A Day in the Mind of E.A.T.

The Year of the Dragon

2012-01-22T11:32:00.000-08:00

The most powerful animal on the Chinese zodiac, symbolizing energy and change, usually for the positive. It fits 2012.

I've moved from feeling overwelmed to extremely optomistic. I had PRK eye surgery over the holidays, which unlike I was advised by my doctor beforehand (Oh yeah! You'll be fine editing nine hours a day) is a long healing process (validated by the experiences of many others I ran into after having surgery).

So in the first months of 2012 in which I'm very involved in preparing my first book for publication in April, trying desperately to wrap up the second book, and slammed at work, my eyes are swelling making my vision too blurry to read, so I have to break up my work day (I even had to get a government issued laptop and a network key, so I can work half my hours at home).

It's also a time when I feel like I should be applying for jobs both inside and outside my current company, which also requires eyesight.

It didn't help that on top of all this, I spent the first half of January with a sinus infection.

In a couple months, I'm going think this all is pretty hilarious. I even appreciate the comedic value of the situation at the time being--although some days--like yesterday when I was on my way to my Chinese friends' house to celebrate the Year of the Dragon and got lost three times because I couldn't see the road signs, I want to cry.

But all in all, on top of what's seemed like an impossible situation, I feel hopeful and blessed.

The press told me at the beginning of December that they wanted me to get my whole book fact checked. It had been peer reviewed by two Utah historians, but my book covers 200 years of coal mining history and is set in Wales, Utah, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. I had to either pull out the literally hundreds of sources I had used from my files and disks and pastainkingly validate every detail, or find historians from Wales and West Virginia, and an expert in energy to peer review it.

I thought this was going to cost me hundreds of dollars. The final changes for the manuscript need to be made at the end of January. There's no way I could do it myself. And yet, I've found strangers to help me look over my book, and moreover, they've refused compensation, only requesting a copy of the book when it's done. This has happened also in gathering photos from all over the world. So far, I haven't had to pay a cent for kindness from all directions.

I feel like the tender mercies of God are being manifest by different people in the smallest of ways, but they are making all the difference.

I love so many people, and so it's all a challenge to see them all before I leave. I feel like there's no way to do it all, and yet, on Saturday morning before I went to my friend Jeanne's house to pull together a cover for the book (the press rejected the one I orginally submitted and then put together one of its own that I don't like), my friend dropped by the high-tech camera I'll be using to take pictures at her wedding in a week, so I could play around with it.

I used it to take the professional level photo I needed for the cover. The light outside was perfect--cloudy above and snow below. It's the most even light possible. Jeanne and I were able to put together something beautiful. It took several hours, and I didn't have time to make the dish I'd planned to bring to my Chinese friends' house (they'd told me not to make anything anyway).

After amazing Chinese food and a Jackie Chan movie, I headed over to my friend Lindy's house (on her honeymoon) to care for her cats who pee on things if they go without human contact too long. I stopped by the grocery store for a few breakfast items for two friends I'd invited over this morning. I forgot ingredients for the vegetable stew I'd agreed to bring for a potluck tonight.

But this morning brainstorming of what to pull together (and not break the Sabbath)--I noticed my friend Lindy had written me a note to use up her tomatoes. With her perishables and the ingredients I didn't use for my dish last night, I was able to pull something together with hardly anything in my cupboard or in my refridgerator.

Tender mercies. Life is beyond overwelming, but God is in the details, even allowing me to be me: manage my crazy job, write two books, move, and say goodbye to everybody I love in a mad dash of activity.

And as far as the new job goes, I could probably do with a few months of unemployment. I could finish the second book and uncomplicate my life, so I can move on to 2012's goals: learn a marshal art, spend more time primping, and find somebody to marry. In the Year of the Dragon, I plan to invest my time becoming a little more attractive and a litte more dangerous--matching the dragon for it's beauty and fire. ;)

So I'm letting the job part go. I trust it will work out somehow. Most of all, I'm feeling excited about the opportunity to reinvent myself. I've lived in D.C. for 8 years-- a good portion of my young adulthood. I've made a lot of mistakes, and I've changed a lot and overcome many challenges.

I can't wait to leave the expectations of all the people that I'm leaving behind to be the new and better version of myself I've earned from all of my trials. I can take the best from these eight years and be that best without all the history of my growing.

In the spirit of the Year of the Dragon, here are all my recent Chinese cookie fortunes:

"You need not worry about your future."

"If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted."

"Think highly of yourself, for the world takes you at your own estimate."

"You will always get what you want through your charm and personality."

"An admirer is too shy to great you."

And while we're being superstitious, we might as well go all the way. The Year of the Dragon is also a good year to be an Aries:

What the stars say on romance:

You're ready for the real thing, and that's because you've finally developed the most important relationship of all - the one with yourself. Now that you're crystal clear about what you will and won't put up with in your intimate relationships, there's no turning back! You've set your standards high and there's no need to compromise.

Although Mars, your ruler, will take up prolonged occupancy in your work sector for the first half of the year - leaving you little time to even think about dating, mating or relating - you'll more than make up for it during 2012's second half. September is potentially one of your most romantic months of the year, so put yourself out on the dating scene without excuses. And finally, December is your most auspicious time for meeting someone you could settle down with. This is your make-or-break year - so let it rip!

And on my career:

When Pluto and Uranus reach their exact square in June, you'll be confronted with the culmination of a quest for radical change that began in summer 2011. Use the momentum of the first quarter of the year to launch your major projects, since Pluto will turn retrograde between April and September, causing a forced slowdown and re-evaluation of your priorities.

With Jupiter bringing good fortune to your money sector for the first half of the year, you'll experience fabulous ease in attracting opportunities to boost your income. You're learning how important it is to value yourself and not sell any of your talents for less than they're worth. The summer brings fabulous opportunities for writing and publishing, so if you've been sitting on a book (or two) that you know needs to be written, this is your year to put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard!

--Almost uncanny, isn't it?

In any case, all signs point to 2012 being a wonderful year to be alive. ;)

My New Job

2011-11-25T14:35:00.000-08:00

This is the point at which stress hits. Three months from a projected relocation and I still have the job details, the house details, the moving details to work out.

And to tip it off work has continued to be really stressful. On last Thursday after having another uncomfortable conversation with one of my employees about performance, I came home and told my roommate that I thought I was going to cry.

"Do it! It'll make you feel better. You deserve to cry."

I got misty eyed for a moment. Not even a real tear. I guess that's it, I thought. Oh well, so much for the big cathartic relief.

The real test of whether I've had all I can take is not usually tears, no, but something that adds cause to the case for tears: locking my keys in my car.

On Saturday morning on the way to watch the championship frisbee game that I wasn't participating in because work has kept me too busy to play with my friends, I got out of the car to fill up my tires.

This, I explained to myself, was the responsible thing to do because they were getting a little low. Who knew what could happen on the way to a frisbee game?

Responsible me shut her keys, her wallet, her phone, and her triple A card in the car. Responsible me was over it. I knew there were other ways of solving this situation; many men came by offering cell phones with internet, a one stop location to connecting with my road-side emergency provider.

Instead, I thanked them graciously (I hope) and borrowed a screw driver from the garage attached to the station. I walked down to my friend Amanda's house for a metal hanger.

"I guess you know what you're doing?" My most persistent possible rescuer volunteered for the second time. He really did mean well, and persistently, so I let him hold the screw driver wedging the door open and cringed as he wiggled it around, tearing up my weather stripping.

As the end of the hanger gripped the edge of the lock and I began to pull, he exclaimed, "This is exciting! I can hardly take the suspense!"

If all other job leads fail, triple A, here I come. Not only can I offer lock picking skills, but simultaneaous counseling and empathy for victims of forgetfulness like myself who on days when they have had all they can take, watch their hand slam the door shut just as their mouth opens wide in shock, disbelief, forming the words, "not again."

Trees

2011-11-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

We hiked the Billy Goat trail along the Potomac River by Great Falls for my brother's birthday. Both of us felt instantly giddy. "How did I not know this was here?" My brother kept exclaiming and planned to take his church youth group the very next week.

"What's the big deal?" my roommate muttered.

"Rocks." My brother and I explained. If this was enough of an explanation. We grew up under the Rocky Mountains and spent our childhood scrabbling up their slopes, riding our bikes up their trails, and free climbing their waterfalls.

"Rocks." What more could anybody really need? The mountains were our guardians. With something so mounumental standing watch, how could you worry about day to day humdrumming in the valley? We lived under majesty.

And now in the beautiful fall mornings when I walk to the metro just after first light, I realize that I'm beginning to feel this way about trees.

I've always liked green things. A climbing plant is currently taking over my cubical, and I don't have to the heart to cut it back. My office is where at least one thing thrives.

But trees have never been quite like rocks or mountains. I love trees, but rocks make me feel at home. But just this fall, I've realized how Eastern I've become.

I love the variety of trees that grow in my neighborhood the bamboo and the old oaks. Not the the Rockies maybe, but certainly sentinals that stand over us and keep us safe. Wiser, because they are much older than we are.

And in the fall, they cast off their brilliance. Just like I pause to smell the roses, often I delay a minute to find the perfect leaf to bring to the office and place on my desk--usually a red one. When I have my own house, I plot having a bowl of leaves under the mirrow in the hallway-- not unlike a bouquet of flowers--snippits of color I'll refresh with new ones on a bi-weekly schedule.

I'll never forget these mornings. The quaint old houses and their trees casting their yellows, oranges, and reds against each other and the crispness in the morning. From now on, trees will always remind me of home.

Vegetable Soup

2011-10-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Vegetables are among the top ten things I blog about. A week ago, concocting the perfect cauliflower soup in my head kept me up all night. One of the main things that attracted me to SF was vegetables--mountains, beaches, (the general aura of hipness), and vegetables. Every time I walked past a produce vendor, my heart leapt inside me.

Lately vegetables have seemed to be my only salvation. I work a lot, all day at work (and I've been in corporate America long enough to understand there are a precious few who do this), and then at home I pull out my IBM computer for more work. I also need to rewrite my whole darn book, and vegetables are helping me stall the inevitable.

A couple weeks ago when life seemed completely overwhelming, I bought a banana squash, two apples, and two onions, stuffed them in my IBM backpack, carried them home, and spent the evening making 28 cups of soup. If anybody has never seen a banana squash, the above visual should supply the imagination.

Another evening I cut up a whole head of broccoli and tossed it into a boiling pot with green beans, spinach, carrots, and an onion, filling my freezer with more Tupperware containers.

It helps that we are part of the CSA, and there are always some vegetables on the table waiting to be made into something. There is still a pile of sweet potatoes. I made one into biscuits while making the previously described green soup and also a chicken spinach salad for dinner. I traded baking soda for powder in the heat of it all, and viola, the first inedible dish in years.

My roommate thought it was hilarious--I thought it was hilarious because not many years back everything I cooked was gross. Up through my teens I could only make Scottish shortbread reliably, during my freshman year of college I added mircrowaved twice baked potatoes, and two years later the dish of dishes: artichoke pasta. That about summed the repertoire until 25.

Not five days ago, I experienced failure once more: spinach soup. Not a winner. Spinach is gross. I had all these romantic ideas about spinach soup. Once upon a time in Ecuador, I climbed a hill with two very heavy bags in a little town snuggled into Amazon jungle covered Andes and ate at a very small restaurant run by a genius.

He was a painter, and kept us waiting for our spinach soup for almost 45 minutes; he was not making soup, but art. It came out steaming, creamy, beautiful vibrant green. The whole experience seemed magical. Even more since I tried to replicate it in my own kitchen. I will leave spinach soup making to the Incas.

But not vegetable soup making. Last weekend I went to Harris Teeter for a Redbox and a box of Coldeze. I came home with a butternut squash.

Embracing the Positive

2011-10-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

This morning while I was putting on my makeup, I had an ephiphany of sorts. I guess along the lines of my last post--my mind is still buzzing over the same premise apparently.

I wrote it on a sticky note and pinned it to the wall at work: We are rewarded according to the version of life we choose to embrace. I mulled over this line as I walked to the metro. As I pointed out before, I'm not sure I can subscribe to the "Law of Attraction," which asserts that wealth, success, and even love are a matter of a certain mindset--life has never been that simple,and limitations are rife in terms of personal abilities and circumstances. And as an artist, I will strongly advocate that most success is the result of hard, hard work, perseverance, and a bit of luck, or as I would phrase it--infinite grace.

Notwithstanding,it occurred to me today that it was possible to work very hard at something, and to even persevere, but hijack our own efforts by our negative patterns of thinking--it's a relationship between hope and effort that is like hope and faith, and even that third Christian virtue, love. Without all three, they do not complete each other, and the best opportunities in our lives are frustrated.

Taken out of context, but still relevant: Proverbs 23:7: As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

We are rewarded according to the version of life we choose to embrace.

We can choose to embrace the premise that we are ultimately unworthy or inadequate, or we can choose to embrace our divine worth and the premise that we are transcendentally loved. While just this feeling of being loved cannot make all people love us, it can change our outlook, so we focus more on the positive in the relationships in our life.

