Marathons and Sprints

After several days of warmth and spring hope it is back to the cold gray of late February. I'd actually forgotten spring was coming; I'd gotten so involved in the woodstove and books and hibernating that to come outside and see the optimistic sprigs of daffodils was a literal surprise. This reversion to the cold was expected and yet still manages to be a letdown.

Lately I've been thinking about running. Unemployment is a marathon and not a sprint and I've realized that this is true with most things. We are running marathons. Nothing is a sprint except an actual sprint.

And yet, I think in terms of sprints. I think short-term, I think here and now and do little to consider the future. I do it with relationships, friendships, finances and more; whatever feels good now is what I'll do. I distill my world to 140 character status updates, and do not consider the punctuation marks I use may not be correct. The place I put a period may be where God wanted a semicolon, changing what I thought was an end into merely a pause. I don't look far enough ahead to understand the difference.

The question I struggle with is how am I to learn to live a marathon life in a world that thinks in sprints?

I want to train to pace myself, to work up to the hills and stretch the parts of me that get overworked along the way. I want to understand that the blisters I get are not because I'm a terrible person or a failure, but because I am a person who is running and blisters happen to runners. In the marathon world, I must pay close attention to what I take in and where I'm going. If I'm to run the race marked out for me, training for the long-distance and not the immediate future is the difference between standing at the finish line and giving up before I can see it.

The Whats

I have always had an overactive imagination in the sleep realm. I have fantastically entertaining and vivid dreams (one this weekend involved trying to travel with a narcoleptic pet piglet named Kevin. He kept passing out in strange places and I’d yell, “Dammit! Where the hell is Kevin!?” I can’t even make that up).

I promise this whole post isn’t about a dream; it is about an idea from a dream. I don’t want to hear other people’s dreams either, unless they are hilarious.

One dream I had this weekend involved an arcade video game that I was playing with 8 to 10 people. I made a choice for the game and it said, “RESET." With that choice, all those playing were allowed to see four “resets” in their life: we were allowed to pick four watershed moments in our past that we could relive with a different choice. We were able to live each reset for a half-hour.

How fascinating!

I remember three of the resets I chose—what if I hadn’t moved to Asheville? What if I’d gone to a different college? What if I’d stayed with my first love?

These aren’t questions that I think about in my daily life, they aren’t choices that particularly haunt me. I feel I made the right choice in every one of those instances, and in my dream I had the same conclusion after seeing those other versions of me.

But I am young, and I have many more choices ahead of me, each one greater than the last.

What if that was the case—what if when we turned 25, we were given four resets for our entire life and we could use them when we wanted? Would you want to see those resets? What would you reset? Would you want to see those paths knowing you couldn’t choose that life?

In the dream I had several people who came into my life regardless of the reset path.
I found comfort in that tiny tidbit. I like to think that some bonds transcend choices.

Perpetual Spring

For my friend Leslie’s 32nd birthday a few weeks ago she had a few of us join her in a desperate housewives takeover of a local tattoo parlor. She was getting her nose pierced, others were actually getting tattoos.
I don’t have any tattoos; I went to get one back in 2001 and thankfully the shop was closed or I may have gotten something I later regretted. However this recent trip planted the idea in my head of getting some ink. My reasoning goes back to my previous post: “Sweetness Follows”: I know that this season in my life is so beautiful and delicious but also extremely fleeting and wholly temporary. It will end, and end sooner than I’d hope. I see these little seasons passing and some I handle better than others.
Some end because of distance. Some end because the changes that happen are too great to overcome. Some end because expectations diverge. Some end because hearts can’t agree. Some end because of death.
Whatever the reason, the feeling is the same. There is a sense of loss right now but I am reminded of two plants in this instance: the American chestnut and the resurrection fern.
When the chestnut succumbs to the blight, the stem/trunk is killed off, but the roots remain. Those roots will continue to send up new stalks of growth with the constant hope that a few will survive. Often you’ll observe a large, dead stump, sometimes 75 years gone, with dozens of tiny chestnut shoots surrounding it. The roots don’t know when to give up and as long as they stay firmly planted, those new growths will continue.
The resurrection fern shrivels up and appears dead when resources wane and droughts appear, but at the first sign of rain it unfurls in a fit of lush green optimism. It is as if it lives in this perpetual spring of new beginnings. It is proof that life, promises and blessings are new every morning if we choose to let them be.

