tiptoes.

sorting.

As I get closer to going back to Sri Lanka, I’ve starting going through all of the things I wrote after the tsunami. I’d almost completely forgotten that the first time I went, about 3 months after the tsunami, there was another earthquake. Near chaos broke out as they thought there was another massive wave coming towards shore. After finding out that friends and family at home were also unnerved and didn’t know if I was okay, I sent out the following e-mail:

• Hello Friends,
  
  I wanted to send a quick e-mail to let you all know that I’m safe and
  sound in Colombo. The earthquake was too far away to be felt here and
  as you all already know, the aftershock didn’t create any waves.
  
  I was outside writing on the terrace last night when a young waiter
  came up to me and in broken english told me to go to my room because a
  tsunami was coming. I wasn’t sure if it was a bad joke or if he was
  being over cautious, but I was tired so I decided to go to my room
  anyway. I became a bit concerned when another traveller mentioned a
  tsunami in the hallway, but didn’t quite believe him either. But lo
  and behold when I turned on the BBC when I got back to my room there
  were tsunami warnings and news of an earthquake.
  
  It was quite quickly clear that a tsunami would not effect the area in
  Sri Lanka where I’m currently staying, but my thoughts immediately
  went to the families and refugees that I’d met over the past few days.
  I can’t imagine that just the tsunami warning has caused so much fear
  and unrest for families that have been through so much lately. I’m
  glad though that they are safe from harm, but it does not help to ease
  the fear that so many of the famlies have of the water.
  
  I’ve spent the past three days visiting refugee campes, devastated
  schools and orphanages along the coast from Colombo to Galle. We’ve
  spent most of our time in Galle where whole villages were ripped from
  their foundations by the sea. The need is so great and at times I’ve
  felt completely helpless, but there have been a few projects that we
  can work on that will hopefully make a difference in a few people’s
  lives.
  
  The Sri Lankans that I’ve met over the past few days have been the
  warmest and kindest people I’ve met anywhere despite the fact that
  they are living in such devastation and have lost so much. I’ve
  connected with a particular refugee camp and spent an entire day there
  filming and photographing their stories. There was such a need to be
  heard that all I had to do was set up my tripod and people started
  lining up to be interviewed.
  
  There’s so much more to tell, but I feel like if I go on anymore, I’ll
  have bored everyone to death. I miss you all and I’ll write more soon.
  
  love, rebekah

Just reading the responses - even today almost 5 years later - has reminded me exactly why I need to go back. That and all of the love and support that friends and family sent across the ocean. Despite appearances, I never actually do anything alone - I’ve got a whole history of support behind me.

True story: I love (!) my dog, but some mornings I wish I was waking up to a two year old saying “Mommy…” instead of a wet nose and stinky breath.

The universe has a weird way of saying it's sorry...

This past week has been a doozy.

For almost 6 months, I’ve felt between here and there. Living in NYC, but still tied to NC. Back and forth (mentally, if not psychically) every single day. The last week, I found out I was laid off from my job at Duke. Beyond the fact that I was sad to leave a fantastic job,  with great benefits and an idyllic office where everyone not only got along, but enjoyed each others company, it also meant that it was no longer easy to go back to Durham. I couldn’t just say “Oh, well my job really needs me,” when I really meant “Oh, this city is just too harsh.”

And for some reason, that change melted all of my ties. My nearest and dearest are now “friends from NC” instead of “friends from home.” I will see my family on holidays, instead of every Sunday dinner. My freelance clients now have 212 area codes. I now had to put both feet in NYC, which is scary, but I wouldn’t trade it.

I haven’t even been up here for 6 months and so far I’ve found out secrets about Grand Central Station. Have one of the YES Men for a professor. Am starting to make true friends - the kind that don’t hesitate to call me out on my shit. I’m currently figuring out, not when or how I’m going to Sri Lanka/India/UAE/Thailand, but for how long. I’m trying to decide if I should go for an internship at the UN, the Human Rights Watch, or maybe MTV just for the heck of it. I’ve learned the basics of two programming languages, can build a basic website in less than a day, and am well on my way to figuring how to turn on a light on and off with a circuit I built completely by myself. And in less than 2 months have found a collaborator and an overwhelming amount of support for my thesis - which is the whole reason I’m in NYC in the first place.

NYC doesn’t just give you such things. In most cases you have to fight, consider which connection you have will be most powerful, and stand out an edge with 100 people pushing on your back and hope that your lucky star also includes a rope ladder.

In my calculations, the Universe and I are tied (4-4) this week:

• I lost my job, but I got half a dozen cupcakes
• I got hit by a guy on the bus, but I got an amazing, giant zebra head
• My courses for spring got messed up, but I got a trophy that says “Code Ninja”
• It took 30 e-mails to get support for a grant, but the two who responded, not only said yes, but emphatically offered all the support they could

Losing my job has also given me pause to look back over the last 2.5 years - all of the ups and downs, promises and regrets, the connections I’ve lost and gained. As with most things in my life - finishing high school, becoming a house wife (former, not present), leaving home - it looks like my Saturn returned early. Those two years of tumult caught me off guard, uprooted me and set me back down exactly where I need to be.

