A Picture's Worth a Thousand Feelings

The weekend before I left Boston, I wandered around my favorite stationary store, and was utterly captivated by one postcard. It was not flashy or funny or any of the attributes that usually make me linger on an image. But as I tried to pull myself away, to look around the store, the postcard kept drawing me back, like a sad, grey magnet. On the back of the card it revealed to be a German company. I took it as a sign from the universe, and finally shelled out the 70 cents to purchase it. 

Now it hangs on my wall, amidst places I've lived or visited, cards from relatives or friends, and a few inspirational quotes. And it sticks out a bit--where the other images are charming/happy/funny/inspirational and/or hold dear memories, this one stands as an odd homage to uneasiness.  

I don't know exactly what it is about this little old woman that so stunned me. Obviously some macabre imagery--impending death, mortality and the unknown that is the end of a life-- yada yada yada. But I don't think that's what was drawing me in.

Something about the grey unknown in this woman's view--it's terrifying, but also beautiful. This sort of sublime awe in the inevitability of being completely wrapped in, drenched in, overtaken by future ambiguity.

The future. And the unknown.
Two very scary prospects for humans all around. They're sort of one in the same. I think we'll always be afraid of the unknown and of the future, and I think maybe we can embrace the fear. Dive in, as this brave old woman is on the brink of doing.

What do you think? Is this image as beautiful to you as it was to me? 

...is this a date?

Back in September, I meet a cute boy.
I mention in passing my lack of food, living in a dorm.
He says he has plenty, and invites me over for dinner.

On my way to his place,  I call a friend, "I'm not sure whether this is a date or not... do I... ask..?"
She says, "Oh no, you'll know when you get there, I'm sure."

When I arrive, he's been cooking.

So he's making dinner... I think this is a date. 

Then I walk into the next room, (living/dining room) where there is a small, fold-out table, and his roommate is sprawled out on the couches, playing a basketball video game.

Roommate's here. ok. not a date. 

I go back into the kitchen and grab the salt, contribute some small-talk,etc. then we carry the pasta into the living room, where the aforementioned roommate had draped over a table cloth and dimmed the lights.

He must have asked his roommate to set a mood. Ok, this feels like a date. 

We sit down to eat, he looks around for a moment,  a little confused, then says, "why is it so dark in here? Someone must've dimmed the lights. Odd."

Not a date! Not a date!

 "Hold on, one sec" Then he gets up to turn the sliding lever to florescent full-blast.

The rest of the evening was a series of conversations where I was trying to decipher whether or not he was flirting with me. Couldn't tell. the entire time.

We ended up quite good friends out of the deal. But it wasn't until most of seven months later when I asked him about that particular evening that I discovered that he really didn't have any idea either.




I felt very much like Fraiser Crane in this valentine's day episode

Dante's 10th Circle of Hell: Moving

I often wake up in a small panic. Suddenly air will fill my lungs, like I've just gasped freedom from underwater. And my heart will start, like it just got shocked back into life by a defibrillator. Sometimes it's because I'm worried about something: an upcoming test. missing a train or flight. Sometimes I'm in the middle of a stressful dream: a new favorite reoccurring charmer, where I bite into an apple, and then my teeth stay in the apple (either I'd be a very interesting patient to psychoanalyze, with deep psychosis--or these dreams are the result of my mother's loving reminders to go to the dentist...)

Today, I woke up, all pulses racing at the moment of consciousness: Today is moving day. 

On top of the logistical nightmare that is moving--no matter how much you prepare, organize, stack, purge, label, it's always harder than you expect it to be. Right?  It's hard to explain how much more emotional moving is than you think it will be.

The littlest things become so sentimental. So hard to throw away. Ticket stubs, syllabi, brochures. 

That pile of handouts and readings you kept with the intentions or hopes of actually reading them. Or referencing them. That name tag you got at that conference where they printed your name with cool letters. You don't remember anything else about the conference, but you kept the name tag. Do you keep it now? Does this mean you keep this stupid little plastic name tag forever, cause you can't bring yourself to get rid of it now?  

