The Transitional Season Landscape

The only thing to resist spring's hastened arrival is the lake. Green shoots of grass fight their way through the tangled brown remnants of last year's photosynthesis. Couples take the moment that their dog is occupied with its sniffing to caress in the fading light. Music and fragments of conversation travel from rolled-down car windows and yards partly shielded by skeletal shrubs. A crowd ambulates the path around the lake, thinner than it would have been earlier in the day, but sizable compared to the foot traffic of the preceding season. The city has awakened under the record heat and recently stretched daylight. 

But the lake is obstinate. It has clung to its coating of ice, which lies still and matte, ranging from thin smoothness to furrowed impasto, prefiguring the deep charcoal gray of the oncoming night. But the surface has fissured. In the places where the slush has split, open water brilliantly mirrors the dimming light and draws attention to its lingering presence. A shining silver point extends where the ice has begun to recede from the shore. Far off, narrow cracks reflect the city lights in duplicate.

Ducks descend and flap close to the surface, lured by the sparkling promise of open water. But they continue on and on across the lake because they are unable to find a gap wide enough for a landing. Despite its thinning cover and the obvious, glowing flaws that show through, the lake has not given up. It exhales occasional bracing breezes, no longer icy, but still asserting the recent grip of colder temperatures. 

We will soon allow the memories of snow, ice and visible breath to melt away with the bright sun, heavy air and pleasant frenzy of enjoying every moment we're free from winter. The lake, rather than providing sturdy support to ice houses and trucks, will be parted by keels, thrashed by swimmers and pierced by paddles and oars. Its peaceful, solitary time is coming to a harshly abrupt end. But our summers are short. Winter will be back soon enough, and the lake will begin forming a new cover of easily broken frost, persisting in its task until it builds up several inches of concealing ice. In the meantime, we'll enjoy this brief moment of candid open water.

Going It Alone: The Promising

I had a hard time recovering from my knee-bashing swing dance experience. I couldn't work up much enthusiasm about going to class the following week. Luckily I had paid for the whole month's session in advance, and I hate losing money for no reason other than reluctance. I begrudgingly left my apartment and headed to the studio, consoling myself by striking a silent (and admittedly pathetic) thought bargain: I had to go to the lesson, but I could skip the class field trip to Lee's Liquor Lounge right after. I had heard that no-one from class had gone to the Famous Dave's field trip at the end of the previous month's session, and the last thing I wanted was to stand around by myself while more experienced dancers burned up the floor.  


After I checked in for class, I headed into the waiting area and resumed my normal habit of milling about awkwardly until class started and people were compelled to interact with me. After about a minute, I decided I was tired of standing silently amongst the chatting couples and friends. I walked over to a group of people I recognized and gracefully wedged my way into their conversation. None of them seemed to mind, and one of the women started trying to convince me to go on the field trip. I clung stubbornly to my irresolute ideals, and the instructor saved me from having to commit by calling us to come on up for class. 


With the initial conversational ice broken, I started talking to another classmate as we headed up the stairs. This thankfully saved me from the second bout of solitary standing that I usually experience during class. The instructor puts on a song or two before he starts leading the lesson, giving us time to practice what we learned the previous week. I don't have much problem with asking someone to dance, but there weren't enough leaders to go around that session. Most of the men who were enrolled came with girlfriends, so they were usually occupied with built-in pre-lesson partners. Since much of beginning Lindy Hop involves learning how to follow a lead, it's hard to practice on your own. Thus the awkward solo standing. 


But this week was different. I talked to my new friend, who was another rare singleton, until the lesson started. The person I'd hobbled the previous week was not in attendance, and I didn't inflict serious harm on any of my partners. After a last burst of big, showy jazz-standard-concluding brass chords rang from the speaker system, the instructor reminded us about the field trip to Lee's. He and the Beginner Plus students wouldn't be able to join us until their lesson ended in about an hour, but he encouraged our class to go over right away. 


I asked my new friend K if she was going to go. She reflected my initial feelings about the outing with a cagily non-committal, "I don't know, I haven't decided yet. Are you going?" "I think we should go," I rallied. "Then if we don't dance, we can at least not dance together." She agreed, and we encouraged a few more of our classmates to join us. We quickly realized that we'd have to put our new strength-in-numbers strategy to the test if we hoped to find the dance venue. One couple had more than a vague sense about how to get there, so they went to the head of our hastily-formed convoy of black Hondas.  


We arrived at Lee's without incident, but our number did not lend us much strength once we saw the dance floor. It was packed with impressively twirling dancers and ringed by a sizable audience of spectators. K and I quickly retreated to the bar for some additional liquid courage. This proved more difficult than I'd anticipated. The lone craggy, cranky bartender made shallow rounds at the far end of the bar for quite some time, so we decided to go to him. Predictably, he moved to the end of the bar we had just left and started treading water and taking orders there. Finally he drifted back in our direction and poured our drinks. Suitably reinforced with alcoholic bravery, we headed to the fringes of the dance floor. 


My first partner was an octogenarian. He led me onto the floor during a song that didn't lend itself to Lindy Hop. I shuffled around confusedly for a while, prompting him to clarify, "It's like a polka." That was not at all helpful to me. Eventually I caught on to the basic step, and he proceeded to grab both of my arms, lean back and gallop us around with the centrifugal force of a much younger man. I could make out nothing but his gleefully smiling face against the blur of motion we created. Before the song was over, he'd done this move a second time, spun-thrown me across the dance floor twice, and turned me repeatedly. This last move caused me to accidentally trail my fingers across his bald, sweaty head. This incident and my uncertainty about the steps should have fused to form an uncomfortable start to the evening. But rather than being off-putting, the experience made me eager to keep trying.  


As the night progressed, I asked some people to dance and a few people asked me. Most were from my class, but I also approached a couple of new people. While I couldn't pick up on everything my parters wanted me to do, I think I passably faked the parts I didn't understand. At least there was little unintentional impact, and that is good enough for me at this point. When neither of us was dancing, I talked to K or the other people who had joined our solidarity party along the way. I met a lot of my women classmates for the first time, which was strange but understandable since our rotation of dance partners is primarily comprised of men. I consider my first social swing dance outing a success, not only because I didn't kill the octogenarian with my dance moves, but because I conquered my recurring shyness and formed connections with some new people. 


I moved up into a more advanced level of lessons this month. I'm hoping that the smaller class size will help me get to know my classmates even better while I improve at Lindy Hop. If nothing else, I'll probably gather some new blog material. Learning more complicated moves will undoubtedly create more opportunities to accidentally body slam my partner. 

Going It Alone: The Ungainly

While the Groupon emails I receive each day usually feature waxing services or restaurants I've no desire to try, I found a surprisingly appealing offer in my inbox over the summer. The deal was $20 for $40 worth of swing dance lessons, and it arrived about a month before Andy and I were due to move into our own separate places. I figured these classes would be a good way to get out of my solitary apartment, get some exercise and meet new people. I'd used salsa dancing as a means to the same ends in Dublin, and I had quite enjoyed myself. I intrepidly clicked the "Buy!" button, then proceeded to wait four months before redeeming the offer the week it expired. Despite delaying my first class as long as possible, however, I've gone to a lesson every week since.


Learning the Lindy Hop has been fun and challenging, but forming any sort of relationship with the people in my class has been harder than I anticipated. The class is set up so that you rotate partners frequently. You only dance with each person for a maximum of five minutes, and there's barely time to reiterate what's written on your name tag before the instructor counts you in. It's also tough to multitask at our current coordination level, so the time you spend with each partner is devoted to silent and intensive concentration on your feet. After trying a move a few times, you high five, change partners and start all over again. I suppose it's a little like speed dating, except you engage in awkward dancing instead of awkward conversation. And most of the men arrive with their girlfriends.


Given the quiet whirlwind of my social interactions in class, I was pleased to see one of my dance partners when I looked up from my empty mocha at a coffee shop. I went to say hello, glad for the chance to talk without the "tri-ple step, tri-ple step, rock step" rhythm pulsing beneath my thoughts the entire time. We chatted about class briefly, then talked about his current graduate studies and my potential ones. It wasn't a long conversation, but it was several times more extensive than all of our previous verbal exchanges combined. I left feeling proud of myself, both for enrolling in the class and approaching this person outside of it. I had stumbled upon a potential new friendship, and I was eager to cultivate it further during the following week's lesson.


