Sometimes life in a city-that-is-not-the-city-you-expected-to-find-yourself-in is somewhat surreal. On most days, after a period of adjustment, it feels fairly comfy, familiar, and happy. You've made friends, built a social life, have places to be on Friday nights, have laundry to pick up, rent to pay. Life in the Unexpected City isn't that different from the City you unfairly (routinely) compare the Unexpected City to.
But on those other days, the days you feel like a sore thumb, it's nice to have tiny moments of recognition with the occassional stranger who chances your way with, perhaps, similar feelings of semi-isolation. While in line to pay for my salad today, I spied a man wearing a William & Mary sweatshirt. As this is the school many of my relatives/friends thought I attended (I went to Washington & Lee) and it's a similarly history-laden Virginia school, I asked him if he was an Alum. When he said yes I told him I had attended W & L and you would have thought I'd just promised him a golden egg. In a short but happy exchange we established that neither of us are Minnesotans, both of us born in small, poor Southern states (Arkansas for me, Alabama for him), both disgusted with today's snow, and both stupidly smitten with the fact that we stumbled upon one another in a checkout line in St. Paul.
It's funny, really. I've had a couple moments of similar mirth recently, meeting folks from south of the Mason-Dixon, and for some manner of moments we forget that The South is a big ole place. All of the sudden Beaumont and New Orleans and Birmingham and Austin and Charlotte and "it's a small town outside Nashville" are all close enough to Home to merit a smile. I suppose when you're this far removed from Home you tend to expand the limits of Home, increasing the likelihood that someone from Home will find you tucked away in this cold, Swedish-y place.
As is to be expected, when these serendipitous meetings occur, someone has to mutter, "what a small world!" And you both smile and nod your heads, laugh a bit, and somebody mentions the time they drove through your hometown or the cousin they have who went to school there. But the world has never seemed small to me. It has always felt enormously, excitingly HUGE, and the more places I live, the bigger it becomes. Every place I visit, every home I have, just exacerbates my feeling that my life will be way too short to enjoy every place I could potentially love. I'll never be able to see it all. I'll never find all the people I could befriend. I'll miss the climbing of various mountains. There will be delicious foods I will never eat, much less learn to cook. There are worlds out there I will never find if I am constantly, comfortably back Home.
So the run-ins with my compatriots, my fellow Southerners, my people who say "y'all" and find my pronunciation of "New Orleans" to be correct not cute, my friends who know good barbeque when they smell the smoke, such run-ins and hellos make me happy. They bring Home here for a little while. But they also make me happy to be elsewhere, some corner of the world I never would have ventured to if not for a combination of natural disaster, mistake, coin flip, curiosity, and homesickness.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
This Is All I Will Say On The Subject
I think taxing the bonuses of a select few Americans is unconstitutional. Bill of attainder, anybody? Equal Protection? Ring any small, important bells?
The tax would do little to nothing to the fat cats everyone is picturing at AIG. The only thing the bill does is rob thousands and thousands of hard-working American families of the small thank-you they received from their embattled employer after months of what can only be the worst possible period to work for these companies. The vast majority of these people aren't getting million dollar bonuses. They're getting a few grand. Maybe it's enough to pay a couple months on their own mortgage. Maybe it repairs a small amount of the damage done to bruised, if not shattered, retirement accounts. Maybe it buys a kid braces. Maybe it's donated to a church or a synagogue or a homeless shelter or any number of charities swamped with the burden of financial ruin. These aren't millionaires.
And if they were millionaires?!
Still. Just. As. Unconstitutional.
That is all.
The tax would do little to nothing to the fat cats everyone is picturing at AIG. The only thing the bill does is rob thousands and thousands of hard-working American families of the small thank-you they received from their embattled employer after months of what can only be the worst possible period to work for these companies. The vast majority of these people aren't getting million dollar bonuses. They're getting a few grand. Maybe it's enough to pay a couple months on their own mortgage. Maybe it repairs a small amount of the damage done to bruised, if not shattered, retirement accounts. Maybe it buys a kid braces. Maybe it's donated to a church or a synagogue or a homeless shelter or any number of charities swamped with the burden of financial ruin. These aren't millionaires.
And if they were millionaires?!
Still. Just. As. Unconstitutional.