We can choose to embrace the faults of others or the shortcomings of our current situation, or we can embrace the goodness in others and our fortunate circumstances, and ultimately it is this positive outlook that shapes our inner person, and by this token has profound repercussions on outward events.

The Power of Postive Thinking

2011-09-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

I found myself searching for a chick flick this evening, something superficial and light that I could do situps to. I wanted something about a woman in her thirties, a writer, a frustrated one who feels like she works too much to accomplish her goals. I wanted to know that she'd make it past the frustration and the rejection letters (yes, I got three this week), and that she'd know what to do to sell her book.

I realized this week that although I write because it's in my nature to write, after sacrificing five months of the last year and a half to write this book, I'm going to feel awfully frustrated if I can't sell it.

I pulled out "The Secret"--pop self help/philosophy video that one of my roommates left at the house. It focuses on the law of attraction, which is probably the "power of positive thinking," hyperbole style.

I don't think my book will be published just as a result of feeling confident about it. I might have to revise the whole thing in the first person, a task I don't know how I'm going to pull off given the every day demands of my life. And of course focusing on my book as explained to me by a guy friend (although he said the fact I write is sexy)is going to make men think I don't have time for them and negatively effect my dating life.

But there's probably something to feeling more optomistic about this right now...

So here's "The Secret" more my style:

"But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

- W. H. Murray, from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

I guess W. H. Murray was a writer too. He wrote a whole book, Mountaineering in Scotland, on toilet paper. He was captured while climbing during WWII by the Germans and spent three years as a prisoner of war. The Gestapo discovered his book on toilet paper and destroyed it. W. H. Murray wrote the entire book again from scratch and had to wait until the war was over to publish it. Talk about poor economic times in the UK! I guess the book market could be worse...

Much better than a chick flick, eh?

Surfing

2011-09-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

I have strawberries from beach sand on my shoulder, my knee, my upper leg, my chest, and on both sides of my inner arm. I have a bruise on the bottom of my chin and bruises on the skin over the bottom of my rib cage, and all I can think of is getting out there again.

There is a part of me that is foolhardy. When I am in the out of doors and there is something difficult to be physically mastered, adrenaline pushes aside caution, and I am filled with something that can only be called grit.

Yesterday I went surfing for the second time. The first time in Ecaudor, I attempted to surf in a friendly ocean on a private beach in front of our small hotel where we were close to the only residents. There were vast periods of calm between waves, and the waves were gentle.

Not much to get up on, but not much to get tossed and spit up in.

In NC, the waves are big this week-- another hurricane is brewing in the Caribbean. They come quickly, in sets of three or five, and there are few if any periods of calm between waves.

I got up the first time I tried--just on my knees. I didn't want to ruin it by trying to get up on my feet. A long ride all the way into shore. I held my hand over my head in triumph. I swam out again fighting the waves past the breakers until I saw the perfect one coming. I guess I didn't quite get on the top of it, and the crest of the wave hit me in the back of the head as I got up on my knees to rise to my feet.

I got rolled around and dragged, and then the next big wave came. Rolled around and dragged, rolled around and dragged three times more. Finally, I washed up. My only thought was, I gotta get back out there.

Yuppie Greens and Hippie Greens

2011-08-25T09:32:00.001-07:00

This thought occurred to me when I was scaling the produce section for a package of organic mixed greens. When I was poor, I ate a lot of collard greens and kale. I even grew a lot of collard greens and kale. I called it “Eating like the Third World.” I looked up a lot of amazing recipes from various countries and boiled a lot of chickpeas and lentils. Nutritious, balanced, cheap. I paid off my car and my student loans clearing 32K a year in Northern Virginia.

My diet has changed a lot since office job. I eat a lot of arugula and watercress. I can no longer boil beans because I don’t have the time or the calorie allowance. Sitting on a yoga ball in my office 9 hours a day only burns so much. I also realized that in order to be on a diet with office job, I had to eat things I really liked: Greek yoghurt, feta, smoked gouda, etc. because I always feel like I deserve fried food and treats just for getting up and going to the office. And then when I do cheat, I have to cheat big because the calories have got to be worth it: no more Twinkies, but shortbread from the bakery.

My roommate and I went to the store yesterday to buy Hurricane supplies—we are mostly stocked because we’re Mormon and I like to go camping, but we needed to stock up on water. A. said we also needed some comfort food. She bought M&Ms. I bought French cookies topped with extra dark chocolate.

Love and Superlatives

2011-08-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

I've had a real knee jerk reaction to conversations with a friend lately. Most of us will not marry the best looking person we've ever dated. I know I won't. But I'll want the man I marry best anyway.

I will probably not marry the smartest guy I've ever dated because quite frankly, the "smartest" guys don't do much for me. Any time somebody suggests I date so and so because he's a rocket scientist-- I feel kind of annoyed. The pretentiousness that usually comes with book smarts is a real turn off.

I liked the guy with the "best" taste in music for about 5 minutes while I was listening to a CD he lent me.

I liked the most articulate man I've ever met for about three days. A Russian poet--he used English better than any native speaker I've ever met. It was immensely attractive-- for three days.

I just want to find a guy I love talking to. He likely won't be the "most" accomplished conversationalist, but I will love talking to him best anyway.

I'm pretty darn sure I won't marry the most athletic guy because he wouldn't want anything to do with me.

And anybody who marries me for being the "best" writer or artist is marrying the wrong girl because there's a ton of people out there who write and paint better. I wouldn't mind marrying somebody, though, who loved what my writing and my art expressed about me.

So all those out there who are waiting for the "best"-- just pick somebody you love and you'll be infinitely more happy. And those of you who can't understand why somebody doesn't love you because you're the "best" or even "better"-- look for somebody who loves you for who you are.

My only hope concerning love and superlatives is to marry my "best friend."

100 Dresses

2011-08-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

A children's book I used to cherish. I'll admit I've forgotten the social justice message the book promoted, but still remember the 100 dresses Wanda drew and placed above her bed. I was a girl who liked dresses, and I was a girl who liked drawing.

Then I hit about 1st grade, and I became just a girl who liked drawing. I still remember my brother teasing me about the baseball cap and boys' shorts I wore one day when I was 19, had short hair, and worked for the forest service. It was true I'd probably taken my tom boyishness too far. I put a flower behind my ear.

Now well into my thirties, it seems I'm returning to my "pink lace" phase. Going through my drawers on a hot day about three weeks back, I came to the conclusion that I had nothing to wear after holding up my three pairs of shorts and two pairs of capris.

They were clean. They still fit. I just couldn't convince myself to put them on. "You hate capris, and you only like denim knee length shorts. It's probably time to stop wearing clothes you feel ugly in," I told myself.

When I went to visit my folks last weekend, we measured. Somehow between now and 16, I grew the 1/3 inch that puts me squarely at 5'9, and I think I've always blamed my lack of enthusiasm for knee length shorts and capris on my height-- that they just don't look right on tall girls, or maybe that when you are tall and wearing something you don't like so many more people can see you.

In the three weeks since this hot day with nothing to wear, I've been building a collection of dresses. Next week I'm planning to pull out my sewing machine and seam ripper and turn my capris into skirts.

BSTWFIYH #4

2011-07-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

6/28/2011

Picture this-- jeans rolled up, white rain jacket, three miles of empty beach, and a pink flowered umbrella.

When you spend a lot of time alone, you discover what kind of person you are most. After peeling away the layers to get at the essential core of self--me?

A social being.

I spend the afternoon driving up the C.A. coast to Pt. Reyes. I am looking for action of any kind and find a town with a few restaurants and jewelry and art galleries. All through Pt. Reyes are artist outposts creating to sell to the rich and upper middle class who venture an hour north of San Francisco.

Again I evaluate my choices. I could do this. I'm good enough. I lived for a couple years without health insurance, working hard to just get by. And then I have this thought--you didn't do it for you. You did for all those eighteen and nineteen years olds and foreign nationals who didn't know how to write. You did it for Kwabena and Chris, who followed you around the halls of NVVC like groupies.

Back in the day when I was studying art, my mother told me I should be a teacher. "Being an artist would be selfish. It won't make you happy. You need to be giving to other people."

Could I make art to sell to the rich?

I get a couple tacos from the most affordable of the restaurants and head back to Stinson Beach, planning to stop in the hippie town of Bolinas on the way--the residents take down the raods signs, so visitors can't find it. I never do.

I take a beach walk in the rain instead and pick up rocks. Of course I pick up rocks. I can't help it. I remember doing this at one and half along the beach in San Diego. Walks at this age, my mom told me once, took a long time. I picked up pine cones around the neighborhood. I'd save candy wrappers in bags and make sculptures out of drier lint I harvested from the drier.

These stones on Stinson Beach need no enhancement-- little Barbara Hepworths and Henri Moores scuplted by the sea.

I put them in my pocket and remembered Dermee. Mongolian boyfriend number two, whom I loved for sheer handsomeness. A Disney Tarzan/Keanu Reeves with hands so large when we danced, I'd hold onto his thumb.

He was an artist. Is an artist, I should say, with his own studio now, but then he was an art student who saw beauty everywhere. We brought a piece of drift wood back to Ulaanbaatar strapped to the the top of a Russian jeep three days over the steppe because Deremee was Bagsh (teacher) Enkbat's favorite, and the wood had caught his fancy. I brought home 20 lbs of river rocks from Mongolia that time in my carryon because they were to heavy for my checked.

"What are these?" Security demanded.

"River rocks."

What harm, I justify, sticking another rock from Stinson beach in my pocket, could bringing home a pocket of rocks from CA be?

Walking along the beach I realize being a solitary artist on the coast of CA would make me miserable. A social being first, then and artist several steps after. I would love the emptiness of the beach and my studio two days tops.

It's almost like a handicap, this need to be around people. I think of Devon and her thirty day retreats. I feel grateful to be Mormon. We are a gregarious people. I would make a lousy Buddhist.

I like myself. I'm even good at entertaining myself. It's just this tremendous amount of energy I derive from loving other people.

Finishing my book took an extrodinary amount of self discipline. I hated staying home and felt cross (I never feel cross). I harbored thoughts of throwing my computer out the window.

I keep walking. My pants are plastered wet to my thighs and I step into the surf even though it is cold and it is raining. The Great Whites live along this strip of coast--it is good perhaps that it is raining--how tempting it would be to swim out.

I see couples and reflect how romantic to be coupled on a day like this. My face is unevenly sunburned from twelve miles of walking in San Francisco on Sunday. My hair is limp--biodegradable shampoo--like putting shea butter in the hair.

I return from a four mile loop reflecting that I've had a lonely, but rather splendid day.

BSTWFIYH #3

2011-07-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

6/27/2011

Sausalito-- a quaint city on the bay full of artists--apparently. Nothing like an art gallery to make me feel inadequate. My mouth waters when I approach a painting with well applied paint. In order to see "paint," you have to move close to a painting--as close as you can before the guard yells, "hey!" Almost with your nose touching is where you can see the strokes and the colors side by side. For me, veiwing well applied paint is a trascendant exprience--not everybody can paint that way. This is where talent and the "touch" come in.

In college one of my professors told me I had that touch. Another told me, "Two more landscape classes, and you'll be a landscape painter." Years later after I graduated, I ran into one of my professors that I'd had an interesting relationship with. Maybe because he's insecure--all my life people have disliked me for the seeminingly unconquerable self confidence with which I tackle the world (note--seeming. I think it comes from my ditsiness--too unaware to be self aware).

In any case, over lunch he told me without mincing words that I was one of those they'd had their eye on, but I had never pulled it together as they hoped-- a waste of potential.

I had epilepsy the whole time I studied art, I wanted to say. I maintained an A average although I never felt well. I held church callings, always had too many friends, but still devoted the majority of my effort to my paintings. What did you expect?

I had stopped by the Museum of Modern Art of San Francisco and saw the Stein collection of early Piccasos, Mattisses, and a few Cezannes. Picasso's red and blue period paintings were like Rothkos: full of color-based pathos. I can paint that into a still life, I reflected, but the feeling in mine was always more about light than despair.

Going to art museums and galleries is like reading an old journal entry that reminds me of my first love--except instead of nostalgia and the pang of things that never quite materialized, I realize I'm still in love.

In a gallery in Sausilito, I realize I could paint for money and live in a place like this. I could quit my business consultant job and join the gypsies, I thought as the door bumped my heel and rang on the way out.

Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair Part Deux

2011-07-11T15:01:00.001-07:00

6/25/2011

I had the strangest feeling arriving in the San Francisco ariport near midnight. I saw "San Diego" on the flight board and thought--this is where I was born. This is where I belong. About two weeks ago I had the random thought, "You should move to San Francisco." I'd never considered it, but this is often how inspiration comes to me, unexpected, simple, direct.

Arriving at Muriel's (one of my best friends from highschool) apartment was like coming home. It felt good to browse through the photos hanging the walls--some of them taken in Madagascar where she served for the Peacecorps.

