Waiting For That Rocket

There’s a certain amount of comfort that can come from a deep-seeded morning routine.

A friend of mine just got back from her Birthright trip to Israel. She was gone for ten days and today was the first time we have seen each other since before she left. In playing the catch up game she asked, “So, what’s going on with you? What’d I miss?”

This gave me pause.

I jokingly replied, “Do you really think I left this corner seat while you were gone?” But thinking on it, that’s not really an exaggeration. I come to the coffee shop, I go to work, I go home and read/watch TV/nap. Sometimes I write, but I think we can all agree that doesn’t happen as much as it should.

Now, that undersells a lot of progress I’ve made inside my own head over the past couple weeks. Not that I’m fixed (let’s be real, that’ll never happen), but I find myself (very) cautiously optimistic about the future. So far it’s working for me.

I find that – as I get “so much” older (I’m still a child) – how I start my day is sacrosanct and a firm routine is the only way I can go about my day in any functional way. With my friend returned from Israel, techno mornings re-instituted, and a wide array of Costa Rican coffee beans available for consumption, I feel I’m ready to go about tackling my work week again :)

I’ve been hanging out at my coffee shop of choice today. All day. For a change. What I have observed is downright demoralizing. People seem to have forgotten there are rules of etiquette that govern not just every day public behavior, but coffeeshop behavior in particular. To be clear, I know that I’m living in a glass house. Sometimes I need these reminders also, but ultimately I like to think of myself as an overall considerate patron.

1) Even if you’re headed to a business that’s pet (dog) friendly, keep that dog leashed up. Not just literally, but figuratively also. Don’t let the dog run, jump or lavish puppy kisses over other patrons.

2) I don’t care if the performer is your Precious Little Snowflake, they’re performing in a coffeeshop. Don’t shoot me death ray glares if I try and have a conversation with my friends.

3) If it’s busy thou shall not occupy more than one seat. This is the one that I probably need the most reminding of. Since I am in this coffeeshop every day I know a lot of people and will often float table to table all while maintaining my primary spot at the bar. However, if it’s super busy? I don’t take up more than my one seat. If you do, you just look like a douche. No one wants that.

4) If it’s super busy and there are no seats that’s still no reason to crowd anyone else’s space. I like many of you people, but I don’t like you enough to have you in my bubble. Step back, please.

5) At no point is it acceptable to have/maintain/insist on a conversation with someone who has their headphones in.

Please keep these basic guidelines in mind as you retreat to the air conditioned coffeeshops of the world. It will keep us all feeling a little less stabby.

Well.

Here I am.

I’m managing to get through the year. I do feel like I’ll get through to the end. These are both feelings that I didn’t have even two months ago.

There’s no way I would have gotten this far without some very key people. So. Thank you.

My greatest indicator that perhaps things aren’t be as horrible as I’ve felt they are, or won’t be as horrible as I felt they will be, is that I’ve actually cracked open my writing again. Not in any significant way – I haven’t added fifty pages, five thousand words or even figured out how the story is going to end – but I had to save my WIP (“work in progress”) the other day. That was the first time in four months.

I’ve felt like a tight rope walker in the middle of the journey for the past six months. I would be weebling, wobbling, not quite falling, but concentrated solely on the act of getting to the other side. Today, I don’t feel like I’m necessarily off the rope, but I’m a heck of a lot closer to the anchor. The part that’s more stable.

I’ve been working my way through an anthology of Arabic literature (Tablet&Pen edited by Raza Aslan). One of the excerpts I read (from “Once Upon a Time” by Sadegh Hedayat) had this to say:

“[Upon realizing his dream woman is dead] At such times as this every man takes refuge in some firmly established habit, in his own particular passion. The drunkard stupefies himself with drink, the writer writes, the sculptor attacks the stone. Each relieves his mind of the burden by recourse to his own stimulant and it is at such times as this that the real artist is capable of producing a masterpiece.”

I feel my time is coming. Maybe I’ll be able to turn the anguish, hurt, and fear that I’ve felt this year into something incredible. At the very least, I’m finding it promising that I want to try.

