Spring Relationship Shit-Can: Stuff Negotiations

Original Post:25 MARCH 2010 on the now defunct NewGay.Net

The first few warm days of the season bring memories of barbecues, day-drinking and intramural sports. We think about cleaning out our closets and getting ready for warm weather, but unfortunately these warm days can bring bad news for some folks—the unexpected Spring Relationship Shit-Can. March seems to be the time when we are all turning new leaves and heading toward a world of betterness, cleaning out our spiritual and emotional closets, and sometimes that turning of a new leaf means the end of an old relationship. The relationship that survives the winter months is not always off the hook in Spring.

The most difficult part about the ending of a relationship? The Stuff Negotiations.

In a short relationship, it might be easier:

"Here’s a box with your Old School DVD, your Nascar bottle opener, your extra contact case and your college t-shirt."

Longer relationships get a little harder.

You might date three consecutive people who need new digital cameras. It makes a great gift, your S.O. is really happy about your thoughtfulness, you both enjoy the new toy – until you get Shit-Canned and after a $1000 investment in digital cameras you find yourself using a disposable camera at your best friend’s bachelorette party: "Wait, let me take another one with the flash in case that first one didn’t turn out. With my disposable camera."

Shared camping equipment?

"You get the tent, I get the poles. I just don’t want you to be able to go camping with your new girlfriend in OUR TENT."

How about the 3,000 pictures the two of you took on vacation in Mexico, flying kites and burying your toes in the sand, and at baseball games, showing off your new jerseys and drinking beer through a straw? Do you delete these images entirely? Do you sit down together and start copying them from one computer to the other? What about sexy or naked pictures? Do you label them “Cute Animal Pictures” or "Grandma's 65th Birthday Party" and keep them on your desktop hoping no one in your life would dare to open the file?

You may also lose access to your favorite band after the Spring Shit-Can — right when concert season is taking off. When they roll through your town on tour you can both go, pretend you don’t spend all night looking for the other, and perhaps crying into your cocktail – or one of you can opt out. Spare yourself the awkwardness. Be mature about it. The latter option is much less likely after the Spring Shit-Can.

Living together? That’s where it starts to get really rough.

She gets the down comforter and you get the duvet cover, leaving you cowering under what is in reality just a sheet while she’s snuggled up toasty under a pile of goose feathers.

Organizing cat visitation schedules – this may be easier with dogs, who tend to shift environments more easily, but in my world I imagine cats are the more frequent victims of divorce. "I’ll take them Tuesday through Friday. Think you can clean their litter box now that you have your 'space'? If I remember correctly I think that when it came to cleaning the box it wasn’t 'you' it was 'me.' Pumpkin-Pie, get in the bag. Get in the bag because I’m the one who really loves you."

Pumpkin-Pie

Maybe you and your girlfriend of a few years break up but still share the same family phone plan. One of you spends the next 13 months sending the other checks with things like “I still love you” or “FOR BEING A TOTAL BASTARD” written in the memo.

May you are smart enough to never get a matching tattoo with your S.O., but if you do, does just one of you have to get it removed at the end of the relationship? Or cover it with a big circle strike? Or cover it with your new S.O.’s name? (Some people have to learn things the hard way.)

On that final day of living together – the last hurrah – you have to do all that stuff you’ve been putting off. Cleaning under the bathroom sink, one final hall closet, and the dreaded refrigerator. 

Do you split the final contents of the fridge? 2 tomatoes, 3 pieces of pizza, an assortment of imported bottle beer. "No, I’m pretty sure I bought the extra firm tofu, you bought the Soyaki. Yes. That’s my mustard. Yes, it is. I brought it when I moved in. I remember fucking buying it."


While Spring is a typical time to be the perpetrator or victim of the Spring Relationship Shit-Can, it can also be a pretty excellent time to do the opposite. To start cleaning out the cobwebs of past relationships, to begin freeing yourself from some ties that have kept you from pursuing new relationships. It’s a good time to make room for someone else’s favorite cereal in your cabinet and think about all the sharing for which you two have potential – not the horrid memories of splitting your shampoo into two tiny travel bottles with your comforter-snatching, tent-pole-purloining, cat-kidnapping ex.

The Origin of Flight (Teaser)

On the advice of my professor, I am posting only a teaser to this piece with the intent of doing a longer (cleaner) draft to submit for publication. Enjoy! 

--- 

The flying squirrel does not actually fly, thank god.

The flying squirrel, like the flying fish, flying snake or flying squid (yes, its real), actually glides. While gliding has evolved on several occasions, flight has evolved only four times in the insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats.  In the air, animals move faster, concur more ground, avoid predators and easily traverse obstacles like wide rivers and steep mountain ridges. Because there are so many different needs for flight, several types of aerial locomotion have evolved.

***

On a Monday night in early February,  I munch on free cookies and press the tip of my pen too hard into my flimsy notebook.  I’m excited. Presentations from international dinosaur experts in this medium-sized Wisconsin town occur rarely,  one from an expert in the origins of avian flight might be a sole instance.  At Science Night at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, people in a darkened auditorium listen intently for an explanation for how dinosaurs took to the sky.

