rayette

citizen journalism

i hate npr's "perspective" series. it annoys the crap out of me! i am bored out of my mind hearing about your daughter's first stuffed animal and how it's metaphoric for the circle of life. i don't care about your eco-angst and false humility when reporting on your attempts to be a good "green citizen." i don't want to hear your interview with your mom or your grandmother or your twin sister, even if they all escaped from an oppressed regime in 1974. this whole everybody's a journalist thing is so grating i can't stand it - everyone is not a journalist, ok? it's bad enough that many bloggers, early on in the game the underdog upstarts, now often believe their own press and have become completely obnoxious and overestimating of their contributions and incisive "perspective" on our collective state of affairs. but why shouldn't they demonstrate such arrogance? they are getting books deals and nice gigs with time magazine! anyway, i put on the mute button any time one of those boring, insipid "perspective" monologues comes on npr. just as i often do when they play "hip, edgy" music and let it roll on forever in case no one is listening to how oh-so-very cool and with it the producers are. aaargh!!!

daydream believer

these are some things i do on a typical day. some make me happy and some just are always there like your grandmother's bottle of rose milk stashed at the back of the bathroom shelf, impervious to change.

1. make coffee in the morning in my much beloved chemex coffee maker
2. turn on NPR (KQED) on my laptop
3. read my email
4. try not to talk to another human before 10am
5. look at the new york times and the san francisco chronicle
6. look at my friends' blogs and at facebook
7. make a smoothie or whole grain toast with almond butter
8. drink my second cup of coffee
9. review the to do list i updated the night before
10. respond to email
11. take a shower
12. get organized/work ramp-up
13. appt. w/trainer monday, wednesday, friday at noon
14. come home and work all afternoon
15. wonder when/if my simultaneously picky/unresponsive client i hate will fire me
16. worry about my media relations outeach
17. wonder how i am stuck doing so much media relations when i like writing so much more
18. worry that the problem isn't fixable unless i am willing to settle for very little money
19. resign myself to the fact that although i will find a better balance, money is important
20. try to stay firm on a fee estimate but end up caving - owe $ to the IRS!
21. feel sick wondering how i will get everything on my two-page to do list done
22. ask myself if i have been irresponsible to take on so much work
23. think about outsourcing some work, but what if the quality is bad?
24. curse the media for not responding to my clearly brilliant pitch
25. consider curling up in bed, shutting the door, and reading every book in my stack
26. wonder what will become of me
27. worry about my mom, my friends, ex-boyfriends, the possibility of invading iran, another republican pres
28. worry about the market and how much my house may sell for, a year from now
29. think about being irresponsible and buying a ticket to istanbul
30. refrain from calling or texting a someone i slept with three weeks ago and am now not talking to
31. more tedious work
32. go to whole foods, forget self-imposed ban on animal fats and buy bacon for soup
33. make soup; it is delicious.
34. watch "sleeper," the funniest movie in the history of the world, again
35. peruse magazines
36. call my mom
37. work until 10pm
38. brush my teeth, floss, wash my face, put on good moisturizer
39. get into bed
40. read my book (right now "the song of the lark" by willa cather) until i am ready to sleep

air in the spare

"over and over we begin again."

-from kitchen, by banana yoshimoto

i'm sleeping in the spare room again. my upstairs neighbor has rented out her unit. she is moving in with another of our building's residents, to whom she is engaged. they met after we all bought our places and moved in. cute! while everyone in our building loves my (now former) upstairs neighbor, i don't. in fact i think she is kind of an idiot. but she's from south carolina and those women seem to think they can pass on charm. and often, down here, it seems they do. said neighbor was never one for the small considerations like not running the washer and dryer after a certain hour at night, and she had, seemingly, the dexerity of a stroke victim as indicated by how many small items she would drop on the hardwood floors. once, she sent me a text in the middle of the night to apologize if her stereo, which had apparently blasted on suddenly, had woken me up. luckily i hadn't heard the stereo and didn't get the text until the next day.

