It's Cracker Jack Material

stop. go. stop. go.

2009-06-22T10:48:00.002-04:00

When we were little, the game was 'Red Light, Green Light,” and it was actually pretty fun. Someone would stand at a declared finish line, at the end of a stretch of asphalt or a patch of back yard and that kid was the one that managed a race to the finish.

Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

When the light was green, we ran as fast as humanely possible to gain on our opponent. When the light was red – we balanced on the tip-toes of our tennis shoes in sheer anticipation of when the light would change once again – our eyes still on the price of the finish line and the bragging rights.

In life, when we grow up, the game is not so fun. The green light is thrilling but the red lights , where find ourselves in a state of complete imbalance is nothing short of frustrating and at times, painful.

The stakes, of course, are higher. We are racing to get to the stable part of a relationship, or the inside track of the fast track or that place as indefinable as any – where one feels fulfilled and challenged and productive all at the same time. All grown up, the red lights are armed. They are ominous. Their arms come in a form of financial distress, divorce, break-ups, cheating, layoffs, lies and sometimes it's just the end of something and the uncertainty of the beginning of something else.

Either way. It's not as fun as when we were kids.

And in the case of being all grown up, we'd like to punch whoever is giving us the red light, square in the nose.

Of course the light changes...not quite as quickly as when it's called out by children. But it changes. We're not always stopped. And once in a while the red light is actually helpful. It changes its ominous nature and it allows us to open up and take in everything that is around us.

But when it isn't helpful. When it is the one thing that is constantly stopping us from gaining any momentum. We have to find a way to work around it. And it can be tough. And it can be tiring. When it throws us a cliff's edge of uncertainty and doubt and another challenge to overcome...we're not thinking of the finish line. We're just clambering at any way to not fall down.

And when we get to that line – we're punching the red light guy square in the nose.

weightless

2009-06-19T08:38:00.000-04:00

“Take the pressure off,” she says.

My mother tells me this after we’ve just gotten into an argument too big and too much for before work on a Friday morning. And I am doing my best “not gonna cry,” but it’s not working.

I hate arguing with my mother because it makes me feel sixteen. And I have not wanted to feel sixteen since I was sixteen.

“Just take the pressure off…”

The pressure is the fact that after five days, no news has been given to me on my car which sits battered and bruised in some body shop 25 miles away. I’ve been forced to make five calls each day between the shop and the insurance company to no avail. The shop says talk to the insurance company. The insurance company says talk to the shop. The insurance company then gives me three different adjuster phone numbers all who whom say they are not my adjuster and can’t help me.

And so I wait.

Frustrating is knowing that if the car is totaled I have about $3,000 to find a new one. Because though it would be awesome to have that brand spankin’ new car smell going on – I can’t afford a car payment. I can’t afford a car payment because I left the great paying job to follow the dream. And the dream ain’t going so well. And without a decision, I am wasting time not resolving the issue.

More frustrating is the nagging feeling no woman who is 29 and alone and unhappy wants to say out loud: that if I had a man, he would be dealing with this and the insurance people and the shop people would realistically, most likely, take him more seriously. They would not keep him waiting around for an entire week. And if he raised his voice the word “bitchy” would not enter the realm of thought. He’d simply be justified in his frustration.

And said man would then keep me together by wrapping his arms around me when I’m shaking in tears after yet another pointless phone call followed by a blow up with my best friend.

But said man has yet to make an appearance. And so the frustration abounds.

And the truth is I probably am doing some sort of disservice to women everywhere by acting as though I can’t get through bad days with the male species…but I can. And I have for some time now. I have moved my own furniture, fixed my own broken electronics, grilled my own meat. I’ve aired up my own tires and I didn’t even cry at the deer. I cried at the damage.

I know what McTalk-to-Me would say. He would say to acknowledge the aloneness but move on, keep going. Don’t lose it on your mother at 7:15 in the morning.

And I already know, that when I get home, I’ll crank the music and dance it out. I’ll revel in the silence rather than the drama. I’ll calm and fall asleep after a stressful week and it’ll all seem less threatening.

But it doesn’t make attending events solo any easier. It doesn’t make crawling into an empty bed any more comforting. And it won’t fix my car or heal the bitter words between the BFF or any other FF’s for that matter and me. It won’t fix my car.

And at the end of the day, it doesn’t relieve any of the pressure.

film about spirituality and action echoes in Tehran

2009-06-18T10:01:00.002-04:00

It was on a warm spring night and the eve of what would become a history making event resulting in the ultimate reveal of the true beliefs one of the world’s most controversial countries, that I found myself seated in a padded folding chair in the wide open warehouse of a yacht club.

I sat there, awaiting the Waterfront Film Festival’s debut showing of “Fierce Light” a documentary by filmmaker and activist Velcrow Ripper who took a seat one row behind and a few seats down from me with guest Daryl Hannah. As the film began, Ripper introduced audiences to his friend, journalist and activist Bradley Will. Will’s breath can be heard as his hands hold the camera that is displaying the images in the beginning of the film…the volatile streets of Mexico where enraged citizens and police clash with stones, bullet proof shields and gunfire.

And then a moment erupts on screen that rips through any narration or visual imagery. As conditions became increasingly hostile, and Will’s camera became something unwanted - almost before the viewer realizes it – the sound of a bullet cracks in the air with Will’s last breath, a gasp. His camera clattering to the ground, is picked up by unknown hands and left sitting sideways on a bench.

Will’s death resonated with the activists that had gathered on the same street where he moved about with his camera and his mission to record and act on their plight. An uprising occurred in his memory an uprising against what they must have seen as a murderous and unjust society around them.

The narration continuing, Ripper explains how the death of his friend sent him on a journey to discover what happens with spirituality meets action and activism. When we act on what we believe.

My initial reaction to what Ripper is searching for, was a combination of intrigue based on a journalist’s life lost in the attempt to tell a story filled with raw emotion and skepticism for my view of the new age theology of oneness.

But Ripper began his story with the Civil Rights Movement, a movement during which the belief in equality was so fierce so thick and heavy with necessity that many lost their lives, shed their blood and continued to fight against a deep rooted hatred. And then Congressman John Lewis’s face and voice fill the screen.

“I saw hate,” he said. “And hate – was too heavy a burden to bear.”

The film explores many injustices…from the beating of Rodney King, which ignited the Los Angeles riots of the 1990s to the story a plot of desolate space in the center of where such an uprising had taken place. There, members of the community pulled up dead surface and worked in new land, new soil and created a community garden. That garden produced fresh produce, fresh flowers and fed a community with not just its product but its service, as children spent their afternoons working with the soil instead of on dangerous streets.

And then, along came a company – more interested in space that substance and so began a tumultuous fight to save the garden from blank development. A fight that lasted over 30 days and ended in the arrest of two who refused to leave the property – including Hannah and a sea of salty tears as that corporation turned down the $16 million the community was miraculously able to raise to purchase and keep the garden. The question Ripper seemed to ask is at what cost do we abandon all our conscious and all our convictions? When exactly does the soul get sold?

At least…that’s what I took from it.

The film affected me more than I had expected it to. The idea of taking what it is we believe in and combining it with activism planted a seed in my restless little mind. Think…if we love and we act on that love – in every breath and every minute of every day – it would be hard to turn to hate. It would be hard to march into a museum filled reminders of what can come from such hate and take a human life. Environmentalist and activist Van Jones calls it 'soulfulness'. And if you ask me, there's always room for soul.

If we believe in independence – in freedom – if we live and breathe that freedom in every day and wake only to act upon it, it would be hard for us to allow ourselves to become prisoners of others.

Now, I am not what one might consider a pacifist in any such sense of the word. Will was an anarchist. I am not. But I do believe in the necessity of balance. There must be the dark so we know what it means to fight our way through and choose the light. It is that choice that I believe is the divine of life. And this is coming from a girl who enjoys her dark and twisty little places and her overwhelming ponderous thoughts. But without the suffocating and paralyzing reign of a man so filled with madness – we would not be witnessing an uprising by a people who have so eloquently shown the world there is a silent majority in Iran that chooses to be silent no more.

And now – how unbelievably profound. As we question the purpose of social networking such as Twitter – we now see that it is so rapid and so resonate that members of the resistance in Iran are turning to it to keep the world abreast of the violence and the tyranny that abounds on Tehran’s streets. In 140 characters or less.

As we question whether journalism is even relevant anymore – the ban of all foreign reporting reminds us how it so undeniably is. As we lose our eyes the brilliance of the written and spoken word can still spread a message – a message of what happens in the world around us – and how it affects each and every one of us, a half a world away.

And we can remember how purpose needs action. How even in the battles that are lost – there are wars to be won. As Jones says, toward the end of the film, after the garden had been bulldozed and years after Will’s death still leaves a hole in the heart of the filmmaker – “being a rebel is important, because a rebel opposes injustice. But a revolutionary...a revolutionary proposes justice of a new order.”

That revolution is evident today in Tehran. It can be as vast as a country’s uprising against dictatorship – or as intimate as the parenting of our children or the loving of one another. It's all about soul. And you've got to have soul. Learn more about “Fierce Light” at http://www.fiercelight.org.

this i believe

2009-06-17T07:59:00.003-04:00

I believe in television men. Because they have jobs. They do stuff like solve crimes, save lives and develop surefire advertising campaigns in past eras. Most of them anyway. The good ones. They don’t sit around in fake jobs that apparently don't require them to do too much because they always seem free to sit on the phone with their girlfriends more than they are doing something productive.

Television men come home to Frank Sinatra and a glass of scotch neat. Or a quick witted best friend/room mate or a dog or a coffee house. For non-television men coming home means...more time with said girlfriend and watching said television. Only not really good, quality television. Old testosterone filled movies or porn.

Television men read. Every so often there's a book or a newspaper or a thick magazine in hand. Even if they're fake reading that's more than the men who have spent all day talking about how much of a goal it is for them to be sixteen again and really nothing much more than that.

Find something to do. Build a shelf for chrissakes. I believe in television men.

The well written ones of course, not "The Hills" ones or the "Rock of Love" ones.

On television, to watch our fictional female counterparts try to figure out the inner psyche of the television man is actually refreshing. What's he thinking, they wonder. What does he want? He didn't call me today, he went out, he's on a boat in the Caymans and doesn't care if I'm there.

In small towns like this one – men don’t really play games. We say they do because we attribute game playing to the complexity and realness of a situation but that's pretty much all bullshit. There's no maybe we'll go out or maybe we'll meet for drinks and later they may want you to leave at the end of the night and keep things casual.

Here, by the end of the first date they are handing you a key, telling you there's no need to knock, introducing you to their mother and basically taking in a new roommate.

If the men sound scary...to me, so are the women who jump right in.

So I believe in the television men. And the movie men. With the things to do. And the jobs. And moves for the dance that is a balance between love and a life.

the bigger picture

2009-06-11T08:37:00.002-04:00

My plan for this week’s column was a preview of the Waterfront Film Festival which I’ll be attending this coming weekend. However, I will be writing a review of the festival for next week and in the mean time – I would encourage anyone with time to kill this weekend to make the drive up to Saugatuck, Mi. to take in a movie or two.

These are independent films with big names, including Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels and Daryl Hannah and the event brings in thousands of visitors to southwest Michigan each year. Check it all out at www.waterfrontfilm.org and look for a review next week.

As a journalist, covering events like the film festival are fun. But when the day is done and we sit up into the wee morning hours reading articles and books and watching newscasts to try and learn as much as we can about what goes on in our world, the fun is just a part of the bigger picture.

A bigger picture of true point of journalism – to be a voice. Whether to the children on our inner city streets, the shop workers in our factories, the teachers, the parents, the doctors or the businessmen and women. Here, next door, abroad. I’m pushing the column on movies to address a far more serious subject – that of the sentencing of two American journalists to 12 years of “reform by labor” in a North Korean labor camp.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee were handed those sentences by an alleged North Korean court after they were apprehended by North Korean soldiers nearly three months ago, as they were working for the San Francisco news outlet Current TV, reportedly on a story about North Korean defectors.

Korean officials say the two young women committed a “grave” crime against the country. Just what they did, however, nobody knows. The sentencing sent shock waves through the news media, put a harsh spotlight on the Obama administration and was an obvious taunt from a country with no plans to live in peaceful coexistence with anyone.

Since the news of Ling and Lee’s conviction there has been an endless supply of reporting, analysis and comment on the situation – painfully and obviously now one that will see these two young Americans as pawns in what is turning out to be a nuclear game of "mine's bigger than yours".

It was weeks prior – even as the two reporters awaited their “trial” – that North Korea turned its back to those nations who wish to live under ideals of peace, humanity, freedom and liberty and repeatedly conduced missile tests and furthered their nuclear aspirations. Still, the current presidential administration was quiet. North Korea acted and they hesitated.

There’s no denying the delicacy it takes to navigate a country in a world filled with countries. There’s no denying the fragility of what is at stake – human life. America can not simply turn its nuclear weapons North Korea’s way threaten an offensive of Sylvester Stallone, Rambo-like proportions. There are consequences and nuclear arsenals to contend with. However, while this situation elevated – the perception doled out by the Obama administration has been: Um…maybe we should put those guys back on the terror list.

Um…really? Washington now has to admit they’ve been checked in North Korea’s chess game…and getting Lee and Ling out of the labor camps they are purportedly being sent to, where prisoners are said to have to try and trap rats for food, transport human waste and live with torture, will not be an easy task. Because obviously – North Korea now has an upper hand.

What the administration must do is chalk up their blatant failure to perceive North Korea for what it is – a living, breathing terrorist entity – and actually do something. It seems almost as if we are dangerously close to adopting a “if I don't look at it, it's not really there” philosophy. There should be more tough talk coming from our nation's capital and less desire play nice with bullies.

The Middle East is a territory of religious ideology. North Korea is not so narrowed. North Korea’s ideology is domination.

In reading the analysis and the articles that are addressing this issue, what struck me beyond the country’s reluctance to be a strong arm when a strong arm is needed – was the reactions of readers to these journalists who “should have known better” than to break another country’s rules. Just because we have freedom of press here, they say, doesn’t mean we should be so daring as to assume those liberties elsewhere.

As a journalist, I agree. And I believe we recognize the dangers. But it is not known if Lee and Ling were actually in North Korea at the time of their capture. Also not known – the circumstances of their “trial” which was held in secret. It is true that the freedom of the press provided for us so valuably in our constitution does not transcend our borders. But true journalism does not live in the constitution.

True journalism isn’t just trying to “get the story” as if they were trolling for the picture of the next celebrity baby. True journalism is to record our world. To give a voice to the people and to report on the actions of those who govern those people. To tell the stories of the goings on in our worlds.

When the world’s journalists are taken, locked up and punished for reporting the truth – we must ask ourselves what that says for the countries behind such acts. Right now, countless journalists are being held in prisons across the world for doing nothing more than what you and I take as a right and a freedom every day.

To those countries, North Korea included, every journalist muted results in an army’s worth of reporters whose voices will only gain in strength and whose missions will continue to expose the atrocities, abuses and infringements on not just a western philosophy, not just an ideology…but the bigger picture. Humanity.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for The Niles Daily Star. Email her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com, or visit her on Twitter @jessicasieff

resistance, it is the “antithesis to nature”

2009-06-04T09:57:00.001-04:00

Though the true beauty is lost behind the glossy finish of the magazine's pages, a photograph taken by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel in last month’s National Geographic depicts the rooftop of Chicago’s City Hall.

Rather than an expected sparse landscape of black tarred top and twisted vents – lush green sits against those vents as well as a backdrop of sky on the verge of night and surrounding skyscrapers lending light via offices still illuminated after hours. The municipal building in the windy city is just one of the world’s examples of a living roof. Forgotten spaces suddenly renewed.

Living roofs, which provide energy efficiency in utilizing spaces that often do little less than get hot as they sit in the sun, according to National Geographic's Verlyn Klinkenborg, in “Up on the Roof,” aren't new. In Germany flat roofs have been required to turn their tops green since 1989. On the surface, one sees what is a beautiful urban garden. But just beneath the surface is the real beauty. Some specifically designed systems collect rainwater, filtering and trapping it rehydrating the soil, a fully functioning ecological system creating a new habitat for plants, birds, insects and yes – even a few amphibians – and reducing the world’s carbon footprint one roof at a time.

And that got me thinking. Change is everywhere. And in no way is it limited to what’s above our heads.

Right now, no single industry in the country or around the world is escaping the need to reinvent itself. And it's rather exciting. Because it means new ideas, new methods, new products and ultimately new ways of being will evolve. And call me partial, but personally I think the change in how we exchange, produce and provide information to the general public is the most exciting of all. I entered this industry with my soft spot for printed newspapers, the smell of newsprint and the heroic images of the newsmen depicted on television and in movies. Because I thought nothing was more classically American than a man or woman tossing a few quarters up on the counter of a newsstand on a busy street and tucking a paper under their arm on their way to work.

But times have changed, as is painfully clear every day in our industry. And the conversation among all of us news hounds never seems to end. But the direction of our talks are changing. The topics started out troubling and thick – like really bad fog. In the annual State Of The News Media Report put out by The Project of Excellence in Journalism an overview of the industry says it all in the first sentence: “some of the numbers are chilling.”

And the first of several major trends reported, “the growing public debate over how to finance the news industry may well be focusing on the wrong remedies while other ideas go largely unexplored.” Journalists are losing their jobs and fighting for freelance opportunities, newspapers have thrown in the towel on a tangible product completely – jumping feet first into online media.

They’re going to make mistakes as they navigate these change filled waters. A lot of the papers that have turned their heads solely to the online avenue also assume they don’t need to write anything, pulling feeds and headlines to other services rather than keeping the valuable minds of their own reporters. But they’ll figure it out.

Brainstorming what can turn out to be a brilliant new idea, taking daily processes and whipping them up and tossing them around, pulling a fresh take on an old practice – is all part of the romance of change. So why do we fear it so much?

Because the reality is that change sucks.

Because once we figure out we need to start changing…we realize that we need to start changing. It’s a challenge. It's a process. It's work. We're uncertain of the outcomes. It’s painstaking. We build a new product and we have to be patient and wait for it to take off… We start changing our own behavior and we have to wait for the change in belief and in mood to come. We leave a bad relationship and we have to wait and see if a better one awaits.

We get frustrated and we fall down. More than once, more often than not. But the thing is, what was once wonderful, sometimes has to remain what was once wonderful. So we can be awakened to a new kind of wonderful.

Who would have thought…as those skyscrapers burst into the skyline decades and half centuries ago that eventually one day, they would house a lush green meadow? “When we go to the rooftops in cities, it's usually to look out at the view,” Klinkenborg writes. “...I can't help feeling that I'm standing on the view...” What an interesting perspective. Change is everywhere. Navigating it is hard. But resisting it is pointless and frankly, harder. In resisting it, we're the only ones who lose.

For those of us down on the ground, in the newsroom, we have so many opportunities ahead of us to reach you, the priceless reader. We can come into your living rooms, be stuffed into your mailboxes and paper boxes, upload to your iPod, Blackberry or mobile phone. We can be delivered to your PC or Mac in a matter of seconds – one example of the newspaper's future: the New York Times has introduced the the Times Reader 2.0 – the entire paper uploaded to your computer in a matter of seconds, with a paid subscription, so you can carry the news anywhere you go.

Imagine that. A news publication delivered to you, providing revenue and exercising the invaluable act of journalism all at the same time. Novel.

No matter the landscape, a rooftop, a newsroom, an auto giant, a government, your own home, we never know which changes will be good changes until we try. But we figure it out. It’s just going to take a new perspective – and a few changes. And who knows. As painful as it may be to change, when it's all over, the view on the other side may just be a bit greener.

one thing that never goes out of business

2009-05-28T09:44:00.002-04:00

I’m writing from the dark place.

The dark place happens when deadlines are looming and weekends fill up with errands and the trash needs to be taken out but there is very little time to do so and there seems to be so much more ahead of what one really wants to do – fun things like catching a good summer blockbuster movie, or scouting out cheap tickets to a summer concert, reading a good book, visiting with friends or letting a mind turn to mush in front of pointless television.

The dark place happens when problem solving takes the front seat and innovation takes the back.

In matters of business, if economic pressures of a changing socio-economic climate is the dark place – it is, as a matter of fact – that innovation that is the light to help us find our way out of the tunnel.

I have a thing for entrepreneurs. Maybe it's just the fancy title or the fact that they have their own magazine. But then, writers and musicians and sock puppets have their own magazine, so come to think of it...that's probably not it. I have a thing for entrepreneurs. Because it seems like such a rush to, one afternoon, be sitting in a leather arm chair somewhere, pondering one's business, one's direction, possibly a glass of scotch in hand and the next day – putting that plan into action. Developing that idea into a bona fide business, scouting out space and strategies, turning one simple idea into the next big thing.

There are probably plenty of ways to describe an entrepreneur, but that seasoned figure, sitting in a leather arm chair…mind as electric as a lightning storm…that's how I romanticize them. I could romanticize a turkey sandwich, but still... I have a thing for entrepreneurs.

When I first thought up a series focusing on some of the area’s own savvy business minds, I thought the least I could get out of it was a handy mini-slate of stories. At the very least, maybe a better idea of whether or not all the talk about the nation’s innovators would have a strong impact generating new business throughout the country, thereby aiding in a rebound of the economy, carries any weight.

What I got, however, was one of the most inspiring projects I have had a chance to work on yet.

Some businesses may be faltering. Car sales are down and home sales are down and they trickle down to the machine shops and the real estate firms and before you know it you’re muttering to yourself as you head home, thick in the dark place, that you’re lucky to have a job.

But one business that will never suffer – one commodity that will always be in demand – are ideas. Good ideas. Brilliant, creative, innovative ideas.

Walking into Veni’s Sweet Shop to pick up a few delicious treats at the end of a hard day, driving past Tem-Pace’s facility in the heart of Niles’ industrial area on Terminal Road, peeking at the products being thought up over at G&H Machine Group – and as you’ll hear Monday, learning about how the guys at Thesis in Three Oaks are taking other people’s ideas and giving them tangible identity to make them visible to their target markets, may all sound like business as usual. But it is not.

Each has, standing behind the curtain, an innovator whose passion is evident in every aspect of their business. Each is a brain child of an idea that was thought up in living rooms, libraries, offices or during a break from work when a little stress needed relieving.

Through the cultivation of these ideas, businesses are created, a need is provided for and sometimes – just sometimes – our world is changed by the products and services these entrepreneurs put their blood, sweat, tears and dollars into creating. Without such innovators – we might not have an automobile industry just waiting for us to re-imagine it. We might have an industry of news just waiting for a creative new way of getting to people. We might not have television or movies to lose ourselves in. We might not have that designer handbag that we covet or our favorite pair of tennis shoes – or Starbucks.

I have a thing for entrepreneurs because they are risk takers. Savvy in their industries and tireless workers. Their passions are their business. And it shows. It shows in a unique quality. In a desire to constantly make their businesses better. Be it through finding stronger methods of human resources, finding good financial advice to weather a tough economy, developing a diversity or even just hanging on to a faith that keeps them going when they fear they’ve put everything they have into something that the masses just need to be exposed to.

Their businesses are true reflections of themselves.

Each month, Entrepreneur Magazine highlights businesses such as these. They offer up advice on everything from venture capitalists to building a better website. I read up their articles like candy.

Because they’re all based in ideas.

No matter what your passion is – whether it is what you do every day – or just what you long to do…there is something to be learned from these brave businessmen and women who are one by one, storefront by storefront, office space by office space and endeavor by delicious endeavor – changing our world.

Instead of focusing on what is not working – on what the masses no longer seem to be drawn to – innovators focus, rather, on what might entice. And they go after those ideas with reckless abandon.

It is a warm thought. A light in the dark place. That dream business you always wanted to start, the nonprofit organization you always wanted to put your time into, the product you always thought would look good on a shelf in a store somewhere – now is the time to pull out the drawing pad, even as the sun sinks below the horizon and the day’s hours grow long – and just start sketching it out a little bit. The idea of an entrepreneur, for some, for me anyway, has always emitted a “lone ranger” quality. Those seasoned men and women work tirelessly and furiously on their own to turn their vision into tangible reality.

But that’s not true. Ideas breathe in the like-mindosphere I’ve mentioned a time or two before.

Take the chance and begin throwing them out there – and you might just find a talented resource in the form of a counterpart, or a colleague or a supportive spouse. Each of them a face you’ll see when you look back at the forefront of your dream. Be sure to read about the guys at Thesis (www.designbythesis.com) on Monday and check out www.entrepreneur.com the next time you’re in the mood for a little inspiration.

Better yet – tempt your sweet tooth at Veni’s, indulge in the art of glass at Tem-Pace’s Carapace, take a second look at www.ghmachinegroup.com or step inside any of the unique businesses right here, right outside your door.

one year later - still living the dream

2009-05-27T10:03:00.003-04:00

There's a thing about writers. Novelists, screenwriters, poets, essayists, journalists. We have a thing. And I can't quote this as my own - I read it long ago, in Nora Ephron's novel "Heartburn." The thing is: everything is copy.

We writers pass you on the street as you're window shopping, picking up groceries, picking your kids up from school. We take notes. We watch your eyes. We look for the joy and the sadness. We jot it down in our mental notepads and when you close your eyes to sleep, we hang on to those little details. We put them all together in fictitious tales where you are the hero - or we remember the reality of them when we try to tell the stories of our world.

We try not to eavesdrop when we're sitting next to you in a café, but we can't help it. And we hear you divulge your greatest secrets, your vulnerabilities, your annoyances to the people you trust - or those you like just enough to tell them so. They make up the characters in our plays, the heroes in our comic books. That's what we writers do.

There's a thing about journalists. We don't just write up stories to fill pages. When this whole gig started, the founding fathers of our craft built a platform of truth and poignancy. Our job is not just to inform and to tell the truth - but to present the world as it is - as it matters.

And it all matters.

We tell the stories that can't be made up. From the long lines for corn dogs and the way a child's eyes light up the first time they see the county fair to the way to shelling of war torn villages in lands far, far away.

We sit back and we watch - and more often than not - we try to give a voice to those who may feel they have none. We try to keep them informed. We put it down on the page and we hope against hope that at the end of the day, we have done a good job at whatever story we have tried to tell.

This week marked my first year here at the Niles Daily Star. And one year later ... I try to think of everything that has changed my world since then.

The dream, originally, was as romantic as Cary Grant following after Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday." Wake up to the sound of the bustling city, the grumblings and the heavy trucks and the sirens and the heartbeat of the streets. Step out into a crisp morning and wonder, where are the sirens headed, what's the grumbling about, how's the heartbeat today as you pick up a cup of coffee and tuck the competitor's rag under your arm and head into the newsroom. And the sound of the rustling of the pages is like the best soundtrack.

Well, dreams change.

In a year, several presses have gone quiet. It's a wonder how many will ultimately survive a world that used to churn out so much newsprint that children's hands were stained with ink after an afternoon of "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" It's not that the world doesn't read anymore. It's just that they want to read everything in 140 characters or less.