***

Not all beasts in the sky have adapted to glide like the squirrel or fly like the bird. Some have learned to let the environment take control. Externally powered aerial locomotion occurs when the animal gives the power back to the conditions -  usually the wind.

Some creatures fly by ballooning,  such as spiders who release webs into the sky to be grabbed by the breeze and carried away.  Tiny creatures trust the winds to carry them across the oceans. This is largely how volcanic islands become lush, diverse environments.

An animal with a large wingspan relies on soaring. Adapted to find the thermals or the wave of air off a slope or a ridge, or the convergence - the place where two air masses meet - and to ride the wind for miles.

***

In my second year of grad school, emboldened by my new-found calling, I call in sick to work and go to dinosaur camp. I walk through the beautiful city zoo with an eccentric scientist in a pith helmet and scratch notes in my tiny notebook, like a real journalist. The first stop on the zoo tour is the bird house. Looking at the scaly legs and firm crested brow of New Zealand’s native Cassowary for long enough, and the dinosaur from which it evolved begins to emerge. It’s easy to see how dinosaurs may have moved like birds, had feet and claws like birds, maybe made sounds like birds. It is my dream to write about dinosaurs. I’m inspired; riding the energy of this environment.  I write my best essay, and believe for a little while that I really am a writer.

***
To be continued...

Growing up on SimCity 2000

1996 was kind of a shit year.

Imagine a 14 year-old struggling with her inner demons, her heart, her height and her hair. Ok, so maybe it was only a shit year for me. 

Lucky for me, the house I shared with my older, angrier brother and the mother of us both was one of 36.6% of American households that had a personal computer. My diminutive, solo, underemployed mother (and her job teaching with computers at a city school) had given us a precious gift. Atop a cheaply made, pressboard, corner-shaped desk, nestled securely in the shadows of the dark-wood cabinets and dirty floors of our family’s kitchen, we had a grayish-white, 35 pound Macintosh LC580 - and it was our savior.

That year, two years after the LC580 was released and one year before it was discontinued and replaced with faster, lighter models in the Apple-style we are so familiar with today, we spent hours playing Mahjong and exploring the tiny web.  Instead of staining our white sneakers with the green hue of fresh cut grass or letting the sun fill us with Vitamin D and pink our cheeks (long before we knew the dangers of skin cancer) we stared at a screen.

From wherever she got things, my mother brought home a city-building game to play on the 8MB computer. SimCity 2000 captured my attention immediately. Ready to put the Chinese matching game away, I sat at the high-backed chair pulled away from the dinner table and loaded the CD-Rom, ready to design my city.  Ready to have some control in this world. Amidst catchy low-budget music, the God-like player (humbly dubbed “The Mayor”) could begin the epic building project by adjusting the terrain. Adding hills, valleys and trees, raising and lowering the water level. The power was intoxicating, especially for a ratty-haired teen who felt so weak.

When the terrain is perfect, the Mayor-cum-City Planner strategically develops a schema of neighborhoods, water pipes and subways. The Mayor considers the needs of her people and builds fire and police stations, hospitals, prisons and schools. The Mayor can affect disasters just for the sadistic joy of it. The Mayor builds roads. And more roads.

It’s the roads that I remember the most.  

There were options for how fast you wanted time to move. Stay at Turtle (Alt-1) and carefully and responsibly monitor your city; accelerate to Llama (Alt-2) and watch the years begin to spin away at a clip; put your skills to the test and, with the quick flick of an Alt-3, select Cheetah. 

That’s right. Cheetah. You’ve got guts.

In Cheetah mode crime surges.  Fires burn uncontrollably, your city crumbles as fast as you build it, the cycle of road repair is never-ending, and you feel the frenetic energy of life on the brink. It’s terrifying and exhilarating.

It turns out that there’s no way to “win” at SimCity 2000. The game just goes on forever as you watch the clock flip to those three strange looking zeros trailing behind a two - a new millennium that seemed frighteningly close and yet so far away - and keeps climbing. To win the game, you continue to rebuild your city as it falls into disrepair, starting over at the beginning each time you no longer have the energy to repair the damage. A little like the American Tamagotchi.

There wasn’t, that I remember, a game in the 90’s that challenged players to maintain a low BMI as they loped into their mid-thirties, to alleviate the hopelessness of a beige cubicled middle-management job, or to stitch and restitch a repeatedly broken heart.

But there was this game that taught us how to build and rebuild. To budget and create and sacrifice. To lay new roads from east to west, watching the first bits of asphalt begin to disintegrate just as you finish the final squares. A game that let you escape the powerlessness that the rising-action years of  “finding yourself” always entail.  A game that foreshadowed the ever-present adult feeling of never being able to catch up. A game that let you see into the future.

Outside of SimCity, there’s no place to select how fast we want time to move. Mostly, life runs in Cheetah speed, but at least we know how to manage it – how to put out the fires and rebuild the roads, even when we are struggling (still) with our hearts, our height or our hair.  But, even without the title of Mayor, even without the Alt key, we have more power than we know. If we really focus, we have the ability to slip quietly back into Turtle mode, and for a few sweet moments, enjoy what we’ve built.

