paging banksy

One of my most favoritest things about my favoritest places is the incredible political graffitti that starts to speckle the walls after many years of chaos... (addendum: i have been chastised and called elitist for not translating these. It's nice to know people care. Translations added, thanks Uncle Pime!)

"Revolution in the plaza, at home and in bed."

"It's the Vatican's fault."

"Are we really in a democracy?"

"The pencils keep on writing..."

"Victory for the Palestinian resistence"

"Where are the Disappeared?" (This building contains military history; the question was not randomly placed!)

"Effing Peronists!"

"Revolutionizing memory, constructing the future."

"Where is he?"

"Women standing to face crises!"

someone give us a house, please!

Ok, ok, the ghetto is glamorous in the movies but when you accidentally live there in Buenos Aires, it's not as fun. Traipsing all over town to find apartments in legitimate neighborhoods is a) good for the glutes and b) really hard for two girls who like eating cheesecake and sitting down a lot. Today we tricked our new friend Jamil (born on Caye Caulker in Belize, raised in Guatemala City, yoga fanatic) into wandering around with us into Palermo.

Jamil, two miles in: "Ay Dios. I should be doing less meditating and more exercising."

This is Jamil's face after he saw Amy Winehouse in her drogaddiccion phase. Emotion was palpable. It was like telling a kid there's no Santa Claus.

Luckily, covering dozens of miles on foot was worth it. We now have an apartment to live in starting on Monday and the happy memory of a cute little Argentinian boy who gasped, "MIRA... que lindo vestido!" to his mom and swung around to watch Marlo's long dress swish by him. At least someone around here appreciates the fact that we brought cute dresses!

deudas y prestados.

Rick Steves says the only thing that means anything when travelling is the people-- you can buy a ticket to Dubai, Dublin, or Fez and if you never meet a new person or hear a new story, you aren't really travelling because your mindset hasn't been altered at all. Conversely, you can cross the street and hear a new story from your neighbor and consider that travelling.

So interesting people and their stories are most of the appeal in clicking "purchase" on a shiny new plane ticket. Our first was the gorgeous blonde sitting next to us on the plane from DC, an Argentinian who used to work for the World Bank (I suppose I knew that people from all over the world work for the World Bank-- it makes sense, right? But it also surprises me when people from Latin America admit to it!). So I had to ask her how socially acceptable it was for her to admit to such employment. She laughed a little.

"Right, well I think the thing is that most people don't know that the World Bank and IMF are sister organizations. Argentina's default on their IMF loan in 2001 caused massive discontent and in the public mentality, the IMF was just the devil. Just terrible. But since most people didn't know how closely connected the two organizations are, it wasn't an issue for me. And also I was running with the international finance crowd in DC for most of that, anyway."

Unfortunately our plane landed before I could ask her more. I wondered if she really thought that the IMF truly knew better than Argentinians on the issue of national economy. And if she didn't, how did she feel to be gainfully employed by what is essentially the same organization that was causing such economic chaos for her country? I laughed to myself when I thought of Argentina telling the IMF to take a hike.

Last night, after wandering down the Avenida 9 de Julio (supposedly the largest street in the world-- and learning how to walk on it is a lesson in putting your life on the line), we found a cafe in the shadow of the Obelisk. As usual when Marlo and I start laughing really hard, we found new friends, and in this case it was the owner of the bar. Howard spent a long time in California and likes speaking English because he's "so hard-headed." He wanted to help us find an apartment and insisted we come back in the morning, "but not before ten! Americans work too hard; it's part of the reason I came back here. Let's enjoy life more and work less, ok?"

Don't have to tell us twice!

So having early afternoon cafe con leche at the cafe today found us in the middle of businessman lunch hour. A bearded accountant started chatting with us from an outside table and I couldn't resist asking a little more about the economic woes of his country. After throwing up his hands in frustration at the "six presidents in five days" and "inflation that just wouldn't get under control" and the way the president just can't seem to get a grasp on things, the conversation turned to America, and this man and I had a little disagreement (Conversation paraphrased. My business Spanish could use some brushing up).

"America is so GREAT! You can have anything you want!" he gushed, looking a little weary after recounting the last decade of Argentine economic insecurity.
I snorted. "De veras? Is that really such a blessing? It's fake money we're using, and I don't see how having massive credit crises on an individual level is any better than having it happen with the government, because people have nothing to fall back on."
"No no, it's not the same. How old are you? At 25, Americans can have a house, a car, a spouse and kids, no problem. It's not like that here. The peso used to be pegged to the dollar at a one-to-one rate. Now, no one your age could even think about getting a house, because one day the peso is worth a dollar, the next it's worth four. How can we rely on a system like that?"

