semi-solo

I just spent my first Christmas alone.

and it was really really lovely.

before i sound like a total Scrooge, i should explain that my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law-to-be all had a family Christmas celebration hard on the heels of Thanksgiving. My parents, who live in Iowa, came out to philly to be with us kids, and we had our Christmas in November. my bro. and sis-in-law spent the actual holiday at their parents, and i flew solo.

sort of.

moving out to the east coast, away from family (especially for the first two years, before my brother joined me), has deepened and expanded my ken of "family." i never realized, before, how important people are - how much more important they are than place. i moved here and thought i didn't really need to have a travelling band of friends - that i could be enough on my own, for myself. when i moved, i was ready to be rid of some people - one in particular who had broken my heart in ways i didn't understand - and flying solo sounded pretty great.

but solo is never really so.

i had no money when i came, and only a small stipend on which to survive grad school, so i boarded with a lovely woman, a widow who had worked for years at my museum, named Esther. my dad drove out with me, settled me into my little room, and flew back to Iowa. immediately, Esther invited me to her family's backyard barbeque - the first of many family gatherings in which i was unquestioningly included. of course i should come - why not? her family was used to having her students join in to grandchildren's birthday parties, soup potlucks, and card-players' gatherings. come, and welcome.

but still - no family needed, thought i. the next summer, i packed a suitcase and headed for new york, to research my thesis and work at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. i'm a girl of the world, thought i, i'll do new york on my own and i'll do it with style. but even to get up to the city, my idea of solo was kindly tempered by Jim, husband of pauline, one of my professors. i was their default house-sitter, and they were my default holiday plans. jim offered to drive me up to new york, bought me lunch along the way, and wouldn't let me give him a penny for gas. pay it forward, he insisted, but don't pay me. i chafed at this, but began to ponder...

as i lived in new york that summer on my own, i tried even to hack my faith solo -- i stopped in at a good church most Sundays, and tried to read my Bible. but i didn't try to hold on to anyone for help and encouragement -- didn't tell anyone how i was doing or ask anyone for prayer. i ended the summer in a state of spiritual exhaustion and came back to my church in glen mills that fall begging God to make it home for me - to knit me in so i would not be solo. another semester passed, and soon i was panning for jobs up and down the east coast. in a near panic, i realized that solo would no longer work - it had never really. even when i had sought life alone, God had shored me up with family in my house, my program, and my church. people who had never clapped eyes on me twenty-four months earlier were suddenly among my dearest relatives.

in the two.5 years since, my sense of solo has been challenged repeatedly: i sold my car and relied, grudgingly at first, on friends' kindness and wheels. i dated a boy and learned what it means to show someone even your ugly parts (and then watch him stay anyway). i hosted a book club and saw it morph into the tightest group of friends i've ever had. when moved, i watched them carry every stick of my furniture down from a third floor walkup, across town in a philadelphia july, and up to another third-floor walkup (three days after they trooped up the same stairs to slog paint on the walls where they now spend at least one long evening every week).

this Christmas, i got to share a meal with some of them, playing cards into the wee sma's on the night of the 23rd, attending church with them on Christmas Eve before going out for lunch and then coffee, conversing, laughing, and sharing silence by turns. on Christmas Day, i shared dinner with a couple in my new church and four other "Christmas orphans," watching my family get a little bigger still.

i came home last night to reflect in front of my wee lit tree on my first solo holiday. solo, i think, may be a fallacy in my mind. by God's grace, even the times when i have felt most alone, He has surrounded me with people, dear ones who show in their lives that He has not forgotten me. He knows me intimately and has placed these in my path to help me remember that He sent His Son, His Immanuel, to be "God with us." that has made this holiday the sweetest of all.

grey//gold

i found myself on kelly drive today, coming home from work along the schuylkill, and the wet, damp grey of the concrete was brilliantly set off by the sun-gold of the maple trees along the roadside. tucked between rocky cliffs and the road, the black bark-brown of the tree trunks are topped, for a little while longer, by the fluttery leaves that shake loose in the wind of a new storm.

grey. november. gold. the words seem to go together, somehow. i love november.
really, i love november in my city:: concrete//nature//urbanity//people//color.