That is all.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Just a Wee Bit of Bragging
I ran my first 5K (3.1 miles) last May and finished with a time of 48 minutes. That's a 15 1/2 minute mile pace. I was quite proud of that as I was in the process of losing a lot of weight and it was the first time I'd run 3 miles without stopping.Today I ran 5 miles in 53:13 minutes. That's less than an 11 minute mile pace, roughly 10:42 pace. So I ran two more miles at a time 5 minutes per mile faster than that first race.
I'm proud. Half-Marathon here I come. Some part of me likes the bookends of this experience, to run my first 5K in May 2008, and my first Half-Marathon in May 2009.
Marathon in May 2010?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Where to?
I've been living in my apartment for nearly a year. It has served me well, despite being entirely too far from my current job. I want to move soon and have yet to decide where in the Cities. Somewhere cute, somewhere convenient, somewhere old, somewhere with orange ceilings.
Invariably, when I start to think of changing apartments, I think of all the apartments I've had before, in all the cities I've loved (and loathed) before. And such thinking makes me start to wonder if maybe I should be exploring apartments in other cities, other countries, places to surprise or inspire myself. I'm not bored here, or unhappy. But some part of me feels the need to stomp around somewhere new. Moving every couple years became a habit and I suppose, seeing as I've lived here for two years come June, my body is simply feeling the itch.
I have wondered if that drive, that need to go "somewhere else" and do "something else," would go away or fade once I found some magic, happy place. But I think that's where the searching comes from, not out of any unhappiness, but out of finding comfort. I start to worry if, in becoming happy, I've also become lazy.
C.S. Lewis has a brilliant quote in 'Til We Have Faces, "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." I don't like to think I suffer from a grass-is-greener problem, constantly seeking something "better" as compared to what I feel my experience currently lacks. Because I don't think my need for change and new perspective is a search for "better" as much as it is a search for something new, different, unexpected, beautiful.
I spoke with a friend about this once, a friend who is much less prone to uprooting herself (in the physical sense). When I worried aloud that perhaps there was something exciting out there that I was missing, some country I would love living in, some river I should fish in, some job I should attempt and probably fail at, she wondered back ,"Have you ever lived somewhere without an expiration date? Why can't that be an adventure, too?"
Every place I have lived since graduating from high school has had a deadline. Virginia ended after college. Morocco ended with the Iraq War. Kansas City was a hiccup, a time-killer while I applied to law school. New Orleans was never supposed to end but after Katrina, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some idea in my mind that even that lovely city was not forever for me. When I moved to Minneapolis I expected to be here two, three years, tops. I could not imagine myself happy, long term, in a city that is not in the South. I just could not embrace the idea of investing in a city that could never feel like Home.
I still feel like that, honestly. I still can't picture living here for years. Can't imagine owning a home here. Raising a family here. But perhaps it is healthy and mature and becoming-an-adultish to experiment with not stamping an expiration date on a city that has done nothing but make me content. I love my job, love being near my family, love the Spring after months of cold, love my church, love some dear, new friends. And even if this is not a forever type of city, even if there is another city in the cards, perhaps it's okay to just let that come in its own time. Perhaps burrowing in, making a home here, doesn't have to be something I do while I wait for my Real life to begin, the one in the Real city, with the Real happiness.
This is real, too. Just new, different, unexpected, beautiful.
Invariably, when I start to think of changing apartments, I think of all the apartments I've had before, in all the cities I've loved (and loathed) before. And such thinking makes me start to wonder if maybe I should be exploring apartments in other cities, other countries, places to surprise or inspire myself. I'm not bored here, or unhappy. But some part of me feels the need to stomp around somewhere new. Moving every couple years became a habit and I suppose, seeing as I've lived here for two years come June, my body is simply feeling the itch.
I have wondered if that drive, that need to go "somewhere else" and do "something else," would go away or fade once I found some magic, happy place. But I think that's where the searching comes from, not out of any unhappiness, but out of finding comfort. I start to worry if, in becoming happy, I've also become lazy.
C.S. Lewis has a brilliant quote in 'Til We Have Faces, "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." I don't like to think I suffer from a grass-is-greener problem, constantly seeking something "better" as compared to what I feel my experience currently lacks. Because I don't think my need for change and new perspective is a search for "better" as much as it is a search for something new, different, unexpected, beautiful.