Here’s to 2012. The year I still want to end sooner rather than later, but a year I feel hasn’t beaten me quite yet.*

*A good deal of avoidance is helping me make that claim. If I stop to think about it, 2012 has really kicked my ass. I’m just not as willing to concede defeat yet.

I’m not going to lie, yesterday was a pretty awesome day.

I got to spend some time with one of my best friends – reading aloud while she prepared dinner. One of my best friends from college came up from New Hampshire with her wife and mother and we grabbed some beers. I went to the drive-in with some good friends and laughed harder than I feel like I’ve laughed in a long time. It was good. It was solid. However it was also tainted.

While out for beer with my friends from the south, I saw someone I used to be really close with. I shared (some of) my secrets with him. He shared his secrets with me. We would walk and talk for hours. I haven’t seen this person, or really talked with him, in over a year. We just sort of….fell out of communication. I tried to maintain – I would text, facebook, whatever to no avail. When I saw him, everything got brighter – I was so excited. I ran up to him and said, “holy crap where have you been” and he looked at me like he didn’t even know me. He said, “oh yeah, I lost my phone”. In that voice of his that I know means he was lying.

I hate having to write someone off. I hate knowing I was so wrong about someone I gave my secrets to. I have enough trust issues when it comes to talking about what I should be talking about without being burned by someone that meant so much to me.

I guess this is the pain of growing up.

I’m sure this will come as a shock to no one, but I was a lackluster student. This had nothing to do with not being smart enough, but more to do with lack of inspiration. The professors and teachers who were able to get me to do work were precious few and far between (ask me: in 18 years of education I can count on hand the number of teachers who inspired me).

Today I wrote a message to one of those few. Dr. Gabriel, I’m calling you out.

I am borderline obsessed with Russia. What started because of a class on the 350 years of St. Petersburg history grew in a subsequent class on the Russian Revolution and solidified with classes on 20th Century European history and a capstone paper on the Soviet Union during the Stalin years. Now, I will be perfectly honest with you. My paper was pretty well crap. By the time I got to my senior year, I was over just about everything. It was one of those transitional years that really takes your mind and heart by storm. All I wanted to do was graduate and get the eff out of dodge.

But a funny thing has happened since college. My thirst for knowledge has proven insatiable. I’ve been unable to pass by any book on early Soviet history. Some of the books that I’ve added to my already vast personal library are some of the very books that I had cherry picked tidbits out of for that capstone paper. I’ve been able to build some fairly comprehensive, defensible positions on how Soviet history is taught (or not) in the States. My mind has this insatiable thirst for more. Some of that is because I’m generally a curious person who just wants to know why, but a lot of it has to do with Dr. Gabriel  firing my imagination.

Dr. Gabriel is the living personification of all that is right with Liberal Arts education. My only regret in the classes I took with Dr. Gabriel is that I didn’t work harder for him.

A couple things have become really, REALLY obvious since I came into D.C. proper this morning.

1. I am a GIANT FREAKING NERD. The first stop I made was NPR headquarters. Second stop? The Library of Congress. I haven’t hit up any monuments or other Smithsonians, but I did find NPR and Starbucks. ::shakes my head::
   

   I am a giant, giant nerd.

2. How freaking young was I in college? I know everyone goes through this at some point in their lives, but, seriously, I was super naive. I used to believe that I would find a job and move to Washington. That I would be able to make a difference in people’s lives just because I’m a helluva nice and smart person. Moreover, I used to think that’s what I wanted. Six years out of college – and traipsing around DC – I’ve come to the irrefutable truth that hell no I don’t want to live in DC. I will never be in a position to effect wide-scale change, nor do I really want to be.*

It’s not that my politics have changed. Believe me, I’m still as liberal as I was when I was in college. The biggest difference is that where I once thought I could change the world in a huge miraculous way, I know now that I’m going to have to change people’s lives one at a time. Volunteering, leading by example, treating others as I’d want to be treated. For those of us on the front line – far from the hallowed halls of Congress and the White House – there’s not way that we can make the kind of broadscale, legislative differences that our government can make. But maybe if we just love a little more and judge a little less, give a little more and fight a little less – maybe then person by person we can make a difference.

