doctor's orders

About a month ago, at a just-in-the-nick-of-time appointment to get my prescriptions refilled, I finally remembered to ask my doc about that weird mole on my upper thigh (nothing to worry about).  As he confirmed my pharmacy for the scrip refills, I remembered the other thing I needed to ask him, and cleared my throat.

"So I've been having issues with anxiety," I said. "I've been medicated for it periodically. It doesn't require daily medication like depression, but every once in awhile it gets bad, and it's been bad lately."  He nodded, following me; I'd already outlined for him what my last few months have entailed.  "Do you think I need to be medicated for it for awhile?"

His shrewd, brisk eyes took me in for a moment.  "Do you want to be medicated for it?"

"Well, I don't want to feel like this anymore," I said.

He assessed me again with that sharp face that I never know quite how to read.

"You drink?" he asked.

I just stared at him for a moment while my entire body clamped down on the impulse to howl with laughter and yell DO I?  I had finally cut back on my alcohol intake, which, though never more than a couple of glasses at a time, had been worrying me with its frequency; after all, I had reasoned, I can only moan "the election" for so long as a preamble to a glass of wine. This being the only life I get, I had reasoned further, I would like to enjoy a long length of it without cirrhosis of the liver.  I watched Dr. S's face, couldn't hear any reprimand in his tone, and, keeping my face neutral, answered,

"Well, I've cut back a lot. But yeah, I like to drink."

"What do you usually do, when you drink?"

"Well--I come home and pour myself a glass of something after work."

"Glass of what?"

"Oh, just about anything; I like it all.  Usually it's wine though."

"Red or white?"

"Usually red. Sometimes white in the summer, like now, when it's hot out."

"Relax you?"

"Oh yes," I said fervently.

He smiled, a quick twinkle.  "Can you keep it to one?"

"Sure, that's not a problem," I said.

He shrugged.  "So do that."

"Uh -- really?"  I resisted the impulse to clean out my ears on an assumed mis-hearing.

"Sure."

"Like -- every day?"  This was not the medical advice I had been expecting.

"If you keep it to one it's fine."

"I was--" I cast about for a minute, completely unsure of my footing in these uncharted and unprecedented medical waters.  "I, uh, was cutting back because I was worried about my liver."

He shrugged again and started organizing the papers on his clipboard.  "Frankly anything I could prescribe you for anxiety would be harder on your liver than alcohol. Alcohol is more natural" [I successfully refrained from rolling my eyes] "and your body is used to it. If one glass of wine a day makes you feel calmer, just stick with what works."

"Oh -- well -- okay. A glass of wine a day.  I think I can do that."  (I mean, I'm gonna HATE it, but if it's for my health, I guess I can drink.)

I practically skipped out to the parking lot.  (Meg, upon hearing the story that weekend, wanted to watch me slap a prescription for alcohol onto a bar counter.) I had never thought of taking anti-anxieties as pleasurable.  But my doctor-recommended glass of dry red medicine that night carried me off into a land where I did nothing but smile.

wonder woman

I have two recently acquired scars over my right eye.

Two days after moving into my new apartment within the Detroit city limits, I went with Steph to a movie theater to escape the godsawful murderous heat and celebrate the arrival of the first female superhero protagonist to the big screen.  Having heard of the film's largely positive reception, and enjoying a nerdy superhero movie as much as the next person (though not a comic book reader, I love a good story of conflict-ridden heroism, particularly when sprinkled with Marvel's satisfying grasp of the comedic, although for Wonder Woman I'll venture back into DC land, which I haven't done in awhile), and pleased that a woman finally gets to command the limelight, I bought my ticket and my popcorn with enthusiasm.

Taking advantage of the sparse attendance of a weekday matinee, we selected our favorite kind of seat (or maybe it's just mine), two-thirds of the way up and center, and just as the previews started to roll, I nipped down to the restroom for a pre-movie pee: an innocent decision with rather disastrous consequences.

The pee part went smoothly enough.  So did the handwashing.  It was the architectural design of the restroom in combination with my habitual assessment of my appearance in the mirror on my way out the door that proved problematic.  See, the restroom had one of those narrow cement-and-tile barrier walls immediately opposite the door, dividing the entryway from the stalls in the back, presumably to screen users from the view of the hall.  The wall was perhaps six inches wide.  It abruptly stopped a few feet past the entryway and opened into the center of the restroom.  Along the same wall as the doorway stood the mirrors and sinks.  Writing about three-dimensional spaces is not my strongest suit, so please enjoy the below crude diagram:

An unexpectedly murderous layout.

I have a slight attention problem when it comes to my immediate surroundings to begin with; it is not uncommon for me, lost in thought, to misgauge the location of a desk or a doorway, bounce off a solid surface, and sport the evidence of my ongoing struggle with physics and geometry in huge bruises on my legs and upper arms. And my stride is, without any shadow of a doubt, a STRIDE -- powerful, decisive, commanding, confident, with shoulders thrown back, head held high, and a long-legged, ground-eating swiftness born of a lifetime of running late.

And so, dominant left eye focused on the wall-length mirror to my left as I prepared to make my way back to the theater, I was sizing up my reflection and its disheartening revelations regarding the effect of two years without exercise on my physique as I strode powerfully, decisively, commandingly, and confidently headfirst into the barrier wall.

I want to write about this like it was hilarious, because thanks to our primate nature nothing is funnier than someone walking into something, but holy shit it hurt.  The tile slammed into my right eye; a shattering crack told me my glasses had snapped in half; I fell to my knees and with my only cogent thought -- my glasses oh my god this is my only pair -- managed to pull my glasses off my face, though my hands were too stunned to hold onto them and they clattered to the floor in front of me where they lay badly bent but not broken.  Confused about what had made the cracking sound (I realized later it was my skull), I became aware of a horrible pain in my brow bone and, holding back tears, pressed the heels of my hands gingerly to my forehead.  A warm liquid squishing led me to pull my hands away from my face to find them awash in blood.

Forgetting my glasses, I leaped to my feet and staggered to the mirror, where I saw blood sliding down my face from two gouges above my right eye, one glaring darkly red from its deep trench in my eyebrow.  As I reached for paper towels to staunch the flow, bright blotches splashed onto the marble-white counter like the opener in Dexter; holding the paper towel to the cuts with one hand, I mopped up the counter with the other.  After retrieving my glasses I returned to the mirror in a glaze of pain to stare dumbly at the damage as I pulled the paper towel away.  My head felt thick and muddled, but I knew to stay put to stem the bleeding, and I knew to be vaguely grateful that no one was in the bathroom to witness my absurd mishap.  I wanted to laugh at myself -- cutting my head open in the women's restroom just before seeing Wonder Woman, honestly -- but it hurt too much and mostly I just felt furious.

"Where were you?" Steph whispered as I slid into my seat five minutes into the movie, holding the paper towel pressed to my eyebrow, and holding my glasses onto my face at the same time.  "I thought you got lost."

"I ran into a wall and sliced open my face," I whispered back.

"You--what? You're bleeding?"

"Profusely."

"Jesus."

"Yeah.  So what'd I miss?"

