Sunday, June 7, 2009

3:30pm
The thing about making my bed in the morning is that it makes me less likely to nap later, because who wants to make their bed twice in one day? Well, actually, I didn’t make my bed until about 3:30 in the afternoon, because currently I’m in the East Coast time zone but living on West Coast time. Somehow, I have thrown my daily pattern way off. For the moment, it’s working just fine, because it’s staying relatively the same. The problem is that it needs to be different. Tonight, I must go to bed by midnight. It is usually these posts that keep me up, but it is usually editing photos or watching a movie that pushes back the writing of these posts. And so, I am beginning this one earlier in the day, which does not mean it will end earlier in the day, but that is the hope.

Today is Sunday, but I did not go to church. I am on a church hiatus for a little while. Going to church here in Kentucky has been exhausting.

10:30pm
Being Evangelical Quaker in the Northwest, I never had to search for a church. When I came to college, I had four different options available in town of Friends churches alone, not including the numerous other churches there. Tale has it that Newberg was once in the Guinness book of world records for most churches per capita. A strange fact for a Northwest town. Needless to say, I simply chose the church I chose, because it was the closest Quaker church in walking distance. Kentucky, however, has no such churches, and finding a church that welcomes me as home has proven to be a seemingly impossible task. And incredibly taxing. Walking into new church after new church after new church, or even the same church a few Sundays in a row has become so stressful that it feels akin to holding one’s breath. I long to find authenticity, and what I find instead is sameness, like The Giver—our churches do not want to live in the midst of color and chaos, instead opting out for safety and sameness. So with the beginning of summer vacation, I have chosen to breathe instead. I do not get in anybody’s car and drive. I do not rush to eat breakfast. I do not put make-up on. I do put on nice clothes. I don’t even brush my teeth in a timely fashion. I simply breathe. And it makes me feel much less tense.

Today, I woke up unsure. I was unsure of how I felt, and unsure of how the day would progress. I had no plan, and I was at a loss. I was productive in some ways today. I finally cleaned the bathroom, a big feat. And I transferred the rack and water bottle holder from my bike to Marilyn’s bike for its use this week, a project that took more effort than I’d thought it would as the screws and bolts had not been touched since they’d been put on my bike in college. And yet, I feel unproductive. I feel as if it just wasn’t good enough, and I don’t know why, because it’s all I’ve got to give.

It’s time for me to go to bed, finally significantly earlier than the last week’s worth of nights, and I think it would be good to have a plan tomorrow, even if only just one thing planned. But I don’t know what to plan. I feel stuck. And so, I will just go to bed, and that will be that. I guess.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I listened to The Giver today read through my stereo speakers by…I don’t know who. And I cried. I’ve read it before, of course, but only a few years ago--not in middle school like many others. It was just coming into being when I was that age. I cried when Jonas was given memories by the Giver, and I cried because memories, when you really think about what they are and their weight in all humanity, are a force indescribable, and I was sad, distraught, really, with the grief that the community did not know them, did not know memory, did not know the depth of feeling, did not know the incredibly destructive and yet incredibly beautiful and life-giving chaos that comes with it. And I realized if faced with the decision, I would choose chaotic beauty over safety, as if that’s a surprise. If you have never read The Giver, you should. But don’t do it if you’re life is full to the margins. It requires time to drink in. Deserves it, really.

And so on the heels of that, I write this blog. It will not be a long one. I have little to say as I think about what I just heard. While listening to the book, I finally finished putting up the rest of the photos I’ve chosen to tack onto my wall. In the process, I wished I had a little extra money, because I have pictures taken more recently that I want to see. I am amused, I will say, because my pictures have been so meticulously put on my wall that I think it’s quite humorous. One look at my wall and you’d think I was an uptight perfectionist. One look at any of my drawers, though, and you’d realize I’m just that way with pictures and not much of the rest of my life.

In the midst of listening to The Giver, I decided to take a little break and go on another picture taking adventure. It was a little late for that decision and it was a bit of a race against the sun to take some good pictures before it went down. So much of a race that I finally made it to the top of the hill at the back of Asbury College in time to get shots of the sun sinking behind the horizon. It’s the first time I’ve ever watched the sun sink below the skyline, and it was impressive. I headed up through the college campus this time, so all the shots are from there. And I managed to get back to the dorm just in time to catch Marilyn dropping off her bike so I can use it for Ichthus next week (if you recall, my bike is not in working order, currently). Here are a few of the shots I captured.


