Singing Praises

From Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain:

"Deutsch and her collegues.... see absolute pitch, what ever its subsequent vicissitudes, as having been crucial to the origins of both speech and music. In his book The Sining Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen takes this idea further, suggesting that music and language have a common origin, and that a sort of combined protomusic-cum-protolanguage was characteristic of the Neanderthal mind. This sort of singing language of meanings, without individual words as we understand them, he calls Hmmm (for holistic-mimetic-musical-multimodal)-- and it depended, he speculates, on a conglomeration of isolated skills, including mimetic abilities and absolute pitch....

I was once told of an isolated valley somewhere in the Pacific where all the inhabitants have absolute pitch. I like to imagine that such a place is populated by an ancient tribe that has remained in the state of Mithen's Neanderthals, with a host of exquisite mimetic abilities and communicating in a proto-language as musical as it is lexical. But I suspect that the Valley of Absolute Pitch does not exist, except as a lovely, Edenic metaphor, or perhaps some sort of collective memory of a more musical past." 129-130

I suppose I do not really wish to journey back to the days of Neanderthal man, but to be able to experience absolute pitch and to converse as easily and emotively with music as with language... what a beautiful thing this must be!

black & white

A few nights ago my roommate and I were having a conversation. My roommate is “Asian” and I am “White, ” and this in itself is not a very interesting fact except that the conversation somehow came back to race.

A friend of C’s – a white male who attends the same prestigious university that we do – was trying to describe an event he had gone to recently. When the subject came to who was at this event, he mentioned that there were a lot of “ethnic” people there. Ethnic? Outraged, my roommate exclaimed: “Ethnic! Who does this guy think he is?” Startled by the strangely racist terminology she asked him if he meant by ethnic, to which he answered, “You know… “ghetto”… errr… hip-hop?”

Did he mean “Black” people?

My roommate, angry at his failed attempt to smooth over the existence of a race other than white informed him that he could have just said African-American or Black or if he was really so concerned about it, he could have said “Urban.”

But wouldn’t you say that I’m urban? I replied innocently. I live in an urban area – and after all, we live in Harlem.

She smiled – good point!

I could understand her feeling of indignation at the racial guffaw of this white friend of hers – after all, she has to suffer people calling her their “panda” – but regardless of her friend’s stupid comment, I did feel a little bit sorry for him. What was probably just an instance of ignorance got written off as racist because he is a white male. This is the problem with being white in a heterogeneous society: you constantly walk on egg shells around the issue of race.

Being female, I have a little bit more leeway than white guys when it comes to talking about minorities and marginalized people, but as a white girl who is interested in African-American studies and who has always had a diverse group of friends, insider-outside language is a problem. You can laugh (carefully) when your friends make “ethnic” jokes, but you cannot make them yourself because you will be considered racist just because your skin is white.

I tried to explain to C that she shouldn’t be too hard on the guy who is probably not a racist, but just a bit ignorant, and she agreed. After all, I added, just recently I was having a conversation with a classmate of mine, who happens to be Afro-Caribbean, and as we were talking about the city of Atlanta, she mentioned that she liked it because it has a big “ethnic” community. That’s right folks – a bona fide black person used the term “ethnic” to describe other black people. And that’s another funny thing – a white person and a black person trying to talk about Atlanta. It’s like talking about two different cities. How do I look her in the face and say: yeah, there are a lot of affluent black people who live in Atlanta and there is an amazing hip-hop scene – without coming across as just a little bit racist? It’s the same reason that my brother who lives there can’t go to a hip-hop club even though he likes the music: you just can’t.

Over the last week I’ve been reading a book called “Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa,” by Antije Krog. Krog is a white journalist who writes about the Truth Finding Commission in South Africa following the horrors of Apartheid rule, and her struggle with white guilt strikes me as characteristic of how many white people in U.S. (especially educated, metropolitan ones) often feel. Even for those like Krog who never participated in the racist hate crimes, they walk the road “with their own fears and shame and guilt. And some say it; most just live it. We are so utterly sorry. We are deeply ashamed and gripped with remorse. But hear us, we are from here. We will live it right – here – with you, for you.”

