Boston Cream Dream

A brisque, blustery Monday morning commute and New York seems too sleepy to notice itself. I’m on the very edge of myself, eyes open and making every street mine. For the first time in weeks, I notice my own breathing and I feel ready for the day, for the week, for the everyday task, for the…moment. I skipped my pre-planned, pre-packaged breakfast in favor of the donut cart. A donut cart that sits right outside my office – I normally walk by it every day with my head down, having consumed a very calculated, cost-efficient and healthy breakfast with the occasional exception of those really painful, come-to-soon mornings that happen sometimes. Always, when I do default to the cart, even when I order, I keep one earbud in to block out the noise of the world. The guys inside are always nice and smiling – and they always give me 25 cents off. But when I stop there it’s almost like some kind of mini failure representing my entire life and career- failure to plan, to watch what I eat, to resist un-meticulous impulses, to spend a limited amount on breakfast. Today, the wind is out on the town, kicking up skirts and driving up hair like a kid on a sugar high, and I feel right there with it… moving alongside instead of towards the long months of winter and work ahead represented by my sleek black office building. It, by the way, looks rather shiny and nice today. (If it were a person, I think I would tell it so.) I’m not waiting for my future today. Not today. I’m living in it. When people ask what I want to do, I say I want to help people. Its not really that simple…but then again it is. Today I don’t ask myself any questions, like other days. And I refuse to give answers. What are you doing with your life? What are you doing for the world? Why are you doing X, Y and not Z? Your hardest does not change the world, why are you not trying harder? No comment. Cuz I’m still writing the press release. Today, I take both my earbuds out. I say “how are you doing” and I mean it. I order a Boston Cream. They say smiling “we havent seen you in a while. Good to see you” (and I believe they mean it). $1 instead of $1.25 today. Big smile. “Have a great day”. Oh I will. Its no Mahatma Ghandi. Its no sustainability in Africa. Not today. Just one, small, happy exchange and a Boston Cream. But maybe on some microscopic, low-frequency wavelength – the world felt it. Maybe not. But I will say, this one hell of a Boston Cream.

If you've never seriously considered therapy, then you just need more of it than the average person

Sometimes, you dont know that you're good at. Sometimes you dont think you can do what you know you can. Sometimes you think if everyone is lying to you, then you're the biggest liar of all. Sometimes you decide on exactly what you will say to every single person who supported you in the case that you might let them all down. Sometimes you feel confident that you might very well ruin everything you touch. Sometimes you get to work early and you actually care that absolutely no one will notice. Sometimes any lives you may have touched, any path you may have altered, don’t matter enough to stand judgment when you call them up one by one to the stand in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes you realize you may be singing a whole octave lower than the song you wrote yourself requires. Sometimes you notice you’ve let your parents problems right on in to your own life, welcoming them at the door with a plate of fruit and cheese and those little non-recyclable appetizer plates that could be single-handedly responsible for global warming. Could you be responsible for global warming? Or maybe just global boring. Is it you, your parents, society or your health insurance provider that expect you to be such a healthy, well-balanced yet wildly successful and shiny-bright human being? Some days, when you go to lock your apartment door behind you, making a mental note to buy Drano, and dig for your keys in a bag full of crumply receipts you haven’t yet logged in your checkbook, you definately know its not all about you. No one has to tell you that. If it was all about you, they would leave the subway doors open the extra 3 seconds so you could safely slip on the train, as opposed to jamming your right shoulder in the doors with unfettered determination not to let life leave you behind. And some mornings, a lot like this one, you get tired of shoving your way into your future in favor of standing alone on the platform, watching the overcrowded train pull away toward success, faces smushed up against the glass. And then its “This train is delayed because of train traffic ahead. Please…be patient.”

Sometimes you spend all your time waiting for always – which will be, well, never. So you’ll just have to leave a voicemail on your own machine and plan to pick it up tomorrow when you’ve had a better nights sleep.

How to make a Thursday from scratch.

