making waves

Radio waves!

Yesterday saw the annual Homeward Bound 5K walk to end homelessness in South Bend, IN. Several of my coworkers and I were present to walk, and partway through a gentleman just ahead of us turned and asked us if we'd like to go on the air for the radio station he was representing when he did his twenty-minute check-in.

Of course we said, YES! So he handed the phone off to me, and I got to explain the point of the walk, saying something like, "We're walking through some neighborhoods right now, and looking at the lovely houses really drives home the point of what we're doing. Hundreds and hundreds of people in our own community don't have a roof over their heads or a place to call home on any given day in the year. The average age of a homeless person in America right now is nine years old, and we're walking to raise money to make sure people have a safe place to raise their families."

The dude's general manager called a few minutes later to say how clear I sounded. Anyway, the guy works for a Christian radio station that reaches around 30 counties, and I was terribly excited to make the contact. The Center for the Homeless, not itself a faith-based organization, is working more this year to establish connections with faith-based organizations, which basically exist to help such places as ours.

So hopefully we have a new business relationship -- and I got to hand out, for the first time, my very own card!

So the summer finds me getting more excited about my job, and loving what I do here and why I do it. Which is good, because I just signed a two-year lease for my apartment this weekend.

bryter now

At least for the time being.

As I said in my comment to the last post (in response to the great input I received), I realized that one of the things that was crushing me the most was the sense of helplessness. And I'm NOT helpless.

So the new strategy is to spend as much time with people as possible. Wednesday night I hung out with the inestimable ThisWomanAlphabetical, yesterday I invited my two favorite coworkers over for lunch, and last night I watched Bon Voyage with MP's French class and then drove over (the reopened!!!) Douglas Road to eat colorful, cold roast vegetable loaf and exchange stories about how tired we were.

It's essentially a matter of being proactive and collaring the people I want to befriend, without hanging back from fear of rejection or looking pathetic. I NEED people. Therefore I will hunt them down. If they hate me, fine; I'll find people who don't. But most people don't hate me.

Plus I have been suddenly blessed with peace over a complicated situation with a guy I know (sorry for the vaguery; perhaps I'll spill more beans layter), and am reminded that I am very capable of bouncing back and recovering from the things that make me sad.

And I'm going to a cookout this weekend! Wheeeee!

Not again...

I've been slipping back into depression.

I've been trying hard to deny it -- I went through two summers of pretty intense therapy toward the end of college to work my way out of it, and I have never wanted to be back here again. But there are certain signs I can't ignore anymore. Pervasive listlessness. Constant exhaustion. Emotional numbness. Indifference toward things that usually make me very happy (hanging out with people, going for walks, reading, even cooking). Lack of energy. A feeling of purposelessness or pointlessness. Poor sleeping. Failed appetite.

I don't know exactly what triggered this slide. Spring is usually a bad time for me -- it's when my sister was at her worst state of health, and when relationships with my family members were tense at best. And depression runs in my family. But I thought I had more or less conquered it. I guess the most consistent thing that has been eating at me since November is my aloneness. I'm far from family. After living here for almost two years, I've only made a scattered handful of friends. My daily existence doesn't matter much to anyone -- I'm not essential, not in the sense that I'm constantly needed, but in the sense that my presence can be assumed by someone. So I'm young, I'm single, I don't have a strong support system in the place where I'm living, and it's really, really hard to meet people here.

And it's getting me down. I spend almost every day on the verge of random, senseless tears. I've been getting hot flashes again. Nothing I do seems to have a whole lot of meaning. And I really, really don't want to live in this state of blankness again. I want to be the old, happy, strong me.

My health insurance isn't that great, so I can't afford therapy. Though -- if it doesn't start to improve soon, I'm going to take steps to get a therapist anyway. I'd rather be emotionally healthy with an even slimmer budget than try to plod alone through a life that for no good reason looks completely gray.

Prayers are much appreciated. In college I had so many friends to come around and support me and be a web of loving presence while I put myself back together. Here I have only a few, and I hate being a downer and a burden.

