make me a map

I found a blog post I drafted over a year ago, about complicated reactions to the 2008 elections, about compromise, and about cutesy sappy websites. I had just discovered “from 52 to 48 with love,” which posits a universal primary patriotism that could trump all other ideology — but still totally captivated me. In my reaction I wrote, “Maybe I just believe that Barack Obama can do the rhetorical work of creating a big tent narrative, and cutesy adolescents in front of webcams just look kind of silly. And I’m hoping that Obama is smart enough to tether that big tent facing left, if probably not in left field to begin with, and will bring all the 52 and 48 people in that direction there with him.” That day I was relishing recent victories  on drug policy, reproductive justice, immigration, and affirmative action, along with Democratic victories in every branch. I started to recoup from that utter despair from 2004, when I believed that the country hated us enough to re-elect a shitty president. (Maybe parts of us were still hated in the 2008 voting booths, but at least it was contained to certain initiatives).

I have been so deeply saddened by the past 2 months, partly because of my own involvement in a 52-48 electoral loss, and partly because Obama’s tent I am under now may have once looked leftward but seems susceptible to the faintest rightward wind. It is appalling that 52 points can be enough to elect a president or mayor but not enough to hold up health care reforms like expanded Medicare and a public option against an undemocratic filibuster process. I am horrified by the plan for the troop buildup in Afghanistan and the template for fighting an all too familiar kind of war.

This feeling of being unmoored in these last months has been exacerbated by being in Connecticut — home of insurance money and Joe Lieberman of the ever-dwindling “Connecticut for Lieberman” party. The commercials about health care reform are endless, and mostly anti-reform. They speak of uncontrolled costs, irresponsible spending, and declines in quality of care, and are usually narrated by elderly people who are probably on government-run health care. These commercials air as frequently as political ads in the days before an election, and they make feel every time like I have lost. My parents are about to see their insurance monthly payments top $1,800, with a $3,000 deductible. No other plan would take my mother for less money with her pre-existing conditions. This does not even include non-covered health services (co-pays, hospital stays) which rack up pretty quickly, often exceeding $1,000 in a month. I don’t think this new health care plan will help very much at all for them, and it makes me furious. If this is what it looks like to compromise over the divide between 52 and 48, or 58 and 42, I cannot really write a love letter to the other side pledging to smile while I take these shells that may, one day, incubate real reform.* My mother is aspiring to live to see the day of government healthcare (only 2 years until her social security disability will qualify her for Medicare) and I really wanted that day to come sooner.

My first protest led by organized labor changed my life — chants could rhyme and be clever! walking in circles in front of someone’s door felt powerful! — and also targeted Joe Lieberman 8 years ago. “Where’s Joe? We don’t know! In the White House? Hell, no!” I am galvanized about Joe Lieberman, about the NY Democratic State Senators who voted against marriage equality, about a filibuster process that allows such a small number to hold up the progress of meaningful and life-changing reforms. The connections between process (overturning term limits, changing the meaning of filibuster, creating a new individualistic self-serving political party) and a lack of real progress are all too clear. All this also makes me want to know more about a parliamentary system of governance. Something has got to give here.

*This reminds me of the video of the octopus with the coconut, hauling it away to use it in an unspecified way. I find this to be an instructive metaphor for assembling tools and preparing for the future.

I would like to have a whole new blog entitled “Tales from the Lycee” because the stories that emerge there are so amazing. I’m sure there would be many more stories if I actually knew French and could understand the side conversations between staffers and students.

Life there really feels like Gossip Girl. The Upper East Side does allow men to make interesting fashion choices (so many kinds of clashing stripes, for example, seem to be acceptable). I did not notice until yesterday that there is a “dress code” because these students wear couture that makes the code irrelevant. I have been working with the applications to the school, mostly for preschool, and particularly noticing the pictures that parents send in of their children. Most of the kids are not smiling; they are brooding and look like 3 year old literary scholars with really impressive accessories. One kid looked like the most CEO-looking child I have ever seen, and then I discovered he was Barron Trump (son of Donald). Although my job there is ostensibly in nonprofit development, I mostly feel like I am doing wealth management. Cajoling the rich to spend their money on the school by offering such wonderful ways to donate — auction items like $11,000 alligator shoes! A $10,000 case of champagne! Botox! More size 2 or 4 dresses than you can imagine! It all makes me throw up a little in my mouth. And being around this kind of wealth is accelerating my class anxiety twentyfold.