Sentiments wrapped up very nicely in this beautiful number from the musical "Ordinary Days":

"Home is where the heart is" yes. 100% agree. But also, home is a little bit where your stuff is. And while your stuff is all in transition, you feel a little..well... home-less. belong-ing-less. It took a while to make that place feel more than just the space that housed your things. It took time to build memories, to enjoy returning there at the end of the day, to host people in your bubble. It wasn't easy to make that home, home. And now you're leaving it, you're moving.

Onto something else. Probably wonderful. But whatever is next is not quite home yet.

Ugh. moving is the worst.

To Perm or Not to Perm

I have straight hair. But not just straight hair. After I wash my hair, if I don’t touch it, it dries looking like a soggy flop of al-dente spaghetti. Yellow and straight and boring as a pile of dead strands of protein (which is literally what hair is, but who wants it to look like that?)

If I do nothing, it dries like fur of a wet Australian shepherd.

When I take the time to care, I have to mousse, flip, blow, diffuse, dry, fluff, spray…it’s a whole ordeal, just to make it look like human hair, and not a flat, stringy mop. I’ve always been jealous of the curly-haired girls. (Ya ya, the grass is always greener… we all want what we don’t have, yada yada. I know. But really, they have it better.)

Lately, the liberal, hippie, Harvard feminist in me has cared less about doing my hair. Claiming to value the pursuit of authenticity, but really just valuing the extra sleep more, there were a lot of ponytails and buns in graduate school. 

But I’ve always clung onto the dream to step out of the shower, and have hair that dries looking like this…

I wanted that effortless, authentically gorgeous hair. Now was the time. I became desperately obsessed with the idea of pumping in a pound of harmful chemicals to rip apart my hair’s natural bonds. All in the noble pursuit of authentic beauty.

My mother and I have gone back and forth about this for years. She’d previously talked me out of it at least three times, but this time I was determined. She warned, “Don’t get a perm. It never looks the way you want it, then it falls out in 3 weeks, and it just ruins your hair. From my experience, it’s never worth it.”

Pssshhh. Silly mommy. I’m a grown up. She simply doesn’t understand. I don’t want one of those poodle perms from the 80s. And America now has self-driving cars. Surely the technologies of perm solutions have developed since she last got a perm decades ago, into no-damage perfection.  

So I called around to prove my mother wrong—I talked to 4 different salons. All of whom said, “You’ve had bleach in your hair? If you came into my studio, I wouldn’t touch it. I’ve been doing hair for __years [usually 20+] and you don’t want a perm.”

Stubbornly undeterred, I wandered in-person into a Hair Cuttery, and asked a young, spunky, seemingly competent woman if she thought it was possible. She ran her fingers through my hair, chuckled out loud, with the confidence of a revolutionary, “Of COURSE we can perm your hair! No problem.”

So smugly, I sat in the chair to be “rolled.” I’d obviously found the only competent hairdresser in the greater Cambridge area. My new best friend.

She talked to me about adjusting my expectations--it wouldn’t be movie star, perfectly quaffed and voluminous… it was probably going to be something a little more subtle, and natural-looking. So I figured something like this:

I was ok with that. Who wouldn’t be? Expectations sufficiently adjusted.

So I started chatting with my new best friend:

            “How long have you been doing this?”            

            “Funny story… I wanted to be a hairdresser when I was 17, but then I got pregnant, I couldn’t go back to school officially till last year…I’ve been official for 6 months. But don’t worry, and I did hair for my neighbors and stuff for 10 years.”

            “Oh. Well good.”

            “But don’t worry. At school, we had an older group of patrons, I did like 10-20 perms a week.”

            “Oh. Cool.”

She was clearly a novice, and her only experience had been with old ladies…Why did I trust her over the four experts I’d consulted? Stupid confidence bias.

…so came the slow dawning that this might be a terrible mistake.

But it was too late. She’d already defied her boss in front of the whole salon.  Everyone saw my girlish excitement. I was committed.

And every step along the way she kept saying, “Stop worrying, it looks great.”