What to do? It's especially annoying because my life is great. I have a great job, a great apartment, a decent church, and some really great friends. And I still feel so horrifyingly, chokingly alone. I can't stand it.

Poop.

Passage of Time

The new kitchen clock with its
circle of red shocks the walls
into purpose and order.

The hazy apartment sharpens
around the iambic tick
that whispers in each room

measuring the sleepy silence of
a faded house in a neighborhood
where the grass spikes
through the cracked concrete in the street.

Last night brushing my teeth
I stiffened and shut off the water
thinking the cat was rustling plastic
or someone was creeping inside

but the regularity of sound
was only the clock
telling me it was nearly eleven

and I had wanted to be in bed
at ten. I turned on the kitchen light
to see it:

red rim with an analog face
that showed the white walls
to be a little yellow.

The cat came to rub against my ankles.
His purr rattled under the clock voice
singsong, surgent like waves.

the fifth season

Every morning when I open my eyes to a sunny spring day in South Bend, I ask myself two questions:

1. Will it be warm out today?
2. Which roads will be closed?

See, there's this fifth season squeezed into the year, sometime between spring and summer (and often stretching through all calendar seasons, refusing to die). Construction season.

I've never lived in a place as haywire for tearing roads apart as South Bend. There's never any announcement. You get in your car and drive along a main thoroughfare, in the happy yet stupid assumption that all will be today as it was yesterday, and suddenly there are orange signs, detours, road blocks, heavy vehicles, and men in green and yellow vests milling around appearing important but really doing nothing.

You curse. You follow the detour. Sometimes even the detours have detours. And the repairs -- or whatever it is they're doing (looking for gold?) -- take weeks.

Suddenly your five-minute commute to work takes fifteen. Or your fifteen-minute drive to a friend's house takes twenty-five. Traffic is always terrible. The word "detour" seems to inspire mass confusion among the majority of fellow drivers. They inch along the detour roads, as if afraid of missing the next prominent orange detour-with-an-arrow sign, or as if afraid to trust that the sign really will get them where it promises. You ride people's bumpers. You catch a lot of red lights. You scream.

It does familiarize you quickly with alternate routes to anywhere. You look up and see that familiar orange-and-white barrel and make an instant turn to Plan B. Anything to avoid the detour.

I feel that every citizen of this community deserves a flyer in his or her mailbox. With a calendar detailing each road and intersection that will be closed, and for how long. That way we don't walk out of our homes and blunder into an urban jungle of broken concrete and cranes.

cookbook queen

Lately I've been bored and restless. Things at work have mostly calmed down from the auction (although I'm still recovering from the stress -- shown mostly by an increased irritability, joy for my coworkers), building community is still taking its time, and with summer coming up, my grad student friends will jettison themselves from South Bend as quickly as they can. So a thinned out social scene awaits me in the next few months, and singleness is, at the least, a further source of boredom. (There's no one to call and say, "Let's go for a walk!" who has to come and walk with me.)

So I did the only thing a girl with a penchant for most things culinary can do.

I bought five new cookbooks.

This is a very logical act. While working on "fitting in" and building a life here, over which I only have so much control, I don't have many new interesting things to do, and often very few people with whom to spend my daily life; and lacking the money to dine out on the exquisite food I enjoy eating, I have to fall back on making it myself. So cooking good food is an easy (or challenging!), enjoyable to way give my life a little flavor, relatively cheaply.

One of the most important aspects of cooking, for me, is not falling into a rut or getting bored. For the past three weeks just before grocery shopping day, I've been thinking, What do I want to eat?...and coming up blank. I flip through all my recipes and they're all so...blah. I'm not in the mood for any of them.

Time for something new. And something new showed up at Borders in the form of: Juices and Smoothies, Mediterranean, Mexian, Spanish, and Jewish cookbooks. I've done nothing for the past two days but read all the recipes and bookmark the ones I want to try.

I'm insanely excited to restock my cupboards and buy (a little at a time; I'm still on a poverty income) new accesories to expand my abilities to make such things as tortillas and flan. It's a little taste of something fresh, and a way to broaden my horizons while I lack the capacity to travel the world, or even the area restaurants.

