This week in development - There you go!

This, pretty much, is development in a nutshell. The narrative (below), written and illustrated by Oren Ginzberg, is better told with corresponding illustrations. The (sad) humor of it can be appreciated regardless whether or not you're one of the "development practitioners." Enjoy.

Our original goal was the same as the usual - to bring them sustainable development. However, in this specific case, we encountered an unexpected challenge (as if it isn't so in any other case). It turned out that these people, in their own kind of way, were already sustainable. So all we could really bring them was Development (without really being able to define what development meant in the first place).

We started Participatory Community Development, but they didn't fully (really want to) participate.

We tried income-generating activities... but some people seem satisfied with less than a dollar a day.

We even tried to empower them... but their reaction was more powerful than expected.

So we opted for Multi-Stakeholder Cross-Disciplinary Integrated approach.

We developed innovative Private Sector Partnerships.

We developed vocational skills adapted to a shifting economy.

We developed tough conservation measures to protect the environment from further harm.

And we developed ambitious Social Safety Nets - for those unable to take care of themselves.

This has been a challenging process with many lessons learned. We certainly look forward to applying them elsewhere in the very near future.

But for now, let us just say,
Welcome to the Global Village.

Now you know what is being vigorously taught to me at Brandeis.

The text and illustrations by Oren Ginzberg (2006), published by and courtesy of Survival International.

It's good to be back...

I'm almost done with school, with the exception of a paper that needs to be finished and submitted by this afternoon (anyone wants to help me write about prostitution and masculinities in post-Soviet Armenia?). I also managed to successfully relocate myself to Richmond last night - the airline and travel gods were nice, and despite snow in the forecast, the flights weren't canceled and I made it to Richmond safely and all in one piece together with all three pieces of my luggage.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane, a Richmonder, asked me whether I lived in Boston or Richmond. "Ummm, both, I guess... " I said, still reluctant to consider my stay in New England as "living." Learning that I only recently moved to Boston for school, he asked me how I liked the area. I told him that for whatever reason it just wouldn't grow on me. He seemed to agree. "It's rough town, let me tell you... It doesn't grow easily on anybody."

Oh, I know, I know. It's hard to get used to a town where you'd be lucky to get a smile from a passer by, let alone have decent conversation. When asking for directions, say to the State Capital, you will most likely get "follow the fucking golden globe, god damnit." And of course, twenty degree cold and snowstorms don't make it any easier.

It feels so good to be in Richmond...

It feels good to be done with school, away from the cold (relatively speaking), back to the familiar settings... It's nice to know that there is a place that i can go back to, like one would go back home. It's good to have an entire month completely free, without any concerns and worries. And, of course, the holidays.

A couple of weeks ago, after a mini-meltdown caused by the holiday frenzy, I realized, for the first time, that I still have some deep and unresolved emotional issues that I need to get to the bottom of. I also need to recommit myself to this blog, which, despite my long-drawn absence, is perhaps one of my main sources for self-expression that is fun and therapeutic at the same time. I also seem to have forgotten how to simply be, and be happy, which is what I plan to spend most of my days in Richmond doing.

The invitation to come and see me here is still open to everyone...

For now, let me just say that it's good to be back here and for the sake of sheer entertainment and in the spirit of this holiday season, check this out.

Happy snowy, cold and icey birthday to me...

Photo courtesy of fancyflouers.com

I’ve been quiet for a while. School has been consuming half of my soul, living in Waltham gnawing at the other half, thus contributing to the overall lack of time and motivation to bring about this long-drawn silence of late. However, despite the absence of regular posts, site meter reads show that there are still people periodically visiting this site. Thank you. Really. So for the sake of saving what’s left of my readership, as well as providing some kind of update on what’s happening in my domain (no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth yet), here’s a brief overview on my overall well-being in general, and my current state in particular, in case you happen to care.

School-wise - school’s fine. Really. No more and no less, that is. I’m not particularly loving it, not quite loathing it entirely (with the exception of one particular class). I am still the disgruntled student that I was at the beginning of the semester, as my past posts will attest to, but for the sake of not repeating myself, I will spare you from the long list of frustrations and apprehensions, and will simply say that, yeah, it’s bearable, it’s going to be over in May and that I will make it through with what dignity and pride I still have left. Grade-wise, on the other hand, I’m kicking ass – turns out I can write pretty good papers, although I’ve never looked at grades as means of measuring progress or accomplishments. Onwards…

Career-wise – it looks like I have taken a completely radical turn as to what I want to do after I graduate. So I’m slowly restructuring – that is, coming to a realization that neither field work, nor micro-finance is what I would like to do with myself at this point. I am more and more drawn to research and policy analysis, and am considering the possibility of getting a PhD in some still intangible future, in some still undefined field. For now, the future, still as vague and uncertain as it can be, concerns me a bit. And yet, I do seem to be confident enough to know that really, I will be fine, no matter what happens or what I happen to chose.

Location-wise –After having lived in the South, it’s a little difficult to get used to New England. Blame the weather. Blame the closed, shielded, unfriendly waspiness. I do find it hard to see myself living here either now, or any point of my life. Despite the historic and cultural magnificence of Boston itself and quaint and artsy cuteness of the nearby small towns, I still can’t quite get it, it still won’t grown on me. Waltham, on the other hand, having neither the quaintness nor the cuteness of nearby towns, has little to nothing to grown on anyway. It depresses the hell out of me. Speak about development – the town needs some serious “lifestyle” development – being the bland dump that it is. Onwards, before I get myself in trouble here…

Fun-wise – my social life leaves much room for improvements. There are days when all I seem to want is to be left alone to read articles and edit papers, or lay on the couch watching CSI re-runs. There are also days when I catch myself feeling nostalgic at the idea of being able to walk into a neighborhood bar, to hang out with local drunks and catch up on gossip… This is when I know how much I miss Yerevan and a certain drunk in particular, which in its turn makes me realize how much time has passed since then, and how much I’ve changed and mellowed in the last couple of years…

Richmond-wise – my frequent trips to Richmond are my saving grace, before I go completely nuts in Smalltown America. I have sublet the cutest room in a cutest row house in the Museum District for winter break. Within walking distance to Carytown and the museums on Boulevard, this is the closest I have lived to the Fan (the area may even be considered the Fan). Needless to say – I’m excited. And would like to extend an open invitations to those who might be interested in coming up for a visit. There. Any volunteers?

Relationship-wise –slowly, very slowly, one baby step at a time I have been recovering all the faith that I lost about relationships in general, and myself in a relationship in particular. My less than stellar track record in this particular area had left me with a reservation that there might be something innately wrong about me and commitments, and everything else that goes into making a functioning relationship. I am slowly coming to realize that after all my fears, mistakes, reservations and plain stubbornness, I am in the middle of a very happy relationship and that is one way of knowing that I finally reconciled all my past conflicts and got my priorities straight. Good to know – turns out it was not all completely hopeless…

Other-wise – to list a few random irrelevances observed as of late - an overall increase in TV watching (particularly CSI – only as little as three months ago I watched almost no TV), drastic decrease in caffeine and nicotine consumption (contrary to what you might think grad school does to you); diet consisting of peanut butter sandwiches, greasy free pizza that they give out at school (Heller school indeed tries to alleviate hunger one student at a time), cafeteria wraps and ravioli - my eating habits are not particularly exciting or exemplary. Yet, it does not bother me at all. Not now. Not at this point. Which I am taking as a good sign. I feel the same way about dropping a course so that the quality of my sleep does not suffer. A big leap forward, I’d say.

So that’s that - my life in a nutshell, kids. Not very exciting, but livable, I’d say. Better, much better than lives of those who do not have what today I am lucky to have and perhaps do not appreciate to the extent that I should. However, despite everything that annoys and frustrates me from one day to another, I do know that I am, still, happy as I’ve never been and forever grateful for everything that I have, - today, tomorrow and for many days to come.