I spoke with a friend about this once, a friend who is much less prone to uprooting herself (in the physical sense). When I worried aloud that perhaps there was something exciting out there that I was missing, some country I would love living in, some river I should fish in, some job I should attempt and probably fail at, she wondered back ,"Have you ever lived somewhere without an expiration date? Why can't that be an adventure, too?"
Every place I have lived since graduating from high school has had a deadline. Virginia ended after college. Morocco ended with the Iraq War. Kansas City was a hiccup, a time-killer while I applied to law school. New Orleans was never supposed to end but after Katrina, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some idea in my mind that even that lovely city was not forever for me. When I moved to Minneapolis I expected to be here two, three years, tops. I could not imagine myself happy, long term, in a city that is not in the South. I just could not embrace the idea of investing in a city that could never feel like Home.
I still feel like that, honestly. I still can't picture living here for years. Can't imagine owning a home here. Raising a family here. But perhaps it is healthy and mature and becoming-an-adultish to experiment with not stamping an expiration date on a city that has done nothing but make me content. I love my job, love being near my family, love the Spring after months of cold, love my church, love some dear, new friends. And even if this is not a forever type of city, even if there is another city in the cards, perhaps it's okay to just let that come in its own time. Perhaps burrowing in, making a home here, doesn't have to be something I do while I wait for my Real life to begin, the one in the Real city, with the Real happiness.
This is real, too. Just new, different, unexpected, beautiful.
Monday, March 09, 2009
The First Batch, Or Two
I bake cookies. Often.
I have not always been a baker. I wasn't much of a cook in New Orleans, give or take a carrot cake or two. And I'm still intimidated by full meal preparation (how do you time the cornbread, the green beans, the mashed potato, AND the chicken to be ready simultaneously). But baking I'm growing happy and comfortable with and I'm getting to the point where I don't always need a recipe, I can generally eyeball what needs to go where and in what amount.
Because I am a recovering English major, I can make any life experience a metaphor for life itself. It's a skill that's hard to articulate on a resume.
The cookies I baked tonight (www.edibleavocation.blogspot.com) were tricky little buggers. The first batch was beautiful to look at until you picked them off the parchment paper to spy their throughly blackened bottoms. My oven runs hot but even when lowering the temp and lessening the baking time, I still burned batch number two. This would have ruined my mood early on in my baking "career" (okay...not really a "career") as I'm easily frustrated when following directions results in disaster. But I've learned, through multiple mishaps, that recipes themselves are fickle creatures. They are built and loved by people other than myself with other ovens and other spatulas and other definitions of "level spoon dropfuls" and getting worked up over my cookies not being their cookies, I have slowly realized, is silly.
I think it's easy to get frustrated by the unpredictability of consequences outside the kitchen, too. I think most people "follow the directions" without remembering that the directions were written in general terms, without the specificity of personal dreams and strengths factored into the experience. This struck me today because yesterday my Dad, sister, and I went out to lunch and we started talking about college choices, life choices, mistakes kids and parents make (my sister is 16). I just remember being her age and feeling like the whole world was laden with directions and signs and magic potions of experience that I was supposed to obtain in order to acquire happiness. College, Marriage, 2.5 children, Successful Career, House (preferably with a picket fence and porch swing). And now, looking back, I wish someone had made me realize that the picture I had in my head of Happiness was a shadow of the Happiness that was possible if I wrote my own damn recipe.
I don't think God puts dreams or goals or curiosities in our hearts for his own twisted pleasure in crushing them. They're there for our exploration, maybe they'll feed us and bring financial gain, or maybe they're fodder for great memories and confidence in other pursuits. And maybe burning those first few batches of experience make us appreciate the perfect, fluffy, lemony morsels that emerge, unscathed, from an oven tempered by well-earned intelligence.
I have not always been a baker. I wasn't much of a cook in New Orleans, give or take a carrot cake or two. And I'm still intimidated by full meal preparation (how do you time the cornbread, the green beans, the mashed potato, AND the chicken to be ready simultaneously). But baking I'm growing happy and comfortable with and I'm getting to the point where I don't always need a recipe, I can generally eyeball what needs to go where and in what amount.
Because I am a recovering English major, I can make any life experience a metaphor for life itself. It's a skill that's hard to articulate on a resume.