Plus the pictures are pretty. My mouth watered all day paging through them.

forehead pressed against the glass

I'm taking a week's vacation from work, composed almost entirely of flex time from the long weeks I worked before the auction. The first two days I spent lying in bed wrapped in afghans, overcome with some mildly disgusting bout of the flu (mildly disgusting mostly because of the degeneration of my clean apartment -- you just can't wash things when you're sick), but on the whole it's been wonderful to relax and know that they're even listening to my voicemails and checking my email at work, so I don't have an endless string of backlogged communication to pick through when I get back.

I've been thinking about community. At church, and in one of the few decent albums by a Christian artist that I own, I've been hearing things like "my journey is my own" and "It doesn't matter if nobody loves me but Jesus." And in some respects, of course, that's true: We are fully responsible for our own lives, and if we find ourselves utterly friendless, we can count on the love of Christ. But statements like these disregard what I think is an essential principle in the Christian faith, and in human life across the board: community.

We weren't meant to live alone. The human being is a social creature, in constant need of contact with his/her own kind. And for each metaphor of individual race-running and watching oneself that appears in the New Testament, there are two metaphors for community, of coming alongside one another and of being a body (one unit, many parts). When Christ left his legacy to the apostles at his ascension, he founded, not a scattered group of individual mystics who went off by themselves into the wilderness to ponder great things, but a church.

When you look at the "secular" world (if you believe in a secular world; I don't, actually), it's the same: People need other people. Most have some kind of family to fall back on, which they often take for granted. (I've met a lot of people who go back home after college, or never left their hometown, so that they are continually surrounded by family; I think they fail to realize what a hole not having nearby family leaves in the lives of complete transplants like me.) Even some of my coworkers, who don't live close to their families, graduated from Notre Dame and so keep to their old, preformulated communities from college while they live in South Bend.

A dash of the closedness to strangers for which I have criticized the church at large (because the church should be the first place where barriers break down -- it was when it first began, or was challenged to be by recognizing the radical truth that "in Christ there is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Gentile"), is present everywhere. People who already have fulfilled their need for a place among others generally aren't looking to include newcomers -- not, perhaps, out of an overt desire to ostracize or exclude, but out of a kind of tunnel vision that results from personal satisfaction: All of my needs are met, so why look further?

I hope that didn't sound at all nasty; it was only an observation. One of my saving graces while I try to settle in and work my way into the already-established communities of the worthwhile and interesting people I've met is the grad school. These are worthwhile and interesting people who are used to a flux in their community as new students enroll and old students leave, so they tend to have a mindset open to incorporating outsiders, newcomers, and loose affiliates.

My other, more permanent saving grace is Meg and Phillip. While rooted among family and longtime friends in their own community, they accepted me with a casual, firm familiarity that reminds me oftentimes of home. I invite myself over; they put me to work, feed me, and take me fun places around the area that I'm still getting to know. They helped me pick out, cut down, transport, and set up my Christmas tree. For several months, although I never actually used it, I had my own toothbrush at their house. We all call me "the second wife." We laugh and horse around and work and bicker like good friends and family do. And the beauty of it is, they're not going anywhere (at least anytime soon, that they've told me). They don't leave for the summer. They're not moving out of town. So they're a kind of above-ground root that I get to lean against.

Not to be all mushy or anything; but a single girl with no family in the area certainly appreciates the niches of belonging that she lands in. Building, or shouldering your way into, a community takes time, and I've only been here twenty months. But it's nice, while I try to put down some roots (this is scary, this roots thing -- I have no particular plans to settle permanently in South Bend, but I also don't have plans to go anywhere else for awhile -- and this weekend I'm signing a two-year lease, which is weird), to have two open places to go where I'm not standing on the outside looking in like a little lost soul.

And I'm off to try to forge some cleanliness out of the disorganized mess that has become my apartment.

Cat Feet

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
(Carl Sandberg)

Clearly Carl Sandberg never lay
prostrate in bed staving off daylight
until a hungry cat cannonballed
his unprotected stomach like a sudden avalanche.