I want to sleep through this day. Let the night come without me noticing. Let the bars open without me hearing. Let the year close over my head, the winter come under my feet, the future slip in my front door and remove the tea kettle from heat. I’m awake but not yet waking. The subway doors close, the train moves and I hang on, just barely, with two fingers.

When will I rise in steamy glory with each morning when it comes? When will I close my teeth on each moment as it passes in saying “Yes, yes, I’m sure of it.” When will I know more than I wish away? When will I keep my life clean, like an open house in a brand new neighborhood? When will I sponge away the worry to make room for grace? When will I vacate my own front row to make room for others? When will I know I've mattered? When will I like what I've written?

One more startover today, because Im starting over. One more day 1. And one of these weeks I’ll make it to day 4. Wont that be nice, Dear. Mine, a life of day 1's. Nothing clean, nothing paid down, nothing well-slept or fully-explained. I will continue to flow and never ebb, move close and never excuse myself, hold tight and never breathe, make messes but never sense. The way I love you now, you’ll never quite be able to remember in detail. The life I’ve cooked up like bacon in a hot greasy skillet wont ever be accurately described in the New Yorker. Sometimes I pull it behind me naked through Union Square and never say sorry, because I am usually not sorry. But today, I just want to sleep through it. One more startover. Starting tomorrow.

>>>>>>>

So you're running. Into the wind. On New York City's east side. In the pouring rain. Well after sunset.
Why you decided to go for a run on a wintry night in the ceaseless rain and a whipping widowy wind you cant remember now. Your shoes fill with icy rainwater as you pad through street puddles and the rain collects like ice cubes in the heels of your shoes. The wind blows your hood around behind you until it quickly grows heavy with rainwater. Theres no one on the street, no boats on the east river, only silhouettes in their cars racing the weather toward home. A muddy construction cone drowns in the middle of the sidewalk. You are 2 miles from your apartment with only black puddles in between. The river stalks you alongside the path, angry and irritated into dirty black peaks by the heavy rain and wind. The streetlights thin as the path pulls away from Alphabet city and dips underneath the skeletal unberbelly of the Williamsburg bridge. The park gates are chained. The public restrooms padlocked. The skyline blotted out. The street-size path flooded from side to side. The FDR highway throwing sheets of water over the fence on the path as speeding cars hit puddles in the road. And thats the only sound you can hear against the beating of the rain.
You've worn multiple layers. Water-resistent, weather-friendly, non-cotton polar layers made out of material that apparently costs $50 a yard. Every layer is backed up by another layer underneath it until you feel like a big rubber chewtoy instead of a night jogger. But tonight, the rain is too much for your careful wardrobe weatherproofing. Within 10 minutes every last layer is soaked to the skin - and that special-non cotton material retaining icy cold water like the titanic. Everything sags - wet, heavy and freezing -- all over your body, held damp against your warmest crevaces. When a solitary streetlight casts your long shadow in a puddle as you pass, you can see the steam that is rising from the back of your neck in the reflection. It rains harder. Harder until the driving water is pouncing with a splash off your chest and into your eyes. You run faster.
Somewhere near the third mile, you notice that the hot pumping of your muscles is creating a paper-thin envelope of warmth around you. This is how you are moving through the universe. How you are navigating the weather of your life. The freezing, hypothermic rain of failure and doubt completely surrounding you in spandex layers, stretched close accross your pounding heart, just waiting to get an icy bite into your bones. And you realize that its only you thats keeping you warm. The raw friction of your body burning toward a full-out sprint and laboring for oxygen thats keeping you from shivering. Your expensive layers that made you feel good enough about going out into a rainy night were never any help at all to keep it out. And once you realize this, there is only one thing to do. Just dont stop running.

Married with children: Sitcom or Epic Journey?

We went up to Poughkeepsie yesterday. The early morning train on a Sunday surprisingly full and the twinge of fall in the leaves just outside the city, turning more and more colorful as we got farther north. By the time the train pulled into Beacon, my trench coat and downtown accessories had become completely obsolete. After sleeping off the fuzz from the house party in Harlem the night before, I suddenly woke up in upstate new York – and Manhattan sounded more like another native-inspired train stop among the trees than the spitting city I lived in.

