Some of what I wanted to say this afternoon

Today I am in México. I´ve never been here before. In the day and a half that I´ve been here I´ve only seen about ten square blocks of the city, the immediate area that adjoins the luxurious hotel that the Fulbright Commission is paying for us to stay at. Hotel Geneve. It is a very nice area that feels safe and has sushi restaurants and 7-11´s, and I don´t think it´s likely that the rest of the city bares even the slightest resemblance to it, the Zona Rosa. Today we, the 30 English Teaching Assistants from México, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile, spent the entire day giving and listening to each other´s ten minute presentations on our experiences thus far. It was so fascinating to hear about how everyone´s grant has been going. Almost everyone had made impressive Powerpoints with fancy photos, but I didn´t, and I didn´t prepare for my talk, so I was really worried as it got closer and closer for me to fill those ten endless minutes. The work I do is not all that interesting, or at least not very unique from what other grantees do, and I decided that I would focus more on social and emotional aspects of my experience in Colombia so far. No one else had talked about these–there was definitely a tacit pressure to talk about our experiences in a professional context, ie, what objectives we had accomplished, what side projects we were undertaking, our takes on various cultural aspects, etc. Very interesting, but I felt compelled to just open up and be honest about some of the rawer, more difficult parts of my five months. Things like loneliness, isolation, shame, and disappointment. Living abroad is hard–I can´t be the only one who feels these things. I know I´m not. But one has to be very brave to open up to others about them. I felt like I had to be candid about these factors that have been a very large part of my experience, even if they´re just the negative grooves I find my mind frequently falling into.

It has taken me a lot of time to adjust. I don´t know why. It just has. I was unhappy for the first two and a half months because of my living situation, living far, far to the north, away from everything, with an extremely wealthy husband and wife and their two year-old daughter. I lived in a big house in a compound, enclosed by a gate with a guard, right next to two Walmart-sized supermarkets. I didn´t pay anything, which was so generous of them, but when I came home in the evening leftovers from dinner were waiting for me, cold, on the stove, and the house was quiet and dark, the parents either already in bed or splayed on the sofas upstairs, watching American crime shows on TV. It was difficult not to have my own space and awkward to occupy theirs. Now I´m by myself and much happier about several things, but it is still difficult. It is a different kind of loneliness. It is something that never leaves me, really, a thread that has always been embroidered alongside my life, and very often wrapped several times around my hands. These months have been very introspective.

And when there is loneliness there is shame because I know it is self-imposed, I know I could and should have close relationships if I would just give it more effort. I read other Fulbrighters´ blogs or see other messages online that tell me how they are thriving, how they have hit the ground running and are collecting one friendship after another, and deservedly so, and I feel terrible, mortified at my abject failure on so many fronts. I had to fill out a Midterm Report the other week on my progress and did my best to put a veneer over what I see as a slipshod surface with many unexplainable holes. I was honest, just not forthcoming. There are so many levels of honesty. There are the facts… and then there are feelings. And I think that these too are important.

You move to another country and you think you will be a new person, the person you always wanted to be, the person you for so long pretended to be although you fooled nobody. There, you will fool everyone, you will fool even yourself for so long that the new you will become dominant and the old self will be forgotten. But no. I totally believe that you can change if you want to in the gradual accumulation of new habits and beliefs and thought processes, but it has nothing to do with a change of residence, or even language. You realize that you are exactly the same person, and this realization is extremely discouraging… and then, after many months and much maturity, calming, fleetingly. I am myself, and wherever I go, there I am. There and nowhere else. And where I go is because I took myself there–I decided to leave where I was previously and head for the new place. At least, this is how it should be. And I am an adult–though I still feel like a girl, and probably always will, maybe. I am capable–my body, my hands, my mind. My body could create and carry a child right now–I could be a mother in only nine months, if I were to want to. And I could move to Paris, or Thailand, and I could get a job with a magazine as a foreign correspondent, or I could begin a master´s degree, or I could stay right here in Bogotá for the rest of my life. It´s all a matter of wanting and not wanting, leaving and staying, believing and discounting.

