My Rear Window

Germany is north. Once we hit mid-September, the days here get rapidly shorter. I wake up very early to get to work, and I had 2 blissful weeks upon arrival where the sun was coming up on my way. Now I make the entire 70-minute-long commute in pre-dawn hours--completely in the dark. 

I look out my bedroom window. It has a full-glass pane door leading out to the balcony, facing the street. The whole street is like that. When it's dark outside, you can see into the other flats through their door windows--like watching a film through a glass screen.

5:55 am, pitch black sky, and I see one other window lit, straight across the road. Clear as a moving picture, I watch as a man, pushes a kitchen chair into the table, puts his keys in his pocket, and adjusts his belt. 

Without feeling a glint of shame for my voyeurism,  I wonder, what is he doing up at such a cruel, cold, dark hour. 

With me. 

Fumbling around his apartment, same as I, eyes trying to adjust to the dark of the morning. Just the two of us awake in our whole neighborhood. 

And I share this rather intimate, rather sweet moment with a total stranger.

Then I think, "Maybe I should close the curtains when I get changed."

Lies Your Teachers Told You

Growing up is a constant series of discovering all the things that you thought you knew but you really didn't. Like learning the actual lyrics to that one song, (R-E-S-P-E-C-T… take care of BLT!); or suddenly understanding the dirty jokes in a beloved childhood film (Grease, anyone?).

Being a first-year teacher, I’ve learned a great many misconceptions I had about the things teachers tell you. Flat-out lies they tell you: 

1.  Teachers always have a lesson they’re trying to get through, and you not being quiet is hindering the whole class’ experience.

This is not always the case. Sometimes the kids blow through what I’ve prepared in much less time than expected, and I’m secretly grateful for the opportunity to improvise a lesson about respect and classroom conduct.

        2.  Teachers don’t care about your opinion. Of their subject or themselves. 

This is also sometimes a lie.  Experienced math teachers have hardened their hearts, and understand that not every child is passionate about the beauty of Euler's Law, but most teachers really love what they teach, and want their students to love it too. Maybe this is a newbie teacher thing, and I’ll grow out of it. But when that cool girl in the 9^th grade says to me, her tone dripping with vitriol and boredom, “This is dumb. Do we have to do this?” A little piece of my soul dies. I moved across the world to share my passion for performing arts with a bunch of disinterested small humans. And apparently, I’m still a middle school girl inside, who secretly cares about the cool kid’s opinion of me.

        3. Teachers don’t have favorites.

This is most definitely, 100%, always a lie. There are students we like, students we really like, and students we really, really don’t. I can say sincerely, I care about every one of my students, but some of them have opened my eyes to the appeal of corporal punishment.

I want to tell you a story about one of my not-so-favorite students:  I have a crew of 7^th grade boys. That sentence alone should make your soul shutter with fear—but it gets worse. They’re waaay too cool for school, and they’re smart. This crew of besties hacked into all the 7^th grade lockers and changed everyone’s combinations. They sit together like a pack of wolves, and they speak very little English.

I know they understand me. Well, they understand some things: like when I tell them to stop grabbing each other, or stop talking, or stop touching the drums, but other than that, they’re totally checked out of the lessons.

The other day, they were causing their usual ruckus, disrupting the class, and finally, I sharply told one, we’ll call him Calvin, (the one that hates me the most) to move to the other side of the circle. He made his protestations, but I gave an insistent finger point (universal language of pointing--very effective), and he moved. I didn’t know what the rustle was, and I didn’t care, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw this tough guy with quiet tears streaming down his face. I was surprised, I thought he was totally apathetic.

A moment later, the one originally sitting next to Calvin, we’ll call him Peter, interrupted me, “Um… Miss…?” (he’s the one most shy about his English. Also the one that cares least about my class, as evidenced by the fact that he doesn’t know my name)...

 “Miss Corkin?” I threw him a bone. But then, admittedly annoyed at being interrupted by his antics again, I was a bit harsh with my tone, “What, Peter?”

“It…not… was Calvin.”

“What?” I didn't understand.

“I had…  took his pen. Fault not Calvin. My.” Painfully stumbling through finding the words, he was trying to tell me that his friend, who I’d banished to the other side of the circle, was not responsible for the trouble, that Calvin had been provoked, and shouldn’t be the one punished. This boy, who was totally uninterested in me or my class, was offering up himself in an honest attempt at taking responsibility. That’s why Calvin was crying, because he’d been wrongly blamed (even on a small scale, we can all relate to this utterly powerless, deeply disturbing feeling). 

But here, his friend Peter was trying to fix it. No matter the personal cost, including struggling through limited English in front of the whole class.  

How much I underestimated this young man because he annoyed me sometimes. How easily dismissive I was because of a language barrier. What character in that moment he proved to have. 

Impressed and humbled, I melted. Oh, my heart. 

“Thank you for telling me that, Peter. I really appreciate your honesty, and taking responsibility.”

I didn’t know how to convey how moved I was at his gesture, in a language we could both understand. So I just smiled warmly. The best I could do.

“I still don’t want you to sit next to each other though. So just stay there right now. Next time, you can move.”

Speaking the Same Language

One time, I sneaked into a  Music and the Brain conference at Harvard Medical School. Thinking, “I am smart, I like brains, I like music--I took a neuroscience class at Harvard, and I can play the piano, this will be fun!" 

While I recognized they were speaking English, they were not speaking a language I understood. So I sat in the dark, straining to focus harder, blinking up at their presentations, trying desperately to understand what exactly any of these words meant, and what I got out of it was a very stinging feeling that I was not that smart.

Trying to get to work using the bus on my own for the first time in Germany. Or the second. Or the 8^th. I ask in my embarrassing German, “Eine Tagskarte, Bitte” (One day ticket, please), and place a few euros on the shelf. And the exchange that comes after is painful: 

The bus driver gives me very specific instructions, then stares blankly while I clearly don’t follow them, and in those moments, I want to say, “I’m so sorry. I'm trying. I’m not stupid, I promise! We just don’t speak the same language.”

I am now teaching little humans. And while I am no Harvard neuroscientist, there is a language barrier between the English I’m speaking, and the English these small people are able to speak as they grow. Including the ones for whom English is their first language.

But I want to remember that feeling I had in that neuro-music conference. Or the feeling I have every time I try to speak German. How small it can feel.  And as I’m going along in my classroom, trying to align the tongue we speak, I want to make them feel like they’re not small, but growing.

I’m learning how important a virtue patience really is. And how wonderful the end product worth investing—a world in which we can understand one another. 

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…”