The Wildest Thing

This morning I woke up fierce. It's always dangerous when this happens. On fierce days I reach for my Ani DiFranco CD, wear black lace, and pretty much tell the world to "piss off." Today I even considered downing the rest of last night's leftover wine that had been sitting out on the counter all night. I thought better of it when I reasoned that I was off to work in a few minutes and would rather be in trouble there for something more satisfying instead of for having had a half glass of stale wine. Plus, though wine and coffee is a pretty rock-n-roll way to start the morning, I have to admit that my 30 something-year-old stomach blanched at the thought of mixing the two. On top of that, there was the bet that the cat may or may not have stuck his head in glass during the night, as he is known to do to various open-mouthed glasses. I was unwilling to lose that bet.

Anyway, fierce days remind me of something that I know is in the core of who I am - that part that can be willed to break free from responsibility (Revolution Now!), the one that asks, "what if I..?" followed by, "Damn the consequence!"

I've never been a wild person, as my outward nature probably indicates. I mean I've done my share of skinny dipping, pyramid climbing, and pith helmet wearing, and my passport could tell the story of many adventuresome days, as could many concert ticket stubs and cigarette butts. But honestly, those things don't seem particularly wild, and at the end of the day I'm still the girl who snuck out of her house once but left a note detailing where I would be in case my mother came in to check on me.

I never fully embrace the fierce. I imagine myself reaching for my combat boots sometimes and daydreaming about a place where poetry meets impurity.. (I can tell you what it looks like and also how it smells)..but I always, in the end, throw on sensible heels and expectation. Part of me really hates that - the suppression - and wants to blur the line, but ..

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (The Wildest Thing I've Done in my Youth, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Overheard: 7th Period

"Maybe if Big Brother looked more like Gerard Butler, people wouldn't mind so much that he's 'watching'."

-A. Student

15 Minutes of Fame

"In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." - Andy Warhol Stokholm, 1968

"In the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes." - Banksy (British graffiti artist), sometime recently

Facebook is not my friend. As I type this post, pictures are being uploaded to facebook several of which end up in my inbox. "You have been tagged in a picture!" is the message, as if I'm supposed to be thrilled. This is all part of a reunion project that someone from my college years - from the years when I wore wire rimmed glasses and Birkenstocks with socks and abhorred the thought of wearing make up. "A girl," I reasoned, "should be valued for her brain, not her appearance, and if people think that t-shirts three sizes too big aren't sexy, then they can go (do something very unpleasant to) themselves." It was a time before I learned the value of a push up bra or the power that the smart stilleto stomper could wield.

Also it was a time when I was more free, a tree climbing philosopher, and less of a tax paying, 401K concerned grown-up. Though a necessary time in my life, one that made me who I am today, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the girl in the pictures - the ones that are currently being broadcast to my friends, family, students, colleagues, acquaintances and so forth - in this, my fifteen minutes of Facebook fame, are wholly ridiculous, comically embarrassing.

Please. Please make it stop. ;)

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (15 Minutes of Fame, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Tegan and Sara - Yes.

At least we got to see a great show in Boston:


Small venue, great seats, incredible show..

Person, Place, or Thing

I've been eating, breathing, sleeping this event for a year. I'm at an international job fair for international teachers in beautiful Boston. Before now, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about how it would play out: I roamed the house deciding what we would take, what we would leave; I researched like a mad person, documenting each country's appeal, writing pro/con lists, calculating health care and income tax expenses; I made sure Jack would be fully taken care of; and on and on and on! The short of it is I worked really, really hard, and nothing came to fruition.

Rich and I had two days of grueling interviews, our nerves frayed, our emotions swinging from optimism and hope to fear and anxiety and then back again and then again. We have hardly eaten anything and have slept only a few hours a night. We were lucky in that every place wanted us. We were called back for second interviews for each initial one and had some huge decisions to make. We made them, and then found that the biggest one was out of our control. The job we wanted most was given to someone else after four call backs.

Now it's time to be resolved to staying in our current posts for another year. Another interviewer at a place we are unsure of is calling as I type. I'm letting the voicemail get it. As my heart leaps at the prospect of not being quite out of the game, yet, I am exhausted and just want to leave here.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Person, Place or Thing, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Greg Mortenson is my Hero

I heard him speak yesterday, and he is wonderful!

Visitor

I had just arrived that morning and had fought my way through the Underground with an especially cantankerous suitcase that weighed more than me, and I hadn't eaten anything since the night before other than some shortbread cookies that came with my morning airplane "snack" . Mark, the friend I was visiting had patiently waited in his garden while I rinsed the travel off my skin and tried to conceal the jet lag that had written itself all over my face.

Anyone who has ever traveled abroad understands that you have to make yourself stay up all day if you ever want to acclimate yourself to the new time zone, and that's why Mark, a former tour guide, intended to take me in all my "resplendent" glory around his North London neighborhood called Southgate.

We meandered our way through and around his neighborhood and got blissfully lost. We found new alleyways that contained "lost relics" - "spastic" Christmas gift labels from before the time when "spastic" was not considered offensive hidden in a hole in a fence, for example, and a soapstone statue of a bird we found on top of a wall.We didn't know what these objects meant so we assigned our own meanings. We visited a church, entering through the back door while the choir was practicing for evensong and found some incredibly beautiful stained glass done by an artist named William Morris . We smelled flowers and had tea at a place we called "Napoleon's" as there was a huge velvet painting of Napoleon over the counter.

We dillied and dallied and chatted and laughed, but the place that stood out the most that day was a tiny shop and its showcased hodgepodge - randomly arranged hats, shoes, scarves, jewels, coats, umbrellas; things that remained un-perused, other than maybe a handful of items around the door. I had the feeling that this was its usual cluttered state. I glanced around, uncomfortably at first, because I knew that I was one among many travelers who had stepped in for something other than shopping, and yet there was a familiarity about the place that made me smile.

That's where I met a woman named Ronnie, the proprietor of the shop. She hugged us as we walked in and set about the task of putting out small folding chairs that took up most of the floorspace in her establishment so that we could sit and visit. She introduced herself as a Jewish Israeli and her vibrancy was amazing, her stories magical. Did you know, for example, that she has a friend in El Paso (my home town) who trains horses to dance? She especially wanted to visit him and loves the warmth of the Texas heat. She herself was a dancer in her younger years, something we had in common, but she found herself in London, somehow, even though she longed to be in more romantic places like Morocco, Spain, or Italy. Yes, there were men in her life (sigh) and they tended to follow her around (as would any man, I mean look at her, Mark noted), but then men are men, and people are people, no matter where one lives, and the world would be a much nicer place, don't you think, if Jesus came back?

As we bounced and floated around various topics as bizarre as dancing horses and as profound as the Israeli/Palestine conflict, Ronnie leaned over the counter and waved hello to passersby and gestured for them to come in. Many of them briefly stepped in to say they would come back for a chat later. I'm convinced that they did go back. Ronnie's charm is magnetizing.

As I search my memory for exactly what made things so marevellous that day, all I can come up with is that everyone we encountered in that community opened their arms to me. I fell in love with them. It is this type of experience and these types of people - ones who are interested in who you are and who immediately take you into their hearts - who blur the divides. Yes, I was a visitor that day, but that night as my head hit the pillow, suitcase stored in the corner, I was a local.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Visitor or Visitors, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.