**sigh** november in the city, in a place like kelly drive, is beautiful to me in the way that a violin in a minor key can knock your breath out with its understated { - - - }. do you know what i mean? it was one of those days when you ache for the beauty in the world, when your soul wants to stretch wide enough to comprehend it all, and you can't -- you know that there is a greater joy to the sound you hear and the image you see, but this side of heaven, you groan at your own incapacity to comprehend their wholeness.

do i approach God with that same longing -- deep, un-nameable yearning -- to understand His whole beauty? His whole grace? love? perfection?

ooh

The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it. (Roland Barthes)

***********

i want to let that roll around in my head for a little while, but isn't there so much there?

hmmm...

aptly named

last week, i overslept (slightly) pulled on default overslept-need-something-that-won't-look-funny-and-be-comfortable outfit (fuzzily) stumbled down the stairs (groggily) and walked out the door (rotely). i could see through my morning fog enough to look forward to the train ride, which i had been missing for the past month as circumstances made it sensible to drive. passing the crowd gathered for the bus in front of my house, i turned the corner to walk to the trolley stop. ipod playing, sun shining -- i was just beginning to wake up.

two blocks into my eight-ish block walk, the toes of my perfectly-normal-default-comfortable-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly-much-less-trip-me clogs sent me straight. down. to the sidewalk -- flop -- rotating me ninety degrees until knees met concrete aggregate.

ouch.

like a seven-year-old, i looked down at my left knee and found my wool dress trousers shredded, and the skin below, too. like a twenty-six year old, i had to stand up and walk back to the house calmly, realising that i would not be taking the train that morning, and find other trousers to put on.

i got up the stairs to the apartment, walked in the door and -- to my roommate's quizzical why-are-you-back-didn't-you-just-leave look, simply pointed to the knee and silently teared up. yes, they are just trousers, but this was the latest chapter in my onogoing, bi-annual spill-for-no-particular-reason-and-ruin-whatever-skirt/trousers/various accessories-you-might-be-wearing habit. it does seem to be a habit -- **sigh**. and it was just the thing to put me over the edge to teariness that morning, which came in one of those sorts of weeks/months. ...

as i relayed this story to a co-worker yesterday, he very kindly told me of a theater choreographer he knew who claimed that dancers were the biggest klutzes, because they were used to moving gracefully through lots of (level) space. that did soothe my ego a bit -- i danced for a while, before giving it up (why??) to ride the pine as a third+-string shooting guard. so i always feel that i am dishonoring my ballet training when i fall, but now maybe not entirely...

anyway, that's my latest trip, and the latest proof of the blog name.

prairie space

mellow...i think that's the best way i can describe my last week... i just got back from spending time with my parents in my iowa hometown. my goodness, but it's fascinating to move between east-coast urbanity and midwestern... non-urbanity!!

flying in to my local airport always fills me with something not quite nostalgic, but -- hmmm -- maybe familial? i'm not talking about warm fuzzies of anticipation for seeing my mom and dad... there's a feeling -- quite visceral, really -- that one gets toward the landscape of one's childhood. there's a beauty to the fields that i nearly loathed as a child. i remember very distinctly that i cried the day we ended our northern michigan vacation in 199x -- i wept for the lack of forests around my house! in one day, we had driven from somewhere like escanaba, michigan (on the u.p.) through green bay (with a side trip to lambeau field -- worthy of another post all its own), over and around the rolling dairy farms of southern wisconsin and back to... iowa. the prairie state. to my twelve year-old mind, it was the antithesis of beauty: it was flat and utilitarian (corn, soybeans, hogs; repeat), windy and hot -- and nothing like the cool, shady, vacation-linked beauty of the upper great lakes.

in one of my favorite books (Giants in the Earth), norwegian-american/minnesotan author Ole Rolvaag places his protagonists in the middle of the unbroken Dakota prairie and tracks the impassioned reactions that husband and wife have to its sheer, unbounded expanse. he is kindled, sparked by the opportunity that rolls before him like a carpet of prairie grass. his very steps are heavy with potential, with limitless possibility. she is terrified, undone by the absence of anything to hide behind. over and over, she circles the space with the frenetic energy of a prairie dog chasing down its burrow -- but finds nothing that can shield her from the open.