Sweetness Follows

It is good to have a theme for a year.

My friends who live in the big blue barn have dubbed it "2010: The Year of Men" which is quite catchy; another friend is calling it "2010: Balls to the Wall". She decided this was going to be the year she said and did what she meant, social norms be damned. I respect her for that.

My theme for the year is Sweetness. I believe that 2010 is the year that brings sweetness; that after the soaring highs and storms and heartbreaks of 2009, 2010 will be the spring breeze. I hold to the confidant expectation that sweetness will follow this.

Sweet is one of the four basic tastes, the others being bitterness, salt and sour. I love the imagery of using those senses to describe our seasons; how every experience has a taste, as if life is on our tongues.

I don’t necessarily have any specific reasons to believe this sweetness will come, I just hope so. Maybe I’m just getting better at owning my hopes and expectations. It isn't here yet, but I know it is on its way.

I have I’ve found my attitude about things changing; I find I’m looking forward more than before. I’ve had to change some habits (people and actions) which is never easy, but those changes have slowly distilled, have begun to take out the salt, the bitter, the sour. And so I go toward the taste of this season.

“Life goes on; I forget just why.” --E.St.V.M.

Calm Before The Storm (o' Change)

I'm sitting on the hours before our country swears in the President we have ordained as the next Lincoln and all I can think about is how I won't have a date for Valentines Day.

Politics are personal, I guess.

In some ways I don't want to see his presidency in actuality. I like the simple idea of hope, rather than the gritty and much less unglamorous world of the day-to-day policy. I'm afraid to get bogged down in the 24-hour news cycle and the politics of Washington and realize he is just like every other politician. I like his speeches; they stay like cologne long after their physical presence has passed. He is an orator of beauty, a man who wears simple and sparse like he invented it, a consummate gentleman who loves his wife and children and isn't shy about being the smartest man in the room. And I eat it up. He could feed me mashed potatoes with a slingshot and if he kept talkin' pretty I'd sit in the corner and take it.
What a relief from the past 8 years of jockdom, bravado, truthiness and preconceived decisions. I almost don't quite know how to respond to a Congress, Senate and President all representing (more or less) my basic civic beliefs. It hasn't been this way since before I was legally allowed to vote.

I want Obama to succeed. Badly I want him to succeed. I want the sacred names of American History to contain him. I want WashingtonJeffersonLincolnRooseveltKennedyObama to be a sentence every American school child knows. I want him to appear on the money my nieces and nephews will carry, replacing that bastard Andrew Jackson on the $20, the new face of hope smiling at you every time you withdrawal from an ATM.

But.

Oh But.

I'm steeling myself against this hope, because Gulf of Tonkin and Watergate and Iran Contra and Lewinsky and Haliburton and Blackwater tell me to do so. Because even the Emancipation Proclamation had ulterior motives than just freeing slaves (read: keeping France out of its support of its industrial partner in the South and drumming up support in the North from seriously pissed voters wondering why their kids were coming home in boxes. It essentially made Slavery the issue). Because we have a government that uses the phrase “collateral damage”. Because loving the current America requires a certain level of forgetting America, like agreeing to date a boyfriend that has time and again let you down.

I want to believe that Obama will change the Presidency but I can't help worrying that the Presidency will change Obama.

Best and Worst of 2k8

Here it is, dear readers: the summary of the year that was (at least in my life). It's time to give out the best and worst awards for the 2008 season. Events: just be honored you were remembered. A lot of events don't even get that chance.

Worst/Weirdest Holiday: New Years 2008.

Key: A night meant to be low key starts with martinis and SNL review and then shifts to “WHAT!?” night with a South African UN pilot, a literal party bus and a stop at Jacks. Whadda way to start a year.

