Surviving

So it's been a while since I posted and I know my masses of readers must think I've died or finally caught illiteracy from the Alabamians with which I've surrounded myself. Neither is true. I've just been..... adjusting. Something about that last stretch of winter always finds me hanging on for dear life. Of course, it feels much less dramatic than that. I find myself surviving, and just that. It's always the same set of symptoms this time of year, a reluctance to bathe, clean the house, cook, get out of bed, do anything really, much less write about how uninspired I feel on my blog. I accidentally wear the same thing to work two days in a row and subsist on sliced cheese. It so happens, actually, that Nathanael has helped me through this particular aspect of winter doldrums by not being too lazy to cook. We've taken to celebrating "Mainstream Mondays" with a piping hot blate of Tuna Helper and an episode of Starwars (we're watching them all in series.) Speaking of the bandwagon, my remedies du jour also include finally reading those damned Harry Potter books which are not bad thankyouverymuch. I started last week and I'm already on book 4. They're just so easy to read. (This does NOT mean however, that they don't include some decent vocabulary words and historical references. They do.)

Yes, escapism abounds these days as life has, with a dull "thud", become boring. I know it will pass, it always does. But it's still hard. One thing does, however, bring me great joy. I could spend hours watching things happen in my garden which has only just recently found itself free of all eyesores except for the mating lawnmowers, one of which belongs to a certain ex-roommate who also left a certain broken down car blocking the view to my english peas. Nevertheless, the mustard greens and lettuce are reaching upwards, alive with deep red and electric green. Spring comes early in Mobile, a pleasure for which we will pay dearly in the muggy heat of August. The peas and sugar snaps are doing their thing in a jolly sort of way, wrapping little tendrils around everything they can reach, including eachother. The crocuses have been this months most exciting surprise, blooming despite the prediction to the contrary by Mobile's newspaper columnist/garden expert guy. I meant to send him a picture to directly contradict what he wrote a couple of weeks ago about them not blooming "down here" but forgot to. They've been so cute, popping out just above the surface of the soil and opening up a violet or creamy white blossom. Above them, the fig branches are pushing forth crinkled, baby-green leaves and tiny, immature fruit. I didn't realize they don't blossom first. Does that mean the fruit is actually a juicy flower bud? If anyone can tell me the answer, they can come pick figs from our three trees this July. If you are really lucky, you can also have some watermelon from the seeds I planted over the weekend. If all goes as planned, their vines will set off across the yard and we won't be able to mow the grass for a couple of months. Should be hilarious.

How's the job going you ask? Ehh. I still sometimes stop and think, "I really have a pretty cool job." but what can I say? I just don't like HAVING a job. I'm over it. No matter how cool the job is, it's more time away from my life than I want to spend. These days I'm rethinking a desire I once had to be a teacher. My current job is teaching me a few things: teaching itself is very hard work, I'm not that bad at it, and I can get into the idea of a summer vacation. Maybe it's all those years as a student, but some part of me keeps expecting Spring Break. For now though, I guess I'll just keep gettin' er done and spending as much time as possible surrounded by vegetables.

The bandwagon

So, after about two weeks of Internet Explorer not allowing me to access my blog (for absolutely no obvious reason) I've switched back to Firefox. Firefox still doesn't allow me to use the scroll function on my mouse, the original reason I stopped using it. What can I say, I'm kind of lazy. But, after the blogger issue and learning more about how Firefox is safer, I'm sold. I will learn to live without scrolling.

Speaking of bandwagons, today is Fat Tuesday here in Mobile. What that means is, "you partied all weekend, now party some more. You've got all of Lent to get your body to forgive you." Yes, please. I'm not really a big "partier" in the sense of injesting lots of intoxicating substances. I am, however, a big fan of excuses to eat funnel cakes and candy and catch chinese junk being thrown at me from passing parade floats. Every time I go to a parade I can't get over what a fun idea it is. It's a wonderfully over-stimulating experience complete with garish costumes, semi-robotic parade floats and high school bands that dance in sink while playing their instruments. Most of this is entertaining; some of it is shocking. (My high school's band never humped their sousaphones while marching, and the majorettes never wore hot pants.) In addition to all this fun, you get the added sport of trying to catch as much stuff as possible from the maskers. In New Orleans, I hear the standard throw is beads, although I hear the Zulus also throw coconuts. Ouch. Here in Mobile, one is always surprised and has a chance of catching all manner or ridiculous items including Moon Pies, peanuts, stuffed animals, any cheap plastic toy you can think of (my favorite is my new pink plastic whistle), ice cream sandwiches, Dublunes, streamers, beef jerky, entire boxes of oatmeal creme pies, and the list goes on. This weekend, friends came down from all over and, as a team, we faired quite well, subsequently filling my dining room table with a massive mound of junk food and beads.