Perhaps one cannot quite compare the situation of white people in South Africa with those in the U.S., but I imagine that this sentiment of guilt will not die out with the closing of the truth commission. 100 years or even 1000 years may not be enough time to heal crimes against a race. And yet, like Krog, I wish we could get past the black and white and truly “make space for ambiguity.”

green

I believe in the power of people to change small things about their lives that have the potential for enormous impact.

This evening I read an article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times that said if you want to save the planet, it doesn’t matter if you change your light bulbs or buy a hybrid car – what really matters is that you get out there and vote for leaders who embrace “green” ideals. While usually I agree with Friedman and do believe that electing the right leaders is important, I cannot fathom that he actually believes that the small changes individuals make are irrelevant. What Friedman fails to acknowledge is that these seemingly small changes made by individuals are the result of a change in consciousness. It is the recognition that our lifestyle choices affect our environment. It is an expression of ethical intent. Electing so-called green leaders is senseless if people do not care enough about their beliefs to let it affect their individual choices.

Moreover, Friedman seems to underestimate the power of trend-setters and peer pressure to change people’s actions. Personally, I don’t know that I would have had the motivation to become a vegetarian if so many of my friends had not already forged the way. Their example showed me that it was not an impossible task. They taught me of the environmental and economic reasons for vegetarianism. And I raise awareness of vegetarianism as an option each time I go out to dinner with someone. Indeed, even my most ardent meat-eating roommate has come to agree with the rational of reducing or eliminating one’s meat-intake.

In the last year I have gotten rid of my car and replaced it with public transportation. I’ve replaced my light bulbs with energy efficient ones. I’ve started buying most of my produce at local farmers markets. And I continue to not eat meat with the exception of fish on occasion. While I cannot claim to be a perfect environmental citizen, I’ve taken intentional steps as an individual to change my lifestyle, not so much because I believe that they are going to drastically change the environment, but because it is an expression of my belief in being an environmentally responsible individual. If Mr. Friedman wants people to vote green, they’re going to have to believe in it first.

Yesterday's Yesterday on Special Today

Today is the way I like to begin things, because today is when most things begin. Today I got up in the morning and it was about to rain. And in today there is always all of yesterday and all of yesterday’s yesterday. All of my yesterdays and all of my parents yesterdays here today. Then again none of them. Today is the way I like to begin things because it’s always today when you start out to do anything. Today I got up and I walked to the subway station at 137th street and I took the number 1 train to work where I didn’t really feel like working at all and where the work I did do was denigrated by a tired old man who ought to go take a nap every once in a while.

In the middle of work I got up and walked to class in an oddly shaped room in a building that is not really a building, but an extension. And in this extension is where they house all the marginal studies having to do with race and gender and memory. In this class led by two people who are married but have different last names we tried to get our minds around what it means to be living in the post-memory of the Vietnam War, and I found myself telling the story I’ve told before about having two uncles. One uncle who was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War and one who was a Conscientious Objector and had long hair. I told them how the one uncle, the one who went to fight, wrote a Conscientious Objector letter for the other. And I told them how my mother protested the war. And I told them about our family email list where the emails fly right and left and how no matter what the email is about it’s always a little bit about Vietnam.

Today in my mind were all the images and all the words of all the films I had been watching all week. All about The Fog of War and about Vietnam on tv. And then suddenly it hit me that when the one uncle – the one who fought – continuously sends out angry emails about why we should be outraged that someone would call General Petraeus, General Betray-us, and when he accuses the rest of the family over and over again of not supporting the troops, this is really about his feelings that we have not supported him. His family did not support him and the war he risked his life in.