It´s so hard for me to ask for help when I need it. And I need it constantly. My typical response to loneliness is to pull back and isolate myself more, feeling ashamed and fearful. I am learning not to do this, and it is an uphill battle. But I know that I am being tried and formed and refined, right now. And so I choose to pay attention, to look for the meaning in motions that look like pointless zigzags, trying to believe that there is a point, there is a pattern, and there is abundantly more grace than I would ever dare ask for. I haven´t been feeling very lonely lately–that´s not why I wrote this. But these were the thoughts and reflections I really wanted to share today, the feelings I am sure all of us have struggled with and kept to ourselves, left out of our pictures and blogs and cheery letters sent back home, kept out on purpose. And just as there are good and valid reasons to hold back, there are also good reasons to be completely and embarrassingly honest. It is always very freeing.

Or stamp yourself and go by mail

Considering the predictable histrionic themes and motifs of this blog, I sometimes feel like Dr. Seuss.

Good day

BAD day

Sad day

GLAD DAY!!!!

Today was Día Sin Carros in Bogotá– Car-Free Day. From 6:30 am till 7:30 at night, only taxis, busses, school busses and motorcycles were allowed on the roads. Isn´t that awesome? Talk about political will–just try to imagine any American city ever pulling this off. They do it every year, and the goal is to encourage people to take alternate modes of transportation and to clear the air. You so do not need a car to live in this city. In fact, you really need to not have a car- for everyone´s good. I can´t imagine ever having a car here because that kind of thinking (times the millions of others aspiring to this American status symbol of freedom and mobility) only guarantees that you make the bad traffic problem even worse and it takes longer to get everywhere. With one of the most extensive bike paths networks in the world, Bogotá does have a lot of bikers. I guess that´s the only transport I haven´t taken down here yet– walk if I can, take busses otherwise, ride the Transmilenio if I´m to the east, take taxis if I´m running late (often), once drove a car to the grocery store, and have had a few rides on the backs of motorcycles. Oh, well there are the zorras, very bedraggled horse-drawn carts pulling poor families that haul away what they find digging through recycling and trash bags. But I don´t anticipate rides with them any time soon.

Classes at the university started this week, and while I am now quite busy, I am not being productive. Which means not cooking, barely eating, not exploring, not decorating, not reading, not watching TV (doesn´t sound productive but it actually is), not submitting midterm reports that are several days late, not replacing purses that have several holes large enough to stick my hand through, not not not not not. I´ve been very bad. I´m going to Mexico next week, and maybe when I come back I´ll hit the restart button and give myself a fresh start. Yes…I think that will be just the thing. That or someone needs to give one to me. Good things are still happening, though. I haven´t been very productive in the personal/ private realm of things, but people-wise and professionally (heh heh) things are looking up. But I won´t bore any of us with details. You´ll have to take my word on it.

Also, I have big news. Of the romance kind… Ready—?? I…have…a

date on Valentine´s Day!!!!!

Yup. Can you believe it? Oh, I´m being completely ridiculous and it´s completely on purpose. Still, it is kind of fun. And true. This guy from church, Jhon Carlos, who has had a very perceivable interest in me for a while now asked me out last Sunday. From what I can tell, he is very shy. He probably doesn´t even realize that his intrigue-from-afar is so obvious to me, but it is. (This sounds presumptuous. But being a shy person myself who has had many of these passive infatuations, I have a very reliable intuition. Plus, I´m a woman.) This is his public persona, though–maybe he is quite gregarious once he is drawn out. And I love to draw shy people out. I really do. If they want to be, anyway. I love to encourage people to abandon their fears, showing them that it is safe to be truthful and vulnerable, confiding my own silly and baseless insecurities. I love to make people at ease. Not that I´m particularly good at it, and it does take a fair amount of pretending on my part. Not that I have it all together, but rather that I am confident and don´t care that other people know I don´t have hardly any of it together and can laugh at myself. I guess I mean that I have to pretend to have a lightness of heart and joie de vivre when I so often have such a serious, somber, Protestant soul. It´s really only the worst cases, the saddest of saps, that I have any of chance of “helping.” Well, we all do our bit.