So what do we think about this? I have to admit that despite the skewed and selfish way most Americans view money (and our right to have material items), the mentality of freedom with money, based on the reliability of knowing your dollar will still buy the same thing tomorrow morning, is unparalleled in most places. But is it worth it, in light of what this past year has shown?

PS. Marlo's blog is a lot funnier than mine. She can be found at http://www.putacandleinthewindow-marlo.blogspot.com/ telling jokes about the people in our hostel who are a total grab-bag of randos.

affluent travelers.

Someone actually buys this magazine. Doesn’t that just make you want to throw up onto their cashmere pashminas as you walk by them in first class?! And then pity them for the watered down experience they are about to have in their resort villas?

Ok, the fact that Day One happened at all was a Christmas miracle. I haven’t been so nervous for an event since... well, since getting my shots for the trip, and I almost made my dad turn the car around and get back on I5 when we got to the airport. I know, I know, we “wanted” to come on this “trip of a lifetime” that’s going to be “so awesome” but truth be told I think we both were pretty much ready to call it quits before we even left. But sometimes you just gotta put aside your personal issues with nervousness, be a big girl and get out your passport.

As we waited at our gate at SeaTac, the faraway yapping of a tiny lap dog filtered through the murmur of voices and insistently reminded every traveler in the N gate section of his little whiny existence. Once we boarded, I was delighted to discover that the lap dog was now directly behind my seat and would. Not. Shut it. You know how cute and witty that Taco Bell Chihuahua was? Farce. False advertising. As this little guy’s relentless yapping now filled the plane, I also became acquainted with the other members of his party: two kids under age 3; one of whom was so frustrated with the flight that his only recourse was to repeatedly kick the back of my seat throughout an entire airing of “Night at the Museum” (excellent work, United!), and another who was too young to do anything but wail. Next time I book a flight I’m going to watch out for the little “you will hate your life in this seat” icon so I’ll at least have fair warning.

Exhausted and only halfway into our trip, Marlo and I boarded our Dulles flight buoyed by just the basics of airline travel: sleeping pills for me, Xanax and red wine for her*, and my mom’s caramel corn for both of us. Peace out, America North! BUENOS DIAS, AMERICA SOUTH!

*RIP, DJ AM.

relativity, family-style

Alzheimers homes don't smell very good all the time. The conversation isn't always quick-witted (although sometimes it will surprise you). And they can be both wrenchingly lonely and quietly encouraging at the same time. These are all things I thought about as I sat on my grandpa's bed on Saturday, filing his nails and making him eat his sweet potatoes.

My mom's father Eugene is 92 years old and, according to her, "a 7.5 out of 8" on the dementia scale. Generally my mother goes to visit and take care of him alone, which I hate, but she goes cheerfully, which I admire. This weekend, the three of us trekked over together. Part of me thinks I was going to say goodbye to him, and a smaller part is a little hopeful that I was. He just seems to be outliving himself, and it's a difficult thing to watch.

In April, before my sister left to begin her life as a Faux-rean (that sounded better in my head than it looks written down), we went over to spend Grandpa Gene's birthday with him. It was an event that was exceptional only in its unexceptionalism. We sat at a dining room table. We chatted about our day. We laughed and wished birthday wishes for his upcoming year. It was as if we had been catapulted back in time, years ago, when his wife and my grandma was still alive and we sat conversing idly at a table about nothing and everything at once. You know, like families do.

Our food arrived: chicken breasts for us and unrecognizably-chopped-up chicken breast for him. "You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered to himself as he poked at the plate listlessly.

I have to say the following things about my grandpa: he can be one of the most crotchety, cranky people I have ever met, and he is universally popular no matter where he goes. Grace, the sweet Mexican girl who works at the home, came in repeatedly to make sure my grandpa had whatever he wanted. Rather than eating dinner, he drank three hot chocolates in a row, with whipped cream, brought to him by the doting waitress who wanted to make sure everything was perfect for him.

"He's a very special man," Grace grinned affectionately. "I want to be sure to show him extra care. I don't have parents, and I don't know what it's like, to have to take care of someone older."

My dad, as he does at any mention of a life story, tuned in. "Oh no. What happened?"

"They died when I was eight, in a car accident in Mexico." She placed more bread in front of Gene.

"I have five kids of my own now," she smiled bittersweetly, "and I wish they could have known my parents." She left to get more hot chocolate as the three of us sat, a little stunned, feeling the need to observe some silence for her decades-old loss.

Yes, it is difficult to watch someone you love grow old and lose track of the person you once knew. But Grace reminded us that even those things, when viewed correctly, are blessings: my mom still has a dad. We have had a grandfather who, 20 years ago, shaved his mustache so he could kiss us goodnight, and who taught us how to dance and drink McDonalds coffee and play Pavarotti on his record player and take long walks in his apple orchards and cook an egg in the microwave and love your spouse immensely. I'm grateful for everything his years have contained, and especially grateful for the fact that he has gotten so many of them.

it's cold out!