Despite the startling realization this week that I actually knew very little of what the Vietnam War was about and why we were fighting it, it permeates my everyday life and my relationship with my family in very real and sometimes emotionally-trying ways. So, today I get up and go to work and I go to class and I get drenched by the cold October rain and I think about Vietnam and realize that I think about Vietnam every day in real ways as I stand in the shower and try to breathe out the frustration that I’ll never be understood by one of my uncles and that trying to talk to him about anything that matters is fruitless and that I should just settle for pictures of his grandkids.

I should settle for the pictures of the grandkids and hope that by the time they’re old enough to really realize what’s going on in the world around them that the country they live in will have put an end to petty wars that bring up all the other wars in which people who are still living have fought. Because truly, it’s not fair to anyone and we ought to know better by now.

flesh wound

Apparently a gunshot rang out, but I was not around to hear it. Instead I came home to police tape all the way around the corner of the building. At least 5 police cars. An emergency police armored vehicle, an investigator in a broad-shouldered gray blazer and a woman in a pink mumu half shrieking at me that a person on the first floor of our building was shot in the face.

It was a Sunday afternoon.

They let me in through the front door ("do you live here?") and warily I walked into the building whose air seemed too exposed to sunlight. Strange. Hollow. And exposed. "There's no reason to worry." The investigator said to no one in particular as I walked past in disbelief. "A contained incident." But was it? A man walks right out the side door that I walk out each and every day and gets shot in the face in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon... He's going to "make it" they say. They haven't caught the shooter, and earlier that day I'm approached by the same strange anorexic girl I encountered a few days previous. A white woman about my age claiming, demurely, that she is a model thrown out by her boyfriend and she needs money for a cab to an audition. All of this here in my neighborhood where I'm never panhandled by anyone, black white male female or otherwise.

Even though I know there is nothing I can do about the situation and that worrying does not help the matter, I've spent most of the day in silent dread of walking through that side door, and my only small comfort is that the police and investigators have remained here all day. I imagine the many ways a bullet might graze a man's face such that he would still live. His flesh hanging off his face like raw meat. The meat-like nature of my own leg that would incite a dog to lunge out and bite it. The decay that a bruise conveys on that same leg - and on the peach I ate at lunch in Riverside Park.

Tomorrow is my 25th birthday and I wonder half-heartedly if this means that I am getting old. I look at my face in the mirror and wonder what it will look like when I am old, just as I used to wonder as a girl what I would look like as a teenager... knowing that at least my eyes will stay familiar to me if nothing else does.

A Typical Day In Harlem

As I'm walking up Broadway with my ice cream cone, enjoying the blossoms and the tulips and my new shoes...

Man on the street: "Hey mama! That ice cream sure looks good! Can I taste?"

Me: "I'm not your mama."

Man: "Well, you could be."

On Religion

Although I usually detest seeing theater by myself, out of a sense of duty to a fellow producer, I went to see a play – or rather, a theater essay – called On Religion. I’ll admit that was immediately wooed by the notion of a “theater essay,” being particularly fond of the essay form in general, and I wondered how a play would perform such a thing. I was reminded of the traveling religious plays that were popular during the middle-ages and Renaissance. These plays were meant to both instruct and inspire religious feeling, and as I understand, they were quite entertaining. So, if we think about the play as a modern re-imagining of something like the passion play, On Religion did not disappoint.

I could tell you about the basic plot, I suppose, but plot takes a secondary role here. There are four players: a mother who is professor and a naturalist (not an atheist, she says), a father whom we can only call a post-modernist and a secular jew, a son who has decided that he is Christian and wants to become a priest (but whom I’d prefer to call a pragmatist), and a young woman who is going to have his child but has not agreed to marry him. The son dies, or has died. The mother grieves and does not grieve. But mostly, they talk around the kitchen table or conversely lecture and preach from the same podium. And by setting the audience on all four sides of the stage, one immediately feels as though she has pulled a chair up to the table. And in this way, it does engage you on that personal, intimate level of discussion like an essay does, slipping you in and out of different perspectives. Here we are. All together. Having a discussion on religion.