The cookies I baked tonight (www.edibleavocation.blogspot.com) were tricky little buggers. The first batch was beautiful to look at until you picked them off the parchment paper to spy their throughly blackened bottoms. My oven runs hot but even when lowering the temp and lessening the baking time, I still burned batch number two. This would have ruined my mood early on in my baking "career" (okay...not really a "career") as I'm easily frustrated when following directions results in disaster. But I've learned, through multiple mishaps, that recipes themselves are fickle creatures. They are built and loved by people other than myself with other ovens and other spatulas and other definitions of "level spoon dropfuls" and getting worked up over my cookies not being their cookies, I have slowly realized, is silly.
I think it's easy to get frustrated by the unpredictability of consequences outside the kitchen, too. I think most people "follow the directions" without remembering that the directions were written in general terms, without the specificity of personal dreams and strengths factored into the experience. This struck me today because yesterday my Dad, sister, and I went out to lunch and we started talking about college choices, life choices, mistakes kids and parents make (my sister is 16). I just remember being her age and feeling like the whole world was laden with directions and signs and magic potions of experience that I was supposed to obtain in order to acquire happiness. College, Marriage, 2.5 children, Successful Career, House (preferably with a picket fence and porch swing). And now, looking back, I wish someone had made me realize that the picture I had in my head of Happiness was a shadow of the Happiness that was possible if I wrote my own damn recipe.
I don't think God puts dreams or goals or curiosities in our hearts for his own twisted pleasure in crushing them. They're there for our exploration, maybe they'll feed us and bring financial gain, or maybe they're fodder for great memories and confidence in other pursuits. And maybe burning those first few batches of experience make us appreciate the perfect, fluffy, lemony morsels that emerge, unscathed, from an oven tempered by well-earned intelligence.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Modern Medicine is no Match for Me, Suckah
Alright, I don't actually use the word, "suckah", in everyday speech. Nor do I feel that modern medicine is a uniform crock or any such thing. In general, I'm a fan of medicine, modernity, and suckers (preferably chocolate flavored tootsie rolls). But of late I've become tired of "medicine" and anxious to return to the days when I had no need for it.
On the plane ride back from Amsterdam I started to feel a small tickle in my chest. Anyone who has had bronchitis knows what this feels like. It inspires a cough but you know from the beginning that said cough is purposeless. You start to cough whenever you lay down, whenever you yawn, whenever you laugh, whenever you swallow, whenever you breathe. And, at least for me, my bronchitis has never really responded to cough syrups, either over-the-counter or prescription. I just have to suffer, sweat it out.
This used to be annoying, of course, but not much beyond the typical sickness annoyance. I'd moan and complain, drug up, and wait the couple weeks it took to shake it out of my system, antibiotics in hand.
But now, see, I'm a runner. And the inability to breathe leads, inevitably, to an inability to run. And that is not an annoyance. That hurts me.
After nearly three weeks of this business, three weeks of no running, I returned to the doctor, hopeful. But unfortunately my doctor's answer to my breathlessness and inability to take a full lung of air without coughing is to slap an inhaler in my hand and laugh (yes, LAUGH) when I ask when I can start running again. I actually like my doctor, honestly, and were I my old self (an old self that certainly wouldn't have asked the running question), I wouldn't have been bothered by his diagnosis. But, to hear it now, no running for "awhile", said so flippantly, just pains me.
I went to the gym after the doctor's visit (I don't take "no" very well) and proceeded to walk as fast as one can walk on the highest incline possible on the treadmill. I'm positive I was actually breathing harder than I would normally have been had I been running. And, I admit, that was a stupid, juvenile move considering I'm only hurting myself. But there is something in me that is occassionally angered by the incessant drugging up of every ill. Where is the "shake it off" mantra instilled in me by my Dad at my softball practices? I think "shake it off" is a pretty viable, healthy mentality to balance out the "no running for awhile" practice.
I know that I asked for it. I don't feel 100% so I went back to the doctor. The doctor gave his honest, well-intentioned recommendation. I suppose I was hoping for a gold star, a slap on the back, and a magic, "you should definitely start running again, your bronchial tubes will LOVE it." So to hear that I'm just not kicking this thing as quickly as I wanted to, despite the fact that I am healthier now than I have ever been, just frustrates me.