anyway, whatever. she's rented it out to "a really sweet couple" (her words in an email to all of us), one of whom i met on the night of the tornado. he was sweet, but hello, early 20s and at that age (unlike my former neighbor, who is well into her 30s and you would think would know better by now) you often have nary a clue that perhaps you should take your shoes off if you have hardwood floors and downstairs neighbors. the sweet couple is apparently so enamored of their new home sweet home (wow, their first real adult apartment!) that they've been staying up til 2am getting everything just. so. good for them. i hope they enjoy the place. i know from experience if people are inconsiderate, there's really no point in telling them about it in the hopes that they'll change. i surrender. this building is an early 21st century version of melrose place and if you can't beat it, move into the spare room. it's a small example, and it does annoy me, but more and more i am learning not to resist the flow.

sometimes i wonder though, when are we wisely going with the flow and when are we surrendering to being a doormat? i've never been afraid of confrontation, per se, but more and more i guess it just seems to me that we are all extremely selfish creatures. some of us are better at the social niceties than others, for example i do try to remember birthdays, but i have to say as i get older i expect less, and less, and less and less from people. it is just easier that way. so i blow up the aerobed in the spare room and enjoy restful sleep. is it the barbie dream bedroom experience of all the decorative pillows carefully moved aside before one retires for the evening? no, but it's more humane than seething over someone else's bad behavior.

i'm finding the other areas of my life are transforming under this same attitude of surrender. i'm tired of having expectations of people and then being disappointed when they don't do what i want them to. i'm grateful for the people in my life who are present, who are capable of making a spontaneous phone call, who laugh at themselves, who don't believe the hype of their own lives or think it's ok to tell you, repeatedly, how much money they make. i'm grateful for the people who show me how to stay open, how to begin again, how to show up bathed and dressed, because aren't there days when you just want to close all your petals, roll up the awning, close off the wing for good?

so, to let go also means to purge. my realization that i need to be back on the west coast in the next year or so invigorates but also exhausts me. i look around and see all this stuff that tethers me, makes me not as i wish to be: nimble and minimalist. ok, let's be honest. i will never be minimalist. i love books and certain christmas tree decorations from when i was five and my photos and how could i ever get rid of my beloved simplex tea kettle or chemex coffee maker or the architectural digest from the 1980s with a full-color spread of greta garbo's new york apartment?

so i'm navigating the path slowly and intentionally, taking one closet and armoire at a time, being a little ruthless to prepare myself for, yet again, another move. meeting with a realtor who specializes in my neighborhood to discuss the right time to sell (next winter). sometimes it makes me sad. why don't i have someone in my life who can share the burden and the excitement of hauling everything hither and nigh? why do i always have to do everything myself? i know what it's like to be independent and i know what it's like to untether. i do it with less sentimentality now. in a move, the time in between, when everything's still packed, is exhilarating. but your problems and your bad habits don't evaporate with a new place. they can just be considered in nicer cafes with better coffee and chocolate croissants.

these are all bourgeois ruminations but they are mine nonetheless and it is all to say i am sleeping in the spare room and it is good to be jarred out of complacency and to think, once again, of letting go of what you thought was your life. i've met a lot of wonderful people in atlanta and the move allowed me to launch a business and gain true self esteem in doing so. there were things that were disappointments but i am proud of myself that i gave it a good try here and put down roots for awhile. i've loved my neighborhood, if not my keg loving melrose-place-wanna be neighbors. i've loved the warm weather and the ubiquity of biscuits and sweet tea and massive old oak trees. but i've come to understand that these aren't my people, aren't my tribe. i grew up in washington state where in the 1970s we were already recycling and going to co-ops opened by the unheralded beautiful people in our town, the back-to-the-landers (otherwise known as "those dirty hippies."). it's just not that way here, to say the least, and small minded and self-absorbed as it may be, i want to be where i can see myself and where it would be impossible to ever be the weirdest or the most liberal. where anti-war protests aren't an impolite curiosity, where there is ocean and neighborhoods to traverse on foot without fear of getting struck down by a cadillac escalade. where there is the bulk food section at rainbow grocery. there are ghosts for me in san francisco, to be sure, but if you've lived any life at all there always are and it's better not to run from them. i did that four years ago, unbeknownst to me, and i have no regrets. that was then and this is now.