While pragmatism has certainly been on my mind a lot these days, I felt its presence most intensely in this “essay,” which is rightfully a piece of criticism that is also a performance. Although I initially felt most at home with the professor-mother’s arguments against religion and its divisiveness, I very soon understood how her son could react against his mother’s radical empiricism in favor of something else – especially when he sides with the atheists and makes the argument that there is no such “thing” as God, because God is not a thing… and also when he makes the very Rorty-esque argument that religions are like languages. We would never say that one language is more right than another language – they just offer different and unique ways to say the same thing. The son (Tom) is a pluralist. To him, religions are merely languages. In a turn that reminded me very much of William James, religions have value in that individual people are able to make use of them.

Indeed, in a modern world where “love” is deified and embraced, how can we deny religious feeling? Or are both defunct and empty – is kindness (an action, and not a feeling) the only thing we can count on? The play unfolds these questions subtly over the course of 2 hours, and I cannot get them off my brain… Not because they are fundamentally new questions, or ones I have not heard before, but because the way the play asked them without forcing answers. Leading the audience through the thought process of them, suggestively. I would compare the play toI Heart Huckabees, except that I feel like that might be an insult. Huckabees does an admirable job of leading the viewer through a series of existential exercises, but in the end forces an answer that feels like a non answer. It’s jokey and ironic and almost trivializes the investigation you’ve just been through. But On Religion does not do that.

Likewise, it does not take itself so seriously that one spends two hours contemplating the hopelessness of asking such questions. The father, for example, whose experience taking ecstasy is about the closest he has come to a religious experience, has a post-modernist sensibility that everything is ok as long as it makes you happy. And even the mother, superbly played by ex-punk rocker Marguerite Van Cook, conjures up a few blissful moments of neurotic hilarity. And in this sense, the secondary “family drama” allows for the play to act like a play instead of series of lectures and debates, which it more or less is.

And now, as is usual when I try to write about a piece of art that has moved me, I find that there is no replacement for having experienced it first-hand. Reminding me, as they play did, that cultural criticism is perhaps most effective when performed and not written in the dry tomes of a blogger/critic.

an earth day thought

I don't really drink soda all that often, and when I do I rarely pay attention to that strange almost undetectable scribble on the top of the can where it tells you the CRV value in particular states. For a moment, I was bitter thinking that this can is worth twice as much in California as it is in New York, until I realized that I could not remember the last time I took anything to the recycling center, if I'd ever done such a thing at all.

And then I remembered the recycling machines that used to be out in front of the PW Supermarket near my house in San Jose. I had completely forgotten them, but suddenly I could hear that distinctive, shimmering noise the machines made as they shredded cans and 2 liter bottles. I could hear the change pile up in the coin return, and my mom taking us for ice cream afterwards. In this memory, it is always summer. Blindingly summer.

As a kid, I felt very strongly about the importance of recycling and wrote poems about how we needed to save the earth. I also felt very strongly that things such as leprechauns and fairies were in danger of becoming extinct, but now I can't remember if their extinction was a product of our destruction of the earth, or my own growing awareness that they might never have existed in the first place. But that's another story.

I wonder now who is getting the money from my cans when I stick them in the recycling bag down in the basement, and I think of all the ice cream these cans could buy if only I could shred them in those machines out in front of PW. If those machines were still there...

Anxiety

Anxiety is one of those things I never will quite comprehend. It comes upon one suddenly. It grabs you and it pulls you down toward the center of your body. Toward your beating heart and suddenly you can hear your breathing in your ears. The blood courses through your veins with impatient vibration (I can feel it in the balls of my feet). It hums. And today I felt it as the phone rang and rang and rang at my parents house in Atlanta. No one picked up. Not even the answering machine. And when my mother picked up her cell phone, it was "hi sweetie... oh well... i'm in the hospital..." long pause "oh well, you know, i thought i was having a heart attack, but i didn't want to call and worry you because everything's alright... we don't really know. i think it was just a bad panic attack, that's all..."

