Ignorance is anything but bliss.

“I started to see that they were not just political targets, they were real people who just… wanted to get married. It started to feel like a petty issue.”

Amazing. How many people in this country are still stuck in the first half of this position - not yet having realized that people ARE people and "not just political targets" - simply because they've never carried on a conversation with an individual on the other side of the debate? How many people would, if they had a few simple conversations with real human beings, change their minds about what they themselves have the right to deny their fellow humans?

The quote above came from a news story, one that I read by way of Yahoo: http://tinyurl.com/6hxtytw. There's nothing surprising about the idea that a young man - only 25 years old - formed strong opinions based on limited knowledge. What's kind of exciting is that even though he didn't go looking for experience that might challenge his opinions, when he stumbled upon that experience he thought about it enough to let it change his views.

How much could we change our nation if we could reduce the collective level of ignorance by 10%? Or even 1%? And how do you measure the collective level of ignorance in the first place, you ask? I don't know. But you get my point.

Sorry - I just can't seem to muster any snark on this issue. This fairly minor incident - a single anti-gay marriage activist changing his mind - has actually kind of blown my mind, because the REAL problem is so unbelievably obvious.

Check out the article; I think it's kind of an astounding study in human ignorance, and the capacity to learn.

Strength in Numbers

Over the last several weeks I've found that my perspective on most of life has shifted fairly significantly. I'm happy with the new direction in which I find myself looking, but it's a big adjustment nevertheless. I keep having to stop and take my bearings, or stop myself from automatically responding to something the way I would have two or three months ago. It's amazing to me how drastically I've changed and simultaneously how much more myself I feel.

One thing I've finally come to terms with is the idea that life is often arbitrary and generally full of mistakes; that I might "ruin" good things in my life, but in some way that's okay because that's just how life goes. I guess I finally believe the old adage about doing your best being all you can ever do.

Even though it makes me very sad to think about the possibility of making terrible career choices or losing dear friends, there's something incredibly liberating about recognizing that it's inevitable that those things - or similar things - will happen. It makes me less anxious about doing something wrong. And it makes me value even more the positive outcomes, the good times with friends. It makes me realize just how valuable my closest friends are, and how grateful I am to have people with whom to share all the ordinary experiences of life. It reaffirms for me that my family - the one I was born into and the one I've chosen for myself, my friends - really are the most important part of my life: the rest of it is arbitrary and too often full of tragedy, but there truly is strength in numbers, in remembering that other people are experiencing the same difficulties, in having people to prop you up when you can't stand on your own and to party with you when you're finally back on your own two feet.

It's cheesy, but it's true.

Thanks, guys.

Elbow Room

I first realized it when I flew home for my cousin's wedding in October: I'd never before been so happy to find myself at Newark Airport. Then it happened again as my plane landed at Logan and I walked out into the terminal. For four days I've re-entered a world of car horns and obscenities, and I've never had such a distinct feeling of coming home.

As I stood on the T this morning simultaneously cursing the group of shouting teenagers in my car and feeling immensely grateful for their existence, I began to wonder about these stereotypes of Southerners as being nicer and Northeasterners as being not necessarily mean but unconcerned with the welfare of their fellow humans. Now that I live in the South I’m seeing how much truth there is to those supposed differences, but as a born and raised Northerner I always feel compelled to defend the detachment: that’s what feels right to me, and I’d like to think that doesn’t make me inherently less nice.

What occurred to me on the T is that there’s just a lot more physical space for people to spread out in the South, and in my favorite cities (New York and Boston) there are so many more people crammed into the available space. In Nashville my apartment isn’t flanked on all sides by neighbors, and it’s more than spitting distance from the building next door. When I go to the far side of town (which is much farther away than the far side of Boston), I get in my own car and have however many cubic feet of space (and sound and attempt at thermal regulation) all to myself. In Boston you’re constantly surrounded by people – roommates, upstairs and downstairs neighbors through thin ceilings and floors, next door apartments with windows so close you could reach in from your room, jam-packed subway cars and buses, sidewalks full of pedestrians – so in order to maintain any sense of personal space you have to manufacture it for yourself.

Northeasterners are “mean” simply out of self-preservation.

It’s not that someone from Boston necessarily cares any less about other humans, but if you let concern for others surface even half the time you’re in close proximity to other people you’ll be completely overwhelmed by caring for a vast sea of humanity. In Tennessee it’s much easier to attempt connection with a large percentage of the people you encounter because on any given day there are so many fewer people who will come close enough to your personal space for interaction.

Obviously not everyone responds to these situations according to the stereotypes, but I think that if you grow up in the Northeast then you are much more likely to develop the apparently prickly exterior necessary to preserve some semblance of personal space, just as if you grow up with a lot of siblings you tend to be aggressive about staking your claim on things you want (lest someone else get there first). Yes, some people find themselves better suited to the environment opposite that of their own childhood, and some people feel equally comfortable in both sorts of places.

I think I’m a true Northeasterner in this sense, which is why I feel so at home when I’m surrounded by people who will honk and swear and cut you off without thinking twice. To me that’s just how you stake out your space in the world. My subconscious definition of "home" seems to include dense population and the attendant survival techniques. But defining "home" is another story for another day.....