And that matters.

When the gig started, there was no question of its relevance. And there was no need to be punchy. Martha Gellhorn wrote more than just reports on the shelling of Madrid in 1937. Without falling into bias like just about every other journalist that comes out of college with the dream of being the next coiffed morning talk show host, she wrote searing descriptions of the men and women and children who remained amidst the rubble. Who continued their walk to the market under a charcoal grey sky.

She wrote the world as it was. And it was enough. And it inspired the dream.

Some dreams change. Today, for instance, Cary Grant would likely be uploading a tweet on his Blackberry while chasing after Rosalind Russell through a newsroom with several empty desks and ergonomic office furniture and a bunch of writers who aren't sure what the dream is anymore.

When I lose the dream, I look back to Gellhorn and remember that original dream. And all of the others that I have stored up in a special file. The streets of Havana. The back alleys of Gaza. The cliffs of Santorini. The streets of New York City. Madrid. And everywhere in between.

More and more industry heavyweights are grasping at finding the new in the dream. They're busy, "reinventing" the magazine, trying to make their websites profitable, putting their presses to bed, trying to figure out how to make advertising lucrative again. And more and more journalists are getting worried that there may be no platform in the future for their words.

We writers have a thing. We watch you, we build on you, we tell your stories. The best we can. In one way or another. The relevance of that can only end in all of you. If you choose not to find any relevance in each other.

One year ago, I came in with a little dream. When I started, all I wanted to do was write for a newspaper. Check.

Thankfully - I'm reminded today of how much that dream has grown. I want Cary Grant. Rosalind Russell. Martha Gellhorn. Madrid.

I don't want to reinvent the art of journalism. I want to recreate it. Just as it was meant to be. Because even when the presses go quiet and shrink to the size of a microchip - the stories we tell are bigger and better than ever. They're you.

Everything is copy. It all matters.

Extra, extra, tweet it up - get thee to a blog - but most of all ... read all about it.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for the Niles Daily Star. Reach her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com.

the battle to save the shop around the corner

2009-05-14T09:49:00.001-04:00

“Let’s take a better look/Beyond our storybook/And learn our souls are all we own/Before we turn to stone…” ‘Turn to Stone’ - Ingrid Michaelson

There are those who live for what they do. And they know nothing but. And now, in a time of such economical and cultural change, we realize that sometimes, we have to be able to expand ourselves, our skills. We have to be able to be diversified. Still, there is a mourning in this shift, which is shaking the futures of Americans in industrial shops across the country.

I have written before about the soft spot I have for industry. The small mom and pop machine shops where mornings consist of thermoses of coffee, uniforms with names embroidered over where the heart lies not far underneath, beating with the hum of large, bulky, various machines.

My affection for this integral part of our country’s heritage has only strengthened since last I wrote about it. Because we have something in common those industrial, tool and die, machine shops and me. Both of the mediums in which we work are in serious danger of becoming obsolete.

I think as a country, we all thought bailout money would bail us out. The big auto dealers would turn around with brand new cars we would have never thought they would come up with. And we would all want to buy them. And the money would just appear in our pockets. And the lines would run again.

And thanks to those lines, the rest of the world of industry would pick up. People would be all about building things and making things and developing things and it would all consist of heavy machinery and construction and manual labor. And parking lots would be full. And families would be secure. And our engineers, machinists, welders, etc. would not be facing the threat of their own extinction. But things haven’t turned out that way.

The all too recent example is 450 lives that hang in the balance of Tyler Refrigeration. Elsewhere, industrial parks sit all but abandoned. Plants have gone dark.

The New York Times recently went to Grafton, Wis., to sit in on a layoff at a family owned tool and die manufacturing company in which the vice president of administration, with the final list of those who would have to go, sank into tears after she had informed them all of the unfortunate news. The Washington Post took a look at areas such as Michigan, which had once thrived off of an auto industry that has all but gone away, searching for industries that might put people back to work in the future. Healthcare. Green jobs. But the future's classification stings. “Uncertain.” At www.toolanddieing.com, almost every moment of this struggle is chronicled with updates, stories of businesses across the country and links to resources within the industry.

I can appreciate community colleges that are reaching out to help those shop workers who may find themselves in need of “retooling”... But I am sincerely afraid to lose our industry. Because the fact of the matter is, if we lose our industry – we will have turned our backs on our own legacy. We will have built a history on the backs of our grandfathers and our fathers, who know this crazy world of steel and sweat better than we could ever hope to learn from history books, only to tear it down without so much as a Plan B. We have to save the shop around the corner because our grandfathers and fathers don’t have a Plan B.

Many small businesses, tool and die, CNC, precision machining, are looking for help in order to survive. Yet as a country, we don’t have so much as a method of CPR. Loans are tough to accept as a resolution when you’re struggling to keep employees. And if you’re looking for any help beyond that – coming from someone who has seen the frustration of many trying to do just that – good luck.

We have to save the shop around the corner – because it means starting with the big businesses uptown. Those who would have us all believe that the future of innovation couldn’t possibly gain anything from wearing a blue collar. It means pooling our most valuable resources, the men and women of the line and taking another look at what this country can do to build itself back up again. It would mean building a future workforce that can benefit from the teachings of the old school and the capabilities of the new school. It would mean enticing entrepreneurs to find new ideas that could put men and women back to work.

Because it can't all be that bad. It can't be that this is how their story ends. It means thinking hard, lending a hand, taking a chance on a new idea. We should save the shop around the corner because it would mean looking at our priorities. Priorities are goals for the future and truly inventive ideas. Stop-gaps are not truly inventive ideas.

Most of all – we should save the shop around the corner because it’s about the ideals. Those ideals are what built our railroads, mined our coal, generated our power, laid our brick, built our cars, our homes…our past. Our present. That our best asset is our hands, our minds and the ability to use them both at the same time. We have to save the shop around the corner – because if we don’t – what will be the next thing to go? Will our work ethic evaporate like fine dust that sloughs off metal shavings only to settle corners of the shops that now sit empty, nothing but natural light and shadows and locked doors. Will we no longer feel the need for inventiveness? Will we lose our convictions?

We have to keep looking for solutions. We have to keep asking for help. Put in the hours. Burn the midnight oil. It sounds so incredibly melodramatic, I know.

So how about this…we have to save the shop around the corner, because if we don’t, we will have a hard time meeting our neighbor’s eye when we pass them on the street. And because when our shops shut down – the silence will be deafening.

moms

2009-05-07T09:47:00.001-04:00

To be quite honest, I'm a bit surprised at what I think of when I hear the word "mother." Almost immediately I envision golden sunrises, Donna Reed aprons and breakfast foods so heavy with buttermilk, eggs and greasy meat that one might as well not even begin to count calories.

I think of sunsets on sticky summer nights when the only thing that has any power of the humidity is ice cold lemonade and when the only thing that soften the aches and pains of a fever or the flu is the cold washcloth held to your forehead or the chicken soup that she'll cross town to bring you even when you're old enough to cook your own. I'm surprised at my initial reaction to the word because I have grown up in a life that has taught me well enough that motherhood is not all Donna Reed aprons and calorific foods.

When I think longer about the what I think motherhood means... I think of how I was blessed with the influences of exceptionally strong mothers in my life. On my maternal side, my grandmother is the mother of 15 children. Hers is a life filled with the teachings of thank yous and pleases and buttoning up shirts and making sure everyone was in school on time. And my grandfather helped. She cooked all the dinners and the breakfasts and the lunches and she still does. And she's always the last one to sit down to the table.

She turned those 15 children into bright, intelligent, successful human beings. Who know how to laugh when what they may want to do is cry, who find strength in just the sound of her voice. Her love knows no time and no distance, as many of her children live an ocean away in a country thousands of miles and who knows how many time zones apart.

She bites her tongue when she has to, a trial and tribulation that comes when children grow up and insist they know what's best for themselves - but she's not afraid to speak her mind.

In her strength, I see my own mother. The single mother who raised three children, worked full time and still fought for a well balanced dinner that we were all to sit down to together. As we children battled adolescence and nursed our broken family wounds, she put her heart last. Left it carefully on a shelf as she made sure our clothes were clean and our shoes were tied and we didn't forget to thank our grandparents or wash the dishes. When we're young, those are the things that seem standard. But they end up meaning everything. We spend a lot of our grown-up time trying to recreate those dinners, searching for detergent that's not only organic, but smells vaguely of childhood.

When her eyes were heavy with sleep, she kept herself up long enough to soothe our own fears as we lay beneath the blankets, warding off our nightmares. And when we became the ungrateful adolescents that all children become at one time or another - she swallowed the hurtful words we slung at her and always said goodnight with an 'I love you.'

Though I never got a chance to really know my paternal grandmother - she lives in a vivid memory from a very young age. And sometimes, even when we haven't had the chance to know our mothers or our grandmothers through and through - their strength is evident in presence. I remember her fondly. As kind. And with very strong hands.

And I have been blessed to see some of my closest friends transition into motherhood. And perhaps that experience has helped me to the perspective I have on motherhood today.

That the best parts of our mothers - have nothing to do with us at all.

My favorite stories of my mother, are about her, her days at work, what she enjoys about her home, the things she did when she was seventeen. Many of my favorite photos of her are those that capture her at that age, young and with long flowing hair, delicate with an underlying strength the world had not yet seen.

My favorite stories of my grandmother are the ones she tells where I can envision her on a kibbutz in Israel sipping on cups of coffee laced with cream, tossing words back and forth with the rest of the motherly clan. My favorite pictures of her are those with my grandfather, trapped in time and in black and white, when she'd slip in the occasional drink, chatting up the issues of the late 1940s, and those even younger still, when she was just a girl with the moxie of legends at her fingertips.

Because I think too often we think mothers are simply defined by motherhood. But they are so much more. They are little girls who dream, young women who live on the edge, who love and break hearts and mend a few broken pieces of their own.

It's fun to think of mothers when the mothering is put down for the night. When the insides come back out. To think of Donna Reed with her feet up on the coffee table, some good music flowing through the living room, a glass of wine in hand. Or sitting out on the back deck with friends, laughing a little too loud for the neighbors. The aprons thrown off, the hair down and screaming at the top of their lungs to an old, favorite song, telling jokes or jumping into a round of bull poker (long story). Of course, those pieces of our moms are always there. We just don't always see them.

Our mothers continue to live outside a simple term. They are our stepmothers – and I'd like mine to know, she has not been forgotten here. And they are our aunts and sisters and daughters and best friends.

I applaud all mothers. I stand in awe of them. I honor them. And most of all I wish them the moments when they melt back into those little girls, who knew the exhilaration of a plie in new ballet shoes, of their first painting or their first home where the silence was all their own. The triumph of their love and everything that goes with it.

They have their own desires, their own sense of fun - dance when no one is looking and all that. As a matter of fact, I consider myself exceptionally lucky - because my mother dances when everybody is looking. And I always think, how I would love to be as brave as that.

What are you waiting for? Call your mother. Take your best friend some flowers. Shoot a twitter to your sister. It's their turn.

the curse of the blank page

2009-05-04T09:57:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time ... okay it was a few weeks ago ... my managing editor told me that he once wrote an entire column about the blank page. Well...I supposed if nothing else, rather than a lack of creativity, we could consider this simply a tip of the hat. Indeed. That sounds better than a lack of creativity.

I can't say if all writers fear the blank page. But I always have. Blank canvas always sounds better than blank page. The phase "blank canvas" is filled with possibility. Will you be a Monet or a Seurat or will burst through boundaries like Pollock? "Blank page" is ominous. It says, millions and millions of writers have come here before you. They have filled this space with brilliance. Now ... what have you got to say?

Where painters may see a canvas just waiting for color, or those writers who are immune to the idea of a blank page see simply some white background on which to put their words, I see a vast, empty space.

And I have to fill it. And it better sound good. Or I'm going to be in trouble.

My adolescent years are probably at the very least, responsible for 30 percent of the all the vanishing trees. Back then, my friends, there were stacks of wide ruled paper and pencils. No flashy laptop computer screens. So when it came time for book reports, poetry, letters, short stories - even drawings, I would write (or draw), crumple the page, throw it out and repeat the process at least 17 times before finally committing something to paper.

To this day ... the lack of a good lead, even just a relatively stable column idea will leave me staring at my screen, my fingers mute. My thoughts clogged in my neuro-gutter.

Blank pages are scary.

They're empty and they're stark white, unless of course you use that fancy patterned paper, but either way - they're empty and they are begging for you to put something down on them. And what is put down is going to matter because it will leave the transparent world of thought - and enter the tangible world of reality. But as I ruminated on the blank page - and as I've probably bored you with it - I realized ... we walk around, every day, living, breathing blank pages. Every day. And these days, we're seeing that more than ever. Even after 100 days of a president in office. Even after the celebration of a country's independence. Entrepreneurs are being forced to scrap business plans and get back on the horse, seek out a new idea, develop that idea amidst what is bound to be significant risks and hope for the best. One after another, we're being forced to face the blank page in an increasing world of unemployment. Ultimately in some way, shape or form, our jobs identify us. And losing one during a time in which any job and every job is a rarity and a prize to be won - some of us are being forced to work where we never thought we would, just to make ends meet. Or worse, figure out how to live a life that was once stable -in the unstable and uncertain.

And blank pages come even more frequently in small, everyday ways. When we lose a relationship, the vastness is painful and scary and unwelcome. And taking the chance to get into another one, in this case, is the same. We run through a seemingly endless checklist of what-ifs and what-abouts and afraid-ofs that, should they work out for the better, only lead to a big blank page sitting in the shadow of to-do items like the pre-rehearsal dinners and pre-weddings where what we're really doing is setting ourselves up for taking the first step on a big blank page.

The things we've never done before. The things we've been avoiding. The things we have to face each and every day. Every fear. Every trepidation. Every dare to hope. They're all blank pages that fill us with that feeling that forces us to keep a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol or in some cases, hard liquor, in the house.

But here's the thing about blank pages.

They're filled with the things we've always wanted to do. The hopes and the dreams and the double dog dares. The overcoming the trouble. The trumping the pain. They're scary. You can douse the nerves with Pepto. Or you can choose to feel the fear as a swarm of butterflies. You can write it down and erase it and write it down again. But you'll probably just get an ugly looking page with lots of smears and smudges. Or you can just start putting things down. You'll find you move on to the next page a lot quicker than you thought - and you can write down the learned lessons from the pages that came before.

How about that? I found something to write about after all.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for the Niles Daily Star. Reach her at jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com.

A thin line between them and us

2009-04-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

Every high school has a wall. And on that wall, are grainy, black and white or sepia toned photos of young men and women of that high school's past. When you're a teenager and you look at them, the people trapped behind the time and glass look more like your grandparents than the people who are passing you in the halls. They're dressed in ties, tweed jackets, and long sleeved shirts. There's something in the eyes that reflect sights that all the generations to follow would never know.

It was one year, a stint in the keystone state of Pennsylvania, and a big dose of reality later when news broke that gunfire had erupted at Columbine High School, a seemingly typical American high school in a part of the world no one had known about until April 20, 1999. News footage was chilling. Young kids, students, some with backpacks still slung around their shoulders ran in terror from a building where inside, fellow students and teachers lay -still under attack, wounded and some dead.

There was a moment, on that very day that something became quite clear.

It was just a year before that myself and my friends had been as unwitting as those students had been that day. In the library or the cafeteria or the classroom - unaware of how the unthinkable can sometimes be unbearably brutal.

And just like that - a line was drawn between those of us who knew what high school was before Columbine. And those who would only know it after.

Those of us who knew of the before, knew high school before stereotyping and merciless teasing resulted in anything other than the possibility of a fight or a good few years of therapy. There were isolated incidents of violence in schools before, of course. But nothing hit so hard as Columbine.

Brutality has its own line. A line that separates the times when the situation is so severe that it leaves a scar we feel forever and the times when the situation is the complete opposite - and we become ultimately desensitized.

High schools are filled with a new kind of cruel. Now, kids torture each other with public insults plastered on Facebook pages and MySpace pages, three-way phone calls where one is basically invited to some personal ridicule. Teasing, in some cases, ends only when one student is driven into such deep self-consciousness, self-hatred and depression, that they try to take their own lives. Guns are toted to school by hands that don't even realize they are - at the very least - too young to be touching them.

But the lines are very thin. A flip of the coin and we could find ourselves on the other side.

Lines sometimes divide us. They challenge us to cross them and challenge us to hold to them. They can be keep us safe from harm, or hold back the ability to love. We don't always have a choice when it comes to the line. Sometimes, we're just on the side we're on.

As a parent, your child might draw a line as they insist on growing up for themselves. We choose paths even our best of friends would not choose for themselves. And vice versa. Criminals test whether we're going to be victims or survivors. Every day, lots of lines. Between right and wrong. Bitterness and forgiveness. Enough and too much.

Along with the anniversary of the Columbine massacre this week was Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day. A day that reminds us all of the thin line between good and evil. Between life and death. Between life and survival. A line between the eyes that were closed before hatred entered the world in an unimaginable way. A line between the eyes that were opened after.

In Israel, to mark the day, sirens wail for two minutes. People stop their cars in the middle of the street. They get out of them and they stand quiet. For two minutes. But there is a line there too, separating those that do stop and those who don't.

It would be arrogant of me to expect to be able to sum up the Holocaust and all that it is - in a paragraph or even a page. There's a line there too. Of when something can be too big for us to sum up. A line between what overwhelms - and what we can handle.

What I will say is that when I do think of the Holocaust, I think of one man in particular. Elie Wiesel. But not because his book about his experience during the Holocaust, his time at Auschwitz, 'Night' is a piece of literature so brilliant, raw, open and honest that it brings one to tears. Or because of his continued mission to bring humanity, justice and ethics to the world.

It's his voice.

With the weight of his life on his shoulders, every day, every morning when he wakes up and every night when he goes to bed, I imagine that Mr. Wiesel knows what it means to walk a great many lines. But one that interests me is the line between what one might expect to be piercing anger and what is his quiet humanity.

Wiesel is quiet when he speaks. Without even trying - he commands that you listen. Even when he's talking to someone else. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey for Winfrey's magazine in 2000, Wiesel said something that has stayed with me every day since heard it on an audio portion of the interview.

Speaking of his travels to countries where there continues to be acts of great brutality, Wiesel said, "I've gone everywhere, trying to stop so many atrocities: Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia. The least I can do is show the victims that they are not alone. When I went to Cambodia, journalists asked me, 'What are you doing here? This is not a Jewish tragedy.' I answered, 'When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here.' "

There are times that we can choose where we draw our lines, how far we bend them, when it's time to break them, how we cross them. Ultimately those lines we weave define our character. Between wrong and righteous. Ignorance and integrity.

When we're brought to a line, sometimes that line is between being and leaving.

That's why lines, as thin or thick as they may be, are flat. Drawn in the sand, a long stretch of tape across a tile floor ... etched in stone. They're flat. So we can hold to them and still see past them. So that we might stretch out our hand and let those on the other side know - we're here.

With a voice as soft as thunder

2009-04-23T14:44:00.002-04:00

Most mornings begin the same way. Rush around over a cup of coffee. Pass the same houses on the same streets wishing and hoping that one day the street scape will change from small town-ness to skyscrapers. Step through the same doors and sit down to a big blank screen.

Then starts the uphill climb. Most days, sitting down to write is like a swim against the current. The current hitting with wave after wave of self doubt and insecurity and 'will this sound good enough,' 'is this written well enough,' those thoughts mixed with 'will I end up anywhere other than here.'

Those are the thoughts that wrap themselves around our weaker places like vicious vines that grow alongside a beautiful old house until they practically cover it all up. And then...Wednesday I caught a teaser on the 'Today' show about a woman who auditioned on Britain's Got Talent.

Later, I jumped on You Tube to see for myself the emergence of Susan Boyle. The “nearly 48” year old woman who had “never been married” and “never been kissed”, was displayed at first against dippy music, presenting her as a joke. As she stepped out onto the stage, the audience laughed. The judges rolled their eyes at responses that have been described as “inarticulate.” Someone in the audience gave a sarcastic whistle at her and the camera caught audience member after audience member laughing and rolling their eyes as she told judges Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell that she wanted to be a professional singer along the lines of British legend, Elaine Paige.

Then, the music started. And Boyle began to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” of the musical Les Miserables.

“I dreamed a dream of time gone by,” Boyle sang with a voice that simply can not be described in one word. It was beautiful, it was delightful, it was amazing. In just that first line, the audience that had been so merciless to Boyle just moments before, were on their feet, in tears and screaming for this woman from a small village in Scotland who has been described as shy and kind – who lives in a government subsidized home with her cat, 'Pebbles,' the youngest of nine children who had been caring for her ailing mother until she died two years ago.

Until her appearance on Britain's Got Talent, Boyle, who had been singing since she was 12, had only sung in and around her village, mostly in church. Which seemed fitting. Sometimes I think God likes to keep the most talented in the unlikeliest and hard to find places, almost as his own rare treasure – so valuable that they have to be sought out.

We live in a society in which we literally build stages on which to mock people. Sometimes I think the best talents, the most beautiful voices, the best painters, sculptors and artists are kept under wraps – until God knows that the world will give them their due.

Boyle's performance on the talent show continues to bring me to tears, even after having watched the clip countless times since.

Over 600 articles had been written about her as of yesterday afternoon. And the number of viewers of her performance on You Tube jumped from nearly six million yesterday afternoon to 11 million this morning.

Several of them take a look at Boyle's looks. They refer to her as “dowdy” or “frumpy.” And they echo judge Holden's remarks that the entire audience was against her when she walked out onto the stage, entirely cynical – and that it was a privilege to hear her.

“Everyone was laughing at you,” Morgan said, when Boyle had finished singing. “Nobody is laughing at you now.” What is most endearing about Boyle is not only her voice. Or the song she chose to sing.

“I dreamed a dream of time gone by/When hope was high/And life worth living/I dreamed that love would never die/I dreamed that God would be forgiving/Then I was young and unafraid/And dreams were made and used and wasted/There was no ransom to be paid/No song unsung/No wine untasted...”

No, the most endearing thing about Boyle was that following her performance, she began to march off stage without so much as a critique – as if she figured the judges would have tossed her off anyway. She was generally surprised when each judge praised her more than any previous contestant and passed her through to the next round. Her eyes went wide, her face flushed and she pumped her fist in the air and stomped her feet. And one got the sense that it is not just talent but purity that runs through the “nearly 48” year old woman from Scotland.

And when Cowell said, “Susan, you are a little tiger aren't you?” Boyle paused. Blushed and said hesitantly, “I don't know about that...no I don't know about that.”

Ms. Boyle, while the world will look at the bigger picture, the way an entire crowd misjudged you based solely on your appearance and while others will look at your talent, I would like to commend you on your bravery and say that you sang to millions of people who still sit at home with their dreams tucked away and tied down by their own self doubt, their own insecurities and their fear that the world might judge them.

You sang to a little girl who grew up loving to read, with unruly hair and a still compromised fashion sense who was teased from childhood to adolescence and sometimes even adulthood for being a little awkward at times and who often fears stepping out of her own village. And probably to countless dreamy children who continue to live in all of us.

And when you sang the lines, “But there are dreams that cannot be/And there are storms we can not weather/I had a dream my life would be/so different from this hell I'm living...” I lost my breath.

And I think everyone else did too.

In an interview, Boyle said she auditioned for the talent show for her late mother, who wanted her to do something with her life. I think there is no question on how proud her mother would be now.

And in that interview Ms. Boyle commented on the subject of the angle that so many are taking about the “frumpy” woman with the angelic voice.

“Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances,” she said. “There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson or set an example.” On the contrary, Ms. Boyle. I think it would be an honor just to be able to shake your hand and compliment your voice. And I think you just might be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

And this morning, I hummed your song on the way to work and dreamed a dream of time gone by. And I think I speak for millions when I say that, when times are really tough, you will lift us all as high as your voice carries.

The truth is – I would never be able to describe it well enough. So I encourage everyone to go to You Tube and search for Susan Boyle. It'll make your day. And it will remind you about what it means to dream. And that dreaming is just the beginning. Living is in the dreaming and the doing.

let you take me home

2009-02-26T19:27:00.003-05:00

I would let you take me home tonight.

And that's really saying something, because usually I insist on driving.

But I would let you take me home tonight. Pull me from the car and deposit me somewhere safe and warm, like the couch. I would put up no fight and let you feed me something comfort foodish, like soup and tell me that you know what's best for me. Close my eyes, secure myself in your iron gate arms.

Because I need you to shelter me. And that is unusual for me. But I need your shelter now. Need you to rock away the nightmares and force my heartbeat to slow and match yours.

I would let you take me home tonight and keep me there. Though I never thought I'd want to be kept ever. I'd let you shelter me from the storm. Weather the worry.

Because I need a place to stay. Where there are no strings. I need a place to recoup. My body is stiff and sore from the recoil that I've mired myself in. I would take your hand.

I would let you take me home tonight.

it's been a long time coming...

2009-02-03T20:05:00.001-05:00

My problem: That I always want to launch into something big and new and fun and I don't do half the preparation I should for it. In other words...though I sometimes have limited internet access I have been trying to format a new blog. New look and new name to sort of start all over on the chronicling of my life. For anyone who even remembers this blog still exists. It's been slow going. I'm working on it...and hoping to have something done here soon. But for now, since I had the opportunity, I just wanted to say - I'm still here. And here: www.facebook.com And here... www.twitter.com/jessicasieff.

saying goodbye to one of the good guys

2008-06-22T22:12:00.002-04:00

I fell in love long ago, with the romanticism of journalism. That romanticism took the form of Robert Redford in "All the President's Men" and Michael Keaton in "The Paper." It is Cary Grant in "His Girl Friday" and George Clooney in "Good Night and Good Luck." In my image of the profession, the journalist is the everyday guy (or gal). Slightly neurotic, with sleeves rolled up and a quick wit about them, they find solace in the sound of keys being furiously tapped on a keyboard in order to make deadline. They are in a constant state of awareness - of what is happening around them. And every story counts - everything means something. And every lead - a chance to save the world - to show that world is a part of themselves they may not be aware of.

When studying journalism in college ... my teacher taught me a very important lesson in the very beginning weeks of class. He was discussing beats, the subjects that journalists will commit themselves to. Politics, entertainment, religion, world affairs.

Some kids laughed when he mentioned that obituaries were typically the most read section of a newspaper. "You may laugh," he said. "But the truth is, it is an important section. Not just because people read them. But because for many people it is the only time they'll see their name or have something written about them in the paper."

I imagined sitting down with the families and sharing in their lives and giving them a piece of their family member or friend, all summed up with sweet and sensitive words, wrapped up tight like a gift - and even with an obituary -someone's world would be touched.

I'm often reminded how valuable one life is - staring at the loss of many. In the loss of local officials or average citizens taken away by storms and flooding - or even a reporter whose influence was so great - it inspired an entire nation.