But now what's making my heart beat in my ears is a sort of dread that I'm not being told the whole story. She sounds too cheerful like the time my parents told me weeks after the fact that our dog had died. They didn't want to spoil my vacation, they had said. But it was dreadful being left out that way. And I remember how I could feel the inside of my skull tingling as though it were hollowed out when they told me.

After we said our goodbyes I tried to go on with my day, but it's so cold outside and the rain makes it so dreadfully dark. A thousand terrible possibilties flooded my brain. I just wanted to be near someone and there was no one to be near to. My apartment empty and filled with the dull light of a lamp half burnt out. T asked me recently if I ever get lonely here, and I do. But today was unbearable, and all it did was rain and rain.

Everything is Complicated

At least, that's the name of the song by my good friend Scott Alexander. If you didn't see my cameo performance with Scott at the Sidewalk Cafe back in March, you can check us out on YouTube or at Scott's new website: http://www.scottalexandermusic.com/

The Coincidence

I cannot think of anything that I love more than a good coincidence. There’s something about the chance occurrence or accidental personal connection that fills me with immeasurable joy and the sense that all is right with the universe. I want to believe in coincidences more than I want to believe in reason or logic, because I think there is a part of me that believes that the random is more precise and more perfect than anything I could pre-divine.

These coincidences usually occur only when circumstances don’t seem to be going my way. Two weeks ago I stood outside the doors of a small club where my friend was already inside and the music was already playing and I was told that there was no chance that I would get in. Instead, five minutes later I followed Natalie Portman inside. Then, as I shimmied my way into the unfortunate corner where T was standing, and sipped my beer and swayed ever so gently to this girl-trio’s subtle melodies, I realized that I was watching Nora Jones since back up vocals for a singer-songwriter I had never even heard of before this night. A beautiful young woman named Sasha Dobson, who wore a gold bird around her neck, and a guitar over her shoulder.

This would have been enough. A night of almost-perfect music that I wasn’t planning on and almost didn’t see. And two celebrity sightings. But the next day as I googled this girl, Sasha Dobson, in hopes of prolonging those melodies in my ears, I learned that she grew up in Santa Cruz and is the daughter of Smith Dobson – the man who taught my brother jazz piano lessons as a child, and just a few years ago was killed in a terrible car crash. I spent at least one afternoon drinking tea in their living room with her mom and mine. This musician who I almost didn’t see play with Norah Jones in New York!

This discovery kept me mesmerized for days. I couldn’t help telling everyone I ran into, even though I knew that scenario could hardly be as entertaining to anyone but me. It was exasperating. I told it too fast. And people said: “That’s great Jess.” It’s an empty, if considerate response. After all, it’s my coincidence and not theirs.

All I can say, I guess, is that you ought to listen to Sasha Dobson, even if not by chance

how you know it's here

For the last week or so I've been starting to wonder about fall. How do you know when it's here? I've been told that I've never really experienced a real fall before, and I've been told that it's going to happen soon. It will be Autumn in New York, just like the song, and the air will ring cool and bright like little bells. I keep looking for little clues everywhere, and then I'm never sure. There were pumpkins in the market last time I checked. Candycorn blazes gold, orange, and white in my hands. Tiny fangs when I want them. But these things might just be incidental. They have these things in California and that's how I would know that it was fall... they're heralds of an invisible change.

But tonight for the first time I heard it, walking up 145th with my plastic drugstore bags. The leaves on the sycamore trees are still green, but at night when the breeze blows through them you can hear their brittle melodies. Pffffffffffffffff tc tc tc tc tc tc..... Shhh-c-c-c-c-c-c-shhhhh...