At the gym I was sandwiched between two people my age, a man running at what would be a very respectable marathon pace, and a morbidly overweight woman walking at a snail's pace and failing to break a sweat. I wanted to plead with them both, because it was so clear that they each took their health for granted, their dear, strong, uninflamed bronchial tubes for granted. The man, clearly, took pride in his body and what it could do, but I'm sure, at that moment, he had no clue how blessed he was to be speeding merrily along. I wondered if he'd thanked God for those legs today. And the woman. Her sin I understand very, very well. She was reading The Economist, an article on China I read a couple weeks ago. To treasure and be grateful for only compartments of the gift God gives us is as great a sin as dismissing the whole package. To cultivate your mind and be proud of it, but to leave your body in a ditch and call it "genetics" or " big boned" is a tragedy I am sure God does not wish upon us. I wondered, and knew, that she had not thanked God for that brain or that belly today. Equally precious gifts, but easy to ignore one for the sake (we think) of the other.
I skipped the pharmacy on the way home. I'll give my lungs another day before I test out the inhaler idea. Perhaps they just need a bit more time, a bit less abuse (stupid treadmill), and some more orange juice. And I'll thank God for them anyway, despite their current ineptitude.
On the plane ride back from Amsterdam I started to feel a small tickle in my chest. Anyone who has had bronchitis knows what this feels like. It inspires a cough but you know from the beginning that said cough is purposeless. You start to cough whenever you lay down, whenever you yawn, whenever you laugh, whenever you swallow, whenever you breathe. And, at least for me, my bronchitis has never really responded to cough syrups, either over-the-counter or prescription. I just have to suffer, sweat it out.
This used to be annoying, of course, but not much beyond the typical sickness annoyance. I'd moan and complain, drug up, and wait the couple weeks it took to shake it out of my system, antibiotics in hand.
But now, see, I'm a runner. And the inability to breathe leads, inevitably, to an inability to run. And that is not an annoyance. That hurts me.
After nearly three weeks of this business, three weeks of no running, I returned to the doctor, hopeful. But unfortunately my doctor's answer to my breathlessness and inability to take a full lung of air without coughing is to slap an inhaler in my hand and laugh (yes, LAUGH) when I ask when I can start running again. I actually like my doctor, honestly, and were I my old self (an old self that certainly wouldn't have asked the running question), I wouldn't have been bothered by his diagnosis. But, to hear it now, no running for "awhile", said so flippantly, just pains me.
I went to the gym after the doctor's visit (I don't take "no" very well) and proceeded to walk as fast as one can walk on the highest incline possible on the treadmill. I'm positive I was actually breathing harder than I would normally have been had I been running. And, I admit, that was a stupid, juvenile move considering I'm only hurting myself. But there is something in me that is occassionally angered by the incessant drugging up of every ill. Where is the "shake it off" mantra instilled in me by my Dad at my softball practices? I think "shake it off" is a pretty viable, healthy mentality to balance out the "no running for awhile" practice.
I know that I asked for it. I don't feel 100% so I went back to the doctor. The doctor gave his honest, well-intentioned recommendation. I suppose I was hoping for a gold star, a slap on the back, and a magic, "you should definitely start running again, your bronchial tubes will LOVE it." So to hear that I'm just not kicking this thing as quickly as I wanted to, despite the fact that I am healthier now than I have ever been, just frustrates me.
At the gym I was sandwiched between two people my age, a man running at what would be a very respectable marathon pace, and a morbidly overweight woman walking at a snail's pace and failing to break a sweat. I wanted to plead with them both, because it was so clear that they each took their health for granted, their dear, strong, uninflamed bronchial tubes for granted. The man, clearly, took pride in his body and what it could do, but I'm sure, at that moment, he had no clue how blessed he was to be speeding merrily along. I wondered if he'd thanked God for those legs today. And the woman. Her sin I understand very, very well. She was reading The Economist, an article on China I read a couple weeks ago. To treasure and be grateful for only compartments of the gift God gives us is as great a sin as dismissing the whole package. To cultivate your mind and be proud of it, but to leave your body in a ditch and call it "genetics" or " big boned" is a tragedy I am sure God does not wish upon us. I wondered, and knew, that she had not thanked God for that brain or that belly today. Equally precious gifts, but easy to ignore one for the sake (we think) of the other.
I skipped the pharmacy on the way home. I'll give my lungs another day before I test out the inhaler idea. Perhaps they just need a bit more time, a bit less abuse (stupid treadmill), and some more orange juice. And I'll thank God for them anyway, despite their current ineptitude.
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