Anyway (so tangential, today!), yes. He asked me out for two weeks from that Sunday and I said yes, and it wasn´t till the next day when I was making a note of it in my agenda that I realized that´s the fourteenth. No way he knew either. Surely not. The Colombian version of Valentine´s day is in September- El Día del Amor y la Amistad. Day of love and friendship. I don´t think I´ve ever had a date or a boyfriend on Valentine´s Day (for some reason, my boyfriends are always in the summer. wait wait wait– ok, I realize I did once have a boyfriend for Feb. 14). I´m saying all these gushy things as if I were one of those girls that really cares about things like this, the kind who wants a small white teddy bear holding a heart  from her paramour and who dedicates significant brain-space to these kinds of things. I guess I´m only brave enough to risk sounding like that because you all know that I am not like that at all. It´s just curious to me, that´s all. And funny- I laughed about the accidental Valentine´s thing. I mean, yes, my life would be like that, strange and sweet and surprising. And usually these things mean nothing, and sometimes they do mean something, and sometimes I, wanting to keep away disappointment, decide they mean nothing (before they´ve even happened) but so very secretly wish them to mean something, anything, very much so. So I just blog to try to figure some of it out, or at least to find stories to tell.

**I´m sorry about broken promises about pictures, and yes, I know that colored fonts and varied typography do not make up for this. Soon, readers, soon!!! Or just come down and visit me– you may see them faster that way.

Cream I´ve skimmed off the top

I am so happy right now. Really, like jumping out of my pants happy, and I just made up that phrase. Don´t think I translated it from Spanish. This week has been so great, and I feel like it´s mostly because I started to quit feeling sorry for myself, quit sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, and just got out. Saying yes when I wanted to say no, staying when I was tempted to leave or started getting afraid that I was being lame and boring, calling people, doing favors for people, solicited and otherwise. Here´s the cream I´ve skimmed off the top of this encouraging week.

I don´t know, things like me wearing a dress (and high heels) today for the first time since I´ve been in Colombia. Having JUST found out that I might have a visitor in the fabulous month of March!! Which makes me want to run out and start dancing in the street, grab the celador standing vigil on the corner and sweep him up in some sort of mad, merry jitterbug. Having made two batches of jello this week in a small glass pie dish. Also having tried to make coffee in a French press for the first time and failing miserably, even after watching four or five how-to videos on Youtube. Humbling. Friends and acquaintances dropping me a line out of the blue and being reminded and reassured that there are really good people in my life, and they like me too. Really, I have as many friends as I allow myself, as many as I´ll accept. I don´t know if that makes much sense to other people, but it´s true.

There´s a girl from China, Isabel, staying with me this weekend. She´s here mostly to study at my university, but also to teach some Chinese classes. A professor called me two days ago and asked if she could stay here and I said yes before I realized what I was saying, and then spent the next two days feeling grouchy when I thought about it. You see, sometimes I get lonely living alone, but I´ve also gotten quite used to living alone and having my own space and walking around in skivvies and such and doing or not doing whatever I want and not having anyone else around to inconvenience me or need me. And these professors want me to help her find a place to stay here (which is their job) and I just know it´s not going to happen in the short blip of the weekend (and I have a life- I only have so much time I can sacrifice to this project) and then, even though I explicitly said several times she has got to be out by Monday (because I live in a matchbox and there´s NO ROOM), I somehow just know Monday is going to come and she still won´t have a place to lay her head besides my pillow and it will be another week and the whole thought just makes me tense and squinty-eyed. And I don´t want to be that way. How can I be so uncompassionate, so selfish and miserly and mean? For so long I´ve wanted a companion, someone to be by my side. I reach bleary-eyed points where I tell myself, Tomorrow I WILL start looking for a roommate- I can´t live by myself even one more day. And then one comes, if only for a few days, and out comes my inner Greta Garbo, burning my fan mail and scorning those who would dare to ask for an interview. The only hope in such a hopeless creature as myself is that I know this isn´t really me who has these misanthropic thoughts. I really do want to be good and these thoughts grow like a few wicked suggestions planted in me- and they grow like kudzu. The desire to be good needs to be stronger. I need to be better. I need help. I did let her sleep in my bed, though, taking a little pallet and rinky-dink pillow on the floor for myself. I feel good about that.