The amount of attention brought on by the passing of Tim Russert last week was in a way, comforting. To know that there are people out there who believe in and respect a journalist who sat week after week with political leaders, world leaders - and the one thing people continue to remember him for - is being a regular guy.

I am always at a loss when the profession that I love - and am still learning - loses one of its own. With Peter Jennings and David Bloom - the image of the hardworking journalist with dusty boots and sleeves rolled up to the elbow ... tired eyes and a sore voice ... grew a bit dimmer. It has been replaced with fancy ties and lapel pins and perfectly coifed hair. And men who are more attracted to the spotlight than the pathways carved out for all of us newcomers by such greats as Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite and even Ernest Hemingway.

Everyday I find myself questioning the nuts and bolts of journalism. Journalists have a distinct honor. We are not just part of an industry. We are a tradition. A provision in the Constitution of the United States of America.

Bound by profession to the truth - but vulnerable to the fact that we do not necessarily control what is presented as that truth, we are ceaseless diggers and searchers for the story. For the piece of the every man in every issue - both on a small town community street- and at the far corners at the world.

Journalism is the art of bringing both of those perspectives together. The small town - and the whole world. It is making life relatable -by telling an amazing story. To tell a story that is equal parts personal, aware, and global. And most importantly - true.

The truth about Tim Russert is, he brought the everyday guy to the world stage with his work on Meet the Press. He was unpretentious and unflinching - all at once. He had Irish roots - like me, my father being born and raised in Dublin. As his Irish culture was brought to light over and over by speakers at his tribute last night - for the first time I felt a little closer to my own. To watch him, you knew he was informed - no, he was infused with the subjects he was discussing. He made me want to read twice as much and know just a little bit more. He was never unprepared in an interview. If he was, you couldn't tell. And he was always working on behalf of someone else. The people.

People may only see the new state of journalism ... that blurs the lines between report and commentary. In truth, the premise of the profession has not changed. People may stray from it from time to time. But the purpose remains.

And every so often someone like Russert comes along and shows it's possible to still have integrity and virtue and morality in what we do - and still be exhilarated by our work.

So, this weekend I will make sure to find time to sit down at my favorite Irish pub. Wait on a thick pint of Guinness. Have a drink for one of the good guys, and remember what it means to report, inform and remember.

fifth-grade-hood

2008-06-22T21:19:00.000-04:00

I was nervous when my editor told me that I could have a weekly column. It's not unlike a blog except...it is. I found myself furiously wondering who would be reading it and if anyone would like it...

I was going to ruminate on change.... How difficult it can be to adapt to it - whether it's a new desk in a new building with new co-workers or a new leader promising new direction for a nation struggling to get back on its feet.

I considered the subject of the state of journalism itself ... because I have always attached a certain degree of romanticism to its character. The fast talking, always moving, always typing men and women who enjoy a drink here and there, keep their sleeves rolled up, tend to chain smoke - and believe they can change the world. But even I have to admit that aside from catching CNN from time to time - I read most of my newspapers online and frequently check for headlines on my cell phone. I too, am contributing to the demise of the public freedom I hold dear.

Serious subjects because as an adult I'm supposed to consider serious things...

But I decided to write about fifth grade.

Tuesday night, I attended the fifth grade graduation for the daughter of one of my best friends. As pictures of the children sitting proudly in front of all their parents played out in a projected montage -pictures of them from their academic start in kindergarten to their fifth grade year - I began to wonder. What was going to become of them as they enter the uncertainty of middle school and later the daunting halls of high school?

My inner cynic - she comes out from time to time - thought about the high school seniors whose speeches I'd listened to covering graduations in the area over the past couple of weeks. They all spoke ideally and I couldn't help but think of how I'd been in their shoes once. I'd thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had a good grasp on what college and the future would hold. Thought I had mapped out all the standard uncertainties and challenges while perfecting a master plan to being an adult - dodging the stereotypical pitfalls because I was going to be the one to do so.

But being an adult is thinking you have 'it' all figured out ... and realizing you're going to have to figure it all out again. And again.

Tears fell from the eyes of truly proud mothers, including the one sitting next to me, as their fifth graders stepped up to receive their certificates. Parents cry for their children, my inner cynic said. No doubt those certificates will get stuffed into a drawer somewhere. Lost and forgotten by the time they reach their own high school commencement.

And then the kids started to cry. Not all of them. But a few. They started to cry as they received their certificates and awards. As they realized they were leaving one school for another ... And my inner cynic shut her mouth.

Maybe, I thought, as adults we don't cry purely out of sentimentality when we recognize our children are growing up. Maybe it's because we realize that we've grown up. Maybe the idealistic notions of our teenagers that it's possible for them to 'figure it all out' better than we ever did aren't idealistic at all. Maybe they just seem that way in the absence of the confidence we used to have that we could figure it out for ourselves.

Maybe instead of trying so hard to be a beacon of inspiration to our kids ... we could stand to soak up a little inspiration from them. Because they find pride in just being present. And they can go for hours laughing for no reason. They don't count the calories when grabbing a piece of cake and they can fall out of trees - and not think twice about getting back up. They work hard. They play hard. But most importantly ... they play.

And when you think about it ... that's pretty serious, heavy, world changing stuff.

a new silent majority

2008-06-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

Each day we are bombarded with rough news. As of late, images and accounts of victims in Myanmar and the Sichuan Province in China have filled the pages of news publications and airtime on every news program. Watching people pick up shards of what is left of their homes and parents grieve over the loss of their only child - is not easy to ignore.

To look at the vast response in aid for such disasters - as for disasters of the past - one would not consider this world one of insensitivity.

In America - especially - one might not think. We are the nation of Pearl Harbor. Of Civil Rights. Of September 11th. We are the nation that sat in shame as we watched our own suffer through Hurricane Katrina and our hearts go out when we hear reports like that of a tornado that ripped through a Boy Scout camp Wednesday in Blencoe, Iowa. We are supposed to care about each other.

There is no comparison of one tragedy to another. Still, one image that remains in mind as of late is that of Angel Arce Torres, known to his friends and family in Hartford Connecticut as "Ponce."

On May 30, police surveillance video in Hartford captured a truly harrowing scene of two cars - one that looked to be chasing after the other - on the wrong side of the street. The first vehicle narrowly misses Ponce as he is crossing the street. The second does not. The video shows the 78-year-old as he is hit by the second vehicle - tossed into the air like a rag doll over the windshield and left in the middle of the street - as both cars speed off leaving him there.

The video is - quite frankly -nauseating. And what's worse is the scene in the moments to come ... as people stare at the elderly resident lying in the middle of the street and do what appears to be nothing. An estimated nine cars pass by Ponce - some having to move around him to continue on their way.

Details about the incident help alleviate the shock. Reports that four people called 911 as soon as they witnessed the incident. The fact that it took police reportedly minutes to get to the scene, the Hartford police chief classifying the incident as "inhumane."

Are we on our own road to dehumanization? Some could consider the Hartford hit 'n run an isolated incident - but is it? I have to believe that there remains a silent majority. That majority being the ones we don't hear about - who wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing they are responsible for the reported paralyzing of a 78-year-old man. A father. A friend.

I have to believe that the number of the vigilant outnumbers that of the predators. That the do-gooders are actively trying to do good. I have to believe they have even more power than those with the freshly starched lapels and crisp white shirts and bold ties who flash their pearly whites as they make their way to Washington. It's not that I don't have faith in government - it's that Washington is a far way from home.

There's a lot of questioning going on in the area about police coverage in the township and complaints about crime. Is it just the typical start of summer? The warm weather making it easier for criminals to go out and do what they do ... create crime? Or is it something else entirely? Or worse - signs of a society that simply doesn't care anymore?

I have to believe that there exists a silent majority. I have to believe that silent majority is just waiting for its time to come ... when it will take back dignity and virtue and human decency. It will declare it unacceptable to drive past a man lying on the street. It will remind us that we are all fathers, mothers, husbands and wives. We are all someone's child. Someone's friend.

I have to believe in that it is just a 'silent' majority. Because to believe otherwise - is something I - and I would hope all of us - are not yet willing to do.

time. place.

2008-05-25T00:18:00.003-04:00

A long time ago, a reader had given me some advice. In the middle of a loss of direction, a fog of frustration he said, "it's not you. It's the time and the place."

The time - kinda - and the place - sort of - have changed.

I no longer work at night, with truck drivers, until the birds come out to chirp incessantly in the morning with the sun. I'm a reporter. For a paper.

It's a small paper. And I haven't had to move anywhere. But I'm scared as hell. I'm scared that it was a bad decision - mostly because of the insanely scary pay cut. And the change. I'm scared my stories won't be liked or even accepted.

And I hate change. I hate new. I hate not knowing. More than that - I hate many changes at once. The change in job. Change in pay. Change in lifestyle. I'd be lying if I were to say it weren't too much for me. It kinda sorta is.

But it's a new time. A new place.

in the abundance of memory

2008-04-16T00:57:00.006-04:00

I'm beginning to wonder if I've ever had a truly original moment as a full grown adult.

When I was in high school, I cared about my social status, but I didn't care enough. I didn't care enough to take the time to figure out what it meant to have good hair, a good wardrobe or good make-up. I didn't really care that I didn't quite fit into one particular clique, but rather certain percentages of various cliques. I remember being awfully frizzy as a highschooler.

Will used to call me "Jugs". But I can't remember exactly if that had anything to do with my boobs. I don't remember them being very big in high school, but I'm surprised at how big they are now and I'm almost thirty. I don't pay attention to a lot a lot of the time. I think the nickname had more to do with the fact that I was the only Jew in school and Will and I hugged each other a lot. Gimme a hug. Jew. Hug. Jew. Jug. Nah. It probably did have to do with the boobs.

I had a moment the other day when I could feel high school all over me like a heavy wool coat in the middle of summer. Oddly enough, it was memories of summer that did it.

I worked in a generic Dairy Queen in my small town for most of my high school years. It was my first real job and it was a beautiful tapestry of colorful characters with the added bonus of a measly paycheck that felt like millions when you don't have bills to pay each month. I often wish I could put my small town experience into words. But I haven't found the words yet. In that little ice box of a building I didn't just swirl together soft serve and broken pieces of candy bar but fell into a family that I only now realize I've lost a lot of.

I can still feel the stickiness that came with working there. The sweat from the hot, humid days when the air conditioning couldn't stand up to the steady flow of small towners who wanted slushies and hot dogs and ice cream cones. I can still smell the bleach Kim would pour into the mop water and feel the steam from the hot dog cooker. My job there was so intoxicating. So high school. So small town. So delicious.

I used to scribble soap opera style diatribes on the dry erase calender where our schedule was written in each month. A whole world existed for me when I went to work there in the afternoons. I picked up every hour that I could. It felt so exhilarating to be in that building rather than in my room where I was bored and scribbling into my sketch pads. At work, I was the nerdy intellectual one compared to everyone else who lived real lives with boyfriends and sex and drugs and alcohol. But I never seemed to mind much.

I can still feel those days. You know the times of your life that you can feel - even in memory. I can feel them there. I think I stopped feeling them for the most part when Lynne died. She was the boss of us all, the mother of one of us and a friend. And I wish I could have known her as an adult. And when she died I think a piece of me tucked that part of my life away and stopped being that nerdy girl with the big aspirations.

And when I saw Punky's mug shot in the paper - it all came flooding back to me. A stark, stinging slap to the face. Over ten years later and this is where we all are. I'm still watching old black and white movies wishing I were living somewhere else, Kim is a mother with a house and a husband and a life that is still heavy with tragedy and happiness and Punky is busy finding herself amidst recklessness...of which I wonder often her mother's opinion - had she lived til today. The memory of it all weighs a lot. The reality of it. I can feel high school and adolescence the way you can feel the cool water in a pool on a hot and humid day. Immediate.

I used to write and draw insanely. I can't even remember what I wrote about, but I do remember not thinking so much about it. Stories and poems and paragraphs of thought just went on the paper until my hands were cramping and it was past midnight. I miss that. The lack of self-consciousness of it all.

And I don't feel as original or individual as I did back then. I'm just realizing that now. I am loved by many for who I am. I know that. But I don't feel that quirkiness that I had once been so proud of. And I'm just wondering, as I wonder if I really do have something worth saying as a writer - if I've ever had that originality that is so blessed in adolescence. If I am an individual.

In New York, as I sat across from my Aunt Darya on a seemingly calm Saturday afternoon, she asked me if I had passion about anything. My answer was no. I've lost all passion. Passion is what fueled me to fill sketchbooks with drawings, what led me to fill notebooks with stories just for the story's sake. I miss passion. Passion is what led me to apply to Columbia and make the drive to orientation with Kim, buy a coffee mug and books from the bookstore even though I knew I wouldn't attend classes there and what led me to request information from Johns Hopkins. It's what led me to apply to Sarah Lawrence.

I always knew that even if I didn't always feel as though I was able to breathe on the streets of my small town, my passion for writing would keep me afloat.

Yet when Darya asked me if I had passion for anything going on in my life at the moment. All I could say was no.

I wish I had the words.

the visitor

2008-04-11T03:19:00.002-04:00

I am on a current, constant search for inspiration.

I am worried that as a writer...I may have nothing important to say.

I worry that the stories I may tell may be better told by someone else.

But sometimes, in searching for inspiration...through movies or music or books - I find a quick moment of it. And the song, the film, the paragraphs or the pages...they make me tear up. Like this one did.

restore my soul

2008-04-02T04:08:00.003-04:00

I lean over the counter at the doctor's office and take in the "prime time drama" aura. Rachel and I trade gossip in a hushed whisper. We make birthday plans. We berate Brangelina.

I tell her how nervous I am to be going to New York tomorrow. Where normally I would be thrilled, I am quite simply not. For a multitude of reasons that are too exhausting to explain here.

The Rabbi Harold Kushner says, in an examination of the 23rd Psalm - that we, humans can become overwhelmingly busy. So much so in fact that we neglect our very souls and sometimes it becomes necessary for us to take a moment to stop - so our souls can catch up to us. "He restores my soul..."

I don't tell Rachel this. That I feel like I need my soul to catch up to me. That I've been thinking at such a massive rate that moments are becoming unnecessarily heavy. She knows all of this anyway. Still, I am nervous. And I dare say, I'd pass the trip up all together.

Still, she talks me down. Calms me down. We go back to trading gossip and making birthday plans. I feel relief.

Of course now...after sitting in a quiet, and painfully boring office for the better part of night - I am nervous again. It is nerve wracking to want something so much. Because you can't want without knowing there is a possibility you won't get it. That is the ache that wanting is. I want something to seep into my pores and inspire me. To wake me up. To restore my soul. I'm afraid I might not get it.

But I'll settle for a glimpse of the place I've always considered my real home.

call me cranky

2008-03-28T02:08:00.003-04:00

I am convinced that the Midwest is the only place in America that innocent people are forced to suffer the sound of windshield wipers running against windshields that are not quite watery enough... Causing a "WWUUUUURRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT" sound every time they wipe against the glass. Causing ears to bleed.

I say this because I bet the Western part of the country - with the exception of Seattle - deals with rain and sleet and snow as an exception. Not a normalcy. And the Eastern part of the country? I'm sure they get even more rain.

Because the Midwest is the ass crack of the nation.

I hate the commercials. Because I know that they are geared towards specific demographics and personality assessments that are developed by newly graduated marketing interns. So what we get is the round woman with a soft voice who feeds her five kids and the entire marching band warm biscuits with butter from Walmart. And people seem to swell here. You won't see them for weeks or months but when you do...you'd swear they didn't look quite as swollen the last time you did. It's not that they're technically overweight. They just look bloated. Like life is what bloats them. Not the carbonation from the beer they are most likely guzzling after five.

I hate that many see me as self-righteous for this. I swear, I am not...

It's not that I don't see the charm in this neck of the woods. Or that I realize I don't connect and shouldn't be here in the first place. A part of me does connect. And it's that part of me that I wish I could express, but alas, tonight I can't.

Processed foods make me sad. I'm not saying I'm not forced to put them in my cart from time to time, or that they're not an obvious fact of life - they just make me sad.

I can't wait for a break from life in the crack.

ghosts and phantoms

2008-03-26T03:43:00.004-04:00

I believe in ghosts. Not the ones of the paranormal kind. The ones that people swear are responsible for their broken dishes or reappearing stains on the carpets or haunting sounds in the dead of night... Rather the ghosts that linger in the space between presence and absence. They live in the moments where time stands still.

What do I mean exactly? I don't know.

Today, I stepped outside into the air that was desperately trying to make it over the hump to Spring - and felt as though I couldn't breath. My mind has a way of travelling at light speeds and all at once I was overwhelmed with the idea that if you stay in one place long enough - you'll eventually see all of its ghosts. Ghosts of romances that never made it. Romances that went terribly wrong, sinking into tears and desperation and settlement. Ghosts of dreams abandoned for the house on the corner and the steady paying job. Ghosts of those who were supposed to live out life with us but now don't live at all...leaving time to stand still for those who were left.

Even paranormal experts will tell you that not all ghosts intend to harm. They're not all bad. So I don't say that I see these ghosts with a measure of cynicism or negativity. Those ghosts are a people and a place's history. It's story. And at the moment that I thought it I could barely breath in the crowd of ghosts around me. I could barely hear my ipod of the sounds of their memory.

They are much like the idea of the phantom limb. The fact that patients who are forced to have a limb amputated can still feel it, feel its pain after it is gone.

You can try to detach people or ideas or dreams from yourself. But it seems that, just like the phantom limb, even once you remove yourself from the subject - you can still feel it. Feel it's pain, it's joy, it's essence. You can tell someone that it's over - but you can still feel the way their arms wrapped around your waist. Their hand through your hair. You can stop dreaming. But you can feel the desire that inspired the dream.

Distraction, I think, helps the pain of that which is phantom. Keep yourself busy and you may not notice it. You may even go a whole day not feeling it. But take a second to stop and you can become overwhelmed with the weight of absence.

But I supposed it's the same wherever you go. And I suppose there's comfort in that.

today i ached for morning

2008-03-18T20:35:00.002-04:00

Today I couldn't stop thinking about how sweet mornings can be.

The weather is only starting to change. And it's little by little. The high 40's and low 50's were nice last week - but they were only to be followed up by mid 30's with cold, sleety rain.

Still. It's amazing the memory that senses can hold. Like when a song or a movie or even just a portion of a song from a movie can transport you right back to where you were in the space and time when it was *the* movie or *the* song.

Know what I mean?

So today I ached for morning. No matter how cool it might be, six or seven o'clock is the sweetest time of day. When the sun is just rising, stepping outside, you can feel the earth turning over. Still warm with sleep - in its own perfect position. You know, the one you're in just before you fully wake up when all your covers are perfectly wrapped around you and you are so completely comfortable. Morning feels like that.

Everything tastes better. Coffee tastes better, eggs taste better, bagels taste better and newspapers smell better. The light is brighter.

Today I ached for morning.

The brain is sharper in the morning, I think. More gets done when the tasks are started in the early morning. The air is inherently crisp - even in 90 degree heat and humidity. It gets into the blood, into the veins. Morning creates the illusion that the day goes on forever. Like every day lasts a lifetime. Which subsequently makes sunset a delightful, calming and serene surprise.

Today I ached for morning. And for a sultry sunset - met with beers on the back deck with my closest friends. I think on the next, I might even slip in a couple of shots. To drink in and get as drunk as - a day that starts with the magic of morning...A day that seems like it will last forever.

Today I ached for morning.

disclaimer

2008-03-14T18:18:00.003-04:00

A little note about the post below that I was hesitant to post at all...

I don't know if anyone reads this at all - but if anybody does - please don't freak out about the thoughts expressed in the post below and start thinking I'm in some sort of dire need of the odd sort of attention.

While I appreciate it - I am someone who writes thoughts and ideas as they pop into my head and they're not always to be taken the way they are by other people.

If I were really that bad - I think I would be off getting some help - and not sitting here typing my little heart out at a Barnes & Noble on a beautiful day listening to Led Zepplin and craving a Toffee Nut Latte and oddly...some falafel.

truth and consequences

2008-03-14T17:53:00.004-04:00

"Trouble...oh trouble, trouble...Seems like every time I get back on my feet she come around and knock me down again. Worry, oh worry, worry... Sometimes, I swear it seems like this worry is my only friend..."

- Ray LaMontagne, 'Trouble'

The truth is... I was busy with work. Busy with things to do. And now that the dust has settled, I'm a little busy with depression.

Not the kind where you have those meandering thoughts of... 'oh this sucks' or 'oh that sucks', but the kind where your chest cavity feels likes someone has filled it with cement and the only way you can get your brain to stop racing is to keep the television and your ipod on at the same time.

When things start to hurt for no reason at all.

But I guess the after effects...is really just the consequences. Since the truth is...I'm a little in love w/ my depression.

I know it sounds odd, but I'm a writer. If we're not in love with inappropriate people, alcohol or drugs - we have to find something else just as self-destructive to be in love with and that, as it would seem, sometimes turns out to be ourselves. Because the truth is that even though the days are harder to get through when I get like this - within it all I find broader sentences...bolder words. Scenes and situations and conversation and ideas and sometimes even, a little confidence.

Depression is the married man. I am the other woman who so desperately believes he'll change his noncommittal cheating ways and leave the wife just to be with me. The mood will melt away into something way more constructive and healthier and better than what it is.

But it doesn't. Instead...I continue to go on with it...I'm in love with it, I think. That's just my truth. So I spend time with friends, eat out, have a few drinks... I keep at my job, write what I can when I can - and when it's too tough I just avoid. Avoid visits or phone calls or responsibilities. Avoid it all because I'm just too busy focusing on myself alone.

The brain is a very small space.

And the funny thing is that through all the fog - there is this incredibly conscious version of me. Who sees this all as a mess that has been left alone long enough - and needs to be cleaned up. A version of me that knows how much work this is going to be. A change in routine. A change in attitude. A change in everything.

That version is the one that never would have gotten involved in such self destructive behavior in the first place. She got straight A's in school. She was compartmentalized when it came to emotions. She was responsible and careful and at times - even a little fun. She didn't drop things because they were too heavy.

And she's a little sick and tired of the me that I've become.

And I'm counting on her to kick my ass.

in which our heroine is overworked and overwhelmed

2008-02-29T17:29:00.004-05:00

There are times that are almost too much for real life. They belong on television with prolific voice overs and a killer soundtracks and soft lighting. Everything looks better with soft lighting.

Last Sunday, over 1/2 a Barnes & Noble cookie and a latte, I realized something painfully simple. If you take a step closer to something - you get closer to it.

But I too often speak in tangled metaphor.

The frustration of not writing, of feeling creatively and intellectually stifled in the small town I live in - eventually became too much for me. And I began getting annoyed at my own voice as it complained to friends and family about my own unhappiness.

So I put the call in to my editor - telling him I was in need of advice as well as ready and willing to do whatever it would take to move my career in some sort of progressive direction. I was neither ready nor willing. But I took the step anyway. And I took on the title of "Southwest Regional Editor". Nothing is certain right now. Not the direction in which I am going or the real depth of that title. Not my future in terms of any of my jobs - or school - or anything else. Things may not change much - but even the littlest amount of change is enough for me.

And having the personal and emotional hell going on that I've been dealing with for the past week - being told that I had one week to put out my first paper with only one writer - me - was almost like a blessing in disguise. A masochistic blessing - but a blessing nonetheless. Anger fuels me in ways. I'm able to scratch off items on a to-do list much faster. I think less and act more just to keep my anger from bottling to the point of combustion.

I worked out until my muscles ached and my breathing was heavy and the anger and stress subsided a little bit. When work became too much and my mind began to spin and my anger started to swell, I'd grab the weights, crunch until I couldn't crunch anymore, push up and get on the gazelle. I've been working constantly. Asleep at six in the morning and up by 10:30, making phone calls, arranging interviews and typing up notes - just to make dinner and go to work until 5 in the morning and asleep by 6 again.

I won't say it hasn't taken it's toll. The lack of sleep and utter exhaustion took an emotional and physical toll on me yesterday when I collapsed into a crumple of tears and fears on my sofa just an hour before work. The only joyful moments were to hear Madison's two-year old voice say she loved me when I kissed her goodbye and when Kim said she understood my sudden desire to return to the age of 20.

I wonder often and over again how I have become the person that I am now - even though I know the person I am now will not be the person I am tomorrow. I wonder where the girl who was on the verge of turning 21 went. She was kinda fun. She drank too much and didn't think about the injustices of the world and she was confidant and comforting.

So I took on a new challenge. And at times - the thought that this could all lead to a more creative and positive life makes my insides surge. I have another meeting with another editor next week for more advice and I've even been in touch with yet another editor of a regional magazine for more work. I've begun thinking of myself as an actual writer. I've made contacts in New York in order to put up an actual website and it would seem this is all a big mass of positive change.

But remember what I've said about me and change...

And still...the personal and the emotional are shaky and uncertain. What were once solid relationships are now taking on new forms that don't necessarily fit me yet.

And I am just a lady in waiting of the future. Waiting for the next wave of change to come.

toxicology

2008-02-23T15:33:00.002-05:00

If I had to point out my toxic best friend...you know, the one that is there with you all the time that you have some sort of perverse love for but all in all is toxic to you. Poison. Makes you inevitably a poorer version of yourself...I'd have to point out my anger.

Anger and I have been best friends since childhood. The only one I have. My anger knows no grey areas - only the black and the white. Black being the dormant anger. It sleeps beneath the surface...and because I never shed any light on it - things that should make me angry, don't. There is no self defense, no standing up for what I believe in, no "I will not take that from you". It's simply sleeping. Dormant. An ironic word that rolls of the tongue much like "doormat".

And there is the white. That's the kind of anger that is blinding. I can't quite pinpoint what brought that anger to me in the first place...but I can remember it as a child. My fits were never quite what normal childhood fits were. Things were broken when I threw a fit. Doors, closets, curtains...chairs.

So I have worked hard to...repress. To turn myself into a forgiving person. A less judgemental person. A person who puts such things in another's hands and thereby, takes a bit of the pressure off. But what is repressed...must return every so often.

So recently...when a certain situation put me in the position, the proverbial fork in the road - where I was forced to decide to either shut the hell up and forgive or get angry and demand forgiveness...I hesitated. I wish my brain had that middle fork... You know, the one that says "do both. Get angry, declare your boundaries and then forgive..." But I don't have that fork. So I didn't want to get angry. Let the vices in and you will surely indulge.

But I gave in. And that is what I'm doing now. Indulging in anger. Snapping at every bit, on a constant defense.

My anger used to fuel my writing. Being mad at the injustices of the world was my motivation, my fuel and my fire. But now it's something altogether. It's not quite what it used to be. Though nothing ever really is. Like an animal in a cage I no longer snarl at the cage. I snarl at the people in it.

I'm sure none of this makes quite that much sense to the rest of the world. Little bits and pieces of a brain is all this really is. A couple of ramblings for the time being.