…

She moussed, squished, blowed, and squished and sprayed, so it looked kind of wavy… and I left the shop with a sinking feeling in my stomach. As it dried, the waves relaxed, and ultimately disappeared, and the frizz slowly started to emerge.  This wasn’t the kind of gorgeous volume I pictured.

In the end, my hair was a slightly fluffy, mostly stringy, helmet of frizzy, damaged fuzz.

Crossing my fingers that my source of perm knowledge—Elle Woods—wouldn’t fail me, I washed my hair that night in the hopes of deactivating the immonium thygocolate. 

Then I called my source of all other knowledge, my mother.

As goes the moral of so many stories:

“Mom…You were right…”

To be Afraid of a Fly

Dorm showers are an experience. Especially when you live at the end of one hallway, and the bathroom is located at the other end. So you have to plan for the trek. 47 steps one way--there's little room for error. If you forget the toothbrush--teeth just are not getting brushed. If you forget the towel--you're dripping wet when putting back on the robe. You gain an appreciation for running water. 

After having successfully made the trip to the shower, all accouterments at my fingertips.  I entered into the shiny white cylinder, excited to take a super-human speedy shower.  

From across the faucet, a giant beast started flying my direction. A mosquito, as large as my head, viciously aiming to take me out--I expertly avoided him, instead swatting him into the water stream, where he'd meet his watery grave. I felt empowered to send this evil creature to his death. 

The bug shot to the ground, immediately pinned down, squirming for his life. But it's legs were still moving, desperately trying to escape the constant slam of water. His status as a behemouth monster had evaporated as I watched it shrink smaller and smaller under the pounding pressure. Most of it's size had been made up of long, spindly legs, which were now soaking, twisted, and strapped next to his helpless body. 

I turned off the water. But it was too late, it clearly could never fly again. Painfully, I put it out of its misery. It was so fragile--so easy to crush. My heart sank when I turned the water on again and washed the remains down the shower drain. 

I found out later, what I thought was a hawk mosquito, was actually a crane fly. Totally harmless winged creature, who flew into the water stream, not to attack me, but to escape--what would be his chamber of death.  

For days I couldn't get this poem out of my head: 

Allowables, by Nikki Giovanni

I killed a spider

Not a murderous brown recluse

Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something
Because I am

Frightened

The scene of him struggling to stay alive when I thought he was such a threat, simply because I didn't know what he was; that image has stayed with me. 

Humans do that to lots of creatures. Including other humans. In part, it's in our nature. But we're also remarkable beings in that we can overcome our instincts, we can change our nature.

What can we do--how can we be advocates for those smaller or different than us, rather than be afraid or fight them? 

Super Powers

Years ago, I went out on a date with a fine young fellow. It was a first date; the getting-to-know-you date. Dinner was at an underwhelming Mexican restaurant, six blocks from my house (because first dates shouldn't be afforded more of a commitment than a ten-minute walk, one-way).

On our way back, strolling down around the food complex, leftover bags in hand, we had one of the most interesting first-date conversations to date:

We talked about our super-powers:


"I have the ability to crank out a pretty decent essay, the day it's due. That superpower has come in handy way more often than I'm proud of."

"I can fit into ridiculously small spaces. My hide-and-seek prowess is off the charts. I'm still the reigning champ. Of every game I've ever played..."

"I have Super-Shower Powers. Like lightening-speed shower skills.2-4 minutes. 5-6 tops. I always get the first slot if girls are ever fighting over the bathroom. Because by the time they finish arguing, I'm already out, squeaky clean." (-Me)

Suddenly, two people bolted by. Dressed in black, they ran right in front of us, pounding the ground at full speed. They were each carrying a plastic bag, and at the cross road, they split apart, turning different directions.

Before we could register what was happening we heard a shout from the back door of the restaurant, "HEY! HEEEY! Somebody! Stop them!"

But it was too late. Stunned observers, He and I were totally useless on the sidelines of this crime.

The person shouting went back inside, presumably to call the police, and after a minute of silence, we kept walking.


