change has come

Today I feel the same relentless surge of emotions that I felt after 9/11. Something equally unimaginable has occurred here in America, only this time it is deep pride and amazed awe that move me to tears. My tears are tears of joy. For the first time in my life I can say I am truly proud to be an American. I want to pledge allegiance to my flag again. I want to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the top of my lungs. Thank you, America, for finally choosing someone based on his promise and not on the color of his skin. Thank you for choosing hope over fear, words over war, and inspiration over desperation. I get tears in my eyes all over again when I see Obama's soft, glittering eyes on the cover of today's Arizona Daily Star.

Last night Michael said that he has not seen this kind fervor for a leader and his ideals since Bobby Kennedy in 1968. I have never had any faith in a political leader in my lifetime. Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, Bobby Kennedy...they are all pages in a history I took no part in. What heros have there been for my generation? My heros have all been writers who have challenged the myths of our America, who have inspired me to open my eyes, to question my own judgments, and to view others with more compassion and empathy. Now we will actually have a president who will, I believe, do the same. He symbolizes balance and a return to rational discourse. He represents us, a nation of mixed races, cultures, religions, and creeds.

I am inspired to write again. I am inspired to give back to my country again. Mr. Obama, you are the hero of my generation. May you be guided to serve as you have promised. May you fulfill that promise of change. May you and your family be protected from harm. I will be so proud to call you my president in 76 days.

one art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, bit it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~ Elizabeth Bishop, 1976



Loss is swirling through my head these days. How many things have I lost in my lifetime? And how much do I really miss those things? I have been fortunate thus far not to lose someone I love dearly, aside from the loss of my first love and my grandmother who died at 84. Those losses were inevitable and perhaps expected.

Right now I face the loss of a home I love dearly. I have always known that I would not live here forever yet I wasn't prepared to leave this home so soon. I keep reminding myself to feel gratitude for having been able to live here at all, for having my health and my family and a job that puts food on the table. There are worse losses than this. There are people who are suffering deeper losses: safety, freedom, shelter, ability to take care of oneself and one's family, nourishment, health. What are my losses in comparison?

I am thankful and I am grieving, too. I am grieving a loss that hasn't happened yet, thus I am not living in the present moment. Waves of fear are tossing me about like a raft on a turbulent sea. I have lost my equanimity. Perhaps my greatest comfort right now is knowing that this, too, shall pass.

the way of the typewriter

Booboo & Lulu

I've finally given in. I've pulled my last stubborn and trailing limb into the 21st century with the rest of me. I bought a new car. And not just any new car, but a hybrid.

I hadn't intended for this to happen—not yet anyway. Michael and I left home one Saturday morning for our usual ritual of coffee, breakfast, and driving around town scoping real estate, except this time we decided to change course and head to the car dealerships instead. Just for fun. Just to test drive a few cars and see what was out there. We came home hours later, exhausted, in two separate blue cars.

I had mixed feelings about buying a brand new car. On the one hand, Lulu (my '73 VW Bug) is a great car. She's fully paid for, runs great, is cheap to insure and maintain, and gives me little grief. She has air conditioning and a brand new CD/MP3 stereo system. And she's really cute. I feel that she accurately reflects my own identity: playful, adventurous, and outside-the-box.

The new Prius is great, too. It requires very little maintenance, gets great gas mileage, has lots of room and a usable cargo space, is eerily quiet, and everything works. She's basically the opposite of a classic VW. I've traded in personality for reliability and fuel-efficiency (as well as a big car payment!)

At the end of the first week with the Prius, I came home from work, threw myself on the couch and burst into tears. I had been wondering all week if I was doing the right thing. I had seen numerous blue Priuses all over town. One of them was even parked next to mine at the movie theater and it took me a second to figure out which was which. I realized I was now driving a rather unremarkable "normal" car. Then there was the hefty car payment and the fact that now I was actually in debt for something. (I've been 100% debt-free ever since I paid off my student loan last year.) Every day I would come home from work and see Lulu parked in the "guest parking" area, looking abandoned and forlorn. My fabulous little vintage car was going the way of the typewriter in a computer-filled world. I never thought a car could break my heart.

Michael was all patience and understanding. He let me cry and assured me that we could sell the Prius whenever we wanted. We could keep Lulu, too. He joked that we should name the Prius Booboo as in "Oops! What were we thinking?!"

In spite of my sentimentality, I'm very practical; it doesn't make sense to keep Lulu if I'm rarely going to drive her and I don't need her. It would be better for her to be with someone who would drive her and love her as I have.