History of Time of Sorts

Long, long ago, before there was even sand in the hourglass, there was a teeny, tiny dot, so small it was virtually invisible -- that was presented to you as a gift.

At first, puzzled and perplexed, you thought it was a joke. Yet, trusting and inquisitive, your intuition led you to accept it and, before long, to carefully examine it.

And lo, after becoming extraordinarily teeny and tiny yourself, you found there was an entrance of sorts into this little treasure, in the form of a long and winding path. So inside you went, through the densest grove of ancient, moss-covered, bending oaks you will ever see. And before long, you found a shiny, gold, old-fashioned key that had been left upon a large, rounded stone, as if especially for you.

With key in hand you proceeded down the path until you arrived at a massive gate. Just above it there was a handwritten plaque for all who might pass beneath it:

"Welcome to the Jungles of Time and Space, Where nothing is as it seems, yet all things are possible. Should you ever feel lost or weary, Forget not from where you have come, And follow the signs..."

Peering between the wrought iron bars, you could see the entire Milky Way Galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies beyond it. Your thoughts raced, your imagination ran wild, and as you raised your key to the sturdy, reinforced lock, slowly slipping it in, and gently turning... there was a sudden flash of light and burst of sound. Whereupon, seemingly light-years later but, in fact, no longer than an instant, you found yourself in the most beautiful human form, living on the most beautiful little planet, having a wonderful life, a wrinkle of curiosity on your brow, reading this very Note, right here and now.
Talk about a sign -
The Universe

Love is...

when you go to bed in boyfriend's boxers, hugging his t-shirt as a teddy bear...

On a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, when the boy was up here for a visit, I was making French toast, when Mother Sugar walks into the kitchen, sees me at the stove, stops in silence for a moment, gives a chuckle and says “Would you like an apron, Miss?

“No thanks. Would you like some orange juice?”

“Oh stop it, Miss Domestic.”

The boy’s watching the scene in silence. Mother Sugar turns to him and says,

“Just so you know, she isn’t usually like this…”

“Yeah, you’d be lucky to see me toasting a bagel.”

The boy, who has had more than one occasion of seeing me by the stove, doesn’t seem to understand how funny the whole situation is. Later I tell Mother Sugar, that you know, I’m quite domestic, after all.

“Ok, then. Dinner is at seven tonight?”

“Yup. Don’t be late. I’ll heat up the pasta that I made from the box the other day...”

Catching the last grains of warmth...

Slowly, reluctantly I am starting to fall into a routine. Despite my initial dismay, frustration and disappointment and after careful consideration of all my options, including dropping out or transferring, I finally came to realize that at this point the most rational thing I can do is stay exactly where I am and finish what I have started. Not that the issues that I have with the program, the school itself and the educational system in general are going to go away, or I am going to feel less of a conformist – merely a realization that with all things considered, including costs and benefits, staying here is perhaps the best option, especially since I will be out of here after the end of the academic year, only six months of internship away from getting the damn degree.

So now I’m getting sucked into the routine. Classes, assignments, midterm exams, group meetings here, community meetings there, lectures, seminars… I’d say I’m busy, except that I do not feel like what I do on daily basis is important or matters on the grand scheme. I’m merely going through motions without much excitement or motivation. I am not very productive, despite the fact that I’m on top of my classes; I don’t accomplish much, contrary to what my grades so far can tell; I feel like I waste too much time, sulk too much, watch too much TV. I feel like I am constantly trying to keep my academic life separate from the rest, I feel as if the rest of my life is somewhat on hold, and I’m here, merely biding time.

I feel like I’ve been biding my time for way too long. The past three years have been nothing but continuation of a transitional state, one temporary stay after another. It’s getting old, or perhaps it’s me who’s getting old and am tired and in need of permanence, stability, shape and order, less uncertainty…

I feel in constant conflict with myself. What I seem to want these days overlaps with what I need; where I seem to be moving towards to seems to not be where I want to be. It’s been a continuous, repetitive theme for quite a while, regardless of my daily routine. I am starting to forget what it is like to live in the moment. I feel like I’m starting to forget how to appreciate my day. I am starting to forget what it is that truly matters and am falling for promises for some distant future that I’m not sure I even want…

For now it’s the routine – school, classes, assignments, meetings here and there. I am, in a way busy, although none of it is either all that exciting or important in the grand scheme. And even if I know that the smartest thing for right now is to stay exactly where I am, the smartest thing may not necessarily be what is best for me.

Before I can even start thinking about development...

“I will never forget the look of hope on the face of the farmer, as I watched him sign the loan agreement and handed out the loan in the amount of two hundred dollars. This would help him repair his old Soviet tractor and buy seeds for next year’s crop. He was happy. So was I. This was my first loan disbursement during the month of internship at FINCA Armenia. Since then I have seen the same expression of hope and gratitude on many faces, which has been the best reward in return to my work and the greatest source of inspiration. I do believe that it is possible to make a difference in the lives of people, however small the efforts and changes might appear at first glance.”

I applied to Brandies with a genuine desire to learn about development. Ranking among the best in the field, the program offered an alternative, “holistic” approach to global development issues, covering a wide range from poverty reduction to global health, to environmental protection to sustainability. At the time my knowledge of “development at work” was based on observation rather than first hand experience, and likewise, my understanding of development was more intuitive than based on existing theories and approaches or backed by empirical evidence.

I was driven by belief that it was “possible to make a difference in the lives of people, however small the efforts and changes might appear at first glance. ” I also felt that those who are more fortunate bear a certain responsibility towards those who are born without their basic rights and opportunities. To me development meant creating opportunities to those who are born without them, as further rephrased by one of my professors as “development is expanding human choices.”

By the time I got to Brandeis, I had read, if not significant, at least certain amount of literature that turned my aspirations to hardcore interrogations, my desire to learn how to achieve development to skeptical “why do existing approaches fail one after another,” and “are there any alternatives other than numerous attempts to achieve blueprint, universally applicable models that act more like band-aids than true solutions to existing issues?”

As I delve deeper and deeper in existing challenges facing development, I am overwhelmed by array of issues that arise as I attempt to answer even one single question. The misadventures of development practitioners in the field during the past decades, as phrased by my beloved Bill Easterly, leave little to no hope or reason to adhere to any given approach or method. Even more so, in the course of time, seemingly simple and well defined development objectives have been becoming more and more obscure as the attempts to overcome them are meeting bigger and bigger obstacles.

As reluctant as the field appears to be to admit its shortcomings and ignorance when it comes to achieving worldwide development, it is becoming obvious that if you don’t know what works, chances are you have little to nothing to teach about how to achieve development. The most you can do is to critique the past approaches, learn from past mistakes and search for alternatives that may not necessarily guarantee any tangible result. However, the first step in even trying to move towards development is to accept the fact that we are, initially, ignorant in the field and do not know how to achieve development, as our failures indicate, as opposed to pretending that we know what we’re doing and giving far reaching promises such as Millennium Development Goals stand today.

From this viewpoint, I cannot help but consider the moral implications of my choice. Medical students, before starting their practice, swear under oath to do no harm. There is no such oath for those practicing development. And yet, at this point it only feels as if we’re the blind trying to lead the meek, without stopping to question whether we’re doing good or making things even worse. Do we have the right to treat social policies as experiments of some kind and thrive to achieve development for the sake of development only without stopping to consider the lives we’re aiming to alter? Do we have the knowledge? Do we have the strength? Do we have the ethical right, even if our intent is driven by nothing but goodwill? Is our intent driven by goodwill alone? Is goodwill alone enough to try and accomplish something that’s rooted deep into centuries and challenges such basic fundamentals as justice, equality, basic rights and needs?