We had come to visit family, family he hadn’t seen in many many years. No one recognized the driveway at first, but we figured we were in the right spot based on the yard sale of children’s toys, plastic vehicles and cartoon reading material haphazardly decorating the entire space of the garage– apparently the garage was reserved for children’s parking— all adults must park outside in the driveway.

We let ourselves in and were immediately greeted by a warm, very full house, teeming with nearly 10 busy young children and their very friendly parents, potato chips in every room and walls stocked solid with family photos. Now this was a family who prioritized just that. Immediately after a few friendly introductions we were plopped down on a lengthy blue courderoy couch in a darkisk den with a heavy maroon carpet, laden with years of big and little feet, knees, snacks, playthings – the weight of many a lifetime, started and passed, day by day over its maroon fibers. A countdown to Christmas ticked over the mantle. After shaking hands with several of the sons-in-law, I took off my brand new navy blue trenchcoast and settled in next to them on the couch to watch the Bills game in florescent green light from the TV – not much need to get to know someone when you have football, I mean really.
The afternoon progressed as such – children crawling in and out, on laps and under chairs, being cooed and sometimes scolded, the adult conversation spoken in a tone half an octive underneath that which is used for the children so that all of us, big and small, know when we are being spoken to and what jokes are not intended for us. I ate half a bag of potato chips, not because I was that hungry but because they tasted so good eaten one at a time. If you eat potato chips fast they are too salty. Thus nothing like a Sunday afternoon to eat your potato chips slow.

Ultimately, we watched the Bills deliver their usual turnover in the last few minutes that led to their usual loss, followed by the usual heartbreak and banter between football fans. The sun was setting, the children were taking it up a notch taking turns crying, running, sharing and refusing to share with one another. If youre not used to kids you have to watch your step as they are almost always underfoot. Their worlds quite simple and never peaceful - remove an item they are interested in and they scream. Give it back to them they are quiet until they want something else and then they scream. Lesson - constantly look for alternative things they might be intersted in. They never really stop moving and when there are many of them, its like a relay race - one rests for a quarter second while playing with something and the others take their turn to run and laugh and tumble around the house. They are always the loudest when fighting over and item of mutual interest among them - apparently possessions and envy are two values that even the youngest of the human species can appreciate.
While the whole situation had me practically seeing spots and counting the seconds on the clock as it lorded over the afternoon, their parents remained relatively cheerful. They had learned to have pleasant conversations with each other that are frequently but not permanently interrupted by scolding or holding or shooing or beconing to or dressing or undressing a child – like doing a job interview while on another phone call, or shaving your legs and flossing your teeth at the same time, kind of thing. Parenting is clearly about patience, but also about negotiation, especially among more than three kids all with their own agenda– “everyone who is sitting in their seat at the table gets a juice box”. I truly think parenting might be the most admirable and noble career path, especially if you get a good ROI out of it in a few happy, healthy young adults if they grow up to be relatively normal and without any prominent social issues.

Eventually we made our way outside to the back yard, flanked by pleasant smelling smoke from the meat cooking on the enoumous BBQ. The sun was going down between the skinny yellowing trees and I heard nothing when I listened. We stood over by the covered pool, which was collecting dead leaves in a tiny puddle drooping in the center.
“Do you want a house like this?” He asked.

Ha do I want a house like this. I had to think about it. Do I want a life like this? Do I?
Part of me said yes – the trees, the smell of barbeque, the silence when you listen for it, being flanked by family who loves you above all others. The other part of me said, only if in this, I find more than a few pieces of myself. When you wake up in the morning and you hear nothing out the window, do you rummage among your dishes just to find some clatter to drown out the voice in your head? Or do you fall slowly back to sleep for 15 minutes, feeling the warmth of the person next to you knowing that you love that person more than every other person you have ever loved, and that really means something. The spouse and the children, do they fill your life with the racket you left behind when you left the city or do they give you a reason to live in the first place? Do they fill your life with doubt or with joy, or both?