The white anger really is blinding. For the past couple of weeks I haven't been able to focus. To put any sense to anything. I'm simply angry. My best friend is back and I want to do is sit on the couch with it and fade out of focus.

Friends like that aren't good for anybody.

So I know I have to kick that old friend out again. Put a limit to its visits.

Find that middle road.

my so called...

2008-02-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

When I was 17, I secretly wanted to be Angela Chase. I wanted to dye my hair a crimson red, adopt pale, flawless skin, wear plaid, grungy shirts tied around my waist (which would be at least 80 lbs. lighter) and ponder the meaning of life. So listening to Buffalo Tom's "Late At Night" is like finding a piece of old-school, sugary sweet candy. The kind that hold memories underneath the wrapper. Like candy cigarrettes, licorice flavored gum or or Brach's neopolitan squares.

It's one of the best scenes in the entire short lived series. After humiliating a love struck Angela, the object of her obsession, Jordan Catalano makes his way down a flourescent high school hallway, his clothes baggy enough to let people know he cares about his appearance but not too much...and Angela is poised against a row of lockers, slumped just enough to make her even more beautiful. Her friends close to her side. And just as she's deciding to banish her feelings for the bad boy Catalano, he approaches her to soft sound of Buffalo Tom's "Late At Night". And as they make their way down the hall, Angela's wish of acknowledgement from her crush is met with a simple grasp of her hand.

"I, I held her hand too tight/too hard to make it right/so I could sleep at night... If I could hold them in my hand/I'd make them understand/I'm not a haunted mind/I'm not a thoughtless kind...I'd do it if I could/I hope you know I would..."

And while it is very rare that I feel a sense of nostalgia for my high school era - the song did it today. And I wanted to be 17 again, an age when I drank way too much soda and didn't fully realize how consequences can span over time. How time can wear on the skin, the bones and the body. An age when I really didn't know much at all - not realizing that ignorance can sometimes certainly be a stage of bliss.

So it was appropriate that the pod next served up The Bravery's "Time Won't Let Me Go".

"If I could go back once again/ I'd change everything/ If I could go back once again I'd do it all so much better...Time won't let me go."

I have an obsession with time. Particularly time wasted.

I think sometimes people are afraid to admit they have regrets. Maybe it's rightly so. But I know if I were 17 again, there's plenty I'd do different. And plenty I wouldn't. I'd still get lost in those depressing songs like Counting Crows' "Goodnight Elisabeth" and "A Long December". I'd still let Tammy and Stacy get me drunk on my 17th birthday. I'd still take every art class and defy every assignment - declaring my hatred for watercolor and silkscreening. I'd still refuse to let my AP English teacher edit my graduation speech.

But I wouldn't be so self-conscious. So self-defeating. So self-aware. I'd read more. I'd let my friends turn into bad influences and feel the rush of adrenaline that comes from skipping a day of school or staying out too late or getting drunk on a school night.

We can never go back. We can never undo what has already been done. To quote the best movie of the year, "that is one doodle that can't be undid, homeskillet". But it is a constant struggle. A constant wish - deep down - even in those who swear in email and myspace forwards that they have no regrets - that we would do things differently if we could go back.

And if I could go back - I'd dye my hair crimson red.

Don't Give Up On Me

2008-02-01T23:21:00.000-05:00

I think that may have been the longest bout of silence from me ever recorded.

And I'm sure the audience has long left the playhouse.

Exams have long been over. School has been postponed. A few steps have been made towards an actual career. More change is on the way.

I have never been good when it comes to change. I hate it, actually. I love the aftermath, hate the ascending part.

Newness. Change. And a new computer.

Stay tuned friends...stay tuned.

t-minus 30 minutes

2007-12-13T15:33:00.000-05:00

Finals will commence in thirty minutes and be over shortly thereafter.

I should be cramming, trying to beef up my Spanish vocabulary just a little bit more. But my brain can't hold any more information...and my eyes can barely hold themselves open.

All I can really think about is the short stack of New York Magazines that have gone unread that I plan to tackle with reckless abandon this weekend. The house that has gone only straightened up that needs to be massively cleaned. The horribly neglected free weights and gazelle in the living room. The horribly neglected person who stares at me in the mirror in the morning.

And the decisions to be made. A break from school...while scary...might be a necessity. A frightening commitment to career might have to be made. The decision to affect what happens to me rather than let what happens affect me might also have to be made...

People usually see winter break as a time to enjoy Christmas or Hanukkah or presents or snow.

I want to enjoy my bed again. My music. My books and my brain and my friends and my family.

Drink warm, milky tea and rich, strong coffee. And feel my muscles ache again. And give my brain a rest. Before it burns out with the rest of me.

T-minus 20 minutes...

the mustard is winning

2007-12-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

I'll confess that I had a nice little blog post all ready in my little head just a few minutes ago. But then, the stench of mustard is wafting my way...from a little plastic cup of it that is sitting on a dirty Styrofoam plate at the computer next to me. There's splatter that I'm noticing on the left hand side of the monitor. So whoever felt comfortable carting a plate of food around campus and eventually wandering into the computer lab - was also a messy eater.

And then there's the gal next to me. Who first ran into my chair on her way back from the printer and whose binder she keeps pushing up against my arm - completely oblivious to the fact that it's even there. She keeps speaking to herself in a hushed tone...as if she's so into her work she must discuss it with itself. Nobody is ever that into any of their work. Those people just want attention. And she keeps sighing these surprised sighs. Like she's just so bowled over all of a sudden by her latest intellectual discovery via Google.

This is just a tiny, measure of an example on how everything feels as though it's encroaching on my personal space. The plate. The food. The stench. The moron. Her exasperation.

Last night at work a truck driver called up and yelled, cussed and bitched at me for twenty minutes. It was the same driver who'd called me last week and yelled, cussed and bitched at me for thirty minutes about the same exact problem, to which I had - surprise - the same exact solution. At this rate, by Christmas maybe he'll stop calling. Most likely not.

This morning, I woke up late, thoroughly exhausted, burned my toast and was too late to school to work on a rough draft of a final paper. In which case, our professor said we might as well not even come to class if we are without it.

It has not been a pleasant day thus far. My personal space is at war with the world...and the mustard is winning.

luck & love

2007-11-26T12:07:00.000-05:00

You know those scenes on television or in a movie...where the camera shows the city. Just the city. The skyline and it's dark and the lights are all twinkly and there are cars on the street. It's called something like an exterior transition shot. It's meant to show a change in location and provide a transition between scenes.

I love those scenes. I want to be in those scenes.

This morning the sky was thick with gray and dripping with cold drizzle that seemed to turn to sleet just moments before it hit the ground. The air was colder. And I would have given anything for a Starbucks with a view of Manhattan. Anywhere in Manhattan. A Starbucks with a view of Manhattan, a latte - and a world far, far away from this one.

Most people have trouble with transitions. That's why you have the transition scenes. They can't handle the quick cuts. From one scene to another. They need something in between. Something to guide them on. Sometimes I think...I'd be happy, just being in transition.

And I know some would say...that's exactly where I already am.

.....and in on an unrelated note...okay so not quite unrelated...today my brother leaves for basic training. So I wish him luck. Luck & Love.

what i need is you

2007-11-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

What i need, right now...is you.

I imagine you're laid back on a couch somewhere...brown distressed leather...thinking the same thing.

Lately, you're all that I've been needing.

I need you to pull me into the crook of your arm and tell me everything is going to be okay. Push my hair back behind my ear and tell me that vitamins and a better attitude will fix the fact that I think my hair isn't as thick as it used to be and kiss my forehead when that simple thought makes me cry. I need you to let me fall asleep on the couch, my head rested on your chest, moving with each breath.

Nothing is how I want it. My little brother is leaving soon and I am still in one place. I'm living in a horrible dump of an apartment and I still haven't gotten my brain to where it once was...where it used to be. That confident, ambitious and determined place I'd always known. I'm out of my element and a comfortable place it is not. Friendships have changed so much, I barely recognize some of them and I don't know how to put them all back to their rightful places. It's as if an earthquake has shaken everything in me and around me to its core - and the mess is overwhelming and old and due to be cleaned up.

I need you to believe that I can make everything turn out right. Sometimes I hear you, in the back of my head. When I should be riddled with anxiety...when it would be typical of my brain to race - something in the back of my mind calms me. Tells me to just keep breathing. Tells me one way or another, I will be okay. But I need you closer now. I need you here.

Nothing is as I want it to be. And looking every which way - I can't see ahead. I need you to show me. Show me my reflection.

It's the holidays...and I'm craving you like red wine and bouquets of orange roses. And I need you to get me through this semester...get me through the next few exams and papers and tell me I will do better next semester. Tell me I am not defined by my GPA. I need you to wake up that part of me that's been sleeping. I need you to pull me out of that hell hole of a residence, pull me out of this job. Pull me out of this state of mind and throw me into holiday movies and smells of cinnamon and vanilla and pumpkin. Remind me what its like to sleep in a real bed instead of curled up on the love seat. Take the neurosis out of the family gatherings. Save my soul.

I'm haunted now...today. I ran across a quote by Norman Mailer. "Every moment of one's existence, one is either growing into more or retreating into less." I feel myself retreating into less - when all I want is more. And so now, they swirl in my head, those words. They will for a while. Until I start growing again.

And still...all I need...is you.

work it out

2007-10-25T13:35:00.000-04:00

If I could do anything today - besides sleep more than four hours - I would seclude myself in a gym for the entire day.

I'd skip classes and call in sick to work, pack a bag and a bottle of water and turn off my phone.

I'd slip the earbuds into my ears and just press play, moving between various machines, the track and back again. I'd be doing this as the sun sank slowly behind the crowded university parking lot. And I wouldn't care about my phone being off, classes missed, or work left to be done by someone else.

I'd work my arms until I felt I couldn't lift them anymore. My legs, until they trembled. My abdomen until it hurt to breathe in.

In my exhaustion, I feel utterly unhealthy. Mind. Body. Soul. I want to flush out my system with a case of spring water. I want to find a Whole Foods and raid it for whole grain, brown rice, vegetables, fruits and anything else I can find listed in a health magazine. I want to wake before the sun and be walking as a dark sky turns to dawn. I want to clean my apartment until it magically becomes another apartment altogether. In another building, another town, another life. I want coffee only if it's sitting on the corner of my desk, where I am seated. Writing.

Exercise for the body. Exercise for the mind.

I want someone to handle my moods. Handle. I think people ignore the charm of that quality in relationships. Someone who can. handle. you. Manage your moods, your ups your downs. Throw you on a stationary bike if you're getting too down. Too sorry for yourself. Make your decisions for you. Just for a day or two. I would cash in that check. Let someone else decide for me that maybe going in to work today is just not what I need to do.

I would seclude myself in a gym. Learn Yoga. Bend. Breathe. Work it out until its gone. Like a charlie horse.

Work it all out.

a few good truths

2007-10-21T15:08:00.000-04:00

Honesty is a funny thing.

We say we want it. From everyone. About everything.

But do we really?

The short answer, I think, is no. We don't want honesty. The real, grit your teeth, clench your jaw and hear the truth, truth. Certainly we want to know when a pair of jeans makes our asses look like a parking lot or when half of dinner is sticking in our teeth. But we don't want to hear the real stuff.

We don't want to hear that we're wrong. That we are not always the shined up, polished versions of ourselves that we're only really able to see from behind our two eyes. We don't want to hear that little by little, we're making mistakes...we're doing something wrong...we're hurting people. The people we love. That's the problem with honesty. It sounds really good, rolls off the tongue like ice cream. Only it doesn't taste like ice cream...it tastes like escargot. Or caviar. Or something equally slimy and bitter and nauseating.

And so....the quandary. If writers take from the lives they know...how do they do so without hurting feelings? And how do friends know the depth of translation and interpretation and observation? To put it plainly...how do they understand the two sides of honesty...

The side that tells it like it is...and the side that loves you anyway.

i got nuthin'

2007-10-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

Mart is one of my very best friends.

As male/female friendships go (and I don't believe they're possible without special circumstance: i.e. the male is engaged to your best friend etc.) - as they go - Mart and I really are great friends. We've had beers together, comforted each other and talked forever. I'd do anything for him, I see his side of things. He'd do anything for me. He'd fix my car, move my furniture, or pick me up from any place anywhere. There are some situations I might even call on him before my own brothers. He'd break any guy in two who would be less than gentlemanly with me - and has threatened to do so to a couple already.

He is my brother from another mother.

But Friday night, I wanted to crack him in the jaw with a baseball bat.

With a goofy, intoxicated grin, Mart waved me over to his side of the bar.

"Jessica," he said. "I feel bad."

"Why do you feel bad, Mart?"

"I feel bad for you," he said.

"Me?"

"You need a man!"

If he hadn't looked so funny saying so, I wouldn't have laughed. "Yes, Mart," I said. "I do need a man."

"You know, I know - how lucky I am to have Rachel. We may not always agree but she loves me and I know - she's always there no matter what,"

Yes...that is sweet isn't it?

"But you," he went on. "You have...nothing."

And cue baseball bat.

I shrugged him off with a smile. "You're right Mart. I have nothing."

"No," he said. "But really...you have nothing. And I just feel bad."

WHACK!

Ahh well...one more beer and twenty minutes later he was singing the opening line to Britney's "Gimme More" - and all was forgiven.

Sort of.

monkeys in my heart

2007-10-09T13:29:00.000-04:00

I really want to say more today. More than I will. But it's just not in me today. I am relatively calm...which is good...since the anxiety attacks have increased in number and frequency over the past few months. They keep me in the house, keep me in jitters, keep me feeling on the verge.

So I'm relatively calm today. And there's plenty to discuss...the fact that my anxiety is at an all time, debilitating high. I have family coming to visit. I have family leaving me in a short month and a half. I have a vacation that is in the planning stages for January. I am getting lost in my Ipod and can't sing praises enough about Brandi Carlile, Ingrid Michaelson and The Cinematic Orchestra. My writing and I are tangled up again in a love/hate relationship...I love it and it hates that I put it second. I'm back to sleeping on the floor just so I can wake up on time in the morning. Jes dumped Brett Michaels on national TV...which was actually pretty kick ass.

So I really want to say more today...but I'm rather calm. I've got Gary Jules' "Falling Awake" in the Ipod. "Monkeys in my heart/rattling their cages"...

on reality tv

2007-10-06T18:14:00.001-04:00

A quick note on reality TV....

Relief was what I felt at the conclusion of "Rock of Love" when Bret Michaels finally showed me he wasn't a putz and picked Jes - the girl anyone would want to hang out with - and sent 80's hair lovin', exotic dancin', food inhalin' Heather back home to Vegas.

And...

Is it odd that after watching a holiday episode of The Girls Next Door - I suddenly got all warm with holiday spirit?????

sundays

2007-09-22T17:26:00.000-04:00

I have a thing with a few friends of mine.

Every Sunday is 'girls day'. We get up, we pile into the car and we head down to what has been branded as "our place" - where the owner knows us by name and the coffee is exceptional and the food is fantastic and we sit and we have breakfast. Or lunch - as it may.

And afterwards, we pile back into the car, mentioning how full we are...and we trot off. Sometimes we shop, sometimes we just go back to Rachel's house and pile up on the bed and watch reality TV until it's late and we're hungry again and we make dinner and move ourselves into the living room for the all star lineup: More reality TV with 'The Two Corey's', a dose of 'Army Wives' and rounding it out with the MVP: 'Rock of Love' with Bret Michaels.

In between, we scour ITunes for as many songs to purchase as we can...we work on homework or stories for the paper or housework - each of us doing our own little things...together.

And when the weeks are long and crowded and I don't get much time to talk to my friends - much less see them - I always know that I'll have that Sunday to look forward to. And it has become my favorite day.

"Girls," Rachel said last week over dinner. "I love our Sundays. So let's keep doing them, okay?"

I have found myself lately a victim of too much retrospect. I keep thinking back to times that no longer exist but in my own memory. Conversations with my grandfather, arguments with my mother, the distance of my father... I keep going back to slinging ice cream with Kim & Andrea and working the same shift as Kim...driving for hours after getting off of work and talking the way best friends do. Spending an insane amount of money at Walmart on things we probably couldn't even find today.

And I miss it. And I wish I could trap them all and give them their own special day. A day for me to revel in all of the parts of them that I love so much. My grandfather's wisdom, my mother's optimism, Kim's neurosis.

Days like these...mean something. They are what mend the wounds that we can pick up throughout the week. They're what heal us and remind us of what it means to be someone's friend - a relationship that comes without the strings and attachments that are packed away with relatives and significant others and even children. And this morning, stepping out of this shower, thinking about all the pasts and all the present tenses - the Sundays and all - I felt this overwhelming sense of knowing. Knowing the little pieces of me that can so easily become lost. Sometimes we only get those feelings for a fleeting moment - like the memory of an old love. We usually can't pull it all in, write it all down, before it's all gone. But we can feel it. And when we do...it is truly healing.

Everybody should have a day.

i see you, you see me...differently

2007-09-20T13:36:00.001-04:00

I remember when it used to be different. Maybe I was different. That's what I'm thinking now...that I didn't notice that you never really noticed me. REALLY noticed. Not the kind of notice where if I didn't show up for days on end or return any phone calls you might think to call the police...The kind of notice where if I'd taken off with just the few precious little things that mattered - you'd notice they were gone. The black journal that sits in my little box of things in the living room. It's still unopened and unwritten in. My grandparents got it for me - a gift to take with me on my first trip to Israel. I refuse to write in it until then. Or the picture of my mother. She's young...and it's one of the only pictures of her without her glasses.

Everything seems so different now. And I know they always end up that way - but it never changes that I never want them to. Seeing you sometimes makes me feel alone. Because I remember what it felt like...being around you. And I can't really shake that maybe we weren't equally present in everything as I thought we were then...but a few seconds later and my mind is telling me that it doesn't matter. It doesn't make you miss something any less.

Today, as I write this, I am exhausted. My legs and back are stiff and ache with sleeping for nights on end on the love seat. I haven't tanned in weeks and I feel pale. I haven't exercised in weeks either and I feel like...an unmovable thing. My mind is desperately trying to keep up with everything else, deadlines, stories, notes, homework. It fails from time to time...forgetting things. Like my homework today - for that matter.

And while - if I have to be plagued with thoughts - I'd rather be plagued with thoughts of whether or not to stop working so much and start writing more...I'm finding myself frustrated that everything is different.

Or is it?

so much to say...er not...

2007-09-15T17:38:00.001-04:00

When I'm not blogging - I'm thinking about it.

When I'm at school or at work or just driving in my car, little thoughts prance through my brain to the "blog" folder. When I'm down, or up or just in between they make their way through the Ponder Too Much Forest to the "blog" folder.

And usually, I love sifting through that folder, picking out which thought to put down on fake paper that is the computer screen. But lately - I'm just leaving them in that folder.

If I had to describe my attitude, my mood, my persona as of late - it would be - hesitant.

I have so many things on my mind lately...that I want to discuss, explore, or mull over...but for some reason - I'm keeping my mouth shut. And keeping it all to myself. I suppose that's what I do when my confidence is lost, when I don't feel very safe saying my ideas or thoughts out loud.

At my mother's house for Rosh Hashana, I clammed up as soon as the first guests arrived. I habitually checked my watch - dying for the minute hand to strike the nine and tell me it was time to go to work. Just a few minutes beforehand, however, while I was trying to keep busy helping my mother with the food - my aunt Vicki cornered me.

"Okay so I need an update on what you're doing," she said. "You seem busy."

When I explained I had to be at work - she pressed me to update her right then and there...and for some reason...I did. Everyone always tells me that my schedule, working nights, writing days, going to school in between, is quite a load. Quite a lot. I never believe them. I figure it's not enough. But when Vicki's first words were, "that's a lot you're doing...that must be tough," I started to believe.

Maybe it is. Maybe it's too much.

Then, though I was determined to clam up, I told her how frustrated I was that nothing was really working in sync. I couldn't get ahead in writing because of my schedule and my schedule couldn't be compromised because it was the only way that I could do everything I was doing. I told her I wanted to write more - work less - but I couldn't figure out how. I told her freelance is not for me. I grow tired of writing from home, interviewing by phone. I want a desk, a newsroom and people to talk to.

In a matter of minutes - there it was.

And to my surprise - she nodded and understood in a way that made me think I was crazy. I wasn't just complaining and being lazy. Maybe there was validity to how I'd been feeling.

When she spoke of projects coming up that could mean more writing for me, the fact that my editor continues to complain that I can't write more for him, that there's a program they're hoping to implement - a grant program - allowing journalistic hopefuls to follow my editor around for a living, learning the ropes, I left the house worn out. Tired. Tired from hanging on to all that frustration. Ready to clam up again - but mulling this time, over the hope of something more.

the memory remains

2007-09-11T13:59:00.000-04:00

People are apt to forget.

That's what we do. We adapt to a new way of being, we fall quickly into a new realm of normal. People come into our lives and leave our lives and we quickly find our step. Jobs are had and lost, we move from house to house, we love, we lose, we start all over again.

Every September 11th, I look through a box in my closet. Newspapers dated Sept. 12th, 2001 with headlines like "WAR" or "AMERICA'S DARKEST DAY" or "ATTACK ON AMERICA". Sometimes I think I should do something...cook a dinner or hold a cocktail party or something to get my friends together on 9/11. To force them to remember too.

But I almost rather my own intimacy with a day that stretched across the world in a single minute.

September 11th wasn't just a day of horrible tragedy. I am almost more drawn to the feeling of being woken up for the first time rather than of being horrifically shocked. Things are always happening in other parts of the world. It's easy to think nothing happens in your backyard. On 9/11 - New York City felt like our back yard.

And I make sure to remember.

I can go through days where the events of that day don't cross my mind. I won't think about the hunter green convertible I passed on an empty small town street, two teenage girls driving in the front seat and a teenage boy perched on the back - large American flag waving in the wind. I don't think about how Kim and I became a tad bit uncomfortable with the rustling corn fields that stood in the back of our office building. My mind raced with imagination. I wondered if suddenly guerrilla forces would pop out from those cornfields, armed, ready.

Days can go by when I don't think about what my aunt must be feeling day in and day out. If she ponders over the choice she made to leave the South Tower when so many were heading back upstairs - just to hit the street as it all came falling down.

Days can go by.

But I always make sure to remember. I read through newspapers, I watch old news footage, look at old photos. I keep 9/11/01 in the back of my mind, tucked away in boxes for this day especially. Just to remember.

There are other days like that. November 3rd is always the day I woke to my Grandfather's last breath. Every day of the winter months bring with their chilly air the absolute wrenching of Brandon's death.

I don't think about where I'm going or not going on 9/11. I don't think about what I've done - or not done. I just think about that day. How it all stopped. How it all changed.

And how it all remains.

this portable life

2007-09-06T13:52:00.000-04:00

My life - it would seem - has gone portable. So to speak.

My computer lost its battle to stupid-computer-syndrome right around the time of my last post. I'm still battling the "hospital" bills (a.k.a. big ass bill that I never paid off). Everything that means something that I had on that computer - photos, notes, chapters, poetry, outlines - and anything else I'd ever written - is sitting on my best friend's, father's portable hard drive. He needs me to come over and sort through it. Burn everything onto cd's so I have it stored neatly away until I can purchase a new computer and fill it up again.

I can't bring myself to sort through it. It's kind of like grieving a lost loved one. I don't really want to take stock of everything that's been lost. And I'm sort of not up to sorting through everything left behind. So my life - essentially - sits there. In portable limbo.

And I say this after talking to my mom on my cell phone. Because I don't own a land line. Nope. All of my calls come with me everywhere. A portable connection to everything.

And as I'm sitting here in the computer lab, I'm listening to Nickelback on the ipod.

Music is a love of mine and here a love is...in portable beauty.

I start wondering if this theme could go deeper. I wonder if it should.

summer lovin'

2007-08-14T13:09:00.000-04:00

Typically, right now I'd be giddy.

Store shelves are stocked with school supplies. Even when I'd dropped out of college and had no plans on going back - this was my favorite time of year. I'd stock up on notebooks and pens and pencils. Of course, I actually used them, scratching passages and pages and short stories into them...only to store them under the bed or in Rubbermaid tubs.

Fall decorations are starting to make an appearance as well...Halloween decorations filled an entire section of a craft store I wandered into over the weekend. The idea of pumpkin scented everything, the colors of oranges and reds and the thought of sweaters would put me over the edge. I'd be so giddy it would be ridiculous.

I'd be praying for rain, making lists of all the fall CD, book and movie releases and shopping for new jeans, long sleeved shirts and fuzzy sweaters...

But for some reason - I just want fall to wait.

I have the nagging feeling that there haven't been enough bonfires. There haven't been enough ice cold beers under a setting summer's sun, there haven't been enough parties that left me woozy and looking for my bed at six o'clock in the morning. There haven't been enough of those.

I'm not a fair or festival gal by nature - but I want fall to wait. There have got to be a few more beer tents to invade, a few more stops along the road to gain composure. A few more nights to forget that we have jobs or rent or responsibilities.

I'm starting to have a thing for summer.

Because I never liked to swim, or wearing shorts for that matter - I usually couldn't wait for summer to be done and over with. Give me a comfortable sweater and rainy days...But if there's anything I've fallen in love with in this life - it's how we can change our attitudes or moods or personalities without even really trying.

Now here I am, not really concerned with the fact that it has been a consecutive 90+ degrees around here. Too hot to do anything outside but sit in the shade and sip something cold. I just want it to stay summer. I want kids to stay outside. I want to enjoy the fact that during the hot, summer months everyone takes a sort of rest from everything. Mental vacations are rampant around this time of year. The days are long...and even bad days have the life of a good, dramatic song...with a revolutionary ending just before bed.

You never know how you deal with things during the summer months...but you deal. You don't ask questions...it's too hot. Just do it and wait for the sun to rise.

Yeah...I could do with fall waiting a little bit longer to come around.

Somebody give me a drink with an umbrella in it.

memoirs

2007-08-14T13:01:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I don't remember the last name of my ex-best friend in junior high.

And for some reason - that's a bit of a relief.

I'm sure it's just a fluke. Right now, there are exactly 1,234,032 things that I'm trying to keep straight in my head and her name must not be one of them. It will probably come back to me at some inopportune moment.

But for now, I'm relieved.

She wasn't the best, best friend. When I look at my friends now - I wonder how lacking in self respect I used to be to let someone suck the energy and integrity right out of me - even at 13. The fact that I can't remember her name, is kind of nice.

But as always - I'm wondering if forgetting people...is a bad habit with me. It's a running joke that when/if I attend my high school reunion it will probably feel more like an odd office party to me than any sort of reunion. I probably don't remember 70% of the kids who took English, Art or Geometry with me.

And there are friends I've neglected to call...because one thing or another gets put before them. Friends I should take time to visit. Take vacations for. See more often. And I don't. And though I could analyze all that and try to figure out why - I just can't bring myself to do it right now.

