engaging my multi-faceted self

i've spent the afternoon reading over jenell's (one of my previous professors) archived blogs and have discovered that she's a lot like me... or rather, she was a lot like me in the fall of 2004.  i identify with her thick layers of cynicism intermixed with her struggle to understand deep feelings of pain and disappointment; i appreciate her delight in finding an outlet for herself, a way that she can better communicate both her intellectual musings and her random thoughts throughout the day; i am struck by her honesty and desire that i could be so bold.  

i used to have a pretty strong distaste for blogs, similar to what most people feel about memoirs... who would want to read about someone's reflections on their own life?  seems a bit self-centered to write only about me and my life.  but i've  recently discovered a love for the memoir style of writing... at least, for those that are done well- those that not only tell stories from a person's life, but that also point to the human experience as a whole, those that use the act of storytelling to better connect the audience with either an experience or a particular insight.  and similarly, i've come to enjoy the sphere of blogging as a sort of unedited and immediate kind of memoir.  i especially enjoy the way reading jenell's archived blogs helps me understand myself with all my confusion and grief, and helps me rethink how i can find hope and strength in god from this state of being.

in one of her early postings, jenell talks about how she appreciates blogging for the voice that it allows women to carry- how it humanizes a person, allowing them to put forth both intellect and emotion, both seriousness and humor, both the rational and irrational.  she herself writes both about the loss of her triplet sons during childbirth and also about the daily lives of her cats.  

and so i'm excited to participate, excited to discover an avenue through which i can engage my multi-faceted self, excited to explore my truest voice in the midst of such a confusing stage of life.  and i'm excited to have you along for the ride... whomever you may be.  

little black dress

I don’t own a single article of clothing that’s black.  No little black dress that’s supposedly every young woman’s necessity, no lacey black tank-top perfect for a night at the clubs, not even a black t-shirt.  Normally, this sort of discovery would be like noticing that I also don’t own anything pink; it’s a color that doesn’t fit my personal tastes, and I since I don’t usually have any need for black clothing, or fancy clothing for that matter the fact that I don’t own a single article of black clothing doesn’t phase me.  But tonight, my lack of appropriate “going out” clothing actually hindered me from seeing a good friend on her last night in town.

 

I’ve been friends with Bethany Anne Murphy ever since her mom and my mom co-chaperoned our monthly Brownies meetings after school during our first grade year.  We both wore glasses back then and both had the option of being called Beth- two very solidifying marks of good friend potential to a first-grader.  I remember playing flashlight-tag in her large and slightly wooded back-yard when we were young and faking an attack of the mosquito bites so I could hide indoors where it was light and I wasn’t alone.

 

It wasn’t until junior high, however, that Beth and I really became close.  My entire group of friends from elementary school had just started experimenting with high-school parties, drinking, some minor drugs and boys, leaving innocent me to fend for myself and find a new clique.  Bethy was there, ready to accept me into her posse of girls in which she was the obvious ringleader.  She welcomed me in with open arms and gave me a group of friends with whom I could experience the typical, awkward phases of junior high at a slower and to me, more enjoyable pace.

 

I found myself longing for those friends again later, after entering high-school, after Bethy moved out of state, and after our seemingly tight-knit group began to disband.  Boyfriends took over, popularity constantly pressured us, and life was no longer easy to understand.

 

I only recently reconnected with Beth, as we are both college graduates living in the city and trying to figure out where life will take us next.  Even though our degrees and experiences have led us down different paths- her to a job in a law firm, meeting in a glass high-rise in the center of downtown and me to a part-time gig in a unique grocery store with a full-time DJ as a boss- we’ve still been able to reconnect over our love for travel, different cultures, and our fond memories of growing up together.

 

But tonight our differences in lifestyle and routine became apparent.  Bethy is leaving the country to teach English in Thailand for 7 months and as a going-away bash, organized a night out on the town for all her friends currently living in the area, mojitos and Salsa dancing at a pretentious club just north of the river.  Excited for the opportunity to get dressed up and thrilled by the idea of going out with girlfriends, I spent a good portion of my evening preparing myself for the night ahead.  Legs were shaved, eye-liner applied, jean mini-skirt was taken out of storage.  After assembling what I thought was a fun ensemble and checking myself in the full-length mirror one last time, I felt ready.  Granted, my fun ensemble consisted of a flashy orange tank-top, jean mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, knee-socks and moccasins, but I felt sexy in my own way, confident that one could still dress like themselves and manage to enjoy an evening out on the town, or wherever they found themselves.

 

My cell phone rang just as I was about to leave.  It was Beth.  She felt she ought to call and let me know that not only did this club have a pretty steep cover, but there was a strictly enforced dress code as well.  “Just don’t wear any jeans or anything, okay?”  I looked down at my skirt trying to decipher whether a jean mini was considered “jeans.”  “How about a jean skirt?” I asked, figuring I’d leave the moccasins out of this one.  Beth paused for a minute, but even in her silence I could tell the answer was no.  “Why don’t you just put on a black skirt or pants, just to be safe” she replied.  Dang, the moccasins were surely out. 