Oh yeah, I was at one point talking about feeling good. I had an in-home Pilates lesson one morning and then felt S-O-R-E for days afterward. I got a manicure and really enjoyed talking to the girl. Amazing how intimate it can become as someone scrapes out dirt from under your fingernails and makes your hands- my hands- her only business and care for an entire hour. And making them beautiful and feminine, at that. I met up with a new friend one day over milkshakes, split because I had to go to a meeting (which I last-minute decided to defiantly skip- after a certain point, one has to take a stand against these monsters), then met up again with her and went to an outdoor concert for Haiti in the Plaza Simón Bolivar downtown. I tutored the daughter of friends and bought two bouquets of purple Gerber daisies and took one to the daughter of other friends because she had just had a baby and my brother turned 20. A friend mentioned kissing in an email and that made me so happy, the thought of it and the memory and the held-out hope. Things come in your life and they´re so wonderful and simple and exhilarating, and then they leave and you forget about them and measure out your days in terrible things like coffee-spoons and meetings and bills to be paid. And then, a note comes from the underground, and you remember that things like kissing exist. We can say that Colombia has been sort of a drought in that arena. But truth be told, I would rather be making great friendships right now than have a boyfriend to carry around. And I am, finally. A good friend is moving to Medellín this weekend and we had a little goodbye dinner Wednesday night, then a little party tonight, and tomorrow we´re all going salsa dancing. Another friend told me the other night while she was driving me home that she can tell I´ve been changing a lot, which was nice to hear. So, these things are here and there and everywhere. I´m right here in Bogotá, Carrera 70D No. 48A- 67, up way later than I should be, about to crawl onto my pallet and try not to wake Isabel. After sleeping 7.5 hours, I´ll start tomorrow like putting a blank piece of paper in the typewriter and something will surely come of it.

Time and desires, time for desires

This week is going to be much better than the last one. I know it– I mean, it already has been. And all I can say is thank goodness. Last week was ok, and there were even some pretty good days and I did spend time with several people. But it was very unintentional and accidental, in a way. I ended up having some great times with various friends because they happened to initiate and call me and invite me to join their groups, but of course all that goodness was completely at the mercy of other people. I feel like you can only count on the universe to happily conspire to keep your best interests in mind while you skip the meeting and sleep in up to a point. And then Friday fell out of the sky like a bomb and ka-pow, it all came to an end. I did nothing, went nowhere, ate hardly anything, and talked to no one. Except for about fifteen seconds with a delivery boy who rang my bell on accident. It was dark, quiet, still, and empty. Naturally, it was also very weepy. Such a terrible way to spend a day, but… these sorts of days usually end up being useful in some way or another. Alone and without distractions, my mind and heart become a little less murky and impenetrable as important things rise to the surface. The tendency is to push them back down again, try to maintain the appearance of calm waters and a pristine beach above. But you could tell even from a long way off that these waters were troubled. Trying to fool myself is so futile. After so much time of being noticeably broken, it makes sense to finally allow myself to arrive at a breaking point.

And then, morning. Saturday. Fanny dropped by in the morning. My friend Pablo called. I ran into my neighbor Jorge on the street. (To be honest, Jorge is very strange and I feel uncomfortable around him. Maybe seeing him was a reminder that not all company is good company. That companionship is not always to be preferred over solitude. Also, because of his constant invitations to go out, I am being forced to learn how to say no and not feel like a terrible person.) Fanny and I went to lunch. Came home and then a family- Luz Elena, Osvaldo, Angela, & Juliana- stopped by for a little bit. Then a neighbor, Alejandro, called and invited me to go out with him and his family. Had to say no, though, ´cause I already had plans. Was with lots of people that night. Sunday was basically a repeat, though even better. With people from sun up to sun down (ok fine, you all know I´ll never be up that early…but you get the point). I already have lots of invitations for the week and promised calls, all of these like promissory notes piling up saying that there will be friendship.

But these weren´t good days just because some friends unexpectedly called or came over, suddenly reminding me that people care about me and I have worth and validating my existence and all that, etc. etc. Because wouldn´t that be a dangerous way to live, letting my mood and spirit swing like an erratic pendulum. Letting other people determine things as important as my sanity and contentment, other people being as forgetful and busy and faulty and human! as I am. It never has been enough. It was a good day because I realized Friday night (and made it concrete in my mind the next morning) that I have to fight for what I want. I must. Hay que luchar. What do I want? Well, it´s currently a feeble desire, but I want to be happy, I want a consistent closeness with God, I want meaningful friendships in Colombia, and I want to be full of life. I also want to be able to once again have strong desires–I´m tired of my desires being so insipid and lukewarm. They´ve been so hazy and ill-defined for so long that they´re hardly worth fighting for or even remembering. And so I don´t, tucking them away for months in a sock drawer until an evening of undesired solitude and a sputter of tears makes me go fumble for them again. I think desires are so important. Before you can even have goals and timelines and a Franklin-Covey agenda to write them all down in you have to begin with desires. How have I lived so long without them?