The next time he came to class, I watched as he progressed from one partner to the next, up and down the lines of followers that stretched the length of the dance floor. Finally I was next in the rotation. I greeted him by name without looking at the adhesive-backed reminder on his chest, and I asked him about something he'd mentioned at the coffee shop. Then we started dancing. My chatting to him had caused him to miss the instructions about which steps we should be practicing, and I felt pressure to be a really good dancer. We both panicked. He worriedly explained that he didn't know what we were supposed to be doing, and I found myself completely unable to follow his unusually anxious lead. I not only stepped on his feet, but I somehow managed to bash both of his knees with my own.

I've stepped on partners' feet before. It's bound to happen when you pair two inexperienced dancers. It's slightly embarrassing, but the feeling fades quickly as you focus on not doing it again. Crippling someone with a double-knee smash, however, is ungainly beyond belief. I was immensely relieved when the instructor's cry of "Rotate!" resounded through the room. The hot humiliation settled into disappointment midway through my casualty-free stint with the next partner. Of all my classmates, why did I have to succumb to extreme clumsiness while paired with the one person I'd encountered outside the dance studio?


I think I managed to redeem myself later that evening. The class had shrunk considerably since the first lesson in the session, and we actually completed the entire partner rotation. I saw that my bruised friend was coming close to having to dance with me again, and I decided to make the most of the opportunity. When he (perhaps reluctantly) took my hand, I smiled as winningly as possible and said, "I promise I won't step on you this time." I thought it best not to bring up the knee incident, even jokingly. He laughed graciously, and I was grateful to put most of the awkwardness behind us. I didn't step on his feet again, nor did any of our joints collide. I suppose I might consider that a small triumph.


But he hasn't been back to class since.

Up next: Going It Alone: The Promising

Going It Alone: The Bad

Being without a significant other means that I no longer have a built-in person to bring along when I discover that Vicious Vicious is playing at the Entry in a few hours. The challenge of dating was finding things to do together, but now that task has reversed into finding people to invite to the things to do. No-one was without plans so late on a Saturday evening and, while I prefer to be able to share my show-going experiences with others, I rarely allow the lack of a companion to deter me from hearing a band I like. Especially when they are as reclusive as Vicious Vicious. I decided to go on my own.


This was nothing new to me. I quite frequently ventured out alone when I lived on other continents, whether it was to visit a museum, watch a Liverpool match down at the pub, go on a wine tasting tour, or listen to a trad session or poetry reading. Nothing especially untoward ever happened, and I almost always talked to some interesting people. 


The individual I met at the Entry that night was, well...interesting in a different way. Some people in front of me went to refresh their drinks after the opening band finished, and I moved a little closer to the stage. This was a rather large mistake, since it put me next to the person who was to put a damper on the rest of my night. He saw that I was holding an empty beer bottle and asked if I needed another drink. I said no but decided to chat with him anyway. 


During the course of our brief conversation, he revealed that he was nearly a decade older than me, told me he hated jazz after I said I used to play saxophone, referred to himself as a poindexter, extended his driving-gloved hand for me to shake three times and forgot my name. Finally his friend, who had been at the bar, returned and started talking to Driving Gloves. I took advantage of the diversion by inching imperceptibly away from him while feigning great interest in some old text messages. I carefully avoided any further eye contact until he reached over and took the empty bottle from my hand. I smiled a thanks at him for relieving me of that burden but did not engage further. 


At long, awkward last Vicious Vicious took the stage. I honed in on the lead singer/guitarist because he was the furthest away from Driving Gloves and there could be absolutely no mistake about where my gaze was resting. After the first song, Driving Gloves shouted, "Free Bird!" No one laughed or acknowledged the joke, and I cringed for both of us. I cringed again when someone in the crowd had to ask his friend to stop flailing so much because he had clipped an innocent bystander. I doggedly continued to avoid glancing anywhere near their direction, and I thought Driving Gloves had taken the hint.


Up to this point, my encounter with him had been nothing more than a slightly uncomfortable bit of small talk, much like any conversation you might have with someone with whom you just can't connect. But about three or four songs in, he reached across the people I'd allowed to squeeze between us and extended his outstretched pointer finger into my peripheral vision. This juvenile method of drawing attention to himself worked: I looked at him. But since I don't respond well to vague threats of being poked in the eye, my response was probably not what he'd hoped. I glanced over only long enough to shake my head and say, "Don't do that." Then I promptly resumed ignoring him. At least outwardly. It was hard to regain much focus on the music, and I'd lost much of my initial excitement about being at the show. 


Surprisingly, that was not the first time a man has attempted to garner attention by pointing his finger in my face. When I was studying abroad in London, I took a side trip to Barcelona with one of my fellow classmates. He began to annoy me less than a day into the four-day holiday, and we very, very narrowly avoided a bus debacle that would have caused us to be stranded together for another night. I was quite ready to keep to myself and write in my journal by the time we boarded the plane back to London, but he had other ideas. When he wasn't putting my tray table down repeatedly, he was hovering his finger an inch or so away from my body without actually touching me. I suppose that pointing experience was more troublesome than this more recent one, since I wasn't trapped on a plane with Driving Gloves.  


I soon learned that being with a friend or boyfriend at the Entry probably wouldn't have saved me from unwelcome advances. Soon after the finger-pointing incident, an extremely drunk guy came up and started loudly hitting on a woman standing behind me. His pickup line was, "That girl's not wearing a bra, is she?" referring to the backup singer on the stage. Eventually the poor targeted woman's boyfriend started talking to Drunkety Drunk, who told Boyfriend that his girlfriend was wonderful, amazing, and he was going to go find someone who would get effed up with him. When he left, Boyfriend remarked to Girlfriend, "I guess he didn't notice I had my arm around you the whole time."


I didn't wait to see if the band did an encore. I squeezed through the crowd as soon as they'd finished their main set, periodically checking to make sure that Driving Gloves wasn't following me. He didn't, and I'm sure he was harmless. I hope he keeps going to the Entry, taking chances and initiating conversation with people. I hope he chats up someone who will let him buy her a beer, laugh at his jokes and connect with him over a mutual hatred of jazz. Most of all, I hope he's not reduced to having to point his finger in her face.


Next up: Going It Alone: The Ungainly

Becoming an Object in Motion

This post puts an end to a full two years of writer's block. I can't even legitimately call it that, since writer's block implies an enduring and diligently fought battle against some inscrutable obstacle. I did fight it at first, wondering why I was having such a hard time calling forth words and shaping them into anything I thought worthy of sharing. Eventually I gave up trying. The reason for my struggle, and even my writing itself, came to seem insignificant. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, the reason has transformed into something both significant and worthy of its own narrative.

Part of it was being busier than almost ever before. After finishing my dreadful assignment at Insurance Place, I enrolled in a full semester of art history courses at the University of Minnesota. Writing twenty-odd papers in sixteen weeks, plus wall labels for my internship in the Contemporary Art department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, left me no time for recreational blog posts.

After I scraped through the semester, I was asked to curate my very own exhibition at the MIA. I was to be the one who would decide on a theme, pick the artworks, research the artists and the time period and write the wall labels. Having this amount of responsibility and creative freedom as an intern is a rare opportunity, and I was determined to make the very most of it. That meant that if I was going to spend my time writing anything at all, it had better be wall labels.

Learning as much as possible about Zeppelins, standards of nineteenth-century hygiene, roller coasters, anarchist bombings, cabarets, corsets, electric light, antisemitism, luxury ocean liners and giant telescopes seemed to pay off. Despite the few small errors that were pointedly brought to my attention by members of the public (really, we're talking a gaffe as miniscule as omitting wood from the list of media that make up an entire bicycle) I am very proud to say that A Means of Escape: European Posters from 1889 to 1930 was my first exhibition.


If I want to make a career of mounting such shows, I will need at least a master's degree and, preferably, a PhD. I started working towards that goal as soon as my show was up on the walls, and I plunged into studying far more math than I had thought about or attempted over the last ten years. I was dismayed to learn that I could no longer remember how to find a percent difference when I'd once been able to do calculus. My GRE preparations also humbled my opinion of my command of vocabulary. I took the exam on Halloween, achieved passable results and began writing personal statements for five different art history graduate programs. I submitted the last of them on January 15.

So I've been busy over the last two years. But time constraints were not the only thing holding me back. I found I no longer knew what to write about. I started this up as a travel blog, and it was almost difficult not to find material whilst living in new places. During my expatriatism in London, Dublin and Sydney, I encountered new adventures almost daily and, whether these novelties took the form of fun or frustration, the experiences were frequently worth relating. What in my American life of laundry, dishes, commuting and routine could be story-worthy?

Mainly my ludicrous experiences as a temp. I documented those for a year or more, until I finally found a permanent job. It is absolutely not lack of material that has forced me to stop writing about the workplace. Rather, companies generally frown upon their HR professionals spilling intimate secrets on the Internet, and I care more about being fired now that I have good benefits and friendly relationships with some of my co-workers.