 

After tearing through every article of clothing I owned, I realized to my own disbelief that I didn’t own anything appropriate for such a club, no slinky skirt or sexy tank-top, no heels or black pants or anything silk, satin, or bejeweled.  My wardrobe consists entirely of jeans, corduroy, flowy peasant skirts and cotton-polyester-blend t-shirts. 

 

My thoughts drifted back to my life in Minnesota.  My friends and I went out to clubs almost every night of the week, and somehow managed to enjoy Minneapolis’ night-life without ever once needing a little black dress.  I felt nostalgic for that time and longed to be surrounded by people who shared my taste in clothing.  I looked at my once perfect outfit, which was now lying in a heap on the closet floor and was immediately angry at the aforementioned, pretentious club just north of the river.  How dare that club- those bouncers and bartenders and club-goers, how dare they tell me I’m not good enough to enter, that I don’t fit the bill.  Of course I don’t fit in there, I know it and they know it.  But who’s to say that just because I don’t own anything black that I can’t come dance and share in my friend’s last night in town?

 

Angry and once again motivated to find something, anything “appropriate” to wear, I looked at my closet again.  I put on outfit after outfit, but nothing made me look “normal.”  And so, after much deliberation, and many wardrobe changes, I was defeated, forced to give in and stay home, upset that I’d be missing out on what should have been an incredible night, and even more upset that I once again allowed the elite, the popular crowd, the black-clothing-wearing-club-going-downtown-working masses make me feel inadequate. 

 

I put my original outfit back on, admiring myself in the mirror for a while and smiling at my funky style.  This is me world, you can take it or leave it, but you should know in case you decide it’s not up to some standard, that this chic is one hell of a dancer. 

daily reminders of home

There’s a man who lives in a field just a few blocks from my apartment.  I see him every day on my way to work and am always torn between feelings of joy, heartache, and a touch of envy. 

 

I’m joyous because I find the sight so utterly beautiful.  This man has turned a barren plot of land into a home simply by bringing to it his constant presence.  He has embodied the true meaning of home by filling his lot with family and friends, surrounding a fire together at night, sharing stories, sharing lives, all without the modern entanglements of tv and radio, indoor plumbing and clocks. 

 

I lived in Kenya for a year, and while there visited a friend’s home in Litein, a small, outlaying town of Kericho in the western region of the country. 

 

In this home, dinner lasted long into the night, the whole family sitting, relaxed, in the living room on couches and on the beautiful area rug at the center of the room.  Candles lit the night as our hands served for utensils: uniting each of us with one another, and uniting our bodies with their source of nourishment.  Conversation was easy, free flowing; laughter was consistent and song danced on the tips our tongues. 

 

Somehow I felt bonded to these people, as though this were my own family, as though I belonged in this foreign land with its melodic language and dark skinned people.  We were one.

 

Upon returning to the states, I have tried for such a night, such a connection with other people, yet only experiencing glimpses of it here and there, like in Michigan one night with my American family.

 

We vacation together once a year at the end of the summer, the whole lot of us.  We wait until the heat of august gets too impossible, ‘til the pressure of another school year is upon us, and we escape to a friends cabin on a small lake in western Michigan.  It’s more of a house than a cabin really.  Close family friends recently turned their three very rustic cabins into one very large house.  What used to house a very tight 10 now comfortably sleeps our 25; bathrooms that once followed the “if it’s yellow let it mellow”-rule, now have multiple sinks, large mirrors, updated plumbing and 3 full showers. 

 

This last year it rained nearly every day of our trip, causing aunts and uncles, cousins, sisters, nieces, nephews and our grandma- the matriarch of us all, to be stuck indoors for the majority of our week.  On one particular night, there was a storm so powerful that it blacked out the entire town.  Nothing was visible as our eyes searched the dark night for signs of power, signs of life.  The silence that overtook our normally boisterous house was eerie at first as we became even more isolated in our now small shelter.  We felt as though we were the last people on the planet, which for those who know my family is a scary thought.

 

But something happened that night, with the TV acting as nothing more than an elevated candle stand.  Preexisting family patterns seemed to fade as toddlers now had no bed-time, as poker became an all-ages, all-genders game, as smokers couldn’t isolate themselves out by the fire and non-smokers had no reason to pass judgment.  We stayed up late, laughing over cards, talking over glasses of wine, hovering close to candles and flashlights, all wanting the night to go on and on.

 

In my own imagination, the man I see living in a field experiences such beauty, peace and community each night as the sun sets and his only reminder of this modern society is the street lamp flickering a soft orange glow overhead.