The hardest part of this journey is not the academic work (or in my case, the lack of challenge that I’m faced with these days). Nor is it the professional pressure or genuinity of my intent. It’s not even the over increasing complexity of social, political and economic challenges that the field of development faces. The hardest thing, as this point is finding answers to the ethical questions, without reconciliation of which I do not think I’ll be able to go on.

Doris Lessing Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

Doris Lessing, "[the] epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny," according to NobelPrize.org., wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2007.

Perhaps my most favorite writer of all times, whose books have impacted and shaped me like no other literary work has done. The Golden Notebook my one and only and all time bible to free womanhood is perhaps one of the greatest analysis of the forces, events and phenomena that shaped the post modern world depicting conflict at every level of fragmented society as we desperately fight and resist the limitations of human condition.

It makes me extremely, ecstatically happy to learn that the prize went to her, one of the greatest visionaries of out times.

For full stories, read here and here.
* Photograph courtesy to CBC.ca

This is actually starting to get a little scary

Only yesterday, through sobs and tears I mumbled, half legibly

"When you want something so badly and you don't get it, it hurts so bad that you stop believing that you will ever get anything you really truly want..."

And this morning:

Actually, Nika, it's not that you want stuff that you don' t have, but that you want stuff that you think you don't have.

And the best way to change this is to begin thinking that you have it.

"Oh, there's my electric, fully loaded, 2008 Habitron cloud maker!!!"
The Universe

Are you playing with me, Universe?

Seriously, first this:

Talking a lot about something that bothers you, Nika, is a pretty good sign that you've got something huge, and profoundly liberating, to learn.

Whooohooooo!
The Universe

and then...

First, as a child, it seems like the entire world is there for you and you rush to drink from its every cup, sometimes wondering to yourself how anything could ever be more fun.

Then, as you grow older, if you're observant, you realize much of what you enjoy was made possible by the contributions, work, and labor of those who came before you, and you're taken aback, disappointed even , because with maturity you can now see cracks in the façades, imperfections in the details, and 10,000 ways it could have all been done better.

At which point, folks typically choose one of two paths: Spend a lifetime lamenting how far from perfect things are. Or, to one degree or another, roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

And should they choose the latter with gusto, dear Nika, they will come to know, to the core of their sacred being, that the differences they might make in the world cannot be made by another. And then they will discover the answer to their often-wondered childhood question.... That the most fun one can have in time and space comes from making such a difference, and that the joy derived from serving is 10,000 times that of being served.
At your service -
The Universe

Ok, i get it, i'll stop the bitching now.

I have been quiet for a while. I have also been down, depressed, disappointed, frustrated and apathetic about this whole school thing (and not only that, but that’s a whole other topic for discussion that I won’t go into at this point). I guess I am really having trouble with adjustment – but it’s the adjustment of my expectations rather than getting used to my new surroundings that is giving me the pains. I do not like the program – to put it as simply as I can. What on paper promised to be an academically rigorous top level education, in practice proved to lack challenge and be as full of bullshit as everything else. I’d follow Tamara’s advice and try to create my own learning path in this whole schooling process. In fact it looks like the only thing I can do in order to survive the next two semesters or so. And yet, at the same time, I cannot hold down the whole “what the fuck” question – the somewhat petty, but at the same time rather tangible and legitimate concern of mine – the financial cost. To pay a fortune for what does not hold to its promise? Am I simply paying for the name rather than quality? Am I buying rather than earning this degree? Surely it’s not groundbreaking news that education is some kind of business in its own way – but can’t you be at least a little subtle about it?

At this point I’m not sure what to do about what seems to cause me such great frustration and pain. Of course I could always quit, go back to Richmond, or home, or anywhere else for that matter, get a more or less satisfying job, do something I’ve always been good at doing – the mundane, repetitive everyday tasks, without expecting any immediate rewards. Or work for a non-profit, grassroots, community based development something or another – honestly, I don’t even NEED a degree to be able to do that – so what the hell am I doing wasting time and money?

But then, what little rationality I have insists that I give it at least another month or two, bite the bullet and go on, finish what I have started because, just like my boss told me– all I need is a piece of paper saying that I’ve got a degree, I’ll be better off with it than without it. But then, I have to question how good I am in playing along the pretense game and how I will feel about myself when all is done and finished. A hypocrite? A conformist? A hopeless cynic? All of the above? I do know bullshit when I see it. I recognize it from miles and miles away. As hard as I try, I cannot quite ignore it – at this point it’s only a matter of further exercising my skills to cope with it.

Maybe I will, after all, get something out of this on top of master’s degree – the perfected skill of coping with bullshit that can always come in handy in all aspects of life. Will it be worth forty grand? I guess only time will tell.

Mother Sugar asks me how I like the house so far. I tell her that I love it.
“What is it about it that you like?”
“It’s very artsy. Colorful. Open. Warm. It has such a positive vibe to it.”
She agrees. Then mentions that the reason she’s so curious is because at my age she would never live with a woman of her age. I tell her that one of the reasons i chose the house was her. She’s amazing, what can I say?

The house itself is very nice. It has a feeling of a home – something that i have been missing for a while. I am not sure whether it’s because of the all female household, or the way she has set it up to be, I love the warmth of this house. I feel safe here. Somewhat sheltered,

Mother Sugar has hosted several kids from my program. One of my roommates, an African queen from Ghana, is in my program as well. Mother Sugar knows so much about the program that she deserves an honorary degree for her indirect involvement and the amount of support she provides to the students.

We often talk about development. She listens closely to my skeptical and somewhat gloomy opinions about the state of development today and in the past. She finds them depressing. She says I sound different from all the other kids who seemed to be on perpetual high of goodwill. She says that I make her think. She thanks me for that. In her turn she asks me what the hell I’m doing getting into this… I tell her that I’m driven out of my biggest fear – the fear of poverty.

“Have you seen poverty from up close?” she asks.
“I have,” and I tell her about life in Armenia in the 90s after the Soviet collapse. She listens closely. Asks if my family is doing well now. I tell her that they’re all right.
“They are paying for your education, aren’t they?”
I look at her as if she’s in sane, at the same time realizing that there is no way in the world I could relay to her how impossible and outright lunatic is the idea of my mother supporting me. In her turn, she looks at me in disbelief.
“You know, my first impression of you was that you come from a wealthy family.”
Other than one of my bosses’ endearing mocking about my Persian princess attitude, this is a first. I am not sure how exactly I can tell her that it is beyond the attributes of wealth and poverty that I could even start to describe my background to her.

Mother Sugar tells me that she’s lived in poverty herself. Raised her kids in poverty in Israel. Looking at this woman, who seems as American as one can be, I have to wonder what her story is. Still most of it in the dark, I have a hard time putting the little snippets that she told about herself together - New York. Israel, Washington DC, Boston…
I wonder how much more there is to it behind this cheerful woman that reminds me so much of my own mother.

Our conversations leave me with a feeling that we share a new level of understanding, one that reaches beyond our genuine liking of each other, similarly radical political views, innate skepticism and intolerance of any kind of bullshit.

Somehow I feel like this year with Mother Sugar is going to give me a whole lot more than what I will learn at Brandeis. And I am extremely grateful for that.

After having been to classes for a full week, I can finally take a break for a minute, and make an “assessment” of my current situation.