These are all issues that could have been surmounted. The most serious problem was that when I did put pen to paper, I wrote things that I wasn't ready to believe or acknowledge. There had been many small signs that it might be time for Andy and me to end our relationship. They pricked at my consciousness and frequently disturbed my thoughts, but I could ignore them well enough as long as I didn't write them down.

I told myself that increasingly identifying with lyrics about heartbreak and loss on the radio didn't mean much. It was normal for couples to argue with and annoy each other a lot more after being together more than three years. Our longevity could also explain why I didn't miss him as much as I once had when he went on business trips. Outside stress was causing my uncomfortable uncertainty about whether or not we'd still be together by the time such-and-such future event rolled around. His busy work schedule was the reason why I felt like I didn't really know him as well anymore, like we were now one against the other instead of one against the world.

There was no obvious transgression or problem, so I countered every doubt or frustration with an increasingly weak reassurance that these problems were temporary. All I had to do was remember was how elated I'd been to find him in the crowd at the Charles de Gaulle airport arrivals gate, the feeling of being invincible and collectively amazing when we were together, the custom-decorated cakes, the surprise ticket to a sold-out show I really wanted to attend, or any one of the little favors he did for me on a routine basis. Things were never that bad, so it seemed like they might one day revert back to what they had been before. But they just never did. Eventually, recalling those memories only emphasized the chasm between what we'd felt then and what we didn't feel now.

Since our love for each other changed so slowly over time, it was hard to decide what to do and when. We talked seriously about breaking up two or three times, but neither of us was ready to face the thought that we would have to let the other go. Finally the strain between us was too great to ignore, and we decided to act on the thoughts and fears we'd been trying so hard to suppress.

I got my own apartment in September. Andy came over the day of the move, just to reassure me that things would, in fact, be fine. The next day, we went to our old place together to load our cars with the things that hadn't required a U-Haul. He called me in a panic the day after because we had misunderstood the date by which we were supposed to completely vacate the apartment. The place was still a right mess and our landlord was livid. I went over to help him scrub, dust, mop, vacuum and argue with our landlord about the cleanliness of the oven and the outside of the windows.

The supportive tenor of those first few post-breakup days has remained, and Andy is still one of my best friends. I will always care about him in some way, and I still think that he is an indisputably caring, creative and talented person. Continuing to be present in each other's lives as we move on as separate entities will sometimes create painful situations. But I am grateful to take that risk.

Our romantic relationship ended and I no longer needed to avoid the concretization of my concerns. But I still couldn't write. This was now nothing more than a lack of momentum, but as I learned when I was between temp assignments, that can be staggeringly difficult to overcome. I repeatedly vowed that I would write something more than an email. Tomorrow.

I started to despair over my lack of creative passion. I envied the people who enjoy something so much that they feel compelled to do it. To get out of bed early, stay up all night, lose all sense of time and place and work unseemly long hours, all for the sake of chasing a ridiculously tempting muse. All I felt compelled to do was procrastinate as long as possible.

Until Raf said I needed to write. I don't know what it was about his particular urging that actually produced a result. I had known what he told me for quite some time, and Erinn had frequently nudged me as well. Maybe the time was right. Maybe it was his choice of words. Maybe the preceding glass of truly terrible wine had created the appropriate sense of gravity. I will never be certain.

Whatever the delicate and ephemeral mixture of intangible elements, it produced a new resolve. I have written something nearly every day since. And I finally overcame what increasingly seemed an insurmountable barrier--I published a blog post. And with it, I have rediscovered my passion. I remembered how driven I can be to find the right word, to create lyricism in a sentence, to convey my thoughts in a tangible, meaningful and entertaining way. I feel the need to move people with words. I don't think I have succeeded in that yet. But I intend to keep writing until I do.

Podcast Escapism

With the end of the year came the end of my assignment at Insurance Place. It never really improved. I continued to spend the majority of my time opening mail and folding forms. But I actually came to prefer this to writing letters, which is what I was hired to do. When opening mail, I could listen to my iPod. In addition to being entertaining, the podcasts I regularly downloaded made it possible for me to drown out the gossipy and inane conversation going on in the cubicles surrounding mine. I would much prefer to hear Ira Glass spin tales on This American Life than listen to my coworker repeatedly tell the story of how her daughter was up all night puking into a bucket. I find Terri Gross' interviews on Fresh Air much more enriching than my coworkers' hostile phone interrogations of their husbands.

While few people hesitated to share their personal business with the rest of the office, one person went above and beyond. A few months ago, she and I were some of the last people in the office. She took a call and, from phrases such as, "What about last weekend," "Was I just a conquest," "What do you want from me," and "I don't need a relationship," I determined that she was blatantly discussing an affair. I sit within plain sight of her, so she should have been aware of my presence. But I started making an excessive amount of noise just in case she wasn't. This did nothing to stop her all-too-detailed conversation. Unfortunately, the statement, "This has nothing to do with the baby; she's not even born yet" revealed exactly who her partner had been. One of two men in our department was soon to be a father. Suddenly it made sense why L had been complaining about how weird S had been that week. She'd been spurned. I'm not sure what S's relationship with the baby's mother is. Maybe it's not necessarily wrong that he's sleeping with someone else. But the whole thing disturbed me. Mostly because I just don't want to know.

I also didn't want to know about the boob job L had after Thanksgiving. But I heard all about it. Repeatedly. She told just about everyone in the office about it before she had it done, squealing about how excited she was and reveling in the dramatic story of how she had revealed the news to her daughter. She was out for two weeks for the procedure (which I relished), then returned wearing low-cut tops and complaining about how sore she was. I take mental notes about occurrences like this just in case I am ever hired to write a season of The Office. Unfortunately, a boob job episode has already been done. And whoever wrote it must have worked with someone just like L. I was frequently struck by how often she did or said something exactly like what Jan said or did after she had her boob job on The Office. I was also bemused by the behaviour of the other ladies in the office. Several of them came by to see the results for themselves, with one woman inquiring, "Do you have anything for show and tell?" I'm fairly certain I also heard one person ask if she could touch them.

As much as I liked tasks that allowed me to drown out such conversations with podcasts, I never became fond of packing up processed claims. This may be because I was offered more instruction on this aspect of my job than any other. I was supposed to remove all the clips from stacks of paper, put the paper into a box and tape the box shut. While this sounds like the most self-explanatory task one can be given, it sadly was not. The second time I packed up the claims, I attached a mailing sheet to the top of the box as I had been instructed. I taped all four sides of the form just like I had the previous month. The next day, my supervisor forwarded an email she had received from one of the people in the mail room which stated that that we should only use one small piece of tape when attaching the form. Above the forwarded message, she had written, "FYI." For your information, too, I thought. I would never have done something as pointless as taping a form on all four sides if she hadn't told me to do so.

I had a few more claims to pack up on the day that I received the tape instructions email. I very deliberately only used one small piece of Scotch tape to attach the mailing form to the remaining box. But the next day, another forwarded email was waiting for me. "The box yesterday had almost as much tape on it as the day before," the mail room person griped. Above this message, my boss had reiterated the instruction to only use one small piece of tape. I replied immediately, writing that I had only used one small piece of tape. I explained that after I had taped the box shut, one of my coworkers had reopened it to take out a claim she had given me accidentally. She had retaped the box herself, and, I told my boss, could have taped over the mailing sheet. Maybe it wasn't noble to call out my coworker, but there's no way I was going to make it look as though I couldn't follow so simple an instruction.

If she were to provide a similarly detailed explanation about proofreading to her other employees, then they might stop sending out letters that included wrong names in the salutations, misspellings of cities and incorrect verb tenses. Sometimes the mistakes I found were comical. I was supposed to send follow-up letters to people who needed to submit documents before we could pay out their death claim. To find out what documents I should ask for, I had to look at the last letter the claims examiner had sent. One of these letters was addressed to the city of Creep, Illinois. I was skeptical about the likelihood of anyone naming their city Creep, so I typed the city, state and zip code into the Google maps search bar. The result read, "Did you mean Crete, IL?" Sigh. In another case, the beneficiary was listed as Rabbi Someone-Or-Other. The examiner had crossed out Rabbi and written "Robbi." On the letter, they reduced the Rabbi's actual first name to a middle initial following the first name Robbi. I did a search for "Rabbi What's-His-Face" on Google just to make sure I wasn't uncorrecting a valid correction. Sure enough, the person is listed on several websites as the leader of a Jewish congregation. He name is not Robbi.