Do you have to fight for each one of those big loves in your life in order to stay with it and know its price? Should I lose him first before I decide I just cant live with losing him? Should we meet with sickness, discomfort, all kinds of noise, messes, diapers and, heck, just the pure pain of childbirth in order to know how far we’d go to protect that little life we've helped create? Is it because we created it that we love it, or is it an inherent beauty of human living? Is that the magic of family – some if it you choose and some of it you don’t, but at the end of the day there is always football. What should I fight for, what should I wait for and what should I hope for when I picture myself in my future adulthood?

We boarded the train home in the dark. I tried to sleep but fitfully, clinging to his arm and wondering what time I would make it to sleep once we got home, what would I do when I grew up that I could be passionate about, and how much did he love me before returning to my previous ponderings of family, sacrifice and choices. As the orange lights of the Bronx and upper manhattan bounced off the black of the Hudson, all these questions would have to wait. I would fight hard for the loves that needed fighting for when they needed it – and I’d leave the rest for after my midlife crisis… a crisis that I had decided to push back (lovingly) by at least five years.

Aruba: The sand that burns your feet

Aruba. The spread of shockingly aqua bathwater out against an almost colorless sand. The ripple of palmtree shadows on the sand as they ruffle in the wind. A nearly clear powder blue sky, at long last allowed to be as big as it really is with only that iridescent, blue speckled sea holding it back from falling off the edge of the horizon. Yep. Aruba. This is some boondoggle.
Im in a rubbery blue lawnchair in a ridiculous-looking, big, white, old-lady sunhat (hey, it works) with my laptop propped in my lap, sand grinding in between the keys as I type. Swathes of shiny, speckly-red American bathers lounge in the shade all around me as the early-afternoon sun moves away from us and out over the sea. I am alone and aware of it. I don’t feel like falling asleep in the sun. I don’t feel like dipping my thighs luxiouriously into the clear shallows. I don’t feel like going back to the very corporate air conditioning of my hotel room to face the mess I made of my suitcase the night before. So I pick up the book I picked randomly off the shelf in Portland, the one I have been putting off reading on the assumption that it will be cryptic, overly academic and completely lacking in human mystery – yet extremely beneficial to my overall knowledge of the world. Therefore I will get to reading it when I have more time and brainpower to spend – which will probably be never. But somehow I feel stupidly better just by owning it, kept next to my Kant collection, along with whatever’s in my 401k and a one way ticket to the English countryside. However, in this instance, the steaming sun and the sunscreen bubbling on my legs bores me more. No company (my boyfriend is at the business conference that brought us here), no phone service and my ipods out of battery. I got time. Might as well go for it. Concluding that I will swap it out for another once it makes me heavy-eyed, I reapply sunscreen until my shoulders shine and reposition myself on the chair to optimize my tan lines, before opening the book as if I were opening a glossyTown and Country on a weekend excursion to the Hamptons – with only half, airy interest.

The book –“Africa Doesn’t Matter: How the West has failed the Poorest Continent and What we Can do about it” by Giles Bolton—turns out to be less boring than it is very simply direct in its message, one that crouches me over in my lawn chair to read better in a little slice of shadow. A message I immediately get: ‘why have you been waiting to so long to read this book? Because you were afraid to be reminded of what you know haunts the early mornings you have been sleeping through lately. What have you been doing for the world and what is your place in it?’
Fifteen minutes later I am doused in acute and almost painful awareness of the vast difference between where I currently sit in the world (on a beach chair at a tropical resort serenaded by chart-topping pop hits from the pool aerobics class somewhere behind me) and the places that I sit on (literally and figuratively), places that support my every move without any realization or graciousness on my part. The book addresses a few very big questions with the skepticism of an academic but without the pessimism of most academic theories. If so much of our taxes, charity dollars, 10k benefit races , foreign policies, public product awareness efforts and mental energy are going to the aid of the developing world, why are things not improving? If we cant possibly understand all the complex factors that contribute to third world crises (take your pick – HIV, malaria, national debt, famine, poverty and co.), then what can we understand? And why do we need to?
What is it that we give back to the developing world? Is it Bono, democratic dogma, P ditty posters, corporate responsibility (whatever that looks like) or foreign aid freckled like paintballs pointed in random directions by lobbyists, public sentiment and corporate agendas? Is it the tourism industry where we can enjoy foreign resources, accents and beaches without having to face any greater cost other than what we put on our Amex card? Aren’t our good intentions good enough? Can globalization be fair and still exist?