This is a cheat we should take advantage of more often.

Finding Leverage in Foreignness

Each one of the 534 “Gravity Purple” tent cards is arranged perfectly. Between 19 and 22 slightly angled cards around each U-Shaped table, in 19 rooms in which English, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and French will be spoken. In each English language room, the countries are numerous – England, India, South Africa, United States, Australia, Nigeria, and on and on. There is a tent card for each seat, and on each tent card is a call name, full name and one of the hundreds of countries from which the “mini U.N.” of my participants hail.

The personalized tent cards set in advance of each of the ten sessions – a new bright color for each set – seem unnecessary. The people who will be seated in these rooms are international business professionals who have personalized itineraries for this training tucked inside their breast pockets and brief cases – but it is a part of the experience.

It is my job, as a training professional, to research and write the curriculum that is presented in each of these classrooms, but it is also my job to consider the learning environment and make the experience – from the locations of the coffee breaks to the spacing of the notes pages in the workbooks – the most conducive to learning. I also stalk the halls in my freshly pressed suit smiling sincerely and answering questions from all corners.

This is what I’m paid to do – and I’m pretty good at it.

-----

Yesterday afternoon I stared at my computer. My eyes straining as I took notes, searched images online, and wrote polite emails for hours. My mind was racing trying to coordinate all the pieces necessary for my project, my pulse accelerating as the time slipped away and my deadlines loomed.

I needed the baby giraffe and the baby elephant to fall in line.
I needed a font that was a little softer and warmer.
I also needed sleeping space for ten, not 8, and someone to take ownership of the games and activities.

I was planning both a baby shower and a bachelorette party (for two separate and awesome women in my life) and the anxiety was driving me to the edge.

I am a person who assembles events for a living, but when it comes to designing an invitation for a baby shower or booking a cottage for ten in southwest Michigan, I lose my mind. I assume I am stressed because no one likes to bring their work home with them, but as my anxiety grows, I realize the hurdle here is the foreignness.

I feel like I’m planning a Taiwanese Lantern Festival celebration. My internal monologue screams, “Shouldn't they have asked someone who was from Taiwan?! What do I know about this?” I do not understand the drive to have children nor to engage in the traditional aspects of courtship and marriage. I do not speak the language.

There’s not so much to planning these celebrations that I cannot learn. A few emails, a couple of Google searches and a click or two in an online party store and the whole thing is settled. The problem is not the task itself; it is my inability to wrap my mind around the concepts. “Foreign” is the way I feel in a lot of situations. I have spent my whole life feeling like an outsider. Like I’m “passing” for one of the crowd, but that I could be found out at any minute. A little too queer to be like the other girls. Planning these “traditional” events falls outside of my natural instincts and makes me feel lost.

-----

The purple tent cards and seats are perfectly arranged, and the final session of this event begins. Hundreds of men and women flood the halls, checking their itineraries and looking for the room that has their preset tent card. They shake hands with their new classmates and greet each other – sometimes in their second, third or fourth language. They exchange business cards and trinkets from their home nations. They've come from all over the world to San Diego, this foreign place, with the excitement of children and the intention to learn from one another. In this environment, the state of being foreign – of being other – is the benefit. This new situation will give each person the greatest opportunity to learn and grow.

-----

The final touches on the jungle themed invite come together, and the deposit on a cottage for ten clears my checking account. I too can grow from my foreignness.

Now where’s my tent card?

The Year of the Rainbow

I'm working to make 2015 a happier, more positive year.  This is a good place to start.

Via Ted.com

Meditations on Otherness...and Bronies

Last week on The Rumpus, Melissa Carroll (who, from the perspective of her story, is likely not far in age from me) recalled the simpler times of the 1980’s when the lives of girls were ruled by tiny plastic ponies. Pink and pretty and for girls.  She writes how her own lack of connecting to these rainbow dictators introduced her to her own differentness, and to the not-so-subtle differences between girls and boys that the toys came to represent.

I connected instantly to the picture she painted. I remember feeling different from the other girls in the presence of ponies, unable to understand the appeal, more drawn to the muscled action figures and adventure stories of my brothers and his friends. I wasn’t interested in the pastel equine cotton candy fantasy they promised.

Carroll’s piece opens up with this familiar narrative of girltoys vs boytoys and how othering that can be for some kids who are, for whatever reason, not into what they are “supposed” to be into. In playing with those toys, two different outlooks assemble. The girls with their big-eyed ponies learn to collaborate and compromise to meet their challenges.  The boys seem to learn to take any character from any story, physically slam one into the other endlessly shouting and growling until one “guy kills the other guy.”

The story also highlights the resurgence of the Pony empire. That’s right – MLP is back with a TV show and all the possible merchandising you can dream of. My own niece and nephew play with Ponies in the BatCave, like Batman, Robin and Rarity (a legit Pony name) all live in the same world; as if their worlds are not divided into boytoys and girltoys, into warmaking and peacemaking, into darkness and light.

