wish you were in my shoes

What happens when Bill Withers is wrong?

When you want to be used up rather than neglected,

but the using up of you doesn't feel good.

Yet, still better than forgotten and not used all.

What happens when you feel like you found home,

and are no longer lost,

but still locked out?

Looking at the line where what you matter to them

ends

short of what you are by universes

is crippling.

They see what they can take,

cause of what you have given,

but can only guess at the true treasure

and underestimate

to the detriment

of better than this.

Mr. Withers, I think you were lying.

Or maybe the truth is

being used

is was what it felt like to be loved.

Pitty,

you didn't know the difference.

I concur.

baby sister

I am writing her a letter.

Cause I met her when we were new here.

A decade is nothing after all.

She's gone off thinking we are meant to be sad.

Thinking she's done wrong and hurting.

Trapped in things I can't free her from.

I used to tell her not to play in the basement, and I keep repeating myself.

Its cold there.

Come on up cellar.

They think they've got you diagnosed and dosed you full of fear.

Fire and brimstone could kill you.

Come on up cellar.

Here we love your mistakes but more importantly, you love you.

No more days in agony and heart ache. We haven't got time for that.

Come on up cellar.

These are your real first steps.

And I am still here, if you fall I will catch you, kiss you, hold you.

Sincerely.

turbulence: the near death experience experiment

While returning home from a trip to South Africa my plane enroute from Johannesburg to Dakar encountered the kind of turbulence I had previously deemed mythical. Driven to pure panic I wanted only one thing, to tell everyone I could how much I loved them.

The bumps were nothing short of normal at first. We had spent an hour parked on the runway waiting for a storm to pass but it was clear we were now in it. Not yet over 10,000 feet if I turned to see either wing through the windows I would catch glimpses of lightning.

I was worried but not frightened.

Then the bumps became crashes. Not in the sense that we were hitting anything, just in the sense that it felt like we were. I was ripped up from my seat, the free falls started to last far too long and the luggage fell from above.

The cabin became a hurricane of anything not belted down. The jerks, crashes, falls continued over and over.

Along with screams came rising chants of prayer, cries and hysteria.

Calm was abandoned. The man next to me, who was traveling alone, was in tears.

We were alone in the night with the lightning. I tried to prepare myself to die.

The back of my remote was a phone, the kind with the credit card reader. I was fumbling with it trying to figure out how to get it to work. If I had one phone call right then it would be to my brother Peter. I don't know why exactly but at that moment I needed to know I was calling someone who would pickup without fail and who could hold it together long enough for me to handle business. The business of relaying my absolute love to a list of people most importantly my father.

The phone idea didn't work and I dropped it from my shaking hands and joined the screams in the cabin as the plane yanked and banked, fell and thrashed.

I confess I didn't pray. They say there are no atheists in fox holes, so apparently divine inspiration isn't airborne.

The last thing I had done on land was trap my boyfriend into a very long and ridiculous session of public affection. It was the kind of kissing that caught stares in the airport terminal. He was waiting for another plane. I was so thankful he wasn't going down with me. I'm enough of a train wreck to be a plane crash too.

I thought of all the things I had done alone, at least this time someone would be able to say I was happy up until the very end.

I recently had a thought of someone going through my bookshelf after my death. It was from the words of Peter Hitchens on his brother Christopher's passing weeks before. These thoughts didn't reach me on the plane but I was certain I had told people I loved them when we last spoke, I was hoping they really believed it.

All of you believe it, I beg you. I probably won't let you forget it now. That was it. That was what I wanted when I was certain I was done, do they believe I love them? I hoped so with all my heart.

It was right when I was reaching the conclusion that the only regret left by my death was the thought of the people I cared about not knowing what they meant to me that the plane started to act relatively normal.

While the chaos ensued not one mention had been made by the crew. Which contributed greatly to my panic. Not hearing from the pilot that it was under control made me sure it was over.

But now, he was speaking, joking, saying he wasn't charging for the roller coaster ride.

The smell of vomit lingered. My hands shook and sweat rolled off of me.

Ten minutes later the drinks started pouring. I was offered beer to go with my wine, I declined the gracious mercy.

I had seventeen more hours of flying ahead of me before I would be somewhere recognizable.

That was yesterday for me.

Today, after a ten hour rest in my own bed and hours of research into turbulence later I can say I was a fool.