At the moment, I'm reading a few different memoirs...and am working with my Grandmother on writing down all of her memories. I certainly could never write my own. I barely remember what I'm supposed to do today...much less what I said to who when they did whatever it was they did. I can't even remember their full names.

It was Erica something...

It wouldn't bother me in the least if I never remember that last name. But there are plenty that I'm letting feel as though I've forgotten about them...who shouldn't.

savin' me...

2007-08-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

Things have been - a little busy. And I could write plenty...particularly on how disgusted I was to wake up this morning to CNN exploiting those whose family members are missing in the Minneapolis bridge collapse. It's sad to see well dressed "reporters" shoving microphones into the faces of those who deny everything to hang on to the only hope they can muster that their mom or dad, husband or wife will come home - when the reality is - they very well may not.

But because things are busy - I'm going to play it high school - and simply post the lyrics of a song I'm listening to. Because I like that song. And because there's just too much to type right now.

Savin' Me - Nickelback
Prison gates won't open up for me
On these hands and knees I'm crawlin'
Oh, I reach for you
Well I'm terrified of these four walls
These iron bars can't hold my soul in
All I need is you
Come please I'm callin'
And oh I scream for you
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'

Show me what it's like
To be the last one standing
And teach me wrong from right
And I'll show you what I can be
Say it for me
Say it to me
And I'll leave this life behind me
Say it if it's worth saving me
Heaven's gates won't open up for me
With these broken wings I'm fallin'
And all I see is you
These city walls ain't got no love for me
I'm on the ledge of the eighteenth story
And oh I scream for you
Come please I'm callin'
And all I need from you
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'

Hurry I'm fallin'
All I need is you
Come please I'm callin'
And oh, I scream for you
Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin', I'm fallin'
Hurry I'm fallin'

if i were a horse...

2007-07-24T06:12:00.000-04:00

I've been writing in my journal again. I do it because my brain races at an uncontrollable pace and I need to put my thoughts on paper just so I can sleep. I know that sounds bad. I'm working on that.

It helps, for the most part. A few pages - and I feel like I've written something, that I've cleared my mind. I should probably do it more than I do. I have a journal that filled up quickly with passages and phrases and thoughts scribbled in it both randomly and symmetrically. I remember one night during one of our long visits/talks, I showed it to Rachel. She flipped through it, the black ink bold against the white paper.

"Wow," she said. "This is how your brain works."

The other night, curled up on the chaise and writing calmly - for the first time in a while - I stopped suddenly.

It was such a simple sentence. And it came out unexpectedly. And I stared down at it and wondered...how we can hide or deny certain things about ourselves...and then they just pop out. Unprovoked. Unexpected.

I don't believe in myself anymore.

That was it. That was the sentence. To think that 10 years of therapy is what it takes for some people to say that out loud...

I should clarify - that belief is a funny thing. I have immense faith - when it comes to my religion. And while I know that this blog can seem choppy from time to time and I know that a feature on Mortgage Brokers can only be so interesting - I'm a pretty good writer. I know I got it in there - in me. I sometimes read other people's stories and think, "I could do that...better." I know that.

And I know that I am fully capable of doing anything I want to do. I may not want to do it - but I think I'm capable. Able.

What I'm driving at is - please don't think me as sitting in the corner of my room feeling as though there's no point in going on. I'm not Winona Ryder in "Girl Interrupted".

But if I were a horse - I wouldn't bet on me.

Belief really is a funny thing. How is it that we can believe in something we've never touched, never met, never actually come face to face with - but we can't believe in the person staring back at us in the mirror? How is it that we believe in so many other people all of the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week - but when it comes to us - we think twice. We doubt. We second guess.

I smiled at the sentence. Maybe the road to reinvention is paved with unexpectedly candid admissions. Maybe that road is a track - and we are all horses - running around seeing how fast we can go, sometimes wishing we could start all over out of the gate. Maybe I don't know what it takes to make a confident bet on a good horse - or even know a good horse when I see one... But I think, if I try - I could learn.

heinous

2007-07-24T05:58:00.000-04:00

I see her at WalMart running through pictures on their digital little machine thing...and all I can think is: I want to have a better wedding than her.

It is completely rude and petty and ridiculous - I know - but I can't help it. It's also completely, stereotypically girly - but for some reason - when I get that way... Like when I fret over dry skin, bad hair and a fading tan - I feel a tad bit more real. When I feel girly, I feel real.

It's not always easy. In fact, over dinner the other night, I told Rachel how I spent a majority of my adolescence shopping in the boys section of department stores because I didn't know a thing about clothes at all. And though I still don't - I do know my size in a pair of jeans and I do enjoy a tank top from time to time. And I certainly know when I'm showing off good cleavage. Whether or not that last item is a good thing - I'm not really sure.

But standing there, watching her, it was all I could think...as I moved my cart past her and went to pick up my yogurt and wheat bread. I want a better wedding. I bet she's getting her pictures done here, I though. At WalMart. I can be the most heinous bitch. I know this. So nobody has to feel as though they must inform me of that fact, thankyouverymuch.

I imagined incredibly elegant pictures. Black and white, mostly. None of that sepia crap. I like sepia - but not for wedding photos. And no cheesy reception hall. Something classy. My uncle married his wife in a large outdoor venue in Israel. There were tables set outside around a large stone circle that served as the dance floor. It was beautiful. I think of that. Or a wedding in New York. We'd have photos of us walking through the city.

No cheap, bland, uncreative food. Stuff that's hard to say - but so delicious. Lots of alcohol... And not just a Top 40 soundtrack. Not just the latest summer songs that people dance to - but good, quality, classic stuff. Stevie, Aretha, The Temptations, Al Green, Ella and Louie and as much cult 80's music that I can find.

As I get out to the car, I realize how ridiculous the whole trip in my mind had been.

She doesn't know who I am or anything about me. And I don't know anything about her. Except that my wedding better kick her wedding's ass.

he did it

2007-07-19T17:09:00.000-04:00

He used to call me "Galakult". Why? I don't freakin' know...but he couldn't say my name.

He loved his pacifier. And when my aunt informed my mother that it was necessary to wean him off it, I hated her for about a year. Because he screamed and cried the entire time.

For a majority of his adolescence - he was busy with his friends and I was busy with mine. We never really meshed. But we fought. We fought hard. We lived in close quarters in a full house and I wasn't always very nice to him. I yelled at him a lot and he'd throw an insult my way from time to time. As most brothers and sisters do.

Something changed as he got older...as he made his way through high school. We were able to joke about the same teachers and he was more involved than I ever was. He was into sports. He had friends that he'd kept since he was young - and I admired him for that.

The first time he got in trouble - real trouble - it was probably blown out of proportion. And he was a combination of pissed and embarrassed because of it. He sat on couch staring at the floor in his crisp blue shirt and tie. Poor kid.

The second time he got in trouble - really got in trouble - he became a legend...with a liking for cigars. In the aficionado way - not the Clinton way. Ew.

We started hanging out. Seeing movies. Joking around. It was a little easier once I'd moved out and there was space between us. But I was more grateful than ever that the space was not as wide as it had been with my older brother, who didn't become a friend until we were both so much older.

And when Brandon died - Kim's little brother, who I'd loved as if he were my own - my own little brother emerged. He hugged me and cared for me and became what he is now. My friend. One of my best friends. Someone I can drink with (even if it bugs me when he's drunk), talk to, lean on and best of all - just be who we are. A brother and a sister.

And as of today - he is no longer a civilian. He's something more. Of course...

I knew that all along.

Congratulations on the Air Force, Dustin. I couldn't be a prouder sister.

being j.k rowling

2007-07-19T16:25:00.000-04:00

I found Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone sitting solemnly in a "In Hardback" section one day, years ago on a trip through Barnes & Noble. Or was it Borders? Anyway - it was years ago. The book hadn't seemed to find a place for itself at the time. It wasn't in the children's section - not even in the young adult section. It just was sitting there. A hardback book. That was it.

It was being described at the time as a book that was just as much for adults as it was for children - which had me opening the front cover and the writing was so eloquent - I picked it up and took it home.

At that time, there wasn't much being said about the book, or its main character or its author. I devoured it and the next book and the next. By then, Harry Potter was everywhere.

A little too everywhere.

When the 4th book came out - at a whopping 734 pages - it seemed like a little too much work just to be part of this curious "in" crowd. The crowd that had begun throwing parties for the book's release and dressing up and eating disgusting jelly beans for fun.

So I quit reading it.

Then came the 6th book - and the news that a central character would die. I suddenly felt like I should join the crowd again. But I didn't. When Kim bought me a copy of the book as a gift, I couldn't finish it.

And so now, the world is at its end with the whole Harry Potter thing. And all I really have to say about it all is: If Oprah doesn't adopt me - I'm hoping J.K. Rowling will.

The one thing that stands out about Rowling's work of a lifetime is her voice. She created a single world that is so much different and so much the same as our own - in massive detail. Her writing welcomes anyone who takes the time to flip the book open - in for a warm and wondrous afternoon read. Like a cup of tea. Or a scone.

I see a photo of her and it makes me wish I were British - much like photos of Cate Blanchett or Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson. Intelligent, witty, beautiful. It's Rowling's story that really hooked me. The single mother, sitting in the cafe writing out this massive chunk of incredible imagination. In an interview, when discussing what might be next, Rowling says she just wants, "to fall in love with an idea again."

I've spent the last week jotting down notes as I begin the research for a novel about my mother's family. One thought begets another, and another and another. I make one list which begs for more lists. A diagram of the family that won't fit on the page. And for the past two days - I've been hesitant to keep going. Right on schedule.

The thought crept into my brain today. "You won't get it right," it said. "It's too much for you to do. You don't even know what you're doing to begin with."

Rowling's words resonated. Writers...fall in love. Over and over again. They fall in love with their characters, their plots and subplots, their sentences and everything in between. Authors cry when their characters die. (Remember Emma Thompson in 'Stranger Than Fiction'?)

And so...right on schedule...I'm tempted to back away from the family novel. As cliche as it sounds, I can't really fall in love. It's too much. It's too close, it's too personal and it's just too, too much. I'm afraid of it all - and it's why it's taken so long to start the novel in the first place...why most of my stories sit unfinished in a case in the spare bedroom - and why I take so long to finish a news story that's not under breaking news deadline. You fall in love and then what? Then how to do you maintain? I certainly have no idea.

Still...I tap my pen against the pages of my journal. Because this time, I'd like to give it a good go. Like a school girl with a mad crush on the quarterback - I daydream about sitting in a cafe and just writing until the sun has set and it's time to go home. And something tells me that if I jump all in - I might just learn to fall in love elsewhere.

Or at least, finish the Harry Potter series.

words to live by

2007-07-18T05:45:00.000-04:00

"Love many, trust few - but always paddle your own canoe."

voices

2007-07-17T05:46:00.000-04:00

A writer is not much of a writer at all without his or her voice. Artists search for their expression. They wander out of paint splattered studios covered in color, the hours of the day showing in the bags under their eyes as they try, try and try again to put their visions on a canvas - or carve them out of soft wood - or mold them out of metal.

Writers search for the voice. And if you're not a writer - you don't really know what that means. It is as intimate as the look in the eye of a soul mate. Something that is just known. It is as loud as standing in front of a main speaker at Ozzfest - it is heard. It is as plain as day - or the look on one's face. It is who the writer is.

And I can't seem to find mine.

I leaf through journals and folders of writings always started and never finished...I scribble ideas and scenes and notes and think they sound good but they always fizzle out once I try to expand on them.

I wish I could capture my conversations with you. I wish the exchange could be put down on paper as beautifully as it comes across in an empty bar, or over the phone or sitting in the driveway as the sun is coming up in front of us. I wish it could hold the comfort and the relief and the honesty of those talks. I wish I could put it all down.

I am me when I am there...and I wish I could put it down here.

weddings and woes

2007-07-16T17:54:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, my blinds are closed and it's long after two in the afternoon and I'm still not showered. I am exhausted from the weekend.

The rehearsal for the wedding of two friends (Beth & Bill) was interesting. We all gathered under a relatively hot evening sun at a public park just around the corner from the happy couple's home to practice the walks, the ceremony and all the details in between.

Weddings are a funny thing.

Like an impressive clash of Titans - weddings seem to bring out the beautiful and the grotesque in people. It's all in the danger of the mix. The mix being love and alcohol. Those who have it - show it in those slow dances on the dance floor. And not those cheesy slow dances, like to an 80's hair band ballad - but those classic slow dances - something by Bennett, Fitzgerald or Sinatra. Those who don't - turn to the alcohol and either end up doubled over in a reception hall restroom or someone's back yard. Or worse. I'm proud to say that being one of those who don't have it at the moment - I did not end up doubled over - or drunk for that matter.

But it was a long night. And there was plenty of drama - the details of which I won't go into here - which left Rachel, Brian and I exhausted by the time we pulled into Rachel's drive way at some point after 4 a.m.

I woke up at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday.

Exhausted as I was, I was in no condition to handle the news that my little brother might be leaving for the Air Force sooner than expected. Like, in two weeks, sooner. I began to cry. And I've been trying to force myself not to think about it all day.

I am no stranger to goodbyes. But Dustin's impending departure is different. He is not just my brother, he is my friend. That is aspect number one. Then there are others. I never thought I'd be here when he left for college a couple of years ago. And I never thought I'd be here when he transferred and came back. And when he told me he was signing up for the service - I hoped I wouldn't be here when he finally took off for boot camp. But here is where I am.

When Rachel called that afternoon, she spoke gently as I cried on the phone. She calmed me down and gave me instructions to get in the shower, get to my grandmother's house - where people were already waiting for me - and reminded me that we had plans for dinner...which always makes for a good time.

And quite frankly - it did.

...And by the way: Congratulations Beth & Bill.

lobotomy anyone?

2007-07-12T03:01:00.000-04:00

So I'm currently reading "Another Day in the Front Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside" by Katrina Firlik.

Don't ask me why.

"I know how you are with your things," Leslie said when she asked me why.

What she means is - my tendency to become obsessed with certain subjects based on what I see on TV. When I was obsessed with the television show 'Alias' (RIP Sydney Bristow), I was on the CIA's official website every day. I downloaded huge PDF flies of global terrorism reports and the statistics of different countries. I headed straight to the military history and intelligence subsection at Barnes and Noble. I read "See No Evil" by Robert Baer before George Clooney turned it into a dysfunctional 'Syriana'.

So I like Grey's Anatomy...and now I'm reading a book about a brain surgeon.

I'd like to imagine that if I weren't so squeamish about...well...everythng - I might have gone to medical school. You're surrounded by workaholics. You get to learn a lot. The overall system of medicine is rather straightforward. You don't have to wonder where you're going to work. A doctor's office, a hospital, a lab. Methods might change - for the most part - people will always have one heart, one brain and two ears. Certain things are certain.

And you make a butt load of money.

Firlik starts out Chapter 2 with the following sentence: "Sometimes I wonder why I chose such a strange career."

I'd read the first chapter standing at the "New in Paperback" section at Borders. When I read that sentence - I knew it was a purchase.

I've been wondering why the hell I've chosen journalism - the way the head cheerleader wonders what the hell has kept her with that idiot from 3rd period Social Studies - who thinks sucking whip cream from the can is cool - for so long. At least in medicine - or intelligence for that matter - you're roped into a pretty specific field. For an over-obsessive thinker like me, journalism is like letting your two year old spend an entire 24 hours unsupervised at Toy's-R-Us. Sure there's plenty to entice the imagination and peak interest and it'll be a lot of fun - but the kid is bound to hurt himself.

When I ask myself the question - all I can come up with is: there's really nothing else I want to do. But the world of journalism is annoying and cluttery. It's like walking into the living room of someone who collects an obscene amount of nick knacks. Or salt and pepper shakers. Or Elvis memorabilia. There's the fact that it's an old world - and for the most part - you can't just jump right in. You have to bide your time writing articles about a department store that's a hundred years old in a town nobody has ever heard of because you need proof you can write to get into a bigger publication. And at most bigger publications, the people who write there are already pretty well established - so you have to keep writing articles about shops that sell natural gas - until one of the well established people retires. Or dies. So you can get in. Only there are seven hundred other people waiting for that exact same position.

And there's the fact that more and more the world of journalism is less deserving of respect. Like when it reports that sensitive military documents that should have been classified were easily found online: and then it reports where. Dear terrorists: have at it.

And so I'm more drawn to the world of journalism that focuses not on "late breaking news" but in depth pieces... magazine articles and books.

Like the one people like me pick up on any given day.

unrelated notes

2007-07-10T01:38:00.001-04:00

This weekend I'll be officiating another wedding. A few years ago - a few? A couple? Whatever - 2 or 3 years ago, my friend Stacy was having trouble securing someone to marry she and her fiance. I joked that she probably wouldn't be able to find anyone crazy enough to marry the two of them and would have to resort to picking someone off the street to get ordained online and do the hitching.

She called back ten minutes later and asked that I do it.

Since then, I married my ex-boss's daughter, their friends, Kim & Mike and this weekend I'll be marrying two more friends of mine.

I really wish people would stop asking me to do this.

It's not that it's not an honor. I mean, it is. And it's not hard to do. And I'm not even all that afraid of public speaking. It's just...I don't want to do it anymore.

I'd rather be a simple wedding guest. Bring my present, watch from the pews or fold out chairs and then move along with the rest of the guests to the reception. Instead I'll be in my black suit, in front of all the guests saying, once again, "by the power vested in me by the state of Michigan..."

The bar better have some good gin.

I'm not complaining about this because I'm callous. Actually I'm complaining because I'm anxious. Normally I would not have a hard time stepping into an event for a friend... But I've not been in the best state of mind for the past few weeks - and I am not ready to have to be "involved" in anything.

On an unrelated note...

Yesterday I went to a local church with Rachel's parents. I'd been curious about it for a while, after it had made the local paper on several occasions. I'd never been to a church service before. I wasn't sure what to expect. When we pulled in, I marveled at the church's size. "Wow. This isn't a church. It's a compound." I said.

"Yeah, well," joked Rachel's mother. "Just don't drink the Kool-aid if they start passing it around again."

Inside, the church was huge. There's plenty to describe - but I don't feel like describing it all right now. Inside, there was a stage, TV screens, a band... It looked like one of those churches on television on Sunday mornings - only a little hipper decor. At first, I was impressed. It wreaked of a unique vision. Some guy saw what he wanted in a church and made it come to life. I'd only known the rigid, traditional insides of my old synagogue. The women on one side, men on the other, separated by partitions strewn with ivy. A rabbi at the front whose body moved with the Torah.

This "preacher" made jokes. He had a band that played live and loud. And like I said, at first I was impressed. But as volunteers walked up and down the aisles - almost like security - I couldn't help but think: it's a fine line between faith and ferocity. I was reminded of the Christianne Amanpour interview I'd watched earlier on CNN where religious Muslim figures were fiercely debating Muslim extremists on their "skewed" view of the Koran. Everyone at the church seemed nice and genuinely faithful in their faith. Luckily. Just a flip of the switch, I thought, looking around while the rest of the congregants held their heads down and prayed - and there could be Kool-aid afoot.

Long after my visit to church, a visit to my grandmother and some errand running, I went home. I've said before that Sundays are always full of anxiety. The stuff I haven't done, the week ahead. This time, it went into full blown panic. Sometimes, when on various levels you don't feel like you're connecting with anything or anyone - it can make you feel like you're in a hole. It does me - anyway. Convinced there was something wrong with me, I forced myself to sleep - much earlier than usual. I woke at 4 a.m. in a full blown panic attack. 2 hours later, I fell back asleep.

All of these are unrelated notes - but there you have it. Recounting my little episode to my mother earlier today - I described it as if half of my brain is focused, ambitious and on point. But the other half simply won't cooperate. It panics, stalls and does nothing. There's no balance.

Maybe balance too, rests on a fine line.

pomp and circumstances

2007-07-04T00:54:00.000-04:00

It's the 4th of July...and when I go home and go to sleep tonight, this morning, whatever... I want to do so w/ the The Duke. That's right. I want to sleep with John Wayne.

I want to sleep with John Wayne on television - that is.

Usually when I sleep w/ the TV on - it's TNT. Because there's nothing terribly interesting on at that hour that will keep me awake. I can't sleep listening to CNN. I want to hear it all and watch it all and what not. Infomercials bother me so just about every other channel is out. So this morning, I'll search AMC and hope there's a John Wayne movie on for me to sleep to. There must be. There's nothing more American than John Wayne.

It occurs to me tonight that I have been rather sporadic with my posting. I'm not posting much at all lately. I haven't had much to say. Not that I haven't been pondering quite a bit. Just not interested in writing it all down. Or typing it all out - as it were.

I'm not sure what it is - but I go through these periods of time when I just observe and soak up and mull over everything. Okay - so I always do that - but there are periods where I don't really feel like discussing it. That's all I can think up for the reason why I haven't been posting much.

Today, I saw the mother of an ex-coworker of mine. She is a 70 year old Jamaican woman - who doesn't look 70. As I stood in Kim's kitchen talking to her, I found myself soothed a bit by her voice. While she spoke, in a deep, melodic voice, I searched my brain for meaning in everything she said. That is a problem of mine. I'm pathological when it comes to searching for meaning. I search for it even in small talk. Sometimes, the meaning is only in...not searching. But I do it anyway. Habitual, if you will.

So I stared into this woman's eyes, which were as dark as espresso beans. Her skin looked like baker's chocolate. I say baker's chocolate because it wasn't all glossy and polished, but soft around the edges. Her hands were slightly wrinkled and there were tiny wrinkles by her eyes and mouth. So often Rachel and I talk about the horror of finding those lines on our own faces but I couldn't help but think - they are signs of a long life. I don't mind the old age - it's the getting there that bothers me.

And so she talks about coming to Michigan from Jamaica in the late 60's. And pictures of my Grandma and Grandpa and my mom and all of her brothers and sisters standing with mounds of luggage, on their way to Israel in the 70's flip through my mind. Her voice takes me to anywhere but here. Anywhere but where words fall flat where there is no accent to accompany them.

But you know me - there are always contradictions. As she tells her stories, I float through mine. If I could, I'd splice them all together with a killer soundtrack. There'd just be moments. Sitting on porches, front steps, back decks, in front seats and back seats. There'd be snippets of uncontrollable laughter, uncontrollable tears, heads resting on shoulders, hands holding one another...

Then, when she asked me if I travel, my answer being "not enough", I began to remember how fierce I used to be. Fierce about dreams and plans and ambitions. I wanted to see Peru. Argentina. India. Israel. Ireland. Kenya. Greece. Italy. Countries that I didn't even know existed. I wanted to see them.

I suppose there are times when everyone becomes...unfocused. As extended as this period of time has been...it has been one of those times for me. I don't feel focused. I am not on point. My head isn't in the game, I'm nowhere near the game.

As this completely inspiring, 70 year old woman spoke to me, advised me to save money, to travel, I found myself begging my mind to be inspired. Begging my mind to just do something. Click back over. Click back over to when you felt unstoppable.

It didn't.

So...as sporadic and discombobulated as this post is. There you have it. Tonight, I'll hope to sleep with John Wayne. Then I'll wake up early - prepare what I need to before heading over to Rachel's for the 4th. I'll stare, wide-eyed and mouth open at all the fireworks. Take comfort in friends close by...

And keep looking for inspiration - wherever I can find it.

it's always something

2007-06-27T06:49:00.000-04:00

Surprisingly to me, the best thing I did this weekend - okay maybe not the best thing - but a cool thing at least - that I did this weekend, was let Leslie upload my Gilda Radner Live CD to our Ipods.

Because standing outside tonight at work, frustrated and pondering as usual about work and writing and where my drive and passion have actually gone...I clicked on the Roseanne Roseannadanna track. Because "It's always something" was exactly how I was feeling.

I'd forgotten exactly what the skit was about. Here's a snippit. It's really not as good w/o the voice.

"...As I look out at your sweet, young, tender journalistic faces with those stupid black hats on with the little tassels hanging off of them - I can't help but know what you're thinking. You're probably saying to yourself, 'Hey, I'm a college graduate. I spent a lot of time in school. What does journalism have to offer me? What do I have to offer journalism? What am I gonna write about? What am I gonna write with? Should I use a typewriter or a pencil? What kinda pencil a #2 pencil or one that writes darker? Where do I get these pencils, does my boss buy 'em for me or do I have to buy 'em myself? And if I don't bring the pencils, am I gonna get fired? And if I get fired, I'll starve and if I starve I'll die and then what'll I do?'

Class of '79...for college graduates you sure ask a lot of dumb questions. But I know exactly what you're going through. Because I remember when I first entered the field, I was real nervous. Imagine, if you will, an idealistic, young, Roseanne Roseannadanna. Fresh out of the Columbia School of Broadcasting - looking for a job in journalism. I filled out applications, I went for interviews and they all told me the same thing: 'You're over-qualified, you're under-qualified, don't call us - we'll call you, it's a jungle out there, a woman's place is in the home, have a nice day, drop dead, goodbye'.

But I didn't give up. I mean, I went to see the head of personnel at CBS, the Tiffany network. And he said to me: 'Ms. Roseannadanna, I think you should look for work in the wonderful world of fast foods.'

I was kinda P.O'd at that..."

to my present self...

2007-06-22T06:24:00.000-04:00

Recently I read an article in O Magazine about women over 40 who were asking the question of whether or not there were still dreams to be had at that point in life. Dreams like the kind you have when you're young. Ambitions. Dreams.

And while the thought that there - inevitably - are dreams yet to be had when I'm old is comforting - my mind trailed. To a column that appears in my Women's Health magazine every month: a writer's letter to their younger self.

In those articles there is always a measure of - albeit sensitive - criticism. "You focused too much on men", "You tried too hard to fit in", "You were too consumed with your appearance"... Eventually the older selves tell the younger ones that their lives turned out great - but - they really shouldn't have been worried about all those things.

Follow?

And that's all true. You don't have to be a literary to know that when you get older you look back. And when you look back you realize. You realize the stress you didn't need, the mistakes you made and the paths you could have taken. You don't necessarily regret them - but you see them like a big, flashing, neon sign.

So I just started thinking...maybe as a gift to my younger and present self...I could outline a few of the things I've done right.

You discovered loyalty. As a child you knew one thing: everybody leaves. That was the way things went. Friends didn't keep in touch, parents left - whether in anger and only to return a few hours later - or for good, brothers had other agendas that took them away from you, families crossed oceans or stopped sending birthday cards. But you stuck around. Even when it was hard. You found those few people who you cared about all your own. The best friends you'd ever find. And you were loyal.

You slept on their couches for a few hours at a time, when a tragedy so big, took both of you by surprise and changed her life forever. You stood by them in marriages - and divorces. And fights. And you held their hand until you both fell asleep after a drama filled night. Sat up all night with them when they didn't want to be alone. Dealt the blows of a parent's cancer as best you could - for them. You cheered on birthdays and graduations and new jobs. And you could have done it all via phone calls from another state. But you didn't. And when you'd finally get home, to a deserted apartment - there may have been laundry and dishes piling up - but not resentment. And you did all that before you were 30. And when you're 40, those people will still be around.