A volume of Langston Hughes' poems caught my eye on the bookshelf. Muriel and I once bought a copy of this book for a homeless man. We'd seen him around town and decided what he needed most was something to read--"To break up the day," we agreed. He was African American, we were in highschool, we lived in Orem, Utah--explanation for why we though Langston Hughes would speak to his soul. I can't remember if we even brough him food, only that we delivered our gift past 10:00 pm. In the dark. Two teenage girls. He thanked us blankly. I thought there were wells of depth beyond the vacant look in his eyes. So many years on the street must make you wise...

Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair

2011-07-10T17:30:00.000-07:00

A.K.A "All You Need is Love: Erin's spectacular California Roadtrip"

First installment tonight. Pictures soon to come . . .

6/24/2011

Last year I flew out to Devon's "unwedding" near Pagosa Springs, CO. School had just ended for hte semester and I had a week before summer classes started. It was a good opportunity to visit my cousin Carrie, who lived in Denver, and I was curious to visit Tara Mandala-- the nearly all female Buddhist retreat center Devon lived at and had written me so many colorful emails about.

I was soul sick. I'd decided not to get a Phd. I'd decided to stay in D.C. Not my plan. I felt done with the city. I missed my family, my mountains, my western skies, my westerness. Somehow how D.C. had never become a part of me the same way.

In Colorado, I would soak in Mountain Country and refuel.

Now heading out to San Francisco to be a bride's maid at Devon's wedding, I feel like a different person. For one thing, I've finally gotten over myself. I knocked off my fears one by one until I feel more comfortable in my skin than I ever have. It's nice to be a little closer to that best version of self we fight for all our lives.

Knee deep in the surf on a North Carolina beach, I discussed this with one of my close guy friends about a month ago. He admitted that the past few years had been a struggle. He'd gotten beaten up some.

"But you won! Doesn't it feel great?" I exclaimed.

He admitted it did--because at the end of it all there needs to be just one take away, and that's the person you've become. More durable on the outside, but gentler on the inside. Less likely to be offended, more likely to extend compassion--the great paradox of adversity.

Now on my way to California, I feel like I'm on my way to discover my future. for the first time in seven years, I feel permission to pull up my roots and move--maybe to San Francisco.

Free, Free at Last

2011-05-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

For the first time in 4.5 years, I went on vacation without a book to write. I didn't even bring one to read, but took a long, long nap on the beach.

Huzzah!

Now everybody just cross your fingers that somebody buys my book!

And this is me lately . . .

2011-05-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

I was estatic, over the moon, to be going to visit my sister in Indiana last weekend and her two incredibly adorable children. My job has been kicking my butt lately, so I really had to work hard in order to earn the time off. The night before I left,I was almost too tired to pack, and threw a t-shirt and a pair of jeans in a bag to change into before I left work to pick up my brother and sister-in-law.

I hadn't worn the jeans in a while and they were saggy; the shirt had shrunk in the wash and the two barely met. I also forgot to remove my pearls. And my DOJ ID that hangs around my neck. We drove across rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, stopping in at gas stations to do our business and gas up. We flattered ourselves that we made a good impression on the locals, being extra friendly to rock the stereotype of uppity city folk. I noticed my pearls and ID when I got ready for bed around midnight at my sister's house.

My roommate read my Zodiac to me tonight. I'm always a little embarassed to be an Aries, and am quick to point out that on the Hartman personality test I come out slightly more blue than red.

Work has been really, really hard lately. I'm a manager and short resources--I've been lobbying hard for additional help and trying to train the resources I have to complete duties more effectively and efficiently.

The Government budget cuts are probably necessary, but they don't help when you need to hire a good editor. It's even more depressing when he's got his clearance and just waiting for the "yes" from us. Especially those nights I stay until 7:00 to finish my work.

So I wrote up my case, fatigue and stress made me daring, and I suprised myself in not backing down to my manager, even as our meeting extended for an hour and a half.

I had a dream that night that I saw a depraved looking fellow walk down the hall in my apartment complex. I shut the door quickly as he took a quick step towards me. The next day, my door fell apart, unclosable and unlockable. I decided there was no use defending a compromised position and abandoned fort for my friend's apartment a couple doors down. I returned later to find my apartment ransacked, of course, as I expected. I summoned up my courage to take my loses in a classy manner. But no, he was still in there. This time, I tackled him and pinned him to the floor. "Go get Pat," (my brawny younger brother)I told my friend. "I will hold him here until he comes to kill him."

Still more blue than red, mind you, I stuck up for myself, but I haven't fired anybody yet. The possibility of doing so makes me squirm. ;)

Pensamiento-itos

2011-04-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from book to write little thoughts.

Lately I've reflected that my job and this book are some of my greatest recent blessings. Today I thought, "Great blessings yes, but a lot of hard work." Maybe our greatest blessings are brought about by not only those bones God throws us, but our most fervent efforts.

Saw friend who is living in Kigali last weekend. She had some big decisions in front of her. A recent breakup had thrown a wrench in all her previous plans. He was too scared to deal with the hardship arising from visa issues-- an impediment yes, but not insuperable.

What a waste, I thought. Really, how often do people fall in love?

He cut it off and promptly cut communication to save his heart.

She let him go.

I realized the greatest acts of courage are not in fact actions, but allowing other people the right to take actions that impact our lives.

Today, NPR, radio broadcast on Japan and energy--Japan has toilets with heated seats, and toilet covers that close and open automatically.

Maybe "alternative energy" means that we need to open and close our own toilet seats. Walk up stairs instead of thinking that we always need an escalator. Roll down our own car windows (mechanical windows break less often than electric anyway).

Some modern conveniences truly make our lives easier--or even possible. I don't think I could put in a 10 hr. day and come home and write without the metro to convey me to work. But other electronic things are just a waste of energy-- burning coal when we should really be burning calories.

On Retreat

2011-04-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

When my friend Devon says this, she's holed up in a lovely mountain nook with spring water and no media or distractions, practicing the careful art of meditation.

When I say retreat, it means I go to the office every day and come home, get under the covers, and write Book. Sitting legs-crossed with an upright back and empty mind vs. curling up with laptop to push through yet another round of revisions-- it is probably a toss up to which is a greater exercise of discipline.

But here I am again. It used to be a once a year thing, but last year I went twice, and this year (only four months in) and I'm already on my second (this time I'm keeping the already set down weekend plans). And there's usually some guy that I am interested in and would like to date, a number of parties I'm sad I can't go to.

So I'm sharing this poem my dad printed out for me:

You want a Social Life, with Friends

You want a social life, with friends
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day. What's true
Is of these three you may have two
And two can pay you dividends
But never may have three

There isn't time enough, my friends--
Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--
To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
Michelangelo had feeling
For Vittoria and the Ceiling
But did he go to parties at day's end?

Homer nightly went to banquets
Wrote all day but had no lockets
Bright with pictures of his Girl.
I know one who loves and parties
And has done so since his thirties
But writes hardly anything at all.

--Kenneth Koch

So after this one, no more, not for a while.

And although nobody reads my blog, any men out there who want to date me: Not a time for the faint of heart. After May, it's your chance. For goodness sakes, seize the day before I start another book.

My Life As a Business Consultant

2011-03-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

(If anybody can tie that back to the title of a French film it loosely references, I’ll buy them a Snickers bar).

From a brisk walk from the metro or the dirt parking lot a couple blocks down run by Ethiopians (although my work pays for my parking, my frugalness still points me to the least cost option), I enter a building of steel and glass. In the elevator there are usually just three things to say: “How it is it that Monday comes again every week?”; “Wednesday, hump day”; and “TGIF”. I usually have much better conversations with the elderly Hispanic man who cleans the floors and the guards up front, one of which, Andre, is very fond of my black cashmere hat from Outer Mongolia.

I keep an eye on my watch punching my mental time clock when I enter my office to the minute, plotting how I will get in my 9 hrs—and perhaps work in an extra hour for the gym. In my cubicle I store an entire canister of instant oatmeal, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, gym clothes, and a make up bag. In a file drawer to my left are three pairs of comfortable heels that I have finally procured via retail establishments ranging from Nordstrom Rack to the Goodwill (although some days it takes me until noon to take off my furry winter boots). When your home becomes your office, and your office becomes your home—this is when you know you’ve sold out.

I’ve exchanged my pink princess water bottle for a more sophisticated grey cup that keeps the tea I drink warm and fill it around four times a day. When the office is particularly chilly, I hold it to my cheek and close my eyes. My walls are decorated with large prints of computer generated artwork, and near my window are pictures of family and a little menagerie of plants. “Sophisticated”—one of my co-workers called it (excepting the pink water bottle). For me, the plants and pictures are just a means of survival.

“What am I doing here?” I ask my friend Jeanne as I plop into the padded file cabinet in her cubicle. And she will remind me, “For the money. And you are being paid quite well.” And then she will follow up with the fact that it is a splendid way to ride out a recession. And it is. And Jeanne understands because she used to be a massage therapist.

Every three days I will catch my reflection in my computer screen and ask myself—what are you doing here? I think of Amy living on an organic farm and Devon in India, and I start to feel greedy for light, plants, foreignness, adventure, for thumbing the man and eating lots of oatmeal.

And then the slick business consultant who sits next to me will send me a snarky email, and I will try not to laugh out loud.

Meanwhile I am trying to finish a book, a process that has begun to feel a lot like slavery (hence my frequent blogging of late). A person who dreams vividly in pictures, I have begun to dream in words.

The first three days of my vacation in Cancun I dreamed of commas and technical terms until I told myself that was it—cut it out. And then I sat on a beach chair under a beach shade and handsome Mexican men brought me drinks. I thought to myself, “What are you doing here?”

The water in Cancun moves from a clear stripe of brilliant aqua to indigo on the horizon, each stripe no bluer or less blue than the next. The sand is white and the shells are like pink edged finger nails. Clean, crisp, and all so hauntingly spa-like. “Erin, what are you doing here?” I have never before been on a vacation that has been a vacation— but slept in airports and dingy hostels, ridden grimy buses and lived on bread and cheese.

When I asked Jeanne today, “Why did I come back?”

She said, “So you can go back to Cancun.”

“Oh yes, that is it.”

I realize that I won’t have time to have a garden this summer—maybe just basil because it grows like a weed. My fingernails will be like the shells at Cancun, I reflect, no dirt under them and spa-white.

I joined a CSA and lately because I have no time to cook, I eat box after box of individually portioned vegetables. I miss cooking. I miss teaching. I miss my morning runs. I miss my poverty, which despite certain scarcities, always felt bounteous. I realize in taking this job I have sacrificed much of what I love.

Still I have this little inkling that my greatest adventures are yet to come. Perhaps more foreignness, more dirt, more bounty. I think of the song I teared up to as I drove to work that first week. And I remember, albeit indirectly, I took this job because of what I love most.

“Oh yes, that is it.”

I do have better things to do with my time

2011-02-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

Spontaneous rant half poetry slam (mid work day) after seeing this picture as an ad for a “Faithful Christian Man” dating site. This is why it’s better to stay off Facebook during the work day. And, yes, like all rants and slam poetry, it is pretty mediocre. ;)

If I was other than I am, I might revert back to associations with the prototypical occupations we are taught in childhood: nurse, mailman, policeman, teacher.

I might see Christianess tied into the innocence of childhood, the basics, things that fit squarely into the boxes of an ordered society.

But since I am me, I have a knee jerk reaction to the image of Christianess juxtaposed with a uniform and a man wearing a gun. I react against the boxiness of middle America and the friendly, small town officer, with his too closely clipped hair who assures me that the situation is control, mam. And flexes his pecks.

Give me a faithful Christian man who eats seaweed.

Who wants to walk the world barefoot and cover it with leather

so others don’t stub their toes.

Give me a faithful Christian man who likes to feel dirt

between his fingers; his hair curls over the ear “just so”

I can run my fingers through it. Give me a faithful

Christian man who loves like rivers, so we can flow

over the world just so the grass grows greener still.

Linked with the references I ripped off in the making. ;)
(My dad used to play the guitar and sing us “Give said the Little Stream” when we were children. He had sideburns—the last remnant of the long hair and bell bottoms he wore in the 60’s.)

Here I raise my glass to love . . .

2011-02-14T10:15:00.001-08:00

Today I echo the post I wrote the day after Valentines Day in 2009, when I discovered beautifully, miraculously that I believed in romantic love, despite the lack of any contemporary positive evidence.

This year I prepared early, beginning to buy presents in January, excited to help my friends feel loved—ecstatic to celebrate love—just for the heck of it.

Someday I’ll have my “one true” to celebrate, and whomever he is, I hope he comes soon! But I was glad to get little glimpses of him in all the truly fabulous guys I know. This year I dedicate my Valentines Day to gratitude for all the men who took good care of me throughout 2010—most of whom are just friends (given fictional names A-Z—just like hurricanes ;)).