To be fair, several of my coworkers were nice and I appreciated my boss letting me adjust my schedule around my class. But I'm glad my assignment is over. It could very well be the last temp job I have. I'm enrolled as a full-time student for this coming semester, and my classes and internship at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will take up most of my 9-to-5 hours. I'll have to work what is likely to be an unfulfilling job on the evenings and weekends to make up for it. But, when an unfulfilling job is paired with making great strides in another direction, it doesn't seem so bad.

Robots and Mail Merges

I have returned to the workforce. It's not necessarily a triumphant return. I'm on another temp assignment. I've been away from an office setting for a while, so I've been finding it a little difficult to readjust. I'd forgotten, for example, what disgusting habits people have. Our warren of cubicle walls, while effective at blocking sight, don't do nearly enough to muffle sound. I share a carpeted cube partition with a woman who likes to eat while she's talking on the phone. The fact that I'm not the one on the other end of the line makes no difference. I can still hear her talking with her mouth full, and it's still gross.

But that pales in comparison to the sound of fingernail clippers that sometimes comes from the cube cater corner to mine. Admittedly, I am quite squeamish about fingernails and am probably extra sensitive the noise that cutting them makes. But I would imagine most people might have a problem with their coworkers sending nail particles flying about the office. Having to listen while the owner of the clippers trimmed her nails one day was fairly painful. But an even higher threshold of disgusting office practices was crossed last week. The woman who sits in the cube behind me went over to her neighbor's unoccupied desk, borrowed the clippers from her drawer and started cutting her own nails with them while she was on the phone. I sat in my decidedly non-soundproofed cube, flinching with every snip of the clippers.

Yet on rare occasions, I'm glad to be able to overhear what goes on in the office. One recent verbal exchange proved to be very amusing. One woman, who usually prefers to complain very audibly about her divorce, was instead seething about a very condescending email she'd apparently received from a co-worker.
"I just can't stand the condensation any more!" she cried. "You know what? I'm smart!" Somehow, confusing the main word in her sentence seemed to belie her statement.

But worse than any ambient office sound I could hear is the crushing boredom of temp work. The setting may have changed from Class Action Place to Insurance Place, but the menial, vacuous tasks are the same. When the position was originally described to me, I was told that I'd be writing letters to inform people what they needed to submit before they could claim insurance money. That in itself sounded boring enough. But when I turned up on the first day, I learned that by writing letters, they meant filling in the blank fields in a form letter with the same pieces of information over and over.

The additional tasks I've been assigned over the last three weeks have continued to decrease in difficulty. First, my supervisor told me I'd be spending several hours a day helping to open the mail. This involves date stamping every single thing that arrives in every single envelope, so it's a very time-consuming process. And it seems to require an immense wealth of knowledge and skill compared to what occupied my time for most of the day today. I was tasked with removing the paper clips from large stacks of paper and then packing the paper into boxes. The elevator lobby on each floor is hung with a poster that encourages employees to submit their ideas on how the company could save costs. I was tempted to write an email that said something along the lines of "Stop paying a temp to do what robots and mail merges could do." But then I'd be out of a job.

Rejected?

My assignment at Tax Place ended about a month ago. Since then, I've spent some quality time each day searching for employment. It's a very disheartening process. I haven't been finding many jobs for which I'm qualified, since even the administrative positions out there seem to require 5+ years of experience. Often, it is a bit muddling to simply read through the job descriptions. One position to which I recently submitted had 30 bulleted items under the "Preferred Qualifications" heading. How does one even begin to address each of those within a single-page cover letter?

When I do meet the listed requirements of a job and decide to apply, the process is often more involved than I expected. I thought I'd finished an online application for a local coffee chain after submitting my employment and education history and three references. But advancing to the next page uncovered a very extensive character evaluation. There were about six pages of statements with which I was supposed to strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree. You'd have to be completely daft to answer most of them incorrectly. I found it fairly easy to discern that agreeing with the statement, "I don't work too hard because it doesn't pay off anyway" would make you appear to be lazy and apathetic.

But a few statements were completely baffling. The one that bemused me most was, "It's maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free." If I strongly disagree, it indicates that I'm lenient towards crime and, presumably, theft of company property. But if I strongly agree, the word "maddening" might make it look as if I have anger issues. So which is better? Anger issues or a tolerant view towards the imperfect court system?

A different company's online assessment gave me a math exam along with their personality test. I realised then just how long it's been since I had to apply any of the concepts I used in my high school math classes. I remember doing really well in calculus. So how can I not recall how to find the percent difference between two numbers? I eventually re-taught myself over the course of the 10 questions they asked that involved that formula, but it was yet another blow to my self-confidence. Then they threw in a word problem. "Raul has more seniority than Colbert, but less invested than Renoir. Colbert has least seniority, but more invested than Raul." It introduced several more parameters, then asked who should be interviewed first for something. It didn't matter, really, because the company never interviewed me.

But interpreting the exhaustive job descriptions and completing ridiculously intensive applications isn't the hardest part of the employment search. It's the waiting. Sometimes there isn't much and there's a swift and merciful rejection. But usually there's a prolonged period of wondering what the status of my application might be. I read the "How to Apply" information for one company where I sent my resume, looking for an estimation of when I might hear back. The material contained the question, "What do I do if I haven’t heard from anyone within a month after submitting my resume?" The very evasive answer was, "If you are interested in any other opportunities, please apply online." A month?! That's an awfully long time to wait for potentially no result.

Some companies try to be merciful by allowing applicants to monitor their status online. This is informative, and helps to eliminate the possibility of uncertain rejection. But it's also addictive. And it can still be frustrating when your status doesn't change. One of my applications has carried the same "Under review" status for a few weeks. Granted, I enjoy the glimmer of hope that remains every time I hit the refresh button and don't see a phrase of rejection. But now I'm just growing annoyed at how long the process is taking. I tried to advance my cause by retrieving the contact information for the position from the HR department. I called the contact to follow up, but it didn't do much good. She said that they were still reviewing applications and that I might receive notice in another two weeks.

So it'll be another two weeks of searching, applying, waiting and (up til the time of publication) being rejected. That's the process. It's frustrating. It's demoralising. And I'm trying again tomorrow.

The Naysayers

Maybe my plan to become a curator isn't such a good idea. Maybe it's impractical. Maybe it's borderline impossible. What if I spend all the time, effort and money to go to grad school only to end up exactly where I am now? What if I still can't find a job when I'm through? I've obviously been experiencing a lot of self-doubt and uncertainty lately. It's entirely warranted, I think, since this new plan of mine involves a commitment of several years and several (hundreds of) thousands of dollars. But knowing that doesn't make me feel any more sure about what I'm doing.

The lot of accountants at work have managed to make me even less sure. I ran into one of them in the elevator bank when I was headed to class one night.
"Leaving already?" she asked.
"I have a midterm that I need to get to," I explained, even though no explanation was necessary because it was already after 5:00. This statement inevitably turned into a conversation about what class I was taking and why. I briefly summarised my plan to go to grad school and eventually become a curator.
"How many jobs are there in that?" she sneered.
I fumbled some answer about how there were more than she might think, since there were so many museums all around the world.

"Well, do you know what Y has a degree in? A Master's degree in?"
"No," I confessed.
"Library science. She has a Master's in library science, but she couldn't find a job. Now she's been working for us so long that she doesn't think anyone will hire her."
I couldn't argue this statement with any known numerical facts about the infallibility of my own plan, but I did manage to counter somewhat nicely.
"Oh, I've seen a few job postings for people with library science degrees. I should tell her."
My naysayer shot me a withering glance. Luckily the 30-story elevator ride was finally over.

She wasn't the only one who thought that mocking my future career plans made a wonderful topic of conversation. B picked up on it as a replacement for his daily comments on my hairstyle. We had been talking quite normally about the University of Minnesota, and I mentioned that my sister was going to med school there.
"Med school, huh?" he asked, with a clear note of admiration. This quickly settled back into his normal, slightly taunting tone. "She's going to medical school and you're going to settle for art curation?"
I couldn't think of any response to this besides a firm "Yes."
"Okay," he said in a sing-song, that's-a-stupid-idea tone and walked away. He has since brought up the subject several more times, always in a teasing manner.

While these comments mainly served to make me angry, they also elevated my pesky feeling of uncertainty. But I've recently received some reassurance from my current art history professor. She is a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and I met with her to talk about her own professional path. The biggest and most painful surprise to me was that I will need to have a PhD instead of a Master's. The idea of so much more school is definitely daunting. But it's not insurmountable. She also recommended that I start learning how to read French and German and gave me some helpful suggestions on what I should include in a cover letter.