She caught me up on the exposition, and I managed to enjoy the film immensely, though I couldn't help wishing I had stopped a mugger or lifted a vending machine off a child or any number of heroic things I could have done to earn a lacerated, swollen and rapidly blackening eye before seeing goddamn Wonder Woman save the world onscreen, instead of knocking myself out in a highly dramatic homage to a deeply socially instilled concern for public appearance that constitutes one hallmark of the experience of womanhood.

I did feel a bit grimly badass for watching a gloriously badass woman singlehandedly end a god and a world war while wounded in my own (admittedly much smaller and stupider) battle with the patriarchy, at least.

And I also felt a bit grimly badass sporting my first shiner two days after moving into actual Detroit, and then I felt all full of subterfuge when I bought a palette of pink and purple eyeshadow and managed to match my eyes on both sides so the bruising didn't even show when I returned to work two days later (and then I felt angry thinking how many women have mastered that precise skill because of human harm rather than ridiculous run-ins with bathroom walls).

And now I have two new scars above my right eye, physical markers of the first female superhero movie on the American cinema in the 21st century.  Woman's experience, carved right into my skin.  So that's something too, I guess.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain (now it's stuck in your head, sorrynotsorry)

Holy shit it is so good to be home.

Of course, "home" right now, to the stranger's eye, would translate roughly to "a senseless conglomeration of oddly assorted piles of way too much crap" but after a week and a half of hospital and hotel rooms and guest beds it is close enough to heaven to sit in peace in a living space that I can call solely mine that it almost makes me remember faith with fondness.  (Lol but not really.)  Currently Simon is curled up on the new, beautiful alpaca blanket that my work friend Maggie brought me back from her trip to see her daughter in Ecuador: a lightweight, beautifully striped creation which shielded him from viewing the scary world outside the car window yesterday and now lies heaped on the couch; I'm sitting out on the balcony for the fourth straight hour marveling at how much quieter my city neighborhood is than my parents' small-town block off Main Street.

Settling into my new home will take, almost certainly, the remainder of the year.  With three years' exhaustion sagging from my bones and dragging at the corners of my consciousness, a whirlwind of purposeful activity will elude my capability for some time.  But I don't mind, much; I keep reminding myself that I have no deadline, and as busy as my job keeps me during the week, I need to focus primarily on catching up on the rest that I have missed while surfing the constant upheaval.

Not that I'm complaining; the last three years have held their share of challenges, but I look at it as a growth spurt.  When I recall my physical growth spurt back in fourth grade, at a literal bomb shelter of a school long since demolished and replaced with a park, I mostly remember intensive discomfort -- particularly in my knees, which ached so badly that they felt hot to the touch and kept me awake at nights.  The last three years have had their share of discomfort and aches and sleeplessness, but as I survey my current position in life, I feel just as I did when my knees finally stopped hurting: taller, stronger, and proud.  Hell yes, this was worth it.  In three years I have nearly doubled my income, found a career and begun to climb ladders with alarming rapidity, and adopted a city that I absolutely love.  I have shed dissatisfying boyfriends (and hopefully, at this point, the inclination toward them, because I am tired of wasting my time and emotional capital on fruitless, doomed, and frankly stupid endeavors).  I have made a place for myself into which I can now settle, and begin to build my own little empire.

Man, it's good to be here.  Poised on the brink of something spectacular, and excited for the experience.  For the whole of my time on this planet, I have been waiting for life to start; and nine years ago I realized that I would have to be the progenitor, and it's taken me this long to make the journey to the mountain I am finally equipped to climb.  I'm not sure what's at the top, but I'm going to work hard and have a whole lot of fun finding out, and the path, for the time being, is challenging, but clear.  

It's good to be here, and it's good to be now.

oh my god fuck this year

Maybe this is a bad time to start blogging again hahaha.  I'd love to have something optimistic and cheery to present to the world, but oh my fuck I am done with life right now.

Let's see.  So far in 2017, the country has gone to abrupt and sickening hell and every day the news headlines read like the writers for The Onion are running out of ideas and diving headlong into the absurd; I entered and exited another disappointing relationship characterized by extreme stress and emotional chaos; my mother was diagnosed with, treated, and is currently recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer; I moved out of one apartment and into another, with attendant unnecessary drama; and I received a promotion at work which while totally YAY THIS IS AWESOME also means more upheaval and adjustments and additional responsibilities without leaving any of my old responsibilities behind and the old responsibilities were highly hectic to begin with.

And each one of those things comes with its own pageant of additional stress factors.

I am tired.

Everything is moving in a definite good direction; by the end of this year I will have lined up nearly all my life circumstances to exactly where I want them.  I just have to survive long enough to get there.

No part of my life has remained untouched and free from change this year.  Settling into the new things will take awhile.  Change is always stressful.  And I didn't have a lot of emotional capital to spare going into any of this, because of how the last three years have gone.

Fortunately, as far as I can see ahead, there is no further urgent thing coming down the pipeline; it's all just a matter of adapting to the latest changes, and there's no huge rush on any of that.  So I can settle in, get a shit ton of rest, and try to recover and reestablish myself in a way I haven't been able to do since 2013.  And that part is exciting - or would be, if I had any capacity to feel excited right now.

It'll probably take the better part of the remainder of the year to rest up.  But that's okay.  It is nice at least to finally have some time on my side.

eyes to see

At the corner of Griswold and State in downtown Detroit, the streets lie empty. The low ambient tide of surrounding noise absorbs the occasional passing car, leaving no interruption to the impression of silence.  Here in the rainwashed graylight just before dawn, all is still. 

Glancing from side to side, I cross Griswold against the advice of the traffic light, breathing the fresh smell of water in the air.  It’s not a good week.  My head feels congested, both by viral symptoms and unhappy thoughts; anxiety twists my stomach.  Sunk into a gloom that matches the downtrodden exhaustion exuded by the lightless skyscrapers in a city long faded from glory, I step toward the puddle at the edge of the curb and start to fall into the habitual obliviousness of the daily walk from my stop to the office.

I don’t know what catches my attention and draws my gaze up.  Maybe it’s an edging in my vision.  Maybe it’s the sound of wings.  But just before I reach the puddle, I pause and turn, and find myself staring over the little square at a flock of pigeons wheeling into flight.

Hundreds of birds, black against the overcast sky, dip and scatter and soar in a synchronicity arresting in its thoughtless grace.  The breeze, thrown into vortex by the ash-gray, soot-darkened skyscrapers, surges in waves of air under the multitude of wings; the flock sweeps up against the wind and billows in slow ripples like sheets.  The gyre widens, narrows; the flock dissolves, spins apart, swirls back together.  Ribbons of pigeons, streaming in spirals of flight, around, and around, and around the open valley of air over the square. 

I have never seen anything this beautiful.

Mouth open, forgetting everything, I stand with my face to the sky, watching, wondering what moves them to flight, wondering, as they swell to the top of the corner building and begin, in scattered waves, to alight on rooftop and windowsills, what moves them to stop; watching the thinning banner of birds who circle the square just a few more times, losing a few to the rooftop each time they come back around, until they have nearly all landed, returning the square to its empty morning stillness.  In all of this, there is no sound but the susurration of distant traffic, or possibly wings. 

small hopes

Well, at least now that it’s March the rainy non-wintry mornings won’t strike me as acutely with the awareness that the planet is dying.  It’s still dying, but I can more safely ignore it, and so human laziness wins again.