The past two years have been a humbling opportunity to meet and work with some phenomenal families whose stories exemplify so much courage. One of my favorites, a sweet Latino clan with four kids and a resilience that won't quit, seems to keep getting knocked down. Last winter's blizzard meant no access to the food banks, the recession meant a shortage of day labor opportunities, and now the kids all have swine flu and the electric company shut off their power. They need to send in at least $500 to Seattle Power so the kiddos can have some heat and start to get better, and while I wish I could provide them more than just a BandAid, right now it's the only thing we can do. Please consider making a donation; even a few dollars will go a long way for them right now.
Let's get their heat turned back on!

roomies.

How do I love my roommates? Let me count the animal-socked ways.

distraction.

I just made a fort out of pillows and ten years of Vogue magazine. Packing is sooo hard, ya'll.

Zac's a Dad!

Dear Zachary D. Stroud:
You're welcome.
Sincerely,
Laura M. Huysman

Travel Short- Sarajevo Taxi

"We are so thankful for you," our acid-washed denim-clad driver, who could not have been more than 18 or 19, gushed to us. At that time, our three faces, dusty from the bus ride from Dubrovnik, represented the US State Department circa 1995. "Bill Clinton, yes! But..."

He trailed off, lost in thought and deeply concerned for his poor country. He wanted to defend it, to share the righteous indignance at what little Bosnia had seen, wanted to express the injustice of the war to this carful of women who had not ever seen or touched real injustice. It's not our fault that we don't know what war really means, who, for all our well-meaning curiosity, could not and most likely would not know what it was like for those four years in the city as it was bombed, what it was like to lose family members and friends, smell the sulfur as a thousand years of literature burned to the ground.

"But why not more?" his flat palms tapped the steering wheel with the restrained frustration of someone trying valiantly to maintain politeness in front of new friends. "Why not sooner? Where were you when the Serbs were-- how do you say it-- firebombing us? and our history?"

A raised pair of shoulders looks remarkably like a passive shrug, but we didn't know what else to say. It was the raised shoulder of solidarity, of wishing that decisions made deep within the state department were not determined by the skin color of the people at hand, or the trade options to consider, but the fact that little kids were dying on the sidewalk somewhere and we had the money to make them stop it. We didn't feel equipped to articulate our thoughts on this to our young driver, who was probably dodging mortar shells while I was searching for conch shells on a Hawaiian beach.

I think one of the most interesting and important aspects of arriving somewhere is to find out where your reality intersects with others, and to keep building on those little points of light until you find some semblance of the truth. But sometimes it's also important just to be quiet.

-July 2007

how to report a dead bird.

If you live in Seattle and there is a dead seagull in front of you, you need to go here:
http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/ts/Zoo/WNV/reportdeadbird.html

But before you do, make sure Marlo hasn't already reported the bird you are looking at. She has a new goal to be famous by becoming the city's primary dead-bird-reporter. For some reason, finding this link made my stressful day seem funny.

i love seattle hip hop, part deux

To round out a great week of live shows, we found ourselves at a biofuel warehouse in Fremont last Thursday to celebrate the launch of Clockwork's new label Designated Hitters. It was a private event meant to get the funds together to rent out 131 (formerly DV8-- someone told me that changing the club's name is a marketing ploy, but I think it's just annoying) to hold a benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters on Halloween!

Shucks. Is there anything better than hanging out with a bunch of tattooed rappers with hearts? It was like being in an episode of that show about how Snoop Dogg is really a family man. Their manager literally cried into the microphone about the power of mentoring while we hung around the back and drank free wine. Cheers! It's for the kids!

A few things about Clockwork:
1. Isaac sounds remarkably like a Bone Thug. This guy is unreal.
2. They released their new video for Hold On which is gor.geous. and shot right here in lovely Georgetown!
3. They are playing with Darwin (of aforementioned Lion King fame) and a bunch of other people at the new Crocodile on Oct. 8. See you there.



In conclusion, here is a cute picture of a kitten.

prep.

South America is exactly one month away. Departure feels imminent, but first there are shots. There are visas. There are verbs to remember how to conjugate so we say "catch a bus" instead of "have our way with a bus." There are hippy names to invent for ourselves so we can fit into the place we're living in Buenos Aires (we saw pictures of bongos. People who are not Matthew McConaughey still play the bongos! I'm as shocked as you are!). From now on, please refer to us as "Moon Flower" and "Peace Wart."

Last week, Marlo spent the 8 am hour buying "underwear we can wash in a river that will dry in ten minutes!" and tear-away Adidas track pants. People keep asking us how prep is going-- at this point, six months in South America is looking like a camping trip with Kopachuck Middle School, Class of 1998.

i like a man who knows his way around a glockenspiel.