I “announced” a few weeks back that 2010 would be The Year of Living Intentionally for me. I think the first step in realizing this lofty and sort of intangible goal is by having desires. Big, small, serious, silly. Whatever. I just know I need to make clear in my mind (and clarity in mind usually starts for me with clarity on paper) what I want, and then what I really want. Fanny and I are going to help each other with this, and decided to start a ritual of getting together every Sunday night and writing out our to-do lists and schedules for the week. We did it last night side-by-side on my sofa and it was so cute. Since she has a real job and thus a set schedule and very narrow windows of free time, she blocked out down to the minute what she would accomplish in her time this week. Since I don´t have a “real” job (and am still on vacation) and have no set schedule and my windows of free time are the size of small countries, I just wrote a million goals and drew little boxes next to them. Also, for Christmas my mom gave me a pink faux-croc skin (surely) agenda that I never would have picked up for myself, but that turns out to be so fabulous and funky that it makes me want to be organized. So. There I have it. Life is good, there are so many things to be grateful for, I don´t need to worry about a thing. But I can´t be passive, can´t be lazy. Just can´t. Sitting and waiting is way too risky. It also happens to be very self-absorbed. I´ve got to reach out, reach up, hand out, take in. I´m glad I don´t give up on myself.

***In order to promote better blog feng shui, I´m going to put up some pictures SOON. Pics of the apartment. Pics of me. Pics of Bogotá. Feel like the place is getting a bit weighed down with all these WORDS.

What a fly on the wall hears

(Fanny and I are walking in our neighborhood, trying to decide where we want to eat. I had told her that it would be my treat. Yo te invito.)

Fanny- Well, where do you usually eat lunch when you don´t eat at my restaurant?

Me- Um, usually on the Calle 53. Oh, my mom and I ate at Brown´s Diner on Calle 51 the other week and it was pretty good.

Fanny- Yeah, but that place is expensive.

Me- I know, it was 9 mil each (most places are about 4 mil). Ok, so, let´s not eat there.

Fanny- Oh, I know a good place we could eat! We turn here. Look, there it is on the corner.

Me- (I see Brown´s, so I think she must mean what looks like a blank building across the street.) Oh, I didn´t even know that was a restaurant.

Fanny- Oh yeah! Sure it is. Here we go… (we are on the sidewalk just in front of Brown´s, I´m thinking we´re going to cross the street, and then she turns and enters Brown´s! I´m highly confused but don´t say anything.)

(a few minutes into eating…)

Fanny- Isn´t this a nice place? And so much better than Brown´s, much more reasonable pricing. Glad we came here.

Me- Fanny, this is Brown´s. (shock and bewilderment come over her face, her jaw dropping)

Fanny- No way! I can´t believe it.

Me- Yep. See how all the backs of the chairs say BROWN´S so unequivocally? That´s why I was so confused when you came in, right after we´d just been talking about how it´s overpriced. I see how it is, since I´m treating…

——————————————————

*Having made a very innocent and human mistake, Fanny confused the place with another expensive-ish restaurant two blocks up.

**Don´t ask me what a place called Brown´s Diner is doing in South America.

***It wasn´t really expensive expensive. About three dollars per plate when we´re used to paying two in neighborhood places like that (and this is for a lot of food). It´s just that Colombia´s so cheap that I´ve become (touches elbow) quite tacaña.

When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone

5

When one has lived a long time alone,
one can fall to poring upon a creature,
contrasting its eternity’s-face to one’s own
full of hours, taking note of each difference,
exaggerating it, making it everything,
until the other is utterly other, and then,
with hard effort, possibly with tongue sticking out,
going back over each one once again
and cancelling it, seeing nothing now
but likeness, until . . . half an hour later
one starts awake, taken aback at how eagerly
one swoons into the happiness of kinship,
when one has lived a long time alone.

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
sour, misanthropic, one fits to one’s defiance
the satanic boast—It is better to reign
in hell than to submit on earth—
and forgets one’s kind, as does the snake,
who has stopped trying to escape and moves
at ease across one’s body, slumping into its contours,
adopting its temperature, and abandons hope
of the sweetness of friendship or love
—before long can barely remember what they are—
and covets the stillness in organic matter,
in a self-dissolution one may not know how to halt,
when one has lived a long time alone.