Abe who was one of most consistent and faithful friends I’ve ever had.
Bartholomew who always seemed to pop up when I needed to interact with a nice guy and brought me chocolate after my kitchen lit on fire.
Corbin who often sends me articles to help me with my books.
Ebert who drove all the way from southern Virginia to go hiking on my birthday and took everybody out for frozen custard afterwards.
Farris who, bless him, keeps on trying.
Goddard who stayed with me all the way up Old Rag when I was experiencing asthma even though it made him miss the sunrise.
Herrick who gives the absolute best hugs.
Ignatius who held a last minute party at his place when a guy asked me out and made me plan the date.
Julius who plays tennis with me, talks deep and superfluous with me, and rescued me from all sorts of diverse travesties in 2010.
Luis the roommate who helped Julius fix my flat tire.
Kaden who was kind to me on the top two worst weekends of 2010 and one of the worst days I’ve had in years.
Marvin who was an excellent pen pal and internet love-interest for the two months it lasted.
Norman who came the minute I called him.
Opie who always asks about my book.
Quentin who took me on the wildest jeep ride across the sand and through enormous puddles.
Randolph who helped me pick out my investment portfolio.
Stevie who revived me with milk, trail mix, and chocolate when I tried to play ultimate Frisbee after giving blood.
Tobias who is just an incredibly decent human being.
Ulysses who tied up the food, so the bears couldn’t get it.
Vern who will give me a good reason to like winter whenever asked.
Wallace who introduced me to the press that accepted my book and helped me publish another article.
Xerxes who volunteered his truck to help me move a dresser in a thunderstorm.
Yoni who made me feel hot when I was having a hard day.
Zebulon who taught me to waltz and reminded me how it feels to fall head over heals.

(And just to give props to Mormon guys (who may seem implicated by the post below)--most of these guys are LDS, and they are fantastic.)

We claim the privilege

2011-02-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

An apologetic response to the article: "Single, Mormon, Alone" that of course of the New Times didn't publish:

Thus begins the eleventh article of faith of the LDS Church, the only of the thirteen that deviates from “We believe.” In 1842, Joseph Smith Jr. was asked by John Wentworth to describe the fundamental doctrines of Mormonism for the Chicago Democrat—“The Thirteen Articles of Faith” was his response and has since become a canonized summary of the religion. The eleventh continues, “of worshipping the almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”

I’ve always appreciated this scripture because of my strong conviction for the need of all religions to extend religious tolerance and because of the joy I feel sharing in the faith of others.

But one evening, the first part of the article kept resonating in my mind, “We claim the privilege of worshiping the almighty God,” ironically in response to an article written by a Mormon, about Mormonism, for a newspaper.

“Single, Female, Mormon, Alone” runs a title from the “Fashion & Style” section of the New York Times. The consequent narrative related by a 36 year old single Mormon female is painfully sincere, devoid of any of the anger usually expressed by disaffected Mormons who feel like they’ve been restricted by adherence to the religion. Not only that, but the details Nicole relates about the experience of being a 36 year old are absolutely accurate—and uncomfortably familiar.

After being send a copy by my Quaker friend Becky via Facebook, I began composing the response I quote here:

“I didn’t know I was her literary foil when I opened up the attachment sent to me in a message entitled ‘30-something independent Mormon writer.’

‘And I’m not talking about you this time,’ my friend Becky began. As I read into the article, I realized there would be no way to explain to my interfaith women’s group, which Becky had helped me found, why I wasn’t headed to planned parenthood next week to have a IUD so carefully and softly inserted. But I could certainly sympathize. I watch my friends from various faith-based backgrounds move in and out of relationships and in and out with boyfriends. When I inquire on domestic arrangements and relational felicity, these dear women look at me expectantly, but I remain silent. How can I say that I am alone because I am Mormon?

The scarcity of eligible Mormon males and the millions of women out of luck provide plenty of banter for single Mormon table talk. I flatter myself that I am also neither entirely unattractive, socially egregious, or odd smelling. Approximately the same age, Nicole and I bookend the nation in opposite coastal cities at the beginning our literary careers. ‘One of those’ Mormon women, I had been told the secret to my lack of success years ago when I was twenty-one before I had purchased my own car, food, or clothes.

‘You are the kind of woman that I can walk right up to and tell you’re not interested in me. You don’t think about men. You don’t need men. And you don’t want a boyfriend.’

It was true. During my early twenties, the prime marrying years of LDS singles, I painted lots of pictures, wrote a lot of poetry, and traveled to places like Outer Mongolia. I flew through my twenties blissfully single. At 28 with a dwindling puddle of prospects, I was smacked with the reality that 1) marrying 2) conceiving three children before the age of forty may not be in the stars.”

I went on to explain my experiences in evaluating the alternatives, the seven atheists I have liked, dated, or kissed. I recalled the moment (after laying on the couch for a week, sorting out my mental universe, pulling apart and putting back together all the philosophies I had read about existence and God) that I landed on the irrevocable truth that being LDS to me was as integral as the blood in the veins, the material of my very personhood, and if that meant not pursuing it with atheist number 4, so be it, because I was for all purposes Mormon.

My article ended with “it is unfairly unglamorous to uphold the torch of virginity without the option of becoming a nun or a patron saint, but I suppose there is some small comfort in the fact that I am not the first to do something hard because I believe.”

Before I got to refining the middle, I realized that this was all entirely wrong–I was still representing Mormon women as subjects of pity. My conclusion was tantamount to religious martyrdom, and although the strain of continuing to date in a circle where I often feel taken for granted and suffer loneliness is all true, this was not true.

It helped that I was riding up to the Poconos for a ski weekend with a couple 30+ LDS single women, and that one of them, had only been LDS for the past six years before which she had experienced an unhappy marriage and a number of other intimate relationships of differing levels of fulfillment. Physical and emotional companionship, if that companionship is destructive, does not equate happiness, just as the lack of physical or emotional companionship does not preclude it.

Talking to this friend brought back me back to this reality—I relish the fullness of my life consisting of family, nephews, friends, service, health, material and intellectual prosperity and all sorts of effulgent goodness. Enthusiasm for living accompanies my daily waking, and the comfort of prayer and scripture holds me as I close my eyes each night. Always in times of extremity and frustration I am overwhelmed with the affirming love of God. I like Nicole have been taught I was a daughter of God. The truth is that I live and thrive in awareness of this kinship, and so my response that will never satisfy my friends of other faiths or the educated American audience that reads the New York Times, but can be one thing only, and that is “I claim the privilege.”

YES

2010-12-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

In 1966, a twenty-six year old art school dropout stopped in at a preview of a one-woman show being held in the Indica Galley in London. The artist, a thirty-three year old Japanese woman handed him a card that said “breathe.” Other art objects included a real apple, a white board ready for the patrons to hammer nails into the surface, and a ladder placed under a framed picture on the ceiling. The young man ascended the rungs, looking up at a framed block print of one word. The letters were so small, he pushed the long bangs from his eyes and reached for a magnifying glass hanging from the frame to see them.

“YES,” read John Lennon from the ceiling. And thus began his fascination with Yoko Ono.

I’ve thought of this story often in the past three years in the wake of two wars and a financial collapse. I thought of it during the Obama campaign that adopted Cesar Chavez’s Farm Workers of America chant to attract Hispanic voters: “Si, se puede.” I thought of it as I took small steps in the human traffic jam of the 2008 presidential inauguration, an experience that lacked all the tension of such a large crowd because of the overwhelming sense of “Yes, we can.”

In almost three years since, this confidence has diminished as the economy has been slow to recover and the new president has failed to remake the world as we know it or has remade it too drastically for our tastes, but Obama was not the most significant ingredient in that mass conglomerate of good will, but hope.

When I think of Yoko Ono’s 1966 Ceiling Painting, I think of the power of the affirmative—the transformative magic of “YES” and how sometimes we all need to hear it so desperately. And how even now, the economy will only turn based on consumer confidence.

Back when I was in art school and studying socially responsive art, I read about an installation, the name of which I’ve never been able to locate since. The artists rented out a corner room in a building, fitted it with chairs and a reception desk, and placed an “employment services sign” out front. As the unemployed waited to be called into the back, encouraging messages played over the audio system—when the walk-ins found out that it wasn’t in fact an office, but an art installation, none of them were angry. They had been reaffirmed and regained their sense of “YES.” Sometimes all we need to change our lives is an increased sense of confidence. The self permission to experience bits of reckless joy in the affirmation that is all around us. The curative potency of a teaspoon of optimism.

Over the past six months as I’ve come to terms with my decision to follow a life path I wouldn’t have chosen on my own, I’ve struggled to find my inner sense of “YES,” which is usually an intrinsic part of my being. After months of waking up every morning with a decision to be positive, last Tuesday I felt ecstatic to find myself overflowing with the affirmative. The dam had broken; I smiled all day.

And driving home from my sister’s house in Indiana last Monday as if in confirmation, I spotted the words “YES.” Just this word-printed on a billboard size sign perched over a motel snugged into the side of a mountain on the eastern border of Ohio.

Maybe the owners just wanted to settle the debate of whether travelers should stop and book a room for the night before disappearing into the hills and vales of West Virginia. Or maybe in the spirit of socially responsive art, the sign simply meant to echo the “YES” of Yoko Ono’s installation, recognizing the need of affirmation from high places.

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes, and a Yes, and a Yes!

(Hollywood’s transliteration of E.M Forester)

Si, se puede

YES

Do No Harm

2010-11-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

For the two years I worked as an adjunct professor, I paid roughly $30.00 a month for “hit-by-a-bus” insurance—in other words, something that would prevent me from being financially bankrupt over the medically unexpected.

Needless to say, I became a much less aggressive skier. I also deepened my knowledge of herb and vitamin immunity boosters to prevent colds and herb antibiotics to cure them. Despite the fact I came in contact with around 100 students each week, all carrying a variety of diseases, I got sick once in the two year period. CVS minute clinic charged me $60.00 for an in-and-out visit and $10.00 for penicillin.

I took Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Zinc, and garlic throughout the cold season. Every time I got a sore throat, I immediately took a dose of Oscillococcinum, France’s favorite cold preventative. It worked. Every season, seven to eight sore throats resolved by the next morning.

I was also continuing the medical regimens from my pre- “hit-by-a-bus” insurance days, purchasing medicines from online Canadian pharmacies, mooching off free samples generously donated by my allergist, and paying for allergy shots out-of-pocket.

My health was never better.

When I accepted my new position, I will admit that “real” insurance was a significant motivator. I showed up to my new Kaiser allergist, confident that she would be willing to continue the very successful treatment I had been following for four and a half years.

My roommate Annette will remember my health status previous to those four and a half years—constant colds during the winter visibly manifested by the mucous emanating out of my facial orifices every five minutes. When I was teaching, I would frequently turn my back, to empty my throat or nostrils discretely. Yes, disgusting.

I thought my immune system was whacked. Nope, just year-round allergies to mold and pollen, which in turn, whacked my immune system.

Come to find out when I visited my new Kaiser allergist that my old allergist (the best doctor I have ever had) made a lucky guess. The skin tests indicated little. Instead of deciding to continue my highly effective treatment, my Kaiser allergist decided I didn’t have allergies.

In consequent phone calls, it hasn’t mattered that I have had two sinus infections in the last four months, totaling five weeks of illness. Or that on two days my eyes have been so irritated I had to come home from work (on one of these days I woke up with deep red eyes and half my face swollen). It doesn’t matter that I’ve exceeded my sick days at a new job, or that I’ve had a constant dull headache from congestion.

It also doesn’t matter that I suffered from chronic sinusitis as a child as a result of allergies or that my father has allergies or that my great grandmother had allergies so badly she had to spend pollen season in the hospital or on the beach.

She stuck with her prognosis.

So I visited my old allergist who apparently keeps more abreast of current medical discoveries and faxed me a copy of a medical study about patients with allergies that don’t manifest in skin tests or blood tests, but nonetheless respond positively to allergy shots.

It doesn’t help that I’ve always got the rarest form of diseases. The epilepsy I experienced for six years was an odd form barely documented that my neurologist never did catch on an EEG. After the doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me, my mother noticed the jitter in my eye and declared it epilepsy.

My asthma is unusually severe for exercise-induced asthma, and no doctor has ever been able to control is satisfactorily. My new Kaiser allergist took up the challenge. She sent me to a pulmonologist way out in Virginia, who apparently was going to document what was going on with my lungs.

After I spent all morning driving out there and getting lost, I arrived to find out that my new Kaiser allergist had given me a referral for the wrong test. They did not test exercise-induced asthma at that location. But the pulmonologist continued with the regular asthma test anyway. Apparently I have extraordinary lung capacity, which frustrated the doctor beyond comprehension when after he had given me asthma inducing chemicals, I could not blow. He explained, raising his voice with each explanation, that unless I could blow for seven seconds, the test results would be inconclusive. I could only blow three seconds, and while he ranted, my vision went in and out of black, my fingers tingled, and I could barely grasp the mouthpiece he repeatedly handed to me.

I started slumping in my chair.

I explained haltingly my symptoms, “There’s not enough blood in my brain.”

“Yes there is. Because you have excellent lung capacity. The symptoms you are experiencing are not asthma.”

I slumped further.

“Stop slumping you are going to fall off your chair. I need you to blow again. Think of me as a coach. I’m telling you what the machine wants you to do. Now blow!”

I forced all the air out of my lungs.

“Only two seconds! Don’t you understand unless you blow for seven seconds, this test will be inconclusive! Now blow!”

After repeating this scenario twelve times he gave up and explained that it was my fault that he could not continue the test.

I was still going in and out of black.

