Thank God For Memory Loss

On the eve of what is likely to be my last round in the ring with institution of American Summer Camp I feel...nothing. Except anxiety over my inability to fall asleep because my body refuses to believe that it has left California.

I have none of the pangs of nervousness that preceded the bus ride up to my sleep away camp every June. None of the suffocating realizations before the kids arrived when it was clear that I was responsible for human lives. I feel none of the social apprehension about making friends, making a good impression, or making sure everyone knows I take myself seriously. And at this moment of levity I a recurring thought resurfaces: How great is it that we forget things?

With the slightest prodding, riptides of prepubescent awkwardness and the cyclical feeling of inferiority that accompanies any age that ends in "teen" baptize me with shame anew. I remember times I laughed cruelly, and made people feel bad, and made embarrassing mistakes, and wore clothes inside out. I remember feeling frozen with fear that I would spend the rest of my life alone, unworthy of attention or social contact.

Wasn't high school terrible? Wasn't middle school worse?

And yet, for 23.75 hours a day I am completely free of these recollections of my mediocrity. I can live in the now and aspire to things despite my moronic inner voice reminding me of  my own mistakes. It feel fabulous to live in the now and make decisions based on the recent past. To be free on the constraints of my own expectations is as liberating as skinny sky diving.

And to not just be free of my own behavior, the way I treated my sisters (pulling their hair and punching them in the face) and the way I treated everyone else (like they were wrong and I was right), but to free for even brief pockets of time of the I understood the world, allows me refreshing clarity.

It's upsetting and disorienting and challenging to forget. Being so close, nothing seems sadder than forgetting the minutiae of my sophomore apartment or my on campus job or the organization I loathed to be a part of. But in reality, they'll soon slip from the foreground, and I will be left with rosy memories, the highlight real, and will be spared the embarrassment of my wrongdoings.

I know that if I had Alzheimers I would wish for it all back: the good, the bad, and the ugly. But as I attempt to trudge through this time around, I can't help but imagine how much more burdensome life would be if we had to carry everything around with us. Packing is not a skill reserved for travel. And how wonderful that we get to choose what we carry around with us. Not mosquito nets or sun hats, but rather the parts of ourselves, our compassion or our wit or our resolve, that we want to inform the future versions. The versions that will eventually and hopefully become the past we can be proud of.

I'm struggling with the past-present-future pull because being back in my old house, in my old town, with my tragically overbearing and dismissive parents (an impressive combination if I do say so myself) I am so readily reminded of all the parts of myself that I hate and what I could so easily become. So how do I let go of that while holding on to the more recent past which seems so at odds with every feature of this snow globe to which I've returned? I changed, but how do I avert regression? How do I forget the reminders without forgetting the convictions which I now know to be true?

A challenge for certain, but perhaps one that I need to face to earn the life I want. Or perhaps this is the bullshit I am obligated to feed myself in order to survive the next twelve months.

Warning: My next post might be about apartment hunting

Don't be Such a Bitch

My topic today is inspired by a friend who has recently found herself on the front lines of the war for human decency, and I"m referring specifically to the battle for some sex etiquette in our 20s. A friend of this glorious gal slept with her ex-boyfriend whom she had only met because my friend was helping her ex find some friends in his new city, and this is after my friend explicitly asked both of them to cool it on the touchy-feely-flirtation situation. I can't imagine it was easy to acquiesce while he was inside her. Just a hunch.

Now I know Gretchen Weiners would be outraged. And I know that everyone informed of this tragically non a-typical scenario is equally disgusted by the ex and the ex-friend. Except that it's not equal. Except that by some sort of deranged instinct we claw at the girl's face and throat, rip out her beating heart by running through the abomination-bitch-cunts of vicious rhetoric designed to make her seem less than us and subsequently make our friend feel better.

Why?

Seriously, when did we learn to do that? I mean it's easy for me to imagine a cavewoman knocking over a neighboring woman's pile of pelts upon learning that her husband hadn't been coming straight home after hunting. And I know that the salons of Europe in the 19th century must have been chock full of judgmental sideways glances at the women who wore necklines that showed off the girls. And I KNOW that in any high school lunch room in the country there as many conversations about ho bag, slut faced, skanky, boyfriend stealing peers as there are tables. But the idea that this is some sort of natural evolution from the more passive (or passive-aggressive in the case of the cavewoman) demonstrations of feminine strength is bullshit.

Ms. Norbury said that calling each other sluts and whores just makes it OK for guys to call us sluts and whores, which is true, but is not the whole story by a long shot. Not only do these instinct demean women but they demean us. There's a two fold implication when I hear a woman call another woman any of the aforementioned slurs:
1. I lack the proper education or  depth of vocabulary to be more eloquent, descriptive, or intelligent
2. I am defined by the way men see me relative to other women

Hell to the NO.