Earlier today, as I sat unhealthily glued to Facebook, I was inspired to make banana muffins. The bananas in my room were bad enough that I knew I’d have to make bread in the next couple of days, and so today I attempted muffins instead. And what a break through this is for me! This gives me a much easier way to store the leftovers and a less messy way to eat. I just might be making it this way most of the time from now on.

On that note, I will head off to bed. The sooner I get to sleep the sooner I can wake up and eat another one. Mmm.

Friday, June 5, 2009

The sun came back out today. It was a low-key day. Except for that part about me not being able to find my social security card. Somewhere in the mess of moving, it has disappeared. Subsequently, that means so has my passport and birth certificate. It's frustrating, because those things were actually organized until I had to box up my files and leave them at home. Stay tuned for next week when I go and get a new one.

Today, the sun came back! And this evening, I decided to go on a little project and wandered a little around Wilmore taking pictures. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll let them do the talking for the rest of this post. Here is Wilmore, Kentucky.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

My dad first introduced us to Cheech and Chong in high school. Writing these entries reminds me of this: “the first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went downtown to a quiet job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The second day on my summer vacation, I woke up, then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The third day of my summer vacation….” This is one of their acts, and if you know Cheech and Chong, you know there is a specific way this needs to be read, a certain tone that can best be explained once you know that before my time, back when vinyl was the music media of choice (yes, I am old enough to know what records, albums, vinyl, 45s, whatever you may call them, are), Cheech and Chong albums came complete with rolling paper. And not for cigarettes.

This has nothing really to do with my day other than that writing these posts makes me want to start each entry with, “the (fill in the blank) day of my summer vacation, I woke up.” And so, the sixth day of my summer vacation, I woke up. And I didn’t do much until I finally got to have my long overdue chat with Peg.

I think talking with Peg is as good for my soul as going home. And if you’ve ever moved away from a place you loved—far away—you know how powerful that is. Peg makes me feel normal. Not in an ordinary sort of way, but like maybe there’s nothing unusually wrong with me. I sat down on a chair on one side of her desk while she sat on the other. Clearing off a space at the edge of her desk so she could see me with no obstructions, she looked at me and asked, “So tell me, what’s going on? What are you doing? How are things? Where are you?” Where am I? It was a lot of questions in one shot. I was sitting in her office, of course, is where I was. I looked at her and then, searching the room with my eyes, in thought, I sighed and said, “ I feel like I’m somewhere between Portland and Kentucky.” “Well, you are,” she stated with hardly a breath between my last word and her reply. I was startled by the response. I didn’t realize I had prepared myself for a reply more along the lines of telling me I should figure out where I am and not be lost in the middle. I looked at her. “I know,” was all I could think to respond for a moment. “I guess I feel like a lot of people tell me I need to figure it out.” “But that’s how you feel,” she stated. “You can’t feel anything other than what you feel.” I was quiet again for a moment and then responded, “Thanks for validating me.” (No, I’ve never taken a counseling class, I’m just that aware of how I feel.) She sort of scoffed, as if to say anyone who would reply differently than she had was simply foolish, and said, “Well, you are where you are. You can’t be anywhere else.”

And this is what is so freeing about talking with Peg. She simply lets you be where you are and feel how you feel. We talked for a long time. We chatted about my struggle to transition into this life I’m unprepared for, and how no longer having a car makes me feel as if I’ve regressed back in time. I was twenty-four years old when I got my license and my car. It was a liberating feeling to know I finally didn’t have to depend on others for transportation, and I feel as if that liberation has been snatched away from me only three and a half years later. “Hmm,” she replied, in thought, “that’s really interesting.” I love that Peg really thinks about the words I say. We talked about seminary. We laughed about Bollywood. We laughed hard. She told me about her dreadful trip to California she just returned from. And we talked about the things that give me life and how it is that I love the college setting but find seminary really difficult to be in. And then I said to her, “Peg, I want to hear the story of how you came here.” She let out a big breath and said, “Oh my,” indicating it is quite a story, indeed. And so next time, perhaps, I will get to know more about Peg. For now, this conversation was a healing one, one well worth waiting for. A conversation in which people laugh really hard over silly things like overly emotional Bollywood films, is the best kind of conversation, for sure. I felt full after we talked, in the best kind of way. My heart is still smiling. I shall go to sleep happy.

And tomorrow…well…will be the seventh day of my summer vacation. And I, indeed, will wake up. Just as I have all the days before.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Do you ever watch Bollywood films? Bollywood, Bollywood, Bollywood. What can I say about Bollywood? If you are unaware of what I’m talking about, let me clue you in. Bollywood is the entertainment center if Indian past-time. Also known as Hindi films, it churns out up to a thousand movies a year, like soccer is immensely popular in every country but the USA (though like soccer, it is becoming increasingly well-known), and is the most extravagant, melancholic, over-romanticized, unrealistic cinema you could ever watch. And it’s wonderfully fantastic…so long as you’re willing to read subtitles.