10

When one has loved a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog, head half out of water, remembers
the exact sexual cantillations of his first spring,
and the snake slides over the threshold and disappears
among the stones, one sees they all live
to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one’s kind, toward the kingdom of strangers,
the hard prayer inside one’s own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one’s own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

11

When one has lived a long time alone,
one wants to live again among men and women,
to return to that place where one’s ties with the human
broke, where the disquiet of death and now
also of history glimmers its firelight on faces,
where the gaze of the new baby looks past the gaze
of the great-granny, and where lovers speak,
on lips blowsy from kissing, that language
the same in each mouth, and like birds at daybreak
blether the song that is both earth’s and heaven’s,
until the sun has risen, and they stand
in a light of being united: kingdom come,
when one has lived a long time alone.

–Galway Kinnell

I might be married! (in five years…read below to see how this affects YOU, TODAY)

I just finished reading a book, the first book I´ve started and finished in this new year. I´m bad at finishing books, these days, my mind and living so often operating with several tabs open at once, desperately and clumsily toggling between them and accomplishing next to nothing in the process. That was supposed to be an internet reference, and it´s appropriate because way too many of my waking hours are spent online. I feel like it´s frustratingly the case for many of us. Is this really how we want to be developing as a species? Or as people? I admire people who can get on for a few minutes, check things, respond, and hop off, not losing themselves for hours in the distraction and intrigue of other peoples´lives. I am fascinated to no end by people who can be so damn productive. I´m not sure how they do it, but I suspect that it has very little to do with keeping on top of  “news,” whether it comes harebrained feed-style or faux-important newspaper-format, which feels much more respectable and worthwhile but ultimately just ends up being another time-suck. All the news that´s fit to print becomes monstrous and never-ending in the virtual, illimitable nebula of the internet.

The book was Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. It was very good, and now I feel an antsy uneasiness about what to do. The temptation is to dive into the next book that I am eager to read, starting off another chain of consuming books where I excitedly fly through pages and savor the new and interesting morsels but never digest them. While I´m reading I can genuinely feel moved and encouraged, challenged and awakened within the safe confines of the two covers. But then I finish and none of the ample underlinings and furious stars and checkmarks in the margins bleed over into my life. There´s an agitation to not be reading the book anymore (either by finishing it or by putting it down and wandering into the other room, maybe getting online or seeing what´s in the refrigerator) because these kinds of books are so intrusive and demanding. Not to mention painful and inconvenient. I know it´s ultimately good news and encouragement, but there´s a lot of sludge and thorns to get through first. I mean, I think there are. It seems that way. And I still don´t even know exactly what I want, which makes action in any direction disheartening. Sigh. I n e r t i a. I wish I had close friends here with whom I could (fluently) talk about these heart-things.

Now I´ll talk about some things that are less important but on the sunnier side. Right now I´m listening to a CD that my friend Pablo gave me on Sunday. It´s Alex Campos, a Christian artist, but I actually like it. Fancy that. This morning another friend, Mónica, came and did an hour-long Pilates lesson in my apartment and then stayed for almost two hours, just talking. I´m meeting her and some other people in an hour and a half. And…I´m still in my pajamas. I mean, they are kind of clothes-like, not like a nightgown or a footie, but still. What can I say, I´ve been reading all day. And most days are not like this. I mean, most days are not going to be like this. Not anymore.

As previously mentioned, my apartment has seen an improvement to the millionth degree, thanks to el toque de la mamá. Seriously–I´ll put up pictures. I´m quite proud of the place. If I can work up the nerve, I might start soliciting Couchsurfers. Also, this should go without saying, but each of you should know that you are very very welcome here, anytime. I humbly ask, request, entreaty, and beg you to come visit me. But make your reservations now– there may not be room in five years when you think you´ll finally get around to coming down here (*cough Anna Laura cough*). I might be married! Ha!

News from the Kitchen Front

My mom has been here since last Wednesday night. She leaves next Tuesday. Mostly, she´s been helping me furnish my apartment, transforming it from sterile living space to home sweet home. No doubt about it, it definitely has many more things in it than it did a week ago…a refrigerator, lots of cooking miscellanea, a toaster oven, and a coffee table and some side tables for the living room, though it is kind of silly to designate the various rooms in my apartment. It´s basically a rectangle with a few walls thrown in, though the various regions squabble about recognizing these arbitrary boundary lines. I might as well refer to the east and west wings. I´ve also rearranged several things I already had and the result is…significantly better. Mom knew best.