I am starting to realize that I came to Brandeis with high expectations and the wrong attitude. And at the end of the week I can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed – still unsure whether my disappointment is unreasonable, or reasonably justified. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions. Perhaps, it’s not the program, but my own ambivalence and attitude towards it, perhaps I am being arrogant, ungrateful, impatient, or maybe all of the above. I do realize that I should be grateful to be here. I do realize that this is a privilege. As the program director said in his opening speech (and we all know how to take these speeches seriously), I am, after all, among the lucky few, among the elite… How many people in the world have access to primary education, let alone graduate school at such fine academic institution? How can I not be ecstatic when I am so close to that shrine that I made graduate school be?

I am, in fact, surrounded by young professionals from all over the world. I am guided by mentors who have several decades of experience not only in academic field, but in the real world. They all have been there, right at the very grassroots – in gutter and squalor, in desert and jungle. My own adviser is the founder of the program himself, who’s been all over the world, and led and directed multiple programs within the giants of the industry. My professors have held similar high ranking and respectable positions… Our inspirations are shared, our dreams are encouraged, our academic aspirations rewarded…

Day in day out classrooms heave with our joint goodwill, compassion and empathy, arguments flare with bright ideas and passion… Reading materials encompass the finest ideas from all over the world, to serve as food for further thought… This is my element, right here, in these classrooms, among the bright and accomplished and young and inspired… And yet, by the end of the day I feel as if I have been let down, disappointed, lost…

I did, after all, come here with highest expectation to find not only shared compassion and good will, but in search of excellence, highest academic excellence that takes nothing for granted, tolerates no givens, when even the most obvious, apparent, almost axiomatic notions are questioned, challenged, dissected. Excellence that can no longer afford naiveté, excellence that looks beyond the accepted, traditional and takes the uniform thoughts to a completely new level of seeing, reasoning, understanding…

So far I am yet to come across such excellence.
For now, I have to wonder whether my expectations were, in fact, unreasonably high. Perhaps I did turn the idea of graduate school into a shrine of some kind, an almost impossible shrine that only very few can reach… Perhaps, what I am looking for is not to be found here, in this fine academic institution or anywhere else, for that matter.

Yet, what I am feeling now is not just disappointment. What I am experiencing is Holden Caulfield syndrome of some sorts. Despite my excitement, my blatant admiration of the new faces that I got to meet in such a short period time and my initial inspiration with such high reaching and noble ideas, what i see and hear is something old, familiar, too subtle and elusive for me to be able to explain, yet tangible enough to be felt with my backbone – the fake… false, carefully guised undertones that creep in every time professor pauses to cough, every time a question is left hanging in the air in the pursuit of the next. The game of pretense. The old, familiar game of pretense… None of this is serious, none of this matters, coined phrases thrown back and forth, clichés, technical words that have become so common that they have lost their meaning, recycled, repetitive ideas that are being served to us on a pretty plate like an exotic and fabulous dish…

It’s going to be a long year…

I already want it to be over. Hence the bad attitude.

And yet, I need to remind myself, before I move on to my next assigned reading, that it’s not just the Master’s degree that I’m here for. Although the last thing I want to do during the next year or so is to question and challenge everything that’s served on my plate, I do need to exercise a certain sense of reality and healthy dose of cynicism to get through this…

More on this later…
Back to the dissecting table – my daily readings, that is.

Busy

I know, I know, it's the familiar, untelling, knee-jerk answer that you hear left and right, but at this point, this is the only thing i can come up with, until some of the chaos of the first week of classes, unnecessarily complicated registration process and just getting used to my new surroundings and schedule finally settles down. For now, here's an excerpt from my bible of everydayness by Amy Krouse Rosenthal on this very brief and limited one word answer - busy.

How you been? Busy. How’s work? Busy. How was your week? Good. Busy. You name the question, “Busy” is the answer. Yes, yes, I know we are all terribly busy doing terribly important things. But I think more often than not, “Busy” is simply the most acceptable knee-jerk response. Certainly there are more interesting, more original, and more accurate ways to answer the question how are you? How about: I’m hungry for a waffle; I’m envious of my best friend; I’m annoyed by everything that’s broken in my house; I’m itchy. Yet busy stands as the easiest way of summarizing all that you do and all that you are. I am busy is the short way of saying —suggesting—my time is filled, my phone does not stop ringing, and you (therefore) should think well of me. Have people always been this busy? Did cavemen think they were busy, too? This week is crazy—I’ve got about ten caves to draw on. Can I meet you by the fire next week? I have a hunch that there is a direct correlation between the advent of coffee chains and the increase in busy-ness. Look at us. We’re all pros now at hailing a cab/pushing a grocery cart/operating a forklift with a to-go cup in hand. We’re skittering about like hyperactive gerbils, high not just on caffeine but on caffeine’s luscious by-product, productivity. Ah, the joy of doing, accomplishing, crossing off. As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What’s new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy. I’m starting to think that, like youth, the word nothing is wasted on the young. Maybe we should try reintroducing it into our grown-up vernacular. Nothing. I say it a few times and I can feel myself becoming more quiet, decaffeinated. Nothing. Now I’m picturing emptiness, a white blanket, a couple ducks gliding on a still pond. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. How did we get so far from it? See also: Coffee, Stopping for; Crossing Guard; Nothing

So it begins...

A few things, while I have a minute to breathe, reconnect to the world, check email, make phone calls and jot down some thoughts, before I plunge headfirst back into day four of orientation at Heller School of Social Policy and Management. More to come I’m sure, for now, this will have to do.

• Where do Peace Corps Volunteers end up after they’re done with their two year service? Apparently, the SID program at Heller is the place to be – it seems like ninety percent of the Americans who are in the program (and believe it or not, they are a minority in an extremely diverse and colorful incoming MA student crowd) are returning Peacies. To take this further – what are the chances that you’ll meet one, let alone two of these amazing well-wishing, tree-hugging do-gooders that have just come back from your own country? Even more so, what if you even happen to have personally seen them on site? From the day one, when after being freshly inaugurated and sworn in, they crowded my favorite bar, making complete fools of themselves, i'd stumble upon them throughout the year here and there in ever corner of downtown Yerevan… A former PC groupie that I was back in the day, while conducting series of interviews with them for my still unfinished project, I actually ended up befriend a few (they are, after all, charming, and adorable, and totally harmless). And yet, Brandeis was the last place I’d expect to run into a former Armenia stationed Peace Corps Volunteer – but then, it’s a small world that makes room for even the most improbable encounters to happen.

• Among the many questions that I’ve been pondering upon for the last year or so that were directly or indirectly touched upon during the course introduction session earlier today: the ethical side of development as to who makes development happen, how certain development projects are created and chosen for implementation, who gets to decide which projects to choose and how to implement. The question being - do we (development practitioners) - or the developed countries, namely the West in general, have the moral and ethical right to make development happen - choose a project for a country or a region that we know little to nothing about without even considering the issue of participation and collaboration, thus ending up face to face with downright hostility from the locals and leaving the site shocked by their "ingratitude"? A dominating theme in the attitude the West that is prevalent not only in this particular field, but the entirety of US foreign policy. To come to think of it - can Western thought and the Western model be imposed to the rest of the world, with neither the knowledge, nor the participation, nor consideration of choices of those who live in the region?


• Snippets from introduction to Poverty and Assets – Poverty is a man created phenomenon that doesn't go away because certain groups happen to have vested interest to make it stay. Certain economists consider poverty as necessity, the driving force of progress – if this is so, capitalism does truly encourage the worst tendencies of human nature. Any comments?

• From introduction to Food and Nutrition – Food for Peace Program, a seemingly harmless and humane project has turned out to be one of the most harmful, if not downright criminal in the practice of aid that sends the agricultural surpluses of US produced wheat and corn to malnourished countries, in the long run has resulted in disrupting the already shaky local agriculture and bankrupted thousands of farmers. Due to a very powerful farmers’ lobby in the US, the US government has agreed to buy the surplus from the farmers, lest the excess supply should push the prices down, and dump it on countries that would rather grow their own produce, which in its turn would result in gradual growth and development of local agriculture. However, as long as the lobby exists, the program will not stop. Politicians of wheat and corn growing states that rely on farmers’ vote will not let this happen either. Speak about morality. How is it different from dropping a bomb on a given country?