Obviously Carl Sandberg never dragged
the covers over his head, only to suffer
forty careful, cubic pounds per square paw
flattening every cyst and sore chest muscle
creaking each rib and collapsing each lung
to crush him slowly, grindingly awake.

Observation

Through a haze of Sunday cigarettes
and a web of Celtic music
I sip cooled tea and track,
over the rim of the cup that does
not match its saucer,
the Irish server’s gorgeous ass.

His appeal contains some mystery:
His fair hair recedes in wisps
along his skull, though his large
blue eyes and generous mouth
open up his somewhat somber face.
Seen from the side, his tummy
bulges slightly over his belt.

But oh, sweet God, that ass.
It fits into his jeans like breasts
fit into a bra, or an orange
fits into its peel, or air fits into
a balloon. I want to cup my hand
along its curve, to feel the sweep
of buttock into hamstring, to tug
the damp white towel from his left
back pocket and snap it at that
perfect, molded ass—

but his left hand glints with
a simple band of silver,
so I pour another cup of tea,
relax against the wooden bench,
and watch his denimed buttocks,
tea towel swinging, saunter past.

Apartment Living

1. Sights

In early April mourning doves
spiral and surge under the crumbled shingles
above my windows. They throw out
curling flashes of taupe and cream
against the paint-splashed panes
and the cat races from the kitchen
to the living room, trying to follow,
his movements manic, liquid.

On the street squat, balding Jim
in gray sweatpants
unloads laundry and bottled water
from his beige Astro van.
Dark hair swirls around his bald spot
like an iris around a pale pupil.

Coming down the stairs, I see Kevin
trekking toward the rutted alley
with his kayak over his head,
short legs and an oversized hat,
on his way, through the St. Joe River
blanched with sewage gas, to work.

Sometimes I surprise Ted
smoking on the cement patio
with his only friend.
They always stand up and say hello,
two portly, gray-faced men
with pouchy wrinkled eyes and
mustached, gap-toothed smiles.

A month ago a police raid
shrieked through the streets.
From my darkened apartment I peered
through miniblinds at houses
blinking in the savage,
festive beams of blue and red.

2. Sounds

In the kitchen Simon’s clawless paws
thump and patter an intermittent jig
on the cracking linoleum tiles
as he captures his insurgent tail.

On Saturdays Jim’s Hoover
growls and snarls over his carpets
below my living room.
While he listens to Bette Middler
or watches soaps, I put on Ray LaMontagne
or Chris Thile to mute the buzz
crawling up the walls.

Sometimes, late at night, Kevin,
who lectures in Spanish at a local college,
listens loudly to Latin music
in his living room below my bedroom.
I used to stumble down the stairs
and knock on his door in the dark
wearing my green robe and red slippers
to ask, in my saddest sleep-scratchy voice,
for him to turn it down.
Now I cram orange plugs in my ears
and burrow under the covers.

If I stand for long enough in
my quaint and tiny bathroom,
over the small free-standing sink blue
with worn enamel,
I can hear, over the ear-grating hum
of the dying fluorescent light above the mirror,
Ted coughing across the hall.

3. Smells

Opening the shabby brown door,
I step into leftover onion and garlic,
laced with growing plants in dirt
and the faint underlay of cat litter.
Sometimes the kitchen smells
of raw chicken.

When Santos comes to shut off our heat
for the summer, I will tape
garbage bags over the old black
metal register grates and cover them
with bathroom rugs that match the carpet,
to keep out the stale, persistent perfume
of burning cigarettes.

After I pull up the covers and turn off the light,
I can smell Kevin, who keeps weird hours,
cooking. Gourmet vegetarian, organic
garlic, tomato, masala, curry odors pour
through the vent in the wall next to my bed.
I close my eyes and try not to dream of food.

Coming or going, up or down
the dirty, stained stairwell that I share
with Ted, I sometimes smell nicotine, tar,
unwashed old man, ancient cat and
ancient cat piss, and sour unscrubbed breath.
I sometimes smell the full, wet steam
of my shampoo and Dial soap.
I sometimes smell Ted’s sister’s cheap cologne
or the grease from onion-frying beef.