Our favorite spot to watch the parades is in an area where the crowd is mostly lower to middle income families with children. I was struck by what fun all these free toys and candy must be when you are young and not already spoiled. Amazingly, however, a childlike greed for what are essentially useless items seems to extend to every age group. We were shocked by one old lady who continually demanded of passing band members that they grab "those beads over there" which she was unable to reach because of the parade barricades. I couldn't imagine what she was going to do with all of them. Despite this, I much prefer this crowd to the mostly well-to-do adult crowd one seems to find further downtown. They made me feel sort of ashamed of myself. Also they were more drunk and tacky.

Anyway, if any of my friends are reading this, thanks for a great weekend. I laughed almost the whole time, from the moment the girls team pulled ahead in pictionary, to the moment Amanda asked, "Is there something in my teeth?" to which Karen responded, "If there is, it's tooth-colored." Hilarious.

The other dream was about a man trapped in a space ball. If you really want to know, I can tell you what a space ball is.

Last night I had no less than three distinct disturbing dreams. I guess this is what happens when you go to bed early. One of them involved me listening guiltily to an old teacher of mine rant about how I didn't care about the class. This is related to an event that actually happened and, at the time, the teacher and I were friends. You know, we hung out. We don't hang out any more. We don't even talk. He can have these totalizing views about people and events, and I guess that event led him to believe I was totally not worthy of respect... My dream makes me think that I must still feel guilty about it. I do I guess. Cookie, if you're reading this; sorry. But why has this memory decided to bother me now? Maybe it has to do with my new job and how it involves a lot more responsibility that anything I've ever done before. I'm nervous about it, but I really want to do a good job.

I think that various things throughout my life in which I flaked out have lead me to fear that flakitude is inevitable for me. This fear has caused me to avoid things that are challenging. UNTIL NOW! (say with megaphone). Here in Mobile, the job market is slim. If I want to make money here, it's either bite the bullet and take some responsibility, or I don't know, wait tables and waste away growing big, nasty varicose veins and smoking a lot of cigarettes. There is nothing in between. Yesterday this fact was expressed vividly to me when I went to Walmart to buy supplies for my program. I hate Walmart. Oh, how I hate it. I never shop there for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, on a very visceral level; that shit is creepy. For the program though, it's really the only option if I want to do all the things I have to do in a reasonably short amount of time and stay within the budget. (I will have to explore this web of conflicting ethical concerns another time, but today, it's all about me). Anyway, because I did not have my tax-exemption code to buy the many pairs of scissors and clothespins I needed; a veritable fiasco ensued during which I had the opportunity to talk to some assistant manager type who was very helpful by the way. He explained that he had applied for a position at the girl scouts about the time I did. He had been a couple of days late and just missed the job. He paused for a second, fluorescent lights ablaze, a cacophony of "doots" from the registers in the background and I got the tragic sense that this man desperately hates his job. Fifty years ago, this man would have been some jolly fellow running a somethin or other store of his own on a city block. Now, he's in middle management at Walmart. It's really heartbreaking when you stop and think about it.

Anyway, I'm having to step up so as not to end up doing meaningless work. I also want to prove to myself that I can push myself and not be a perpetual flake. So far, I'm really happy with how things are going. Tomorrow I have a whole day of programming at a school and I'll be by myself. I think that everyday will be a little challenging, but I also have found that if I don't think about it too much, I don't have time to be scared. That has been the method by which I did every ballsy thing I've ever done in my life, from asking out boys to jumping off a bridge this one time to eating a plate of octopus parts at a Peruvian restaurant. That plate was too big for this particular method to really work. It just took so long to eat that I had lots of time to think about tentacles, and suckers, and baby octopi and mommy octopi and ink squirting out of their butts and oh god I have to stop. But for this job, it's pure gold.