Was it worth it? Yes it is.

swine flu and me.

I have a love/hate relationship with the narcissism of blogs. Personal blogs exist to talk about one’s self, obviously, which from others more often that not causes me to roll my eyes. But I stop short because I, myself, participate in such self indulgent acts from time to time.

Like now, for example.

I can’t resist blogging about such a banal and personal act as getting sick because I wasn’t just sick, I was part of the four alarm fire that is H1N1.

About two weeks ago, I got a cough, a sore throat, and generally started feeling nasty, so S and I kicked the raw juice regimen in double-time. We started every morning with emergen-c + a glass of raw beets, red carrots, apples, pears, oranges, and whatever other veggies we had in the fridge. I stopped eating dairy. I slept more.

And voila! I started to feel better. My mama came to town. I ate less consciously. We stayed out at bars until 4am every night (ha! just kidding).

A few days later, mama left and the next morning I woke up feeling like wheat paste. I trudged to my morning lab with intent to go to student health services afterwards, so I called them during my walk between the subway and class to set up an appointment.

This is when the chaos started. As soon as I actually got someone from Health Services on the line (about 2 hours later), she forcefully told me that I need to leave class, not get on the subway and wait to call her back.

For some reason, I actually listened and sat on a fire hydrant on 14th street for close to 40 minutes before calling S to just come pick me up. They called me back to say that my flu-like symptoms were in fact similar to H1N1 so I should go home, take cold/flu medicine and not leave the house until my fever has gone away. Oh, but the medicine would reduce my fever anyway, so I couldn’t tell when it was really gone, so I should leave the house only after all of my symptoms are gone.

Unless of course, I wanted to wear a mask.

Considering all I wanted to do was sleep, I did just that for the next 4 days, waking from my slumber to find no fever and empty cupboards. S & I didn’t have fevers and were feeling marginally better, so we figured we could take a quick trip to the grocery story, no harm done.

Wrong. 6 hours later, we were finally back home. We slept for the next 4 days. Rinse. Repeat. Until a week and a half later we felt well enough to at least do our laundry. This time, we weren’t going to risk it, so we tied bandannas over our faces and headed to Mega Laundromat. We scared small children and old ladies alike, but none of them came near us. Mission accomplished. We weren’t giving anyone this flu.

But then we went back home. To the tiny apartment we’d been stuck in day-in, day-out for weeks. No going out. No seeing friends. Little to no human interaction. No amount of Scrabble or endless online TV or php programming was going to cure how stir crazy we were. We needed out.

As luck should have it, we both miraculously felt better overnight. We both made it to our Tuesday night classes and even went to an early art opening this weekend. To this day, neither one of us feels spectacular, just happy that we can interact with the rest of the world.

Embarassment of Riches.

One of the things I’ve found most truly bizarre about NYC is despite the fact that this hive of a city has a reputation for being providing ANYTHING at ANY HOUR, there are some things that just can’t be found at all.

I’m not talking about love or happiness or success, but really, really simple things.

For example, when S first moved up here, there was a fast and unrelenting heat wave, which is different from the Southern humidity we’d just left because a) there was no sweet tea b) the pavement stays hot 24 hours a day and c) there’s no AC. I’m fine with most of these, but we also happened to be moving, so I needed something a little different than the 40+ summer dresses I had hanging in my closet. I needed shorts.

This seems like a simple task. Shorts are as nondescript as say pants or a shirt. I wasn’t being picky, I just needed one pair of shorts. One night while trying to find the best bubble tea in NYC, I popped into H&M for a second, assuming that they’d have cheap and decent shorts. No dice. The rest of the night was a series of similar events, I kept thinking the next store would have them and then the next until I was finally in Necessary Objects trying to convince myself that I really could pull off hot pink running shorts, the only of its kind I’d found thus far.

This continued for a week, until I gave up, went home and cut an old pair of grey jeans into jorts. This would have been the first logical step in NC, but I kind of liked those jeans as jeans and I was wooed by the idea that I live in a city where I can find absolutely anything at any given moment.

It didn’t stop with the shorts. Mid-move, we couldn’t find a broom or a bucket to save our lives. I had the hardest time finding black sneaks. Last night I went to FOUR grocery stores trying to find GARLIC BREAD with no avail.

But as frustrated as I get when I can’t find a No. 2 pencil, try as I might, I remember that reason I can’t find it is because between here and there I can get the best vegan milkshakes in the world, an assortment of non-ironic neon sunglasses, any book I can possibly imagine, and not one, but fifteen different kinds of folding fans.

I apparently just need to think outside the box because I’m sure that there’s someone in the city turn broken asphalt into pencil lead and more importantly, if I live in NYC and go to art school, wtf am I doing wearing black sneaks!?