And that's how you know it's here.

hot sand in the wound

I’m lightly dusted in dried salt water and I don’t want to wash it off. My clammy hair sticks to my head and I want it to stay that way. At least for a little while longer. I want to bring back all that was today and all that was yesterday and to hold it for an instant. And when I feel the wound, I want to rub hot sand in it.

There is nothing better than this moment. We live in paradise, I murmur to myself. Lauren and Arun can hear me. We hold our feet up out of the water, laughing, and let the waves rush toward us. Over us. It’s easier to stay in the water than to get out of it. As I let myself edge back to shore I am dashed upon the rocks, sucked under, and then dashed upon the rocks again. It’s easier to stay in the water. Arun comes out to me and offers his hands. His feet are already cut by the rocks, so he walks out on the rocks again. Try rubbing hot sand in the wound – that will make it better, he says. It’s true. It’s rubbing the sand out of the wound that is the problem. It’s easier to stay in the water than to get out of it.

Blind Date

So I’ve been thinking (which I tend to do when I’ve had a lot of caffeine), and I’ve decided: never again. No more blind dates. Before I even opened the door, I could see his balding head through the window, and when he turned around it wasn’t much better. 31. works in finance. balding. belly. white Volvo. And as I write these words I realize that this is superficial of me. Unkind, even. He is a nice… man… and I am sure that he could be a choice candidate for some… woman… of a certain age. Of course, age has nothing to do with it. I know people in their 30’s who are nothing like him, who are a whole lot more like me, and for whom age is more of a state of mind. And he has let himself age.

I suppose I should preface this by informing you that I was set up by my boss, who hardly knew me when she made the match. The awkwardness of this situation need not be mentioned. She’s my boss. She meant this as a compliment. It is not as though I have a boyfriend or some other excuse to keep me from dating “nice men.” So I acquiesced.

Yet the whole time I was out with this “nice man” all I could think of was: is this the kind of person she thinks I go for? is this the kind of person that she thinks would be right for me? is this the kind of person I am supposed to be dating? because if this is the kind of person I ought to be looking for, forget it. it’s not worth it.

And as I mused over these questions, I was reminded why I don’t date.

As we pulled up in front of my house at the end of the evening, he started to unbuckle his seat belt and edge toward my seat (his hand sliding behind the head rest), but soon enough I’d popped out the door, waved, thanked him for dinner, and mumbled something about having a nice time. It was a blatant escape – and one I hope he understood.

The next day at work when my boss asked me how it went, I told her politely that I think we are in “very different places in our lives,” which roughly translates to, “he’s too old for me what were you thinking?” But I could never have said that and wouldn’t have wanted to.

People always say that even a bad date is good because you get practice and learn what you like and dislike… but I only have so many days left in Los Angeles, and in the end, I’d much rather spend time with a friend.

One week to the next

How did this happen? In precisely one week I will be in New York, and suddenly everything is scattered all over the floor again, ready to be blown away by the slightest whimsical breeze. A bin full of magazines. Clean laundry half folded. In three weeks I have gone from dashing down Olympic on foot to a terrifying temp job, to sleeping-in and wandering into a familiar office where there are always dogs and music, to laying awake at night wondering how I am ever going to make a decision about school when three weeks ago it wasn’t even a prospect.

Every little thing in my house weighs down upon me. How will I move it? Where will it go? And if I can’t take it with me, how will I get rid of it? How can I get rid of it? Books. Boxes of letters and postcards. Gifts from ex-boyfriends. A tennis racquet I’ve hardly used and a Casio keyboard with one broken key. A dozen pictures in frames. Maybe I just get rid of the frames.

And somehow, as all these things are blowing around me, I know that it does little good to even think about “things” when it is unlikely that my current circumstances will bear any resemblance to my situation three months from now. In the meantime, I think I will throw away my cd cases, and maybe the picture frames too. And if anyone wants a bookcase come August, let me know… but don’t expect my answer not to change.

Here Fishy Fishy

Wednesday, my boss calls me in to her office. No. Half yells, half whines at me to come into her office is more like it.