Best Hungover Activity: New Years Day 2008.
Key: Wes invites Robin, Jane and I to play on the segways at the chamber of commerce.

Best ending to the best ruse I've ever managed to pull off:
Preface: Hatcher never wanted to meet my friend Paul. She'd heard so many wonderful stories about him that she thought he'd never live up to the hype and thus chose to actively try to not meet him, even while they lived in the same town and had a few friends in common. Paul and I thought this could not be. So in November 2005 I secretly had Hatcher and Paul hang out for an entire night without Hatcher ever realizing who he was (we gave him the alias “Pete Griffin” from 'Family Guy') and had an entire room of our friends play along (big shout out to KK, Maskey, Grafto, and Hollaback), calling him “Pete” the whole night. Poor KK met him as Pete and we didn't get to tell her the truth til after Hatch left. At one point during the night Hatch said, “Spooner, your friend Pete is hilarious! Why haven't I hung out with him sooner?” I told her it was because he was only in town for one night. Giggle. By the next summer Paul had moved to Wisconsin and Hatch thought herself victorious, never meeting Paul.

Jump ahead to the very tail end of 2007, two years later. I finally get the courage to tell Hatcher the truth, that she had actually met, hung out and LIKED Paul, that we introduced him under an alias and it had gone swimmingly. She burst out laughing. She didn't remember the night but was so impressed that the ruse had lasted as long as it did. In the long run I guess we both won. Hatch doesn't remember actually meeting him and I can say for certain that they did meet and she liked him. All's well that ends well. Best ruse ever.

Worst Wardrobe Malfunction: Alana and David's wedding, Weaverville, NC May.
Key: My strapless dresses zipper breaks as I step out of the car to walk into the wedding. Leslie tries to fix it and instead makes it worse. “Run. Run, Spooner. Run home and change; there is no hope for this dress.” (and I loved Natalie Knauer's “You don't have a spare dress in your car?”) and thus I speed out the front door of the church holding my dress together. Awesome.

Best “That's what she said” moment: Margarita's couch, Asheville, November.
Key: Margarita had wedged her beer bottle into the couch cushions and it was listing slightly, we both grabbed the bottle at the same time to keep it from spilling only to have it spill all over me. I said, “That's what I was trying to prevent and that's what just went all over my butt” and she fell off the couch laughing.

Best Concert Experience: Three Girls and Their Buddy, Asheville, January
Key: Robin and I splurge and see Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller play an acoustic round-robin set that sent shivers down my spine. Such beauty.

Best Team Name: The No Talent Ass Clowns, Nate and Anthony's dart team at Barley's Tap Room, March.
Key: It was about 6 hours into the 11 hour tour and they did end up defeating the Hot Bizzos quite handily.

Best Holiday: Fourth of July, Asheville.
Key: BBQ and water balloon fight at Clark and Nancy's house followed by a trip to the Shop to sit on the roof and feel the fireworks rumple. The night didn't end until past 1am and it was just one of those times where life gets perfect for a moment.

Best Spontaneous Trip: Fleeing to Charleston, SC for one day, April.
Key: Katie, Margarita and I forgo other obligations to spend 8 hours in the car to lay on the beach for 5. Standing at the Battery, smelling the ocean after dinner with Squirrel...then guilty Liz Phair sing-a-long on the way home.

Best Not-Holiday Holiday: Valentines, Schmalentines with Doug, The Biltmore Estate.
Key: Doug and I have not-Valentines Day fun tooling around the Biltmore Estate before a picnic at the lagoon (no wine corker so...leatherman! Floating cork!) and then the wine tour. The day doesn't end until 10pm and I'm reminded how much fun we have.

Best Competition: Sangria-palooza, West Asheville, June.
Key: Four kinds of sangria, four kinds of liquor for each, taste tests and everyone wins. Margarita gets double points for making hers with moonshine. Also: I bring giant steak that almost kills me.

Worst Weird Injury: My Lifetime Movie Channel bruise, Asheville, May.
Key: Playing cups with friends and frisbee strikes my left forearm so forcefully I had a literal welt and kept a bag of frozen peas on it the rest of the party. Looked like I was beaten.