• From introduction to Framework to Development – despite the fact that foreign aid has been in practice for several decades, it’s still a very young field in its experimental stage, where both practitioners, policy makers and scholars are trying to find applicable solutions to pressing global issues more through trial and error process than a unified and collaborative strategy (if it's even possible to come up with one). If that’s the case, why does the UN and other joint aid agencies make the assumptions that they will meet the Millennium Development Goals by the projected year of 2015? One has to wonder whether it is pretense, arrogance or plain ignorance or there is more to it that what “they” let us know?

Needless to say, I’m excited. And this is before even the classes started. Yet, the fact that they won’t let the incoming class register for courses yet drives me insane. On the bright side - I found out that I might just as well try to find a real job instead of shitty unpaid internships for my second year. As delighted as I am, this adds yet another important task to my already crowded agenda for the coming year, more on which will come later...

The last days in Richmond were almost surreal. Starting from the big storm last Thursday night that lasted all night and shook the ground with lightning and thunder, to the heat finally subsiding a little, to overcast skies and fog in the morning and the smell of fall in the air predicting all kinds of change, and the red brick of the houses looking brighter against the gloomy sky…

Running on Monument for the last time, through the mist of the early morning fog… Packing. Cleaning up… the trip to the airport…

Lisa came to visit on Sunday. I hadn’t seen her since I left Gainesville. That was an eternity ago. Seeing her, seeing myself, how much we both have changed since then and yet how familiar it all felt. How much at ease both of us were. The same welcoming feeling of familiarity. The same long conversations over coffee, the same musings of what happened, and what will next… Our past, our future, our plans and dreams…
She wanted to see Richmond, since I spoke so fondly of it. Showing Richmond to her gave me a chance to see it once again, all the favorite places that I will miss so much, the downtown and Shockoe Bottom to Boulevard and the Museum District, Byrd Park and Carillon, the bridges across the river, the Fan and Carytown… Showing these places to her felt as if I was showing a part of myself, despite the fact that I myself was so new to Richmond only a little while ago.

Finishing up the last little tasks at work. Trying not to forget to pass on the last little details to my replacement. Finishing up training. Hoping that I was leaving all these files in good hands, and yet for the first time realizing how good of a job I had done even having only partially applied myself in this work.

Leaving work was harder than I thought it would be. Although work itself is probably one of the last things that I will miss, it was hard to leave the place, especially after knowing that I’ve been valued and appreciated. It’s strange how throughout this entire year, after feeling so strange and out of place with my foreignness, ill fitted liberal ideas that I kept to myself, my lack of genuine interest when it came to real estate, to only partial effort that I put into my work, I suddenly felt welcomed, accepted, a member of an extended family that sent me away with genuine wishes and warmest goodbyes.

Almost all free time outside work for the last couple of weeks was spent with him. Playing, joking, being cute and silly. Cooking together, going out for meals. Watching Before Sunset yet again. Distracting each other. Planning future trips…

It wasn’t until we were at the airport when it hit. It hit hard. When I was about to cross the security check point. And every single tear that I had been trying to hold back for days, every sad emotion that I would distract myself from fell crushing on me. I cried through the entire flight. Listened to David Gray and cried. And yet, despite the sadness that still lingers with me and gets me teary eyed, I am so hopeful and optimistic … Looking back at the relationship this time last year, and even a few months back, I realize how much it has grown, how different it is from what once started as an undefined, equivocal, ambiguous relationship… All the uncertainties that I once had, all insecurities are gone. What I once asked for – continuity rather than commitment, is what I am finally able to see. I realize that I could not have been happier. That I cannot be happier now, from however many miles away… For now, it’s merely a distance of days, surviving time in short intervals: eight days, ten more days, two more weeks until I see you again. Soon. I promise.

А на последок я скажу…

This time next week I will be in Waltham. The time interval between now and then seems gray and fuzzy. Next Wednesday seems an eternity away. Once again I am reminded how multi textured (flexible) time can be, rigid in some occasions, fast and rapid and stretchable in others…Every day seems to have acquired a special significance. Yet, in the bigger scheme, it’s just another day, another week…

It still hasn’t quite clicked in that I will be leaving in less than a week. I’ve known this all along, from the first day I came to Richmond. Yet it is still hard for me to comprehend that I will be leaving. Perhaps it’s partly because I know that the leave is not final, that I will be coming back, in as little as three weeks. This time next month I will be back in Richmond for a long weekend, thanks to Rosh Hashanah that’s an official holiday for Brandeis. I am looking forward to these coming trips. Another one in October, one for Thanksgiving, a month long stay during the winter break… I’ll be here in February, in March and April…Yet anything after that seems vague and blurry… It gives me an uneasy feeling – the fact that I do not know where I will be in less than ten months, let alone this time next year.

I try to be realistic. Try to keep myself still, not to run ahead of myself, which is something that I have been doing a lot lately. I try to objectively identify all the options that I have. Likewise, be aware of all the limitations that are on my way. And for the first time, these limitations don’t make me feel helpless… Better prepared, maybe more pragmatic but not helpless… And yet, for the first time I ever remember myself, I wish I knew what was coming towards me, what the future holds for me. I once used to be the greatest believer of randomness, perceiving the human condition as our collective helplessness against circumstances that determine it all… Thus I never let myself make any far reaching plans, even in my wildest dreams and felt frozen and paralyzed within the bounds of my limitations… Lately I’ve been trying to look at things differently. Trying to believe that there’s always a remote possibility for even the impossible to come to life. Lately I’ve trying to look at things through the power of believing. Make room for even the farthest reaching dreams. And likewise I actually believe that it is quite possible that I find myself one day looking at Himalayas, strolling the streets of Prague or back in Armenia working on a documentary… Or back in Richmond, living quietly on Strawberry Street. Maybe happily married, with a couple of kids…

What makes it possible to believe in all of the above is the fact that I am the happiest that I can possibly ever be... It’s a feeling that comes from within. From the certainty of knowing of what’s important and what’s with me to stay. Those are things that cannot be taken away from me, won’t be left behind…Everything else, everything I encounter on my way, or happen to accomplish, will count as bonus points to this happiness. At this point, I am moving from point A to point B not because I have to, but because I want to… And that’s all that counts…

And now, only a week away from moving, only a breath away from yet another exciting adventure that lies ahead, I feel incredibly calm and confident. I am leaving Richmond with a peaceful mind, knowing that it will always have a place in my heart. And that is something you can’t leave behind. Neither now or ever.

A few things

- more as side notes to myself, in hopes of turning them into full blogs between now and the move, that is, if I don’t collapse of exhaustion, dehydration or pass out from excitement first.

• If I had a nickel every time I trained someone, or my take on summing up residential real estate in a few paragraphs, as my way of marking an end to a phase. I hope that after the next two weeks I'll never ever have to deal with it again… Even when I decide to buy my own house one day.

• Between Persian princess and street urchin, I will forever go down the history of R&C as the girl who not only politely corrected the boss that “No, Mr. R., it’s diphthong, not dipthong” but was also able to explain what it actually meant and illustrate it on examples. Big deal – even the dumbest student at Brusov knows this, and yet, the Boss-Who’s-Always-Right was not only impressed but somewhat hurt, as I shoved the dictionary right at his face and ended the argument with Subjunctive “I wish I were wrong…”, thus scarring the poor thing for the rest of his lifetime… The incident itself took place a couple of years ago, and yet up to this date the guy won’t stop bringing it up. Food for further though - you’d think that with such grammar background, I’d make a lot less errors on this blog but my short attention span has been a long established and documented fact.

