{untitled}

We almost broke up in March. Well, I threatened, anyway. I even perused various travel sites for the cheapest ticket out, away, anywhere, but couldn’t afford the fare or the time away from school and work. So I came home, as expected.

There was no welcome home—no apology or warm hug—because I stayed out of necessity, a thing not to be rewarded. And you were just as cold as you’d been all month. So I spent most of March away from home and quarantined in the school library, boxed in by books and doubting my judgment.

We’ve never really talked about March, probably because things improved in April, and by May I remembered what exactly I fell in love with. So today, I bought fruit and flowers at a stand in the city and ate a peach on the walk home, overwhelmed with gratitude.

Happy Anniversary, Boston. It’s been a good year.

erosion

When I finally hopped the 9:44 train yesterday, I sat across from young man who was sketching the shapes of a woman in his notebook. I watched his hand move as he balanced the notebook on his knee to combat the uneven ride North, each stroke adding dimension and emotional depth. He added light, feathery detail to her whirling ponytail and shaded her shapely legs, each planted on either side of a concrete ravine. Nearly suffocated by apocalyptic debris of the razed cityscape, he drew her strong and resolute.

To my left, a phone sang an old Destiny’s Child tune. A woman dug through her purse and finally barked, “What?” Her hair was pulled tight and she smoothed the fly-aways as she listened to the caller. “Why should I?” she asked. “When was the last time you did something like that for me?” She paused and dropped her head. “I jump for you. You need something and I jump. You never jump for me. You don’t give a damn.” She listened and nodded along with the inaudible voice on the other end.

The artist looked up from his picture, adjusted his all-black Boston ball cap, and began erasing. The woman closed her phone and repositioned her sunglasses, her lips pursed and nose red.

the only thing missing was the white horse.

The three taps on my shoulder occurred in such concise succession that I couldn’t blame it on an accidental move in the crowd of bodies. It was deliberate, and I wondered if my roommate or a former student was in the same car. People here don’t typically chat-up strangers. Turning a bit and looking over my shoulder, a grinning man well over six feet tall grinned fingered his tailored chinstrap.

“What’s up, punk?”

I looked to my left and to my right. “You,” he said.

“Oh, uh, hi then.”

“You know that girl on your mirror?” he continued with a grin, “She’s fine—think you could hook me up?”

I felt my eyebrows furrow. “Um...on my mirror? I’m not sure what you—”

“You know,” he winked, “on your mirror.”

I forced a polite and utterly clueless chuckle. “I don’t think I understand what you—”

“God, girl. I’m tryin’ to say you’re beautiful.”

“Oh,” I laughed. And then it really clicked and my cheeks burned and my voice sunk. “Oh. How…strange.”

His face twisted in confusion. “What?”

“I mean, thank you. That’s very---thanks. Very much.” And as the train slowed at Andrew, he leaned in a little too close and whispered, “I’m hung.”

Even though it wasn’t my stop, I barreled through the crowd and onto the musty, underground platform while he shouted “What the---” at the closing doors. As I waited at Andrew for the next train, my bewildered knight rode off into the tunnel, his big-ass sword at his side.

Boston Medical Center

Just twenty feet from the revolving doors, eight women smoked eight cigarettes, all crowded around one baby stroller.

from the workforce, pt. 2: neurosis is...

I probably spend too much time worrying about student behavior, that is, when I’m not crushed by my own inadequacy, which is often. I had a dream this week that I asked a student to put his phone away, and in response, he cursed me out, threw a desk, and punched me in the mouth. Even though it’ll probably never happen, I’m now putting together a strategy to dodge the desk, and the right hook.

Aside from averting violence, I want students to learn and enjoy my class. This can cause me to be a bit of a pushover. And because I’m a pushover, I sometimes rehearse the occasional, hypothetical harangue I’d deliver to my students for not completing their reading. They’re not speeches I never hope to give, but I’m learning that I’m much more likely to either give in or flip out without such a script.

Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade put me in a strange funk, and it probably contributed to my suspicion that I’d show up to a crowd of unprepared students. But to be fair, this panic wasn’t totally unfounded. Earlier this week, a student in class posed this question:

“Do we have to, like, watch Metropolis?”

“Yeah. You, like, do.”

I didn’t say that, of course, because it’s rude. But I think my eye-roll was audible, and deservedly so. Seriously, guy, we’re half way through the semester. Figure life out.

With this brief conversation in mind, I spent my time in transit to school running through a few scenarios.