You know when your friends tell you they started a band, and you secretly cringe a little because you know you're going to have to listen to them and pretend to like it, and shell out for concerts that are only mildly fun because the hipster scene is about pretending to hate stuff and smoke cigarettes, and rave to your friends later that they're just like the early-years Ramones/DJ AM/GodforbidNickelback/whoever they're trying to imitate, and then have a bunch of their demos lying around your house because you feel guilty throwing them away but can't bring yourself to listen to them?

Yeah, I hate that. But when my friend Mary's brother Michael started a band, I decided to grit my teeth and try to get excited because he's like family, and that's what family does. They deal with things that aren't cool because they love you.

So Sunday night I put on my beer-drinking hat and headed to Nectar to see what the story is with Boomzzilla. As it turns out, they pretty much kick the crap out of the wannabe hip-hop white guy groups (NeighBrohood, not you. Not you. Ok, kind of you. Don't pout!). I loved them-- from their werewolf headgear to the song about getting beaten up by Russian prostitutes in Korea to the fact that two out of their three moms showed up for the set. Michael, I'm so sorry I ever doubted you. I knew all that band geek stuff would lead to great things. Oh, and thanks for wearing pleather. The big-boned Kardashian sister who got naked for PETA is really proud of you.

But wait- two more exciting things happened! 1. Darwin started mixing with the Lion King soundtrack and 2. the lead singer of my favorite band walked in!

I saw Barcelona two years ago when Catie dragged me to Neumo's and immediately fell in love with them when I realized that I had never seen anyone play a glockenspiel with such panache. I saw them woo another couple thousand people at Bumbershoot 2008 and was smitten again. Just some dudes from SPU whose songs are now playing on national television (I can't think of which show used Falling Out of Trees, but I want to say it's something on the WB. Hey, we all have to start getting massively famous somewhere).

As I was trying to convince Brian Fennell to be friends with me, he mentioned that he and the band "have no reason to ever leave Seattle-- it's not like country music where you need to be in Nashville, or acting where you have to be in LA." (But what I heard him say was "HiiiiYA! Take THAT, ignorati who think your major non-Seattle city is the center of the known universe!") Anyway, Absolutes is one of the most genuinely beautiful albums I've ever heard, so I'll share my sister's advice for really good album-listenage and you can tell me how it goes: "Laura, you gotta get by yourself. And you gotta get a glass of red wine. Then you gotta just sit there with the lights off and listen the whole way through. Then you call me."


There we are with our matching Coors Light cans! It's so nice when people keep it real. Aye aye, Brian Fennell. Aye aye, Boomzzilla. Keep it up, you.

keeping time.

I've never worn a watch, but I used to like keeping track of my comings and goings by the expiration dates on milk cartons. It brought me a secret joy to have something as tangible as the spoiling of food as a marker of my time before the next adventure. Watching the days tick down as the extra sharp cheddar in the fridge door got older, little by little, was like a paper-chain countdown in my head.

The cereal in my cupboard now has dates well into November. I grin a little at breakfast when I remember that by the time this cereal is stale, I will already be 7,000 miles away.

I love the little arcane mental quirks that keep us company when no one is looking...

rain

Mark told me that in Sierra Leone, when a big rain comes, life freezes. Wherever you are, you stay there.





Meetings can wait.

Meals can wait.

Life can wait.


It's a delayed existence that celebrates the present tense. As Seattle was caught in a deluge of Biblical proportions this morning, I was grateful for the torrential downpours that created Sabbath in the midst of busy-ness.

special olympics.

I think Facebook invitations have gotten out of hand. I got an invite today to join a group called "Deaflympics." First of all, I'm going to ignore how deeply irritating I find the word "Deaflympics" and move on to the more glaring fact that I don't think deaf people really need their own Olympics. Where do we draw the line with this stuff? Kurt said "I'm sorry, you don't have to hear to be fast," and then got really excited about the idea of someday being able to compete in his own Special Olympics. His hopes were for gold in the:

Kind Heart Olympics
Sarcastic Olympics
Lying about Having a Big Member Olympics

They aren't as catchy as "Siamese Twinlympics" or "Centaurlympics" (both of which I would buy tickets to watch), but it's still the early phases.

meet alex.

Alex wears a lot of hats-- UW business school grad, violinist extraordinaire, thoughtful observer of the world-- but she impresses me more every time I am fortunate enough to spend time with her. Recently, she turned down an offer from the Gates Foundation (who does that?! has it ever happened before?!) to raise her own salary and work for Mars Hill Church in the UDistrict. She's following her passion of serving college kids, even at the cost of sacrificing something that she (like many others) has dreamed of doing. And she's humble about it, too, which is why I want to brag about her. If you have a heart for UW and/or ministering to college kids, and have a few cents to spare, let me know. I'll send you Alex's way.