The heart of the piece is about the new market for Ponies. Enter the Brony.

The Brony is the adult man who is into My Little Pony – but not for the creepy reasons you’d assume. In a study from last year referenced by Carroll, Bronies have embraced Pony power for a few key reasons: “to become a part of the Brony community, to escape the realities of real life, and to learn about the importance of strong friendships.”

The summary of the Brony culture is this: the world we live in is full of sadness and violence, so why not embrace positivity. Lucky for the internet, these men don’t have to be alone. Brony culture is growing and growing fast with conferences, online forums and their own set of identifying merchandise.

25 years after the ponies made me feel different, feel alone, their colorful manes are bringing together individuals who are bound together by their difference. They are othered by their refusal to see glittery pink positive dream sequences to be a girls only domain. By their choice to reject the masculinity, solitude and stoicism that young man are taught to embrace. The rise of the Brony culture allows these men to be different without having to be alone. Carroll’s article stuck out to me in a sea of words that describe war, death and tragedy around the world. I think these Ponies (and Bronies) are on the right track.

Neo’s Choice

When Neo chose the Red Pill, he acknowledged that the life he knew was meaningless.  He chose to venture into the potential nightmare of living outside the matrix, rather than continue in the world that he knew, a world that, to be fair, wasn’t that great anyway.  The dingy, depressing environment created by the Wachowskis for The Matrix fell short on sunshine and hope, which perhaps contributed to our protagonist’s choice. Why not take the chance? What could be worse than living in a (pretty crappy) world that isn’t real?

The world may very well be divided by Red Pill and Blue Pill people. Those who would jump at the chance to rid themselves of a meaningless world if given it, and those who wouldn’t humor the offer it; those who are happy to be happy even if happy isn’t real. There has always been a question of whether or not this world is real.

Philosophers, scientists, writers and filmmakers have discussed it for centuries, though maybe not in terms as reduced as a choice between red and blue.

Albert Camus, the 20th century philosopher and writer, described this choice in the allegory of Sisyphus. The difference being that Sisyphus isn’t given the option of choosing the red pill. Or even that of the blue pill. He isn’t permitted to escape the Matrix, or forget – he is bound to live inside the Matrix aware of its absurdity. The takeaway from Camus’ story is a cheery one – When you realize that life is meaningless you have three choices. 

One: Commit Suicide. The knowledge hurts too much, nothing has meaning, so end it all. (Though he is astute enough to recognize that death itself is meaningless, so the problem is not solved!)

Two: Commit a sort of philosophical suicide, meaning to pretend that you didn’t figure out that life is meaningless. Lie to yourself, maintain the charade, and maybe achieve “happiness.”

Three: Live the rest of your life (or eternity, in the case of Sisyphus) recognizing the meaninglessness of life, but keep living it. Live honestly and bravely, and maybe find real happiness in the task.

The Gods cursing you to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity, or Morpheus telling you that your reality is a simulation may feel like hypotheticals, however some scientists think these thought pieces Camus’ and the Wachowskis have given us may not be that far off.

A recent New York Times article penned by Edward Frenkel asks if the universe in which we live might actually be a simulation.

Another thought experiment? Apparently not. 

In “Is the Universe a Simulation?” Frenkel highlights the immutable truths of mathematics (how scientists around the globe and across the decades reach the same mathematical conclusions, for example) as one of the tenets some scientists are using to support this hypothesis.  We did not create mathematics. Somehow mathematics already exists in our world, waiting to be discovered. How is this possible? How is math the same across cultures and generations? How is math already here?  

One creepy and awesome theory goes like this: the computer programmer of the future has built a simulation (our world).  When we “discover” mathematic formulas, really we are just uncovering bits and pieces of planted code in the simulation. 

Ammiright?

 You may not take kindly to the idea of living inside a real “Matrix,” or consider the concept far-fetched, but some scientists say that the probability is actually quite good. Frenkel paraphrases Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom on the subject:

“Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not. If such simulations are possible in theory, he reason, then eventually humans will create them – Presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than in the real one.”

For me, the reality of this world doesn’t matter. Would a simulated universe make my coffee less soothing, my friends less caring, my partner’s eyes less blue? I know what I know, and in that case, “real” is indefinable. Even in meaninglessness, we can all choose to find happiness. In Camus’ words:

“Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Measuring Achievement in the Midst of Winter

Chicago's winter can be harsh. This year seems to be challenging even the most hard-core of Chicago's winter-lovers. The snow this season has accumulated in beautiful puffy piles that swiftly transform into inches-deep obstacles of grayish slush, hungrily waiting to swallow your boots whole. Some days, the sun has shone brightly, attempting to mask temperature dips so severe that schools and businesses closed to encourage us to stay safely indoors.

The winter anecdotally brings on the blues in a lot of people, and this mega-winter seems to be bringing on the mega-blues. For me, the winter is only partly the sources of the blues.  Its mostly that the winter came post-marathon.

In my absence from the blog I haven't shared much about the marathon. Here it is, in short:

My friends are awesome (those that ran with me, and those that supported me along the course).