Most importantly, she told me I was doing all the right things. That is quite comforting when coming from someone who has already taken this path. And it makes me really excited to keep following my own. Soon I'll get to pick somewhere I'd like to live and choose a school there (or maybe the other way around). I'll get to learn all about art and museums. I'll be able to read French and German. And hopefully I'll find a job I really love in the end. Luckily the people who have mocked or questioned me lately are offset by an equal, if not greater, number of supporters. Paying more attention to what they have to say, and to my own determination and interest in the profession I'm pursuing, will help me to put the naysayers in their proper place--behind me.

Soap Sud

Having lived in Minnesota for most of my life, I thought I knew what it felt like to have completely cold-numbed feet. I didn't. I found out yesterday during my two-hour orientation at the Soap Factory gallery in Northeast Minneapolis. The gallery has no heat, and it was colder inside than the sun-warmed 45-degree conditions outside. My Converse trainers were not designed, nor well-chosen, for the frigidity I encountered.

Dressed, as we'd been advised, in fairly warm clothing and coats, we learned about the Soap Factory's history, went over the duties and opportunities for volunteers and took an extensive tour of the space. Near the end of the tour, I finally stopped feeling the tingling, biting pain in my toes. I stopped feeling anything. When I re-emerged into the sunshine at the end of the session, I decided to take a walk to help reawaken my comatose nerves. Walking on numb feet proved to be a very odd sensation. I was moving forward, but had no sensory record of how I had done so.

But frozen feet were, I think, a very small price to pay. The reason why the gallery has no heat is also the reason that it's such an amazing space. The building once housed the National Purity Soap Factory (hence the name), which always was or came to be owned by Pillsbury. In the late 90s, before real estate near the Mississippi became trendy and expensive, some people from the company were discussing their plans to demolish the building. Apparently this conversation took place in a bar and was overheard by someone who convinced them to donate it to an artists' collective instead.

No Name Exhibitions eventually acquired the old factory for one dollar. But since it had been scheduled for the wrecking ball, many essential elements had already been removed (like the heating system). The $4 million cost of installing a new one is obviously prohibitive for a non-profit organization. But these small imperfections somehow make the space ideal for housing art--especially the sort of emerging, risk-taking art that the Soap Factory seeks.

We were shown several of the building's quirks during our tour. The locomotive boiler still lies dormant in the basement, an absolutely massive, hulking, awe-inspiring and antiquated piece of machinery. The basement itself is one of the eeriest places I have ever seen. It's very well-suited to the Halloween Haunted Basement that is held there each year. I was spooked whilst travelling the maze of dark spaces without costumed characters and other scary effects. I can't imagine what my reaction will be when it's done up properly. Probably sheer, silent terror.

The organic, constantly improving nature of the gallery means that I will have a very interesting volunteer experience there. Unlike the Walker, where I man a kiosk and occasionally direct a visitor to a café or gallery, I'll have the opportunity to be involved with a little bit of everything at the Soap Factory. According to the orientation slides, I'll be able to work one-on-one with artists, help with installations, contribute to rebuilding the floor that was torn out along with the lard-boiling vats, bar tend at openings--and, of course, gallery sit. I feel like I'll have a chance to make a true impact and learn a lot in the process. That is very exciting.

The Soap Factory is already doing interesting things, and I think it has great potential to achieve a lot more. The organisation is fueled by enthusiastic people with great ideas for fundraising and gallery improvements. Hopefully I can contribute a few of my own thoughts in addition to helping to carry out visions already in place. Despite having frozen feet, the orientation left the rest of me warm with eager anticipation. And I now know why the Soap Factory presents the Art Shanty Projects on Lake Minnetonka every winter. No-one expects those to be heated.

Wheels

Following a string of 40-plus-degree days that melted most of the lingering ice, I embarked on my first bike ride of the season. I was fully prepared for it to hurt. I recalled last year's first ride, which left me gasping for air and feeling a strong desire to throw up. This year, it was my hands and face that were burning rather than my lungs and legs. It was still probably a bit too cold, and the wind rushing across my exposed flesh left my fingers and ears numb. But aside from that, it was a very pleasant ride. I even pedaled against the wind up a long hill and found myself only reasonably winded at its summit.

Apparently the frequent unemployment walks I took this winter gave me some physical stamina. That and making endless rounds amongst the copy machine, printer, binding machine, and errant accountants' offices at Tax Place. While I expected to have some humourous-in-hindsight stories about my pedaling plight, the lack of physical pain I experienced means that a more interesting scenario involves wheels powered by an engine. Before I went to Australia, I had been borrowing my parents' third car when I needed to go somewhere. They and I both thought that I would be gone much longer than I actually was, and they sold the car about a month before I came home. This made it more difficult to go to class, go to my shifts at the Walker--go anywhere.

Luckily Raf and Laura went to Canada a few weeks ago. Luckily, Raf and Laura were generous enough to let me borrow their car whilst they were gone. I had just dropped them off at the airport and driven to work, exalting all the way about my new four-wheel freedom, when I received an email from Andy's parents offering to let me borrow their car when they went to Colorado the following week. I was thrilled at the prospect of having a car for three weeks, and scheduled every conceivable thing to which I would need to drive within that period of time.

But it got even better. Andy's parents decided to let me use Andy's car until he comes home in May. I must admit I teared up a little when he told me. To the people who lend me their vehicles, it may not seem like a huge deal (maybe it does and I just don't realise it). But, for someone who lives in a part of Maple Grove where the nearest coffee shop is a two-hour walk away with no transportation besides the Monday-through-Friday morning and evening rush-hour bus service, having a car is a significant luxury. I met Russdad and Dianemom for dinner and picked up the beautiful green Subaru about a week ago. It has made everything much easier and more accessible.

It has also opened up some new opportunities. I was interested in volunteering at the Soap Factory in addition to the Walker, but I didn't think I'd have reliable access to a car. After discovering that I'd have my own means of transport, I immediately signed up for one of the orientation sessions. It's coming up this Saturday. Working there will be an interesting contrast to the Walker, since it's a much smaller gallery with no permanent collection (as far as I know). That means there will be a lot more exhibitions coming through, which subsequently means more opportunities for me to witness or talk to people about how they curate the shows.

From a much easier first-ride-of-the-season to borrowing a car of my own, the wheel situation is greatly improved this year. Now I can focus on other aspects of life I'd like to improve over last year, like my job. I consider myself very lucky to have basically had the vehicle situation straightened out for me, and I'm hoping that luck holds out.

Toner Lung Relapse

After an unexpected five-month holiday, I finally returned to being gainfully employed in February. I returned to Tax Place. Not surprisingly, it is much the same as it was last year. Everyone, with the exception of two temps, is still there. I'm sitting in the same cubicle. I'm assembling the same e-file returns for a lot of the same clients. And I think I'm once again suffering from Toner Lung. I remember my fellow temp, M, complaining of mysteriously swollen glands last year. I've noticed that my own glands have become perceptibly larger over the past week, but I thought it was due to a recent cold. I didn't associate this telltale symptom with Toner Lung until today when, in the course of trying to clear a jam in the copier, I found my face in very close proximity to the acrid fumes it produces.

Suddenly everything fell into place. The excessive thirst. Dry, chapped hands. Fatigue. Grogginess. All symptoms that I also experienced last year and that led me to postulate about the existence of the disease in the first place. And this strain of Toner Lung seems to be more severe than ever before. Last year, one of the accountants provided evidence of the respiratory difficulties associated with Toner Lung by clearing his throat almost incessantly. This year, the "Ahm" and "Hrrrrm" to which I had grown accustomed have escalated to a full range of horribly phlegmatic noises. Rather than giving a simple cough, he now sounds as if he's blatantly trying to dislodge a fairly sizable loogie.

I've also noticed strange behaviour from another accountant. Now that M is no longer here to captivate the wheezy preparer, I've seen a lot less of him back by our cubicles. Instead, I've been hearing far more from B. Last year he confined himself to asking me what I was listening to on my iPod. Now it's become much more personal. I'd grown out my hair a bit last year, and it was too long to spike it up as I usually do. I'd forgotten about this change in coiffure until B started constantly teasing me about it.

"What'd'you call that?" he asked, gesturing to my hair. "The Rooster?" Another day he greeted me by calling out, "Hey, Spike!"
Once he ran out of clever jokes about my hairstyle, he moved on to my nose stud. "Do you stick that on there or is it real?" he inquired.
"It's real," I answered. "I've had that for a while. I'm surprised you didn't notice it last year."
"Oh I noticed it," he sneered. "I just didn't say anything about it."
I'm beginning to suspect that the only explanation for this verbal diarrhea is that it's yet another symptom of Toner Lung.