There's more: she's also helping start up a brand-new microcredit organization in Ghana called Lumana Credit (http://lumana.org/), which provides loans along with skills training for underserved people, giving them the tools to pull themselves out of poverty. Please take a look; it's pretty exciting to be on the ground floor of a sustainable development project. If helping support a college ministry isn't your thing, but helping rebuild economic viability for families in Africa is, this would be a really good place to start.














postscript: the delicious coffee in our hands is from All City Coffee in Georgetown, hands down the best coffee in Seattle. They serve Caffe Vita, have bypassed Fair Trade by trading directly with farmers (ensuring even better prices for the growers), roast locally, and their doppio espresso with a dash of simple syrup MIGHT be the closest thing to ambrosia that mankind has discovered... Go there. Be transformed.

cost/benefit analysis of dating a monk

I developed a theory a few years ago: if a guy is still single in his mid-30s, there is ALWAYS. A. REASON. Date him long enough and you'll find out what it is. Frank, always the chipper devil's advocate, suggested that the specific reason for singledom is more important than the singledom itself-- did he recently pass the bar? become a doctor? get out of prison?

But what if he was a man of the cloth who has decided to enter the secular world? And the debate began: Frank, Marlo and I attempting to decide if dating a former monk would be worth the trouble.

"Plus side: knows how to make delicious beer."
"Downside: only wears robes."
"Plus side: has never seen the female form, thus rendering one goddess-like."
"Downside: sits alone in his room... a LOT."
"Plus side: will be so happy to leave his room that he'll do anything you want."
"Downside: he quit GOD, of all things to quit!"
"Plus side: he can always go back to God and win 3 championships like Jordan."
"Downside: God will always be making passive aggressive comments about how he left."
"Plus side: knows how to survive minimally, thereby making him a cheap date."
"Downside: he knows how to survive minimally, thereby making him a cheap date."
"Plus side: free gruel for life."

The jury's still out.

just two girls with big dreams.

lazy sunday.

Morning with the Irish at Le Pichet...

Fishies on our cappucinos...

Citrus...

Wandering Pike Place...

Afternoon drinks on Broadway...

For all this peace, would one ever guess that this was the same day we saw a misplaced HempFest attendee washing his weiner in the water fountain at Pike Place Park?

wuv. twu wuv.

In 2004, Malia and I stood at a roundabout somewhere in Northern Ireland and met a dozen people for the first time.

Five years, several cross-Atlantic moves, a few disappointments and frustrations and joys later, Malia is married to one of the random Irishmen we met that day. That summer changed the path of our lives-- we wanted to go to Africa but we got sent to Ireland ("First World?! Aw, no wayyyy"), found out that actually we loved Ireland, and now neither of us would have changed it for anything. The summer we first spent on the Emerald Isle caused our hearts to expand in directions we didn't expect (or always really want), and it brought Malia to Peter: a quietly hilarious boy who loved trees and dreamed of arriving at our doorsteps in America driving a wood-panelled station wagon. And on Saturday, after five years of chasing each other down, Peter slipped a ring on Malia's finger and they became permanent boyfriend/girlfriend!

When Josh got up to read during the ceremony, I was overwhelmed with gratefulness for having a tight little group of four that has made it half a decade and will hopefully make it for many more, for being a part of Malia and Peter's intersecting lives from the first minute, and most of all for genuine love.

wedding season!

It's been the summer of weddings, and in the past 24 hours, two more friends have gotten engaged. Plus one, very kind, invitation to be a bridesmaid.

Is it normal, in light of all this blissful and balmy love in the air, to feel the need to self-medicate with vodka and schadenfreude?

scott and jamie.

Summer 2007:

The end of Belfast was a whirlwind of visits to Child Protective Services, harsh words from angry kids, and an overall sense of having failed, massively, on almost every front.

In July, when an email from a little girl informed me that all of my efforts with CPS had only succeeded in getting her friend removed from her home--nothing helpful or restorative, nothing that would mend the situation, I found myself on the floor of a Croatian bathroom, unable to stem the flood of tears that finally were released after leaving Belfast. My heart has never felt more broken.

A couple years have passed. The weight is somewhat removed; the long separation has helped diffuse the water in my lungs, but my heart still has not fully come home to me either. It's still on a dozen doorsteps in Northwest Belfast, which is why it was so hurt again tonight: the Irish arrived, ready for Peter and Malia's wedding, bearing news that my Hawthorne Effect boys are both dads.

Scott and Jamie, in true northwest Belfast style, have now both become fathers before age 16.

I don't even know where to start describing how much I love these boys and how much more I want for their lives. It's a familiar sense, the heaviness that has settled onto my chest tonight, but so unwelcome.