Not feeling particularly well today - this virus appears to be dragging its way through my body still like some kind of congestion-inducing zombie, and my stomach hasn’t felt great the last couple of days.  Probably nerves - actually investing in my job has its disadvantages.

(Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.)

But the thought of better living accommodations has a perking effect that bolsters me through the loudness of the upstairs neighbors and the length of the bus commute.  I keep thinking, Four more months.  Just four more months. 

I will have a life again.  I won’t know what to do first.  It’ll be the homebody nerd equivalent of rolling in a pile of cash and giggling.  Do I play piano all evening? Do I read? Do I run around naked in honor of not having a roommate?  Do I cook everything in my fridge?  Do I work on my magnum opus?  Maybe I can do them ALL AT ONCE. 

So exciting.

So, that infuses the daily grind with a sense of upcoming relief, and takes some of the edge off the growing national disasters. 

Also it’s daylight now - soon I will ride down Woodward Avenue in a bus that does not have to tunnel its way through darkness.  Makes the heart lift.

interlude

Back again!  Last week, recovering from some kind of virus that apparently specializes in draining your will to live, I considered blogging and could barely summon the energy to think “fuck it.”  So I took a respite.  Now of course my body is rushing headlong into its monthly uterine misery, as indicated by wanting to cry about everything, but at least I feel a little like writing, so here I am.

For the last week, most of my extra-survival effort has gone into my job - I think I should start calling it my career, now; first time I’ve had one - planning an ambitious future and starting to lay tracks in its direction.  Assessing the ladders to climb and building networks and generally playing the political game has surprised me with its feeling of FUN. I never knew I could navigate these kinds of waters. I never know I would be good at it. I love it.

On February 29th of last year I launched this career.  Fitting that it should have begun on Leap Day, albeit somewhat annoying for celebrating anniversaries.  I look back on what I’ve accomplished in one orbit around the sun and feel a strong, happy glow.  I built a whole new life for myself, and it’s only going to keep getting better; this past year stands as a testament to resilience, resourcefulness, and bulldogged determination.  I have a lot to be both proud of and grateful for.

Possibilities for a more conveniently located, stylistically pleasing dwelling are developing nicely as well.  It’s all lining up.

Nothing particularly special to relay today; I am still very tired and hoping that this week doesn’t demand too much of my reserves; that cistern is still a bit low.  But otherwise I am happy, and looking forward to summer, both for the more amenable weather and for the finalization of my relocation plans, when - fingers crossed or atheist equivalent - my life, complete with time to call my own in the mornings and evenings - can really begin.                                                              

the faces that you meet

Well I didn't make it to the end of the day yesterday; around 11:00 the chills started racking me and I gave up and went home.  Had to call in sick today.  I loathe missing work (it's a toss-up between racking by chills or guilt) but really had no reasonable options.  (I am grudgingly thankful for the voice of reason as repeated with varying degrees of exasperation by a certain Neil.  They breed us stubborn in Pennsylvania.)  

After I finally yielded to good sense yesterday, I trudged the two blocks to the bus stop.  Detroit's bus lines run at odd times.  The city buses, which stop approximately every ten feet, run all day, but if you want to get to the suburbs and you don't have a week to spare you'd rather not take them.  The commuter buses, which I take daily, only run during morning and afternoon commute times.  Late last year the regional transit authorities teamed up to create an express bus line that both runs 24 hours and makes extremely limited stops all the way to the suburbs; only drawback is that the buses run once an hour, so you have to get the timing pretty exact.  Shivering, I made my slow, shaky, feverish way to the express stop on the other side of the central city park to wait the 15-20 minutes for the next bus.

As I approached the stop - one of the rare-ish stops boasting an actual shelter - I could see that it was occupied by three rough-looking men of color engaged in loud conversation.  When I reached them I paused before stepping into the shelter; they noticed me and all started talking at once.  

"Which bus line you looking for?" "You wanna see the schedule?" "There's one in here or you can look at the one on the other side if you're more comfortable."  

At that last proclamation, said with perfect understanding that I might not be comfortable in close proximity, I smiled and stepped into the shelter with them.  "No, this is fine."

Their faces were both friendly and prepared to flirt; the smell of alcohol stood strong in the air.  One of them asked how I was doing.  "Pretty sick, actually," I said.  "I had to leave work early."

The flirtation instantly disappeared from every face, replaced by solicitous concern.  The most inebriated of them jumped up and offered me his seat; all of them began offering their favorite remedies for illness.  "You go home and wrap up like a burrito in a big blanket with some hot tea."  "Get lots of sleep."  "Make sure you eat a good salad or some soup first.  You want to have something in your stomach for when you're resting."  "Tell that man of yours to leave you alone, you need to get better."  

I loved listening to them.  They knew each other well, kept interrupting each other and then apologizing, talked about relationships (the man sitting next to me said, "I got a sweetheart, when I'm sick she takes good care of me and I'd do the same for her but she's never sick!") and germs and the spread of disease ("People are always touching things with their unwashed hands, like the toilet handle or the door, you touch those and you pick up germs"), and taking sick time off from work ("You work hard, they know that, they know if you go home you're really sick").  They gave me little details about their lives ("He's got two beautiful baby boys at home, his sweetheart can't afford to get sick").

A skinny hipster passed the stop hastily with his eyes fixed straight ahead.  I know that look from wearing it myself when walking through downtown Detroit, a city with a nationwide reputation.  It hit me pretty hard, though, seeing that look on someone else's face - race-based fear.  I must have worn that look as I approached the stop to begin with.  What hit me hardest was the matter-of-factness and compassion with which my new friends accepted it.  They saw my caution and wanted to make me comfortable.  They didn't even spare a glance for the nervous hipster.  They deal with white fear all the time.  And the fear looked different to me from my unaccustomed perspective, sitting down on the bench instead of walking past - it lacked all subtlety. It dehumanized.  And I saw, for just a second, that this othering is the daily experience of the men who were being nothing but kind to me.

I know that already; I have read fairly extensively on the subject of systemic racism.  But, typical of most white people, my social groups remain largely homogenous.  I don't see.  And seeing brought me up short.

I don't want to be a part of that othering.  It's bullshit.  I want to help break it down.  Changing my body language when I walk down the street might not be a large contribution, but it's a start.  

tragicomedy

Waaaah morning why.

Going to be another weird Sudafed-enhanced day where my body wants to die but my brain doesn’t stop.  I can picture myself suddenly looking around at my office at 5:00 and finding that I have organized all the things; I hope it happens. 

I don’t have any deep thoughts today.  Valentine’s Day the other day took me through some memory montages of the past couple of years, leaving me on a mental loop of “a year ago….” but I don’t feel like spending a lot of time considering that.  I have constructed an immeasurably better life for myself, and I seem to have reached a phase where I feel less interest in dwelling in my past hurts.  It will cycle back around, of course, because processing requires revisitation, and that shit was painful; but for now it feels nice not to define myself by what has happened to me, but by what I’ve chosen for myself, even if the choices necessarily responded to circumstances I didn’t choose or want.

Of course I’m probably full of shit; traumas leave their marks and sometimes I feel sad, and that’s growth and healing too.  Wholeness is complexity. 