But I don't have quite as much time to study the disease and its strange manifestations as I did last year. Since I already knew how to assemble completed returns, my supervisors decided to teach me how to scan tax documents into the computer. This new task is now the bane of my Tax Place existence. It involves sorting through the big mess of W2s, 1099s, 1098s and whatever else people send back with their tax organisers. Many people seem to have an annoying fondness for staples, paper clips and Post-It notes, all of which I must remove. I have to watch for marks in any highlighter colour other than yellow, since they will turn into black censor bars if scanned in black and white. And, unlike assembling, I can't fix a mistake without completely starting over. I don't have the ability to delete a page that might turn out wonky. Cultivating the eagle-eyed forethought necessary for this task has kept me far busier than I was last year.

Despite the scanning, I generally like being back at Tax Place. I'm getting paid, the passage of time has picked up considerable speed, and I'm treated quite well. But returning here has highlighted the main difference between my life now and my life then. I really miss Andy. We had just begun dating before I started this assignment last year, and my nearly constant love-stupid giddiness must have been apparent to others, too. Immediately upon walking in the door on my first day back, the receptionist called, "I saw you kissing a boy!" Seeing my confusion, she went on to explain that it had been around the time I'd been working there last year.
"I was going to say it must not have been any time recently," I replied, and explained the separate travel paths that we're currently navigating.
"Well, you looked really in love, and it was cute," she concluded.

And that is a big part of the reason why I'm also ready to be done with Tax Place. Unlike last year, where the end of my assignment meant only uncertainty and, eventually, a far worse temp assignment, this year I have a great deal to look forward to. By 15 April, there will only be two weeks left until Andy comes home. Soon after that I'll move out of my parents' house. I have fall classes to plan. And I've been working really hard to find a job I might actually enjoy by the time tax season is done. I'm feeling pretty optimistic and eager to move on to new things. And, of course, I need to recover from this new strain of Toner Lung.

Line, Shape and Form

After diligently addressing, stamping and mailing an application for a volunteer position at the Walker Art Center this week, I expected at least a few days to pass before receiving a response. But the very next day my inbox contained a message from the representative to whom I'd sent my form and introductory letter. I opened it eagerly and scanned to the part where it said I'd be a good fit for the program. I couldn't help but grin rather hugely. I was, and am, absolutely thrilled.

Based on the amazingly fast response time, I doubt the selection process was very competitive. Perhaps just sending in the application was all that had been required. But it feels so great to finally be chosen for something. After all the negative responses (or lack of responses) I'd received in Australia during my job search, this is truly gratifying. And it's an opportunity I'm tremendously excited about. I can't remember ever being so eager to do work for which I'm not going to be paid.

But, even though they're not monetary, there are still many benefits to be gained from the experience. I'll learn more about art. Make connections at the gallery. Find someone I can talk to about grad school programs. Interact with lots of people. And, hopefully, enjoy myself as well. Though the position only requires me to volunteer four hours a month, this seems like a big step for me. Things are finally taking shape.

Part of that shape is formed by the art history class I'm taking at the University of Minnesota. I was told by the graduate program's director of admissions that I'd never be accepted with the single art history course currently on my transcript. So I'm slowly building a more substantial background in art history, one class at a time. I've started with a course dealing with the history of prints (woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithography, etc). I'm finding it really interesting, despite focusing on very early religious prints thus far.

Though I graduated only about two years ago, it's quite strange to be an undergrad again. I'm a bit removed from the student lifestyle, so I'm able to look at it from a different perspective than I could when school was my main career. I'm basically surprised at how uptight and anxious some people seem to be feeling about the class. The midterm exam, for example, has proven to be a huge source of worry. It's still at least a month away, but our professor feels the need to reassure us every week because someone has come to her with concerns about it.

At least four people have also asked during class if our professor could put the slides and lecture notes up online before class rather than after. She refused, telling us quite honestly that she generally worked on the lecture up until class started.
"It's always a race to the finish," she confessed. I personally like her style. She told us on the first day that, "8.50 [the end time for our class] seems really late, especially in the winter. I'm all for letting you guys out early." This she has done consistently, which completely makes up for any tardiness in posting the lecture materials.

Then there was her tact in fielding a fairly delicate question last week. We had been looking at a print by Goya that featured a scary woman threatening a small group of people with an even scarier gigantic needle. Our professor told us that this would have been used to deliver an enema. This statement was seemingly going to pass without comment. But one student posed a question after we'd moved on to the next slide (which she seems to have a habit of doing).
"Wait...what was that big needle in the last slide?"
"I think it's called a clyster," the professor responded.
"But what's it for?"
"It's to give an enema."
"But what's an enema? That's what I'm asking."

The professor hesitated for a moment, certainly trying to figure out how to respond without delving into graphic descriptions. Trying to save us all from having to hear what her answer might be, one student announced to the girl, "I'll tell you after class." But Professor M discovered a way to disclose the information somewhat discreetly.
"Well, what's the opposite of Imodium AD?" she asked, having forgotten the name of the drug.
"Ex-Lax," another student chimed helpfully.
"Yes," our professor announced, sounding understandably relieved. "It's like Ex-Lax."

And yet some people in the class look bored!

Despite some awkward moments, I'm enjoying the class and the other steps I'm taking to reach my ultimate goal of being a curator. I'm excited for Walker orientation this week. I'm excited to pick my class for summer term. I'm excited to pick a grad school. I'm excited for all of it. I've felt a little lost career-wise for the past year or more, so it's exhilarating to pursue this line. I'm not quite sure exactly where it leads yet, but I know it's going somewhere I like. And the fact that it's still flexible is the most exciting part of all.

An Object at Rest...

Repatriating this time around has not proven to be as traumatic as it was last year. I think in a way that's because I never truly felt like an expat in Australia. I felt far more transient than I had on any of my previous excursions abroad. There are several reasons for that. Part of it was that I didn't discover a source of steady income and couldn't dismiss my concerns about running out of money before my visa expired. Part of it was that I didn't latch onto anything about Sydney that made me absolutely need to stay there. Part of it was that I took a lot more guided tours. Part of it was that Andy wasn't there.

And part of it was that I genuinely missed the Twin Cities. I missed the Current, the local music scene and the free local publications. I missed Punch, Chipotle, Quang, and the rest of Eat Street. I missed the bridges over the Mississippi. I missed the Mississippi in general. I missed having more clothes than I could carry in a suitcase. And after seven months of hot weather, I even missed the winter (though the solid week of -30°F temperatures that heralded my return was a little excessive). More than all the tangible things, I was actually happy to have a sense of stability. I've been moving about so much over the past two years that the idea of settling into one geographical place for a while is very appealing. I was glad to come home.

But my enthusiasm about being back doesn't help to eliminate the intense boredom I've felt since returning. I'm going back to Tax Place for another temporary assignment, but not for over two weeks. I have no car and very little money. I've largely been confined to the house, and am struggling to combat the inertia that such entrapment seems to encourage. For me, being bored is a vicious cycle. The logical way to fight boredom would be to engage myself in something interesting or productive. Something I always wished I had time to do when I was working. It's simple in theory, but in practice it's close to impossible. Instead of reading my textbook, I compulsively read facebook updates. The longest thing I've managed to write lately is a text message. And I won't even talk about how many games of Snood (a ridiculously simple and ridiculously addictive computer game) I play in a day.

Last week was much better. I think finding ways to leave my house has been the key to setting myself in motion. I'm taking a night art history course at the U. My friends have been supplying pretty frequent invitations for dinners, ice skating or watching football matches at the pub. I've been taking the bus downtown when I feel like I'm about to lose it in suburbia. I brave the cold and take long walks. All that getting out of the house helps me to be more productive when I'm in the house, too. I've been applying for weekend jobs, reading, inquiring about volunteer opportunities at art galleries...and writing. These latest posts on my blog represent my return to being an object motion. And if I adhere to Newton's first law, I'll hopefully stay in motion, too.

Gallic Expectations

My expectations of France were not at all disappointed. At least in terms of reuniting with Andy. I finally arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport after about 34 hours of travel. I was in a very focused daze while I waited in the line at passport control, which seemed to be continuously growing and barely progressing. I mustered a smile and "bonjour" that hopefully sounded more energetic than I felt when I finally reached the sullen man brandishing the stamp. Despite the line, inking my passport was expedient enough. And my backpack was one of the first things to arrive on the conveyor belt of luggage. I felt fortunate, since every additional minute of waiting was extremely irritating. I slung my massive pack onto my back, hopped once to help it fall into place, and made tracks for the arrivals gate.