“I need the room for my next patient. Can you carry your purse into the next room?”

I explained haltingly that I could not stand, and that I was having an asthma attack.

“But you are not wheezing! The test was inconclusive. We do not know that you have asthma. Are you diabetic? Did you eat breakfast?”

“No. I’ve had asthma for 14 years. I understand what it feels like. I ate a half a loaf of bread this morning.”

After about twenty minutes of this, he began to get scared and called in reinforcements to check my vitals.

“Do we need to call an ambulance?”

“No, I have asthma. I need to rest.”

They couldn’t find a wheelchair, so the doctor pushed me into the next room in his rolling chair. I recovered after an hour and a half.

After this ordeal, I can imagine what my Kaiser pulmonologist has written in his notes: “Test inconclusive. Patient does not have asthma.”

And my new Kaiser allergist will determine to discontinue my asthma medication.

Interdependency,

2010-11-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

Codependency, dependent—all these words have a negative connotation in English, and quite frankly describe a number of undesirable personality characteristics or relationship dynamics.

But this morning on the metro, milling about amongst all the Washingtonians, who with their ultra-independent dog-eat-dog attitude weave in and out of each other individualistically in the collective of the morning mass transit commute, I had an epiphany.

As I stepped off the yellow line en route to the red, I noticed a woman with a seeing-eye dog. I snapped out of the push and shove mindset almost immediately and watched to make sure she wasn’t lost in the shuffle. With so many people headed to so many destinations on the 5th, 12th, and 14th floors of some office building at the end of some metro line, I admired her courage to venture out. “How independent of her!” I thought.

Then I noticed how she asked somebody immediately as she stepped out of the metro car about the direction of the escalator and if the stairs were moving up or stationary. What allowed her to negotiate effectively in morning transit was the willingness to accept the fact that she would have to rely on others—this is what allowed her to be independent.

The other day as I was dreaming of my parallel life to the one I live now—I think I have mentioned this before—the one where I save orphans and start community organic farms in third world countries, I realized why I feel so comfortable traveling abroad. I ask a lot of questions and learn who to depend on and who not to depend on fairly quickly. As a result, I’ve gotten out of lots of sticky situations.

When I live in another country, I always feel empowered. I’ve always told myself this is because I am forced to be courageous and resourceful every day to overcome challenges, but I’ve never really considered the manner in which most of these challenges are overcome.

Flashback: Standing in front of the metro in downtown St. Petersburg. No map, no rubles, no Russian. Just arrived from Latvia via bus and my program has forgotten to pick me up. Several hours later, I arrive to the correct hotel thanks to the mercy of multiple strangers. How independent of me—you might say—negotiating the mass transit system and carrying the 80 lbs of luggage over my shoulder and on my back. My act of courage? Instead of sitting down to cry, accepting the fact that I would have to rely on others to get where I was going.

Hope Floats, and So Do I

2010-08-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

A semi-original masterpiece composed by my sister and I, late one night after we’d watched Hope Floats. Adele’s “To Make You Feel My Love” lyric transformed into “So you can feel my chub” and so on. My sister and I still think it’s hilarious, but nobody else does, so I’ll spare you the rest of the song.

Right now I’m sitting out on my porch, watching a rainstorm from behind the two white pillars that stand in front of the entrance to my home, which is locked. I decided to take the opportunity provided by having left my keys this morning to compose a blog, on you guessed it, “hope floats and so do I.”

You see, I just started a job at IBM in technical writing—for a creative, B-personality type like myself, perhaps not the most obvious road to happiness. My job’s not bad, my co-workers are great, and I’m beginning to realize that for a person who can never produce an error-free piece of text, I’m an awfully anal editor. So never challenge me on commas; I just wrote a very specific style guide on the subject.

Despite the fact that my life as a professor who could go running in the morning and grow vegetables has been turned absolutely topsy-turvy by a nine hour work day and composite two hour commute, I feel a sense of hope. I feel a sense of hope with my decision to stay in D.C., which was no where near my plan, and I know somehow things will work out for the best in the end.

My clearance at work hasn’t gone through, so I’m not able to go to the office or leave the office without being escorted. I can’t get into the computer system without clearance, so I’m unable to assume all my duties, and I’ve been sick since, yes, my first day of work.

I can’t wait to emerge from my fog of headachiness and get things “organized,” but I’m not getting too stressed about it.

I decided that hope is like love and joy. It needs no justification for being because having hope creates happiness whether or not there is something tangible to hope for.

Now for the “and so do I” part—how do you stay in shape when you are at work or in transit for 11 hours a day? I’m going to have to give up at least one of the three following items: sleep, food, or friends. :)

A Bibliography Page

2010-05-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

Over the past week, I've sorted through about 40 lbs. of print sources and several more K of electronic sources to compile a 13 page bad boy, "Selected Bibliography."--I've been reminded of the rediculous amount of research I did for my book and have concluded that for this next book, I'm going to do this in increments instead of an all at once 40 hr. plunge.

I found this poem in the middle of some notes on Wales. Since this blog is in part dedicated to bad poetry, enjoy:

Train Station Cardiff, Wales

A Limping pigeon
(a health hazard and nuisance)
struts on nonetheless
a red tipped stump
of dubious origin.
I am eating wasabi peas,
and the pigeon is confident
because of the stump
that some
will fall wayside.

Enveloping the Chill

2010-05-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

Last semester I probably had one of the hardest classes in my teaching career. Too often I was pulling students out in the hall to talk to them about plagiarism or failing, and at the end of the semester I failed more students than I had since my first semester.

I wondered what was wrong because my teaching skills and class strategies had developed significantly in the last two years. I realized that other people were making choices, and I needed to let go of responsibility. I chilled.

There is this Taoist idea of going with the flow--"wu wei." Called the principle of non-action, what it really means is knowing when to act and when not to act.

When I think of being chill, I think of the story of Peter walking on the water, and how he could do it until he realized "What the! I'm walking on water." In Peter's defense it was a rollicking sea, not a peaceful glass like surface.

But still Christ reprimanded him for doubting--"So you think you can walk on only calm water, huh? You should think better of me and of yourself."

I've reached a crossroads this summer, and I'm exhausted emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I'm waiting to hear back today on whether I got a second interview on a technical writing job. On Friday, the publisher looking over my book proposal requested the full document. In addition to changing careers and publishing, I also need to concentrate on getting hitched.

All of these tasks I realize might not be easy. May involve a lot of rejection. In need of a second wind, I keep hoping the Lord will throw me a bone for being so darn obedient--quitting my job, trying to make friends with boys who are sometimes mean to me, staying in D.C. "So you think you can walk on only calm water, huh?" I need to think better of myself and better of the Lord.

And most of all I need to chill out and stop taking responsibility for other people's decisions. When I picture calm, I think of the expanse of an ocean and patience that wide.

This year I've been focusing on developing the attribute of charity. I wrote a couple attributes from 1 Cor. 13 on my calendar to focus on each month. But I realized one attribute is missing. It should be on the top, "Charity is Chill." This is because "Perfect love casteth out all fear." Fearless people are patient and never jealous because they know that the Lord will deliver. They're chill ocean swallowing water-walkers, waves and all.

Counting My Happinesses

2010-04-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

I feel grateful and happy today, so I wanted to make a list why:

1. God has blessed me with an amazing family and so many dear friends. Loving them and experiencing their love is the joy of my life.

2. The opportunity to serve by teaching my students at NVCC and my primary class at church.

3. Mountains and waterfalls and beaches (oh my!) that are all within driving distance.

4. My garden.

5. Even though my job situation isn't totally resolved, I feel confident in what I can do.

6. My health!!!

7. I'm not afraid of anything anymore--reading (my work), acting, and singing are all off the list (through making myself participate in each). And I'm no longer afraid of getting married either.

8. That I'm acquainted with a number of good men, some of whom I wouldn't mind being better acquainted with. ;)

9. I understand in greater measure the relationship between faith, hope, and charity. Especially hope. I've been looking for a concise definition for years (how it is different than faith). After feeling quite a bit of it lately, I realized it is a very simple, but beautifully powerful concept.

Putting in Roots

2010-03-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

After six years of living D.C., it’s time to unpack the fine china. Or have my parents send my not so fine plate set from Utah. Or buy some for that matter. Over the past few years I’ve probably experienced a little schizophrenia about where I lived. I am from and will always be from Utah, but I didn’t live in Utah and I didn’t live in D.C., not really; I was renting.

Here it’s probably useful to point out the difference between the simple present tense, which denotes “fact,” and the present progressive, which indicates a continuing action of temporary duration. My state of residence for the last six years has been in the present progressive tense—continuing, but always with reservations and subject to change. Today, I decided for the first time that I live in D.C.—that for better or worse, and for probably much longer than I anticipate or desire, I will live in D.C.

I can’t say that I’m excited about it; I’ve felt a nagging sadness for over a week. Returning to Utah meant access to nephews, being near my dad who’s experiencing health problems, a new pool of men with whom I would experience “new girl” status for at least three months, and the opportunity to walk away from the past indefinitely.

As a westerner, I think I will always inhabit the East with a certain amount of discomfort. I was raised with mountains and wide open spaces; living near so much concrete, brick, and marble twists my innards into coils that unwind blissfully every time I leave the beltway. D.C., although it has been a place of learning has also been a place of suffering. Although I’m grateful for the growth, I don’t want anything to do with that sufferer. Somehow I have to dig up that girl who loves flowers, and people, and life, and all things bright and beautiful and make sure she never leaves again.

Now because just yesterday, I was accused of being an eternal optimist, I’ve got to spin it upside: This opens me to the beauty of decisiveness. Now there’s no more doubt. I composted my garden last fall just in case, but I didn’t buy a shovel because I had already decided that I was moving. I bought a shovel a couple days ago, and I planted my garden today. And I know I’ll be around to weed it throughout the summer months.

And this is the advantage of living in the city in the second-hand house that “Dan built”—I have a little plot of earth and tending vegetables unfailingly turns me back into that girl no matter how hard she is to find.

Why am I staying? A quote from my journal early January: “But there’s this thing about being a good Christian. In Old Testament times, usually it was enough to bring your finest ram or dove to the priest for sacrifice. The Lord honored it. But God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Sometimes God asks a dove, sometimes a ram, sometimes Issac. A good Christian gives God Isaac when he asks for Isaac.”

But in exchange, God deals out tender mercies always: a number of Kale plants, a strawberry plant, a parsley plant, some mint, some oregano, and some thyme all survived the winter.

I have a job interview next week.

God loves us, everyone.

Here Am I; Send me

2010-02-23T15:45:00.000-08:00

I was particularly struck by this idea mid-January standing in James Madison’s library at Montpelier.

A small, quiet man, sometimes called “the forgotten founder,” here in the calm of what was then the wild out-back of the new world, James Madison studied the failed democracies of history. Compared to the renovations at Monticello, Montpelier definitely evidences neglect. In Madison’s library there is one book shelf with eight or so worn volumes that might have been his. Otherwise the room is empty.

It is possible that the contemporary overlook of such an influential man is a modern trend and not reflective of his peer’s regard in his times. But Madison was shy, and certainly not the most dynamic of all the founding fathers, yet he took it upon himself to write the much of the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

When we think of influential characters of the past, there is a certain amount of magical realism that we attach to them. But there was nothing more than the miniscule scholar and his books, burning the daylight hours and candles into the evening in his library. Outside his window the Blue Ridge Mountains peeked above dense forest as they do today, and in times no less real than now, Madison had the audacity to self-elect to write the foundation of the first self-sustaining democratic model of history.

As I entered social seclusion to pour over books, snuggled under the afghan my aunt made me for my graduation on my bed, I realized there was a certain amount of preposterousness and presumption in deciding that I was going to write a book about Iraq. The more I read, the more this self-humbling reflection was justified.

In Iraq, there are a few like Sheik Sittar in the Anbar Province, who had a similar epiphany to Madison. Something like this: “There are many people in this world, but I can make an individual contribution. This job is mine, and I will step up to the plate.”

And this is the common denominator among the movers and the shakers of the world, both great and terrible, the reckless courage to make a splash, to self nominate to action: Here Am I.

Oraciones for Grace

2010-02-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

The name of a book of poetry that I never finished about the crazy things I encountered on my commute D.C. when I first moved out here 6 years ago. I liked the title because I taught primarily Spanish speakers at the time, and “Oraciones” means both “prayers” and “sentences” in Spanish.

I metro-ed into the city last night to see my friend Kim, who was here one day from Kigali, Rwanda where she’s been living for the past year. I assumed correctly that the city would be a mess. When I got off the metro to walk to the restaurant I passed a number of men with snow shovels trying to chip the two inches of ice off the sidewalk. But, I felt a sense of vivacity I get only walking in a city and being among "people"--something I miss a little living a 15 minute walk from work in N.Va.

We are reading Edward P. Jones’ Lost in the City in my English 112 class, and although his stories about downtown D.C. are grittier than I ever want my experiences to be, there is something very alive about the city that Jones taps into. Something slightly off-kilter and human—something definitely in need of grace.
The metro is a crossing grounds for all sorts of people that would never interact in “real life,” and because of this, so many amazing things happen there.