Since floor space real estate is mostly bought up, we´re moving on to walls. Some are painted, some are white, most have crown molding (fancy, eh?), but all are bare. Well, except for the kitchen area that is. (Have you ever seen those outdoor dog pens they have at the veterinarian’s or at the dog shelter? That is roughly twenty times the amount of space I mean when I refer to the kitchen area. It is completely and sadly sufficient for me and my lonesome. Though it sure does make the kitchens of some people I know look like Taj Mahals.) Above the counters and below the cabinets are two rows of faux-marble tiles, punctuated three times by happy, dancing Italian men. To be more precise, they are Italian chefs of buxom mustachio, florid cheeks, large chef coat barely covering an enormous girth, puffy white chef hat perched on top, and a spruce red handkerchief tying the ensemble together. They are doing a lively little jig on one foot, and their arms are exuberantly atilt, a ladle in one hand and a menu in the other. A baguette, a bunch of grapes, lemons, and one inscrutable hieroglyphic float around the twee chef, as well as various squiggles that obviously are meant to connote glad tidings and cheer. They would never be found in any kitchen that even desired to be taken seriously. They are schmaltzy and corny and everything else I hate in decorating. The tubby chef´s overacting is so obvious, his mirthfulness so smug, his enthusiasm completely saccharine. When I first decided to take the apartment, I told myself they would be the first to go. In the meantime, I had trained myself to act like they weren´t there.

Surprisingly, the frolickers have been endearing themselves to me lately. I wholely intended to cover them up with some elegant Georgia O´Keeffe prints, and this week I did all the necessary preparations to once and for all be done with the embarrassing hams. Art would win over kitsch, taste would triumph over cheesiness and all things cutesy. And yet… there is something so right about these dancing chefs in my life right now, in this apartment, in this far-off land. They might be kind of daft and dim and way too unselfconscious in their simple merriment, but I think I have something to learn from them. So they´re staying up. Georgia can go paper a bathroom.

Finally, my refrigerator came today. I had to wait eight hours before I was allowed to plug it in (the delivery men would not budge on this), and then give it another hour to cool up until I could put anything in it. I realized that it was time a few minutes ago- ahhh!!! Time for the fridge inauguration!!! Since I didn´t have a fridge before, though, there wasn´t any food lying around that needed to be refrigerated. Shoot. That wouldn´t be any fun. Finally, I found a pitcher of lemonade and put it in. Then, I made my very first batch of ice cubes. It was difficult at first, but I think I got the hang of it once I got going.

Thoughts on Le Blog; Haiti

I get tired of all these flowery blog posts, so wispy and chintzy, cataloging minutia and empty musings that lead nowhere but a few back-scratching comments and visually pleasing paragraphs that end in the right place. I refuse to be cryptic or suggestive, so I try not to plink on a subject without following through, but don´t want to write too much, precariously straddling the line between blog and diary, not able to bear being completely truthful and point-blank. I let it annoy me and keep me away.

This blog is an interesting theatrical reworking of my life. Life on the small screen is often at odds with the life that I make for myself each day. The cast is certainly different; my on-screen persona manages to make an innerly mousy, terribly unsure, frequently lonely girl seem like something very different. I don´t know, a Revlon model or great mind or something. Sometimes I need the dressing up and saying of lines to be able to visualize myself, one day, changed, to keep my spirits up. Mostly I just want something to say and want to keep track of my days, but without the pathos.