The weather was undeniably perfect.
My girlfriend probably ran her own marathon chasing me around the city.

My sister, niece and nephew cheered me on with adorableness and big signs.

26.2 miles is long.

26.2 miles is boring.

After 26.2 miles you are pretty tired.

The next day you feel sore.
You may also feel sad.

After years and years of running, and meeting every goal - from that first mile, to those 26.2 in October - finishing the marathon sort of felt like the end of the climb. There is no higher to go. Of course I'm aware that there is, including faster times and longer races, but for a weekend racer, training for the marathon was a massive time commitment that won't easily be achieved again.

After the marathon, I had some trouble getting motivated. The holidays hit, things got busy with work, and getting back on the treadmill for 2 or 3 miles seemed sort of pointless without an end goal.  

Running the marathon was supposed to feel awesome - was supposed to feel like a life accomplishment, but really it just reminded me that sometimes the best hobbies or goals are the ones that remain unachieved. The ones that change and evolve and are measured in progress and growth. 

As I pull my hat down over my ears and stomp through inches of slush attacking my boots, I start to collect ideas of what's next. To look for a goal that can grow with me. A goal that I can't leave behind like a finish line. In the meantime, I might as well go to the gym - I think better on a run, anyway. 

Girls in STEM

http://maryanningsrevenge.blogspot.com/

Eliot the Cat Gets an iPhone 5S

Now that I know that he can access the finger-print security pad, I see no reason to withhold any longer.

Eliot has always been a technophile. Here he harnesses
the sun's light to fuel future activity.

Check out the TechCrunch article about the new iPhone 5S's super loosy goosy touch pad here.

(Isn't it cute how the iPhone user gives the cat a little good job paw rub at the end?)

More on Gen-Y

This is Lucy.
www.waitbutwhy.com

In my previous post about the Y Generation, I separated out "Millennials" as group a little bit younger than myself (born in the 90s, perhaps). This humorous article extrapolates on why Gen Y is a sad generation. Broken down, it seems that our ambitions and undeserved superiority make "regular" life feel inadequate. Is it true? You decide.

The Disconnection of Constant Connection

My generation moved from low-tech (or tech free) to high tech seamlessly. When I say "my generation" I recognize that there may be some debate about who falls into this group. I readily accept that Gen X ended in the 70's. The generation that came after (some say 77-94) is often called the Millenials. Although I was born in 1982, the idea of being group in with "Millenials" terrifies me.  Us early 80's babies have almost nothing in common with the early 90's babies. So, I suppose that makes me Gen Y, if that is such a thing.

Part of this differentiation comes from our experience with technology.  As an 80s baby, I remember when we first got the new and tiny internet, I got my first cell phone in college and avidly used Friendster and MySpace in my 20s before Facebook was ever born.

My generation grew up without these technologies, but were young enough to accept them as they were introduced. We took to cell phones, tablets and social networking slightly faster than our older siblings, but had a memory of walkmans, fax machines and typewriters that our younger siblings did not.

I was in middle school when I got hooked on AOL Instant Messenger, the precursor to a lot of the social media that I eventually got hooked on. As social websites evolved, I stuck with it.  I loved connecting with friends who had moved away, promoting my writing ventures, and using the hive-mind those applications collect to make decisions for me (What movie should I see tonight?), but recently I started to pull back. Perhaps it's the memory of what once was that has been causing me trouble.

When I close my eyes, I remember debates about movie characters that were not solved instantaneously with Wikipedia. I remember writing and receiving long emails and even paper letters full of details of friend's lives, rather than skimming their About Me sections, and receiving phone calls of good news rather than reading about a Relationship Status change on my cell phone while I wait for the train. I remember waiting to hear a song on the radio - and excitedly blasting it in the car - instead of just downloading everything I want whenever I want.

The happiness and energy that I used to feel being connected to so many people and their lives all the time has faded. The more I read about my friends and acquaintances online, the more distant I feel. My phone rarely rings. My emails are all deals and promotions. Friend post funny stories on my wall, instead of telling me in person. Happy hour plans are made electronically.

I think the recognition that this sort of constant communication leaves all of us out of touch is something Millenials might not be able to feel. They have always had everything at their fingertips. They have never gone 5 years without seeing the faces of their friends.  The memory of what once was makes this reality a little harder to accept. I think this is the feeling our parents (and their parents) have always tried to communicate to us with all of their "back in my day" stories.

The good thing is that getting back to the connections and communications that I remember isn't that hard. When I have a funny story to tell you, I'll call. When you see something online that reminds you of me, send it in an email. Cut out a magazine article and mail it. Let's ask each other how we are doing rather then gleaning each other's moods from our newsfeeds.

I'm a Gen Yer. That means that technology is a part of my life (a part that I love) - but that also means that I came of age during a simpler time. A time when people connected in person, and we shared our good news with our family and closest friends before we told everyone we've ever met with the click of a mouse.

Maybe by disconnecting a little we can all feel more connected.


This post from buzzfeed actually addresses this gap a little bit.