When I hopped on yesterday, a big black guy in his twenties walked down the middle singing and taunting the passengers, “Dead people. All ya’s dead people.” And of course nobody looked, just stared at their hands, their paper, or the head of the person in front of them.

Waiting to transfer trains, I saw an almost fully opened long stemmed white rose clutched in the hand of a young man standing next to me and knew what he felt for the woman he was on his way to deliver it to.

I’ll never forget at Chinatown when a young blind man bumped into an elderly woman—they were both flustered and disoriented—neither realized the situation and walked away blaming the other for being inconsiderate. It seemed like a perfect metaphor for a world in need of grace with a dash of New Testament rhetoric. How often we are involved in the collisions of widows and the blind, and walk away never understanding the circumstances or lack of ill intention of the person we are at odds with.

Body Love

2010-02-12T12:17:00.001-08:00

A blog entry to preach the doctrine of body love instead of body hate—the other day as I was spooning up some rather healthy homemade soup, I reflected in all these months that I have been a very healthy eater and daily exerciser that I haven’t dropped much weight. In fact for the first few months, I just got stronger.

I have this pact with myself that if I get down to a size 8, I’ll buy myself a pair of skinny jeans. I thought of this spooning my soup—“still not a size 8.” Then my whole system revolted.

“Erin,” I said to myself, “You feel better than you’ve ever felt. You’re never sick and your immune system is amazing. You are strong and if you need to pick up something heavy—you can do it yourself. This is why you eat healthy and exercise—it’s because you love your body.”

Body haters consider eating healthy food and exercise punishment because they are doing it in order to conform to some outside measure imposed on them by society. When they indulge in unhealthy food, they are “treating themselves.”

Moving from the soup to some vanilla yoghurt, I realized that I was treating myself. All those vitamins I was spooning in. In fact, the soup I had just finished was the result of not wanting to throw away the water I boiled my collard greens in—all that dark green healthy juice—I wanted it in my belly and not in the kitchen sink.

This is body love. So next time I pick up the jump rope in my living room, I’m going to chant “I love you” to keep time. The next bowl I oatmeal I down, I’m going to pat my stomach and say, “There you go hunny.” Taking time to exercise will be my “guilty pleasure.”

And if I never reach size 8, I’ll still feel fantastic. And I’ll still love my body.

A Literary Spinster

2009-12-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

Christmas of 2008, I wrote the beginnings of an essay thus entitled and saved it on my parent's computer. When I looked for it this year, I noticed they'd been wise enough to delete it. At the time I was feeling that it would be a relief to renounce any ideas of matrimony and take off on all sorts of adventures--live it large and write it even larger.

For my models I looked to Emily Dickinson, George Elliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Willa Cather, and Jane Austen. The problem was after doing more research on these women, I didn't want to be anything like them: Dickinson, a recluse and needy in a gripping terrible, leachy sort of way. Elliot, plain, clingy, a home wrecker. Bishop and Cather had relationships with women. And Austen died young and lived very, very small.

The reckless abandon associated with even writing the essay, let alone emulating it, quickly diminished.

Lately, I've noticed an excess of "writers" in chick flicks--women who are intelligent and ambitious and unloved because nobody is good enough for them except for the guy who's a jerk who will change of course (of course) when he finally realizes she's his soul mate. You would think all of this would be self-validating.

Instead I find myself annoyed that at the center of women's fantasy world--represented by chick flicks--is typology that subsumes me in the real world. I don't want to be a character in a chick flick because these stories reinforce expectations that don't materialize.

My dear little grandmother pulled me aside at a family Christmas party and told me, "I've been thinking about you since I saw you last. You remember how Darcy says Elizabeth has 'fine eyes'? You have fine eyes." I understood from this comment that she was comparing me to Elizabeth in Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," assuring me that Darcy would be along soon, that certainly he would transform, that of course we would live happily ever after. My aunt gave me a copy of a British TV series called "Lost in Austen" where a character gets transported into "Pride and Prejudice" and ends up with Darcy, who she has loved all her life because no love story in real life has ever measured up.

Again, I found myself frustrated to be compared to Austen's character or for somebody to assume that I could relate to this story. When I was a teenager back in the day when I thought I was awfully smart and talked a lot of smack with the neighborhood boys, I did identify with Elizabeth and with Beatrice ("Much Ado about Nothing"). My brother, who once identified with Benedik, who has spent much of his life chasing Beatrices, is now dating one of the kindest women that both he and I have ever met--and is deliriously happy.

This pattern presented with those who are ever so clever, those who are anti-matrimony or relationship, who treat each other abominably until they are transformed by their consuming love for each other is a false one. And in all my resistance to these heroines, I realize I've finally grown out of it.

Two additional New Year's resolutions: Love--as defined by 1 Corinthians 13, and absolutely no more ineffectual dating behaviors.

Paying My Dues to Possibility

2009-12-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

Never in my life have I had so little prescience about what is next. “In Northern Virginia by default,” I’ve tried to relocate about three times since graduation in May 2008. I’ve considered transitioning fields: editing, technical writing. I’ve thought about teaching K-12. I called the State Department and found out I’m not qualified to be an Education Specialist—almost applied to USAID as an education junior officer. I paid off my car and my school loans because I wanted to be unfettered--free to abandon the U.S. for the world on a whim.

My Bulgarian friend almost convinced me to move to Vienna. Teaching in Europe sounded like a fabulous two year plan during which I planned to have a couple short-lived romances with extremely handsome and intellectual atheists. After putting a nest-egg aside, I would then pick a developing country to devote myself to, and maybe some orphans.

I waited until mid-October to purchase a ticket home for Christmas because I couldn’t decide if I should buy a one-way. The luxury of spending the winter holed up in my parents’ basement trying to get published was hard to pass up. A few weeks later I quit a teaching job I had accepted a week before—hadn’t even filled out the paperwork yet.

A week ago, I sent in my application to a Ph.D. program in Creative Writing at the University of Utah. In three weeks, I’ll send one into the University of Houston and the University of Ohio. In January, I’ll try to sell my book once more, and in February, I’m going to renounce social activities in order to write another one.

For the meantime, I’m going to have to make one thing definite—so I’m getting a haircut and blonde highlights. This is the short-term plan.

In sum I refer to the last two lines of “The Lion’s tooth (Dandelion)” a bad poem I wrote in my early, early twenties: and so I send my wishes feather-born / on the seedlings of my many lives.

An Abundant Life

2009-11-21T10:44:00.001-08:00

Four years ago, I decided that I needed to have one, and only one New Year's Resolution (yes, I'm blowing past 2 holidays right now). So I decided, in classic D.C. style, that I would be unflappable. That year I got flapped so bad, I didn't know what hit me. Until two weeks ago, I was still feeling the repercussions of it.

In any case, the next year I was too flapped to come up with any New Year's Resolutions, but the following I decided I was barking up the wrong New Year's Resolution and needed to regroup. That year I went for "being good." I tried awful hard to be good that year (somewhat successfully) and had all sorts of challenges to that end but learned a lot in the exchange.

2009 was the year of "joy." I can honestly say that there were months and weeks during this year when I was full of effulgence just because I decided to be. Nothing particularly marvelous has happened this year, but nothing particularly rotten either. A lot of frustration not knowing where I'm going next, but a lot of gratitude for health and for the vivacity of spirit I feel when I am joyous.

We're coming on 2010, and I am declaring this now because I have a lot of preparing to do. This next year is going to be the year of the abundant life. A couple weeks ago, I finally kicked fear in the butt--he's been hounding me for years, and I'm ready to be full, full of all good things. I'm making a list of things that give me the feelings of light, peace, youth, and freedom, so I can come up with some ideas of how to fulfill them:

1. Experiencing inspiration, truth, and the Holy Spirit of God.

2. Loving people, both my friends and people who are different than me.

3. Being out in nature where the wild things are.

4. Using my muscles and moving my body.

5. Reading, writing, and talking about interesting ideas.

6. Being exposed to beautiful things.

7. Creating beautiful things.

8. Having international experiences or being with people from international countries.

An American Dream

2009-10-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

I've been an ESL teacher for over ten years, so this is a phrase I hear often. My students have written essays and given presentations about what this ideal signifies. When they say, "American Dream," they say it meaningfully because many of them saved all they had and went through a long process of paper work to come to the United States. Others skipped the paperwork and hid in Mango trucks or cut through the brush at night over the border, risking their lives for the hope of a better one. Others crossed deserts in countries across the world as refugees from wars or corrupt governments.

When you are an ESL teacher, you believe in the American Dream because you see it every day in the lives of your students. Sometimes they would get frustrated with the time it took to socially and economically climb through learning English and improving their skills. "Be patient," I would tell them. "Don't compare yourself to others. It's not a race. There is no other way, but this way, and it is hard work." I told them this because I believed it; at least I did for them.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I needed to believe in the American Dream for me. A member of the middle class, I am an inheritor of this dream, but when I think of its personal application, I look back to my ancestors. I think of Alma Elizabeth who crossed the plains with her family from Sweden. I think of Guissepe Toronto and the flat he ran down the Missouri River. I think of my Grandpa Thomas, who grew up in a coal mining family and worked his way through his first degree doing swing and night shifts at the shipyard. He was bald and into his thirties before he had finished his last degree and began to obtain any sort of decent income for raising his two children.

I've inherited these acts of initiative and sacrifice but have somehow gotten it into my head (maybe from the "me" generation--it ruined us all) that for me it will be smoother than this uphill climb. Then is the danger of complacency, the danger of the middle class, that I will stop dreaming and be satisfied with the status quo.

I'm frustrated that I'm over thirty (thank goodness hair still intact) and not on salary--that I teach over 26 credits and spend all my time correcting and not writing; that right this minute I'm neglecting a pile of 50 essays and 500 journal entries along with a plethora of other ungraded assignments.

I'm frustrated that my glasses and my contacts are not up to prescription, that my filling fell out and I can't afford to go the dentist, and that I have to order all my medications from Canada. I'm frustrated that I take 6 different vitamins each day because I can't afford to lose time or money being sick.

I'm frustrated that nobody will take my pitches or publish my essays. I'm frustrated that no agent will take on my book. I'm even more frustrated that I don't have the time to dedicate to making this writing thing happen.

But there's this thing about American Dreams--they often involve pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, putting in long hours at the docks, and crossing deserts. That's why there's the dream part--you need hope to keep on going and to keep on believing although it's difficult. Because there is no other way.

But after it all, America is the land of opportunity. And I've decided lately that I mean to make it the land of mine.

Morpho Blue

2009-06-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

In January, reveling in my pre-semester bliss, I went to an exhibition at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum with a fellow teacher featuring butterflies. We walked through a room controlled for heat and moisture with butterflies fluttering around our heads, watching our step to make sure we wouldn't crush one of the moths that enjoyed lounging around on the stone path below.

Always a bit of a priss at heart, I love things light and ethereal like butterfly wings and flower petals, so I was in ecstatics although I tried to reign in my 5 year old like joy. The bug that caught my fancy the most was the Morpho.

Morpho blue is not the result of pigmentation, but of scales shaped like crystal that refract light. Only the males are blue--a way to signal other males to stay out of their mating territory. The scales of Morpho butterflies have been studied to produce the iridescence used in anti-counterfeit technology for bills.

This Morpho blue is a similar color to another item from the natural world that has always fascinated me: lapis lazuli. A stone embedded for decoration in many items from Antiquity, lapis lazuli is mentioned many times in the epic of Gilgamesh. In the Renaissance it was ground to make an expensive blue paint used for the shawl of Mary. The wealth of a patron who commissioned an alter piece could be determined by the amount of blue paint used by the artist. At a market in Otovalo, Ecuador, I stumbled on a outlay of jewelry made of lapis lazuli and haggled for a low enough price that I could take some home with me.

Ultramarine, the color derived from lapis lazuli, went out of style due to its price and also because the color tended to dull when mixed with oil. Yves Klein, a twentieth century artist bordering on neo-dada and early modernism, discovered how to suspend ultramarine paint in synthetic resin, which preserved its brilliance. This color became known as "International Ives Klein Blue."

Yves Klein, when lying on the beach as a young man, divided the world between his two friends. Klein picked the sky. As a result of many years studying judo and Eastern philosophy, he tried to produce an aesthetic experience similar to nirvana: "With this famous symbolic gesture of signing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from that time onwards- a quest to reach the far side of the infinite." The "void" was Klein's representation of this pure idea or the separation from the material world of man. His exhibits consisted of empty galleries or galleries hung with identical paintings of "Yves Klein Blue."

While studying art in college, I wasn't always so sure that I bought into Yves Klein, but I sure bought into Yves Klein blue. This is why while entering a Marshall's last week, I caught my breath and made a straight line to the dressing room. Due to financial restrictions lately, I have made a personal commitment to separate myself from the material world of man, but I had to buy this dress. Morpho blue, Ultramarine, Yves Klein blue, whatever color this dress is (Lagoon it said on the tag), it represents a pure idea that looks smashing with my silver heels.

The dress was a little short, a little tight (made for a female without curves), and the top flapped open a little too much. I spent all yesterday altering this dress with a thread called "Monaco blue," but how could I not, with what such splendid company this hue keeps?