You saw things. You may have yet to see a sunset in Havana, the Wailing Wall, or Machu Picchu. But you stood at Ground Zero long before it was cleaned up and ready for memorial. You saw the destruction one generation will never forget. You stood at the edge (even with your fear of heights) of the Grand Canyon - and realized how small you really are. And it was comforting. You saw the pain of the homeless on the streets of a city that was not destined to be your home. You related. You hiked a mountain with a sinus infection. You people-watched in a dozen airports.

You took it all on. He died. Right there. In front of you. Leaving her and all of his kids and grandkids and great grandkids - with a missing piece. And you put everything back in its place, before she came back from the hospital - saving her the sight of death. And then you spoke at the funeral. And then you watched them all mourn. You worried over salary and bills because your money now had a new destination - a house full of people who you had to help. You washed dishes, mowed the lawn, shoveled the drive, helped with dinner, bought groceries, took care of the trash and the laundry and managed, while working and going to school - because she needed you to. And when she was sick, just months later, you dressed her, took her to the doctor and got an ambulance to take her to the hospital. And you only cried in solitude. You'll realize - you can handle crisis better than you initially think you can. And you'll drop everything to do so. And that is admirable.

Your cooking rocked. The one thing you wanted to do when you were out on your own, was to have the kinds of dinners that meant a lot of wine and a lot of procrastinating on the clean up. You entertained and - You. Really. Can. Cook. You made lavish meals for you friends and went through bottles of wine and beer and laughed and talked and had the most fun. And you always have a menu ready in your head - when the opportunity presents itself again.

You knew. A lot of people at a young age wonder what they're supposed to do in life. You knew at 18. In the midst of a rough depression, you were asked to think about "what you're meant to do". That one thing. You knew. The NY Times, the novel, the essays and the journey - those are all ambitions. Writing is the thing, no matter how you do it - or on what scale. You do it. Go you. And while you watched other girls - even, eventually younger girls - give away their worth...you knew yours. It. Wasn't. Easy. But you knew what you were worth. And you knew that you showed that off... When a conversation was had between friends, and it was relayed to you that they all came to the same conclusion: He's going to have to be the best man there is. Flattering - and so needed.

You struggled. Depression didn't leave you alone. It came up time and time again. It had you wearing black all through high school and writing letters to relatives that said you didn't know why you existed at all. It confined you to your bathroom when you were hundreds of miles away from home, a towel shoved in your mouth so no one could hear you cry. It confined you to your bed, a friend threatening to physically come over and pull you out - if you didn't get up. It made you afraid of everything. Afraid to live. Afraid to die. Then - you fought, you won and you kept on going. Each time. You faced the dragon time and time again. And you did so w/o any drugs, w/o any mood elevators. You just dealt.

You worked your ass off. You love your work ethic. You've gone in to work at 7 a.m. and left at 1 a.m. only to go home, sleep and go back and do it all over again. You worked your way through positions that didn't fit you to positions that had you in charge of people twice your age. You knew your job. You did your job well. You handled every problem. Then you took on a new job. Then you took on three. You wrote for three newspapers while working all night to pay the rent - and went to school. And you held a 4.0 for a couple of years - until that bastard got all technical in American Politics which took you down to 3.98. You've consecutively made the Dean's list. You have the student loans to prove it. You've slept on anything but your bed, so you can get up and go on just a few hours of snooze time. You do what's asked of you. You work your ass off. And if you're lucky - you'll do it forever. Because you like to work. It gives you a surprising sense of purpose.

And you partied, you went to concerts, you got too drunk and kissed inappropriate men. And you read some amazing books, watched some amazing films and filled every day with some amazing music. You stayed out of trouble, and you messed up and you were generally good. Nothing too detrimental.

Just as you would wish for your own daughter some day.

what you do to me

2007-06-18T17:54:00.000-04:00

"Hey there Delilah, what'd you put in those burritos/I am sick and I am gassy/And I can't get off the shitter.../La la la.../You're such a stupid little whore/Stupid whore/Oh what'd you do to me?/Oh what'd you do to me..."

...So I sang on the way to Flag Day.

I don't know what it is about Flag Day that gets me. But it gets me so. Every year, in a town about 30 miles away, people get together, grab a band and erect a beer tent in honor of Flag Day. There's baseball games and a parade too, I think, but really all I'm concerned with is the beer tent.

And so...the point is to buy a bunch of beer tickets and stand around an empty parking lot, with plastic cup in one hand and a pitcher of beer in the other. The obvious obstacle is to drink as much as you can and wait as long as possible to pee - thereby avoiding the wretchedness of Port-a-John Row.

I love Flag Day because it's like a circus. There are the obvious attractions - the fights, the stumblers, the obviously-didn't-look-in-the-mirror...ers. And then there are the REALLY bad dancers - who don't realize that they are bumping and jumping and butt smacking air for all to see. But by far - the best - is the crowd spotting. From the outskirts of the crowd, just near the ticket booth and across from where the band is playing - you can get a good glimpse of old classmates - who don't know you're there. They run along gleefully with husbands they think are cuter than they are. They're intoxicated and flashing body parts...or they've changed hair color. Or they look like they've just eaten a tub of cotton candy and washed it down with Jolt and have no problem telling you - about their love lives while spilling beer all over themselves.

Beer goes down quicker and easier at Flag Day. It could be because they're in those plastic cups. Or because you're walking around looking for people and drinking as you're doing it. Or because it's hot outside. Or because it's Flag Day and why the hell not.

After walking through crowds three times - I found Maegin, Chris & Gabe right outside Port-a-John Row. We met up with Rachel and Leslie on the other side of the grounds, where I filled my cup and tried to forget about the drama that had taken place just before we'd gotten there. And for a few hours, anyway, Flag Day was fun. I wandered back and forth from the stage with a deliciously drunk Maegin - who I can't wait to get drunk with again (damn Flag Day for not serving gin!), I made fun of a man in an orange shirt who was hopping and dancing like those crazy people who try out for American Idol or America's Got Talent. (And I saw him the next day while having Father's Day Breakfast with my Dad & brother...)

And I sung that cute little ditty above on the way to the beer tent - which made Rachel laugh.

When I got home, I crashed on the couch since I had to be up early...but I wished I'd have stayed out longer. It had been a night heavily laden with drama - but the fun still peeked through.

Oh Flag Day...what you do to me.

damn good

2007-06-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

"damn the long distance phone call/making a bastard of me/i don't want to relive the lost child story/Cameron is pushing her jesus/maybe she needs to believe/'cuz nobody sticks around/everybody leaves

55 pictures on the wall/i still don't have the guts to call/everyone moved away and we grew up/we slammed the big door shut/55 pictures in your room/100 chances that you blew/if only these pictures could say i miss you..."

- the damnwells

alas

2007-06-14T06:13:00.000-04:00

The guy at the computer place wasn't half bad.

He was cute. His hair was a little too long to be so spikey, but whatever. The tech-support area was rather drab however. There was not much look at or read or busy my brain with while he tinkered with my laptop and waited for it to turn on.

A brief explanation: My computer has been f*d up since I got it. Gotta get something other than a Dell... And I'm still trying to get the damn thing to just work. And I procrastinate on such things. But the recent gift of an IPod has me hungry for internet, Itune crazy access...so here I am.

With the cute computer guy.

So like I said...it was taking him a while. And I was bored...and I couldn't think of anything so I decided to turn girl. Very rarely do I exume extreme girliness. When a bat or a bird is flying over my head, for example, or when I'm forced to see what looks like a really, really, REALLY, scary/gory movie - without the help of any controlled substance.

Either way, I started thinking... What kind of a story would I tell? 'Well I took my computer in to get fixed, we chatted over gigabytes and motherboards and the next thing you know - he's moving in....'

Doubtful. He was a bit shorter than me and that stresses me out. But I thought it anyway.

Then he told me it'd be $250 to fix the damn thing that I'm still paying on.

I told him thank you and left w/ my computer and no plans on coming back. That was the end of that.

When I got to Rachel's I was highly annoyed. Not only did the computer guy and I not work out - but I found out some disturbing school news.

When I got there, my friend Brian pulled out a sledge hammer and offered it up as a solution to my computer problems. In the end, Rachel's father had a quick, cheap solution for me - sealing the deal that I'll never see the cute computer guy again.

I've been going to Rachel's a lot lately and sitting out in the garage until the last possible minute before I have to leave to go to work. It's been a bad idea. I never want to leave. We'll sit in the shade of the garage with the radio on...wait for Mart to get home from work and do what friends do...enjoy each other's company. I love my friends even more in the summertime. And I don't like having to leave just as they're starting to relax...and sleeping when I could be up taking part in the world.

"I don't want to go to work," I'll say to Rachel as we discuss workouts and tennis shoes and the neighbor's stupid house-sitter.

"I don't want you to go to work," she'll say back.

But alas...there is nothing to be done. So I get in my car and wish it were Friday.

see my soul makes it home

2007-06-12T06:07:00.000-04:00

By 6 o'clock Thursday evening - I wanted to be a writer for Rolling Stone.

I was sitting in the lobby of the Ship & Shore Motel which had been converted into the VIP festival hub, which meant a full open bar - someone to crush the mint for your mojito or get you a plastic cup filled with frozen margarita. I poured myself a T&T and sat down.

The press handler and I were waiting on the arrival of The Damnwells - who were playing live for the street party and who were also the subject of the documentary "Golden Days" - which was showing at the festival over the weekend. The film's trailer had hooked me. The Damnwells, out of Brooklyn, have opened for The Fray, The Dixie Chicks and Blue October and had struggled to get their band on a major label. They succeeded - getting the go ahead from Epic to produce their first professional record. Only to be dropped from the label after months of recording, fine tuning and waiting.

The press handler spoke nervously into her cell phone as she checked up on the band yet again - and Alex Dezen, lead singer of The Damnwells, suddenly showed up behind us both.

Frankly, I didn't expect to get much out of the guy. I write for the local paper, and Dezen & The Damnwells had spent less than 10 minutes in Saugatuck. Dezen had a radio man waiting for a five minute spot and The Grand Rapids Press threw in a last minute call requesting an interview...and the band was supposed to go on stage by 7:30.

Before I go on let me just say - now that I've watched "Golden Days" three times and have had nothing but their latest album "Air Stereo" playing in my car all weekend - it's hard not to fall in love with The Damnwells. Theirs is a kind of genuine rock and roll that's hard to find these days. It's in the sound of a guitar case clicking open and shut, the smell of the strings... It's in small bars and clubs where guys like Dezen and his band play under heavy lights... It's on the road.

Instantly I was hooked on the lyrics...delivered soulfully by Dezen - like on "Golden Days": 'Am I in tune?/Yeah I can't hear much but the melody coming from you...' or on my favorite track so far "I Am A Leaver": 'Lock your lips in Eastern time/bleed my heart, I'm leaving mine/see my soul makes it home/I'm high on wretched wine/spinning here alone...'

Back to Thursday night, Dezen, the handler and I walked across town to get the radio man his five minute sound bite. The Grand Rapids Press was rushing to get to Saugatuck before The Damnwells took the stage. Dezen and I sat down to talk.

We talked about the movie... "Ego would probably be the death of any documentary film," he said. "You have to kinda e on the outside."

Dezen seemed nervous - but he was comfortable enough to joke around. I wanted so much to relate to him as he talked about being young - and then getting older - and still trying to find some form of success. Even with the film and the new record and the band's current tour - he was careful. "Whether it takes us to, you know, large success still remains to be seen," he said.

The subject turned to the band itself - and I got cliche - "So how long are you guys going to be doing this?" I asked him. "Forever?" Dezen laughed and was quick to say - more or less - not really. And it was almost heartbreaking. You expect some bands to break up and go off on their own. Soon that Pete Wentz guy will probably find his way out of Fall Out Boy and I'm sure each Pussycat Doll will sign their own record deal. But bands like The Damnwells you just hope will go on forever. You don't want them to grow up.

"The future is very finite," Dezen said. "I think our goals are pretty much practical. When you're more practical about your goals, you can build to bigger achievements."

The band's music, he explained, will "live on beyond us". "That's the only goal that has any real permanence," he says. And he uses the term "insurmountable obscurity" and suddenly I want to be a groupie. I want to be Kate Hudson in "Almost Famous". I want to be a "band-aid". I want to make a list of every band I've every liked and go on the road with them.

"When you play a show," Dezen says. "You leave more of an indelible impression on people. A record is a permanent memory of that experience."

And suddenly I realize - I want a lot of permanent memories.

Dezen says what he wants, is to feel like "at the end of the day, I can walk away."

And I thank him for his interview. And I wish him luck. And I leave him for the rest of the reporters. I go outside on a high and wait for the band to set up. When I make my way up to the stage to take pictures for the story, I stop at the small table that is sitting just a few feet away and throw down $15 for "Air Stereo".

Unable to make the screening of "Golden Days" at the festival, I get a screener to take home. I pop it in and I watch...and then I watch it again. The festival is over. The weekend is over. I don't want to go to work. I want to sit in the shade of Rachel's garage and drink a beer and scribble notes into a notebook and go home to a slate full of stories waiting for me the next day. I wonder if I'll ever really write full time. For a bigger paper. Or a magazine. Who knows. The future is very finite.

the thought & thank yous

2007-06-01T05:32:00.000-04:00

I've gotten some really great gifts in my day. This year, for my birthday, my Grandmother gave me a 1976 print my Grandfather had done of a cafe in Tel Aviv that had been long lost.

Once, I'd written a story that mentioned a boy I'd met during my short stint in Pittsburgh. He and I had talked about travelling and living and being away from home. On my last night in the city he'd driven me home and stopped to have me listen to an Ani Difranco song because of one particular line, "My life may not be something special/but it's never been lived before". I think I might have girlishly fell in love with him right there. For years, I never could figure out which song it was. One Christmas, though, I opened a present from Kim and there it was. The CD, the song. She'd gone online and asked fans on message boards about it to find it.

And there are plenty more, I'm sure. I can't remember them all at this moment... The journal my grandparents gave me to use when I finally made a trip to Israel - which I'm still saving for that trip. The signed copy of an Alice Hoffman novel.

"I'm just really stressing out and I need someone to talk to. And Rachel is sick."

So Leslie said she was coming up to work. She needed someone to talk to. I told her I'd meet her outside for a cigarette & a quick vent.

When I saw her standing at her car, I heard two "hello"s. Rachel came out from behind the Jeep they were parked next to. A bag with a ribbon sat on the hood of Leslie's car.

"I thought you were sick," I said.

Rachel grabbed the bag and handed it to me. "Happy Birthday," she said.

"My birthday was in January," I said back. "And you guys already got me stuff."

"No we didn't," said Rachel.

"I got you something you already had," said Leslie. "That doesn't count."

"Read your card," said Rachel.

There are some nights that play out like a James Cameron film. They are sweet and understated and deserve a incomparable score like the kind Nancy Wilson cooks up.

And so my friends bought me a belated birthday present. Inside, the card was signed by Rachel, Leslie and even Rachel's parents. And inside the bag...was this:

It's not just that I got the coolest present, and something I'd been bitching about wanting for longer than I can remember. It's not even that I'm going to use that thing like crazy. It was the card, really. And the thought. I mean, people always say it's the thought - but really, this time, it was the thought.

And so I couldn't say thank you enough, and I couldn't find the right words, and I kept hugging them. And when I got back into work, I read the card again, and the tears welled up. And then I opened the box...and MYpod - is very pretty. I think I'll give it a name. Yes...definitely.

Name to come.

thanks for the memories

2007-05-30T06:58:00.000-04:00

The picture...is painful.

There I am, trapped in black and white, standing at the end of a group of kids piled on metal chairs and a draft table. They're all gleefully happy to be in this photo of our sophomore year art club. I've got a half smile. I'm in a heavy flannel over a t-shirt, baggy jeans and big black boots.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....high school.

"You look like a kid who was mis-fit into a school she didn't belong in," Rachel says. It is then I realize - misfit could have multiple meanings.

Leslie, Rachel and I were sitting in Rachel & Mart's garage drinking gin and beer and looking through a box of Rachel's old high school year books, notebooks and papers. She'd graduated 1700 miles away and three years prior to us - but all kids in high school look the same. Trapped in a time that is no longer as cool as it felt when it was the present. Still...it sent thoughts of high school running through my brain and I sent Leslie back to her house to get all of our yearbooks.

I never bought any yearbooks. I hated the idea of walking up to people and asking them to sign it. Though I was flattered when I was asked to sign someone else's. But having to walk up and say, "wanna sign my yearbook?" made me feel as uncomfortable as sending back food at a restaurant. Or asking someone out on the date. Because if they secretly don't like you, they'll give a look that's dead behind the eyes and sign something generic like, "Jessica, great to know ya, Bucks Rock! Good Luck!" And if they really don't like you, they'll just say no. And either way, it's uncomfortable.

So there I was, in my Art Club glory. "You really grew up," Rachel says. And I am ecstatic to hear it. "I mean you looked so young, now you look like a grown woman." I push the memory of finding a gray hair recently out of my head - and take the compliment.

Looking through pages and pages of 'so-long-ago' stuff, we all fell into reminiscent moods. Rachel talked about her recent 10 year reunion and Leslie and I talked about dreading ours. Then we decided to get drunk before it, take Rachel with us and crash the hell out of it.

be careful what you wish for...

2007-05-25T06:01:00.000-04:00

Long story short - I wanted tonight to go by faster.

The last few nights of work have dragged on. And it drives me crazy. I'm just distracted enough not to be able to focus on anything else - like research or stories or outlines...but not distracted enough to be...distracted.

Know what I mean?

The last few days, I've barely done anything. And I realize the last few weeks, I'm been barrelling towards burnout. I was in a different city, town, county every other day, preparing questions, holding interviews and coming home achey and tired with just enough time to put a salad together and get to work on time.

So these last few days, I've dragged myself out of bed, stretched, worked out and then stall until it's time to go to work. The other day was good. Getting good reviews on your stories can really help one's confidence. But then you stall at the next story and you're down again. You get offered a shot at yet another paper, with wider circulation - but there's no firm date on when that will start. So you worry in the mean time about how you'll fit it in, how you'll pay for all this insane gas you're burning up driving all over the freakin' state.

My brain...quite simply...is mush.

I stumbled though an phone interview this afternoon. One that could have been insanely interesting - with Logan Smalley, director of the documentary "Darius Goes West", which has been sweeping up awards at film festivals everywhere. Even though the interview was only to be part of a feature, I wanted to take advantage and ask a slew of questions. Instead, I could barely think straight.

I hoped tonight would go by fast, that we'd be busy and I wouldn't sit in that horrible purgatory mode that makes me feel like one of Nicole Kidman's freaky kids in "The Others".

It went by relatively fast...because it sucked. It's not even worth describing. I spend ten hours a night on the phone with truck drivers. I don't feel much explanation is necessary.

My job tends to melt my brain. Hours of insipid questions and other annoyances wind it tight - too tight to manage. When I go home, I'll lay in bed, unsure how to fall asleep. I'll wake up just as tired - even if I spend a solid eight hours under the covers - and it'll take quite some time for my body to stretch itself out of its stiffness.

So much is supposed to happen this weekend in terms of the festival - that if I am able to get any interviews set up for next week (before everyone disappears for the weekend) I don't know how I'll fit everything in. And I'm starting to panic.

Scratch the starting to...

breaking the waves

2007-05-23T05:10:00.000-04:00

I tend to fall madly in love with certain television shows. The ones I love, I love because their problems and issues are wrapped up within neat little time frames. Minutes, hours, seasons. Some people hate that and say it's unrealistic. I am grateful for the lack of realism. It's refreshing.

There's an episode of 'Gilmore Girls' where Lorelai describes her fear that she might never get, "the whole package". Love. Comfort. Safety. That couple life where you come home and there's someone there. And I love that scene because it's dark and the actress delivers her speech and then she goes back home. Because moments like that never last long. They come in waves.

By the time I'd crawled into bed Saturday night, my brain was twirling with the kind of introspection that always makes it twirl. I woke up the next day just a'pondering away until close to 10 o'clock when I found myself sitting on the steps in Rachel's garage. It had been a rough day for repetitive reasons...

"Am I doing alright?" I asked her, my head on her shoulder.

"You're doing just fine," she said.

After a few moments, I choked on the words as they came out. "I'm lonely." I said. The boys were inside, they'd already gone to bed. The radio was playing and the garage door was open slightly, letting the night air in.

I've never been a dependent person. Or that girl who searches self-destructively for a man, falling in love with whichever new face walks into the bar, getting overly or emotionally attached... Yet I can't help but admit that sometimes, it's hard going home. It's hard to face the dishes in the sink that no one else is going to wash, to face the mail no one else is going to pick up after work, to see the empty bed or face the silent apartment on the days I'm down. To listen to everyone else discuss their boyfriends and fiances and husbands.

It comes in waves.

Lately, those waves follow nights when I'm happiest - oddly. Like this night. The day after I'd been out with friends who came together to give me a belated birthday. Who watched me dance and bought me a cake and made my favorite dinner. I got in my car and drove home - knowing there'd be no one to talk to when I got there - and the combination of that with an already weak mind (thanks to the alcohol) made for a horrible mood the next day.

"Don't worry," Rachel said. "You got me." And she told me not to cry, but she cried for me anyway. She hugged me tight and reminded me that no ordinary man would do. It's why I love her. She breaks the wave.

Tonight, I tell Kim about a couple of offers for more freelance work that have come my way - and she sounds excited. Later, she and Andrea call me after one - or two - bottles of wine. I am at work and they have me on speaker - and I feel fifteen again. I am the one cleaning the fryers and the hot dog machine and they are the ones in the back room gossiping and flipping through Cosmo and Glamour.

They repeatedly start sentences with, "When you're a famous writer," and they call me successful and tell me they're proud of me. And I know they mean it. Not like the people who say that and you can't tell if they're being honest. They say it like they mean it. They say it like they're proud. They say it like family. And that is why I love them. They break the wave.

On my way in to work, I take comfort in these - the characters in my own little story. Nobody will ever see them as I do. Nobody will ever capture them as I do.

And having them in the absence of others, I realize, is part of the whole package.

the beetlejuice theory

2007-05-21T20:40:00.000-04:00

Friday night - or I should say - early Saturday morning, a poorly chosen combination of Tequila Rose and Michelob Ultra left me with a queasy stomach and a raging head ache.

I dropped Rachel off at her house and practiced my "I'm-NOT-going-to-throw-up" breathing all the way home. Three Tylenol and a bottle of water later, I curled up under the covers and prayed for a quick trip to sleepydom.

"I'm not drinking tonight," I declared when I answered the phone at noon, still laying in bed.

"Oh," Rachel answered. "You're not? Not at all?"

A few days before, she'd suddenly "remembered" to tell me about a dinner she was throwing Saturday night. No specifics, no need to bring anything, just be there. Those were my instructions.

I arrived with a tired body after a long workout to work out the grogginess that was clinging to my system and a bottle of Vitamin Water.

"Are you dehydrated?" asked my friend Nicole.

"Yeah," I answered. "Don't think I'll be drinking tonight." I use that term with the same superstitious belief as Beetlejuice. Say it three times and it will be true. That was #2.

"What-the-hell ever," cried Nicole. "This is your birthday party, man."

I stared up at Rachel. Five months after I'd contracted a wicked flu on my birthday, shutting down any possibility for partying whatsoever, my friends had gathered up an array of food, a cake, guests and a few bottles of wine for some mock wine tasting and general birthday party fun.

We only got through two mini-bottles of wine before I hit the gin.

living for the weekend

2007-05-14T17:06:00.000-04:00

Lately, it's been taking me well into Tuesday to recover from my Friday/Saturday.

I could blame it on a series of events. Birthdays, visitors and other various - albeit weak - reasons for weekend celebration.

That's probably not it. But regardless, I was once again, found this weekend waking up in a crowded bed with very little logged sleep. The weekends when Rachel works at the lodge, I'm usually up until the wee morning hours. After the last of the drunken townsfolk is given the last call treatment, we talk while she vacuums, wipes down the bar and cleans the last of her dishes. Saturday we rushed around in preparation for Mart's birthday.

After dinner was done, presents opened and the family had gone home for the night - the rest of us gathered in the garage and began pumping music into the cd player. Even though I was exhausted, I cracked open a bottle of gin and we danced to every song.

Eventually, I was lying out on Mart & Rachel's deck...drink in hand...with a spinning sky above me. I know I'm drunk when I start to sit down places. I got up off the deck on my own. But throughout the night, I found a place to sit on the kitchen floor, the hallway, the bathroom floor and the living room. With a toss of my head and the closing of my eyes, Rachel quickly jerked me back up.

I tried to sleep in the middle of Rachel's bed...but I drifted in and out every few minutes. Then came the rumbling of her footsteps at 7 o'clock in the morning. She was the last man standing - or rather jumping - on Leslie and I as we tried to score some sleep in her bed.

Before I knew it - I was stumbling through the house to my car - to take my mother to lunch for Mother's Day.

Last night, I worked out obsessively while watching 'Brothers & Sisters' to avoid my usual, Sunday night panic attack that I could feel coming on. Tired and achey, my mind glanced at the calender on my wall. Interviews all week, phone calls to make and bills to pay. Then I remembered that Rachel is bartending again Friday. I'm sure I can find a reason to celebrate by then.

It seems as quickly as I was analyzing my "I-Want-To-Settle" phase, I jumped into a "Can't-Wait-To-Get-Drunk-This-Weekend-Like-I'm-Nineteen" phase. I'm sure there's a behavior psychologist drooling over that right now.

seriously.

2007-05-08T05:02:00.000-04:00

"Your boobs look amazing!"

Rachel is in her bathroom. Trying to figure out what to wear.

"You're drunk already, aren't you?" I ask her.

"I'm not drunk," she says. "But I've got a buzz."

She sprays me with something that smells delicious and puts something in my hair to hold the curl. When we join the boys out in the garage, she instructs them all to give them a good once over. A couple of feels were even copped.

I'd not yet had anything to drink.

When we got to the bar - I was drinking without thinking. Normally thinking while I'm drinking leads me to be more responsible. To take in account my behavior, my well being... But there was no thinking. There was, "look how quick I finished my beer!" and "look how I can drink beer from a bottle stuck in my cleavage!" and "I just did another shot!"...

Boobs were prevalent throughout the night. The girls were comparing theirs...the boys were watching.

The next day I would feel completely humiliated. And even a little sore.

By 7 a.m. Saturday - I still hadn't gone to sleep. I was supposed to be home, in bed. I was not. I was laying in Rachel's bed.

It sounds porny.

I can assure - it was not porny.

By 7 a.m. Saturday morning, I'd made sure five people were taken care of and passed out - some more than once - scattered about Rachel's house. Mart has told me not to worry about going home, that he'd take the couch and let me take his side of the bed next to Rachel. But I still hadn't slept yet. I'd cleaned up bodily fluids, picked Doritos off the kitchen floor, put beer cans by the sink and helped with soaking up water from the living room floor.