wait for love

one of my very favorite movies in the world, which i have watched scores of times, is pillow talk, featuring doris day and rock hudson. doris day is the independent single new yorker with fabulous 1960s ensembles. rock hudson is the gorgeous playboy song writer whose little black book is always close at hand. the two characters share a party line and come to verbal spurs when rock is always tying up the telephone wooing a different woman from his coterie of would-be conquests. madcap misunderstandings, and eventually, love, ensue.

at one point in the film, the doris day character is gently rebuffing the persistent overtures of the neurotic millionaire character played (hilariously, of course) by tony randall. he pursues her with cars, gifts, dinners at fabulous restaurants, but she ultimately resists his efforts, telling him she wants to "hit the moon" in love. the movie is so innocent, so frothy, so totally of another time in which automats and hats and glamorous nightclubs still reigned. modern life is more complicated, right? hitting the moon is a fictional trifle that is the province of the unrealistic, perhaps deluded romantic. that's what i often tell myself, anyway, and i don't think i'm alone.

i went on my fourth "date" with the guy i've been seeing last night. it was kind of a watershed evening. he invited me over to his house to play board games. fun. but there was a subtext that another kind of sport would ensue after scrabble was played out. we hadn't really been alone together, and last time he took me home (at about 1:30 in the morning, from a local club), he asked "if we were ever going to make out" when he dropped me off. normally, i would have done everything to comply, because although being pretty sure of myself, a big part of me still wants to please a man - even if i'm not really into him. strange, eh?

long story short, i didn't make out with him. either i'm not ready or i'm not into him. i'm not sure what it is yet but i'm taking my own time to find out. he emails a bit too often and said in an email on monday that he had been "bragging" about me to a friend. i thought this was a little premature bearing in mind how many times we've been out and that there's been pretty much zero physical contact. it says to me, right or wrong, needy and overeager and, perhaps, a doormat. i want someone who's into me, but that early on to me is just a red flag for a lot of potential issues.

there is a scarcity model when it comes to dating that subtly makes you feel have to try to make something decent work even if it doesn't excite you. i think that's pretty cynical and results in some pretty unsatisfying relationships. let's face it, relationships take a lot of time and a lot of work. maybe i am kidding myself at this point with my expectations but you know what, i'd rather dream big and not get what i want than settle for something that doesn't hit the moon. this guy is really cool, and maybe it is my own fears that are driving the car and i will relax over time. to be determined but it feels nice (and surprisingly new) to let my heart lead rather than my head.

mustache love

i'm going out again tomorrow with the guy i went out with last week, who a colleague set me up with. i'm not sure if i'm attracted to him, even though it seems we have many important things in common and i want to like him. maybe that's the problem. he's been e-mailing a fair amount this week. well, we've had a conversation via e-mail. i went ahead and let myself converse somewhat freely. maybe that sounds odd. but in any case i let myself be drawn in. and he's run with it.

lord knows how many times i have been engaged in a flirtation or courtship where my suitor and i have spent countless amounts of hours engaging in that once invigorating, now tiresome, sport of witty repartee. that is what this fellow has been trying, rather enthusiastically, to engage me in all week. i have responded to his rather unoriginal fixation with mustaches with nice conversational girl links to trend stories on mustachery and beards. at certain points i could tell he wanted to take things into an irony one-upsmanship sporting tourney. maybe he is bored at work. i don't know. it's depressing.

being smart is not something i need more of. i was always the girl wanting to be the best writer in the class. and usually, i was. as told to me by my own professors. i was always the one sweating out every word, taking notes on scraps of notebook paper, listening for lilts, sitting in the stacks reading poems by john dos passos, feigning understanding of ezra pound, surprised by my own imagination and wondering where the hell this or that came from. eavesdropping on buses. sticking with a piece of writing because it obsessed me and frustrated me, then exhilarated by what i, myself, had somehow made stick to a page.

i want to tell this guy - i get it, ok? been there, done that, scrubbed and mopped and waxed up the room with it, floor to ceiling, got the big giant a+ with a "just so" at the bottom of my paper in it.

bless her little pea picking heart. she worked so hard.