Generally a good three hours long and including at least six musical dance numbers, Bollywood creates the best of the best and the worst of the worst and everything in between. On the better side, I would describe it as Shakespeare meets Rogers & Hammerstein meets India. On the bad side, I might just describe it as unbelievable, in every meaning. I love Bollywood movies. And I watched one tonight. It was sappy, colorful, full of tears (from the characters), and entirely over the top. Just as it should be. The best part was the dream sequence it started out with, wherein the two main characters were running around in mountainous fields of flowers. This is what Bollywood is known for. But it was one of the better ones, and I enjoyed it. It was a wonderful escape from life and a bittersweet reminder that one of these days, I really need to make it to India. When I have the money.

Ah, money. And that brings me back to reality. A strange thing has occurred. Aside from the fact that I have just begun four sentences in a row with the letter A, I have also discovered that my credit card payment is listing my minimum payment not as its usual amount, but as $0 (and trust me, the balance is not low enough for that to be normal in any way). Technically this means I do not have only ten dollars for the month of June. But I don’t know why it says this. I, of course, am going to say nothing at all about it to the company, but I will hold my sense of the miraculous until the June 14th due date has passed. Tune back in then to see the results. For the time being, I have enough instant oatmeal, suddenly, to last me the entire month, possibly for all three meals a day. Apparently, when people move out, instant oatmeal is not something they want to take with them, and people are moving out these days. I am sad to report that none of the flavors I have acquired are my favorite—peaches & cream. I would, of course, be more than surprised and wonderfully grateful if some showed up at my door or in my mail box…which happens to be ATS-SPO #148, 204 N Lexington Ave., Wilmore, KY 40390. In case you’re thinking of sending me a letter or a picture of yourself…or something else….

Today was not so sunny as the past few days. Just after waking up, a storm rolled through and despite the fact that I really wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep more, I couldn’t help but sit up on my bed and stare out my window as the lightning flashed and the thunder roared. That is, until lightning struck directly over the seminary and was so startling that I jumped. Thunder, I’m learning, can sound like all sorts of things. It can rumble like the sound of a thousand bouncy balls let loose on a stairway (which I happened to witness the other night), roar like a sheet of metal being shaken like a madman, and clap like…well, like thunder. What I learned today is that when you hear thunder clap, you only hear that sound when it is as close as it can be, and it’s not like the clapping of an auditorium full of people. It’s like the unexpected sound of your annoying younger sibling suddenly clapping their hands together loudly right next to your ear. It didn’t stop me from watching the storm, but it did make me move back from the window a bit, considering I was sitting on the bed with my feet on the windowsill.

All in all, today was not the kind of productivity I had planned. The remaining pictures left to be put up are still on my bed and the bathroom has still not been cleaned in longer than I think I’ll let you know. But I did participate in a small photo project (took photos of our Dean of the Chapel because he doesn’t like the seminary’s pictures of him), which got me out of the dorm for a few minutes and into the hot, muggy Kentucky outdoors.

Tomorrow, I have only one thing planned (well, except for watching So You Think You Can Dance). I get to spend some time with the wonderful Peg Hutchins. Peg, first introduced to me via-email by my friend Sarah, is amazing. An ordained United Methodist preacher, she works for the chapel office and Community Life and might be described by some as a spiritual beacon of Asbury Theological Seminary. Peg is spunky, feisty, and has a smile and laugh that would light up a room. Just to see her face makes my day feel a little lighter. I got to chat with Peg a few times in the Fall semester, but Spring proved to be an impossible few months and so I look forward to getting to have the first real conversation with her in a very long time. I am excited for the time. I love Peg’s honesty—she is a native New Yorker, after all—and I love her sense of the Spirit.

But for now, it’s late, too late, as the pattern seems to be forming. So I’m off to bed for some sweet dreams and maybe a storm or two. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll get around to the bathroom. Maybe not. But for certain, I will look forward to a great chat in the afternoon and then a good dance show when 8pm comes around.