Scenario the first, wherein everybody’s prepared:

Me: I hope you all had a terrific Spring Break. Lets get right into Metropolis. Everybody watched the film, right?

Students: Yes. It was really interesting.

Me: Wonderful. And you all read the criticisms?

Students: Yes. Also interesting. We’re all prepared to share insightful articulations in an organized fashion.

Me: Wonderful! Let’s light this candle!

Scenario the second, wherein half of the students are prepared:

Me: I hope you all had a terrific Spring Break. Lets get right into Metropolis. Everybody watched the film and completed the readings, right?

Students: Various sounds of hesitation.

Me: Some yes, some no?

Students: Uh...

Me: Okay, raise your hands if you watched the film and read the criticisms.

Half of the students raise their hands, and my face turns pink. 


Me: Hmmm…Two things, guys. This class ain’t SparkNotes. It’s not my responsibility to summarize what you should have learned through your reading. This portion of class is designed for discussion and analysis, something we can’t do if you haven’t read. Also, it’s not fair to your classmates who are prepared, so those of you who didn’t do the reading, you’re dismissed. You have a lot of work to do. 


And I’d spend the remaining 45 minutes trying to lower my heart rate, curious if anyone will show up the following Friday, and wondering how I’d live with the guilt of kicking students out of class.

Scenario the third, wherein nobody's prepared:

Me: I hope you all had a terrific Spring Break. Lets get right into Metropolis. Everybody watched the film and completed the readings, right?

Students: Pure, unadulterated silence.

Me: Anyone? Did anyone complete the reading or watch Metropolis? Raise your hand if you did.

Nobody raises their hand.

Me: Nobody did the reading. Okay, then everybody take out a piece of paper and a pen. Do it now. I want you to write a paper, a five paragraph essay, arguing why you don’t have to do your reading. Three reasons. And I’d better be convinced by the end of it, because you’ve clearly convinced yourselves. Pens move the entire 50 minutes. Turn it in to me at the end of class. Go.

And then I’d probably throw up. Also, I haven’t quite mapped out how I’d react to the mutiny that would inevitably follow this exchange.

My projection of the third and most extreme scenario wrapped up just as I walked into class where I realized (once again) that I’m not badass enough to follow through with the two latter exchanges. I hung my coat and scarf over my chair, wrote out the agenda on the chalkboard, and organized my notes. When D and L sat down, they extracted their readings, highlighted and annotated, just as readings should be. I relaxed a bit.

Though class was not without one strange hiccup—a detour into Soviet history?—it followed Scenario One closer than expected. I spent the ride home evaluating the mental stability of a woman who lived the above entry.

I got home and confessed to my roommate/good friend how I spent my commute. “I sound crazy. And not crazy like quirky, but crazy like certifiable.”

“You’re not crazy,” she replied. “You just...have an active inner-life.”

Cheers to Fridays, and to friends who tell all the right lies.

from the workforce:

Every Friday, I teach a section of Intro to Cinema. I’ve got a good group, I think, though they were particularly unresponsive this last Friday. I’m blaming it on Spring Break because even I wanted to check-out early. But I didn’t, because we were discussing an article about how art is political, a thesis with which I agree completely. So I arrived upbeat and, dare I say, bouncy.

“I know these articles can feel like a bit of a slog,” I said as I stood in front of the class, “and I know you’re all looking forward to tearing out of here today, so where would everyone or anyone like to start? Who wants to take the wheel? What arguments did you buy or not buy?”

I stood, eyed wide with chalk in hand, ready to scribble their insights all over the board. I wanted an eruption, a crackling debate, or even a sign of comprehension. But instead they dead-fished me: mouths open, eyes glazed, and bodies barely upright.

Finally S raised her hand and said, “I guess I don’t understand why he thinks the frame story of the film changes the main story so much.”

“Thanks, S. That’s a great place to start, and it’s probably a common confusion, so let’s dive right in. What do we think?”

We hammered out the main story in which a very average Joe bucks authority and exposes the madness inherent in said authority. The frame story, however, situates this average Joe as not so average. He’s crazy, in fact, and has been diagnosed and is being healed by the very authority figure he’d put away in the main story. Not so subversive anymore, eh?

There was some light debate about whether or not the man was actually crazy. I asked how the story might change if he was or was not crazy. One student raised his hand and said, “We’ve done that, though—put people away because they didn’t fall in line, not because they were crazy.”

“Of course,” I said. “Can anyone think of an example?”

“Homosexuals.”

“You bet. Scarily recent, too.”

“And women, right?” asked another student.