"Here," she says, handing me a small green net attached to a stick and glancing toward her large bulbous fish tank. I know this cannot be good.

"A few of the fish have died," she stated matter-of-factly. "I need you to scoop them out and I'll hold the bag."
I looked at her with a tight-lipped bemused smile on my face. Surely she was kidding. But then she jostled the bag a bit and I realized she was definitely not joking.

"Um. Ok." I replied rolling up the sleeve of my sweater. It was a deep tank, the fish were lodged in the rocks at the bottom, and my little green stick only reached so far, so I plunged my arm into the bowl.

As I scraped the net among the rocks to dislodge the fish, it began to disintegrate into mushy fishy blobs. Oh god, oh god, oh god... Swishing the net around - grasping at the floating fish bits - I had to turn my face away from the bowl. It was too horrifying. I slapped the net against the plastic bag to try to free what remained of that sad little fish. She laughed. No... she cackled.

"Ok," She said, "There are two more..."

And this is what I am being paid for.

ha ha

In response to yet another disappointing exchange with the mouse (while on the phone and pumping gas at Arco)...

Mom: Well, you never know. Miracles happen.

Me: I don't believe in miracles. I just believe in hard work that leads to nothing. It's meaningless.

Guy in a suit who is standing behind me: (laughs)

Small Victories

Homeless and Unemployed. Just last week this title seemed an inevitable one, and it is not the sort of title a UCLA grad expects herself to be facing. Yet, there I was – staring at an eviction notice with one hand on my hip and the other in an empty pocket. When “homeless and unemployed” is staring you in the face, even the smallest victories don’t seem so small. Sunshine on Thursday seemed like a sign from the gods.

I’d become terrified of things like the mail and the telephone. The mail brought eviction, rejection letters from graduate schools, and have you seen me? notices. The phone rang with news that the job I had been offered at Disney was being held captive because of ridiculous employment restrictions surrounding my internship. And the thing is, I can handle the uncertainties of the job search. I can even handle rejection letters from graduate schools. What I can’t handle is having things stolen from me which are rightfully mine! Things that I like and enjoy and appreciate. Things like my house and my job.

But Thursday, the sun came out (small victory No. 1). Inspired by the sun, I went to the Farmer’s Market where a nice florist gave me and Lauren pretty pink roses just because we looked cute eating our crepes cross-legged on the sidewalk. Then, I managed to secure a temp position for at least a month, finally got through to Disney’s gatekeepers (i.e. HR), and best of all, I got word from our landlord that he would be able to extend our lease until August 1st! The Bentley House has been saved!

I suppose next week, the mailman could bring more rejection letters, and the phone could ring of no luck at Disney… but I’ll keep my fists up in front of my face. I’m ready to swing back.

The Georgia Journals

Welcome to Georgia. Land of the free, home of the endlessly entertaining/slightly disturbing kitch. I've been here in the red state for about a week visiting my family as I bide my time "between jobs," and I have to say, Georgia is every bit as strange and delightful as I could have hoped. In an attempt to convince me that Georgia is cool, my brother decided we should head to Athens to check out the record stores and cool shops. Along the way, I was truly blown away by the above image - the American flag fluttering above a truck dealership... and in the background, a billboard simply stating "Jesus." God-themed billboards seem the thing here. One of my favorites: "Don't make me come down there -- God."

Since it was just Mom and me during the week, we used the time to explore down-town Atlanta. We went to a mall that was very much like the Beverly Center, visited the High Museum of Art (which has a great collection of American 19th & 20th century art), and puttered around Little 5 Points - a sort of Melrose cum Haight-Ashbury with all the requisite thrift shops and indie coffee houses. By accident, we wandered into a "feminist" book store run by a stern young woman with short buzzed hair.

