of my favorite books (1, 2, 3, label me!).

26) Having my political affiliation changed on my voter registration because some db begged me to sign a phony petition because I was his "last signature" and if I signed he could "go home."

27) That smug girl who said I should have known better.

28) Knowing I should have known better.

29) Anyone who has ever stolen anything from their mother.

30) Cutting my fingers when I'm eating whole crabs and then getting old bay seasoning in the little cuts.

31) Cold wind blowing up my skirt.

32) Pantyhose. Ugh.

33) Second-hand smoke in my hair. (And see, I still don't support the smoking ban!)

34) Young politicians with major responsibilities that fell into their lap, who seriously abuse their new-found power. But I'm not mentioning any names or anything.

35) Julia Roberts

36) The fact that Julia Roberts named her twins Phinnaeus and Hazel

37) The fact that I know that.

38) Dave Grohl

39) Ergo, the Foo Fighters

40) Also, the bass player from the Goo Goo Dolls

41) People who make both Cs soft in words that start with a double C - ie "a-sess-ory" instead of "ack-sess-ory."

42) Colbie Caillat. What kind of self-respecting adult uses the phrases "silly place," "crinkle my nose," and "bubbly face," in a song that isn't written for children?

43) The fact that, in June, I called DPW, my state representative, and the mayor's 311 help line, about a SINK HOLE in front of my house. And today, December 11th, a guy from a sewerage company came to my house and told me he was trying to establish the cause of said sink hole, and could I please flush some dye down my toilet (and remember to flush twice).

44) People who don't use their turn signals

45) People who honestly believe that using their turn signals will "give away [their] next move." (I'm talking to you, paternal nuclear family member who shall remain nameless.)

46) People who complain too much

47) When my dog headbutts me in the shnoz.

-More to come someday, I'm sure.

* - If you are in absolute shock right now, read my blog "Public Service Announcement"

**-It may sound like I'm being defensive, and maybe I am, but I have these friends who moved from this boho city, to another boho city, and think it's fantastic simply because it's different - (and I bet this happens everywhere). Baltimore kills me - Oh you moved to a formerly industrial city, trying to forge a new image, with a famous hospital, a surprisingly vibrant arts community, and a football team that sometimes struggles, and sometimes kicks ass? CRAZY. Next thing you know you're gonna tell me that it has an ivy-caliber university (that isn't an ivy) and some amazing aquarium, or zoo!
-In another vein, I've encountered people who can't seem to consider themselves successful as human beings unless they have lived in, or near, New York City. I feel sorry for them. I think you appreciate New York the most when you want to be there, not when you are afraid to be somewhere else.

I'm trying to be heroic in an age of modernity*

2007-12-07T20:20:00.001-05:00

This morning, while waiting to transfer to my second morning bus during a gusty snowfall, my friend from Elderberry Junction (the woman in my very first blog post) sidled into the bus shelter next to me. I haven't seen her in awhile, so I smiled at her and she smiled at me, and we waited for our bus in the blustery cold, occasionally glancing at one another, or at the sun that was just beginning to peak over the horizon. When the bus finally came, I dutifully ensured that she boarded just in front of me, so that I could support her if she needed a hand.

I feel a responsibility for her such that, if she knew, I know she would be offended. Despite this, when she clutched the standing bar at the front of the bus, rather than taking a very close vacant seat I said, "Don't you want to sit down?"

She hesitantly stepped forward (with me one step behind her), and before she began her second step, her feet went out from under her. It happened quickly and slowly at the same time. It was fast enough that I was startled and frightened, but slow enough that I had a chance to think and brace myself (despite the fact that I was wearing knee-high stiletto boots**) so that I could catch her without falling over myself.

The floor was so wet that even though I caught her, and stopped her from further falling, her feet kept sliding, so both of us were inching closer and closer to being parallel with the (very wet and dirty) floor. Two girls in nearby seats immediately lunged forward to help, and one of them said "you're okay" a few times in the most reassuring, yet pitiless voice I've ever heard. She had the tone so many doctors strive for, but can never deliver.

As the three of us finally righted ourselves, I felt proud of humanity at large. I see people do so many disgusting and heartless things sometimes that I've really come to appreciate it when strangers go beyond simply being civil to one another.

As the woman finished her trek to her seat she mumbled "that's why I didn't want to sit down in the first place" and I felt guilty and responsible. I felt like she was saying it to me. It's equally possible that it was just something to say after experiencing something embarassing (I think of how many times I've tripped and mumbled "stupid shoes" just in case anyone was within earshot), but it's just as possible that it really was directed to me and she was mad that I coaxed her into sitting.

Oh well. Maybe next time she won't sit, but for this time, I'm happy I caught her.