Labor Day Spring Cleaning

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The dust that lined the baseboards had been building its home in the quiet darkness for almost four years. It feathered in the humid summer as air forced its way around the curves and corners powered by a box fax across the room, but it never lost its resolve. On Labor Day, it let loose. It made its way into my nostrils and lungs, stuck to the skin of my sweat-moistened stomach as I dragged out piles of unmatched socks and empty shoeboxes from the depths of my almost walk-in closet, clad only in a neon yellow tie-died sports bra and basketball shorts, on another steamy Chicago end-of-summer day.

Marathon training had been the impetus of a 12-mile run on Saturday morning and a 16-mile bike ride on Sunday afternoon, but I am a rule-follower, and Mondays are rest days. Overwhelmed by the impotence of a Monday off of work with no run to run, I decided at some point in the early afternoon that my bedroom closet would be the day's project. I could write or draw dinosaurs (two actually purposeful activities), but I craved a physical activity maybe to avoid a mental one.

I went through my closet, hanger by hanger, and removed some of my favorite shirts, shoving them deep into a donation bag, feeling reckless and irritated at my lifelong nostalgia. I decided I was out of my sneaker phase, replacing four pairs of infrequently worn, seriously worn-in shoes with a few sets of high heels on the shelf above my head.

Sneezing and sweating, I cleaned.  The computer blared indie dance tunes from the front room and the cat stayed safely hidden away from the commotion. I made a new space for the shoes that lived mostly in the hallway, and the stack of wicking shirts that had found a home on the floor. I found coins and bobby pins and, for some reason, three cylinders of Smarties. 

I imagined moving to my next place, and a shared closet with my girlfriend that wasn’t overrun by my clutter. I imagined loving my home so much that I would care too much to somehow let delicious packs of pastel colored candies get loose and live in the shadows of my GAP collared shirts.

The Great Closet Clean of 2013 was part girl-who-can’t-sit-still, part physical exercise, and part ode to commitment. In the weeks that precede yet another birthday, I want to continue to grow. I want to prove to myself that I am not done evolving. I also don’t want to end up on an episode of Hoarders.

The Communication of the Dead - Westminster Abbey

Back-post from

15 June 2013

London

“The communication / of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living.” 

T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” 

The words that mark his memorial in Westminster Abbey.

It’s almost impossible to let go of my obsessive need to accomplish – to not waste a minute of time, to record every instance. This morning, I tried to shut it off. I let myself sleep until 930, mosey down to the common room for coffee and toast and relax a little.

My primary goal of the morning is a visit to Westminster Abbey, another site I disregarded on my original London excursion. Another day, another cathedral – this is London after all.

Rick Steves correctly advised me to chose the cash line (over the credit line) to get in the doors of this imposing building, but both lines moved surprisingly quick for a Saturday morning, just a couple years after the most recent Royal Wedding was held in this very space. (The first was in 1100!)

Entering the cathedral overwhelms visitors, as I myself do what each person has before me – touch my chest and let my jaw fall open.  It is stunning, and its place in British history cannot be overstated. For almost 800 years, this has been the site of nation-changing weddings, funerals and mention coronations.      

I’m not in the building for three minutes, barely getting my orientation, when I notice a wall plaque for Alfred Russel Wallace, a 19^th century British explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. Although a somewhat overlooked scientist, Wallace not only explored and described the flora and fauna of unknown regions of the world in the 1880’s, he also developed a theory of evolution independent of his contemporary Charles Darwin. Some suggest that Darwin was pushed to publish his On the Origin of Species primarily to beat Wallace to the punch. Although Wallace is buried in Dorset, as he wished, the plaque was placed in Westminster two years after his death, in 1915.

I’m still thinking about poor Wallace and the short-end he got in British history when I find myself standing on the stone marked for Darwin himself. I immediately wonder if Wallace’s scientist bros purposefully had his plaque added just a few feet in front of Darwin’s grave so he could be first at something. My hands shake and clench at the desire to break the rules and take a picture, but I can control myself. I’m honored and awed to be standing here and wish desperately that I could talk to the grumpy old Darwin and tell him what he means to me. I’m secretly glad that I skipped this stop when I was 19, because there’s no way it would have felt this special.

Nearby the rests stone of Charles Lyell, another scientist and contemporary of Darwin (a friend and mentor, really).  Among kings and queens, I also find a Isaac Newton, a brilliant dedication to William Shakespeare (who is buried in Stratford-Upon-Avon) and a memorial to T.S. Eliot, among other influential poets and writers. The list of rockstars who are buried or memorialized here would take up a whole post, but go ahead and check Wikipedia. 

Westminster Abbey is a place that can make you feel both tiny and inspired at the same time. To mingle with history in this close proximity really is to communicate with the dead. 

I Did Not Find The Steak That I Was Promised

While enjoying a proper pint at the Cat Tavern (I`ll give you three guesses why I stopped into this tavern), the smell of freshly fried fish and chips is pungent, but theres also a dog walking around, and you know how I like a bar-dog. There is no music for a while, and then there is Green Day. Perfect.