I scanned left for Andy and didn't see him amongst the line of waiting people. So I turned right, searching. I heard my name and turned to see him trotting towards me from the left. I hadn't spotted him. Or maybe I just hadn't recognised him. Actually seeing him was quite startling. So was hearing his real voice, unaltered by phone and Internet signals travelling over great distances. I was taken aback at how weirdly like a stranger he seemed. That uncomfortable feeling lingered through our first hug. But it slowly dissipated after we moved off to one side and stood hugging for what was probably a solid 10 minutes. And it was replaced with an inundation of pure giddiness.

That lasted for the first few days. When I finally started to re-devote some sensory perception to my surroundings, I noticed that France was full of things I didn't expect. Like food that exceeded my idea of delicious by such a wide margin. Buttery, flaky croissants. Moist, soft, eggy baguette de campagne with crispy crust. Hot chocolate with thin sheets of actual chocolate melted into it. Warm, chewy, butter and sugar crêpes. Some sort of dessert that far surpassed the sum of its pecans, massive amounts of chocolate and sprigs of decorative aloe. Breakfast cereal that consisted of crunchy hazelnut pillows filled with smooth chocolate and hazelnut. Pitchers of house wine that were fantastic without exception. Even the oysters started to grow on me. I visibly gained weight within a week.

Given the overall deliciousness of the food, my first surprise was at just how bad some of it looked or tasted. On our second night in Paris, we were blissfully eating curried mussels at a restaurant in Montmartre. The pair of women at the table next to ours were appraising our food as they waited for their own to arrive. We returned the interested glances when the waiter finally delivered their dishes. Hopefully our appreciative looks remained in place, masking the philistine shock we felt when we saw what they'd ordered. A plate of raw hamburger, a raw egg, a chopped onion and various spices. They mixed everything together into a pile of pure uncookedness, ate every last bit, and gave their compliments to the chef. For what? we wondered. He didn't actually do anything.

I wish that another of our food mishaps had been merely observed rather than experienced. While Andy's French vocabulary has expanded immensely over the months he'd been there, he still is not able to translate every single word. I came across something called moelle d'os on a menu and asked him what it was.
"I don't know," he said. "Let's try it." That plan had worked well for us during the rest of the trip, so I agreed.

"What is it?" I asked when the waiter who brought the dish was safely out of hearing range.
"It's bone marrow," Andy said quietly and disbelievingly. We both picked up one of the tiny spoons and scooped some of the gelatinous substance from the centre of the large bones. We gingerly tasted it. We set the spoons back down and desperately reached for slices of the toast meant to be a vehicle for the marrow.
"That's AWFUL!" Andy choked, pushing the plate towards the edge of the table.

One waiter passed, glanced down at our plate and walked by without picking it up.
"He didn't take it," Andy said with dismay.
"Of course not. We have plenty of delicious bone marrow left," I explained. A second waiter rescued us from our culinary plight, but not our embarrassment.
"Is something wrong with it?" he asked, stopped in his tracks by the sight of perfectly good bone marrow not being adequately appreciated.
"No," Andy said, "We just thought we should try it."
"Yes, it's something you need to try," the waiter agreed, and took the offensive plate away.

Beyond the good and the bad of food, other aspects of the country did not fit into my perception of France as a stylish, romantic place of culture and refinement. The toilets were the most obvious departure. Most establishments offered a tiny, freezing, semi-clean single stall. Many didn't have seats, and I quickly learnt that toilet paper was a luxury. One had a particularly memorable DIY element to it. Instead of being affixed to the wall as it should have been, the soap dispenser was sitting on the counter next to the sink. You had to hold it suspended with one hand whilst pushing the soap-releasing lever with the other.

Sometimes we were lucky if there was a toilet at all. There were two armoured port-a-potty-like public bathrooms near a beach we were visiting in Sète one afternoon, but neither was working. One gave the impression of functionality by flushing its toilet every few minutes. But the red "occupé" button remained frustratingly illuminated. No-one came out or responded to knocks and inquiring shouts from the few desperate bystanders. It was a bit of an urgent situation, so we curtailed our beach walk and drove until we found a different, paid public toilet.

"My treat," Andy offered. But the coin slot built into the side of the structure only accepted 10 and 20 cent pieces. He wound up having to barter with a passerby to obtain enough correct change. Despite the printed claim that it was automatically washed and sanitised after each use, the facility's condition made me resentful that we'd had to pay to enter. But compared to a rest stop we used on the way back from Marseilles, that toilet was amazing. The women's stalls there consisted of two texturised porcelain foot grips, a handle and a hole. At least going to the bathroom was never boring.

Large packs of stray dogs, larvae in the holy water at a church we visited, a lack of some things we take for granted here (drop boxes at movie rental stores, for example), and completely erratic shop hours were some other things that surprised me about France. But even if some of these differences struck me as slightly unpleasant, they couldn't detract from the overall brilliance of the place. The food, as I said, was beyond delicious, people were warm and welcoming and the scenery was generally gorgeous and frequently breathtaking. And I was able to share all of it with Andy.

There were some surprises there, too. Andy and I had never been together continuously for such an extended period before. We did spend most of our free time together in the States, but we'd never had such an excess of free time. I think I would have begun to harbour some quite unpleasant thoughts about anyone else after so much quality time together. It was definitely an adjustment, but I learned a lot about Andy that I hadn't known before. That was really cool. And affirming.

I'm glad my time in France didn't match my expectations exactly. I enjoy staying somewhere long enough to discover some not-so-good elements along with the enviable aspects. At that point, I really feel like I've gained a sense of what life in a place is like. It fascinates me and often makes me appreciate certain things in the US that I'd always taken for granted. And some aspects of my visit were better than I could ever have anticipated. I'm happy for that, too. I feel some sort of need to like every place that I go, and it's wonderful when that comes easily. Not all of my expectations were met. But I wasn't disappointed. The reality was better.

International Couple

The past several days in Sydney have been passing excruciatingly slowly. This has a little to do with boredom. I’ve been here nearly three months without working. I’ve had more than enough time to visit everything in Sydney that sparks my interest—two or three times in some cases. But the crawling passage of time has even more to do with an unbearable feeling of anticipation. I’ve been here nearly three months without seeing Andy. Tomorrow I’ll be boarding a plane that will finally bring me to him. And as the time of my departure approaches, each hour seems to pass more slowly than the one before.

Our separation has been hard. It has become a little easier with time, if only because my memories have grown less vivid as they’ve become less recent. I’ve adjusted to Andy being present only through electronic messages, slightly distorted voice and occasional pictures. He’s taken on a sort of abstractness. To such a degree that being in close geographical proximity again seems strangely unbelievable, and actually makes me a little nervous. And though this abstractness has reduced the initial, sharper pain to a dull ache, I don’t like it.

Usually we can work around the distance and express our love for each other through the means we have available. But sometimes it really feels like we’re on opposite sides of the world. When schedules don’t align. When words, unaided by visual cues, just don’t come out right. When one of us is off-kilter. And especially when, as so often happens, technology gets in the way. Internet access in our respective countries is not what we’re accustomed to. There are frequent disconnections, delays, weird electronic interjections and total Internet outages in the middle of our conversations. Sometimes we barely have time to rehash our day-to-day activities. Most of the time we spend talking is taken up by the sentiments that overwhelm everything else: “I miss you” and “I love you.”

Since the time that we have to connect each day is limited, it sometimes seems excessively important and precious. It feels like we no longer have the space to be silly. And being silly, inventing absolutely fantastic scenarios and characters, used to be an important element of our relationship. When we do have a chance to make up something ridiculous and laugh at it, laugh really hard, it’s wonderful. It’s a sudden and startling return to what our relationship used to be like before all the international seriousness crept in. And it illustrates how things have changed.

They haven’t changed beyond recognition. The foundations of love, affection, and mutual respect are still there. But there are small differences. We’re not quite as close as we once were. That’s inevitable, given the 10-hour time difference and 10,543 miles between us. And it’s not irreparable. I have a feeling that physical closeness will allow us to regain what we’ve lost very quickly. There’s an additional gravity. There’s extra frustration. There are tests of trust, patience, maturity and commitment.

There’s also, unfortunately, a bit of jealousy on my part. Andy has been doing a brilliant job of making the most of his experience in France. He’s meeting people and being invited to hikes, dinners and events as a result. He’s sitting in on extra classes. He’s taking tango lessons. Essentially, he’s finding and taking advantage of all sorts of opportunities. And I can’t help being envious. I feel a little like I’ve failed. I didn’t find a job. I didn’t really make friends. I know I ultimately made the decision to call it quits. But I can’t help having a sneaking suspicion that I was fired. That I didn’t do everything I could have to make myself happy in Sydney. That’s all usually short-lived. I want Andy to be doing exactly what he is. And I’m exceedingly proud of him.