Over the course of history we have given pardons to SO many men who have slept their way through life in favor of remembering how they helped, changed, or impacted the world. Who cares how many women JFK slept with, his wife was still epicly fabulous and he inspired and challenged a generation of Americans to dream bigger and follow suit with their actions. But we continue to define women by their numbers: by the number of people they've slept with, the number of times they've been married, their height, shoe size, hip-waist-bust measurements. Because apparently, despite believing that our sisters and daughters and mothers and friends are destined for greatness despite of their monthly periods, we are not actually convinced that in the general sense women are capable of much of anything besides stealing a man.

And there are exceptions, but so often to admit greatness we must deny femininity, as if the two are mutually exclusive, despite the rainbow of masculinity that manifests in great men the world wide.

What I'm saying is what we've known: that women define themselves by men and destory themselves and each other with the slightest provocation. And I don't have the slightest idea how to fix that. Because honestly, it doesn't really seem to be getting better over time. As we get older, as generations cycle, nothing stops women from being vindictive and cruel.

As a lover of well crafted language there are few things I love more than a good put down. Whether it's on TV or in a book or a movie or some witty retort in a column my heart races and my lips curl at the encounter with a person intelligent enough to find the weak spot and plunge the sword into the evil enemy's hide. It's the same instinct that popularized Pamplona's bulls and the Coliseum's gladiators. But I worry. Because in these scenarios, women against women, women against men, there doesn't seem to be a clear enemy. The enemy is only the weakest link, the easiest kill. And the only effect that pattern seems to have is to make us feel terrible once we realized we've killed someone in our uniform. So maybe in the battle of the sexes, which at present seems to be a battle within the sexes more and more, we need to take our outstretched bitch slap, extend a hand, and pull someone up to the high ground.

We're clearly not all on the same side in the fight for a nicer world, but I say let's take it one battle at a time. And I think that not performing intimate acts at the disrequest of friends with people who are deeply emotionally linked to them for the pleasure of inducing pain is as good a place to start as any.

More Pleasant Musings Soon

The process of writing is a process of discovery.

And for the past 5ish months this blog has been a locus a discovery, a space in which I can uncover and encounter the recesses of my consciousness in an effort to sort through my own feelings before I'm forced to acknowledge them in the real world.

And then I graduated college. And then I moved home.

And suddenly the composite hour I spent on the phone with my parents every week has been blown out of proportion, and the sanity provided by meals and work and general time spent with friends has been shrunk to some infintissimal percentage of its original. I feel my mind shrinking and growing lazy. I feel my social skills losing their finesse. And I feel all the self doubt and sense of not belonging (the kind I associate with adolescence, not with the growth and exploration of the college years) returning in tidal wave force.

So it's not that I haven't been thinking about what these changes mean, what ripples out from these pivot points in life, but rather that i've only been thinking about them, and haven't been sure how to put words on this new brand of loneliness I'm experiencing. I'm afraid that when I sit down to write I'll discover that reading a book a week, learning to knit, and studying for the GRE aren't actually doing anything to stave off impending misery. I've been more comfortable not knowing one way or the other.

I'm hoping that as I return to the writing table my own thoughts will become more cogent and that I'll regain some semblance of control over my own experience, but I ask that you understand that if I fail to post it really isn't you, it's me.

Things My Dad Says

In lieu of Friday's entry I bring you a special Fathers' Day bulletin?

To celebrate this day of dads I have decide to share a few kernels of his wisdom. Let me start by saying that everyone loves my dad. The same reasons that my mom yells at him, essentially for still behaving like a child, are the same things that attract people to his warmth, humor, and genuine happiness. I kind of love him. He's taught me a bunch. So now I present to you selected bits of wisdom from my favorite man in the world:

You Can Drive Your Car with Your Feet, But that Don't Make it a Good Idea (actually Chris Rock)

Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Nuff said.

Don't Order a Hamburger in a Chinese Restaurant

A narrow metaphor but universally useful piece of advice. You'll have the best experience if you make the most of where you are when you're there and with whoever you're with. Adjust your expectations appropriately. Adjust your behavior appropriately. Make the most of the moment.

Nothing good ever happens after 2 am

I will respectfully disagree with dear papa on this one (maybe if we adjust from old people time we're actually talking like 5 am?) In that case I would remind you that the more alcohol and the less sleep your system is coping with, the less intelligent your decision making will be. This will almost always be a huge mistake. But sometimes a huge mistake (is that what the kids are calling it these days?) is exactly what you need.

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king

He seriously says this ALL the time. Two part take-away: 1. you should pay attention to people who know more than you. Because they know more than you. 2. Just because someone knows more than you doesn't mean they know everything. Watch out.

Be Quick. Don't Hurry. (this is actually John Wooden)

Safety in numbers! (those numbers specifically being the numbers on the clock indicating time) Be efficient. Don't be reckless. This mantra is as useful when applied to your work ethic as it is when applied to travel.