So I guess the dream I had last night is reminding me of a time when I was a major flake. Now that I know I can get things done if i just make an effort, those times have been brought into sharp relief and I sort of mourn them more. Lots of lost opportunities.... But like so many evolutionary moments in my life, I don't think this one could have been rushed or happened a second sooner. I guess I should be thankful for the mercy life has afforded me in teaching me this lesson without me having to work at Walmart (or eat more tentacles) to figure it out.

Back to Work

Last week I started my new job at the Girl Scouts of the Deep South. It has its plusses. It has its minuses. I have to edit what I say about it because it's like, current. I can say though, that if I can get over the usual list of bureaucratic headaches and inconveniences (I'm thinking of the inevitable "dress code conversation" which happened yesterday, learning how to manage hyperactive personalities, figuring out all the forms I have to fill out) I will really love this job. The other thing I have to do is be really good at it. My job is to make some teeny tiny dent in a massive wall of negative influences that girls in poverty are forced to deal with. Some of the girls I'm working with (we're talking middle school here) are already mothers. Most of them don't have fathers. Their inner-city schools are run like prisons out of nessecity. They are surrounded by drug-dealing and hopelessness. Their faces light up when you give them a compliment.

Coming in contact with real poverty (The shelves of the school's library are half empty) is enough to knock me right off my usual soapbox. Environmental concerns seem like such a luxurious worry compared to the lives these girls lead. They are worried about surviving. They are wondering if they will ever have a life that's different from the one their family has been leading for four or five generations. I'd like to think that this country is still rich enough and powerful enough to apply some energy to all of our problems. I see no reason why we should have to choose between giving kids resources that can help them through the public school system and trying to prevent a totally preventable economic catastrophe. I guess what I'm saying is that one set of issues is not more important than the other, or more essential to remedy. Rather, this country just has a shit-load of problems.

Tonight I watched Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that, though a few years old, still has relevant things to say about this country's investment in violence. What if we actually took all tha money we're investing in building new nuclear warheads and actually paid teachers more than 30,000 a year? What if we used that money to support renewable fuel research or rezone cities so they wouldn't disallow good urbanism? What if? Would we really all get blown up the second we changed our priorities? Because that's what some would have you believe. That, essentially, we can't "afford" educated children. I'm not sure, but I do think that this outcome (the getting blown up one I mean) is almost assured if we keep doing what we're doing now. As a nation, I'd rather go down fighting for something worth having, like healthy kids and a healthy planet rather than global domination and a now-dwindling oil supply. But what do I know? I'm just a program facilipotater.

8th grade girls= toughest audience ever

So today I started my new job with the Girl Scouts. Yes, I can get you cookies. I will be in charge of "facilitating" a program about wise spending and saving habits. Facilitate is a long word that basically means "do". What I will "do" is hang out with some middle-school-age girls and tell them to be quiet alot and teach them how to make money by, what else, selling cookies. At first glance, this sounds manipulative, and it kind of is. It's also legitimately instructive though and the more I think about it, the more I wish the program was longer than the six scheduled sessions. I want to get to know these girls. I wish I could make some tiny impression on their lives at this critical age when they still have so many choices and second chances. The older girls- the eighth graders- sit on the edge of a precipice. Some seem already to have fallen over. They know everything, think in groups and revolve their energies around lusting after boys and expensive shoes and clothes. They have all the desires of women- some even have the bodies of women, but none of the wisdom. Pain and loss is in their future, whether or not I can get through to them, and I could see it in their eyes.

Today I watched the reactions of several classes ranging from 5th to 8th grade. The youngest were eager, attentive, impressionable. As they got older you could watch them grow less and less reachable. By high school, if they are not already motivated to become something other than a hood rat, most of their teachers will have stopped trying. The recess area was right outside our classroom door and two girls got in a fist fight during a break. I don't know which grade they were in.