• A baffled attempt to respond to an image conscious comment thrown at me some weeks ago, as in “You look great! Different.” “Different how?” “You look like you’ve lost a lot of weight. You look skinny now. ” Apparently the comment affected me more than I'd expect it to, hence the necessity to write a coherent piece on an extremely tangled and convoluted mess that weight related issues once used to be.

• Can someone tell me what’s the difference between a regular physical checkup and a school checkup? Apparently there is, since they’re billed differently and chances are that my current health insurance won’t over the latter. Which sucks – such a waste of year long insurance money thrown away for nothing. Does anyone actually need another long and drawn out rant of hostility and rage on how much health care sucks in this country?

• Is it just me or Starbucks has been brewing some seriously mediocre coffee lately? An observation of the last few months or so based on visits to several stores, including one in Boston and another one in D.C… On a slightly different note – as my coffee consumption dramatically decreases, my soft drink consumption increases accordingly. Between the two, I’m not sure what to consider a lesser evil…

• I have finally reached the point where I am mentally and emotionally done with Richmond. And yet, I find it hard to list every little thing that I will miss. However, I can firmly assert that anything south of the river or north of Broad will not be remembered fondly…

• As much as I hate winter, I am having a really hard time dealing with dog days of August, when Richmond seems to be the hottest spot in the whole entire East Coast, if not the continent intself (seriously, check weather.com, if you don’t believe me). At this point, frost bite and snow seem a much more pleasant alternative to this blood boiling, brain melting, suffocating hell. I do realize that I might want to reconsider this last statement in a few months. I think I need to move to a place like Oakland, or San Diego, or whatever happens to have temperatures of perpetual upper 70s, if for nothing else, at least for the sake of having one less thing to bitch about.

• And lastly, I still owe a comment to Tamara, and the promised reward, so hopefully, that will be coming shortly. Just to let you know that I haven't forgotten.
  

It’s August yet again…

My two notebooks have come to an end… Pages filled with scribbling, half sentences written in hurried, illegible handwriting, dark butterflies on the margins… Lists, random quotes, words underlined for future pondering…

The year in Richmond is in these notebooks. Two summers, fall, winter and spring… From the very first “Give me a day…” to frustrated “How long it takes to get better…” to affirmative “I need more definitions” to shy “I love you” to trembling “I’m afraid of randomness of circumstances” to reminiscing “this time last year… ” to wistful ”if only… “ to airy “I’m happy like I’ve never been before…” to restless “I have to go and see…” – this has been the year in Richmond. How ironic that both notebooks would come to their end when my stay here is coming to its own end…

I need a new notebook…

Yet I am reluctant to get one, just like I’m reluctant to write these days, as if I’m afraid of what might come out, afraid to voice what I do not want to hear, lest I wander off into a territory that’s better left untrodden…

My days are filled with little tasks, small deadlines, chores, must-do lists… I concentrate on them one at a time, trying to live in those moments, stay in those moments as long as I can, aware of every passing minute as seconds tick away… My days are full… My heart is full… at night my dreams are crowded… prophetic…

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for in the Golden Notebook… And yet, I’m at awe that the book still has that strong hold on me, just like I did when I first picked it up when I was barely eighteen, not knowing that the book would change me, shape me like no other book would… The divided self – in four notebooks, in hopes of bringing it all together in one unified golden notebook… I think of all the notebooks that I’ve left behind, scattered bits of myself left here and there…

I need a new notebook…

It’s August yet again.

I’m leaving the new notebook for everything after…

"Honey, once you live in the South, it never leaves you..."

Am I the only fool who thinks that Southern is darn sexiest thing ever?

Bringing summers back…

Seven summers back I was in Charlottesville, having just moved to a tiny studio in a rundown building off of 29th. Having just escaped almost slave-like conditions that a five-star hotel has for its employees, this ghetto seemed nothing but heaven to me. I will always remember the experience of Charlottesville with bitterness; the misery, hostility and exhaustion of that entire summer will always be there to haunt me, and yet, out of the dark and strenuous experience The Tale of the Cities was born, a story that I wrote and rewrote and shaped and reshaped and cried and bled on paper without knowing that I would be living out that story one day. And despite every single hardship that I went through that summer, I will always be grateful for having found two of my most dearest people – the Bosnian girl who generously let me share her shoe box apartment, and the one who is the main reason why I am here in Richmond today.

Six summers back I was unhappy, depressed, torn by longing and overwhelmed with regret, feeling helpless and trapped in a city cursed by the sun, the city that only years later I was going to love and accept as home. I remember that long and hot summer of hell, living on ice-cream and tomato sandwiches day in day out, staying up night after night, dreaming, writing, writing the Tale, and when the pain of helplessness was too much to bear, I would cry myself to sleep, dreading the awakening the next morning, knowing that the new day would not bring any possible change. At the end of the summer, when the heat started to break, exhausted and jaded and dry after all the tears I'd shed, I sold my soul to the “devil” and got a full time job and fell in love, hard and fast, against all odds and every reason of rationality, the way you fall in love only when you’re twenty one, still young and stubborn, ignoring and trying to defy the reality with all might. Looking at it now, I realize that it was nothing but desperation – desperation that was to determine the next two years and everything that had to come afterwards.

Five summers back I graduated. And got my first apartment in downtown Yerevan. With five months’ rent I bought all the freedom and solitude I could ever ask for, realizing, for the first time, that I could live like that, alone, hidden in the heart of the downtown, happy in my solitude – a woman, alone, in a big city. And yet, before the summer came to end, I gave up the freedom and was married, without fully aware of any repercussions, waiting for a new life to start under a different sky.

Four summers back I was in Florida. Biding my time in timeless indolence. Hopeful, still in love, waiting for that long expected happiness to dawn, and thinking to myself that there must be something more to this thing that they call marriage.

Three summers back I was still in Florida. Surrounded by bliss of domesticity, slowly embracing what was coming to shape as complacent middleclassness, and desperately trying to grasp the finality of marriage. And yet, I’d often long for the woman I had left behind, the woman alone, in a big city… At the end of that summer Another Life was born, which, with its main theme of adultery, was nothing but the longing for all the other lives that I could have had, had I not made that one particular choice that I was slowly coming to regret.

Two summers back I was in Yerevan. Dazed and crazed by the heat and the sun, the cloudless skies, watered streets and freshly cut grass, happy, delirious, a butterfly on the sidewalk, intoxicated with my own freedom, testing its limits and daring it every way I could. Restless. Sleepless. In love – but this time it was the city I had fallen in love with, fast and hard. For the first time I felt that I was at home, finally at home in a place that I had so long hated and tried to defy. At the end of the summer I moved into my second apartment downtown and with another six months rent I bought the dream that I had so often longed for – the dream of a woman, alone, in a big city.

Last summer I was in Richmond – to come here, of all the places in the world, a decision so sudden and unexpected and yet looking back at it now – the only possible choice that I could have made wondering “whether this was a choice or an inevitable consequence of the past years that brought me here...”, realizing that I’m living out the end of the story that I once wrote and dreamed about night after night before I'd cry myself to sleep out of helplessness and desperation.

This summer it’s Richmond again. If they ask me what’s the best that I have had so far, I’ll tell them it’s Richmond – the year in Richmond. Looking back I realize how happy I have been and how much this entire year has changed me. Yet before the summer’s done, I will be gone, elsewhere, chasing winds and kaleidoscopic dreams… As restless as I am, as eager as I am, I have to make myself slow down, stop and enjoy what probably will be the last month of this quiet and uninterrupted stay.