“Yes.”

“When did they put women away?” asked a boy.

“It wasn’t limited to just one specific time period,” I said, “but one example was when women got really tired of just ironing and breastfeeding and cooking all day, and the medical community was all, ‘How can you not be fulfilled doing this? You’re biologically wired to perform these tasks. Oh no, you’re hysterical!’ So naturally the answer to all this irrational hysteria was to, you know, lock them bitches up!”

And then I had a flash of what unemployment might feel like. But the class laughed and I worried less that one of them would report me to the school authorities.

At 12:50, I cut them loose. I hope they spend the week sleeping in and watching good and bad movies—and maybe they’ll think, just once, about its political agenda. And I hope I have a job to come back to.

too personal and not about Boston, really.

Wednesdays were designed to build character. Of this, I am sure.

I don’t much care what happened today, though—some good, some less than—because I came home at near 11 p.m. and had mail: Comcast bill to pay this month, my credit card bill, and a square letter with actual blue, hand-written ink.

Today I got a card from Heidi.

Heidi’s my BFF (an acronym I find revolting in any other context) from Utah. She and I met at UVU’s Writing Center and took an ass-kicking class together, and we’ll always be friends for a number of reasons: she is, without a doubt, one of the most genuine people I know. Sweet, kind, and way too hard on herself. Someone’s gotta keep her in check and I nominate me. Also, she’s seen me lose my temper and butterfly kick a garbage can down the school hallway. Okay, it wasn’t a butterfly kick; it was a generic side-kick only elevated by its motivating fury. Post-garbage can, Heidi and I cranked out final papers together and spent hours at the Barnes and Noble Starbucks working, chatting, and ranting over tea.

We keep in touch via e-mail, but everyone knows that a card is different. Mostly because I can so clearly see her with a squishy-grip pen composing the most direct and kindest of “thank yous”, and because her last-second decision to pass on a little “social update” likely underwent much debate before penning the exchange she outlined.

So now it’s on my board with a card from my adopted Serbian sister, a note from my sister, K, pictures of family and friends, concert and game tickets, and the string of beads my brother S gave me when he was 5. In Boston, I keep my heart on my wall.

a sudden turn

It rained all day Friday, which was a nice break from the snow until I stepped in a puddle and trekked around campus all day with a wet left foot. Still, it was worth it to lay in bed that night listening to the rain against my sliding glass doors.

At 9 a.m., I locked the door behind me and my corkscrew umbrella leaves sprang into full cover. I hustled across the street and tiptoed across some black ice that was, no doubt, proof of the first snow in early December. My umbrella fluttered in the wind and I looked at my watch. Five minutes until the T arrived. A strong gust almost stole the umbrella from my gloveless hand, and I stepped off the curb and into a three-inch deep slush.

“Shit wet shoe,” I muttered.

A car whizzed past me and I jumped back on to the sidewalk to avoid its wake. Then the white sedan reversed, the treat of the tires throwing gray mush in the opposite direction.

“Ma’am! Excuse me, ma’am.”

I looked up and asked, “Me?” I’ve never been a “ma’am.”

“Yeah, hey, your backpack’s open. I didn’t want all of your stuff to fall out.”

I thanked him twice, and he nodded and said, “It was no trouble,” and sped down The Ave. toward the T stop. I slipped my right arm out of the strap and swung my green backpack to my left, resting it on my hip. It was wide open, wet notebooks and folders spilling out like a tongue from a mouth.

“Lame,” I whispered.

When the train finally arrived 14 minutes late, I sat near the doors, like always, and I imagined myself walking with an open backpack ten feet further down the road, fishing out assignments from the tiny lake accumulated between S. Street and A. Drive, umbrella rolling down the street, and hair soaked.

That man did me quite a kindness. Friday was happy.

at Heidi's request:

Thursday and Friday were the most beautiful no-coat days. I walked to school in 46 degree sunshine that I could actually feel and left my heavy wool coat and hanging in my closet. It was a brief but lovely break from the relentless Windy East Coast Chill.

It’s foolish to say that I had a hard week, because everyone has hard weeks. But I did, and I came home absolutely bushed. My body crashed, but my brain wouldn’t rest. The remedy? Around one a.m. I popped a Xanax and turned on The Devil Wears Prada and fell asleep before Anne Hathaway is reinvented into a chic Material Girl, which was a shame because I really do love a good makeover montage.