So…anyway. I´ve been thinking about and reading about Haiti. (Why not praying?) Incredibly sad. People for whom living direly is a way of life, a country that has always been neglected and woebegone, and now this earthquake that has reduced shambles to even greater shambles. So many lives suddenly ended, a country in havoc. I find myself searching for the slenderest threads to account for its relevance and concern to me- currently living in Latin America, once spent a month in the neighboring Dominican Republic, know first- and secondhand people who are involved in missions in Haiti. My family sponsors a child in Haiti. I sponsor a girl, Carolina, in the DR. Once Anna Laura and I lived in a household with Haitians, who immediately and seamlessly became sisters and a son. I clutch to these threads to somehow “justify” the something viscerally stirring inside of me when I read these stories and look at the pictures, ineffable pain in their faces. And then I remember that what I´m feeling is the most natural thing in the world (right?)- I don´t have to grasp at and strain faint connections and similarities. It wouldn´t matter if I´d never heard of Haiti before in my life. We are connected, we are family. All of us, just by being fellow humans and by being witnesses. Compassion means co-suffering, and so I, like most of the world, suffer alongside the Haitians and desire to do what I can to alleviate their suffering. For me, I think that means money. As much as I can safely afford (with a what-if cushion figured in), then minus the cushion, then as much as I wish I could give, then a bit more.

“At this moment, there is no place for so many of these people to go,” he says. “No food. No shelter. No clothes. Nothing. We are being given the opportunity to extend a helping hand. As a person of faith, I believe this is God’s way of saying to the world, ‘I want to see your humanity. Where is it?’ These are the moments when the question will be asked, ‘When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me?’ There are people in Haiti who are in real need right now. Are we going to replace their suffering with a hand of hope? This is a challenge to our humanity.”

–http://www.tonic.com/article/charities-celebrities-step-up-to-help-haiti/

“We American people decided we could afford to spend $179 million to see “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” at the movies (box office gross as of 1/11/10). Anyone who says we can´t afford to help the people of Haiti right now really ought to rethink their priorities.”

–from the NYT comments

All right, well the usual gripes and moans and squeals and yelps will take a back seat today.

Mid-holiday fill-in

Long time no blog, flourers. I´ve been home for almost two weeks. I´ll be here for another week and a half. Well, half of it in Nashville. I have to rent a car, which, encouragingly, is actually not as expensive as I thought (though it would be less if I were 25 instead of 23). I´ve never rented a car before, and the thought of bulletting southward down the highways in its austere emptiness and strictly pragmatic machinery will probably make me feel a little bit like a space cadette. I´ll be sure to wear antennae.

I like long drives alone. I looked on craigslist though to see if anyone needed a ride from Chicago to Nashville, and the only person who did said that he was into EPICNESS. I fear that I would be a colossal bore to such a Dean Moriarty type. It´s strange that I look high-strung next to some of my friends, because I am definitely much more low-key than many. Though I´d like to snap out of that. Some of it´s just personality, some of it plain unwakefulness. 2010 will be a year of Waking Up. I think its official name is The Year of Living Intentionally. Just thought I´d throw that out there to put myself on the spot.

Speaking of 2010, it´s really soon and I´m very ready for it. Speaking of whatever else we were speaking about, I think I will add that I have really enjoyed the time being home. My family has been playing a lot of games and watching a lot of movies. Some good, some insufferable. Now I just need to squeeze some reading in. It is lovely to print out sheet music on good, thick paper and teach myself favorite songs on the piano, to listen to my parents laughing uncontrollably, to watch Gracie feebly scuttle about in her diaper, to be sweetly startled by the generosity of my siblings, to go on walks in (practically) thigh-high snow, to eat the homemade peppermint bark and toffee and cakes and cookies and pie that my mom whisks before us every day as if we were kings. It is good to be living with other people.

So many people I know have just gotten engaged! What in the world?? Also, I played BOOBIE in a Scrabble game with my dad today (as in the blue-footed bird), but it turned out to not really be a word (though this was realized at a later point, so it went unchallenged) but I still won by almost a hundred points. Apparently, it´s the blue-footed BOOBY. You should look these guys up. The pictures of them where they have one foot up in the air and thus appear to be dancing can´t help but make you smile. What an absurd little bird. Also, I don´t think it would be fair to not mention that my dad won by 144 points in the next game. Finally, I have “gone through” two cartons of egg nog in as many weeks. My mom thinks this is excessive, but I feel that, in my case anyway, it´s actually a display of great temperance and moderation, almost worthy of canonization. Though it must have something to do with the result when, in a fit of nosiness, I got on the scale the other day after four months of having no idea “what I weigh.” (Up ten pounds or so) I couldn´t care less, and I might consciously try to never get on a scale again in all my life. I already have enough meaningless numbers jiggling around in my brain. I think that you should know intuitively if your life is healthy or not, if you´re healthy of mind and spirit and frame, and if you don´t, you should probably learn how.