Oh fuck it, of course I’m full of shit.  Here’s my last Valentine’s Day:  My ex resentfully bought me grocery store flowers because I straight-up asked for flowers; they smelled like nothing and died after a day.  He took me out for dinner at one of our favorite sushi places because I asked him to take me somewhere (he so seldom displayed any kind of affection that I had hoped to cash in on the annual marketing tradition of special-occasion love to tide me over for awhile), but got mad at me when I drank too many martinis and wouldn’t speak to me on the way back to his place or for the rest of the night, except of course for the explosive sighs and slamming doors, which count as communication.  I ended the Commercial Day of Romance curled up in his bed silently crying myself to sleep. 

What a douche (him).  And also - what an idiot (me).

Silver lining: He was enough of a douche that it finally woke me up to the realization that I won’t accept non-love anymore, and showed me pretty clearly that I need to change a few things myself. 

Blech.  (Quick mental shake.)  Thank god I quit that when I did.  Thank god I have elected not to live that daily reality going forward.  And now it seems just as funny as it was painful.  What the fuck was his problem?  What reason does anyone ever have to behave that way?  That’s like a sitcom-farcical level of douchery.  And what the hell was my problem for tolerating it? 

It’s a little weird, looking back on a version of myself I can still connect with emotionally but don’t entirely recognize.  I can’t see this current self, or any future self, succumbing to those kinds of circumstances.  Part of me would love to upload my present perspective into my past brain and do the whole thing over just for the satisfaction of bringing my ex up short, and maybe to spare myself a lot of what was at the time intense misery.  But I think my present perspective was forged in that misery, so now I can treasure the satisfaction of looking back on his self-important dismissiveness and my kicked-puppy woundedness and laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was.  I mean, I still recognize how badly it hurt.  That was not a fun two years.  But at the same time...LOL.   Seriously wtf.  Under no circumstances would I have managed to fit happily into that life.  Like trying to ride a child’s bike.  It just took me awhile to realize that I could put it down and walk.  And while seriously attempting to ride that bike strained all my joints and bruised me horribly, there’s something kind of amusing about a fully grown woman weeping because the kiddie bike doesn’t work for her.  Oh, honey.  Get off the bike.

So here I am, wryly amused at my past determination regarding all the wrong things, and glad I woke up about at least some of it, and weirded out by the fact that my sad-sack life was in full swing only a year ago.  I’m a little perplexed as to where all the heartache went; most likely it’ll blindside me out of nowhere one of these days and I will empathize completely with my past self and cry about it like I did last weekend, and that’s okay too.  Self-love involves self-compassion, and I really didn’t know any better at the time, and that relationship really really hurt; and now I get to take that past experience and make it count for something going forward, in the resolve to live better, if nothing else.

Guess I managed a decent reflection after all, despite my swollen tonsils and drippy sinuses.  Thanks, Sudafed.

bah

I’m sick.  I have no brilliance, and barely even any lack thereof, to share with the ether.  My mental capacity, my sinus contents and my phone battery are all draining away like the concept of American democracy and all I want to do is creep home and pull the covers over my head.

Fortunately I’m on the bus heading gradually in that direction.  Unfortunately the only person having a loud cell phone conversation decided to sit right behind me.  To the likely benefit of my sense of self as a decent person, this cold-borne lethargy has me suspended between the collapse of my social filters that usually restrain me from going full aggressor on people who piss me off, and the collapse of any internal wherewithal to act on any of it, so I’m pretty much left staring angrily at my lap and trying to bully my over-agitated brain into ignoring all the extra stimuli around me since my body can do fuck-all about it right now anyway.  

Does this even count as a post?  Do I even care?  Why am I not in bed right this fucking second?  Everything is stupid.  Including this post. 

Go Down, Miss Moses

Late last winter I joined the ranks of the downtown workforce - Lilliputian ranks, practically Spartan, very mixed in metaphors, but as proud and determined as we are sparse.  And this little small-town mouse found herself needing, for the first time in her life, to negotiate a city commute. 

For whatever reason - mostly, I think, because humans are basically inherently helpful as long as you’re not talking politics (and as long as you bear with you all the markers of race and class privilege, ugh) - I have almost always found someone to point me in a useful direction, in this case my job predecessor who trained me for the first two weeks of my employment before taking her well-deserved retirement.  I voiced my apprehension about making the drive from the suburbs to the downtown (sure, Detroit isn’t THAT big, but it’s much bigger than anywhere I’ve lived before and it’s also, you know, Detroit) and she recommended taking the bus.

So, armed with her various tips and a newly purchased bus pass and jotted notes from calling the bus line’s customer service number to find the best stop, I embarked on my first use of public transportation that didn’t involve visiting Jess in Chicago and being steered patiently everywhere by the elbow.  All my type A/Virgo/anxiety-driven control traits rose up like an army to bolster me through it; I’m sure I presented quite a picture, slightly wild-eyed, on edge, staring down every detail to assess its effect on my plan.  (“Relaxing under new circumstances” does not hang in the wardrobe of my stronger suits.)  Fortunately a kindly commuter named Walter took me under his wing, talked to me the whole way down the bus line, and showed me the best stop, and I alighted without incident a reasonable walk from my new office building.

In general I love taking the bus.  I don’t love the length of the ride, but driving wouldn’t save me much time, and this way I can write or read or scroll through the increasingly insane news feed on Facebook or just stare out the window at the endlessly fascinating layout of metro Detroit.  My employer pays for my monthly bus pass and I park in a free lot, so I conserve enormous amounts of money that otherwise would have to foot the bills for gas and parking and wear and tear on my car.  Occasionally you get the odd creeper, but I’ve perfected my “don’t fuck with me” face (which takes resting bitchface and stirs in a healthy dose of potential aggression) and have crafted a really quite effective “get the fuck out of my face” speech, so I rarely experience harassment. 

The biggest drawback to taking the bus in winter is the unbelievable cold.  It’s the kind of cold that seeps into the marrow of your bones and leaches out your body heat from the inside.  It eviscerates.  There’s no brisk walk, no quick scurry between heated car and heated building, to mitigate the horrific chill.  You stand still, you stand exposed, and you stand for sometimes quite a long time, when the buses run late or fail to show altogether.  I had thought of my winter coat as heavy, but I learned last year that it’s actually made of tissue paper.  And holy shit was that walk from the bus stop to my building miserable. 

But once again a kindly semi-stranger gave me some pointers.  (I must go through life with these huge eyes that say I’M LOST PLEASE HELP ME.)  “Get a down coat next winter,” she said.  “And get a long one.  Fuck fashion.”

So on her advice I did indeed fuck fashion and before the snow flew (that one time, since the fever that is killing our planet has resulted in a parsimony of snowfall) purchased a down coat that falls to mid-calf.  With a hood trimmed in faux fur.  It isn’t stylish at all and I can pull it off only because I am formidably tall and long things make me look majestic (or so I tell myself), but oh my glorious fuck, is it warm. I cheerfully withstood negative temperatures feeling (and looking) like I was wrapped in a freshly toasted marshmallow.  Also the hood is warm like a hug around your face and I can dispense entirely with the notion of a winter hat, which is awesome, because I hate hats (mostly because they squish my hair but also because I look stupid in them).

So here’s to my down coat, and its beautiful way of adapting to the temperature around me so that I am never too hot or too cold, but always, Baby Bear-style, just right.

fixing on rest

God DAMN Monday morning came way too fucking soon.