P.S. I don't quite understand yet how to insert pictures right, so they are in inverse order. The top is Yves Kline jumping into the "void." The next is a painting using Yves Kline Blue. The next are the Babylonian Gates to Ishtar, and the last is a Morpho butterfly.

The Holding Pattern

2009-05-11T11:55:00.001-07:00

I had a dream once in fable form. It might have even been illustrated. The tortoise from the Tortoise and the hare, came upon a clam relaxing on the edge of the ocean.

"You're so lazy," the tortoise told the clam. "All you do is just sit there. You should get up and do something."

And the clam replied, in this particular fable the wise one, "Sometimes you have to wait for the ocean to pick you up and move you."

I just finished my first semester of professorhood. Every few days I get another email from one of the community colleges in California who aren't even interested in interviewing me. But I have this overall sense of well-being and nonchalance about the whole thing.

I feel like I've taken just about every positive action I can to move my life forward in a myriad of ways. I feel good about myself. Really good.

I've decided that living in Northern Virginia by default, ain't half bad, and until whatever is next decides to present itself on the horizon, I'm going to wait for the ocean to pick me up and move me. Meanwhile, I'm going to spend all summer enjoying the beach.

Soups

2009-04-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

I had an amazing bit of luck yesterday and whipped up some yummy Easter soups. The chicken and wild rice was such a haphazard dance of "whoops," and "get in my belly," that I don't think it is replicable. I'll have to mess around with it a little more to get anything standardized.

The tomato, however, I think is reproducible in recipe format:

1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 30 oz can crushed / diced tomatoes.
5 grams vegetable bouillon
3 medium carrots or 4 small ones
3/4 a regular sized yellow onion
1 pint half and half

Season to taste:
Basil (lots)
black pepper
garlic (2 large cloves)
red pepper (2 small, dried, medium-hot ground in pestle)

Chop and saute the carrots and onion in the bottom of a soup pan in olive oil. Add tomatoes. Simmer 15-20 minutes. Let cool a little and blend in blender (You'll need to add enough water to make it soupy). Add spices and half and half.

Easter in Wales

2009-04-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Last year I spent my Easter in Wales. A typically temperate time of the year in Europe, this spring was unusually cold. We got hailed on in Paris, and on Easter morning in Wales it snowed. My friend Abby and I were staying in Merthyr Tydfil, a village in "The Valleys," the old coal fields of South Wales. My great, great grandmother Margaret and Evan immigrated from this once booming iron and coal mining town to Scofield, Utah around the turn of the century. I was back to do research and visit the last deep coal mine in Wales: The Tower Colliery. It had been bought out by the men who mined it when Margaret Thatcher shut down all the mines in Britain--an amazing story retold to me over a ginger ale in a charming Welsh accent by one of the ring leaders, who was kind enough to meet me the Glancynon, the most popular pub in the little town of Hirwaun.

Most of my nights in Wales had been restless, full of dreams of driving. We had rented a car, and we'd gotten to the dealer in Cardiff only moments before they closed. The only car they had left was a brand new Mercedes Benz. A luxury vehicle, a little wider than the average European car, this was not the ideal for a first time driver on the left side of the road. Driving was especially difficult given the fact I am R/L challenged and took a while to remember which was the right side when I started driving at 16. Needless to say, Abby heard me curse for the first time, and in my dreams, I practiced driving for the next day. The "new right," the "new left," I would tell myself as I navigated through the maps of roads in my sleep.

What added to my restlessness is that I was sleeping in a child's bunk bed in a member of my church's home in the wrong side of town. They were out of town for the week and had offered their house since we were unable to find lodging in the few hotel options in Merthyr. It was "rough," but not too "rough," we were counseled. They might slash our tires, but they wouldn't steal our car. This wasn't much comfort parking a Mercedes Benz in area where there were very few vehicles and strange noises of bored teenagers throughout the night. If they slashed our tires, what then?

But, I awoke this Easter in Wales remarkably rested in a time that I had not been sleeping for months with a repeating thought. I still don't know what it portends, "When one door closes, another opens." In a time of my life when I've felt like I've had very little direction, in which I've almost picked up and moved twice, I'm still waiting for that door. But this thought came with a rush of elation and light, such that I believed all that I was worried about at that moment would be resolved. In this Easter morning in Wales with a light touch of snow over the thin, winding roads of Merthyr, I felt how much I loved life. I felt like I was passing through one of those "pillars of mortality," and that I had once again learned what it meant to be redeemed and resurrected from all the times I had died and was born again. I feel this again this year. I turned 31 yesterday, and it is a new year. I feel hopeful. Forgiven. Redeemed.

Signs of Age

2009-03-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

I have a barb on my chin, no stray hair, no. It is not thin and nearly invisible like the hairs on my arm that only show when they sparkle in the sun. It is a certified barb, the kind that grow from witch's chins and the chins of old ladies. It is not black or blond, but somewhere in between, a mottled barb. Since lately I have put significant effort into rooting out the evil in me, I guess it means I am becoming old.

I have an almost inperceptible blue vein on my upper thigh that I can see through the skin. I spied it last year sun bathing. I pointed it out to my younger brother who is a man-nurse, "See look at that! I have a varicose vein!" He was polite enough not to reply.

When I turned 28, I realized for the first time that I could get wrinkles. When I turned 29, I glanced in the mirror and found my first. At 30, this one has become deeper. Washing my face several weeks ago, I caught a glimmer of the future, the wrinkles that would be someday. In less than a week, I am turning 31, and realize after this it is all downhill.

Of course there will be many wonderful moments and still much maturing to do intellectually and emotionally, but nearing my 31st, I realize that I will get no more beautiful. After this, it is all the beauty of the spirit.

I have always been nothing more than a mediocre athlete; it is sobering to think after this, I will get no more athletic. I have a crick in my knee, and unlike others, I have never outgrown my adolescent asthma. Limping and hyperventilating will be my future in sports, and the thing is, I don't feel that I have earned it.

I've traveled the world, earned a few degrees, and suppose I can say I have a career, but coming from a Mormon background, I will never feel like I have truly grown up until I have a child. Turning 31 and staring into the future of so many wrinkles, I am realizing it is time I earned them changing diapers. It is time I earned them losing sleep over an infant and not worrying about men. I want to link into the propagating of youth before I am truly old. :)

(All in tongue and cheek )

For the Men

2009-03-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Reading a letter from Women for Women International today, I had a thought that took me aback. It described women in Kosovo who owned a dairy farm collective, who walked out to their field everyday with their shoulders back because they were the best wage earners in their village. One woman, the letter boasted, had rebuilt her war-torn home. Where was Men for Men International? These women were able to pay to send their children to school and support their families. Where were their husbands?

This Women for Women project was based off the idea of micro-credit, small loans that in fact in most international aid societies are given out to women. One of the ideas behind micro-credit is the empowerment of women who live in societies where they are marginalized. It is almost as if we have given up on the men. They make war, spread AIDS, and drink beer. Might as well put the money in the hands of the women, and then the children will eat. But children need more than sustenance; children need fathers.

I wondered if these women’s husbands were sipping out their wages on bar stools, feeling emasculated because their wives were supporting the family. Although micro-credit has been very successful, and although I have always believed in the empowerment and equal rights for women, I believe in the empowerment and equal rights for men too. We need non-profit organizations that focus on teaching men to gain confidence from supporting their families both financially and emotionally. To save our world, we must also save the men.

It feels good to hear myself say that. There was probably a point in my life that I would have called myself a feminist. I was tired of men always trying to compete with me or put me down. This frustrated me to the point that I wanted to beat them and at their own game too. Then I grew up a little, and I no longer considered myself a feminist. A womanist, I declared myself because I believed in the rights of women but wanted to stay away from the man-hating baggage of feminism. But, today I realize that I don’t want to call myself that anymore either because I don’t want to declare my loyalty to one sex only. I believe in the rights of men. Society is only peaceful and safe and children well-nurtured when men and women are strong together.

Stranded in Garrett, PA

2009-03-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've always wished that there were some IQ test that tested for ditziness--like a learning disability it's something that I've always wished I could diagnose, get down on paper, pin down the malfunction to the soft spot in my brain: the place my mother dropped me, the part that got too squeezed in the birth canal.

In order to compensate for this particular lack of intelligence, I try to build good habits. For instance no matter what, I always put on my parking brake. No matter what I always lock my car. The no matter what I've been trying to solidify lately is putting my keys in the front pocket of my red purse as soon as they come out of the ignition.

On my road trip this weekend, I brought a grey bag from Ecuador because it matched my outfit and was better for hiking--this is where the system break down all started.

I went to see the windmills in Garrett, PA, a small former mining community just over the Mason-Dixon line. I had ambiguous feelings about the aesthetics of wind farms until the eight on the ridge in Garrett popped up on the horizon; I gasped, being overcome with their stream-line white loveliness. This is not only because I'm a tree hugger.

I drove through town and up the hills, taking pictures and madly scribbling down notes of all sorts of quirky particulars. I pulled into the BP, which had two old-fashioned questionably operating pumps and started a conversation with a man who was fixing the sign at the local Baptist church.

I felt so writerly through all this. So many Ahhas! After I finished asking him questions, I walked back to my car, fumbling through my grey purse. No keys. Keys were sitting on the front seat, always so accusingly conspicuously placed.

My brain rapidly assessed the situation. I was more than 3 hours from home. My cell phone was in the car. There was no way to jimmy the lock in the trunk. The extra key underneath my car fell off long ago. Stuck.

Then I had this feeling. I always have this feeling. Perhaps it is God or the entourage of angels who follow me orchestrating ways to rescue me from my stupidity, and I knew things would be okay. This didn't prevent me from chastising myself for being the stupidest person in the world. Something like this: Erin, what am I going to do with you? Forbid you from traveling alone? Maybe! Ridiculous at 30 years of age.

And so it has happened in all parts of the globe, and there are angels everywhere. The man fixing the sign--I never asked him if he was the preacher (likely, the population of Garrett swells to just over 400, and there is no mechanic in town, no cop, etc.)--called his friends. Nobody had a slim jim. Hanger in hand, his friend arrived, and two middle aged men starting working on the car.

Now only a woman can understand predicaments such as these. Had I a hanger and a leatherman, I could have gotten it open myself. This sort of handyman knowledge is the only common sense I have. Once at work, I left my keys home, so I picked the lock with a paperclip. But I am a "young woman;" I once was a blond woman; I was in distress. And the leatherman belonged to the guy with the beard.

After they tried to pry the door open with a ball point pen, I meekly handed them some wooden shims I'd retrieved from a neighbor's wood pile. After grimacing a little because I thought of it, the bearded one put them in. Whala! The door propped open. After he trying to pull open the handle for 15 minutes, I meekly suggested he make the hook longer. He opened it on the next try. I thanked him profusely, told him he was brilliant, that I couldn't do it without him, that I was amazed at how handy he was.

We all left with warm fuzzies, the main point being that I left. I did not have to sleep overnight at the BP. I didn't have to marry and settle down in Garrett.

So what to do with me? Carry a leatherman, a hanger, and wooden shims everywhere I go? Never go anywhere alone? I think I'll start with taking two pairs of keys everywhere I go. One for my pocket. One for my purse's pocket.

P.S. I have AAA.

Happy Only Four More Years Day

2009-03-09T15:05:00.001-07:00

I wrote this after Bush was inaugurated the second time, a fictitious newsflash that would have come out this January. I just encountered it today, remembered my fondness for it, and the lambasting emails that I got as a result of sending it around to my friends. It seemed only appropriate to post it today. To any Texans that may stumble upon this, all in good fun my friends, all in good fun:

Happy “Only Four More Years” Day
News flash-2009

After a failed attempt over the past two years by the Republican-dominated congress to annul the 22nd Amendment, George W. Bush has declared himself the King of Texas. The Lone Star State became the 28th member of the United States in 1845, and after more than 150 years has succeeded from the nation. Yesterday, at 10:00 the Texas legislature convened in Austin at a special convention to finalize its succession, begin drafting a constitution, and hold the ribbon cutting ceremony for a giant “W.” erected in front of the capitol building.

This dramatic move is the result of underground separatist movements that began almost four years ago under the leadership of Karl Rove. The propaganda campaign started subliminally with radio broadcasts that when played backwards repeated the message, “George is King, George is King, George is King.” Recent propaganda in the Texan media has been more blatant, suggesting “The United States of America is the enemy of Freedom.”

Since three years ago, suspicion across the nation of Texan succession has run rampant and protests have been staged by various groups of citizens of Texas who support unification with the United States. To date, nearly 30,000 dissenting Texans have disappeared. Experts fear they have been abducted or worse. In a particular media-receiving event last year, peaceful demonstrators attending an anti-Bush city-wide rock concert in Austin were kidnapped into vans by individuals in black wearing “Operation Texan Freedom” baseball caps.

Over the past four years, the Bush administration has taken serious measures to cover-up the intended succession, and despite nation-wide alarm and demonstration, action by the federal government has been frozen by the intrigues of the oval office. Movements to impeach the president by Democrats have gone no further than the House, due to the lack of support from the Republican majority. This may have been the result of hefty bribes paid to several members of congress, an indiscretion that has been recently exposed by national media.