..."Man," I said, "I wish I had better superpowers."


...


I think I went to graduate school hoping to gain some super powers. I mean, I'd be a Master. (from Harvard).

However, staring down the barrel of my graduation, I feel significantly less powerful and mostly just more aware about the extent of the evil-nemeses we're up against.

I wish I had the powers:

to fix the school-to-prison pipeline,
change our systemic racial and cultural biases,
support disenfranchised and oppressed voices,

among so many other things--to find solutions to these massive problems.

But I do not.

However, I find hope in the people trying to solve them. I found great inspiration from my classes on leadership; reading about people like Ernest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Rachel Carson, even Ann Hopkins, who faced enormous challenges, and led others to overcome them. Hearing about my own classmates' work with innovative programs helping to break the cycle of poverty, and bigotry, and oppression.

I think some of my friends here are no less than super-human-heroes for fighting to help change our worlds' issues with education.

So I suppose that's what we do. We become inspired by the heroes we see and hear about;  we motivate ourselves to question more, learn more, innovate more, serve more, become more Super, one little act and one little change at a time.

And maybe collectively, we have more power than we think.

Me and Breakfast at Tiffany's

Trapped in a flying metal tube, 10,000 of feet above the ground, there's a wonderful phenomenon: one cannot feel guilty about NOT being as productive as one could be, because you're trapped in a flying metal tube 10,000 feet above the ground. So sometimes one has the luxury of 6 uninterrupted hours in the middle of the day, where one can read a book in one, albeit forced, sitting.  Last week, I had the enormous pleasure of one-sitting, in-flight reading: "Fifth Avenue, 5:00 AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman." 

I highly recommend the book--interesting historical factoids about Truman Capote, the movie's production, the fashion and social trends at the time, and why the movie was so revolutionary. (Did you know that Audrey Hepburn hated danishes, and wanted to shoot that opening scene with an ice cream cone instead? But was convinced that ice cream isn't a very good Breakfast). 

While reading it, I thought the author's flowery and romanticizing language might have aggrandized the film a bit. But then I watched it for the first time in ten years. 

It was magic. t's stuck with me. No, more accurately, it's sticking on me. Like the residue of a peeled-off band aid, or glue. It's still on me. Like I just walked through a Breakfast-at-Tiffany's perfume cloud, and the scent is all around. I can't stop thinking about it. Something about it lingered, followed my memory, something about it... 
bothered me.. 

"Holly: You know the days when you get the mean reds?

Paul : The mean reds. You mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?"

absolutely.  

Holly Golightly is fabulous. She's feverishly independent. She's impulsive and careless. She's elegant and a complete mess. She feels so deeply, but can't really let anyone into those depths. Maybe one time she allowed that, but then one day realized a surface-level interaction is much more easily manipulated, and so she stayed there. 

Then it hit me. why I'm so bothered:

I am Holly Golightly. 

“Never love a wild thing...If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky...

It's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.” 

I am Holly Golightly. 
Oh dear. 

Paul shouts to her in frustration: 
"You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself... It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.” 

But the people who have had the guts to call me out,  have not stayed around in my life to see if anything changes. That's because I usually didn't want them to (for other reasons). But still. Starting over again on a frequent basis can lead to a lack of identity. Which Holly has. So afraid to be tied down to anything, even her own identity. 

That heartbreaking moment at the end, when she shoves Cat into the rain, you could replace her name: 

"I'm not Holly. I'm not [Averill], either. I don't know who I am! I'm like cat here, a couple of no-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other." 

I am Holly Golightly.

But I think we're all a little bit Holly Golightly. 

Trying to charm our way to any sort of stability because there's no rules or maps as to how to get there any other way. 
Internally, we're afraid, 
and reckless
and sexy
and confident 
and terrified
and chaotic
and passionate 
and careless
and all of those things together.



We're sorting all of the fractured elements of one of iconic literary figures within ourselves. 

I guess maybe I'm waiting for my dramatic scene in the rain where true belonging feels possible. 

                 Or maybe I should get a cat.