Sometimes it feels like my entire life’s goal boils down to getting more sleep.  Why this simple practice should remain so consistently elusive makes perfect - and yet at the same time no - sense.  I haven’t managed a rhythm of good sleep habits since before I met my ex.

Those two years prior to meeting my ex stand out as the most stable stretch of time I’ve ever enjoyed (up to now).  I lived in The Eyrie, the top flat of an early twentieth century duplex that I adored (god that place was spacious and bright and perfect); I worked out every morning while listening to segments of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; I played piano almost daily; I managed my money carefully; I ate well; I went to bed at 9:30 p.m.  I wouldn’t call that phase of my life perfect - my job bored me and I lived reclusively and therefore often felt lonely - but I liked the simplicity, the dependability, the quiet.  In that microcosm on the corner of 24th and Raspberry, I cultivated something good.

What I have, what I’m building now, is better.  My first career is well underway.  Although my internal state has not quite reached the even keel I remember from back then, the foundation of confident self-possession I’m building on runs much deeper, and promises a rich fullness I couldn’t have dreamed of in Erie.  I’m writing. I feel happy again.  I have all the pieces for the most amazing life I could ever want, all spread out in front of me, shiny and beautiful.  I just have to put them all together into a coherent picture, and some of those marker pieces - regular disciplines to maintain an optimal state of wellbeing (exercise, budgeting, music practice, diet) - I’m not quite ready to arrange yet. 

It’s coming, though.  And it starts with better sleep habits.  I think once I’m rested I will be able to conquer worlds.  I’ve managed some pretty impressive accomplishments on sheer grit and stubbornness; I can’t wait to see what I can do when I can rely upon a regularly replenished brain and body. 

And while I look back on my former life in Erie with fondness - and nostalgia for the comfortable regularity - I don’t want that life back.  The peace I achieved then was hollow, a convalescent’s absence of illness rather than a robust expression of health: a necessary phase, but an inadequate end.  What I’m undertaking to build now is immeasurably better, worth building slowly and carefully, with forethought and consideration.

And if confidence and self-possession are the foundation, sleep is the frame.  So for the remainder of February and the entirety of March, I plan to hone my gimlet eye on the goal of establishing a healthy resting life.  Good sleep hygiene, better and more sleep, a regular schedule. I want to rise every morning eager and ready to take on the day. I have shit to do, and I want to amass the reserves I’ll need to do it well.

Ready, set, snore.

In Memoriam

The first time I met Dr. Price I was wedged into one of a dozen collapsed desks crammed into temporary storage under one of the side stairwells of Calderwood Hall, my hands blocking out the glaring fluorescence while Eric pressed his long fingers into my temples.  I wouldn’t receive a migraine diagnosis for another six or seven years, but even then I was prone to headaches, and one had clamped down on my skull halfway through Brit Lit.  Eric, one of the few people with whom I felt physically at ease, had directed me to the broken desk, out of the flow of between-class foot traffic, and told me to sit down while he worked on the pressure points in my skull.  I obliged, in no mental shape to notice the stairwell’s location opposite Dr. Price’s office door.

It came to my attention, however, when an intense, strained voice materialized next to my right shoulder with an abrupt “Is something wrong?” I jumped and shifted my hand away from my eye to see a face, comically upside-down, peering into mine.

Oh shit.  I knew Dr. Price by appearance and reputation, having been regaled with horror stories from my first day of classes by older students. He’s the meanest professor in the department, they told us, as if we sat around a campfire listening to the insidious exploits of bloodthirsty ghosts.  He NEVER gives As.  He hates everyone.  He hates teaching.  He had a nervous breakdown last year.  He yells at students.

I yanked my hands away from my face.  “Omigosh! Dr. Price! Are we bothering you?”

He blinked, a small man with a military-style crew cut and a sparse mustache, looking, in the rapids of moving students jostling each other to get around him, both slight and confused. 

“Why would you be bothering me?” he said.  “You’re not making any noise.”

“Oh…” My voice trailed off, confused, unsure whether he disapproved of the physical contact between a boy and a girl at a strictly conservative religious school, but not quite direct enough to ask. 

He straightened up and stood there awkwardly blinking again before venturing, “Are you all right?”

“Oh! I’m fine--it’s just a little headache--we can go away if we’re bothering you--”

“Do you want some Ibuprofen?” His voice cut mine off.

I blinked.  “Oh---no, that’s okay---”

“I have some in my office,” he said.

“Oh--sure--thanks!” I managed, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. 

He whipped around and scurried into his office, then returned with a bottle of Ibuprofen the size of my head.  He brought an aura of intensity with him that seemed to buzz in the air around him.

“How many do you want? Ten? Twelve?”

“Um--two?”

His face fell.  “Just two?”

I watched his face and saw the disappointment there, and said, “Well, maybe a few more for the road, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind!”  Excitedly he twisted off the cap while I extended my hand, and then poured a slot machine of pills into my cupped palm until I had to catch the overflow in my other hand. 

“Thanks, Dr. Price!” I said.

He beamed.  “Do you need anything to carry them in?”

“Oh no, I’ll just put them in my pocket,” I said, standing up.  Eric, silent through the whole exchange, stood at my shoulder, his eyes assessing.  “Thanks again, Dr. Price.”

“Sure, if you need any more, just stop by my office,” he said, and then went back inside and closed his door while I turned to look at Eric with raised eyebrows.

“I thought he was mean,” I whispered.

Throughout my tenure at Grove City I only had one of Dr. Price’s classes, Civ Lit, one of the core humanities classes required of every major.  The stories of his ogreish reputation swirled unabated, and I saw the abrupt manner and harsh writing commentaries that gave birth to them as I sat in the front row of Civ Lit; I also saw how his hands shook whenever he held a paper between them, and heard the deep anxiety that tightened his voice, and listened to my other professors speak in tones of respect about his research in classical literature, and remembered, from our first encounter, his awkward, shy eagerness to alleviate someone else’s pain.  I saw, in his red-pen slashes through his students’ attempts at essays, a profound love for writing.  When our term paper was assigned, I poured all my effort into it, going so far as to begin writing it weeks in advance rather than the night before the due date, and brought several drafts for him for review, at which he almost literally lit up in delight, and insisted that I sit while he went through it on the spot so we could discuss.  He liked my writing, offered excellent suggestions with unusual warmth, and, when he handed back the graded results in class, proudly delivered mine into my hands with the semester’s only “A” scrawled boldly across the top.  “You earned it,” he said.

I wanted the A.  But I also took my writing process to him as a gift.  And I made sure, when the campfire stories about his cruelty and craziness circulated, to append them with my own experiences and observations of him, concluding simply, “He’s nice.”

In my senior year, when I defended my undergraduate thesis, he sat on the panel of professors who judged it.  I had undertaken an intensive criticism of C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces using the psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva (all of which I look back on and laugh as total horseshit, but it was a fun exercise); Dr. Brown demanded to know why I hadn’t used a Christian interpretive lens, which sparked an intradepartmental war right in front of me, with the Drs. Dixon and Dr. Potter and Dr. Stansberry leaping into the fray in my defense and Dr. Brown throwing barbs at me and then drowning under their indignation, so that I barely needed to say a word to earn my honors.  Throughout the farcical ordeal, Dr. Price sat quietly in the back corner, having obviously not read my thesis but unwilling to participate in any criticism. I loved all of my professors (except Dr. Brown) in that moment.