somewhere between his unbridled anticipation and her bottomless dread is my spectrum of feeling for the flatlands... having lived east for four+years, i understand now that the open space of the middle is something special -- something unique. and affection for the space has grown exponentially as i've experienced near-claustrophobia in the patches of corn that pass as fields in the mid-atlantic. there is a rolling rhythm to iowa's fertile patchwork (it does, indeed, resemble an earthy quilt from the sky) that grant wood captured most nearly... sonically, it resonates with the guitar sounds of U2's Joshua Tree. When i was in college, i would drive along highway 30 in my 2door V6 coupe, sunroof and windows wide open, and six-speaker stereo channeling the Edge's transcendent guitar -- the blue sky could not have been bluer against the green (is there a way to make green any greener? this would define it) GREEN fields of corn and beans, punctuated by faded red barns and grey-white four-square houses. Few places, if any, have been for me more exhilarating (even the ocean).

i'm not exactly sure why, as i can have very little in common with Rolvaag's hero -- I am not a farmer; nor am I encountering the prairie in its unbroken wildness. but there is a feeling of being able to move with freedom and abandon that is unique to that part of the country where you can see ten miles in any direction (without the aid of a mountaintop) -- and where roads strip out, stick straight, in cardinal directions for hundreds of miles.

this week was the first time in three+ years that i've been home not at Christmas, and to see the crops still in the fields and the leaves still on the trees was lovely... i sent a postcard to a friend and wrote that perhaps it's a landscape only a native could appreciate, but i am such a native -- and i will unashamedly love that land.

must be the endorphins

running along the river is one of the privileges of this city in the almost-summer, summer, and still-barely-summertime. it seems that a full quarter of the city laces up the sneaks and hits the trail -- i wonder why they do it? each person has a different reason for being there... are they fitness nuts? reluctant joggers? trying to impress the girl/guy with whom they're running/biking/blading? hmmm... most of us run with little wires coming out of our ears -- are we grooving to smooth jazz? rocking out to metal? (smooth jazz?? i wonder who could possibly run to smooth jazz... it seems you'd just sloow d o o w w n u n t i l . . .

(so far, my favorite band to run to is semisonic... i love this band!! loved them since i lived in the state right below theirs, since "closing time" was the thing to sing at every graduation. if you've never tried their tunes, hop over to www.danwilsonmusic.com or www.semisonic.com to give a listen... it's good stuff, maynard.)

i'm always encouraged (is this mean?) to see that i'm not the slowest person out there. i'm nowhere near the fastest (ha!) but i can usually pass at least one person on the course of my two or three miles. when i'm passing them, though, i'm always thinking that they're probably at the end of some terrific eight-miler, and my wee little moral victory of passing them a mile out is pretty pathetic... oh well.

i ran in high school... suffice to say, cross-country and i were not friends. i never quite licked the mental challenge of pushing my body to do those races, and the seasons were pretty dismal. (really dismal). i laid off running for years, aside from the occasional string of three jogs here, another there -- but an overwhelming desire to know that i could -- if i wanted to -- propelled me into the running store this month to pick up a pair of shoes before i could change my mind. i walked in, told the lean, mean running machine by the door what sort of running i wanted to do, and walked out with the second pair he brought out: Saucony Grid Omnis. Grey.

i like my running shoes. very much.

tying them on my feet is like a new little victory each time. i am making the decision to go out, again, and once i go out, i will run, and i will come back having run. i just got back a little while ago from a three-miler (i think -- must get accurate measure of trail) and my legs have that vaguely achey feeling that is nearly euphoric to me. discipline! endurance! perseverance! that is what my achey-ness means right now. if i can push my body to finish something on a trail, i can push the rest of me to stick out other patience-requiring situations currently in play... and i end each run relieved to know just that.

why i live in the city, #435 / why i drink coffee, #687

one of the greatest pleasures of living in a city is the twinning of neighborhood and food. for a summer, i lived in new york, and i joke with philadelphia friends that if i take them to manhattan, they will be given a summary tour of hole-in-the-wall finger food places up and down the island. in my mind, sense of place is intricately bound up with the gastronomic as well as the aesthetic, and this morning was a lovely example.