I have no way of knowing what future holds for me. I have no way of foretelling where I’ll be this time next year. Come what may, happen what will, I know I will make the best of it, since I’ve outlived so many summers and have so many more to come… The only thing I can ask for, the only thing I can wish for, is to be back in Richmond, once again, without an urgency to leave, without an expiration date, a stay that will feel that I have found home, of all the homes I’ve had and have willingly left behind….

This Thing I Do

Once, early on during my recovery, I started making lists of every little thing that made me happy during the day. The list included every random, miscellaneous thing that would instantaneously lift my spirits and make me feel happy, humbled and grateful at the thought that it really didn’t take much, after all… There was so much satisfaction in simply writing those little lists, the process itself was so comforting and therapeutic. I would often go back to those lists, re-read, add more things to them, rewrite them all over, just for the sheer satisfaction of being reminded over and over again that

“when you come to think about it- it’s the simple everydayness that makes up for everything… it’s this everydayness that contributes to this overall happiness that I am feeling now… orange juice in the morning, apple and walnut crepes in the afternoon, late evening ride to downtown, watching the string of lights at night as the cab takes me home… going to bed tired yet knowing that the morning is going to bring yet another wonderful day and it’s all that matters…”

And that happiness itself was this ability of experiencing every single nuance of the day, the usual, the routine, the mundane, and still derive the greatest satisfaction from living it day after day, one beautiful moment at a time, instead of waiting for that abstract, big and wonderful thing that I used to picture happiness as, to never happen.

My list of entries were as random and miscellaneous as they could be, from “waking up” and “drinking orange juice in the morning” to

“smell of freshly baked bread, as I pass by the bakery on my way to work…to think about all the labor that goes into making it, from growing the wheat to grinding it to flour, to putting the dough in the oven, to make sure that there’s fresh bread on our tables every day…”

“This morning I made breakfast for him. Left his place with a smile on my face…”

“Oh the decadence, raspberries and truffles, overpriced bagels and apple walnut crepes, hours spent at my coffee shop, lazy afternoons as I sit and watch the city from above, slanted rays sliding over the rooftops… Late night outings, loud music and laughter, endless talk, and the rhythm of the day and night, day and night as I’m living every moment of a life that I once dreamed of and am watching now to turn into my reality…”

"It's amazing how you continue living your life day by day in a way you've always lived, doing the same things you ordinarily do and yet with the knowledge that every day is bringing you closer to whatever you've set to accomplish. It's a wonderful feeling..."

These days being happy has become my default state. How i got there from being constantly, chronically depressed and apathetic is next to a miracle. However, i wonder where i would be if i hadn't learned to appreciate these very little things, almost ridiculous in their simplicity, and yet making the bulk of this very everydayness that my younger and depressed self so desperately tried to escape.

• Waking up in the morning before the alarm clock, to the whistle of the train. Half asleep stumbling to the kitchen to get my daily dose of bliss and calcium that a glass of orange juice provides.

• Morning runs on Monument Avenue, as I look at those big houses and realize how truly beautiful they are and how different from where I grew up.

• Running downhill, wind blowing on my face, with a feeling that’s the closest that I’ve come to experience to flying.

• Strawberry jam and waffles on weekend mornings.

• Cooking a meal for something other than me.

• Pretty, colorful, summer dresses…

• Painting my toenails.

• Catching myself say “fiiiiiine” and “niiiiiiiiiiice” in a still slight Southern drawl.

• Dave Matthews’ “I love you oh so well, like a kid loves candy and first snow…”

• Haagen Dazs Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (not to be mistaken with plain Vanilla).

• Rain at the end of a hot, summer day.

• Those few minutes before falling asleep, as I feel like I’m sinking into a warm, soft pit, soothing and comforting and yet already impatient for the coming day that will dawn tomorrow and start everything all over anew.

• Still, after all I’ve been through and all I will be going through, after all tentative planning and consideration, being able to look at future “as if I were in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires…” (Doris Lessing).

Speaking of Ordinary -

here are a few excerpts from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a cute little book that i've read and reread many many times, her Alphabetized Existence from A to Z reminding me time and again how wonderful, amazing, funny and extraordinary an ordinary life can be...

"As"
As self-conscious as rearranging what's on your coffee table before guests arrive - putting Art Forum and Milan Kundera's latest novel on top of People magazine and The Berenstain Bears Potty Book.
As specific as a mosquito bite on a pinky toe knuckle.
As startling as coming home from vacation and seeing yourself in your own bathroom mirror and only then realizing just how tan you really are.
As out of place as a heap of snow that remains by a street lamp on a sunny April day long after all the other snow has melted.

"Butterfly"
Once you learn how to draw a butterfly, you just want to keep doing it. There is something calming and satisfying about drawing them. Maybe it has to do with the symmetry, and the curves of the wings.

"Doing Something"
It is so much easier to not do something than to do something. Even the smallest tasks, like filling out a Scholastic Books order form or putting away the butter, requires time, focus, and follow-through. It's astounding, actually, that anything gets done at all, by anyone.

But then, let's say you finally are prepared and determined to do that thing, whatever it is, but you wake up to find that your basement has flooded and you must spend your day making phone calls to the contractor, plumber, and carpet people. Or not that but something else - perhaps you must stand before a committee for approval, a committee that neither grasps your intent nor appreciates your ingenuity, and anyway, they are in a bit of hurry to break for lunch.

Yet. Still. Somehow. I am encouraged to see that despite the colossal effort, despite the odds against one, despite the mere constraints of time and schedules and sore throats, houses do get built, pottery gets glazed, e-mails get sent, trees get planted, shoes get reheeled, manifestos get Xeroxed, films get shot, highways get repaved, cakes get frosted, stories get told.

"Rainbows"
If rainbows did not exists and someone said wouldn't it be cool to paint enormous stripes of color across the sky you'd say yes that would be very cool - impossible, but very cool. Children are totally tuned in to the miracle of rainbows - that's why they are forever drawing them. [...] It would be nice to have some universal ritual connected with rainbows, along the lines of stray penny equals good luck, and car with one headlight equals, say, piddiddle/make a wish. Maybe: See a rainbow, eat a sugar cube. Or see a rainbow, put a dollar in a jar: then when you leave home at eighteen, your mother sends you off with your rainbow money...

"Toast"
I cannot stress this enough: One second your toast is fine, golden brown; the next second it is black.

"Sunny Day"
I stepped outside. It was bright, very bright and sunny. There was a long patch of yellow flowers across the street. The flowers were in full bloom, so alertly yellow, as if plugged in. I felt like I was in a Claritin commercial.

For more excerpts read here.

Wonderful everydayness

"Going to a grocery, getting up in the morning. . . seeing that our clothes have buttons--are aspects of everyday feeling; but seen from the viewpoint of existence as a whole, they are strange and wonderful. That people should feel warmly familiar, routinely intimate, unsurprisingly comfortable. . . from the viewpoint of time as a whole. . . existence straight--is a grandly amazing state of affairs."

Eli Siegel
in his definition of "Everydayness," from
Definitions and Comment, Being a Description of the World.
(a link to the work itself i was unable to find, however, i ran across this, this and this which might be more than you want to know on Aesthetic Realism.)

