little boxes.

There’s a new job in the mix these days, so for the first time in six months, I have to go somewhere to work (at least a few days a week). It’s a 30 minute walk to get there, so I’m back in the wonderful habit of walking to work, leaving lots of good time for thinking and podcast-listening (this morning, this one). The street I walk down is cheerful, mostly houses and old apartment buildings, not too bustling, but also not too quiet to be unnerving after dark. There are plenty of Christmas lights out. It’s good for my brain to be walking again, walking with a destination in mind. It’s one of the most satisfying things I know.

This evening, on my way back, I stopped in a small bookstore in our neighborhood. I slowly perused the shelves. I was the only one in the shop, so the shopkeeper chatted with me. I decided, on a whim, to buy myself a random book, whatever looked good. I picked this up.

After I left the bookstore, further down the road, I passed a newer apartment building. Condos, I’m guessing, boxy with big front windows. The building was three stories, with two units on each floor. Six big airy windows facing the street, belonging to six different people. In each window, I could see a big flat screen TV attached to the wall. In each window, the TV was on.

I mean, I watch TV too. Maybe not as much as the average person, but I watch my fair share (lately more than my fair share of this). But……….man did it make me feel sad. All of those little houses just the same, TVs just the same, life just the same.

brain-knots

Yesterday we drove down to Pilsen to visit the National Museum of Mexican Art. It’s a lovely little museum (and one of the few free ones here). I’m still thinking about this exhibit and the Mexican Repatriation in the 1930’s, which I actually knew very little about. It’s a good time to learn.

Injustices like that, even things that happened long before my time, drag me pretty low. I can’t stop thinking about it. I always say that I’m meant to work on small causes and at small organizations because I do much better focused on my own piece of the world - what I can do right here and now. Otherwise I tie my brain into knots thinking about how systems got the way they are and how we can make them change. But Jacob says that my brain-knots are a good thing. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere important one day.

It’s strangely warm out, and I’m flip-flopping between feeling very ambitious and very lazy. I went for a run, so that's good. The final paper due on Tuesday is looming and triggering some strong procrastination urges. I’m also thinking about a big bag of chocolate chips on the shelf and what I could make out of them right now. Actually, I'm wishing someone else would make and deliver some of these (right now).

Otherwise, my wacky and unpredictable life goes on. This has been a strange year full of surprises. It’s a good life. December is nearly half through, so I’m setting a small handful of goals for the new year, like I usually do. No more than 2 or 3. I’m trying to focus on things that do and will make me feel more like me. And I’m getting ready to wrap up this year in a blaze of writing, I hope, not least of all here.

a great writer.

Last week, while sitting at the closest Starbucks (shame) and trying to cram in as much work as possible, an older man crept up behind me holding his laptop. “Are you good with computers?” he asked. I smiled and cleared a spot at my table. “I’m ok,” I answered. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to meet and stammered through something about a spreadsheet. I finally realized that he wanted to copy a spreadsheet from one folder to another. “Oh, that’s easy!” I told him. “You won’t believe how easy it is.”

So I showed him: select the spreadsheet file, control+c, control+v. He couldn’t believe how easy it was. He went back to his table with the spreadsheet in the right place.

An hour or so later, as he was leaving, he came back to my table and told me I was kind. He gave me his business card. We talked about his wholesale flower business, how he had been in the neighborhood for 20 years, how his niece in Israel kept telling him, “Uncle Benny, you need a website.”

He asked what I did for a living, and I told him, "I’m a grant writer." But he heard, "I’m a great writer." And he didn’t even hesitate. “Oh, you’re a great writer! You can help me write things! Advertising, website. Give me your card. I will call you.”

And that was that. I gave him my card. Who knows if we’ll cross paths again, but whatever happens, he’s out in the world thinking I’m a great writer.

On an entirely different note, I can’t stop thinking about this piece on racial privilege. It says a lot of things that I’ve been trying to find my own way to say.

So it’s dark and has been for the past four hours, because it’s December. We hung up a single string of Christmas lights, which is helping. I’m starting some new work tomorrow, thinking about dusting off my bike to get there, thinking about how casual my business-casual can be. On it goes.

mix CDs.

I got a new computer this summer when my old mammoth laptop started dying, unprovoked, all the time. I had saved my music and pictures on an external hard drive, and when the new computer came, I never got around to transferring them. I have music online when I want it, or NPR, or the turntable. Still, 5 months later, I have no music on my computer.

It seems so strange when I think about just 5 or 6 years ago when the music I owned was so precious. I drove from Minnesota to Massachusetts in the summer of 2008, alone. I had a thick folder of CDs tucked into the passenger seat next to me, including various mixes I’d burned onto CDs to conjure up the right feelings.

When I lived in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, I drove all the time. This was before podcasts were so much a thing, at least in my world. I listened to NPR sometimes, or the local classic rock station. And I listened to more mixes, burned onto CDs, to conjure up the right feelings. Broken heart mixes, wild and free mixes, independent lady mixes, etc.

And a few years later, I met Jacob. Within the first month we started seeing each other, I burned him a mix CD, carefully crafted to tell him that I liked him a lot, but not too much, because I was still a very cool and independent lady. Shortly after, he made me a mix. I can still tell you almost every song that was on the mix, not least of all I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, which obviously said everything.

Awhile back Jacob subscribed to Apple Music, and he just added me onto his family plan this weekend. So now I have unlimited music at hand, whatever I want, whenever I want it. Today it dawned on me that the age of purchasing music, at least in my life, is done. Apart from the vinyl I pick up at Salvation Army, I’m not buying music anymore. I know that there are lots of ways to still make mixes (actually the youths know, I don’t really know), but suddenly I was grieving for those old CD mixes that soundtracked the emotional landscape of my 20s. So it goes, I guess. Every generation has to mourn the things that they watched disappear.

when I'm walking.

It snowed here yesterday, rain mixed with big, fluffy snowflakes. Today the temperature dipped into the 20s, so every tree branch is still coated. The powerful radiators in our building run sporadically, so the temperature in our apartment (completely out of our control) dips between quite cold and quite warm all day long.

Yesterday morning, when I woke up to the gray, slushy day, I found myself strangely sentimental for Washington, DC. I loved the walks on Capitol Hill, walking down to Eastern Market or to H Street on a Saturday morning. Especially when the weather was cold and wet.

I started walking when I lived outside of Boston. I lived a mile and a half from work, was very poor, afraid to bike in the city, and couldn’t afford to park or ride the bus every day. So I got into the habit of walking to work, regardless of the weather. It took me 30 minutes. I can call back the world of those walks instantly - the people I would see, the intersections, where I’d cross the road, the sushi shop I’d look into every day without stopping. I would always listen to music on those walks, though I remember one traumatic morning when I got out the door and realized that I had accidentally deleted the music from my iPod.

When I moved to DC, once we were in the city, I started walking again. The office was one mile away, for a few months, and then it moved another mile further. The two mile walk took 40 minutes. Eventually I started biking most days, but the walk was so centering that I’d still do it sometimes. I got out of the habit of listening to anything. I’d just walk and look around and think.