Its incredibly unlikely anything was wrong. While its true that the rare turbulence related crashes occurred in similar conditions, even they belonged to a time of older aircraft and technology.

I was deceived into a near death experience, but it was real enough to have effected the rest of my life.

I am a little more self aware, I hope a lot less foolish and very much alive.

Love.

have yourself a merry little christmas

I grew up with incredible Christmases. A house with not just one but sometimes four Christmas trees. To explain what it was like with such a huge wonderful family, two fireplaces, snowmen - everything. We had everything. Holidays were that time of year my Mother put out all of her Swarovski crystal and all the oriental rugs. The house was perfect, every bed and then some was full and Nat King Cole played on the stereo at the perfect volume.

It is because I had such perfection that I am completely at ease having a different experience now.

I've had a lot of strange Christmases in my adult life, and my plans this year, though dull, still bring me joy.

After College I tried to go home for the holiday. I was struggling to figure out how to pull everyone together again. I went home, I cleaned and decorated, and cleaned some more. I tried to but failed at pulling off the miracle my Mother had for dozens of years.

The past was perfect and gone, happiness wasn't going to happen until I moved on.

I married and spent a couple Christmases pretending I could fit in someone else's family. I learned how to bake some amazing cookies and perfected the art of throwing a huge over the top Christmas party. I even called it a Fezzywig. My ex grudgingly went along with it. I tried so hard to bring a little over abundance of the Holmes house into the lives of the people in my life. It was a small success but when my marriage ended so did the traditions I was struggling to make. In my heart I know I will Fezzywig again someday.

Faced with my first Christmas alone in the world I chose to travel. The experience was incredible and worth repeating over and over. It changed me, my values, how I feel this time of year - Everything, it changed everything. I have become a more self reliant and flexible woman where I was a very stubborn child afraid of change.

Part of this was accepting that wherever I am and whomever I am with, Christmas is glorious. I have never had a green man steel my tree and roast beast, but I got the same lesson.

The first year away it was a bit awkward for me, to be living with a host family where I felt like I was intruding in their Holiday. But I thought of the guests we loved having join us when I was growing up and I just melted into their hospitality. This open arm acceptance with too much food and community was the feeling that transcended Nat King Cole and the glitz of my childhood home near the holidays. It was home, completely home.

There was still so much to do, vegetables to cut, things to fuss over - everywhere. It always feels so wonderful to see the business necessary for spending time together being shared by the very hands that reap the benefit.

It gracious and lovely, and it happens even between strangers. That is Christmas.

I am not much of a fan of the giftyness of it all. This is a girl who once cried cause she thought he dog Beau was left out without a gift. The next year my parents put one of those ridiculous dog stockings up for him. I also properly freaked out when I though I didn't get the "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" computer game I begged for. I had opened a roomful of gifts and it wasn't there. I lost it, yelled at my parents and cried. My mother told my brother Pete to give me what he had gotten me, it was the game. Not my best day. Wretched thing to do, but to me on that day, knowing where the gifts came from, I felt like no one listened. Of course my mother would set Peter up to be the hero, as if he needed yet another reason for me to adore him.

I remember thinking they all wasted their money on stupid things when all I wanted was that game and they didn't bother to get it for me. Trust me, I spent a lot of time not getting what I wanted - thankfully my parents knew better than to satiate a fickle child. This is my contrition, I should never have behaved that way. But maybe that's what happens when there is just so much of everything and my child-mind was overwhelmed.

This year I will celebrate peace and quiet. I will have a nice run and probably go see a movie. I will spend the day packing for a New Year's trip to South Africa and reading a bunch of stuff I have been putting off until after the semester. And this year, for the first time ever on Christmas, I will be alone. I will be fine, but I know its not what people who love me want me to do. But I think the folks who know me get that this is just fine.

Its not that I will be visited by three ghosts - those ghosts got nothing on me. My life has been a race recently and this pause is needed, I assure you.

My life has been a walk down a long hall at some beautiful hotel. I started at one end opening doors. I spend a little time in each room and move on. Each room is unique with a different beautiful view. The room I am in now is far quieter than I am used to. But I know the noise will return in another room further down the hall. All those traditions and decorations I stored for future use rooms ago will appear again. Even the Swarovski crystal.

sweet nothings

There are so many things happening in the world right now and I am at a loss for words.

But I am sitting here struggling to say something.

Life is fragile, beautiful and brief. Nothing is certain.

These are times that clichés are born.

Nothing is certain.