*I do want to be able to effect huge change, but I don’t want to have the kind of responsibilities inherent therein.

Julia Ann Conley passed away on Sunday after a brief, furious, losing battle with cancer.

She was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever had the honor of calling friend.

I got to know her at L.L.Bean. We were part of a group representing the Flagship Store that went to Albany to help open the new store there. Between spending five hours in a van together and working somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty, intense hours over the course of four days, we got to know each other fairly well. Our friendship was born and, working together even further first back at Flagship and later at the Home Store, our friendship only deepened. I was able to talk to her about anything and everything. I cried with (to) her, I dreamt with her, most importantly, I laughed with her.

As my friends and I have gathered together to remember this remarkable woman who was our friend, the word that has been used most often is “laughter”. We laughed together. We talked about our families. We talked about our pipe dreams. She encouraged all of us to do whatever it was that makes us happy. We laughed.

A friend introduced me to the poet Mary Oliver and a poem In Blackwater Wood. Let this be my rememberence, because this is how she was – she lived, she loved, she laughed:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

It is with a heavy heart and unequivocal tone that I say 2012 has been an absolutely wretched year for me.

A lot of you have been along for the ride, whether in person, here or on Twitter and Facebook. And for that I thank you. Kara Sassone (née Matuszewski) sent me a tweet that encapsulates what I feel whenever something tragic happens in my life: “You are surrounded by love.” Since becoming a part of the Twitter community here in Maine and Northern New England I have felt naught but love. I’ve been infuriated and frustrated, but ultimately when things get rough my friends on Twitter, and off, are there for me with unqualified love.

It’s this that I have to keep in perspective as my life seemingly falls into the shitter. This year I’ve lost two friends and one of the only faux fathers I’ve had (as in not a substitute father – mine’s just fine thank you – but an extra dad to keep me in line). It’s only April.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten a niece and have had such a tremendous wealth of love and support to get me through the horrible times. My life is so tremendously blessed. I shouldn’t have to compare my life to what’s happening abroad to gain perspective, but sometimes I do. I have more than enough food, more than enough first-world creature comforts, and a government that (while I may not always agree with them) won’t massacre my loved ones just because I disagree.

So. While this year is indubitably crappy – and there is a long way for it go for it to turn around – my life is filled with love.

Every now and then I find myself wondering, why can’t we live in a world where we all get along?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not proposing that we all have to live and breathe the same exact way, but still. Can’t we all get on board that domestic violence is bad? Or that perhaps putting someone that disagrees with us in jail (gulag…yes, they still exist) strictly because they (or their significant other) disagree with us is bad?

When I read that there are conservative mucketymucks (FEMALE mucketymucks to boot!) who are claiming that funding for anti-domestic violence education, shelters for battered women, or any of the other provisions covered by the Violence Against Women Act were  a ploy to put money in “feminist coffers”  and to boost hatred of men, I was flabbergasted.

I get it. You may not necessarily agree with my stances on birth control, gay marriage, education, or taxes. And guess what, that’s okay. Although pretty smart, I’m not THE smartest person around. And, although I like to pretend I’m infallible, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that I am – in fact – fallible. I could be wrong about things.* One thing that I am absolutely ASTOUNDED and DISGUSTED that isn’t incontrovertible – in 21st century America – is that wanting to help a neighbor who’s a victim of domestic violence is  strictly a “liberal” or “feminist” viewpoint. When did wanting to protect the community become déclassé?

I have many conservative friends who do incredible things to help the local and global community so this is by no means a treatise against ALL conservatives. Remember I mentioned I’m smart? I also know that it’s only in rare circumstances that the pundits speak for the people. But this is the dialogue (monologue?) that the loudest voices are perpetuating.

So I’m left asking: Can’t we all just get along?

*Pretty sure I’m not, but whatever. We can agree to disagree if we must.