I refer to my beer as a "proper pint" because the glass which holds the beer is not the thick walled illusion pint from home. You know, that glass into which you could empty a can of Miller Lite and it would threaten to overflow? No, this is a proper pint of beer, in what I think of like as an extra-wide kitchen glass. The kind of glass that rich people drink lemonade from at big-hat backyard parties.

A Biker-looking dude with a beard that could be tucked behind his large metallic belt buckle advised my purchase when he eyed me scanning the tappers.

"`ere, I`ll `elp: You`ve got Guinness; Cider; rubbish; beer; beer; beer." 

I chose the Dophin Amber by Sunny Republic; because thats what he was drinking, and apparently was not considered to be rubbish.

My seat at the bar provides me with a direct view of the kitchen, where I can see an "INSECTOCUTER" which is exactly what it sounds like - a machine that makes bugs adorable. But, cute bugs or not, I`m happy that I brought my lunch with me from London to Salisbury.

this image is creepy looking due to user error. my apologies.

Yes, I traveled to Salisbury solely to visit a Tavern named for a cat, but Salisbury also happens to have a couple other amazing attributes like a bad-ass cathedral built in the early 13th century, and the best surviving copy (of 4) of the Magna Carta. Who knew?

Sadly, there was no steak.

The trip to Salisbury had been a success. The cathedral is absolutely stunning (for any of you Pillars of the Earth fans, this was one of the cathedrals that inspired the tale). For 800 years this building has stood, inspiring people to god and really making everything else in town look puny. That it houses one of the few remaining copies of the document which influenced all modern governments is just a feather in its buttress.

The massive grounds hug the cathedral walls, and allow for tourists and students from the Cathedral school to rest and enjoy lunch in the shadow of an eight century old building.

A historic cathedral, a priceless historical document AND a Cat Tavern? This was the start of a pretty good day!

post script: part of me wondered if Cat was short for Cathedral; but there was definitely a picture of a feline on the sign, and no sign of a connection to a church in the living room-like decor.

A Run Through London

14 June

You really see a lot more of a city when you get lost. In fact that's how Columbus discovered America, and how 20% of movie meet-cutes happen.  When my shoes were laced and my chrono set, I felt less like an American in London and more like a runner looking to knock out some miles. A painful stiffness in my neck, undoubtably from the awkward rest of a hostel bunk bed, and my chronic travelers dehydration (beer > water), told me immediately that the the run would be short. I just wanted to do two or three miles. I reminded myself that I could run as short or as long as I wanted. I was on vacation.

My beloved hostel sat on the south side of the Thames, very near the Westminster bridge which dead ended at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. As I rambled over the bridge with my short strides and soft footfalls, I imagined that this view - the iconic tower and the seat of the government- was a part of my daily run.

Bridge after bridge criss-cross the Thames like stripes across the back of a snake. From south to north, east and then south again, I ran. Navigational signs pepper the city, mostly at the locations of the bike share stations, known to some locals as "Boris" bikes for the mayor who procured them. I slowed to check the signs often and geared myself toward the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern museum.  As I approached the eerie smokestack that interrupts the south bank skyline from the converted warehouse that serves as the city's modern art haven, I burst out in laughter recalling my sister and I perusing its exhibits, realizing how much we didn't "get" modern art, on her visit to London while I studied here.

I ran along the cobbled streets surrounding the Globe, and peered through the metal gates in front  decorated with tiny sculptures of Shakespeare's greatest characters.

Figuring I could just weave my way back through the neighborhoods, rather than returning to the riverfront walk, turned out to be an error in judgement. Up and down and around tiny twisty streets, trying to move myself west, trying to avoid moving south, I ran.  Eventually, when I finally approached my hostel,  6 miles later, I felt like I could do anything.

There's A Reason Why It's Called That

14 June...continued...visiting my favorite thing on earth.

Exhausted and still stiff-necked, I debated heading back to the hostel to recharge as my train from Salisbury pulled into London's Waterloo. The hostel was so close, I reasoned, a little rest couldn't hurt. But, oh, it can hurt, I contradicted. What if I let the tired set in and never make it back out, wasting a half a day in London!?! Deciding without making a decision, I boarded the tube and headed out in another adventure.

There wasn't time left in the day to tour an entire museum, but I didn't need to. This was the perfect time to visit my favorite historical artifact in London, and maybe the world: the Rosetta Stone. It can be hard to comprehend the age or significance of a piece of art, or a historical monument, but the the first time I laid my eyes on the Rosetta Stone my mind was blown [insert hilarious visual of trendy "mind blown" gesture here]. This stone, which is actually a small portion broken off of a larger tablet, or Stella, contains a message from Ptolemy IV to the people of Memphis, Egypt in 196BC. It was discovered in 1799 many miles away from its original location. Scholars maintain that it was likely transported to be used in building - being a nice solid stone with some scribble on it- since it had outlived its original use, the way you write your list of bills to pay this month on the back of an unpaid parking ticket. The story of the creation, age and discovery of this ancient stone is cool enough on its own, but what historians were able to do with it takes the fricken cake.