It sounds responsible...but that was just in regards to the aftermath of when we all got home.

After an eventful morning...the events of which can't even begin to be detailed here...everyone was - once again - passed out. We kicked the boys out of Rachel's bed and the two of us finally made an attempt at real sleep. It was around 8:30 a.m.

Leslie - who'd passed out in another room - brought us water and breakfast by 1 o'clock. Then she climbed into bed with us - and the three of us lay there, virtually motionless until 4 pm - when we finally went home.

Sunday, against what could be better judgement, we were all back in Rachel's garage...drinks in hand. We drank them slower this time...and in lesser quantity.

"Why do my legs hurt so much?!" I finally asked.

Details were recounted. The shots, the beer that I spilled all over myself, the boobs that were paraded around anyone present. The groping, the puking, the rest of it all. As we talked about it - I felt sixteen. The kind of sixteen I never was. The kind that stayed out too late, drank too much and partied a little too hard. And it felt good. I looked around the garage at my friends and didn't want to ever leave. We'd go to our jobs the next day, eventually get back into our routines....at least until the next Friday.

We told the stories over and over again. But it's hard to sum it up all here. But that's okay.

The nights you can't sum up - tend to be the best ones.

what it is...

2007-05-02T05:57:00.000-04:00

I don't know what it is.

It could be that I just watched last night's episode of the Gilmore Girls, which had me slightly misty eyed while Lorelai sang Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" to Rory and then to Luke...and I related completely to Rory's minor meltdown while she continues to be rejected by various newspapers.

It could be that I allowed myself to take part in a 30 minute, deep tanning session that left me relaxed, toasty, slightly bronzed and vulnerable to deep thinking.

...Or it could be that Rachel found a gray hair in my head yesterday. And for the record she was completely excited about it. And jot down on that record - it was a very tiny hair. Not even a full gray hair...for the record.

Come to think of it...it was probably that last one that started the whole thing.

Before the infamous gray hair was found, I was already experiencing a full on case of grumpy. The sun was shining and I was forced to spend these last few days inside. Studying for finals. Of course I had the delicious "Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery Channel to keep me distracted...there's something about manly men not showering and driving big boats of the Alaskan waters that mesmerizes me...

Back to the matter at hand...

Suddenly...certain things are starting to irk me. It's no longer about getting a job at a newspaper just to "be a journalist". It's to have a desk. To work my way up. To settle into a place to live where I can start finding my favorite market, favorite bookstore...a routine. So I don't have to worry about where things are going.

I'm beginning to notice wedding rings. I think they look nice on people. Especially men. It makes me wish I had one. A man with a ring on his finger. And I realize that sounds completely ridiculous. Especially for me. Because I try not to let my life revolve around men. Because frankly, relationships scare me. That's why I stay away from them. But there it is. I don't know what it is, but there it is. And it's bugging me...that it's there at all.

Driving back from tanning today, exhausted from all the heat and relaxing, I noticed the house across from Rachel's had a 'For Sale' sign in the front yard. I joked about buying it and living across the street. But suddenly I wished I had a better credit score so I could actually buy the house. Again - uncharacteristic for me. I wouldn't even buy furniture after Kim moved hers out of my apartment. I made Rachel pick out the sofa, love seat and chaise and I made Kim approve the coffee table and end tables - because I am not one to buy things that can't be moved conveniently in zip-up luggage. Kim herself has listened to me for 13 years make constant disparaging remarks against the town I live in, putting it in the dank, dark shadow of Manhattan and Phoenix.

So I don't get what it is. What it is that's making me ache for things I never really ached for before. And want the things I've always wanted in a way I never thought of before.

What it is...I hope...is a really odd phase that will pass really, really soon.

whirly twirly

2007-04-27T05:19:00.000-04:00

My brain is all sorts of whirly twirly.

It always takes me a while to come down after a hectic spell. And almost all of March & April has been hectic and is just now starting to settle...so it's taking me a while to come down.

I've been spending more time in my bed. I switched sides and suddenly am able to wake up at a decent hour. Does anyone else find that odd? Yeah. I thought so.

Today was the first official Spring/Summer Storm. "Spring/Summer" because in Michigan, apparently, we don't have real seasons. It was, after all, just earlier this month that we had snow. But today was all about the tornado watches and even a couple of warnings, sheets of rain and darkened skies. It was all sorts of whirly, twirly. Just like my brain.

When the semester nears its end, ushering in a 3 month break from homework, professors and syllabi, I get fidgity. Mental lists run through my head at lightening speed. Things to do, places to go, goals to reach. A few months ago, my brother and I discussed the end of the semester being the point in time when I would fully dedicate myself to my "plan". The plan being seriously considering a career path. Courting newspapers, putting together both a digital and hard copy portfolio, obtaining letters of reccomendation, getting professional advice. There's the move factor - the idea that I might not be able to get my foot fully in any door unless it is elsewhere...but I can't work on that part of the plan yet. I'm not ready. Too much mental baggage there.

In addition, after my grandmother returns from a trip to Israel, there's the start of our oral history/novel research project. It means spending large amounts of times with a tape recorder and plenty of tape. Getting every bit of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and mother's history on tape. Sorting through old family photos and taking notes on dates and places. It's a project I can't put off - so it will just have to fit itself in.

And there's my fun. I need more fun. This past weekend, spending most of it with Rachel and her family, going to Grand Rapids with my friends - it was real fun. The kind of fun I don't have any more. The kind of fun that needs to happen weekly. So there's that...

And there's my me time. Listening to soundtracks like "Garden State" and "Grey's Anatomy" or bands like Teagan & Sara or The Shins while I hit the gym. Getting achey and sweaty and then going home to shower - with enough energy to clean the whole house. There's my reading list...which I just started tonight:

"Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreau
"Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
"It Ain't All About The Cookin'" by Paula Deen
"Personal History" by Katharine Graham
"The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan
"Overcoming Life's Disappointments" by Harold S. Kushner
"Alice Waters & Chez Panisse" by Thomas McNamee
"How Doctors Think" by Jerome Groopman

And that's just the start of it...

And it's writing season... I have a six stories already on my list for Saugatuck alone...and a set waiting to be dumped on me for the South Haven area and a couple I'd like to pitch to the South Bend area.

Tonight, however, I will partake in a few beers, watch men act like men and most likely scratch themselves and dribble beer onto their dirty shirts...and then go home to study until I fall asleep in bed. Only to wake up and spend the day at my 3rd place - B&N for some more study time.

Like I said. Whirly. Twirly.

it all comes down to this...

2007-04-23T20:53:00.000-04:00

When it comes to moments you just don't want to let go of - the past four days have been full of them.

Then again - sometimes I can be too sentimental for my own good.

The details of Rachel's birthday bonanza started months ago when I decided to put together a photo album/scrapbook as a present. After working closely with her mom, her fiance and her friends & family in Michigan and Arizona and Georgia - her one scrapbook turned into two volumes and reduced me to 4 hours of sleep a night.

But it was all worth it to see her open it up.

After the dinner and the cake and the family had all gone home, Rachel and I sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, Mart on the couch snapping pictures as she unwrapped the two, black, leather bound books. As she flipped through the pages, she cried.

Afterwards, we sat on the couch, exhausted from the day but still unwilling to stop talking about it.

Just 48 hours later, we were sleepily piling into the car with Leslie and Misty for her birthday celebration. A dinner of tapas at San Chez in Grand Rapids, followed by drinks and dancing at The Bob. We had directions, we had a hotel room and we had a case full of CD's.

And we had a really good time.

We feasted at San Chez, ordering rounds of food and even indulging in desserts. When we were full (and some of us warm and happy from the sangria) we walked down the street to The Bob. We took breaks outside on the terrace when things got too warm but for the most part we drank and we danced and sometime after the dance mix of Kelly Clarkson's "Since You've Been Gone" and before the DJ took us back to old school with Kick Saigon's "Love Is On The Way" for a final song, I leaned into Rachel's ear and yelled, "Are you having fun?"

She nodded. Emphatically. Then she threw her arms around my neck and yelled back, "Thank you!"

When we got back to the hotel, we didn't want to go to sleep. I woke to Rachel and Leslie singing "Baby Got Back". When we woke, we hustled out of the hotel room and feasted on breakfast quesadilla's. We may have been cranky and hung over...but we didn't want to go home.

Tonight I talk with Rachel on the phone...and it's clear neither one of us wanted her birthday to end. It seems sometimes, as though those good moments, the ones when you feel loved by your friends and carefree - can sometimes become fewer and farther between. Maybe that's just life. Or maybe that's just if you let them fall.

The massive build up to just one event left the two of us sort of tired, sort of drained and sort of aching for more.

And really...that's how you know you've just had one of the best moments with one of the best friends you'll ever know.

extra! extra!

2007-04-12T05:47:00.000-04:00

"Gonorrhea is becoming more resistant to drugs," Tom said tonight, while the phones were quiet.

"If I ran my own newspaper," I said. "That would be all over the front page."

Headline: GENITAL WARFARE: GONORRHEA FIGHTS BACK.

Hell yes. I can't wait to run my own paper some day.

at the corners of my mind

2007-04-12T05:37:00.000-04:00

For the past month, I've been working on Rachel's "25th" birthday present. (The air quotes are on purpose. You never reveal a woman's age.)

I won't go into specifics, but her present required the use of rubber cement. Something I hadn't thought of or touched since 3rd grade art class.

The fumes - which I did not indulge in - nevertheless left me reminiscent. Thinking back is something I just do. It's comfortable and warm, like wrapping up in a soft blanket on a rainy day with a latte and watching a Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie.

In elementary school, I was an imaginative child. I spent my days in faraway lands and colorful landscapes and stories. My dreams were cartoonish and wild. I believed in the unreal and looked at the real with cynicsm. I loved Fridays, with our parshot readings. Specific stories from the Torah drawn out in stick figure comics. I always added clothes to the characters, colors and faces.

I didn't have many friends...the neighborhood kids were all my brother's age and only hung out with me for so long - and I couldn't really "mesh" with the Orthodox girls who didn't understand why I wore jeans or rode a bike or...played. So summers were spent running to the craft house at the park, buying beads and string and colored chalk.

Some days I spent with my grandparents. The best days were when I was able to sneak into the abandoned building next to the house where my grandpa had set up his studio. Paintings, half finshed, sat on easles and Motzart bounced off the walls. My grandmother would let me draw all day. I was going to be an artist.

As I throw my bookbag onto the bar stool when I get home, shaking the April snow off my boots (Yes. April. Snow. I don't want to talk about it.), I remember the innocence and purity that I had then. Even amidst the psychological damage that was my parents' divorce. I search behind the folds of my memory for more...like a drug. Like caffiene.

When I was in high school, my after school job was at a small, independantly owned ice cream shop in town. Innocence then meant flipping through issues of Cosmo and Glamour and believing in our horoscopes. We ate ice cream like it would never add pounds and fried food like deep frying was the only way to do it. When the air was hot and thick was sat with our backs against the outdoor freezer and let clouds of cigarette smoke hang above our heads. We believed in lyrics. Country songs about love and heartbreak and pop songs about everything else. My drawings became dark and twisted - but detailed. Imagined.

And though I hated high school for a lot of reasons, I loved the hallways. Those few moments when everyone was in a mad rush from point A to point B - but didn't care enough about the bell to let it stop them from stopping for their friends. The last day of classes when it didn't matter what we did, but we walked around with backpacks anyway and tried to have enough respect to sit in our seats for the duration.

Now my imagination travels through words. Through watching. At bars when the neon lights give a glow to our glasses - shots can seem romantic rather than juvenile. A toast to a good time. A long night. A way to prove we can still party like we used to. I tend to wonder what kind of conversation Madison is having when all she can do is say "no" and "bye" and "hi" and make other noises that are sweet and bubbly. History sits between Kim and I on the couch. It's our constant companion. If we really sat down to try and remember 12 years of friendship we would need a big pot of coffee.

My 3rd place might be a dingy, old, lodge where I don't have a thing in common with the patrons - but when they clear out for the night, I have some of the best talks with one of my best friends. Who's turning "25" soon and whose present I've been working on for over a month. I think of one night in particular, when we'd closed down the bar and locked up by 3 o'clock in the morning. And we drove to her house and sat in my car in the driveway and talked for so long, we ended up putting our seats back and staring out the window. Even though the sun had come up, we didn't quite realize how late...or early it had gotten. Not until the neighbor started up his lawnmower and the clock read 9 a.m.

And so these are the things I remember. And when I remember hard enough...that little girl with the colorful and animated imagination...stirs. And wishes for sunny afternoons with nothing but construction paper and markers. And maybe a little rubber cement.

beware children...

2007-04-11T05:16:00.000-04:00

Sleep deprivation is not a joke.

Over the weekend my sleep schedule was toyed with, which left me sleepy whilst I drove my car and wide awake at 3 a.m. after I passed out for only an hour and a half.

In the past 48 hours - I have gotten roughly 8 hours of sleep total. Those hours were spent sleeping on the floor near the balcony door. Which is drafty. And cold.

I am...as they say...exhausted.

But I am not really complaining. This month is going to be one of the most stressful months I've ever had. Every day is filled, my 'to do' list has become obsolete, I'm scraping the bottom of the laundry barrel and in my fridge I have little more than a bag of coffee, one last yogurt and a bottle of mustard. It is - however - the final stretch. This weekend the birthday celebrations will kick off with my aunt Monroe's 40th, Leslie's 27th and they will wind up next weekend with Rachel's "25th". In between - there are chapters to read, deadlines to meet and a final waiting for me on the 30th.

Final.

As in - over and done.

This semester has been hell. And I can't wait for it to be over. Already a list of books are running through my brain to read while no homework is due. I'll buy newspapers daily again - and actually read them. I've been tragically deprived of musical sustenance. My wardrobe is in serious need of an upgrade. As is my bank account. My oral history project...which needs a fitting title...has to start once my grandmother returns from Israel, there are stories to write and newspapers to court. A gym to get reacquainted with on a permanent and regular basis.

And some quality time with just me and my bed.

dear madison

2007-04-05T05:43:00.000-04:00

I was just thinking about you. And I haven't written you in a while.

You're getting so big. Now you have arms and legs that carry you places. You sit yourself in little chairs and make your way down little stairs...You're a real little person now.

I don't have much to say...partially because if I really sat down to write you it would take forever. But I was just thinking...

One day, when you're still little...like you are now...I'd like to tell you stories. The stories about how your mom and I met and became friends and fought and learned to rely on each other... About your Uncle Brandon and your Grandma and your Grandpa... About our drunken nights (we won't tell your Dad that I told you those stories)... About how we've grown up. About how you were born and suddenly all these people were just enamoured with you. About the first time I babysat you and we fell asleep on the couch. You were tiny and cradled in my arm and I felt like I was with one of the coolest people in the world.

People grow old and friends fall out of pictures. Things change, but you should still know the stories. And I'd like to tell them to you while you're little, and don't really understand them. Because it'll look cuter that way.

One day soon, we'll do that, you and me.

silent people

2007-04-04T05:14:00.000-04:00

Years ago, I sat across from Kim in her office and recounted to her a, now horribly embarrassing, IM-style conversation I'd had the night before.

"I told him I loved him," I said, with a tone that was part 'See I am capable of love' and part 'I think I just crapped my pants'.

...

Imagine the sound of crickets.

...

Through countless conversations to follow, Kim would try to explain to me that A.) Telling the man in question that I loved him...was stupid and B.)It was stupid because I didn't really love him. What I did was obsessively crush on him. And I don't think I ever told her she was right.

I don't have many stories of love or relationships. This one, also, is a story of neither.

I thought I had loved him at the time. Maybe. Maybe I knew I really didn't. But I wanted to. Either way... When we were friends I remember him telling me of how he wanted to be a school teacher and settle down. He was all about settling. And I was all about trying to mold him into not being all about settling. Wouldn't he want to go to some inner city and teach kids? Or a foreign country? Wouldn't he want to see the world first?

No. Basically.

I told him that I'd fallen in love with him and then came the great 'silent era' when we were no longer friends because things had just gotten way too dramatic. I'd wondered why I couldn't get through to him until one day...I started wondering...why did I want to? And still sometimes I wonder.

But when I saw him last year, we sat at a bar and I remember my friends boasting that I was actually writing for publication. My name was being printed in papers and he seemed genuinely happy for me. And he'd taken up with friends I didn't know and seemed to be genuinely happy himself and I was happy for him. And then I went home - and hoped I'd never see him again.

I didn't want to jump back into that whole mess of emotion and practically scripted drama. I didn't want to wonder. I just wanted to forget.

Perusing Myspace tonight - as I do when I'm feeling particularly ADD and in need of a click-fix - I noticed a blog post of his that he'd gotten engaged. I see-sawed around sending him a congratulatory note before I decided not to. When it comes to some people - we should just stay silent...people.

He & I would have been one big joke. He's a settler. I am not. He's an idealist. I am not. He was not what I wanted him to be. I am glad I was not what he was looking for.

Still...I wanted to love him. And I suppose when we take stock in life - that's gotta count for something.

sometimes the journey

2007-04-03T05:51:00.000-04:00

Last week, I sat with my Grandmother for a long overdue visit. With a million things ahead of me in the next couple of months, I couldn't stop myself from saying - "Grandma, this summer we're going to start that oral history project." She answered with an enthusiastic 'okay'.

Before I'd even decided to be a writer, my family had said to me that they expected me to write the family book. The book that would tell the millions of stories that passed through dinner conversations, anniversary parties, reunions and chats... The story of my grandparents, their 15 kids, the depression, the civil rights era, the loss, the migration, the wars and everything to follow afterward. Like how three days after my grandparents moved 10 of their children to Israel from Grand Rapids Mi. - they were running for the bomb shelters at the beginning of what would be the Yom Kippur War.

I have an extraordinary family.

So I decided I couldn't afford to waste any more time - and that one day my Grandmother will no longer be with us and all of those stories and their accuracy will be lost forever. So this summer, the taped conversations, sorting through photos and letters, researching geographical histories - all of it will begin. Despite all other goings on. Hopefully it will all lead to a monumental trip next Summer - to Israel. Where it all got interesting. 'Ha shana baya bi yirushalim' - we say every year at Passover. 'Next year in Jerusalem'.

Sometimes the journey just can't wait.

rolling with moses

2007-04-02T05:15:00.000-04:00

Tonight, my family rounded out our Passover Seder with Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On".

Because that's how we roll...you know, with Moses.

This weekend, an unfortunate conversation left me reeling about the perception some have of Judaism. To be completely frank about the whole situation, let me first say - I've dealt with prejudices. Growing up attending a private Hebrew school, I watched as swastikas and other Anti Semitic words and symbols had to be professionally washed off our school's building as well as our synagogue's walls. The "Hebrew" on our buses had to be covered during the 1st Gulf War because people felt Israel was responsible for the war to begin with...and they threw rocks at the bus while kids were being taken to school and back.

But I've never been flat out insulted. I've never had someone from another faith stand in front of me and explain to my friends what a Jew is - and that explanation be less than flattering and literally incorrect. I've never had someone judge me for it on an eye level. A 'here I stand, there you are' level. And it pissed me off. And it still pisses me off.

And what really got me - was that I said nothing. To be polite, because I was at my friend's house, I said nothing.

Luckily it was just two days before Passover.

Passover has always been my favorite of the Jewish holidays. Even though I'm forced to go without cereal, pizza, bread and anything else that consists of flour, yeast etc. etc. The ceremonies can be grueling... One year, my older brother and I slept in the back of my parents' station wagon as we drove to New York to celebrate with my Aunt Laraine, who was going according to an Orthodox ceremony. We started mid-afternoon and didn't finish until well after midnight. Somewhere in between, they allowed the children a little break from the formalities...my cousins sat me in front of the television for a viewing of "Cat's Eye". I'm not a cat person.

There's a lot of ground to cover before you can even think about touching the matzo ball soup. The baby in the river, the ten plagues, the Pharaoh's control issues, the splitting of the sea...

Some of the best Passover moments are when everyone is ready for a good song and nobody cares that we're banging on the table so hard that the wine in Elijah's cup is spilling over the edge and onto the table cloth. Others roll like tonight, when we laugh so hard we can barely get through the Haggadah and fill up on so much food - that we can't even properly finish the Seder.

Unlike Hanukkah - which can be compared with Christmas because they both occur around the same time and involve presents - Passover is just for us. Just for Jews. Regardless of the fact that Easter happens around the same time - there's nothing to really compare between the two. There's something comforting about knowing that while everyone else you know is going about their Monday - Jews are stopping to tell a story so important in Jewish history - and they're partying it up with wine and singing and maybe even Marvin Gaye.

You know, depending on how they roll.

smoke out

2007-03-28T05:50:00.000-04:00

I haven't written anything in a while.

I've thought of writing many things. But alas...I haven't written any. And I am quite unsure as to why.

Hundreds of things to write run through my mind in the course of the day. Letters, lists, journalistic stories, fiction stories, novel ideas, essays, quotes, movies, television shows. In and out of my head they fly.

I should be writing them down.

Even turning them into a list would be helpful. Maybe even inspiring. Ambitious. But I haven't done that either.

Understandably, there are at least a million other things running through my mind. I have a handful of stories I'm trying to write up as soon as possible, I have to decline yet another inadequate writing offer from my editor, prepare for Passover, study for Midterm #2 - YES - Midterm #2, I'm coordinating Rachel's birthday party, trying to coordinate her present, planning for Leslie's birthday party -

Incidentally, yes...I realize the term "birthday party" sounds juvenile.

...I'm hassling with H&R Block, trying to remember to pay my bills, file for financial aid, register for classes, do homework and last weekend I woke up and realized I hadn't done laundry in two weeks.

That could be part of the reason I'm not writing.

It's Saturday. 3:30 in the morning. I spent all of Friday in my apartment and did nothing. I was so full of laziness I was exhausted - and when Rachel never called me back - I decided to go to bed early around midnight. At 3:30, my phone started ringing.

We talked for an hour and then I said, "Dude. We've lost our moxie."

Now I can't stop saying it. We really have lost our moxie. I know I have. None of the things I listed above are out of the ordinary for me - yet they feel entirely unbearable. Work is entirely unbearable these days. My brain is like a caged bird. I don't know why it sings but I don't really care - I just want to get it out of the fucking cage. "There was that bit of us," I tell Rachel Sunday, after beer on the deck. "Where we just knew we were better than some. Don't you miss that?"

I do.

So I'm not doing much of anything at the moment. But last night I concocted a pretty ambitious 'to do' list and crossed at least four or five things off it today.

If I can't find my moxie...I'm gonna smoke the bitch out.

certain uncertainty

2007-03-21T06:14:00.000-04:00

In 7th grade, Ms. Minissee - a tall, lanky woman with a horrible disposition - made us invest fake money in the stock market. She broke us up into groups of four and gave each group $1,000. We were told to invest the money in any company we wanted - and we had to monitor the numbers through the paper for like, six weeks.

I hated this assignment.

I'll most likely never invest in the stock market.

I don't do well with uncertainty. At least - not anymore. Once upon a time, I didn't question. I didn't worry about the decisions I was making, the path I was cutting for myself. I didn't double, triple check my reasoning to see if I was missing any red flags, any dangerous curves. Being uncertain was not a concern then.

As it seems to be now.

I don't do well with making decisions lately. Instead, I go through the motions...I am where I'm supposed to be, on time, without any trouble along the way. I do what I'm told, I don't suggest, I don't offer up ideas, I don't put myself 'out there'. I don't make a decision and figure the rest out later. I just don't make the decision because I figure none of it will work out anyway. This, incidentally, is also why I don't date.

Nobody could tell me which company we were investing our fake money in - was the right one. Nobody could tell me which one would make a zillion dollars. Which one would see success without fail. So I didn't choose. I let the rest of the group choose and just kept track for them.

Maybe it's the realization of the magnitude of my self-reliance. Wordy words = I have no one else to cover my rent. Maybe it's the fear after falling into a place where I didn't want to move, didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want to try...that got me to stop trying.

Decisions...scare me. I don't want to make them. Because once upon a time I trusted my own. And now I don't. Once upon a time I trusted me to take me where I needed to go. To make myself happy...and now I don't.

I want to know for sure. And I can't. But I want to. And so here we are.

st. paddy would be proud

2007-03-19T18:37:00.000-04:00

"Hey Jessica," Rachel yells. "How does it feel?"

She's sitting right across from me, but has to yell over the band. I can't remember what they were playing at the time. It was either before or after we sang along to a cover of "Last Dance w/ Mary Jane"...of course, I sang along with just about every song. But that's beside the point.

"What?!" I yell back.

"Not having to worry about driving us home!"

I smile. Just the night before while she was closing the bar, I told Rachel I didn't think I was fun. She disagreed. But she's supposed to. That's her job.

So we commandeered a designated driver who wasn't me. They put Noelle in heels and made her look glam and when the waitress came over to check our legalities - Noelle flashed her military ID. Without so much as a glance, the waitress started calling her ma'am, I kept asking about how much shrapnel she took in 'Raq and we didn't have to worry about getting kicked out with a minor at the table.

Each of us dressed in green sipped...okay we more than sipped...green beer, beer in bottles and a few rounds of shots. Every song was a good song. Even the cold air didn't damper our moods after closing down the bar. Noelle and I napped on the couch while Rachel & Leslie fake-boxed each other on Bill & Beth's Nintendo Wii - Rachel dropped her cigarette more than once in the back of the Tahoe o' Fun and Leslie earned the title of Kelpto-Queen when we walked out of the 'Dog w/ five souvenir pint glasses...free of charge.

I stood...tired...in Rachel's kitchen, sipping on ice water. Mart was already out, snoring on the couch. It was almost 5 a.m.

"I did good tonight, didn't I?" I asked her. "I was fun?"

"Yes sweetie," she said. "Lot's of fun."

She could have just been saying that because it's her job. Or because I stuck a bottle of beer into my cleavage and was able to drink from it. Or because I kept crying out like Borat "you will never get this" to the bar.

Never know.

'it' is love

2007-03-15T06:22:00.000-04:00

When I left the gym I was warm and achey. It wasn't nearly the workout I'd been doing regularly a year or so ago - but it was a good start. I'd taken up the rowing machine. I like the rowing machine because I can pretend I'm on a boat...or going to an Ivy League school where it seems like they just own their own rivers for row teams to practice on. I pretend that and row my little heart out...

I am really enjoying having no school this week. So much so - it will be hard to register for Fall in a couple of weeks. The upside is a few more Journalism classes being offered in the Fall.

Which is handy. Because I'm in love with my career right now.

It's been slow going. Real slow. The reality to writing is - you can't get a full time gig at a paper without practice. Clips. Proof that you write and you get published. Meanwhile you need a full time job. So you have to do both. And in my case - both and school. So I've been writing a few stories here and there each semester...trying to balance it with my job. Then class is out for the summer and I hit my papers as hard as I can, take as many stories as I can and write up as much as I can.