Don't stuff 10 lb of flour into a 5 lb sack

Thanks Dad! These are the delicately phrased words my father barked at me through childhood warning me to not look like a slut, more specifically a fat one.

Nobody's looking at you

Moving on to adolescence (the full picture of my self-confidence is coming in to focus, I'm sure) this is what my dad kindly reminded me every time I expressed the slightest discontent at my outfit for a bat-mitzvah, Sweet 16, or wedding. Retrospectively, it was a humbling reminder for an active member of the ME generation, but still, the delivery could have been workshopped a bit more. The most useful component of this failure to realize that sometimes I did want people to be looking at me was that it wasn't about me, and it's an important part of life to recognize who it is about and be supportive of them. (Though I maintain that doesn't mean I have to look like shit)

So in closing, thanks for all the advice dad. I hope that the next 22 years loosen some lips and I can find out just how you acquired all your worldly wisdom.
xo your loving daughter

Dear Adults...shut the fuck up

1. For all intensive purposes it's still Wednesday. Don't Shoot.

2. The two pronged reason that a reminder didn't grace your inbox upon waking this morning (still not getting those? Just drop your e-mail in the "I'm Kind of a Can't Miss" box to the right) is that I started studying for the GREs last night and then proceeded to have what I can only assume was a casual panic attack about the impending mediocrity of my life.

3. The fact that I felt as if I was swimming in Jello comprised of my failures and wasted potential is of little to no consequence to y'all, and by y'all I mean the full time employed.

I'm taking the liberty to offer this rant to the gods of employment and misery (who I assume are at least twins if not the same person) on behalf of all those out there who are looking for a job, working at a dead end job, unhappy with the direction of their professional life or who are cleverly staving off these inevitable options by continuing their education. If you don't agree, I don't really care, and here's a secret for you: those gods don't really exist...


Dear Advice Offering, Know it Alls of the realm of full time employment,

Shut the fuck up. I know with certainty that your life is not perfect. That you have not figured it all out. That with the slightest examination you could honestly say you have no regrets or doubts about the way your life has unfolded. If you say I'm wrong I say take a lie detector test and talk to me then.

And I know that pretending like you have all the answers to the defenseless hoards of recent grads is comforting and reassuring to you, but it's also rude. And pretentious. And often hurtful. Please, point to the moment when you figured your whole life out and got all the answers straight?
What's that?
You're still not at that point?
Then as good as your intentions are do me a favor and share your benevolent wisdom with a sea tortoise because I really don't want to waste any more of my precious time listening to all the things I'm doing wrong and have done wrong and should do differently.

I cite my older and wiser sister's insight to point out that when your fellow adults fall on times of unemployment you avoid that topic like the plague. And it's not because your wisdom is any less useful to the previously gainfully employed, it's because it's rude. So why, seriously, someone explain to me, why it suddenly becomes socially acceptable to Salem-Witch-Trial the class of 2013 (and 2012 and 2011 and 2014) on all their admittedly uninformed thoughts and plans and aspirations? Who decided that was OK?

I concede that these unintentionally malicious figures may have something valuable to offer, some shred of experience or wisdom that while it may not offer employment may at least offer comfort in whatever stage you are at now. But I cannot pretend that this possibility is worth being accused by friends and strangers alike as lazy or unintelligent or unskilled or whatever their diagnosis of my unemployment is.

Let's put it this way: your advice hasn't gotten me hired yet, and unless you're the real Salem witch I don't see that changing. And I'm not even looking for a career path job! And yet your narrow minded inability to listen to or value anything that comes out of my mouth stops you from understanding my plan and permits you to correct it. That's so funny, I don't remember handing you a red pen.

So save the criticism for someone who's listening. I'm off seeking advice from people whom I actually respect. Like my friends Mr. Merlot and Ms. Malbec.

With Thoughts of Avoxes Dancing Through My Head,
The Modernist

On The Run

So remember that time I ran away from my life and went on vacation to Hawaii and drove across the country to relocate to my childhood home slash state and completely neglected my e-mail, facebook, and blog? No? Well maybe you didn't realize that's what's been happening for the past 3 weeks,but hazzah! Mystery solved.

Now that my life is an open and aimless book (quite officially) I am lending it some structure. I'll go over this laundry list at some point in the future, but the relevant notification for y'all is that I will be delivering my post pubescent musings and angst thrice weekly: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Watch Out! There's a low flying plane! Just kidding. I meant to watch out for my blog posts.

Some things to look forward to...Why do people (ie adults) think they have it all figured out to the point where they can offer endless advice on life? Let me return the favor... QLC: old name for a new problem... And introducing some hard hitting journalism:Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? (Because seriously, why haven't we figured it out? Get it together.)

So, for those of you who haven't checked your calendars, you can begin the 48 hour countdown to my return to the blogosphere. Get pumped. ( you don't have to, it was just a suggestion...)