Best/Worst Project: The tiling of the floor, Jane's House, Asheville, most of the year.
Key: Started the kitchen and hall in June. Finished in December. Speed isn't a strong suit of my home improvement skills.

Best Visitors: Murphy and Caroline come to AVL, March.
Key: Oh jeez. Bad Idea Girls take on the dirty soouf. “Woohoo! This will not suck!” “Good ol' Muffintop! Muffintop, Tennessee!” Gunticles. The 22oz of PBR for Kings. The 11 Hour Beer Tour with Nate, Cara, Anthony and Margarita and the other characters who roamed in and out.

Best Not Celebrity Run in: The Eli Manning Doppelganger, Jack of the Wood, March
Key: Caroline, while blatantly flashing her engagement ring, getting hit on relentlessly by Eli Manning look-a-like during the final 2-3 hours of the 11 hour beer tour.

Worst Departure, Person: Rita Marroquin moves back to Austin, September.
Key: After 8 years Rita goes home and all of AVL wonders what to do in her place. She is sorely missed!

Best Futile Effort to Get Adults to Focus: Attempting Trivial Pursuit at Rita's Martini Party, Asheville, July.
Key: The group was several martinis in, Rita didn't know what was going on, Nate looked like a J.Crew model and Margarita did eventually lose her pants.

Best span of 48 hours: Running around Paris with Erin, France, October.
Key: “We are young and happy!”, Jeff in IT and Stacey, “Escargot? More like Escar-GREAT!”, surrendering to the French Police when he just wanted to give us roses, the Cafe in the Tuleries, Satire doesn't translate well into Hebrew, Pulling on a wine bottle on our picnic at the Rodan, The bunkbed of death. That whole trip could be it's own page of bests.

Best Wedding Moment: Bridesmaids and Jess, Liz and Phil's Flat, London, October.
Key: Three bridesmaids sitting on the edge of a bathtub, soaking our tired feet and passing around a bottle of champagne.

Best Day: August 5, Hot Springs, NC and Cradle of Forestry, NC.

Key: Katherine and I head to Hot Springs, to lay in the river for the afternoon. Go home, change, and head out on a trip with Jonathan to Mt. Pisgah where we sipped wine, talked, watched the sunset then put the cushions on the ground and looked at the stars. It was close to perfect.

Worst Ending of a Streak: My first speeding ticket, Albemarle County, VA, September.

Key: I had never even been pulled over before and I was actually excited. Then the cop and I talked about weddings and baby showers for five minutes. Also: managed to get another speeding ticket on Christmas Eve. Super.

Best New Tradition: Bouchon All You Can Eat Mussels night, Asheville, Summer.

Key: Delicious mussels, Nate and Margarita, a bottle of muscadet, summer in the city.

Best Lists:

Dangerous Breakfast Cereals (Alpha Bits-of-broken-glass)

Potentially Embarrassing Songs on your iPod

Dramatic Movies made funnier had they starred Tom Cruise in place of Tom Hanks (think: Philadelphia)

American Car or American Gladiator (Woohoo McSweeneys)

Best Moment During Endless Presidential Campaign: VP Debate Drinking game, all over, September.
Key: Friends from across the country texting and drinking on words and phrases like, “You betcha”, “Maverick”, “Joe Six-Pack”, “Scranton” and “Ya know”.

Best Homemade gift: My birthday cards from the Birch girls, Paris VA, May.
Key: two phrases: “I know Spanish OK” and, of course, “Tony I am Tony”.

Moment I was proudest of my country: November 4^th, 2008.
Key: Watching people of all ages be that inspired and hopeful and teary-eyed, dancing in the streets, hugging, yelling in joy. Also: it as Andrew's birthday so that was a fun too.

Most Improved Holiday: My Birthday, West Asheville, May.
Key: playing cups, grilling out, laughing at my friends, a bag of bugles, a secret side trip, feeling loved.