Tired. I am so tired. Drained. Exhausted by the heat. Suffocating in this humidity that feels like hot bath water the minute you step outside. Yet, it’s beautiful, the summer in Richmond. Lush and green. Alive. If you listen close enough early in the morning, you can almost hear the earth moving beneath your feet with all kinds of living, breathing things…

I am running out of time. Missing out on summer. There’s work. There’s always work that I can hardly bring myself to do. I don’t want to do any more of it. No more closings. Back to back closings, one after another. I’ve become so proficient that hardly have to put any effort. I’m merely biding my time. Wishing I was elsewhere. I’m tired and burnt out beyond all acceptable limits. The rush of adrenaline that kept me going for the whole past year is sizzling down, and all I seem to want to do these days is stay in, sleep in, go for runs, take naps in the afternoons, go to Shakoe Bottom and hang out at Café Gutenberg. Write. Read. Find the Doris Lessing passage. Sort through my illegible notebook scribbling. Simply sit there and breathe… There’s never enough of that quiet time. Breathing time. When you simply shut out all the noise and let yourself be. Present and aware in every passing moment…

I will be working until the very last day. I wanted it this way, although now I wish I hadn’t. I thought that if I keep myself busy until the very last moment, distract myself with work that soon will no longer matter, I will keep the sad and overwhelming feelings at bay… I gave myself only a day to pack, a day to travel, another day to get settled until school starts. I thought it’s better that way anyway. Now I wish I had given myself a little more time. To simply rest. And breathe. And marvel at the thought of just how happy I am at this point regardless all the sad and overwhelming feelings.

A reoccuring theme of social ineptitude or as it turns out, I'm a closeted dog person...

Sometimes there are moments that make me seriously question my social skills. Despite the fact that I have been known to be selectively antisocial on certain occasions, thus giving an impression of being stuck-up and stand-offish, up to this day I consider myself rather outgoing and friendly, friendly in a way that even boyfriend notices with certain dismay that I’ll start a conversation with anyone who’d stop to talk to me (today’s encounter on my way to grocery store serving as an example). If I were to describe my personal skills, shy would be the last attribute I’d apply to myself, keeping in mind that the last time I said, half-mockingly, to a shocked by some previous statement Peace Corps volunteer that “I’m just shy”, I received a roaring laughter in response.

Yet in the last year or so my social skills with a particular group of people have been greatly challenged and have left me wondering whether I’m really, seriously, socially handicapped. I’m not sure what it is about this particular “click” (and these people have known each other since high school, some even longer than that), that makes me feel not only extremely bored, but uncomfortable, inadequate and tongue tied. I have to admit though that I have to sit tight and watch myself closely so that i do not accidentally blurt out some of my typical “you’re such a dear, bitch” comments that have previously given me a reputation of “stay away from her, she stings.”

I realize that I may not be the easiest person to decipher. And perhaps it takes a lot to get “in” with a group as exclusive as this one, where my “foreignness” has been long established to explain why I don’t like football or share an enthusiasm for certain movies, “don’t hate me for being a communist, since I’m not, hate me for being a flaming liberal” has been agreed upon, and I have patiently explained to one of the crew that foreign does not necessarily translate to vegetarian and answered “thanks, I’ll take the burger, like everyone else” to “we thought you did not eat red meat.” As a side note - I wonder if there’s something about people who choose not to eat meat that gives them away, and whether I look like one (I take my steak bloody, thank you very much).

I have, on several occasions, tried to be more “open,” and “social”, and “nice” and yet, time and again when hanging out with this particular group I have to ask myself what it is about them or myself that makes me feel so uncomfortable, whereas I’ve been a whole lot more comfortable with a lot more exclusive, more stuck up and out of my league people.

“You’re comfortable when you’re in your element…”

Considering my past encounters, my element seems to include a potpourri of drunken Kentucky miners, snobbish government officials, gay bartenders, random cab drivers, Russian sailors, US marines, college professors, my mother’s friends, my brother’s younger friends, retired grandmas, nearly bankrupt farmers, lawyers, real estate moguls, corporate pricks and republicans my grandfather’s age who usually end up finding my “liberal” ideas at such tender age nothing but endearing. I am, after all, irresistibly charming and plain adorable, even when I’m the dear bitch. So what gives?

The thing is, when I look at each member of this group separately, I actually like them for the most part, and would probably have quite entertaining conversations with them had I met them say in a bar, or a coffee shop, out in the street or a grocery store, where the “nice talk” was not required and I could find some common grounds beyond the usual “cocktail” questions. And yet, considering that the likelihood of running into them separately in aforementioned settings would be very very slim, I am limited to a few “nice” phrases of exchange when having to spend time with them, thus giving up the hope that I’ll ever be anything but a tag-along girlfriend who’s shy and does not speak.

So once I realized that I am more or less denied of “group love” from people that separately are more or less ok, and even quite likable, I simply stopped trying and/or looking at those situations as uncomfortable. I’ll be selectively antisocial if that means that I can go an entire evening without having to utter as much as a peep. And this weekend I had a great, “quiet” time amids the group noise, truly enjoyed the stay at the lake with the boat ride in the setting sun while watching fireworks, and when alpha male arrogance and bloated ego became too much to bear, I simply retrieved to play with the dogs, discovering, to my surprise, that dogs, of all sizes and shapes, actually like me and that I have, indeed, been a closeted dog person all this time without even knowing it.

What I Hide Behind My Bed...

Or what i will miss most, when I leave my current job.

“What’s this?” asked the Boyfriend, pulling out from behind my bed what turned out to be the latest of Martha Stewart Living Special Entertainment Issue featuring Fourth of July star spangled cake, and further tips on summer outdoor entertaining, fancy recipes, arts and crafts and gardening.

“I have to tell you, most people hide porn and Playboy behind their bed, you hide Martha Stewart?”

“Ummm. Oops. Patricia gave it to me when I was complaining to her about how bored I’ve become with food lately. She thought this might cheer me up a bit. Like I'd be caught dead reading this thing, when I have Playboy sitting out there in the open on my nightstand? Or do you actually see me as a homemaker, or outdoor entertainer?”

“Your cooking is pretty decent, but your outdoor entertaining would be something like ‘Come over and share the stoop with me on my back porch,’ if even that… ”

“…'And I’d be happy to let you leaf through one of the older Playboy issues that I scored at work.' Like there's something more entertaining than that. What am I going to do without them when I leave work?”

As ridiculous as it sounds, I do bring Playboys home with me from work. And sadly, this is what I will miss most about this establishment, this, and the wonderful people in the office, with who I share my love for such vain and shallow magazine.

A very happy, tall and skinny birthday

My most favorite person in the whole entire world recently returned from the army, having served his mandatory military “duty” to his county, which really is a regrettable and unrecoverable waste of perhaps the best two years of any young man’s life just out of college.

This favorite person, who is one of the cutest geeks and a rabid fan of soccer (think Juventus), speaks Italian and dreams of living in Italy one day, calls me “ma piccolo bambina ” – my little one, despite being the youngest of the two of us – this favorite person happens to be my brother, who just turned twenty two. The idea that my baby brother is already twenty two is a little scary – having the older sister syndrome, I will always see him as the baby of the family. Although the baby has all the smarts of the genius who will invent the next brilliant invention of mankind, that is, if he decides to finally give up slacking and get off his butt to put his brains to work.

Although as kids we were very close, we sort of drifted apart after I hit a certain age – blame the age gap and the fact that I was often absent for long periods of time and busy with one thing or another. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t spend enough time with him when I could and missed out on being there to watch him become who he is today – one of the greatest, smartest, funniest, kindest and tallest people that I know. But despite all the time that we’ve been apart, despite the fact that being from the same family, we are, after all, product of two drastically different environments, we have the strongest bond and an unspoken understanding with each other that only grows stronger as we grow older. We read each others' thoughts, finish each others' sentences, understand each others' gestures, laugh at each others' jokes before they're even told and team up against our mom, making fun of her in a most endearing way that always makes her laugh.

Happy birthday, my little tall and skinny genius. I miss you more than anything else. And since we’re already too old to wish each other jars of mayonnaise and jelly on our birthdays, I wish you a bottle of bourbon, since last time i checked, you were still the smartass who had not stopped drinking bourbon early in the mornings.