Nothing.

All the more reason to be more patient with people.

I can’t be everywhere or do much to help this planet right now.

But I can be more patient with everyone.

I am going to try to counteract all of this uncertainty and grief with choosing to be kind. It is the smallest gesture but I am hoping in some phenomenon it helps.

The person pissing you off right now probably knows your pain, only it is as their own and can’t imagine you’ve had a dose.

Probably just projecting it another way, maybe at you.

I got angry last week and vented about not being treated fairly by a professor. But just now I thought of that man having just as much loss and pain in his life as all of us and it killed my anger.

Walking around thinking someone else is better off is a bit ignorant. Does the situation improve by getting angry with someone who properly deserves it? No, or at least not in my world.

Maybe I let the big picture effect me too much. Maybe I take the saying that life is too short too seriously. Whatever. Happiness is a choice, no one can give it to you.

They may want to, they can’t.

People I love call me silly, so be it.

People will be diagnosed with cancer. Young mothers will die. Wars will kill young people. Homes will be foreclosed on. And maybe life will pull you in so many directions that you haven’t been back to the place you were born in years.

These things will happen to each of us.

When it feels like the world is against you I will not be.

homeless in Athens

Last weekend I wandered around Ikea. The international mecca of nesting. I have to admit its quite easy to go in there on a budget and come out with a comfortable little apartment. Sure I wish I had the time and cash for more eclectic pieces, but with ten credit hours of law school and forty hours of work, I don't have time for everything I want. I need a functioning home so I can sit on Sunday afternoons procrastinating the writing a forced appellant brief by drinking coffee and reading news.

The number of homeless in Athens, Greece has risen by 25%. These are normal people who had homes, careers, dreams and ambition. These things are fragile and over the last two years austerity measures we read in headlines have not had a face. Middle class, educated men and women are desperate. It is scary and real and heartbreaking.

Last weekend while lost in the huge store full of mock up apartments I saw one that didn't make sense. My friend and I stopped and counted the beds. It was a five hundred square foot apartment with no less than eight sets of bunk beds. It was a genius work of lego-like perfection that made every inch work. There was a large-ish kitchen at the center with tons of seating, a closet like area, a small but well organized bathroom and the perimeter was all beds. I remarked to my shopping companion how odd it was and how it must have been a mock of a hostel. Could you imagine sixteen people living in five hundred square feet?

I cringe when I think of the movie Fight Club and how I am trying to get the coffee table that says something about me. Its all nonsense. Months ago I had no place of my own. Now I need just the right wall art.

That number, that %25 - its an under estimate and relief organizations say they can't account for the people cramming apartments and sleeping on couches.

Was Ikea demonstrating how to set up your own shelter?

Rethinking my apartment my front hall could be lined with lockers. My living room could sleep eight, my bedroom twelve. The closet could be an incredible pantry and everyone could store one trunk under the bottom bunk.

Ridiculous. But that is the function of a storyteller.

fortunate son

After a long process I found a home by July of this year. The building has its quirks but the neighborhood is completely what I sought. I have two rooms, a kitchen, a hall and a bathroom. For me, this is more than enough.

In the next few days I will attempt, and probably succeed, to get my little possessions down here. There is a bed I have missed dearly for eight months and books I can't wait to see happily shelved in my hall.

More than anything though is the "difference" of this move. It feels so settling. I don't intend to rent this place forever by any means, but there is something about getting where I was going.

There is also this incredible feeling of support for this move. I once had a night sleeping alone in a moving van somewhere in Delaware, I cried. This time some very generous people are making things so very lovely that I am actually looking forward to it.

One of these people made me an apple pie on my thirtieth birthday and wrote my name on it. I've missed him a lot and he's making me a moving pie.

Speaking of my thirtieth birthday, a friend made me a beautiful necklace which I have worn countless times since. I hope to see her at some point while I am in Albany for the day.

When I was carless and couldn't get home at Christmas, a friend took me out to his family's house for dinner. He's told me I am not allowed to worry about this nonsense, and he and his father are lending a hand. That whole "lending a hand" business is a huge understatement.

My roommate from China has been a wonderful help, she just so happens to be moving to DC and is splitting the stifling truck and gas costs with me.

Basically, I feel really lucky to have friends who love me. I've done this dance alone enough to know how good it feels to have more support than my shadow and a couple greasy dudes off craigslist.

It means the world to me. And the world is very large, after all.