Best Idea that actually became a reality: Road trip to Canada with Jonathan, August.
Key: over 20 hours in the Westy to spend two days in Canada. The afternoon spent wandering around Pittsburgh, the campsite on the shore of Lake Ontario, waking up to the New River Gorge, laughing hysterically while getting soaked on the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls, just one of the best trips I've ever taken. Also seeing the sign “Christian Warho” and then joking about what a Wareho would be.

Best Text Message (tie): “I think of Taps every time I eat popcorn or throw up in a bush.” -Caroline.
“I kinda just want to get drunk, dress up like a fairy and throw glitter on people. But I want to do that pretty much every day.” --Margarita, talking about Halloween.

Best Story That Didn't Happen to Me but is Nonetheless Hilarious: Doug's bicycle road-rage incident.
Key: Just read it here. Amazing.

Benign and Yet Incredibly Odd Moment of the Year: The gas crisis in September, waiting in the queue for 45 minutes to pay almost $5/gal, the creepiness of seeing cars abandoned for want of gasoline. All of Asheville shut down because no one had gasoline.

Favorite Daily Entertainment: Prank War at Work with Andrea and Andrew, all year.
Key: started with stickers, then went to bigger stickers, then involved cars, then involved a plastic dinosaur, then involved wrapping a car in seran wrap, fake birthdays and a loaf of bread I am still a little bitter about.

I'd have to say that the almost weekly camping trips I took with Jonathan over the summer were also a huge highlight of my year, as was getting to know Katie Baker, Kelly Lynch's quick AVL stop, having Slappy the weiner-dog for over a month, wandering around London with Stephanie, getting my ass handed to me in Scrabble by Beth Williams, nights spent at the guitar shop playing darts and talking, and much more. I had probably the best year of my life so far in 2008 and I can't wait to see where 2009 takes me.

Quotes:
“I'm gonna eat the shit out of these pickles.” --Margarita to herself, Quizzo, January (about her fried pickles)
“Hold my coat, he loves Jesus.”--New Years
“Isn't your email address Ihaveaclawfoottub@ashevillesingles.com?” Wait...a conflict tub? What is a conflict tub? --Me and Nate
“Why does it have to be the American Indians? Why can't it be the Mexican Indians? I mean we wore shoes...” --Margarita, on Moccasins.
“Fine. They are playing your favorite song right now but if they play “She's like the wind” you are dead.” --Doug trying to psyche me out while playing darts in newspaper pirate hats.
Frumpy is the new black
32 is the new 25
Ham: It's like meat cake.

And So 'Tis

The last month and a half of 2007 has slurred into 2008 without so much as a wink or a nod. Within the fury every week seemed to have some sort of festival, party, concert, wedding or other event requiring attendance and alcohol and each morning after brought the same promises of exemption and remorse, like my 19 year-old self woke from the slumber of time to rage again. I thought she was long gone. I was wrong.

I don't pretend to be changed. I only hope I have.

I think there is this subtle self-destructive fiber in my being that awakens without impunity or regard and tears through the careful structure that has formed around me as if good decision-making was nothing but balsa wood and chaos something akin to a tornado. This fiber is stronger than I care to admit, and her influence is far-reaching. She is the beast inside me and she rages at her whim.

I am happy to see 2007 go...God am I happy to see it leave. It was one of the better years in this decade, but I am still glad to see it fade into history. My hopes for 2008 involve stability, a sense of community, and the ever-elusive idea of putting down roots. I think this town is my home for an indefinite time period; just what that entails and where that takes me (in all aspects) is what will be unfurled within the winds of the year.

How's that for a post of mixed metaphors.

Being a Better Mousetrap

One of the things I was most excited about when I got into Syracuse was the opportunity to go to a school where no one knew me. I could start afresh. I could be whomever I chose. To a girl who graduated from high school with the very same people she met the first day of kindergarten, this notion of reinvention was mythical and fantastic. I had great visions of who I'd be.