Following graduation, I moved out to South Bend, but for a few years returned annually to Grove City’s Homecoming.  At one departmental breakfast, after catching up with classmates and the Dixons and Dr. Potter, I made my way across the central lobby of the English suite to say hi to Dr. Price. 

“How’s your writing?” he asked.  “What are you working on?” 

I told him about my biggest project - a retelling of the life of Clytemnestra, using an experimental narrative format - waxing enthusiastic about all the details of her life (ones that Aeschylus left out) that I had discovered in my research into mythology.  He joined in with some details of his own, his face taking on the rare joy of a scholar speaking about his subject with someone who could follow it.  I described the narrative structure, and where I wanted to go with the story.  He listened intently, nodding.

“This has legs,” he said.  “You need to write this.  This can go somewhere.  It has legs.”

I think it was the last time I spoke with him.  A year or so later I returned to Grove City to sit in the chapel with a handful of other students for his memorial service.  “There was an accident,” the classmate who called to tell us about it had said.  “He went off the road in the dark and hit a tree.”  I thought about his shaking hands, remembered John’s story about the time Dr. Price suddenly stopped teaching his Advanced Writing class and sat under the table, and wondered.  His ten-year-old son, whom he had spoken of rarely but with affection, stood next to his mother looking stunned.

This morning, anticipating a full day of heinous menstrual cramps, I checked my supply of Ibuprofen in my purse and saw that it was running low.  As I reached into my bedside drawer for the industrial-sized bottle I keep there, twisted off the top, and poured a jackpot of pills into my palm, I found myself thinking of Dr. Price, and the intensity of unaccustomed kindness on his face as he gripped the bottle tightly to keep it steady and poured pain reliever into my hands.

I’m still working on the magnum opus I discussed with him all those years ago - have finally brought it back to light and begun to write it again.  When I finish it, in 20 or 30 years, I don’t expect anyone to read it or want to publish it.  It will be difficult and challenging.  It won’t sell.

I’m dedicating it to Dr. Price anyway. 

A Game of Thrones

Finally getting enough sleep after months - no, years - of going short on it. I still feel exhausted, but the mortal death’s door sensation is draining away and I can go through my day in a reasonable facsimile of human responsiveness. Which is great news for the plans I have around my job.

So I guess it’s time for a little about my work. There’s only so much I can disclose due to confidentiality and not being an idiot, but in short, I work as a legal secretary at a large firm in a large city.  I struck gold when I landed this job, and I fought hard for every bit of it.

Something fundamental shifted inside me when I went for it.  Even worn down and depressed as fuck from teaching and two years of a miserable relationship, I mustered the resolve to drive a hard bargain for my salary and assert my value as an employee from the first interview.  I had a stroke of good fortune (well, not really; the resume and cover letter that I posted online kicked ass) when my resume attracted the notice of a legal recruiter who set me up with the interview and negotiated my salary up to a nice cut above the usual starting salary for my position.  And they wanted me badly.  Where most of the people I’ve spoken with at the firm underwent a hiring process that spanned many weeks, I secured the job offer in less than 48 hours.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I think it had to do with every fiber in what I know as my being suddenly, absolutely, and in unison revolting against a shadow life of toiling for the grudging table scraps of lesser people.  Everything in me snapped and screamed ENOUGH (or possibly FUCK THIS).  I was, quite simply, done. Done with nonsense. Done with constant criticism (Christ, teaching is such an abusive environment). Done with depending on others’ terms. I had never worked at a large firm before, and envisioning the huge corporate professionalism about which I knew nothing scared me out of my MIND at that interview table, but I channeled the fear into performance energy and put all my charisma and cool rationality into impressing the living fuck out of the people I decided to view as my equals.  And I seized this job like I was born to it.

That assertiveness that I stepped into at the interview has only grown. Almost a year later I have risen in the ranks of my department to the recognition of nearly all the attorneys and staff. At various points I have approached each of the attorneys I assist to tell them, “You are underutilizing me. I am very, very smart. I have been doing this for a long time. My grammar is perfect. I can handle a lot. And I can boost your job performance like you wouldn’t believe. Make better use of my skills.”  I have also approached my managers and said, “Give me more responsibilities. Here are the attorneys I want to work for no matter how the secretarial assignments shift. Here is where I want my job to go. Here are my ideas for the department.” And I have done all this with a political panache I never knew I had, so that instead of pissing people off or coming across as brazen, I have won respect and trust.

A long time ago, under vastly different circumstances, a tearful, cowed me was told by an angry manager, “You would be eaten alive at a big firm.”  I am happy to discover that she was many orders of magnitude mistaken. A big firm, it turns out, has always been the answer. I was BORED. I am not bored any longer. Here I have room to stretch and cultivate my ambitions. I have my eyes fixed hard on the present and the future both, everything I do in the former designed for the impact of the latter, with a heretofore latent talent for building tactics on the fly and navigating political maneuvers with a smoothness that should probably not astonish me as much as it does (this feels like walking onto a dance floor at a huge event, having never danced, and suddenly learning that your body knows all the steps and takes OFF while your mind is watching your own nearly flawless performance and going “what the fuck?”). I have a lot to learn still, and mistakes to make, but I know I’ll land on my feet and learn even more from the mistakes. I have plans for my job.  Plans for the department.  Plans for the firm.  And lining up the pieces to get there is fun as hell.

I fucking love what I do.  It doesn’t fit my adolescent impressions of success - and people still ask me, “Don’t you want to be a lawyer?” to which without missing a beat I always answer NO - but I like this better. I can have influence, and achieve my real goals, more completely in this position than I could as an attorney. I like helping. I like a nine-to-five. And I’d rather be the power behind the throne - Varys, rather than the contenders for the crown of the Seven Kingdoms (come on, you knew the reference had to happen). I want to be the one running the show in the background, and making the firm into a truly amazing place.

All of that is miles ahead. I’m still just starting out, still the newbie, still an underling. But I’m setting up the board. I’m attracting notice. I’m focusing on intense excellence in my current responsibilities, and putting out feelers for the ones I want in the future.

And the great thing? I’m doing all this by just being myself. I am doing all this by being warm and funny and enthusiastic and helpful. I’m doing all this by being direct and plainspoken and forceful. I’m doing all this by being tactful and diplomatic. I’m doing all this by taking no shit and no prisoners.

Damn, this feels good.

the word, the pebble rolling in the dark

One of those epiphanic moments this morning.

The past year has given rise to a continual paradigm shift - slower than my usual, haha.  A year ago the realization that I hated the life I was living crystallized into a hard, clear purpose.  A year ago I glared at the cracked and peeling walls of the derelict classroom that choked my days with stress and marker dust and suffocated my nights with dread, and began, quietly, to pack my things, to take down a poster here and there, to throw away unneeded papers, to fill the space underneath my desk with boxes for keeping and boxes for tossing.  A year ago I clamped my being around the hard little kernel at the center that said "I will not do this anymore" and started digging a tunnel out.  A year ago I said Fuck this, and started poring over my resume, picking and choosing the best words from which to forge a new life.  A real life. A life I chose freely and on my own terms. A year ago I walked through the old halls reeking of chalk and asbestos and pointlessness with a lighter step, bore up under the chaos in my classroom with a little smile, holding a warmth in the pit of my stomach that said, I am getting out. 