We're the only ones in this tiny bookstore and I know the girl at the counter can hear us.
"... hey did you see that they have that book Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. She goes and visits all these sites associated with presidential assassinations," I say to break the silence.
And as the words still hung in the air, I turned around and the short-haired woman was holding the book. Very eerie.
"Here's the book you were just talking about. It's a bestseller right now." She shoves the book in my hands. We very quickly paid the book and were on our merry way.

The book purchase proved to be the perfect companion for our two day trip to Savannah, where we would wander amongst the old colonial squares and live oaks swagged in Spanish moss. Vowell perfectly captures the strange nuances of historical tourism and somehow makes presidential death funny. She's the kind of writer who makes you feel smarter - who makes you feel like part of her freakish vacation. It was precisely the kind of vacation I needed from my own vacation.

On Tybee Beach (near Savannah), I discovered confederate boogie boarding. Wow. Savannah is also a great place to taste all those Southern culinary delights you always dreamed of. Things like black eyed peas, collard greens, macaroni & cheese, and buttered green beans... Needless to say, Georgia is a hard place to be a vegetarian, as even the vegetables are cooked with meat. I've tried my best. And of course, a trip with Mom would not have been complete without a visit to a graveyard.

My southern trip may soon be coming to a close, but at least tomorrow we have Waffle House to look forward to.



Things that are awesome about Georgia:
- Sweet Tea
- Ho-cakes
- Dudes wearing overalls

The Stomach Flu and Me

On Monday morning, I awoke to a war zone. It all began when army tribes of paranoid parasites (with isolationist tendencies) invaded my stomach and swiftly began evicting all occupants of its newly claimed territory. Out the front door, out the back door – take your pick. As evidence of their paranoia, they even launched a full-scale evacuation when there was nothing left to evacuate – leaving me lying on a cold linoleum floor and wondering how I had not foreseen their terrorist plots.

Diplomatic measures were futile. Offerings of peace (tomato soup and saltine crakers) were flat out rejected and eschewed violently. In a panic, the body quickly shut down and meekly told me, “We’re giving up. The stomacher tribes have taken all of our major ports, incapacitated our energy supplies, defeated our strongest defenses… It’s just too much for a body to handle!”

“Well, that’s not good enough,” I said to the body. “Think of something else!”

I was angry. To think that the body was so easily cowered by one tiny tribe! The body seemed annoyed, but agreed with the stipulation that I would not do anything to irritate the colonizing tribe.

So I did not eat. I did not move.

I could hear the rumbling murmurs of the stomacher tribes, who were obviously unnerved by the sudden quiet. As night began to fall, however, the body unleashed its new defenses, and the weather began to change. As temperatures rose, all organs had been told to hold their positions. But the brain refused to comply.

In the darkened depths of my room, torn between sleep and awake, I was led into a hellish blaze of hallucination where I was commanded by invisible forces to reconstruct a seemingly un-constructible red Lego castle that lay in pieces at my feet. Surrounded by flames, I struggled to fit the pieces together, but there was no end in site. The castle could not be put together. Oh, what phantasmagorical night visions!

As dawn approached, and temperatures cooled slightly, I was withdrawn from the flames. All seemed silent. Had the invading tribes deserted? Were they killed by the heat? There was no response. For many hours, the body and I sat silently in a dull yellow haze – numb, uneasy, and empty.

But then, the rumbling murmuring returned, and in a sudden blaze of inspiration, the body turned its furnaces full throttle. War had begun again.

Why is this happening to me? I cried weakly. No body answered and nobody cared.

At the moment when I thought all was lost and that I would be forced to stay home from work a third day, and worst of all, have to seek a doctor (who could scarcely understand my difficulties, I am sure)… a thick, tropical rain came. Only, it wasn’t the kind of rain I expected. And the body laughed.

“We only thought they had usurped all ports. But we had forgotten that they could be forced out of the millions of tiny pores of your skin!”

I looked down at my shiny arm, searching for the stomachers in retreat, but I could not see them.
“No,” the body said, “You cannot see them – and with any luck, you never will."