I got to Syracuse and began my reinvention. I spent the next three years trying to undo the damage the new me had caused. Not all of my reinvention was detrimental, some of it I have happily kept. But much too much of it was me in costume, a fascade of a person who didn't exactly exist. I was so caught up in being the better mousetrap that I forgot what I really was at my core. The people I befriended knew the part I was playing, they didn't know me. I have never felt so lonely. My Morma (Swedish grandmother) used to say, “Never forget who you are and what you stand for.” Sometimes we get so caught up in what we could be, in the winds of our potential, that we forget to have any sort of anchor. Potential is a delicious and dangerous treat, no?

Since that reinvention of almost a decade ago I like to believe I've stayed fairly honest about who I am, to both others and myself. I more or less learned my lesson. I think it's important to try to be a better person, to take those clean slates as the opportunities that they are and use them to change what needs to change, but in an intentional and tempered manner. What is so bad about us that we feel the need to play someone else?

OPP

So I think I finally have a job (or two?) but I am tempering my excitement until I actually hear someone say, "You've got the job." It just looks really good from here. Big interview on monday! Being unemployed this long I have been afforded a lot of time to myself and I have to say: I'm going to miss it. I really like being by myself; being alone and yet I am not in the least bit lonely. I like my social time too, but I've throughly enjoyed taking my time through my day, spending time writing, reading, guitar, doing little tasks, etc. I like my own company. I'm thinking that eventually I'd like to get my own place, live alone for a while, see how I do. I've never had the chance to decorate my own apartment or house, I've always lived in other people's places (a very different kind of OPP, yeah you know me) and I would like to try my hand at it. Have my own space and a sense of permanence. (Don't get me wrong: love my roommates, love my current house, just thinking down the road. Don't freak out Jane...). Though if I do get a chance to work as a writer and I live alone I am in great danger of never leaving my house and becoming a complete recluse. You may not think this is possible but I'm here to assure you, oh, it is. I'm a closeted recluse...I just play a socialite on TV.
I guess the first step is secure a job, then think about the What Next when it's the time to.

Bla Bla Bla

Isn't it funny how different we become based on our circumstance?

When I am settled, when I am provided for, when I am secure in where I am, I am more inclined to be secure in who I am. They all seem intricately connected unfortunately. I don't question my worth the same way, I don't struggle with bouts of doubts or worthlessness. It is much easier to be when being is fairly mundane and straightforward.

It is when I am so dirty in the process of living, when nothing I have (or don't have) is of any mention, when money is stretched so tightly it sings—it is then that the whispers of doubt become shouts. I hate the truth in that statement. Everything about me is called to testify and is found wanton through some court of private scorn and public image. And I hate that is happens over and over again, a lesson I am missing along the way somehow. I seem to only believe my worth when it is empirically obvious.

Sidebar: got a splinter under my fingernail on Saturday. I can't get it out without cutting my fingernail all the way down, and I really like my fingernail. But that shit hurts.

Slow Progress

Well here it is, an ending of an era. I am officially no longer the proud owner of a MOAK (Mother of All Keys) at Windy Gap. I have no idea what 6:30am is going to look like on Monday but it will be an adjustment not grabbing that radio, those keys, that nametag and driving those 30 minutes; my quality time with NPR. I'm ready to leave, ready to not be in this holding pattern, but realizing I'm just moving on to do that elsewhere doesn't help much. I'm thankful to WG for the work, for the patience, the friendships and the lessons. I never quite fit in and most of the time I liked that. I'm really just going to miss the faces of friends. That consistency.

This past summer was a time of such promise for me, feeling sheer joy in potential. In jobs, friendships, relationships, the future, life in general, being in great shape. And I know potential is fickle, believe me, but this summer was the first time I ever actually entertained it. It was the first time I left my logic at home and let with my heart, and even where I am today I'm glad I did it. I lived differently if only for a short while. I don't know when or if I'll be able to do it again, but the simple notion that once in a while my mind is forced to relinquish control is a bit of hope for me. That's a slow progress.

How is potential detrimental to faith? Is it? Where do potential and faith cross—the making of ones own vague, idealistic plans in the face of eagerly seeking the will of God—and if they do cross, where is the compromise? Why are we made to hope so strongly when hope and faith often crash into each other?

Anyway, off to the beach in SC for a wknd away. Needed.