i want someone who is smart and interesting - enough so that i want to learn more. enough that i forget worrying about how i look when picking up my wine glass because i'm so interested in what he's saying and thinking how cute he is. enough so that i am truly surprised. but more so i want a man who makes me want to share my true, vulnerable, sweet female self. who sees the intellectual stuff and recognizes it for what it is more often than not - for many of us: a defense mechanism, smoke screen, a film noir veil.

basically, i see by my own description i am wanting the luke wilson character in "the family stone." which makes me...the uptight sarah jessica parker character who needed someone to de-ice her heart by taking her out of her head.

i still have hope for this fellow. his is indeed smart, and i can tell he has heart. i just hope tomorrow i can find a way to short circuit the sparring and mustache talk. or, better yet, that he does.

sandwich

i have pms and i'm so crabby and tired of hearing my neighbors expound, play african drums (upstairs neighbors), get testy, have sex (downstairs neighbors), run the vacuum at 11pm, run the washer and dryer at midnight, let the alarm go for 45 minutes at 6am, and stomp (all upstairs neighbors). upstairs neighbors used to be next door neighbors. now they are engaged. cute! i am the most private person in the world. i might start wearing a black veil and big black chanel sunglasses indoors any day now. which means having anyone over to my place (not that that's been an issue in months) poses a problem. i don't want a communal experience. i don't want to know what my neighbors are doing and i don't want them to know what i am doing. the lack of privacy is the only downside of this place, and most days it doesn't impinge too much on my enjoyment of living here. it's not that bad, except when the drumming starts directly overhead when i've just turned the lights out. it's just...odd. i am very intuitive, and i sense happiness from downstairs neighbors (two gay men) and unhappiness upstairs, although i never hear dramatics. it's more of a quiet emanation of unhappiness. i guess being the receptor of this upstairs, downstairs dynamic makes me the unwitting sandwich filling. i am the bologna, the peppered turkey, the pimiento cheese or, when skinnier, the watercress. great!

heart shaped box

so here we are, another valentine's day. i don't really let valentine's day get to me. i love all the pink and red hearts, the excess of icing, the snoopy cards, even the very cute sight of hordes of men lined up at the valentine's day cut flowers station at whole foods last night.

hey, a day early? you've gotta hand it to them for at least a wee bit of advance planning, however predictable the choice of blooms (tulips were tres popular).

one of the best gifts i ever gave for valentine's day was a handmade valentine's box like those we had in grade school. it was lovingly wrapped in red and pink craft paper, layered with lacy red and white hearts, and had a slot in the top for his valentines: a month's worth of favorite quotes i thought he would like.

he loved it. we shared a sweet bond for the love of such little handmade things. for poetry and music and being transported to galaxies far beyond just by looking into each other's eyes. it seemed like a once in a lifetime thing at the time.

after we broke up, i had a premonition that he probably took that box, a vessel for so much sheer unguarded love, to burning man (a favorite annual foray) and let it burn on the collective pyre. a romantic gesture in and of itself that would, knowing him, surely lure a beautiful woman who witnessed his pain.

does it go without saying that smart women everywhere should beware the man who makes himself the center of such dramatic gestures?

we've had limited contact over the years, so i've never asked him if he in fact did this, but something troubling rings true about the likelihood that might have. it was his box to burn, but still. when you realize someone has no clue of all those layers you painstakingly pasted into place, it causes you to reassess everything that comes after.

i had a date last night that went much like many of my dates in recent years. this guy is cool, smart, and quick. he is cute, although i'm not sure that i am attracted to him. yet. i struggle at times with wondering if i have been residing in such a woolly, cossetting cocoon for so many years after that one "perfect" love (that so, so wasn't) that i have lost my ability to relax, connect, appreciate someone who is not what i have in my mind's eye. i worry at times that my expectations are out of bounds. is it shallow that i was troubled by his hair? or that he had one too many glasses of wine? or that he seemed very interested in me?

i want to be in love again, but i don't want to have to talk myself into it. i've grown into a noncommittal strategy that works for me. i don't instantly reject, but i don't instantly decide. i don't label who this person might be in my life. constantly looking for "the one" puts so much pressure on the simplest social interactions. but still, when i got an email from him today wanting to go out this weekend, i said "no." i'm just not that anxious, and there are other plans and bills to pay and a house to clean and rest to take and, unfortunately, work to do that at this point is more important than a guy whose hair troubles me.