When I push open my sticky, warped windows,
I catch the sharp clean smell of snow,
the smoke of wood-burning furnaces,
the rich awakening of the earth in the yards,
the asphalt taint in rain.
Neighborhood kids of mingled races clamor
in the streets. They climb cars
and dart after balls and spat with sticks.
Through the pavement on the streets,
the red lines of bricks are wearing free.

snacking out

Last night Joan, Laura, Marianne and I had a long-awaited Girls' Night at my place. We intended to watch chick flicks and eat lots of popcorn; we ended up talking and eating lots of chips and salsa con queso, and monkey bread.

All day prior to the get-together, I was reminiscing on the slumber parties of my adolescence, when our parents supplied 5-10 teenage girls with enough junk food to feed the army of Attila the Hun, and we would stay up till 3 or 4 a.m. yakking and drinking caffeinated soda and stuffing our mouths with Doritoes, Cheetoes, popcorn, chips and dip.

So I wanted to provide a feast (perhaps partially in denial of my current poverty -- I can be far more lavish with guests than I can with myself, and it's more satisfying to feed other people anyway), and I did. There were chips & salsa, an enormous veggie spread with ranch dip, baguette (provided by Marianne) with butter or sun-dried tomato spread (which didn't turn out like I'd hoped, but was edible), chocolate chip monkey bread (provided by Laura, and delicious), soda, and wine.

And we couldn't eat it all. I didn't even break out the hummus and babaganouj (I have FINALLY conquered the recipe!) with pita, the popcorn, or the cheeses that Joan brought. And I realized, to my astonished disappointment, that I'm no longer an adolescent. Eating till I burst now means so much less than it used to.

The conclusion: I'M GETTING OLD. Not really. The actual conclusion is, don't buy tons of food for a girl party. Because now I'll be stuck with it for weeks.

BUT the conversation was delightful and fulfilling -- nothing warms my heart like a fellowship of women (unless it's communion with one amazing man -- and I'm something lacking that at the moment, not completely but in part) -- and we're planning to make tracks for a girly shopping trip to Chicago in a week.

At least we didn't run out of food!

2006 Auction: going--going--gone!

The Auction took place a week ago today, and went, I am glad to say, extremely well. We didn't quite make our fundraising goal, but on the whole the event was a brilliant success.

And some quick backstory about the Auction, so you get a little bit of an idea what it was like: It's a big event -- 432 people attend, alongside 100 volunteers, to bid on fully or partially donated packages, the net from the sale of which benefits the Center for the Homeless. Our annual operating budget at the Center hits the 2.4 million dollar mark, and the Auction is our biggest annual event. This year, with the sale of auction items and sponsorships from community businesses, we grossed $260,000.

And I was in charge of running the whole event. Namely, I was in charge of organizing our Auction Committee, comprised entirely of long-time volunteers from around the community. They all know what they're doing, so I didn't have to run anyone's life, but I had to make decisions, network behind the scenes, and do a lot of navigating in what is for me completely uncharted waters. It was thoroughly rewarding work, and of course left me exhausted afterward.

The particular challenge was making this year's auction experience better for everyone than last year's. Last year my boss, Angie, came into her position and had to handle the Auction, with no preliminary experience, three weeks before the event; it was the first year being held at a new venue; and it was the first year using a new brand of auction software to make keeping track of sales easier (but, since it was the first year, it wasn't easier at all).

I was lucky in that the second year of doing something new is bound to be easier than the first, and in that I had Angie to coach me along the entire way; but something also made everyone on the Auction Committee, and the other Center staff who worked their arses off to pull this off, very relaxed. The day before the Auction we all set up at the Palais Royale, and it was entirely low-key. So was the day of the Auction. And that -- everyone's chill, roll-with-the-punches attitude -- is what makes me think I did a good job.

So I've been putting in 60-90 hour work weeks the past month, and I took a three-day-weekend this time around, and midway through April I'm taking off a week just in flex time. I'm looking forward to it greatly.