I saw my middle school self in some of the girls today. I was the dorky one who wanted to answer all the questions- the easy sell. I was the girl shushing the loud mouths. For that reason, I don't know anything about what it takes to get the attention of the popular girls with the attitude problem. I'm terrified of them and suddenly a range of emotions comes back to me from some not-so-far-off place. "I hope they like me." "I hope they think I'm cool." I take comfort in the thought that their idea of cool: someone with Air Jordans and a pair of Apple Bottom jeans, is a fairly shallow construct. Maybe it won't be too hard to tear down and replace with something more substantial. Maybe I can start their, get them to talk about the kind of person they respect, and go ahead and admit that that isn't me. Maybe they'll appreciate that I'm leveling with them and take what I'm offering them more readily. Maybe they'll eat me alive.....

Mom and the Apocalypse

Sometimes my mom is really funny. Like today she calls me to tell me I have some "unclaimed property" being held by the state of Tennessee. Images race through my mind of 20 acres of beautiful farm land I forgot about or maybe, a treasure chest full of gold. It's actually more like a check for 23 dollars from this one stock my Mimi bought me when I was little. That's great. I'll take it. We're talking about it and Mom says that sometimes it's a person's last paycheck before they moved away or a long-lost relative a person never knew she had who left them a zillion dollars. "Wish I had one", says mom and I burst our laughing. She and I never developed that friend thing that, apparently, lots of girls develop with their mothers after they move out of the house and no longer have to confront mom with their burgeoning sexuality. We still essentially misunderstand each other all the time, so those rare moments of shared laughter are a treat. Sometimes I think about the future of the US economy and the impending petroleum crisis, an event in which I, for whatever reason, have a faith bordering on religious. I think about my mom and dad and what on earth they will do in a dog-eat-dog post-apocalyptic end-times economy. Shit, I barely know what I will do.

Today I was looking through the classifieds for a new job. Nathanael and I compromised yesterday and decided that, in exchange for him agreeing to join the peace corps with me for two years after we sell the house, I will work and try to make some actual money for the next two years while we do have the house and the bills and all that (oh yeah, and for the rest of our lives after we get out of the peace corps). I will have to put my entirely cash-less lifestyle on hold till we actually don't need cash anymore. Fair enough.

There is something communal in the experience of job-hunting I think. Where once all men knew what it was like to hunt a deer or a wild boar; now it is the stealthy decent job that tests our wits and reflexes. Where once every woman required the discernment to tell an edible root from a poisonous one, now we must be armed with the ability to recognized the distinction between "must have organizational skills and follow-through" and "must be good with hands and ambitious". The pages full of tiny boxes with tinier type seem so promising, so full of possibilities until I actually scrunch up my nose and read them.

I have a couple of good prospects, but the time of tense anticipation is upon me. I am mourning what will prove to be the loss of my blessed state of semi-employment. Time to write, clean the house, work on a hobby. I am sort of terrified by the choice I've just made. "Putting it on hold" is the death knell of many a dream of many an alternative lifestyle. What will happen? Will I forget what I wanted? Will I be bogged down till I'm 50-something and can't relate to my daughter and just wish to god I had a relative I never knew I had who I just found out died and left me a zillion dollars? Maybe my faith in a future economic chaos is the latest excuse to rebel against what must necessarily be a work-a-day life full of glum responsibilities and mediocre health. If that's the case so be it. I'll take any excuse I can find to maintain some small shreds of idealism as I get older.

Our reasoning is certainly different, but now that I think about it, Mom deserves a little admiration on the subject of choosing one's life's work. At 50-something, she's eschewed a career that made her pretty good money as an accountant and now works in a daycare with little children because that's what she loves. She doesn't make much money, a serious issue as she approaches retirement age, but she doesn't care. I see the charm in what she does. I visited the daycare once and was shocked by the bizarre, but pleasant feeling of being surrounded by short, curious, messy, adorable, 2-year-old people. Now that I think about it a little bit more, this experience has probably thoroughly prepared her for all manner of future chaos. Maybe I do have a relative I didn't know existed. Seriously though, it would be nice if she felt like giving me a zillion dollars.

Woes and the 00's

So it's six hours till the beginning of another year and it seems a convenient time to be a little retrospective. We've experienced 6 out of 10 of the 00 decade and it is thus non-too-early to begin conceptualizing the decade that is/was. What will it have been? What flavor was the zeitgeist? What will be said about the national character, the collective unconscious, all of that?