At this time, the late 18th century, the brits were pretty enamored with the mysteries of Egypt. It was foreign and new, so different from their own world. The only problem was that no one had any idea at all what all those little signs and pictures on tombs and artwork were talking about. A lot of experts assumed that hieroglyphs weren't a language at all. Just a primitive communication tool - look, a picture of a bird! That means there were birds! But the Rosetta Stone changed everything. The message I mentioned that was carved on the stone? It was more complex than just a message. In the section of the stone that was found, the same message was written 3 times - to make sure everyone in town understood it (think "Caution Wet Floor! Cuidado Piso Mojado!" - it saves a ton of money on lawsuits). The three languages used were Greek, the language of government, Demotic, and hieroglyphs, which were pretty much out of style by then, but like I said, these folks were playing it safe.

What this means is that historians had a key, a legend for reading the hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone could only do so much on its own, it took supremely talented scientists 25 years to learn to read the language of the hieroglyphs, and then modern folks began to understand the mysteries of ancient Egypt, and to learn that the society had been an advanced culture, experienced in math and science.

This stone, this piece of carved rock that has been in the British museum for over two hundred years (I wonder what the gift shop was like then!) changed history, and we can see it, Up close (if you push through the "eh? A rock? I don't get it?) touch it (well, the perfect replica across the hall that's for geeks who really want to touch it!) and begin the understand that every day we are unlocking history - that's why we keep looking for keys.

Revisiting my old friend, the Rosetta Stone was a moving experience. It reminded me why I seek so many answers- because they are there if we look hard enough.

After the closest thing I can have to a religious experience, I was ready to take a break. The cafe looked lively and the sandwiches decent, so I parked myself on a bench on the museum's beautiful main floor and enjoyed dinner. It was nearing dark, and I had already accidentally purchased a Rosetta Stone laptop sleeve (oh the multiple levels of meaning!!) so it was time to head home. I happily returned to the hostel to enjoy a pint, and think about all the history I had lived that day.

*does it make more sense why the wildly popular language software is called Rosetta Stone now?

Arriving in the Homeland

13 June 13

The rickets set in immediately. 

London hasn't seen the sun since the Norman Invasion and this day is  as cloudy as the day it was born. Dressed in black and gray, I match its gloomy countenance, my foreignness only given away by my excessively American Northfaced apparel.

Relatively well rested for an overnight traveler, and anxious to get my journey in order,  the moment the airplane aisle cleared I politely passed my seatmate whose Willy Nelson braid shifted softly in the aftermath of my departure. 

Customs stood unusually empty for one of the busiest airports in the world, and the UK welcomed me with open arms. Well, the cold, soulless, Dementor-like, open arms of the TSA.  Off to the train! The Tube ticket booth challenged me. The warning I received stateside proved true when the unmanned ticket booth refused to accept my American credit card, heartily backed by failing financial institutions. Thankful I had obtained GBP from the bank at home, I obtained a fare card to central London with minimal shame.

As I remembered, London's tube is tiny but immaculate. One of many touristas, I cradled my bag tightly to my body and apologized emphatically to everyone it tripped. The Cockfosters-bound Picadilly line train travelled through central London (as we Americans call "downtown"), and with a single Transfer deposited me a mere 300 meters from my hostel. Now I only had to conjure the ancient and antiquated rules of the metric system to understand how far that was. (A little US-centric joke for you all.)

On the flight, I had decided that I'd skip "dinner" in favor of sleep, and indulge in the ready-made breakfast I'd be served before landing in London, instead. Unfortunately, my eyes we still open when dinner service came around, and it just didn't feel right ordering a vodka sprite but refusing the sustenance. 

I poked at my mystery meat, in its appropriately mystery sauce,  inhaled a creepily warm roll encased in plastic, and took my chances on a plastic wrapped brownie that turned out to be award-winning. 

The low-grade cell-phone-sized tv on the back of the seat in front of me ( god I feel 21st century and spoiled saying that) refused to show anything in my native tongue and I took that as a sign to try to sleep. I turned it off, and in my trademark in-flight move, I pulled my hood over my eyes and wedged myself into a "sleep position."  After a couple of hours of repositioning and fighting the sandman, my body gave in. By the time I roused, Willie Nelson was licking his breakfast plate clean and the bright light of the morning illuminated the interior of the aircraft.

It was 130 (1330) when I arrived in the neighborhood of the Walrus- my bar/hostel on the South bank of London- 30 minutes prior to checkin time. After the predicable near-miss with a London double decker bus, I planted at a coffee house and order an unsweetened Americano. I was grateful for the caffeine, but I can admit that I was using this coffee house for its wifi. The wifi situation seemed simple enough. I confirmed the existence of the wifi with a sign on the door, checked with the barista that there was no password, and attempted to log in and contact my family and friends. Except, I can't. I obtained the login information and a contact code, and they asked me to confirm my code by test message. The text message is not a luxury I have here in phone-free London. I give up on wifi, and go back to the Americano. Ironic. I know.

I relax and try to bask in the moment - I am in a coffee shop, in London, hearing the joyous cacophony of Brits going about their business unbeknownst that they are in the presence of an interloper. 

Although I surely stick out, I savor my ability to drink espresso like this Is my side of the pond.