'Literary Charlatan and Degenerate"

In high school, I had a wonderful friend who spoke slowly and was beautiful, even at age 15. She told me she wanted to become Colette and I thought she meant the orphan from Les Miserables, and wondered why anyone would want to walk around with smudged cheeks singing "Castle On A Cloud."


That's Cosette.


Colette is different; and while younger-days Colette may be a little much for me, old-lady Colette is a dream: living alone, fully content to sit quietly and think deeply and move slowly. She is a woman fully engaged in the process of becoming, one who does not rely on others to tell her what her name is. Having had a few decades of debauchery under her belt (that's not the word I want to use, but what else to call a lifetime of living life to the teeth and scandalizing people everywhere you go and making memories that people who become old too soon do not make? Perhaps I'll think of the word later), she is then happy to smell the smells her garden makes and to live to her own rhythms, now more peaceful.

Reading Break of Day is like looking into what I hope my own thought patterns are like when I'm older, and it comforts me that even the author herself admits that she hasn't arrived yet. "Are you imagining, as you read me, that I'm portraying myself? Have patience: this is merely my model."

And still, she is yet another grave at Père Lachaise that we didn't have time to find.

today

The following things happened today: I bought a ticket to Argentina, quit my job (in three months) only to have my boss offer to save it for whenever I get back, saw the amazing Bumbershoot lineup, and had an ice cream sandwich.

Best. Day. Ever.

this is my friend ryan.

The trajectory of our friendship has gone like this: at age 17, we were watching Being John Malkovich and I was in love with him. At 19, we became best friends ("we're just like sisters!" a drunk Ryan grinned at me that New Years, which I guess meant "siblings) as we navigated the first months of college together. It's hard not to bond when you share a small section with a painfully emo English TA who was personally living out Kafka's "The Hunger Artist." We learned firsthand that life indeed imitates art as we scribbled draft after draft of critique-- on the essay? On the TA? We lost track.

Now, Ryan goes to MIT and is technically the smartest person I know. We shared time together last week on my front porch-- tea in hand, elbows tucked between our knees as the creeping chill settled around us, recatching up and remembering all the things that hold people together even after much distance and time separates them temporarily.

Ryan and I have many memories, and the thing I love most about good friends is that they are living, breathing insurance against the forgetfullness of time. They carry pieces of our memories around for us-- the things that would slip away with our own unreliable recollections are buttressed by the minds of the people we love. And I am so thankful that little bits of my memory and heart are wandering around all over the place.

the history of beauty

I walked into the lunchroom today and immediately commented on my coworker Katie's cute heels. "I don't want to talk about it," she smirked, still reeling from a long lecture from another coworker, this one morbidly obese, on how heels are just one example of how our superficial culture tells women to present themselves. "You'll regret them later!" she declared, wagging her chubby finger toward Katie's toes.

"Maybe I will," Katie admitted. "But I sure as hell don't want to hear about it from her."

***

Malia, sitting cross-legged on a chaise lounge, raises her tone as she reads aloud to us from a book about the American trajectory of beauty and self-image. We hear of thinness and fatness and acne and sex and how our capricious culture defines perfection. It's a sad, helpless thing; to watch the values of a culture slip from internal qualities to almost exclusively external. "How do we stop this?" she asks. We throw around pie in the sky ideas like, "wear less makeup?" "stop looking in mirrors so much?" "read more?" but when it comes down to it, we were all forced to realize that, intentionally or not, we are interwoven into what our culture tells us to focus on. So: Are we beautiful?

***

9 pm. Yoga class. "Use the mirror to square your hips and balance yourself," our strawberry blonde instructor guided us. "Don't look at yourself like you normally would-- how does my hair look? Use it to force your body into a better place." Namaste, yoga. You are one of the world's best teachers of the lesson: Here Is Your Body. Here is How to Make it Work Well. Enjoy Your Strength and Guard It."

Moving On.

"I'd say 'anytime', but I know I can't follow through on a statement like that."

"I know. I know."

What stings the fingers like a closed door? What holds a more bittersweet taste on the back of the tongue than something that never happened and that wasn't supposed to happen anyway? Time marches on. "The stars, in their firmament, behave like stars." But rooms never explored contain the strange, dusty musk of a life that can only be lived once. This is both disconcerting and comforting a la vez. I am glad for only so many options. And I also grieve for being able to follow so few.

Travel Short- WC Priču

I was locked in a bathroom in Sarajevo, and my travel buddies (one of whom had given birth to me) seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Thanks, Mom!