* this is a lyric from Bloc Party's song "Song for Clay: Disappear Here"

** No, I'm not a prostitute.

You Can Choose Your Afterlife

2007-12-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

Eric Gamalinda wrote a poem called "You Can Choose Your Afterlife," in his 1999 book, Zero Gravity. It is one of my very favorite books, and perhaps one of the most complete collections of poetry I have ever encountered*. In this poem, the speaker addresses a friend, real or created, who decided to take his own life:

---------------------------
"You Can Choose Your Afterlife"**

according to the strange customs
of the T'boli
who believe we are not judged

by good or evil
but by the kind of death
we meet: to die by the sword

is to enter the kingdom
where everything
even the sound of water

is red They welcome you there
with the tintinnabulation
of copper bells

and the lamentation
of bamboo violins
and all night long

a wounded sun hovers
over your place of business
And those who drown

return to the navel of the sea
(that's what they call it)
where they become subjects

of Fon Muhin, god
of all creatures
who breathe water And those

who die of sickness
go to Mogul
where they receive everything

they've always desired
but are not free of suffering
And those who kill themselves

go to a place exactly like earth
but where everything sways
even in sleep

Arne you didn't tell us
why you wanted
to go

we can only imagine you
in a world where
you can't keep a cup

of coffee still
and people keep changing
the rules for soccer

because the ball
keeps rolling away
You won't miss us

everything moves in the same
direction You were always
one step ahead
---------------------------

I think about this poem a lot, particularly the line in which the speaker first addresses his friend, Arne; "Arne, you didn't tell us/ why you wanted/ to go"

The speaker is so obviously at peace with the lack of closure in this situation. He doesn't know why Arne took his own life, but he's not going to spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out. I have spent many hours wondering about questions I'll never be able to answer. I haven't made peace with many of them, but it's an ongoing quest.

We, humans, have the desire to know why. Why did it happen? Why did they do it? We'll never know. But that's not the point of this poem.

This is a poem about empowerment. In death, in which most of us imagine that we have no choice, Gamalinda is positing that maybe, in some ways, we do have a choice.

The answer to the riddle of Arne's suicide is hidden in these stanzas, but the answer is something that pertains to much more than suicide, or death. This isn't a poem about death. This is a poem about choice. If you have can choose your afterlife, then your possibilities in life are endless.

You can choose anything.

*I have a system of grading poetry; it's somewhat elementary and childish, but it works very well for me. I put a star on poems I like, a check next to poems I have read (let's call them neutral), and a "re." on poems I don't understand the first time through; this way, when I re-read a book, I know which to give special attention ("re."), which to give another shot (check), and which are already favorites (star). This means that, to me, the mark of a truly "good" collection (in a very generic sense, and barring any poet's collected works) is the ratio of stars to the total number of poems. By this reasoning, any ratio of 1:2 or higher is "good." I starred 26 of the 34 poems in this book on the first reading (and if I were to re-do my marks now, I'd star them all).

**Eric Gamalinda, I fully acknowledge that I have absolutely no permission to reprint any of your work in part, or in whole. However, I must warn you that if you contact me asking me to remove your work, you are going to subject yourself to a barrage of questions filled with breathless adulation, and a standing invitation to every one of my birthday parties.

Long ago, I had a question for everything...

2007-12-01T12:05:00.000-05:00

Two nights ago I found out that my friend's older brother died tragically young in a car accident. I didn't know his older brother well, but there was a time when I was very close with my friend. Anytime I hear that anyone I know has died, my heart wrenches in my chest with all too much familiarity.

I called my father to tell him I'd be coming home sometime soon. He asked me why, and when I told him that I had to attend a viewing he responded, "Jesus, again?"

My father is not a cold man; he was expressing genuine shock. He went on to say, "You must have been to 10 times as many funerals as me." (The knowledge that my father is 40 years older than I am was implicit to both of us.)

I, and my group of friends, have lost more young people - far more young people- than any other person my age that I know, or have heard of. Most of our friends and acquaintances have died in car accidents - all of them have died tragically young.

We're not a reckless group of people. We're not a bad group of people. Some of our friends were risk-takers, others were incredibly responsible and cautious. Some of their deaths may have been preventable (but how can you even measure such a thing?) and others definitely were not.

The only thing our friends had in common, aside from dying too young, is us. I know it has crossed all of our minds - that there is some connection between the deaths, or some "curse" among us. Everyone knows it's ridiculous and untrue, but still you reach a point where logic and emotion blur together, and when what once seemed completely irrational, begins to seem the only logical explantion - well, let's just say there are only some manys ways to put the pieces of a puzzle together.

I mourn this loss, and all of the other losses. My heart goes out to you, Eric. My heart goes out to you, and your family, and your friends, and your fiance.

Eric Gamalinda wrote:

"Long ago I had a question for everything
but now I know better: everything goes
and only the questions remain."

And so far, this is the only truth I know.

Move Over, Venice.

2007-11-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

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*

2007-11-27T23:49:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-24T12:29:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-21T10:32:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-20T19:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

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,

2007-11-17T14:19:00.000-05:00

(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

2007-11-17T12:09:00.000-05:00

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.