At a time when culture is more homoginized than ever before, I can't help but begin by noting how diverse America still is- even within my own family. I should note that one might call this year, for me, The Year of the Soapbox. Time spent working in the nonprofit sector and for an organic farm has opened my eyes to serious, and seemingly obvious economic and ethical problems facing this country. Among my generation, at least in certain circles, awareness of these problems seems high. When I say problems I'm thinking of America's fragile, globally dependent economy, rampant (maniacal) over-consumption and the resulting ill health of the population. I'm thinking of a food system that is toxifying and unsustainable. I'm thinking of car-culture and the suburban way of life that is both culturally barren and incredibly wasteful of precious resources. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Time spent with friends in the city makes me feel as if tides are turning. I see a rebirth of good urbanism, economic and social diversity, a drive to use green transportation and support local, sustainable economic systems. I think to myself that soon, everyone will be on the band wagon. A quick trip through Atlanta's northern suburbs on the way to visit my parents reminds me that things are not so simple. The ex-urban housing boom, even in its now-dwindling form, still far outpaces the urban one. Walmart is finding a way to creep into new urban markets that, once unattractive, now promise profits thanks to the efforts of pioneering small businesses. Strip mall after strip mall is going up on the virgin farmland around my parents' small town. When I'm at home I always try to "convert" my conservative father. He's a thoughtful Christian, and I believe a good man. Yet I can't seem to sell him on what, to me, seem such obvious moral imperatives. I ask him how he feels about the strip malls and he just explains, with a matter-of-factness that is utterly deflating, how convenient it is to have all the shopping. I ask him doesn't it bother him that they just keep widening the road instead of designing the city to better accomodate the growing population. He replys, again with that murderous matter-of-factness, that so many choices cannot be compatable with the population of a small/medium sized town without everyone driving their cars. In many ways he is a typical American, himself raised in the suburbs, taking much about our affluent, car-dependent lifestyle for granted. This year I didn't bring up our regular argument: George Bush and the war. I should note for fairness that in many ways he is not a typical American. He hates waste and over-consumption. Indeed, he is one of the least materialistic people I know and I'd like to think I inherited some of his strong critical thinking skills.

So, on the eve of 2007, I believe that America is still capable of a great deal of diversity of opinions and values. My father and I come from essentially the same place: white, middleclass suburbia and yet we see the state of the world in very different ways and have come to value very different things. Perhaps this is simply the typical generation gap but it is still an interesting place from which to try to analyze the state of the nation. Maybe it is reducable to the now cliche red state/ blue state dichotomy. Maybe it is the consequence of the even more simplistic post-modern relativism. I'm not sure, but I do believe that the 2000's can be characterized, as many times before have, by a dominant culture and a counter culture. I think their differentiating feature is, and Marx would agree with me on this, differing modes of production, or at least, differing ideals of production. Or maybe differing understandings of production in general. The dominant culture sees consumption as essentially morally neutral. Despite lipservice to religious feelings against gluttony, they no longer recognize themselves as consuming way more of the earth's resources than is healthy or just. This consumption has reached the level of mania in the 00's and will be the defining characteristic of this era. I believe that one source of the motivation for consumption mania is the comprehension, on some level, that "the end is near". That is to say, that it can't go on like this much longer. Either we'll blow ourselves up, destroy the planet, or poison ourselves with this lifestyle; whichever one comes first. People are desperate to ignore this truth, so on they shop, even if they must go into debt to do it.

The dominant culture is so extreme that it is producing a growing backlash, a counterculture, that is trying desperately to live differently. The counterculture has many, many faces: urban bike kids, organic farmers, savvy green entrepreneurs, New Urban planners, gen x mothers who are leading the trend to eat organic because they care about their children's health. Added to this are scores of young people who are trying to pick up the threads of the past, and learn skills for producing their own useful goods. Many of these skills are in danger of being lost forever as the generation of my grandfather begins to die of old age. The indie craft movement is one example of this effort.

So that's the general script for our lives right now. Technology is casting an interesting glow on the drama as it unfolds, offering great potential to either side of the conflict. I believe that, by the end of the 00's life will have changed even more dramatically than it has in the past 6 years. I also believe that many of those changes will play out pretty messily, and unfortunately, violently. Hopefully, by the time this is history, I'll still be around to join the debate.