I knew what was happening outside of my tile prison. Mom was lying down on the bed in our cabin-style hostel room, flipping through the thin copy of Oscar Wilde children's stories I had just finished. Lauren was outside, dealing with round two of the drunk Finn who had spotted us on the porch earlier. He watched us conduct an unproductive conversation with the sweet desk manager who spoke no English, and, buoyed by cheap beer and unwarranted confidence, he wandered his way into the hostel foyer, ready to grab our asses and fight with anyone who wanted to stop him. Earlier, we had played along lightheartedly with his inebriated attempts at flirtation. Now, worn out by exhaustion at finding decent accomodation, his middle-aged slurriness was not quite as cute.

This is when Emir entered our lives. Oh dear God. Emir. This is what he did: he woke up that morning, he put on a tight t-shirt, he re-Biced his head till it shone, he lit a cigarette and showed up in my life and dammit Emir, why must you be a chain-smoking, espresso-guzzling seductive Muslim from the former Yugoslavia while I am stuck, STUCK I tell you! in this lame life as a white girl from American suburbia? Why can't I have an addictive personality, leather pants, at least one dark secret that gives my eyes a hooded quality? Why can't I have stories of my days as a traveling busker, when I lived off of the kindness of strangers? Emir had the relaxed cool of someone who knew that, scars and all, they were the absolute shit and didn't care if you didn't agree. He also had flawed English, a confident chuckle and the ability to make me shy just by looking in my general direction.

I loved him.

Emir came blazing into the hostel and argued furiously with our Finnish suitor and quite literally tossed him out by his collar. Oh, the testosterone, how can a maid in waiting not swoon? Dusting himself off, he shuffled some papers behind the counter and explained that "he needs to stop drinking, it's not attractive. And he also needs to get the fuck out of here." I felt childish that moments before I had been amused at the old guy's antics. A more worldly woman would not have taken the time to laugh.

Earlier that day, a rickety bus took us up the side of the hill where we had heard a wonderful view of the city awaited us. An old woman, holding her groceries fresh from the market, wriggled her way around in her seat and gazed at us, telling us a story in Bosnian while smiling serenely. She paused. "Zlatkas," she grinned, gesturing to her face in the way Santa Claus did for the deaf girl in Miracle on 34th Street. "Golden Girls? Golden Child?" Our limited vocabulary clued us in to "zlat," but the rest of her meaning was lost. We got off the bus together, the old vehicle kicking up dust as it made a three point turn to head back down the hill. Last stop! And beautiful it was, yes. But also surreal to stand on an isthmus between two valleys and imagine the Serbs standing, crouching, lying in the grass around us and using their massive guns to entrap the Sarajevans. We stood alone, sharing the view with an abandoned crane ("Volim te, Tito!" declared in bold, spray painted contrast to the fading yellow of an unused machine), the city's beauty holding a bitterness that we wanted to touch gingerly.

"The tunnel? No, no. I don't want to go near the tunnel. I have seen the tunnel. I have seen plenty of the tunnel, and I never want to see it again in my life."

Emir had spoken. At this point, his word was pretty much law. We had asked him about the locations one expects to see in Sarajevo-- Olympic stadiums, the Holiday Inn (Lauren's suggestion-- the exact location in which so many journalists had been confined during the war held a strange attraction, although by the time we got there, it was hardly worth the trip, since no one was willing to acknowledge that anything of the sort had ever occurred), Baščaršija. They were all met with an aloof disdain, but at the mention of the escape tunnel, we were firmly shut down. I again felt sheepish.

They say that the escape tunnel, which was the only entrance to or exit from the city for the thousand days of Serb attack, was used by every person living in the city at one point or another. Despite the fact that, much like Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, it is a major draw for tourists in Bosnia, Emir saw it as dragging out the past, not to mention a little disrespectful to treat what once was a lifeline as entertainment for an afternoon. Isn't it too soon to go near a place that holds such bone-deep pain for so many?

Maybe. But if no one sees the tunnels and the houses and the mortar shells that represent what man can do to each other, then it will keep happening.

I had a lot of time to think about this before Emir rescued me from the bathroom with a laugh. Yes, I think I'm in love.

(July 2007)

Crush.

Timothy Padraic Sullivan, I have a crush on you.

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The Grasshopper and The Ant

Let me tell you a story! You’ve probably already heard it, but I’ll tell it again, this time with interjections colorfully placed by Javier Bardem’s character in the Spanish movie Mondays in the Sun, as he read it to a small child. He was meant to be babysitting, but the kid got a crash course in social ethics before bedtime as well:

The Grasshopper and the Ant

Once upon a time, there was a grasshopper and an ant. The ant was very hardworking and the grasshopper wasn't. He liked to dance and sing, while the ant went about his tasks. Time went by. The ant worked and worked all summer long. He saved all he could and when winter came, the grasshopper was dying of hunger and cold while the ant had everything. ("That ant is a real bastard!") The grasshopper knocked on the ant's door, and the ant said to him, "Grasshopper, Grasshopper, if you had worked as hard as I did, you wouldn't be hungry and cold now." And he didn't open the door! (“Who wrote this? Because this isn't how it is! That ant is a piece of shit and a speculator. And it doesn't say why some are born grasshoppers. Because if you are, you're fucked. And it doesn't say that here.”)