sometimes i honestly don't think i will find the guy i am looking for in atlanta. the cheese factor is high, high, high. the use of hair products is ridiculous. the metrosexual sartorial ethic somehow still reigns supreme. maybe i am shallow. and maybe i will get to know this guy and be a smitten kitten. i am open to that, but i am not counting on it. life surprises, and it's important to keep your heart open. i want to berate myself for judging his hair and hold it against myself as a sign that i am a woman who fears commitment (and will end up alone, cats swirling afoot!), but i don't honestly think that's the case. this whole romantic love thing isn't like a trip to anthropologie to find the perfect bohemian-inspired tunic.

love tends to come in and turn your world upside down. i'm ready for that to happen if it's right, but if it's not, i'm more than ok. i want someone who inspires me to make a valentine's box. even if that box is pasted with entirely different shapes than those to which i am accustomed.

conversation heart

i just discovered patti digh's great blog, 37 days. it reminds me of another great blog, the other 334 days by my friend and coach, melissa grossman. both are as compassionate as they are insightful, and both write like a dream.

anyway, patti digh's blog has an incredible essay, "burn those jeans" that i think every woman (or, indeed, man) should read as a valentine to herself. seriously.

enjoy and happy heart day!

who loves ya, baby?

so i am having surgery for the first time on tuesday.

i've never had anything wrong with me, never had anesthesia. i'm terrified of doctors.

it is a "minor" surgery (fun, i'm having an endometrial polyp removed. does that sound geriatric or what?), but in my mind anything requiring you to be put under is serious. i'm worried.

it's brought up some interesting thoughts about who is really truly in my life, for real and not just in the christmas cards. there are friends i haven't told whom i'm very close with, who know in the important ways what's going on with me (col). others who i talk to all the time who know the fine grains of what's going on with me (meg) - from the most neurotic thoughts to the shopping excesses. my mom, maddening and lovely, and always there for me. other new friends who have become closer to me than i had realized. isn't that funny when you realize that the new has some pretty sturdy roots and branches? another, a man i dated and with whom the lines are always blurred, who i've come to realize i would have a hard time doing without. he is my friend, and i've come to rely on his presence in my life in a way that comforts me and makes me draw back at the same time. there are other friendships that have ebbed away or whose promise in reality never materializes into anything you'd ever call up at midnight. it's kind of sad, but life always moves. it's important to be able to look around and keep your eye (and your heart) set not on the door, but on the people who are already in the room.

love is all around

"love is all around, no need to waste it
you can have the town, why don't you take it
you're gonna make it after all
you're gonna make it after all."

-theme from "the mary tyler moore show"

small things can be your salvation.

take, for example, the mary tyler moore show. after a long day in which nothing goes right and people keep piling more on and the technology breaks and the check doesn't arrive and i want to scream at more than one someone and everyone seems to be taking not giving and the media aren't working on my PR timeline and i have cramps and am wondering how i'll pay my taxes and the documents that were supposed to arrive haven't and there is mold on the cheese and i wonder if i'll ever find a man i truly love and who really loves me...there is nothing like red wine, pizza and back to back mtm episodes on dvd.

i love mary's uncomfortable attempts at feminism, her neurotic tendencies, her fabulous 1970's fashion sensibility, and the cast of characters that populate her world: rhoda, lou, murray, ted, georgette, phyllis, sue ann. hasn't everyone wished their best girlfriend (rhoda morgenstern) lived in the same apartment building, handy to discuss matters of the heart or trade costume jewelry for a big date? mary's stammering efforts to stand her ground while being afraid of creating hurt feelings are, despite all the years of feminist gains, often what i for one feel when i "should" be feeling bold, powerful, strong, unapologetic.

i like people with imperfections that show and i like people who care mightily about others and who let that show, too. mary does that and it's why she comforts me when i am feeling all of my foibles and seams are all too visible. and: "the lars affair" has to be one of the funniest television episodes ever made. here is to small things that save the day.