They're not the kinds of stories I'd love to be writing. Profiles on local businesses, stories about local people of interest, quaint little local happenings... Every once in a while I get a really good one. One that interests me. Sometimes its a random business. Machine shops turn me on. They're like the engineers that work in them. Smart, crafty and not afraid to get dirty and work hard. The Waterfront Film Festival was my highlight last year - because it combined my first love: movies with a free, first official press pass.

Still...it's slow going. I'd rather be writing on more in-depth social issues. Class in America. Race in America. Religion in America. I'd rather be in another country. In Peru writing about the culture. In Israel, writing about the erie calm that seems to be taking place there now. I'd rather be in Arizona - on the border with the minute men and moving through the night with the illegals.

And yet...I'm still totally in love with my career. I just picked up a third newspaper to freelance for during the summer. I researched my editor and found that he is no small town newspaper guy. He was a hard-nosed, star investigative reporter. He knows what he's doing. And last year, he sat me down and said, "You have it."

I didn't know what that meant then. I thought it was a cheesy line that he was giving me. But he's not the butter-up type. He meant it.

And I think to myself...there are people who probably aren't in love with what they've turned into a career. No matter how good they are at it. Really, truly, totally in love with it. And I am lucky that way.

Today, when I heard of a white supremacy pamphlet found on the doorstep of an African American family in a nearby neighborhood - the first thought I had was to pitch the story to an editor. Small town racism. Remind people it's still there. It still goes on even as so many states are starting to issue official apologies for slavery and the federal government is reopening Civil Rights era hate crimes. I could dig deeper. Find out just how prevalent it is around here...

Shit...came my second thought. People may want to kick my ass for something like that. Taunting the KKK. Finally touching something I'd only read about in a history class in high school. That's what Journalism is. Everything you read about - we get to touch it. See it. Know it. It would be worth it, I finally decided. To get my ass kicked for a story.

That's when I felt it. The 'it' my editor said I had. I don't know what 'it' is, but it is apparently necessary.

That's when I knew.

That's when I knew 'it' was love.

oh the suspense

2007-03-14T06:21:00.000-04:00

Me: I'm going to the gym tomorrow.

Rachel: Are you?

Me: No. I AM GOING TO THE GYM TOMORROW.

Rachel: O-kay.

Me: I have to go, tell me I have to go.

Rachel: Okay you're going to the gym tomorrow.

Me: I AM. I AM GOING TO THE GY-

Rachel: Dude. Shut up.

Will I really go? Or will I fall victim to my bed. My sweet, comfy, inspiration of laziness bed...........

degrees

2007-03-14T06:12:00.000-04:00

The day, simply, could not have been more perfect.

I woke up in the cool shade of my apartment. Cool shade because it was 73 DEGREES outside today! The best part about summer is the air conditioning. Sun and comfortable coolness all at once. It's fantastic really.

Rachel called and we chatted over coffee and breakfast for what ended up being a couple of hours. Finally, I got myself into the shower and out into the sun.

Without a jacket.

That's where it got to perfect.

I picked up my first iced latte of the season. Yes, there are rumors of snow showers towards the weekend - but SNOW BE DAMNED. It was 73 degrees outside.

As I settled back into the car, my phone began to vibrate. My mommy is home, her vacation to Texas, over. I missed her. A call from one's mommy does always a good day make.

Iced latte in hand, I rolled down my window and blared The Shins into the warm afternoon. I felt like calling everybody. I called Kim.

"It's beautiful out!" I cried.

We talked quickly and excitedly. I think it was the weather. Inside, my apartment was cool and shady, just as I'd left it. I soaked it up. I crunched until I couldn't crunch anymore. Leg lifted until I could leg lift anymore. Jumped on the Gazelle and swore that this, THIS, was all I needed to get back into my habits. My drink eight bottles of water a day, go to the gym three times a week, work out at home on alternate days, enjoy the feeling of an achey body - habits.

I pulled into work, made my coffee, sat down with a smile.

A few hours later - my body was achey. It felt as good as 73 degrees.

friday night "eye candy"

2007-03-13T06:04:00.000-04:00

There's a reason why they call it "eye candy". Because it looks good on the outside. To the eye. Like candy. Delicious. But then....it might not taste so good. It could crack a tooth. Eventually too much of it could lead to multiple cavities, subsequent dentist appointments, bills, debt, etc. etc. etc.

That's why they call it "eye candy".

Hrm. I think from now on when I say "eye candy" - I'm going to use air quotes.

The "eye candy" sat on the other end of the bar. He was visibly drunk. Visibly drunk = swaying, slanted eyes and smiley. But it worked for him. Because he's "eye candy". So any time he addressed me in conversation - I tried to keep the conversation going. Just to look at him. He tried to get me to partake in a game of shuffle board. I balked. He used the words "finesse" and "touch". I conceded. Luckily, two even drunker people wanted to play a 'championship match'. I was happy to reclaim my seat at the bar.

A sidebar...

Depending on my mood, the company and the overall atmosphere - I can be relatively un-shy. Big men who drink a lot and ogle women they know they'll never have with a healthy sense of humor - don't threaten me. This is how the conversation went to my underwear.

Are you following?

It wasn't dirty. The conversation. Or the underwear. Shit...just follow along.

The point is that my friends and I had a fun, flirty conversation about underwear (according to a man poll at the bar...which = two men...women who wear matching bras and underwear are super sexy) but "eye candy" wasn't paying attention.

The subject then switched over to sex and dating - and big, drunk, horny but harmless guy sitting next to me - called "eye candy" over to our side of the bar.

"C'mere," he said. "This girl wants to make out with you."

It was all very pedestrian and high school and the like. But it didn't bother me as it normally would. Because he was "eye candy" and I could get a closer look.

But then he started to talk. And talk....about how there was no point to life in that drunk, random, rambling, unable to stop, hear other points of view or change the subject way that just becomes....waning. We begged him to stop talking. The words 'shut up' were cried out from all ends of the bar. But it wouldn't stop. And I was his only audience. Horny but harmless guy mouthed an apology to me from the other end of the bar where he'd escaped to. "Eye candy" continued to tell me how there was no point in my being a journalist...because one day the world would wake up and decide it no longer wanted to read newspapers. Or magazines. Or anything.

There's a reason...they call it "eye candy".

unhealthy

2007-03-12T05:35:00.000-04:00

I have an unhealthy relationship with my bed.

I can't seem to wake up out of my bed when I want to. Therefore, when I must get up and function relatively early, to make phone calls for interviews, go on location for interviews, go to class etc. etc. etc. - I sleep on the floor.

But this weekend my bed and I reconciled. Three nights in a row. And now I can't seem to pull myself away from my bed. My bed is tricky like that. It sweet talks me with promises of pillows and comforters and space to stretch - and then quickly turns posessive. Not wanting to let me go.

Frankly, it's unhealthy.

This morning, I woke up to a strange feeling. Daylight Savings Time went into effect and the sun was spilling into my bedroom. It was quiet and the day had already started - which always makes me uneasy. I could remember two years ago, I didn't want to leave my bed. I was unemployed. So I didn't have to. And I didn't want to. Rachel would try to talk me out of bed over the phone, threatening to come over if I didn't at least get up and make some coffee. I felt too heavy to move. Eventually she'd get me up. I'd move to the living room and sit.

When I went out this afternoon, the air was sweet and warm and thickly reminiscent. I thought of getting off work just as the sun started to set. Meeting friends at the bar and the taste of ice cold beer by six. There was still evidence of sun when I'd make my way back to my apartment, shower and lay my homework out on the floor. My apartment would always be busy, whether I lived above a friend's house or with my best friend. There would always be visitors to populate the evening. Now things are quieter. People are busier. I don't keep beer in the fridge anymore.

Last night, after a movie marathon that included 'Babel', 'Stranger Than Fiction', 'Little Miss Sunshine' and 'Half Nelson', I ran my videos back to the video store. It was 11 o'clock on Sunday night and the town was desolate. I was already in the beginning stages of my Sunday night anxiety attack. Thinking about everything to come in the week sets it off. Then I realized, I don't know if I like a quiet town. That's the draw of the city. Noise at 2 a.m. It settles me. To know things are going on.

If I took a lot of time to think about it all - which I usually do - but need to stop myself from doing right now...I would most likely determine that it's all relatively unhealthy.

how long, so long

2007-03-08T18:20:00.000-05:00

I stand in the doorway and look at my bed...which is littered with clean laundry. Underneath the piles of socks, underwear and a few sweaters strewn about there is my neatly placed bedding.

I can't remember how long it has been since I've slept in my own bed.

Which means it has been a long time.

Sleeping on the love seat, the floor...means that I'll get up on time. But now I'm walking around with a constant, wrenching back ache and knees that throb from being scrunched into too small a space. Last night a draft that came in from the balcony door kept me up for half the night. Standing in the doorway I seriously miss my bed. Seriously.

I spend most of the morning hunched over the coffee table, furiously sipping coffee and conducting phone interviews. And I keep thinking: SPRING. The stories are starting to pour in... My editor sent an email the other day letting me know that he may be looking into launching another newspaper in the area - which means new exposure. I can't wait for the air to smell and taste clean and to get up early, jump in my car and drive around. Interviewing. Reporting.

I rush through a shower so I can hit Starbucks before work. Outside it's 30 degrees, but it feels as refreshing as 50. I wish I were driving to the gym instead of work. I'd walk my miles, hit the bike, the rower, the ellipticals until my body ached with movement. I'd jump in the car and sit in the warm glow of Barnes & Noble until they threatened to close. Crawl into my bed and read until I fell asleep.

I would anyway.

"I put a record on/put it on and sing along with you..." sings Unkle Bob.

And sometimes a song catches me just so...and I think of you. It can't be mainstream. Something indie, something unique. Something that reminds me of the coffee place with a narrow shape and dark wood paneling and the beans sitting in open barrels. It was so dark in there. I never got to show it to you. It was my favorite place. For just a short moment in a place and in a time - you belonged to me and I didn't even know it. I see it in other women now. They feel this...connection when they turn the corner and see their husbands, their boyfriends.

You and I had that a lot. Around the corner moments. Around the corner into blue eyes and a square jaw and a bunch of stuff you wanted to tellme. You were my first connection. We had discussions, not banter. You shook your head at my coffee addiction and I suggested you quit smoking.

"And I wish I could see you/Across over seas/And I wish I could be with you/But I'll always believe/...I gotta hold it down/don't let it show"

I like those moments. In the car. When I want to be somewhere else. Just for a minute.

Can't hold on to them too long.

sugar & spite

2007-03-08T05:28:00.000-05:00

That's what girls are made of.

It's also the title of the Unkle Bob CD I was able to find this weekend, which is kick ass and delicious on all levels - but back to the subject at hand...

I have a hard time with girls. Which might sound strange. Considering I am one. But I grew up with two boys. And a father who wanted me to be a boy.

So I can't handle a room full of girls fighting over curling irons and eye makeup and lip gloss and body lotion. Giggles hurt my ears. I don't think it's really bonding to walk around half naked commenting on bras and underwear while you're trying to keep the curling iron straight - or the straightener straight - or whatever.

My two best friends know that I find waxing relaxing, feel like Tom Selleck if I go too long without, like to make sure I smell good at all times and know absolutely nothing about makeup or hair.

Other than that, I like privacy when I shower. I can't sit in a bathroom if there are four girls gathered outside the door - unless I'm drunk. Then all I need is one in there with me to make sure nobody comes in and somehow I muster up the guts to go in someone else's presence. But who doesn't really.

I wandered through the bright aisles of Sephora, the stark bright fluorescent white against lacquered black. Rows and rows of sweet, lovely Philosophy products that I wanted to pack up into several plastic bags and take home. And rows and rows of makeup I didn't know the first thing about. I wondered to myself if I could ever be that kind of girl.

When I think about it - I imagine myself sitting on a floor surrounded by text books, how-to guides and instructional videos. How to be a girl.

Aside from the exterior ritual - I'm pretty much as girly as they come. I believe in romance and commitment and letting boys be boys. They don't need to remember birthdays or anniversaries as long as they make up for it later. They don't have to be sensitive at all times. They're supposed to fix stuff and watch sports and think they're smarter when they're insecure and I'm fine with that because I know better. Different than me. That's what I want a boy to be. And I didn't intend to rhyme.

But back to the curlers...

In the bathroom, where the girls are, curling and powdering and eye-linering, they judge each other's beauty, rate each other's boyfriends and become spiteful towards each other - without saying a word. That is why I have always had a hard time with girls. They get jealous of each other, get moody with each other and get condescending towards each other - then plaster on a smile and imagine everything must be alright in the end. "Fake at the seams", as Unkle Bob would say.

So I cherish little girls like Madison and Alexa, while they're little. Find joy in the innocent and good girls like Noelle and Carmen and find comfort in girls who are sweeter and sans spite - like Rachel & Kim. Because those are the kinds of girls who grow into women and become the best of friends - and help you out with those crazy boys - when you need it the most.

stormy weather

2007-03-01T06:01:00.000-05:00

The thunder actually took me by surprise. Its rumble was deep and serious. The kind where you think everything is shaking outside. Everything but you.

And it made me crave Spring.

I'd forgotten that I figured it would rain today. Early evening I stepped out from the store and the air tasted like water. Cool - but not cold. Rich - but not crisp.

Some of my favorite memories as a child are memories of storms. When the sky would turn a dark blue, then black and green, my father would step outside in his shorts, with a cup of tea. He'd listen to the thunder, watch the lightening and see the rain.

Summer days that drag with air that is thick, hot and heavy - could turn threatening in an instant. A greenish tint to the clouds would turn the entire neighborhood a shade of pukey and mothers would call their children in from games of tag and hide 'n seek. We'd let the screen door slam behind us, my brother and I, as the weather man pointed out green and red squiggly lines on the radar screen.

Storms outside meant playing inside. Using the imagination. Making things come alive, turning blankets into deep, dark caves or putting crayon to paper and thinking everything was just one step shy of Monet or Renoir. When there was a chance of a tornado, we'd gather up downstairs. Taking bowls of ice cream, cans of soda, books, blankets and toys with us. Our "downstairs" was actually partially under ground. So we'd watch the rain and hail pelt the front yard from ground level...the door to the crawl space open...just in case.

Once, we pulled into the parking lot of our first apartment to see the sky split in half. Green on top, black on the bottom. The sirens wailed as we rushed out groceries in from the car and we sat under the staircase in the hall - everyone with their doors open - waiting for word it was okay to go back in again. I remember being disappointed when all was clear and we shut our doors. For a moment everything was open. For a moment there were no borders...in the face of a possible disaster.

Growing up, storms became even cooler. Frightening to drive in - but an adventure all the same. Tornado warnings mean work halted while someone tuned in a radio and we were ushered into a conference room on the first floor...with no real security to it whatsoever. Cloudy, thunderstormy days in the Spring or Summer means movies - and lots of them. Turning the air condition down when the heat and humidity has finally broken - and there's a breeze. Staying in and staying curled up on the couch.

I'm so excited for Spring - I can't freakin' stand it.

Soon the roads will be free of ice and I'll be able to do more reporting, driving back and forth from Saugatuck - watching tourists buy sweatshirts and shot glasses and fudge. I'll drive with my windows down. I'll leave the coat at home. Music will sound better. The air might even smell sweeter.

And there will be a chance for some bad weather - but that's the point.

stay with me

2007-02-23T00:34:00.000-05:00

I asked Rachel to Tivo it. I double and triple checked the times and confirmed that time with her so Tivo would be set correctly. Because no matter what some people may say - cliche, cheesy or not - I'm a huge Grey's Anatomy fan. And tonight was the final of a three episode story arc.

But a big THANK YOU goes out to Canada. The show airs at 7 pm in Canada. I was able to find out what happened before the Tivo even touched it here in the US.

And so I'm going to be reaching ever so slightly here - but I'm going to work the episode in to this post regardless.

All you need to know is that Meredith, (title character), had fallen into icy waters off Puget Sound only to be pulled out all icy blue and near death and stuff.

And tonight - as she floated between living and dying - the issue was that she quit swimming.

"Stay with me, this state of mind..." I scribble into my journal before going to bed. I've been cramming for my midterm and legislative paper for days now. I'm writing notes upon notes, defining term after term and researching like a capital hill intern on crack. Slowly...I remember what it all feels like.

My brain used to function a lot differently than it does now. Nobody understands this. I try to put it into words, explain it, complain about it to people. My brother, my mother, Rachel, my grandmother. It doesn't come out right. My brain used to be like a sterile operating room. Multi-functional, orderly, clean. Several things going at once - no threat of tripping over one or another.

I loved my brain. Love. Love. Real love. I loved that I could stay out at the bar until 3 a.m., go to work at 8 a.m. - actually be productive, make it to class and still pull A's. I loved that I could think in order. Now, things are out of control. My thoughts are literally out of control. They move at a speed I never thought possible. "Like pistons," I read an actress describe in a magazine article. "One idea begets 700."

I don't know how to slow down...but I know that I want to. To streamline my thoughts, the things I need to do. As I roll over and over these legislative terms - they begin to stick. I begin to remember what it meant to prioritize. To have things under control. Discouraged is what I've been for an entire year. I've handled things...an internship, writing assignments, a job, homework. But I have not been present in what it was that I was doing. I was on autopilot. I stopped swimming and began to drown. And that has gotten me nowhere. (And so goes the end of the weak, pointless Grey's Anatomy connection)

The other night, when I cried to my mother who always makes me feel better, she said that deciding to change focus, change mind - is tiring. It is indeed. Exhausting. But if being exhausted means that I'm still changing, still focusing, still trying...I'm okay with that.

in truth

2007-02-17T15:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've been working on a post for a few days. Trying to capture a moment or a revelation or a new epiphany...

But the truth is - I just can't do it right now.

I will be filling my head with - almost - nothing but Michigan state legislation, aspects of Federalism and Citizenship/Immigration for the next two weeks. A desperate attempt to do well on my midterm and finish my legislative memo before venturing out to Chicago next weekend.

Nevertheless I feel like I have plenty to say...as I've been spending a lot of time with my "dark & twisty" side these past few weeks. An odd thing to do for someone trying to think more positively these days. I just can't seem to help it. I finally cried today. A heavy cry that didn't last long enough but hit as soon as I'd heard my mother's voice on the phone.

It all started with this photograph - in a copy of a National Geographic I picked up a couple of weeks ago. There the human heart sits...in a plastic case...plucked from one chest - waiting to settle into another.

I flip to the photo every day. It's inspiring for some reason. When I think about how complicated the human heart must be...it makes me think that maybe we, okay I, don't need to make it even more so.

That's pretty vague...but it will just have to do...until I figure out what the hell Federalism is.

hats. off.

2007-02-15T23:15:00.000-05:00

One year, for Christmas/Hanukkah - my mission was to prove that I was a killer gift giver. The previous year, I'd come up terribly short on my gift to Kim - and a bad gift from a best friend does not look good on a resume.

I wrote her a letter for any and every possible event I could think of until...well...the end. Every milestone birthday, divorce, marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, bad days, any days, moving away, the death of our parents and plenty more. I wrote each of them by hand, on soft, creamy paper and stamped them with a wax seal.

But Hallmark beat me anyway. Hallmark has introduced a new line of cards called "Journeys" that focus on a change in times. Cards dealing with cancer, chemo, recovery, depression, eating disorders and for homosexuals - coming out.

Maybe it doesn't seem like much - but for we writers - it seems like the technical age has threatened to diminish the meaning of what we do. With email - our messages are shorter, with text - even shorter than that. The power of words come not only in their meaning - but how they are used. It's not just reading a book...it's the drive to the store, the wandering of the shelves, opening that hard cover to the first page and discovering words that you don't only relate to - but relate to you. It's not just saying the right thing. It's opening the mailbox, seeing the envelope, reading the inside...

We're never going to get back to long, handwritten letters describing everything we're going through to the people we love most. But maybe a card or two - wouldn't hurt.

My hat off to Hallmark for acknowledging a change in time.

snow. day.

2007-02-14T05:42:00.000-05:00

It makes me want to go home. And get in bed. And watch movies. With hot cocoa...

Blizzard and Winter Storm Warnings are parading across local television stations, parking lots are only navigable by All Terrain Vehicles and it is cold.

Winter just gave a big F*ck You to global warming.

And still...I want a snow day. No matter how old we get, a piece of us will appreciate Winter for the simple nostalgia of The Snow Day. When you go to sleep as white flakes begin to accumulate on the lawn - and you wake to find that school has been cancelled. As adults - we can't lie. A piece of us wakes with that same bit of excitement. That same bit of apprehension - that we'll turn on our local news and see that there is no work today. Work is closed today. It's a snow day.

Alas...it never happens.

Fortunately for me - my college has decided to join the Tri-State area in cancelling classes for Wednesday. Which means that until my workday starts at 7pm. I have a snow day. And I am super excited.

This morning, on my way home from work, I got stuck in my parking lot. Later, I got stuck in Kim's driveway. I nearly fell three separate times. Still, when I finally made my way back home this afternoon, kicking the snow off my boots and carrying my last minute, emergency groceries into my kitchen - all I could think about was that little kid sitting anxiously in front of the television at night - watching the up-to-the-minute forecasts.

One day, I will have plenty of money. And in my closet, will be an abundance of clothes from REI and sweaters from L.L. Bean. I will layer up in the mornings - unafraid of the windchill - strap on water resistant boots and shovel my own driveway. I might even help a neighbor. I'll know all about the importance of anti-freeze and snow tires and my cupboards will be full of boxes of hot cocoa and bags of marshmallows.

I'll respect Winter by exploring it. I'll travel wherever possible, tell stories of people struggling through blizzards or living in constant cold. Alaska, Peru, Siberia - Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. I'll taste salt on my tongue and apply cocoa butter to my skin when it burns from the wind. I'll examine the idea of global warming - for myself. See an iceberg or two.

One day...but until then - I'll have to settle for my snow day.

younger versions of impeccable selves

2007-02-12T13:46:00.000-05:00

Rachel and I spent a chunk of the weekend in the company of her niece and her niece's best friend. They giggled, chortled and snorted. They picked through dresses for their upcoming winter dance and walked ahead of Rachel and I at the mall.

"Do you think we're friends like that?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Do you think people look at us when we're together and just see how good friends we are. Get jealous of our inside jokes?"

"Yeah, of course," she said. "Only we're adults...so we're a little more under control."

Over the years, I've made the idea of friendship as much a priority to me as family. Out of that priority I have made my own family. Like a quilt, it's patched together with memories and inside jokes stitched by a precious few. Watching Noelle & Carmen march through the mall - I could feel the solidity I've felt with my own friends. Kim and I making our way through parties long after we were old enough to drink at the bar. The way other friends of ours sit in the back seat when we go somewhere and she and I sit in the front. The way the balance shifts when she's surrounded by in-laws and I walk into the room. Her back-up, her friend. It's a presence. Certain friendships allow a presence. Rachel and I have it when she's working at the bar, when we're out to dinner with a big group - or just in the car. Those precious few friends are what I am truly grateful for. Sure, I have plenty of friends whose company I enjoy, who - at one time or another - may have been a part of the quilt and were later cut out...because they didn't quite match...and those are not to be discounted...

But at 2:30 in the morning, Rachel and I look over at each other while the younger versions of us fight against sleep under fuzzy covers....Finally they submit and I get into the car, ready for a little sleep myself. I try to think hard on the way home...but I'm too tired. Instead, memories flood forward in my mind, like a virtual photo album.

I have two of the best friends in the world. For that, I am truly grateful.

the secret

2007-02-09T05:28:00.000-05:00

I am not a New-Agey kind of gal. So I don't know if there is anything to this "Secret" that Oprah's all talking about.

But I am a curious gal. And I question a lot. So I watched the film. And I'm still uncertain. It sounds good. It also sounds simple...in a way. It sounds like a way of thinking.

There's probably plenty I could ramble on about in regards to the "Secret"...but it's late and I haven't though about it enough to ramble about it. So take a look at 'part one' yourself...and see if you're interested enough to jump into part two. I was compelled enough to watch it all - and I'm a skeptic.

Either way...a lot of people believe this. Which is kind of interesting in itself. And it has made me question...which is not unusual. What is unusual - is that it has me questioning...what I want.

an old friend and a tollbooth...

2007-02-08T05:37:00.000-05:00

He really was the first boy I ever cried in front of. I was 18 and had just said my goodbyes to my then-best-friend and his was the house I went to. When I cried, his eyes watered.

He was prince of the prom - I was queen - and if I had to drive to the next town over to return movies on a Thursday night, he usually rode shotgun.

And then, like all things high school, he disappeared.

Now he's a news producer. He followed the rules, went to college, finished and there he is, trying like hell to work his way to 'on air' talent. He says he's getting close to burnout. I tell him I'm already past it.

It's always odd to speak to someone after you've not spoken to them for so many years. Especially someone from that dreaded high school age - when we were all a bunch of pathological liars...trying to be someone we didn't even know.

"You gotta love the cards we were dealt," he says when I ask him who would have thought we both would end up two starving journalists looking for our spotlight - or our front page. "Great minds tell the best stories." And we promise to get together when we're in each other's towns. But we most likely won't, because that's the way it goes. Even though - for some odd reason - I'd really like to. We all like to dip into the past from time to time...

And speaking of the past...

If you've never read Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth as a child - it's much better read as an adult. Over the weekend, the book sitting on a shelf at Barnes & Noble, looked so inviting I picked up a copy - since I'd lost my childhood one - to reread and pass along to another young mind.

"What kind of place is Expectations?" inquired Milo, unable to see the humor and feeling very doubtful of the little man's sanity.
"Good question, good question," he exclaimed. "Expectations is the place you must always go before you get to where you're going. Of course some people never get beyond Expectations but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not."

I fear I've gotten stuck in Expectations. I had so many growing up. I've clung to them and refuse to let go. I can't decide which expectations are healthy and which are not. If there really is a land of Expectations - then there must be a bridge called Acceptance that is the only way out.

Now, if I could only get over my fear of that particular bridge.

i digress

2007-02-07T05:18:00.000-05:00

I have been mulling over the idea of acceptance, (Rachel made me put the definition on a post-it and keep it on my bathroom mirror)... I have been re-reading Norton Juster's "The Phantom Tollbooth" before I give my copy to Rachel's daughter and realizing I may have taken up residence in the land of Expectations...

I touched base with an old friend, the first boy to ever see me cry... It was one tear - and I'm not sure if it actually fell. I wore a lot of black in high school and refused to cry in front of anyone. I still wear a lot of black and refuse to cry in front of anyone...but I digress... "You gotta love the cards that we were dealt," he says. We are both starving journalists now...only he is one full time and I am not. I am jealous.

I'm tired and pissed that my school is the only school to stay open in this god-forsaken winter weather that is paralyzing the Midwest.

I am extremely pensive. But I am also extremely busy. I will be sharing a lot more very soon. Maybe even some pics. You never know. I might just get crazy.