The movie revolves around a group of friends who lose their jobs in a Spanish shipyard and are left to float, unmoored and seeking meaning beyond their employment (or lack thereof). They have relationship issues, they drink, they laugh sardonically at what little they have. As the “Making Of” said, it’s not based on a true story. It’s based on a million.

The scene with the kid in the bedroom, who lay wide-eyed and silent at this strange, thick-bearded man who wanted to tell him what the world was really about, struck me more than any other. Everyone has seen world-weary men drinking their pennies away in some dark bar (I will never forget the tightness I felt in my throat, senior year of college, as my friends and I drank Olympia ironically at The Knarr Bar, quite possibly the world’s dirtiest watering hole, when I saw a shriveled, bent old man come in with a wad of grimy bills in one hand. He took a seat at the bar, which appeared to fit his backside perfectly as if it had been reserved for him, and ordered the first of many brews that would get him through the rest of the night. I didn’t want to look at him anymore, so strong was my heartbreak for the way our tongue-in-cheek night out was the equivalent of his lifestyle. His sadness, and then my own, was palpable). Everyone has seen men become shells of themselves as they drown in apathy, which Oscar Wilde accurately considers the worst illness man can contract.

But to watch this character, who was fiery and alive and appropriately bitter and unwilling to shut up about it, seemed an anomaly against the grey backdrop of his tired, tired friends. And the scene in the bedroom, in which he informed an innocent that not everyone would be sleeping in a warm bed that night, that not everyone is fortunate enough to be born an Ant and not a Grasshopper, meant he hadn’t given up. He was funny and honest and smart. He was mad as hell and the kid wasn’t going to be spared any of the ugly details of Adam Smith’s world order. It was one of the most refreshing things I have scene in terms of cinematic social commentary. But it also hurt my heart because the night before, as in so many nights these past few years, I had spent an evening with a Grasshopper, hearing about the same things firsthand.

Cynthia is a mom from Mexico, and I’ve gotten to know her while working with her sweet son Emilio this year at TT Minor. I arrived at their apartment, a lovely space on a tree-lined street in the Central District. Despite being one of the best-off Latino immigrants I have met in the past two years, she struggles, now specifically because her smart and potential-laden son cannot get a break when it comes to school. She had come from the year-end carnival that the school district threw for TT, which we agreed was a pathetic consolation prize in light of the fact that they have mostly been ignored and brushed aside for so long.

(Side note—the jury is still out for me on what I think about TT closing. I want to say that the school itself isn't the real issue, in light of the fact that kids everywhere are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to education. But then I remember what Paul Farmer said in Mountains Beyond Mountains: "If you focus on individual patients, you can't get sloppy." In other words, let's not generalize the bigger picture. Let's find the kid next door, see what's going on, and if it's not good, he probably isn't the only one.)

“Where is Emilio going to school next year?” I asked, then remembering that he would be bussing down to Leschi.
“But what is the closest school to you here?” I added.
“Stevens is just a few blocks away,” she said with a smirk. “But we applied for him, and he didn’t get in.”
“Why not? He’s a smart kid. I don’t understand the district’s methods at all.”
She looked at me sideways, half a laugh on her lips and a shrug lifting her shoulders slightly. “He’s a minority, so it makes it tougher. Only white kids go to Stevens.”

It’s hard for me to forget about my Emilios when I go home at night. It’s hard to watch the Grasshoppers (which is not necessarily a race thing-- although racial lines tend to blend into class lines, they aren’t an exact intersection) get a bad rap. Why did the Ant win over wintertime? Is it because he worked harder and did a better job than the Grasshopper? No! (and if someone tries to tell you that the Grasshopper danced and sang all summer, they probably have never met one in person) and why doesn’t anyone ask about what kind of parents the Grasshopper had, if he was a different color that was looked at a little suspiciously, or whether or not he had been able to access the same quality of education as the Ant had? “This book is bullshit,” Javier told the kid. He’s right. It’s not a science, this business of success. But it doesn’t have to be so uneven to get a fair shake at the beginning.

The movie comes to its emotional conclusion with a speech in a bar, after a (SPOILER ALERT!) friend of theirs dies from alcoholism. The remaining group is bickering about whether or not their dearly departed friend left anything tangible in his wake.

"He didn't say anything."

"He did, but he was hard to understand. Like... like Siamese twins. They're stuck together. If one falls, we all fall. And if one gets fucked, that's it. So do the others. Because we're the same thing. The same thing."