According to reports, policies of the new Texan government center on a heavy nuclear arms program. This proposed program has already incited threat of sanctions from England, France, Spain, and Germany. Former Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is expected to head the revival of the failed “Absolute Belligerence Towards Suspected Terrorists Act” of 2006 that condones torture, especially particularly brutal practices of pulling off toe-nails, filleting skin off limbs, and quartering in order to obtain information from detainees. Finally, the Texan convention proposed the institution of a state religion, The Church of Texas, with George W. Bush as its forefront religious leader.

Today, Valenzuela will be sworn in as the president of the United States. She assures the nation and the world that as soon as she assumes office she will take immediate measures against the formation of a new radical Texan state. She has already met with leaders from England, France, Spain, and Germany and committed to participate in the economic sanctions against Texas.

George W. Bush is not expected to attend the inauguration ceremonies today. Last week, when rumors that the president was the head the conspiracy were proved true, Bush and his family fled the White House in the president’s personal jet. According to reports from the FBI, Bush immediately stationed himself with an armed guard at his ranch in Crawford and began renovating the Alamo to serve as his personal palace.

In the past few days, the nation has received bomb threats from Texan Terrorists organizations, but security has been doubled in the Capitol for the inaugural ceremonies. Citizens with ten-gallon hats, large belt buckles and mullets are profiled and can expect to be detained and searched at the gates.

The First Day of Retreat

2009-03-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Is filled with anxiety because now with absolutely no excuses, I have got to finish my book. I'm also worried about how I'm going to handle being alone so much, and if I'll have any friends left when I emerge in a month. I suppose if I don't, I'll get a lot of writing done.

There is one point for delight, absolute exaltation, and that is the thought that for a month, I won't have to flirt. This occurred to me a week back, and for a moment radiant light seeped into the room, and I felt that floating, cloud nine sensation of absolute liberation.

Although I'm taking on the obligation of dealing with a 300 page manuscript and boxes of research, and once this spills into my study, I don't know how I'll ever reign chaos into order again, this is nothing to shedding the obligation for a month of finding a spouse.

This marriage thing is always hanging over my head, and unlike a man, there is no real direct action I can take to bring it about. An appreciator of nuance in art, music, and literature, the nuance of love is entirely lost on in me. This is the one and only area of life where I am absolutely literal. And a woman's job in this particular arena is anything but literal.

Flirtation is an art--the only art I have absolutely no use for. And I'm not going to go into the feminist arguments of how this oughtn't be so, and yawdy, yaw. Because on this particular point, I will always yield to biology, and the fact that there's no use fighting the system when it's hardwired into your genes.

All I can say is that for a month I will breath in the sweet air of being able to dedicate my time to something I'm good at and not have to worry about something I can't seem to pull off--either because I can't or I won't . . . sometimes I flatter myself that it's because I'm too honest, other times I accuse myself of being too pretentious.

One flirtation free month may be too lovely of an experience to discontinue altogether. I may have to renounce it forever, or at least the obligation to flirt, since I don't know if you can completely argue that I have ever taken it up. What I need, I tell myself, is somebody to point to me and say, "You, I want that one." I won't quibble over his lack of grace, his failure to wink, or make me blush--I've never been a swooning type, but breath a deep sigh of relief that the flirting days are over, or perhaps in earnest begun . . .

A Night in the Mind of E.A.T.

2009-03-02T06:56:00.001-08:00

I've never been a fan of creepy or violent movies because however bad it is on the screen it will be that much worse in my dreams. There's nothing I can blame my dream on last night. I watched Once during the day and in the evening snuggled in with my roommates to watch a church fireside.

Combine Cousin It from the Adams family and the hand--maybe just called Hand--I don't remember and you approximate the creepiness of a head propelling itself on wheels, trying to schmooze in with doctors so that somebody, someday will be willing to decapitate a live being and give this head a trunk. This head was born without a body, and could not speak perhaps because it did not have a throat or lungs. It would latch on to people and communicate with signs hung over the hair that covered its face, a face that I saw once because I found it on the street and washed it like a baby, feeling bad for its forlorn state. In this dream, I was a doctor and intuited its evil plan after a matter of months, but after that, it sought me everywhere.

Oatmeal and PB and J

2009-02-27T11:57:00.001-08:00

Coming to terms with the fact that I am an impractical person and will never make any money has precipitated some life style changes. Cold cereal? For the rich folks. Sandwiches with arugula and Gouda? The yuppies with benefits.

I've reintroduced two old classics into my life: peanut butter and jelly and oatmeal. I was raised on these two staples plus spaghetti, and consequently have eaten very little of the three for over twelve years.

Every time I even think of eating oatmeal, Pb and j, the system revolts, "What? No! That's prison food! I can't eat that!" There were too many smooshed sandwiches in wrinkled brown bags I brought to school with me up through junior high. These sandwiches were made from wheat store brand "nothing bread" and spread with store brand raspberry jam with a slightly grayish hue and store brand peanut butter that came in a huge tub--all things that did not contribute to my social status.

It wasn't that my mother couldn't cook. She's actually adept with a variety of American and international dishes. It was that she fed a family of 8 on a $100.oo a month, which meant oatmeal for breakfast or corn flakes-I must have read that story about the Post family a thousand times throughout my youth. And despite her general facility in the kitchen, my mother killed spaghetti.

Apparently, when I was a toddler, it was my favorite dish. We were even poorer then, and maybe it was the tastiest alternative. All I know is there is a picture of me when I am around one and half, bare chested like an Amazon with the carnage of a plate of spaghetti spread all over my face and body. I am holding my arms up and grinning ferociously like a true warrior who has eaten the heart of her enemy.

When I was older I became acquainted with the process used to make this spaghetti, a can of tomato paste, a fist sized ball of frozen lean ground beef, stir fried and then mixed with a disproportionate amount of noodle. The result was red-tinted spaghetti with small bits of meat adhered to the sides. It was even worse two days old when the noodles would begin to dry out a little.

Since, I have never understood why people order spaghetti at fancy Italian restaurants, "What? Prison food?" When I go over to people's houses and they are serving spaghetti, I am secretly disappointed. I'll eat penne, fettuccine, and even angel hair-but only with a sizable plop of spaghetti sauce on top and never with ground beef.

But forced to adhere to the monastic eating standards of an adjunct professor's life, I grow my own vegetables, I cut out any beverage save water, and of late have started waking up early to boil some water for my daily bowl of oatmeal, which will be followed by a daily dose of Pb and j. At the store yesterday browsing through, I picked up some craisins I thought might taste good on top. I picked up some honey, having recently allowed myself to use sugar. I bought some Nature's Harvest bread with flax seeds, organic peanut butter and all fruit preserves. I'll do prison food, but forgive me mother, I'll do it yuppie style.

A Blog Christening

2009-02-25T07:51:00.000-08:00

I've felt the urge to blog ever since the New Year. A friend has been working on my web-site, so meanwhile I've been keeping my on-line journal off-line. Following a decision to separate my personal blog from my professional, I commence and christen this blog with many, many posts.

Yours Truly Airhead

2009-02-25T07:50:00.001-08:00

So ended all the notes I wrote my friends and folded according to the going fashion in junior high. It wasn’t a name I’d given myself, but one I admitted was warranted. Back in these days, if a boy caught glance of my report card, he was always astounded and immediately lost interest—I wasn’t just the offhanded blonde ditz I might have seemed initially.

My intelligence was often a subject of neighborhood debate. All clustered on the lawn with their bikes or roller blades, the boys my age who tortured me would discuss how book smarts weren’t the same as street smarts. Sure I had the first, but lacked the second: They were still superior. In the Missionary Training Center, my intelligence was also a topic of conversation—geniuses, a sister in my district contended, were often known to be absent minded.

Now at thirty, I’ve finally learned how to keep track of my keys. I haven’t run out of gas since I moved to D.C., and I only leave my lights on when I have absolutely too many things to think of, or I’m writing a really awesome essay. Admittedly, I still occasionally astound myself. My intelligence has often been a subject of my personal distress. Blondes are not usually considered to be reliable or responsible—two qualities I have always aspired to.

I want people to take me seriously. Now, as a professor, I want my students to take me seriously. That’s why when I turn their papers back to them before I put them in my grade book, I feel like a fool when I have to ask for them back. The other day when I had to have my ESL student drive me home because I forgot my books and the listening CDs, I felt especially foolish.

A friend who lived with me in Outer Mongolia came to realize that my absent-mindedness wasn’t the result of carelessness. “You really don’t mean to be like this. It’s just the way you are!” was her final epiphany. My logical, pragmatic, and totally on-top-of-it mother came to a similar conclusion after I graduated from high school. Recently, she told my brother she was proud of me for turning out to be more of an organized person than I was predispositioned to be.

But when I say things like I said to the department secretary yesterday in all earnestness, “Do we have a copier?” (I use the copier at least three times a week and have an access card), I don’t really know what to make of myself. It may be best just to accept my mental limitations—the misfires and missing connections somewhere in there between Erin and reality, and conclude to sign this blog post as I signed so many melodramatic junior high notes:

Yours Truly,

Airhead.

A poem composed before sleeping that needs better final lines to be composed later

2009-02-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

February 24, 2008

The emergence of wonder
is it a nectarine
peeling itself, each slice
an offering of sweetness
or does it cocoon
a worm’s spinning, a slumber
a creeper’s dreams, a heat, a thrashing
and then the drying of wings
does it come by sorting
the shells from the egg
that did not crack
or just the uncommon miracle
of loving the moon
not only in fullness
but in the wane and wax

Dear St. Valentine . . .

2009-02-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

February 15, 2008

On this the day after Valentine’s, I find myself reflective on the subject of Love. Five days ago it occurred to me that last time I was in Love, or in [l]ove, or had amorous feeling toward a man that perhaps, just maybe I could love, that it was a perfectly miserable experience. It was so wretched that the line from Love Actually seemed apropos: "Worse than the total agony of being in love?" So, of course I pasted it into my Facebook page because what better to do with a perplexing thought than to share it with all the world including the people you never talked to in high school.

But weathering this last weekend sin Valentine I had yet another remarkable thought and that was that despite all, I believed in love, no Love, perhaps more than I have ever believed in Love. Strangely, this last year I could have submitted a list of grievances to Love that would have been a bit longer than other years, that would have proved indefinitely that I was wise to choose “Paint it Black” (The Stones) as a Valentine’s Day theme and settle in on the idea of being that Painting / Writing / Gardening / old hag with ten dogs down the street.

. . .It is fair to say here that gathering evidence over the years, Love could compile a pretty compelling case against me . . .

But, regardless, on this the day after Valentine’s Day, I would submit to you that I believe in Love. This is perhaps because I have been humbled enough to believe in things I have no proof of, or because I have learned to hope. This may be one thing like the mystery of Love itself, so here’s to you, St. Valentine. Here I raise my glass to Love.

A Pending Disaster

2009-02-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

January 14, 2008

“Some say the world will end in fire”

Like the time my hair drier exploded and
The curling iron melted, perched
on a black bible, scorching a hole through
the cover of that good book. Or the wet socks
in the oven too long. Or when my hair enflamed
and the rice I burn into the black bottom
of the pan always. The world will end in flood
of the floor boards that warp when I water
the house plants, the sun roof
I left open (just once) and spoiled
the backseat leather forever. The world will end
by whirlwind
flinging CDS, keys and Alpaca wool hats
where it walks. My favorite sweater this
chaos claimed, and today my shiny red
aluminum
water bottle
I find gleaming on the secretary’s
desk in the English department. “I almost
threw it away,” she says. I clutch it;
The world will end but
maybe not today.

Amateur Astrology: The stuff Greek legends are made of

2009-02-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2008

Early each winter I look forward to the emergence of Orion, the constellation that used to perch just above my home on Inglewood Rd. in Orem. One evening coming home late from volleyball, I flipped off this giant of a man and his smirking three-starred belt, and for penance ever since (this is how Greek stuff works), I blow him a kiss.

You see Orion was put there by Zeus (writes Horace), who probably took pity on him because he was the manliest of men, a great hunter, and apparently a great looker—
enough at least to make Diana, the goddess of the hunt, woodly creatures, and virgins, swoon. Apollo, her brother, didn’t think Orion was good enough for her (mortals never are), and put her up to a bet.

“Hey, see if you can hit that floating log out there.”

And of course she could because she was an excellent markswoman. Little did she know the log was the top of Orion’s head, no less, who was bathing in the ocean or a sacred pool, something like that.

Diana felt really bad about it. But she was the goddess of wild things (and virgins), and somebody in a relationship really wouldn’t do for them, so she picked up her bow and arrows and went off to hit some more logs.

This really doesn’t explain why I flipped off Orion.

. . . later one evening on a date we were sitting on a car up at Squaw Peak (a make out spot in Provo). I pointed up at Orion and said to the man I was with, “Let me tell you about Orion.”

He said, “That’s not Orion, that’s O’Brandon.”

More than you know, I thought, more than you will ever care to know.