friend c. picked me up at my apartment and we drove over to the italian market section of the city, which is a sheer delight for anyone who loves the pleasures of interesting food. within a few-block span, there are three excellent places for brunch (or, anyway, three that he and i have collectively discovered -- there are probably many, many more). as you stroll from one to the other, searching for the shortest line, you see others in the neighborhood doing the same thing, or nearly the same -- but the point is, there are PEOPLE in the STREETS -- native city dwellers will not realize the impact this has on an ex-suburbanite. it's actually quite revolutionary! uniquely in the city (in my mid-Atlantic city, anyway), there are spaces, and people move through them in an un-insulated (read: not sealed in a car) fashion. they are open to hearing the sounds and smelling the smells and seeing the textures of the people and structures in the space. i love this! there is community... in the very best sense described by Jane Jacobs (see favorite book section for more of her layman's observations of urban design -- i'm a fan). There are eyes on the street, and they're not afraid to look around.

little places, like the butcher's cafe, where we ate today, seem to me to be touchstones for this sort of community -- they are destinations for the strolls through the streetscape, places where the neighborhood pauses to interact with its own or to allow outsiders to slip inside. we were outsiders today, but even outsiders can appreciate that kind of food! wow... conversation kept either of us from finishing our dishes (frittata primavera with turkey bacon (him) and challah french toast stuffed with summer fruit (me)), and i, lucky girl that i am, got to bring home leftovers. sooo... when i am done updating the internet on the pleasures of interesting neighborhood food enjoyed in situ, i will go remind my palate of same.

whole books could be written, as well, on the wonder of a thickly potted, grey-white glazed stoneware mug filled, always and as though by magic, with diner coffee. to me, it is the single greatest catalyst for conversation. sit two people down at a table across from one another and feed them -- they will first have to wait for their food, and after they finish the food, they will wait for the check. the waiting time before and after will be without props -- and two people forced to converse without props have no little bit of anything to hide behind. -- there's no warm-up: it's just you and him, and you have either to dive into each other's expressions or to remain silent.

IF, however, you have a warm mug of coffee, conversation can ramp up gradually: coffee arrives, along with small bowl of creamer... open creamer, pour in -- add sugar if you must -- and stir... words begin, but eye contact can be spotty....(clank, clink -- find a place to lay your dripping spoon -- ah, the napkin -- and now...) the stirring finished, you wrap your hands around the mug (assume position) and sip slowly, peering over the rim at your dining partner... sentences can flow, punctuated by measured sips when pause is needed. lest even this early stage ramp up too quickly, one of the incredibly attentive wait staff apparates at your elbow, and though you have a strict two-cup limit on per-meal caffeine, you welcome about a half-dozen half-fresh cups that she will pour for you between now and when your food arrives (followed by a symmetrical portion after the plates are cleared). by the time forks and knives are picked up to begin the entree, conversant rhythms are hitting their strides, nursed from infancy by the screen of the grey-white stoneware filled with -- as friend n lovingly coined -- the golden nectar.

hmmm.. saturday mornings were made for such things.

and so it begins...

After de-lurking on yet another blog, i've realized that turnabout is, in fact, fair play... so here goes.

i'm not even sure who will know about this little project, but it seems a good way to refine a few thoughts and to dialogue with friends, old and new. by way of introduction (and explanation), i am a gracefull klutz... i am a christian (of the presbyterian variety), increasingly and keenly aware of my stumbling need for God's abundant grace. i love learning about theology and its applications to all facets of life, so reading of that variety often spawns lengthy conversations -- and perhaps, now, lengthy posts? my non-bloggy friends will be relieved if some of the pressure is taken off them to listen to my "oh-my-word-i-have-to-tell-you-about-the-great-book-i-just-picked-up-about-the-church-and-the-arts" rants!

in everyday physical reality, i am simultaneously a decent dancer and an accident waiting to happen. narrating my encounters with new cities usually includes an obligatory "and-this-is-how-i-tore-my-favorite-trousers-and-spilled-coffee-on-the-person-who-would-have-been-my-first-friend-there" stories...

i am a midwestern transplant to the east coast and am thoroughly fascinated by american regionalism. i don't care how homogenized our television accents are, there are most definitely cultural differences between sections of this country, and i am having a ball observing them. i come from a serious ag state but love, love, love living in the city -- public transit has become one of my dearest friends! other things that make me happy are meeting people at farmer's markets, cooking big meals for friends (who tell me good stories that make me laugh while we eat), reading books that poke my mind into wakefulness, running to know that i can, and making art for the sheer possibility of beauty.

i dearly love my friends and my family. ice cream and coffee make me irrationally excited. my master's thesis focused on the material culture of migration, and all stories/artifacts of travel and transition fascinate me.

i s'pose that's about enough for a first pass...