And I did.  Quickly.  It has gone extremely well.  I love my current job and am discovering a wealth of skills and talents I had never given myself the opportunity to know I possessed.  I have a more satisfying social network.  I am dusting off and resurrecting my hobbies.  I am free of the old, unfulfilling, hollow relationship that I was in at the time, and freeing myself from the neural pathways that built it.  I feel powerful.

And more neural pathways are changing.

A long time ago I wrote a sestina.  Sestinas are HELL to write - and I imposed even more structure on it than is mandated (iambic pentameter, three pairs of binaries to contrast at lines' ends).  I thought of that sestina this morning as the epiphany blew through me like a sudden cool breeze through an open window.
_____________________________

Monday, September 15, 2008

I hope this letter finds you well. Today
when I first woke, the morning still was dark
and as I held my breath I heard the water’s
clear monotone still covering the earth.
I wanted to cocoon myself in rest,
but then a black bewhiskered face yowled, "Work!"

So blearily I rose and went to work.
I had a lovely time, though, yesterday –
I shopped for things to complement my rest
and candles to illuminate the dark.
I like the autumn afternoons, when earth
contracts to just the self, the house, the water.

The softened candle glow winked on the water
as I rinsed off my hands and got to work
preparing dishes from across the earth
(Moroccan stew). The chilly, sodden day
felt warm and bright. I looked into the dark
outside the window, peaceful and at rest

while Simon cleaned his paws and, owl-eyed, rested
beside my feet. I put the kettled water
on high for jasmine tea and sipped the dark
and bitter brew, glad not to be at work
but home: on such a nearly perfect day
more than content to be upon this earth.

It seems, sometimes, my days upon this earth
are growing shorter. Sometimes, restlessly,
I want to stretch the miles beyond the day,
stare over new profundities of water
in windblown freedom. But, for now, my work
is waiting for the Word dropped in the dark.

The Word, the pebble rolling in the dark
is yet to come. I bent and wiped the earth
still wet between my toes and thought the work
of rendering a sabbath gives the rest
of life its still point. Turning like the water
that drained into the sink, I saw the day

lay down its head in darkness, while the rest
of sky and earth gave way to moving water.
It was no work to smile at close of day.

_______________________________

The word, the pebble rolling in the dark.  All my life I have been waiting for something.  Some sudden oracle, some clear bell tone to draw my attention to my purpose, some Road to Damascus moment that will finally show me where I belong.  Long after my faith evaporated and dissipated into the clear air of reality, the idea that I have some certain task to do persisted. 

It has kept me restless, on edge, always looking to the horizon, always holding loosely to whatever placeholder job and placeholder living space and placeholder life I seized in the moment, knowing that I needed something to pay the bills and pacify a need for present happiness while I kept my vigil.  Maybe it's the effect of giftedness; I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up; I only knew that I wanted to change the world; and since I was good at pretty much everything (except dancing and sports), I had no clearly defined career path to follow.  Maybe it's the effect of my place in the Millennial generation, having grown up hearing that I needed to do something amazing and transformative and I could be whatever I wanted someday.  Maybe it's the effect of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing that instilled in me the (harsh) promise that God had designed me with a purpose (but wouldn't tell me what it was).  Maybe it's the effect of growing up in a dysfunctional home, where my potential remained largely unfostered (Jeff once said, his voice unusually hoarse, "When I think of what you could have been, if you'd had a supportive environment..." and then trailed off into silence for a moment before blinking hard and shaking his head and saying, "Well. There's no use thinking like that").  Maybe it's all of those things, and something a little more.  Whatever the reason, I have spent my life with my hands absently on the present and my eyes fixed on the future, impatiently viewing the long distance between them and feeling the eternal restlessness moving under my skin.

But this morning, reflecting on my own line of poetry (omg such an egoist), it came like a bell: The word, the pebble rolling in the dark, will never come.  I have been waiting for an answer, but there is no answer.  There's just...me.

So I don't have to wait anymore for a direction.  I can strike out toward the horizon in any damn direction I choose.  And right now that means staying put, and finally fully investing in where and when I am. 

My long-term plans will always be open-ended.  The restlessness will never vanish -- I think it stems not from a desire for a prescribed purpose, but from a longing for adventure and muchness, a longing for growth and change, a desire to forge meaning and belong to something big --  the soul of a pioneer.  But I can embrace that aspect of my personality AND live fully in my own circumstances.  I can give myself adventure and muchness and remain open to new opportunities while also truly settling in to my job, my dwelling, my social surroundings, my coummunity. 

Like Alice in The Magicians, I have spent my life holding back; "even I don't know what I'm capable of."  And as with Alice, it's time for me to find out.

This is going to be fun.  And transformative.  And engaging.  I am finally going to live, as I choose to live.

And that's the word, the pebble rolling in the dark. This morning it finally bumped up against my toes, and I stooped to pick it up, and held it cupped in my palm to see that it's only, after all, a plain little stone. No grand edict, no manifest destiny. Just something small I can hold in my hand, or put in my pocket and take with me while I walk, or cast aside altogether and let it rest with the other stones while I make my way to wherever I want to go.

I am here, and I am now, and I don't want to be anywhere or anywhen else.

And this, maybe, is freedom. 

a face to meet the faces that you meet

Another Monday morning.

Just like any other Monday, I woke to the dark and cold and left in the dark and cold, and am now sitting blearily on the bus listening to human breath transformed into notes - the breathing of dead men. 

Rather atypically for a Monday, however, was a certain forgetfulness. I forgot to set my alarms last night. Fortunately my biorhythms prodded me up into consciousness only two minutes past when my alarm is supposed to go off. And I forgot my makeup bag.

Makeup has stood as a cornerstone of how I "prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet" since my adolescence, when my mother taught me its tasteful application and thus saved me from five or six years of garish cake layers of cheap foundation and spider lashes that seem typical of teenagers trying to teach themselves how to wear it.  I always prided myself in the subtlety of my art, the daily not-quite-blank canvas of my face awaiting my rendering.  Over the years I have gone through various phases or more and less dramatic in my overall approach, although which end of the binary is never clear unless in retrospect; right now I would say the focus is dramatic eyes, with less an emphasis on skin, which is spotted anyway from twenty-three years of picking.  The morning ritual frequently relaxes me - losing myself in the details, forgetting language and thought in a quiet rhythm of self care.

When I took this job at the beginning of March of last year, leaving so early for the bus presented me with three choices: get up insanely early to put on my makeup at home; put on my makeup on the bus; or put it on at work.  The first option sucked, the second was too bumpy, so, Goldilocks-style, I landed on the pleasing "just right" of the third.  I arrive at work half an hour early, put on my makeup, and acclimate myself to another day in the quiet of my little office. 

Ordinarily my makeup bag lives in my larger tote that accompanies me to work filled with other vital objects like books, journal and (now) my portable keyboard; but this weekend I actually wore makeup, and forgot to place the bag back in the tote, which I didn't realize until I was most of the way to the bus stop.  I briefly considered turning around, then realized I didn't care enough to risk running late.