For all the difficulties, living in opposite hemispheres done us quite a lot of good. Maintaining a really-long-distance relationship is something I hadn’t dealt with on previous experiences abroad. It made things a little harder. But, paradoxically, it also made them easier. Andy has been caring, encouraging, sympathetic, optimistic and supportive. He still has the ability to make me happy, even across multiple oceans. He’s worked really hard to make sure that this separation is as painless as such a thing can be. So have I. And it seems to have worked. This hasn’t been quite as hard as I anticipated. If anything, it’s made me more certain that I love Andy and will for a long time. I’ve felt a little empty the past few months. But I’m reserving that emptiness for Andy. And it’ll be filled tomorrow.

A Bus Full of Slightly Drunks

I woke up to my alarm and a weak, gray, far-too-early-in-the-morning light on Thursday. I was going on a day trip to the Hunter Valley wine region, and it left early. But even the prospect of delicious wine tastings did nothing to elevate my spirits as I dazedly stumbled downstairs and lingered absent-mindedly in the shower.

The rest of the city didn’t seem to have fully awakened yet, either. Glebe Point Road was eerily but pleasantly quiet when I walked along on my way to Central Station at 6:30. Most of the shops and restaurants were still shut, and only a few people were about. The chaos picked up a bit along the main thoroughfare of Broadway, as did my pace when I realised my relaxed gait likely wouldn’t get me there on time.

I needn’t have worried. I stood for what seemed like ages outside the Central YHA, compulsively checking my watch. My tendency to impatience, quickened by the earliness of the hour, was provoked as the minutes slowly ticked by and the bus still didn’t appear. It finally pulled up 20 minutes late. That was another 20 minutes I could I have devoted to precious sleep. So I was not particularly receptive to the couple already on the bus who tried to strike up conversation.

In response to the driver’s query, I announced that I was from the US. The man of the couple said, “Oh! Small world! We’re from Boston.” I can recognise an American who hasn’t left the country much by how utterly shocked they are to meet another American outside the US. I’ve heard loads of American accents around Sydney and knew a fair few compatriots in London and Dublin. So to me, it only qualifies as a small world if the other person is from Minnesota.

The man exhibited further evidence of insularity when he started talking to the Scottish couple we’d picked up. He twisted round in his seat and immediately asked them something about Braveheart. I think I visually cringed. It was a line of conversation so deeply rooted in popular culture stereotype that I couldn’t believe he’d actually pursued it. But, setting the tone for the day, D answered him in a friendly manner.

In addition to the free-flowing wine, the tour group itself made the trip quite fun. We had three Americans, a woman from Hong Kong who was dressed head-to-toe in glittery and bejewelled clothing, the Scottish couple and three older sisters from Northern England. The sisters were especially jovial, referring to themselves as “Ten Pound POMs.” They’d all immigrated to Australia after World War II, taking advantage of the 10-pound fare offered to anyone with a British passport. One stayed; the other two had since returned to England and were now visiting their sister. I was called upon to show my support of Liverpool FC when one of them introduced herself as living near Manchester and added, “If you’ve heard of Manchester United.”

The tour guide kept us entertained on the two-and-a-half hour drive with further historical anecdotes. Of particular interest to me was the Hawkesbury River. G told us that on a visit to Australia, Mark Twain had referred to it as Australia’s Mississippi. It was quite a bit wider than the part of the Mississippi I’ve cycled on the East and West River Roads, and it was missing the sheer drop-offs with which I’m familiar. But the rolling hills and the fairly similar vegetation made it a decently apt comparison.

It was still gray when we reached Lindemans, the site of our first tasting. A heavily made-up, blonde-dyed young woman lined 10 glasses up on the bar and filled them with splashes of a sparkling white. The Hunter Valley is known for its Semillon and Shiraz, so each vineyard included samples of each. But after tasting seven to 10 wines at each of four places, particulars of type, body and taste escape me. Nothing at Lindemans was particularly good. Most of the wines were quite young, 2007 or 2008 vintage. The more experienced wine connoisseurs wrinkled their noses at most. They complained of the excessive sweetness and the tannin.

Next up that morning (it was still only 11.15) was Tempus Two. We parked alongside a surprisingly modern building. The exterior was painted black with slanted steel supports stretching angular white shade awnings overhead. The interior was similarly contemporary. Incongruously darkened against the morning light, the focus of the room was the wall of wines at the back. A bright orange/pink illuminated panel provided backlighting for the bottles lined up against it.

A businesslike older woman, dressed in a black imitation of a chef’s button-up coat and black glasses, conducted the tasting. She had an air of superiority about her, making it clear that she was not particularly fond of having to give samples to an uncouth busload of tourists. She didn’t have so much cause to be snobby; out of the six or seven wines we sampled there, only the Merlot was very impressive. The hushed opinions that my fellow tasters expressed back on the bus echoed my own thoughts. The winery was new to the Hunter Valley and just seemed to be trying too hard.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was tipsy. How? I’d only been drinking tiny samples! But I’d had 14 of them, and they add up. Mixing the variety of red, white, sparkling and dessert wines probably contributed to the effects. The lunch break that followed our Tempus Two visit seemed perfectly timed. Unfortunately, our lunch stop was at the Blue Tongue Brewery. But my condition, and, more convincingly, the condition of my pocketbook, made it possible to avoid buying the six-beer tasting paddle.

Instead I ate my packed lunch and talked with the other people who’d chosen the light lunch option. These were the driver and the three English sisters. All of them proved to be quite interesting and distracted me from the beer quite nicely. The food and the entertaining conversation helped to clear my head a little before we all boarded the bus and drove the short distance to the Oakvale Vineyard.

Here we were seated at a long, round, dark wood table rather than standing at the bar. The feel couldn’t have deviated more from the flashy nightclub atmosphere of Tempus Two. Oakvale was more like an airy family farmhouse. The wines here were more pleasing as well. A heavy-set man dressed in a black collared shirt embroidered with the Oakvale name explained the difference.
“These are actual Hunter Valley wines,” he said as we sipped one of the samples. “Those other places use grapes from all over. If you ask them where their grapes are grown, they kind of dance around the answer.”
D, the Scotsman, agreed.
“They either don’t know or they won’t answer you,” he complained, referring to his recent experience at Tempus Two.

My imbibing and their proximity to me at the table led me to strike up a conversation with the American couple. Despite their earlier cringe-inducing comments, they weren’t so bad. We’d all had to introduce ourselves on the bus that morning, a gentle coercion I’d resented in the still-pretty-small hours but which I appreciated now. I’d briefly summed up my job search saga then, and we talked about that and the strange barriers to graduate studies that both I and the other American woman were encountering.

The man in charge of the tasting offered to pour us a sample of anything on the list that hadn’t been included in the seven varieties we’d tried. I asked to try the Peppercorn Shiraz and deemed it the best wine of the day. I became convinced that I’ll need to export some of it, despite Oakvale not shipping internationally. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to get it out of this country, into France, out of France and into the US. Simple.

Drayton’s, one of the oldest vineyards in Australia, was our last stop. They were in the midst of ongoing renovations, so their cellar door was actually a small tin-roofed temporary building. The man presiding over the tasting was originally from Northern England, to the delight of the sisters and the Scots (and me).
“Where’re you from, anyway?” D demanded, hearing the man’s definitively non-Australian accent.
“Between Newcastle and Durham,” he explained. His football allegiance was questioned. It lay with Newcastle, and I had a second opportunity to declare my support of Liverpool. He retorted that he’d once forced someone who’d come dressed in Liverpool kit to take it off before he’d pour them a sample.

The 10 wines included in this tasting ensured that most of it is a blur in my memory. I talked to the American couple a bit more. I think the Chardonnay was good. Then I promptly fell asleep when the bus started rolling back towards Sydney. The trip wasn’t so much fun after I woke up. I felt fine, but we’d arrived in the city centre at the height of rush hour gridlock. This prompted me to walk home from where G dropped the American couple rather than waiting out the ride back to my pick-up point.

Despite the long walk home, I'd enjoyed the group experience of this group tour much more than the Penguin Island tour. That probably has much to do with the fact that I was surrounded by people from the UK, which I dearly miss. They, and my relative inexperience with wine sampling, made me much more tolerant of being guided. The grumpiness with which I’d greeted the morning had dissipated with the wine and the hour. I enjoyed becoming better acquainted with everyone at the same time as I increased my familiarity with Riesling, Semillon, Merlot and Shiraz. It was quite a welcome break from Sydney and makes me hopeful for the guided dive experience I’ll be doing in the Great Barrier Reef next week.