...but I'm Not Tired Yet...

Who, as a kid, didn't try anything and everything to avoid getting put to bed? Is there a child who (on a regular basis) willing marches out of the room, away from all the fun, and up to brush her teeth and turn out the light? There may be...but I was not one. I was the kid who'd swear up and down that she wasn't tired, while she was actually managing to fall asleep mid-sentence. I have many memories of drifting in and out of consciousness while the grownups all around me carried on the party and let me pretend I was part of it. I did NOT want to go to bed.

I guess some things never change.

I'm not sure why it is that I hate going to bed. I do love late nights, both the part when everyone is out and living it and the part after that, when it gets impossibly quiet and you can hear yourself think for once. I often get a bit restless on nights when I'm home with nothing to do, because there's so much possibility. And nighttime just begs to be shared - what's better than sitting on the beach after dark, under the stars, with a good friend? Sitting there alone just isn't the same. Nice, yes, but not the same. So putting the kabosh on that and heading off to Never Never Land is not to be desired.

There's also just something I can't put my finger on.... something that makes giving up and going to bed seem like, well, like just that - like giving up. Giving up on another day. Letting it be over, with no more possibility for great things to happen in it. Try again tomorrow, today is done. I guess I like the idea that there's still a little more to come. Anything could happen. I guess anything will have to happen tomorrow....

Time Warp

For a truly surreal experience: return to your hometown, see a bunch of people you haven't seen for a lot of years, and then sort through all the crap you left in your parents' house and forgot existed.

Even better, do this just at the moment when you're preparing to ship yourself far from home to have a second try at something you swore, after the first time, you'd never do again. Just as you're beginning (again) that Last Summer Before Everything Changes.

Even just the beginning of summer is always, for me, the trigger of flashbacks to summers past. There's something about the feel of the air, the quality of the light, that makes me feel a little bit lost in my own historical timeline. Maybe it's that magical summer sense that anything could happen - even waking up ten years ago. Maybe it's the extra hours of daylight that give the illusion of free time like you haven't known since high school vacation. Maybe this year it does seem more that way than ever before, and I'm just letting it all jumble in my brain.

Maybe it's the smells in my parents' house. Maybe it's the lack of obligations for three whole days (which feels like an enormous stretch of time).

Maybe it's an overwhelming desire to twist time into an endless loop, so what's so good right now never gets lost, that makes it so easy to forget what day it is, what year it is.

That's Just Like a Vacation, Right?

Apologies for being MIA for more than a whole week! A dreadful sin in the blogosphere, I know. My excuse is that I was out of town, and too busy taking in a new city to sit back and reflect on much of anything. Now that I'm home I can share a few thoughts about (or inspired by) the trip:

• Southwest Airlines is lovely, but the way to "like where you sit" is NOT to "sit where you like." Give your sloganeers a pat on the back, and then find some other way of boarding people quickly without screwing us over. Thanks.
• Any city that has a coffee shop that serves a spicy vegan chocolate chocolate chip cookie (and a really good cup of coffee) is okay by me.
• Trees are nice. Grass is nice, too.
• A lake can be almost like an ocean, if you don't swallow any of it, and if you ignore the fact that you can see the other side.
• Long Island is REALLY big.
• I like nice people.
• I want a tiny house with its very own vegetation, within walking distance of civilization.
• Major corporations are the devil, but small-ish chains that make a strange city feel more like home might not be quite so bad.
• Motels are the most miserable places on earth. The free wireless access is necessary so the guests don't all drown themselves in the indefinably sketchy swimming pool.
  Time should be allowed, in life, for both varieties of vacations: the kind where you go somewhere new and run around like crazy trying to Maximize Your Time, and the kind where you go somewhere - probably somewhere familiar - and just become as much like a piece of furniture as possible for some amount of time. People call the first a vacation, but after trying to See And Do an entire city in 2.5 days, I'm really not sure it should count.

* photo(s) to be posted very soon *

On the Spot

Over dinner, recently, one of my friends turned to another and said "not to put you on the spot, but...." and proceeded to suggest that the second friend do his impression of me.

Friend 2 clearly did feel put on the spot. I was quite surprised that I'm worthy of being impersonated at all; I was nervous about what this impression might reveal about how these friends perceive me, on the one hand, but on the other hand was silently daring Friend 2 to do go ahead and do it and risk offending me. He decided to go ahead because, as he later explained, that was the only way to show me it 'wasn't bad.'

Well, I have yet to decide whether or not it was 'bad'. It was an impression of me leaving a voicemail - I'm well aware that I leave ridiculous voicemails, because I hate phones and hate leaving messages, but I didn't realize I sounded quite that ridiculous. The (brief) performance seemed up to par as far as the rest of the table was concerned. I was also amused, partly by the impersonation but perhaps even more so by Friend 2's concern that he'd insulted me. When I decide, I'll let him know.

He should rest assured, though, that it will always be (at most) secondary to the infamous "oh my god! You look like a GIRL!!" Isn't it funny when you start to find out what your friends really think of you?