As they should, these questions lead to more questions - and I am sweating under my sunhat as I digest each crumb of knowledge (1 out of 5 African children will never reach the age of 5, hunger and simple malnutrition kill more people than all other diseases combined, and so on)– What about the first world has naturally pre-qualified us for a chance at a cleaner, longer, more resourceful life (Bronx-dwellers will tell you that even this is not gaurunteed, with or without social services and subsidized vaccinations). What would we as the first world have to give up if somehow we could extend economic and educational equity to the entire world? And would we give them up if we had the choice?

Some might ask (and many do), that confronted with the risks of foreign meddling, the innate complexity of international dynamics and the limitation of simplistic public awareness for the sake of optimism, who would be dumb enough to attack development? But with all that piercing human suffering, dedication, resilience, cruelty and livelihood all breaking through in every story you come across, how can you turn away? Once you know even just a paragraph beyond your basic CNN education of the mire of the international economics, policy and history that have created withering inequities and heartrending accounts of people just like you, only thumbtacked at birth somewhere else on the globe, why turn the page of your newspaper to keep your midnights from exploding with questions about where you sit in the pantheon of humanity and why. What would you do if someone switched those thumbtacks? Would you trade a whole week’s food of just one meal a day for you and your family to save up enough for a malaria mosquito net? If your life expectancy was thirty years and you spent most of it cleaning toilets or cutting salt in the heat, would you count your joys or your misfortunes, or would you just redefine your defition of joy? None of us made the world, but all of us live in it. Can I sit ankle deep in white sand and tell myself I owe nothing to the world and I cant change it enough to matter? What is it that I am so sorely missing, here sitting on a throne with a melting margarita in hand and letting that kind of logic keep me from looking down? Its not that I don’t have some sense of what I might see – its just that Im afraid knowing that once you look down, you might not ever be able to sit on that throne again without considerable discomfort. But is life better lived outside the palace doors?
It is a mistake to pity the developing world – intead, there is much to be admired, and supported at the same time. As that hot, raw humanity in every story keeps me in fiery pursuit of some kind of international work, what am I so afraid of discovering when I find it... and what is it that I’m so terrified I’ll be asked to give up? Perhaps it is not so much the rest of the world who needs my help, but me who is in desperate need of theirs. As I fold up my towel, I feel fairly certain that no amount of sleep will help this fever pass. Show me the road to riches and I’ll know which path isn’t mine. Africa or Bust.

Business Trip

Midnight sunset over Chicago. The bigger the hotel room, the longer the walk to the bathroom to get water in the middle of the night, the lonelier the unworn bath robes in the closet make you feel. A hotel bar unvisited, its characters unrevealed, a hotel notepad unwritten on. A cocktail dress worn for (practically) nothing. A heart unexplored over a cab-view of the windy city. Like a stranded showgirl somewhere very far away from Vegas. I shut the curtains at 11:13 pm over downtown Chicago fronted by a flashing neon "Chicago" sign. If I had any sense of adventure I'd throw my heels back on and walk till I reached that sign. And inside I would find the stories that Im dying to write. Instead Ill use up the entire bottle of hotel shampoo and wait for my outlook to load. Then spend a little time worrying about the people that I love for various reasons before falling asleep with the lights on. Where's "home" when you need one.