 

But part of me knows that can’t be true.  I’ve taken enough sociology classes and understand too much of urban structures and systems to see my daydreams about this man’s life as nothing more than naïve and idealistic. 

 

I know those lots are empty from abandonment.  The gentrification happening around the hospital and around the university just blocks north have pushed previous inhabitants further south.

 

I know the city would rather have a string of empty lots to deal with than blocks and blocks of abandoned houses and buildings, where crime can breed and taxes go unpaid.

 

And I know the high rate of prostitution and drug dealing that happens within my idealized field of empty lots, reminding me that the “friends and family” which surround this man’s campfire each night are probably not singing songs and playing cards.

 

Being reminded of the systemic injustice that plagues our cities, that’s continued to push the poor further south and further out toward the suburbs, hurts my soul.  I don’t know where to put that kind of pain or how to process the knowledge that this man is probably not living outside because he wants to commune with nature and re-experience the simplistic lifestyle we humans were intended for.  Bur rather, he’s living outside because he can’t afford to live inside.

 

No matter how intangible the concept of home may be at the intellectual level, at the material level four walls and a roof cost money, they cost a constant stream of money coming in and require a lot of social capital to obtain.

 

Still, I can’t help but distinguish this man from the myriad of other homeless men I encounter on the streets downtown, those that smile politely reminding little ol’ white-girl me that they’re not going to rob me but just need a buck or two- those that ask me if I want a shoe shine or if I’ve ever been a model.  Those men truly seem to fit the notion of homeless to me as they walk the streets, carrying everything they own in a stolen shopping cart or bundled up in a soiled blanket.

 

But the man in the open field has a home, his plot of land with boxes and crates lining his boarders, cars parked in the street out front, a fire roaring in a trash can at the center of his lot. 

 

Why hasn’t he expanded? I wonder as I view his home from the train.  Why does he continue to abide by plot lines, by previous city ordinances?  He could inhabit the whole block, or the whole field for that matter.  He could widen his boarders and live on an acreage if he wanted, and acreage in the middle of the city.  But then he’d be just like the men downtown that see the entire city streets as their domain, wandering where they will, carrying everything the own with them each day.  By sticking to a few structures, this man seems to be destroying so many more.  Its as though he’s saying, “screw the system.”  “Screw the system that tells me land should cost money, and those who say I don’t deserve to be settled, to build a home because the minimum wage is too low for me to afford one.”

 

He’s reminding us, reminding me, as the train passes by his home on my way to and from work each day, what home is really about.  I go to work to make money, and that money is applied directly to the apartment I live in, so that I can continue living down town and going to work each day.  He reminds me daily of the dangerous cycle I’ve entered into.  

retail.

I worked a mid-shift today.  In the glorious world of retail, a mid-shift means I neither opened the store nor closed it at the end of the day.  What mid-shift also means is that my entire seven hour work day will be spent surrounded by customers, dodging their “can you help me” eyes, picking up their lipstick-stained demo cups.  It also means that I need to wake up at a decent hour, forfeit my afternoon of productive TV watching, and return home before diner- even before the Late Show.  Offices will still be buzzing with activity as I hop the train and settle in for my 45minute commute around the loop and headed south.  Rail maintenance will not have started yet, TV watching can be put off for after dark, and for once, I will be on the same time schedule as the rest of the city.

pigeons

There is a pigeon that lives at the State and Lake el train stop with only one toe on her right foot.  I noticed this late one night as I sat waiting for the last train to leave the loop, taking me along the pink line south to my quiet apartment.  I sat and watched as this deformed pigeon showed no notice of her own mutilated claw-foot.  She wobbled around at a slightly slower pace than the myriad of other pigeons on the platform, but with the same random intensity and aggression.  I couldn’t help but feel sad as I watched her.  Such a scene should have inspired hope in a being’s ability to overcome obstacles, but instead it just seemed to reinforce the knowledge that pain and heartache exist in this world, seemingly without explanation.

 

I sat and watched this pigeon wander around the platform, looking for a warm place to curl up for the night, and began to wonder how she could have lost two of her toes.  Not being familiar with any “pigeons born with deformity” condition, my first thought was to blame the harsh steel of the brutal el trains that came whizzing through these stations like the locomotives that they are.  How destructive is the human race that we would create cities of concrete and use vehicles of metal to cover up any glimpse of the natural world. 

 

But as I started to sort through the images of this poor pigeon’s foot being run over by such a huge locomotive, I couldn’t help but feel that this maiming was more personal and intentional than I had previously thought.  I all of a sudden had images of a person catching the pigeon and willfully slicing off the pigeon’s talons one at a time before she was able to escape.  As horrendous as that sight sounds, it seemed more plausible in my minds eye.  A huge el train would surely kill the entire bird, or if nothing else, would remove the whole right foot.  How could it possibly be so delicate as to select two of the three talon-toes?  A person, however, would have ample opportunity for catching one of these many birds, these rodents of the air, and wouldn’t think twice before removing a toe or two, especially considering their rampant reproduction and dirty stigma.