Soooo now I get to spend the day reflecting on the effect of the beauty standards on women and analyzing my various responses to my own social transgression - the panic at remembering, the shame at showing up to work looking unprofessional, the quiet defiance at deciding makeup is technically unnecessary anyway and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise, the anxiety at looking less pretty than usual, the dread of all the comments about how tired I look.  For the most part I have worked hard to define myself as I see fit and worry less about the mainstream opinions of those around me (anyone who has seen my particular style of dress knows this), but makeup is a tough one.   I do love the way it makes me look.

Today will be interesting, in that respect, at least.  Bare faced and staring down the world. 

It's stupid, the little things that require courage of women.  I have ladders to climb, shit to get done, important things to do, and here I am worrying about a few layers of cream and powder on a tiny portion of my skin.  Fuck you, systemic sexism.  Thanks for exhausting my internal resources on either submitting to or rebelling against your exacting standards for my appearance, as if that is all I have to offer.

reach for the sun

Finally some goddamn sunshine.

Currently my office presents a beautiful 20th-floor vista of northeast Detroit.  Mostly the beauty comes from the sheer fact of the height; the landscape itself looks, to a girl born and raised in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, as flat and dull as the broad expanse of Ohio, with art deco skyscrapers, sprawling factories, belching smokestacks, and fields of concrete substituting for farmland.

From up here you can't tell that the city died forty years ago.  You can't tell that most of the neighborhoods visible from my window give off no light at night, that much of the once-packed residential land no longer has any neighborhood at all.  You can't see the burned out houses studding the blocks like rotten teeth, the production plants squatting hollow and cold amidst the derelict houses where the workers once lived.  You can't identify the places where the wilderness vines and creeps back over the concrete and the empty foundations, where the remnants of human habitation haunt the expanding forest.

From up here, in the shallow brightness of a winter sun, the city looks as it must always have done: sprawling, energetic, established. 

The long arm of history has not bent toward justice here.

The pioneer in me wants to help resettle this place, take the wreckage of industry and the fields and trees springing up in their ashes and turn them into something new - a strange frontier of a land wrested from the wilderness and forced into production, then abandoned back to nature.  A place where you can find the country in the middle of the city, and see the stars at night.

This romanticization overlooks, in typical white middle-class carpetbagger fashion, the many complex layers of race and class and cultural heritage that underlie all that makes up Detroit.  I can only be peripheral here, and try not to steamroll the intricate realities with my hipster starry-eyed visions of reclamation.  I am an invasive species, here.

I do confess though, that the concept of a bonfire in an urban backyard has appeal.  Living at the intersection of many different worlds.  Being a small, quiet, simple part of a much bigger ecosystem. 

With every day that passes I become increasingly excited for a new form of a self-determined life, one that I haven't dared to live yet.  The reality is still percolating, still dreamlike.  But when I consider that my next phase is arriving THIS SUMMER, I feel a warm glow to match even today's unseasonal sunshine rendering this apocalyptic city in a clear, unflinching light.

O the dark, dark, dark

Just received my Bluetooth keyboard, which I hope to utilize for blogging on the bus. 

Riding down Woodward Avenue right now - the main non-highway thoroughfare (is that the right word?) that cuts from the heart of downtown Detroit all the way to the upper northwest of the metro area.  In any season but winter it's a visually fascinating journey through a perfect cross-section of all that is Detroit; currently, however, it is a long dull trip through a mind-numbing darkness.  Which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't also ride home in the same darkness. 

My only real complaint about my life at the moment centers around the length of my commute.  I leave the house at 6:15 a.m. and return twelve hours later.  Dark to dark.  Waking weariness to sleeping weariness.  Short evenings at home; even shorter mornings.  Many, many personal goals and hobbies and activities for which I have neither time nor energy before or after the bookends of my days.

So as I look ahead to the expiration of my lease this summer I am considering my living options.  Two years is long enough to be living in an apartment that I have always considered a placeholder; it's time to find a place I can love.  My favorite dwellings have always been old, spacious, charming.  And I have grown weary of the suburbs with their soulless uniformity of sprawl; I want, for the time being, something a little more urban. This means something closer to the city (fortunately YB knows the neighborhoods and can tell me which ones I won't get mugged, robbed or murdered in), which also means, oh please dear god, a shorter commute. 

Currently my commute consumes two and a half hours of my day.  I can make use of the time (reading in the mornings, and, now that this Bluetooth keyboard is working so beautifully, writing in the evenings), but oh my fuck, I miss being able to work out in the mornings and actually have time and energy to DO SHIT at home in the evenings.  This present lifestyle is shitting all over my life satisfaction outside of work.

I want to love it here.  I've been holding back for two years, like I've held back my whole life, never quite allowing myself to grow attached to a geographical area.  And Detroit isn't that loveable.  It's worn down and tired and empty and sprawling and devastated and ugly and depressing.  But I have a knack for seeing the promise in difficult things (not for nothing did I take as my confirmation name, back when I became Catholic and before emerging out of faith altogether, the identity of my favorite patron saint, Jude: I passionately resist the concept of lost causes), and this city, this life of mine that I live around it, have a lot of promise. 

I still spend the bulk of my metacognition on a dissonance between the two things I want for myself: on the one hand, a deep involvement in something that brings change and meaning to the world around me; on the other, a quiet, peaceful, simple life.  I am arriving at the annoying conclusion that the two are not mutually exclusive.  I can have both - I just need to take the leap.

This is the year that I leap, I think.  This is my city, my life.  This is my time. 

Reclamation

Far, far to the south
south past south
a long expanse of ground grows slowly wild.
For twoscore and three years
the reaping blade pared it bare.
Public land, appointed to the enjoyment of passersby,
it knew the daily cutting of every blade and leaf,
knew the habitual cultivation of parkland
until its topsoil forgot how to send new shoots into the air,
forgot fecundity. But now, purchased
by a quiet agency, it lies fallow, allowed
to seed. Even in the cold of indifferent winter
the roots stir beneath the soil, remember
their purpose. Overexposed for so many years
it starts small, a patch of foliage, shy,
keeping close to the ground, and then
begins to spread, to flourish, to lengthen
like the daylight. It textures the ground,
casts shadows.
Some of its surfaces still lie smooth,
without memory, without awareness,
without forecast, sheer as rock.
Some of them have just begun to wake,
tiny spikes pushing through the soil
among the wild lengths of the already
vibrant growth. Running my fingers
up the softness of my shins, parting the
sparse beachgrass waves to see where the whorls
shade the newest shoots,
I see my body begin to remember itself,
to reforest. In the sunshine strength
of my skin, lush for its own sake,
the flush stirrings of life unfold
in what I have reappropriated.

We Carry Our Origins within Us

We are salt and water

stung by lightning into life

in the voiceless beginnings

of biological time

kindled nucleotide threads

replicating unthought, unthinking in our harsh salt bath

and when we had grown large

enough, bony enough, breathing

enough to creep from the ocean

we made of our bodies vessels to enclose it

and bring it with us

in the brine of our blood, the solutions of our

sweat and tears, of our urine and semen

and vaginal fluid,

the seawater of our spines.

From our brains swimming in salinity lightning

flashes down the forked tendrils of nerves

to sting our cells, and in this endless animation

of billions of years of algorithmically adapted tissue

we live

and move

and have our being,

awakened worlds of water and salt

surging electric within elastic casings of skin.