I know it's time for a "real" car. A car that I can drive over mountains without wondering if she'll overheat. A car that lets me hear myself think. A car that doesn't smell like gas fumes and scorched dust. A car that is safe. A car with room. A car that will maybe carry kids someday.

I'm keeping the Prius and my identity and selling Lulu. I hope I can find her a good home.

epitaph

Or, she did nothing.

Yesterday, I read this post by Keri Smith, and thought YES! This is what I've meant all along.

I believe in doing nothing. Not doing nothing, as in vegetating on the couch with a bag of chips in front of the TV all day, but doing nothing, as in slowing down, savoring, experiencing, and not pushing to control, compete, manipulate and succeed in the American sense of the word.

As a child I was always very competitive and had everything mapped out for my future. I was an excellent student, usually getting straight A's on my report cards and liked by my teachers. When I grew up, I planned to become a marine biologist (so I could scuba dive all day), a pyschologist (so I could help people with their problems), an Olympic swimmer, and a writer.

I began swimming competitively at the age of 10, which required 6-8 hours of practice a week. Practices were fun at first, but then they became repetitive and gruelling. When I didn't place in the top three at several swim meets, I gave up. What did I want to be a champion swimmer for? What I loved was the feel of gliding through the water, the freedom of movement and weightlessness of it. I felt like a mermaid. I always loved being in the water, but once swimming became work, something I needed to do in order to win, I lost interest in swimming competitively. It wasn't fun.

When I went to college and told my advisor I planned to major in biology, she came up with an outline of courses I would need to take my first semester: chemistry, biology, calculus, and the required freshman humanities course. I balked, but gave it a try. After the first week of sitting through excruciatingly dull classes about numbers and chemical compositions and data, I dropped chemistry and calculus and signed up for a third-year Spanish literature class. I kept biology because I needed to study a science for one year, but I quickly discovered that I hated sitting in a lab for four hours and looking at squirmy blobs under a microscope.

My junior year, I declared myself a Literature major. I loved reading stories and I loved talking about them and interpreting them. I loved writing but didn't really love writing term papers. The idea of pressing forward with my studies to become an academic horrified me. I had no desire to narrow my focus to a specific genre or writer or theory. I didn't want to have to compete for a job in academia or deal with university politics and committees. Ugh. Too much hassle. Too much work.

I was drawn to jobs that allowed me to earn a living while creating a life. I had time to do the things I loved: explore my environment, discover beauty, write in my journal, take classes, laugh with friends, go hiking, read novels, ride my bike, paint, meet people, take photographs, dance, travel. I had no desire for jobs that would allow me to climb some kind of ladder to "success." Those jobs usually meant I would have to work long hours, wear a suit, write reports and sit in meetings for hours. For what? More money? More things? A sense of security?

It is so easy in our culture to get caught up in the drive for money and success. This is the way of capitalism, the way we have been taught and the way we teach our children. We believe that more is better, so we sacrifice being in the name of having. Our national past-times are shopping and watching television. In spite of advanced technologies that allow us to instantly connect with people anywhere in the world, we are so utterly disconnected from the people right next to us and the patch of earth we inhabit in any given moment.

This is something I struggle with: how do I live in this culture and not be a part of the rat race? How can I live simply, maintain my integrity, give back to my community, and be more attuned to nature and its cycles?

time for beauty

Birthday Bouquet from My Sister

Today is my 33rd birthday and all is well in my world if not in the world at large.

I found this article by chance and it resonated with me and how I try to live my life. The simple but profound question--Do you have time for beauty?--is one that I try to answer YES! to on a daily basis, but too often, I think I fail.

I think about how much I take for granted, how all too often I miss what is right before my eyes. This is why the Annie Dillard quote is one of the most inspiring for me; it's a reminder to keep my eyes open, to see the beauty in each moment, and the gifts the universe is offering for free.

Today I am 33. I am blessed with a husband, family, and friends who love me deeply. I am blessed with sunshine and flowers and cats yowling outside my window at 5:00 a.m. I am blessed with work that is meaningful. I am blessed with another day of living and seeing.

11 things i can't live without

(not necessarily in order:)

1. dance
   
2. meaningful relationships
3. sunshine
4. water
5. laughter
   
6. solitude
7. home
8. love
9. beauty
   
10. health
11. integrity
    

If I had to eliminate eight of them, one by one, which would be the first to go? Which three would I hold tight to?

There have been times in my life when I have lived without some of these by choice. And times when I had no choice but to live without them. (At least it felt that way.)

I suppose there is always a choice.