 

I was at a loss for how to think about this situation, for how to think about this world that I live in.  To imagine a place where humans saw fit to torture and maim a living creature- not for their own livelihood or personal gain, but for sheer sport… I was defeated.

 

It was a cold December night.  The air was crisp as it whipped across my exposed cheeks and trickled down the nape of my neck, settling in between my heavy winter fleece and my spine.  I sat mesmerized by this courageous and yet hopeless creature.  It took all that was within me not to scoop up the filthy bird into my arms, warming it with my mixture of love and body heat. 

 

But maybe my reaction to this sad situation is what’s most important.  The fact that there are people who love in such a way could be enough; that there exists within me a love that would compel me to cradle a deformed and dirty pigeon in my arms on a cold December evening.

 

Mom would tell me that my irrational love for this creature is similar to God’s irrational love for me- however dirty and maimed I may be.  That God doesn’t see the filth which street pollution and the inability to clean one’s self adequately produces.  And God wouldn’t hold to the stereotypes and stigmas the world places on such creatures like myself.  Instead, God’s attention would be focused on my deformed foot, and would be crushed that I live in such a place where enough evil exists to cause such pain.  God wouldn’t hesitate to scoop me up in his warm fleece and lavish me with his warmth and love.

 

If I would only hold still and allow it.

 

Did the pigeon skirt away from me as I walked near?  Did she imagine her torturer in my approaching footsteps, in my constant gaze?  Do I, likewise, run from God as the perpetrator of my pain and heartache when I should be allowing Her love to warm me against the harsh elements of the night? 

begin at the beginnings

I want to write; to be a writer.  Maybe it’s just this post-college stage that has me so longing for intellectual stimulation, for opening up a blank word document and imagining the possibilities, or maybe it’s the vast expanse set out before me; the terrifying openness of my future looming overhead that has me scrambling for something, anything to cling to.  Whatever the case, I can’t help but find myself alone in my two bedroom apartment above a busy neighborhood street thinking, I want to write.

 

I’ve tried writing multiple times before with little to no result.  Not only have I been a fulltime student for the past 13 years of my life, writing mostly mundane book reports and philosophical musings, but at the culmination of my educational career, I took a memoir writing class and spent 5 months straight working on what would hopefully be my memoir documenting this confusing stage of life.  Suffice to say, it did not turn out as I had imagined.

 

I have this habit of over-critiquing everything I create.  Back in grade school art class I was the same way.  I would come up with some lofty ceramics project I’d want to make, filled with all this symbolism and intricate detail.  I would spend hours of my own free time thinking and planning and working on this project; I would physically leave the classroom while mentally remaining there, stooped over in my stool, covered in clay.  At last, when the project was due, I would be scrounging to finish in time, thinking things like due dates and time-tables weren’t intended for true masters.  Did Michelangelo have a deadline to meet when he painted the Sistine Chapel? (maybe he did, but I’d never think so). 

 

So I’d turn in my project, thinking if I had had only a bit more time, it would have turned out better.  A week or two would pass, my teacher struggling to grade the myriad of works collected in as quick a time as possible, and all the while I’d sit and dream about how beautiful my own work had been.  Granted, it could have been better had I had the extra time, but I could settle for near perfect if I had to.

 

Without fail, my project never returned to me in the same state as when I had submitted it.  Nothing had changed in its material nature, no chips or cracks to give witness to it’s being handled and transported from classroom to teacher’s home and back again, no coffee stains on the pages of a paper to imply that my professor actually did have a life outside of school.  To anyone else, my project would appear the exact same, but to my eyes and my perspective, it would loose much of its appeal, its perfection.  I would take it in again from an unbiased viewpoint and be well aware of its shortcomings: the shoddy craftsmanship or the trite symbolism.  I’d be disappointed in my own abilities and cautious to attempt another such work.  The wonderfully supportive parents that I have would boast and brag about this masterpiece of an art project and display it on the mantelpiece for years to come, where it would stand to mock me and my inabilities as an artist.

 

It’s in this same vein that my memoir came to be.  After months of detailed work and serious introspection, I was forced to meet a generous yet all-too-present deadline and was unhappy with the results.  I felt that it didn’t quite convey the depth of my thought processes and didn’t sound like my true writers voice, or rather, like the writer’s voice I had hoped to put forth.  It was melodramatic and shallow and sporadic and once again, all I had to gain from that experience was the experience itself. 

 

And now here I am again, attempting to write.  This time, however, I will not be working under any deadlines, and I will not be forced to comply with any classroom requirements.  It will be on my time, in my framework, and hopefully completed under my own master of discipline.

 

Now, where to begin?