Between three and four that morning, I woke to the sound of branches cracking against my deck, to metal scraping on the pavement and tumbling down the asphalt of our charming street. In my drugged daze, I worried that the garbage cans might slam into the side my favorite green Volvo parked across the street, or that my deck would fall right off of the side of my house. I imagined it crushing my roommate J’s car, probably because she insists on leaving the backdoor unlocked so she doesn’t have to walk the 20 extra feet to our front door.

My eyes were too stubborn to fully open, too thick with medicine, but I could see my white cotton curtains fluttering at the heavy wind, a reminder that my deck doors are poorly fashioned. I turned to my left side and felt a cool breeze sweep across my face, and then my bed began to rock from side to side like a rowboat, a slave to the current. I listened to that wind all night.

When my roommate M walked into the kitchen the next morning, she looked as tired as I felt.

“Didn’t sleep?” I asked.

“No. You?"

“Not enough.”

“I kept waking up to the house,” she said and reached for her Cheerios.

“The house?” I asked through a mouthful of oatmeal.

“Yeah, didn’t you feel it rocking?”

“The house rocked?”

“Yeah. Old New England houses in the wind, they rock. You didn’t notice?”

No need for a rowboat or the salty Atlantic in 55 mile per hour gusts.

tweens are clever.

My bus route takes me past The Boston Globe and Boston’s WB headquarters. Or maybe they’re branches. At the very least, they look official enough to be important extensions. Occasionally, if the timing’s right, I get to witness flashes of various promotions for shows like 90210 or Hellcats where teenagers dress up, picket, and make choices they’ll most likely regret. If I’m really lucky, like I was today, my bus hits a red light and I get to stare in total disbelief.

This evening, girls and boys lined the sidewalk dressed as vampires to advertise tonight’s episode of The Vampire Diaries. Dozens of signs boasted heavy red and black ink, all with the same catchphrase: “Catch VD!”

Might wanna rethink the slogan, guys.

park it.

About a week ago, I tripped over a chair. To be fair, it was sitting on the street about two feet away from the curb and I was scrolling through the artists on my iPod. I walked away unharmed, intact, but puzzled about the placement of the faded green wooden chair. But it was snowing and cold and I was too nervous about school to think about the chair.

On my way from the T four days ago, I noticed another chair on the sidewalk, a neon pink camping chair that folds sorta like a tripod and is carried in a nylon bag. I’ve accumulated hundreds of hours sitting in identical chairs on camping trips and at ball games, and because it’s an outdoorsy chair, I thought, “There have been a striking number of birds nesting in and fluttering about our neighborhood, so…?” But it was dark and snowing, and I’ve been watching The Wire and am therefore afraid of everything, especially in the dark, and especially in the dark when my vision is compromised by snow. So I hurried home.

Such heavy snowfall in Boston has left little space on the streets. My neighborhood is comprised of a long, narrow road that loops, most of which is one-way. Cars drive too fast, typically, and too close to the curb. As the snow has encroached on the already modest street space, drivers have gotten more aggressive and more territorial, as demonstrated by Old Smoker Guy’s inability to wait for Middle-Aged Lady to back out of her driveway. He tried to hop the curb, but his sedan couldn’t make it past the preliminary snow bank.

Given the median-like snow stacked along the street, too many drivers and cars have been displaced. Instead of parking bumper to bumper, vehicles are separated by five-foot snow banks. And all I can think about is when they’ll melt and how the whole street will sound like water.

It snowed a bit on Sunday, and watching it from inside my home (still freezing, btw) was beautiful. Unexpected winds dove in and blew the snow off the flat New England roofs, shaking loose a gorgeous, dancing dust. The downside, I suppose, is that the city of Boston requires us to shovel all that beauty within a certain time frame.

I don’t mind shoveling the snow, so I’ve taken care of it since I got home. My roommate J, who I’ve tried to like but just really don’t, doesn’t think she should shovel snow because “I’ve done it once before already.” Well I’ve done it five times, so zip it. The point is that I tucked my sweats into my boots, slipped my gloves on, and grabbed the shovel.

For some reason at 3 p.m. this Sunday, the streets were absolutely deserted. No bodies, no cars, just snow. And chairs.

Chairs.

White plastic lawn chair. Broken bar stool. Navy square-back wooden chair. Neon pink camping chair. Wooden footstool. Markers. Chairs near the curb, not always on all fours, but staking claim to the precious blacktop.

the week my electric blanket busted.