This entry brought to you by the letter A and the number 786—and apparently Allah, so Bollywood taught me today. ☺

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I drank my childhood today. As a young child, while still living in my first house, my family would sometimes eat out at the nearby A&W restaurant. Alongside hamburgers and loaded hotdogs, with my little hands I would wrap my fingers around the thick jumbo sized frosted mug of root beer and take a sip of that frothy, sweet caramel-hinted syrupy fizz. Root beer was a luxury drink of my early years. We sometimes had it around, and in a kitchen cupboard, if I could ever reach, sat a couple of those A&W mugs, purchased, once, during a trip to the restaurant. I felt like a queen on the rare occasion I drank from one. When I was older and living in a new house, we never again went to A&W and rarely bought the pop from the store. It was soon only a memory and the taste of root beer became the flavor of being six years old. On the table out in the living area of my dorm floor is currently sitting a pack of root beer, bought for an evening occasion and left out afterward for any to partake. Root beer with all its sugary sweetness is no longer my pop of choice, but simply because it was sitting there, I took one, and the instant that childhood nectar touched my tongue, I felt, if just for a moment, the cool atmosphere of the air conditioned A&W as we sat in the brown and orange colored booth with plates of food before us, and cold mugs of root beer in reach, likely because the hot summer evening made the house too unpleasant to cook in. Back then, only the wealthiest people in the Northwest had air-conditioned homes. The rest of us ate out.

It is a curious thing that the older memories become, the more enjoyable and less bittersweet they are to recall, as if after a certain passage of time, they move into a different space in our brains—Memories only, where there is no longer possibility attached to it, only reflection. They enter through the door of the "Golden Days."

I find the hardest part of living in Kentucky is that nothing is old. I have no memories of Kentucky, no experience from years past, no long lasting friendships, no history here. Everything is new, and sometimes, without roots, it feels as if I’m going to be swept away. In fact, on Friday, I felt as if I was swept away and it was Marilyn who pulled me back up to my feet before I was gone, like in the midst of a raging river an unmoving rock that I could grasp onto: the voice of reason on the brink of insanity.

And so I’m brought back to the present where I’m currently sitting in my dorm room typing this. A candle burns beside me and my lights are off with the hopes of the nearby storm making an appearance, but it is too far north for any wonders tonight, I’m realizing.

As has been normal the past many days, the sun shined bright and warm today and I opened my curtains to let the light stream in as I finally finished cleaning my room. I have moved the bike back in and all that is left is to finish putting up the pictures. The goal after that: don’t mess it back up—a goal which I have never succeeded in, but with a slower paced summer I can at least pretend it might be possible.

I am discovering that Marilyn’s advice to be productive may serve less to actually feel particularly useful to the world and more to keep me from thinking about feeling useless. Today, I have been less productive than the days before and I could feel that despair begin to seep back into my bones. I wish I could enjoy the nothingness that my life is right now, the open book, the unmarked calendar. I want to enjoy it for those times that are yet to come when my life will be more full than there are hours in the day to live it. But, in truth, it is difficult to enjoy a break from something you haven’t yet lived.

But I’m still enjoying the reality that I have nothing I need to set my alarm for. I can be lazy in my productivity and take all the time I need, and it is nice to see the enjoyable results of things neglected just a few weeks ago, like a clean room. I can get back to my Bengali lessons, as I do every summer, and hope that maybe this year I’ll get somewhere further with them. And maybe, hopefully, I can come to be at peace with myself enough to be able to sit still for a while and just read. Tomorrow, however, I will finish putting up my pictures, and then, because I can’t sit still quite yet, I will clean the bathroom.

PS. Today, I had a job interview for a workstudy job for the City of Wilmore. I will be hopeful about it. I would like the job.

Monday, June 1, 2009

I am not type A. I’m messy, not particularly organized, can’t remember where I set things down a lot of the time, and can’t remember what I say to whom or who said what to me. When I clean my room, it takes days, because the mess is so disorganized. I often shove papers from school in my backpack and forget about them for weeks if not months. In fact, there are probably a fair amount of papers in there right now, and my Greek flashcards, long ago having fallen out of the rubber band, have been strewn around the bottom of one of the backpack pockets for over a year. I am not type A. Not in any way. Usually.

But in few and far between places in my life, I am excruciatingly meticulous. My photo files on my external hard drive are organized into files by camera type then year and then by month, and each event I shoot, whether spontaneous or planned, gets its own file and is dated with month, day, and year along with a brief description. If I take pictures at two different times of the day of two entirely separate things, they each get their own folder. The file names I leave as numbered so they stay in the exact order of when I took them.