What surprises me is my own resilience. Knowing that if (or when) I must live without something I value, I will adapt.

how I discovered i was in the wrong major

Harder, Monica and Sativa Saposnek. "Observation and Analysis of Heart Rate in the Frog." Biology 101 Lab Report, Reed College (1992): 3.

I am mortified in retrospect that Sativa and I actually handed this in as our lab report.

And yet I remember how much fun we had writing this "Materials and Methods" section, how little we actually understood, and how much we hated analysing data and putting it into language as dry and tasteless as a salt-free cracker. Not to mention, we were at Reed—an environment which fed our intellects as it fueled our rebellion against them. We were learning how to wade through the boggiest theories and come out the other end with a decent paper in hand and our sides aching from laughter or tears or both. Unfortunately, we had to dissect a few frogs along the way.

This is the document that cemented our friendship. We had taken turns all night at her computer trying to write it, not understanding how to analyse and interpret our data correctly. We were exhausted. At one point, I broke down crying I was so frustrated and stuck. Sativa calmed me, ordered me to bed and took over. Sometime later, I awoke to her crumpled at the foot of my bed, stifling her own sobs. I stumbled to her side and burst into tears which sent us both into fits of screeching, crawling, hysterical laughter.

Somehow, we got the lab report finished and turned in on time. Somehow, we got a B on it. Somehow, we weren't thrown out of Bio101 for academic insolence. And somehow, I decided to major in Literature.

eulogy for loretta

Michael brought her home one sunny afternoon in March, 2002. He had been driving home when he passed her parked in someone's driveway with a FOR SALE sign in her windshield. He knocked at the door, took her for a test drive and offered the owner $1700 in cash.

I was standing in the driveway when he pulled up with a grin on his face. "Isn't she great?" he said, more as a statement than a question. She was 26 years old, had a cracked windshield, rimless headlights, no radio or A/C, and pink upholstery. She smelled like the '70s and gasoline. I wasn't too impressed, though she was kind of cute.

I drove her for the first time in a shopping mall parking lot with Michael beside me explaining her quirks as I repeatedly tried to get her into first gear and stalled her. I had to work to stop her and steer her. She had her own way of doing things. And she took her time.

I didn't have a car and soon claimed her as my own. I drove her, took care of her, and adorned her with color. Over time, a collection of little plastic animal heads ringed the windshield. A spillproof bottle of bubbles came to live wedged between the seatbelt release buckle and the driver's seat. The glovebox and dash displayed various magnets and a bright yellow sunflower. A strand of colorful beads and bells dangled from the rearview mirror beside the scapulario my mother gave me for protection, brought from Colombia and blessed in the Señor de los Milagros Basílica. A Marlboro matchbook I found proclaiming Even Communists Are Free to Smoke was clipped to the ashtray. Behind the backseat I carried some tools, a quart of oil, a sunflower umbrella, and some VW manuals I long ago gave up trying to comprehend.

I named her Loretta. If she were a woman, she would have been a fiesty waitress in a small-town diner wearing rhinestone cats-eye glasses with her name embroidered in flowery script on her uniform. She was the kind of car that had no pretensions about what she was: a simple old car with nothing flashy or fast about her, but solid and dependable. She embodied for me the essence of what the Japanese call wabi-sabi: the beauty of modest, imperfect, impermanent, and unconventional objects.

We had many adventures around town. People would notice her, ask me what year she was ('76) and then eagerly tell me their own "when I had a Bug" stories. Children would point and their mouths would become little "O"s and sometimes they would ask me shyly about the animals on the windshield. I received many smiles and waves and questions. I was flashed the peace sign and beeped at by other VW owners in a gesture of solidarity that only VW owners display to other VW owners. I suddenly belonged to a unique car culture vastly different from the one of high-tech convenience and speed I lived in.

And then one day I was rear-ended while I was stopped at a light, on my way to give a presentation for work. I was fine, but Loretta's engine box was crushed. My good friends came and rescued us both, towing Loretta back to my place on their trailer. For weeks I walked by her and she seemed to still be smiling at me, as if she knew I would soon be taking her to the shop to get her fixed. But the insurance company told me it would cost more to fix her than she was worth. How do you explain to an insurance agent what a car like Loretta is really worth?

I cleaned her out and said goodbye and the insurance company towed her away to their auto auction lot, where she would be auctioned off to the highest bidder who most likely would use her for parts.

She was exactly 30 years old when she met her end, though I don't like to think of it as her end. Pieces of her will likely end up in other old Bugs. And now I have my own "when I had a Bug" stories to tell at the gas pump.

Goodbye, Loretta. You were fabulous.