The heat in my apartment’s not working. Hasn’t been for about a week, but I suppose that’s not the whole truth. The heat kicks on if we jack the thermostat up to just past 80 degrees, but even then the heat is patchy, poorly circulated, and more expensive than anything I own. I voted to shutoff the heat altogether, but should the pipes freeze and burst (which is likely in sub 20 degree temperatures), it’s on the renters. What this means is that we must keep the heat on without any actual heat. In short, we’re each paying hundreds of dollars to freeze.

The landlord is slow to act, as a professional assessment of the heating system will cost her money; and also because “if you can’t see you breath, it’s not that cold.” Last night when the temperature dropped to minus 7, I saw my breath. And then said the F word.

My hopes that this gorgeous, snow-packed city would warm up have been smothered. By more snow, in fact.

When I left the house today it was three degrees below zero. I opened my front door, and my first breath choked me. I hacked and gasped for a few seconds on my porch worried that my lung may collapse. That’s what three below will do to ya.

My wussy .3 mile walk to the T numbed my face, hands, and legs, despite the long underwear Mom got me for Christmas. Tiny stars crystallized on my scarf just below my mouth. This cold, it’s a whole different kind of beating.

My teeth are still ringing.

PS: thanks Heidi and Meg for reading this gibberish. Though, me in person is much worse.

a nighthawk throwback. or, why i’m a pathetic human being.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. My early drafts usually involve grand plans to drastically change my lifestyle and financial state with a better body and more time to travel. A once-over forces me to eliminate “volunteer in Nepal” and “backpack through Europe.” Later, Whitney. Later. A third look drops the goal “save 2,000 dollars”, as it’s a significant percentage of my overall income, most of which goes to paying rent. So this year, I’ve narrowed my scope.

As I sat by the fire tonight watching River Monsters and talking to my siblings, they began listing their own resolutions. M wants to “treat people better. Maybe. If they deserve it.” K is setting a goal she believes to be impossible: to “relax and quit taking responsibility for everyone’s actions and feelings.” True, it’ll be a doozy. S wants to finish school with a 4.0., to which he quickly added, “and get my leg press over 1000 pounds again.”

This sparked a landslide of goals committed to physical excellence, a realm I can’t very well understand. I think that’s a problem. I can hop on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes or play a (semi) competitive game of soccer, but when it comes to basic physical fitness, I’m embarrassingly out of shape.

Two days ago, as I rooted through old boxes of pictures, yearbooks (which I threw out), and old board games, I found my Presidential Physical Fitness award from the sixth grade. The Presidential award was the highest (and most meaningless) award given, and it required specific times and numbers for pushups, pull-ups, the mile run, and sprints. I can’t imagine my soft, tricep-less, 26-year-old body taking that test today. In fact, I haven’t attempted a pull-up since the sixth grade, a realization I confessed to S, after which we both descended into giggles.

So this year, I will. And I will succeed. I will complete a pull-up. That is my resolution.

orem landing.

I’m sleeping in my old room but without the comfort of handmade bookshelves, a 17-year-old desk, or the navy banana chair I gifted to my brother S before I left. No pictures, trinkets, ticket stubs, and no change on floor. The whole setup feels austere and deserted, except for my luggage in the corner. My duffle bag looks like a murder victim: deflated and gutted, the contents spilling over onto the carpet; and my scarves make for a convincing likeness of the 20+ feet of intestines once neatly coiled in my bag.

I’ve lived out of a bag before. After my parents split, we all packed up every week to cross the boundary between Lindon and Orem, different towns for each parent. Still, I can’t get used to the chaos of scattered and piled clothes, or the mingling of dirty shirts and clean jeans.

But I like my yellow room, and I’ve liked visiting Utah. I like long lunches with friends that demand a tip that almost matches the bill because, really, we sat there for three hours. I like dancing with my family to songs synonymous with seedy stripper joints. I like buckets of good food, and violent indoor soccer games that leave me winded, sweaty, and bruised. I like reading Blankets in bed until 4 a.m. I like the general warmth of people, even at 1 a.m. in the grocery store. Utah people’s good people.

But just as Utah has reminded me what I miss, it has reminded me why I left. Explaining why I’m 26 and not married has proven to be just as irritating as it was five months ago, as are the assumptions that I’m both politically conservative and an active member of the dominant faith.

They’re honest mistakes, I suppose, I hope, and though I’d never claim that Utah people are homogenous, there’s definitely a commanding mindset, and I doubt it will change much. But it’s my home, a place with a vacant room waiting for me to drop my luggage. And even in moments of sheer frustration, I can skip over to Ridley’s and get a six-pack of Apple Beer and watch The Mighty Ducks with my siblings. And that makes all the difference.