This weekend, in cleaning my room, I stumbled upon this little piece of type A that managed to sneak into my DNA when someone let their guard down for just a moment. My book shelf is fastidiously organized, so much so that on the shelf where I put my non-fiction minus religion books (they have to have their own shelf), I organized them so that the literature books (which mostly consist of literary criticism books for the moment) effortlessly transition into the philosophy books, moving smoothly from works on Deconstruction, to Derrida himself, to Postmodernism and straight into The Story of Philosophy. It’s a work of art. But it was in spending over eight hours in putting photos up on my wall that I remembered some of the intense ways I organize periphery pieces of my life. Today, I pulled out the tape measure from the tool set (yes, I own a real tool set), found the level, and took a pencil from the desk drawer and after laying photos over my bed and designing just exactly how I wanted them up on my wall, I began measuring and marking so the pictures would be so perfectly placed that it would never irritate me to look at them. I don’t like crooked pictures. On one of my walls, I drew lines, leveled pictures, and then put up strips of masking tape to make sure the spaces between the 4x6 pictures were perfectly symmetrical. And then I realized if my entire life were like this all the time, I would have shot myself long ago.

And yet, my room is still not entirely clean. A few stray items are still strewn across the extra bed, but I worked on the important stuff. I put up pictures! Because of my necessity to measure things out perfectly, I’m not done with the photos, but I’ve stopped for the night and will pick up again tomorrow. Here’s the new room arrangement. You can see the start of one of my photo set-ups on my bed.


I am still enjoying my new room arrangement, and today I had a friend over. Ellen (the professor), it turned out, ran out of bread without realizing it, so the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches didn’t happen. We rescheduled a time to meet and then rescheduled again and finally decided she would simply come to the dorm, and so today I got to enjoy my new room with company. We chatted a little about my year and both agreed that these next two years here need to be better than this one was, but she graciously reminded me that at least I had one bright spot in the year: my sister’s television debut…on Judge Judy. I groaned and said, “On the gift God handed me as this last year, that was simply the ribbon on the whole package.” I want to believe God will grace me with a much better next two years—that this year was simply the transition year, the year I transitioned from Oregon to Kentucky and the year I transitioned from the first half of my degree to the second half. The middle of the program, I’m told, is often the hardest, and I’m going to hang on those words for now. This year I transitioned to a new state, a new time zone, and a new and very foreign culture. I feel like I moved to a new country and have had much of the culture shock that would be expected in such a situation.

But the year is over and summer has begun and I should be relieved, but I’m left with no car, no job, and no money. I won’t see home this summer and I am grieving the fact that I didn’t get to see my good friend Rachel’s wedding in May, that I won’t get to see my friend Amy’s wedding in a few weeks, that I can’t get a birthday present for my mother come the end of the month, and that I don’t get to be a part of the 4th-6th grade girls camp at the Oregon coast which I photographed for last summer and attended as a child nearly two decades ago. It was pictures from that camp last summer that I put up today, and as I stuck them to my wall, I mourned what feels like a loss in not being able to go back this year like I’d hoped. Moving far away is an interesting adventure into loss. I find it is smaller things I grieve the most. It is silly things like Fred Meyer (a one stop shopping place that I never particularly enjoyed while at home) and Burgerville, a local fast food joint with all local Oregon food and great fish and chips. It is familiar street names, library catalogues you’ve known for years, chapel songs you’ve come to enjoy, and a city that knows both good wine and good beer. And it is not so silly things like the lack of expectation for people to be remarkably friendly on the streets, and the loss of favorite places like Powell’s and the Oregon coast, the place where I see God most clearly. Sometimes I feel as if I miss my heart.

And so I end today thinking about these things, and I will allow myself to think about them, because it is okay to grieve over what we have to leave behind and losses we must face in the midst of change. Summer is the most spectacular time of year in Oregon, and Portland calls like the Greek sirens, neglecting to remind you that at other times of the year, the city is not such a dream (though I love it all the time). I will not, this year, get to spend time in the unairconditioned Stumptown Coffehouse on eighty-five degree evenings sipping on the strangest and most amazing iced tea as a fan blows in the window working in vane to cool the sultry room but at least succeeding in making it bearable. I won’t wander around Laurelhurst Park with Amalija, both of us wondering at the most unbelievable yoga moves we’ve ever seen. We won’t walk down Hawthorne Boulevard or eat fish and chips and bread pudding and have a fabulous locally brewed beer at The Horse Brass.

Instead, I will remember what I’ve had. I will look at the pictures on my wall and be reminded each time of the memories of my last few years. I will think about that Fall day a couple friends of mine and I wandered around the back roads of Newberg taking pictures. I will think often of Portland and secretly (or not so secretly) be proud of where I come from. And I will remember that this summer is yet to come, a blank slate, and it’s time to start etching new memories. It is exhausting to be where you are not established, but it’s a new time, still a new place, and adventure is before me. As I grieve what I no longer have, I will look forward with anticipation to what is yet to come. And I know someday I will not forget that one summer where I had to live on almost nothing, and it was foolishly fantastic.