I am really ready for a job that is permanent and pays my bills. I came close, and then had it snatched away by the forces of a horrible economy. And since then I haven’t really recovered, and clearly neither has the economy. In the meantime I write cover letters and cook and I watch this beautiful video over and over to see the narwhals and notes in bottles. This comforts me, and I try to imagine being a narwhal bobbing on Arctic waves like in the animation on that video.

So I have read about narwhals many times, and just now when looking at the Wikipedia entry I discovered they have apparently just become extinct. It is hard to know what information to trust — nowhere else on the internet says they are instinct, though many sources document that they are threatened for extinction. It is really sad to try and draw a larger narrative about what this means, on both a global warming and personal level, so I won’t. But here is a photo of beautiful tusking narwhals.

unicorns of the sea

After being ensconced in the security of the LGBT Center for a long temp job, budget cuts forced me out into the-not-welcome arms of a French-American school on the Upper East Side. I am helping them with the planning of this crazy celebrity and dignitary-studded gala, but mostly I feel like I’m being acculturated in a wholly new world. Not that I understand much of it, because people are speaking French most of the time. One of my Directors sat me down and talked to me about how the French are hierachical and want lots of structure, thus it would be frowned upon if I a) ate at my desk or b)ate lunch for less than an hour, or a half hour if absolutely necessary. “You know this isn’t some New Age West Coast Think Tank” he told me and I felt so deeply insulted. Apparently this means things like calling co-workers Miss/Mrs. or Mr. ______, automatically entering hetero spouses as Mr. & Mrs. [man’s name] even if they have different last names, and hosting obscene benefits even when it is almost exclusively wealthy students who attend the school.

I wish that Kristen Bell narrated my whole day with acerbic comments like “Look out Little L – this community on the Upper East Side speaks a whole different language.” Also, I wish I had the wardrobe of Chuck Bass. Sadly neither of these things are true.

Instead of having gay constructed family Thanksgiving in San Francisco, as I’ve done for the past 3 years, this year I spent the holiday with my family of blood in rural Connecticut. When I walked into the holiday I immediately saw a bowl of edamame. Edamame! This extended family rarely deviates from meat and potatoes, and most vegetables need to have adequate amounts of bread crumbs and cheese in order to appeal to the masses. So this bowl of green soybeans felt like a sign of Change in a pretty massive way. Furthermore, then we proceeded to talk about politics, and finally the Democrats in the family could gleefully talk about the campaign and the future. My mom broke out her “Hope” pin, which she had previously mentioned but I always assumed was something related to angels or footprints. Not about Barack Obama! We discovered that my 94 year old great-aunt was so angry (racist?) that Hillary Clinton wasn’t nominated that she voted for Ralph Nader. I had forgotten that a more distant relative and his former housemate come for family Thanksgiving, and we talked about Proposition 8 and I now want them to come to every holiday and be my allies. I also became convinced that one of them is gay and listened for cues all night. Using the phrase “people I have dated” = strong sign, to me. He also made an exceptional pumpkin cheesecake with pecan sauce, and was the only man to prepare any food for the holiday (sans carving the turkey, though that shouldn’t even count).

But okay, back to the edamame. Over showing my relatives how to eat the pods, and talking about Obama, my cousin of some kind/patriarch of the holiday leaned over to me and said, “How does it feel to have all of us agree with you now?” and I replied, “about the edamame or Obama?”

“Both.”

I accompanied my mother to chemo today, fully prepared for the inspirational posters and pastel recliners and nurses in Angels of Hope scrubs in the midst of frail and ill bodies.  The constant refrain of “stay positive” is the undercurrent of the place, which must be so exhausting as nurses and patients watch someone decline week after week. But people trade snacks and stories about anti-nausea meds, and it all normalizes a bit. My mother’s oncology nurse, Helen, has been a central figure in her stories over the past 9 years – even though I’ve only met her a few times, I know a lot about this woman’s life. When she referenced her son and his partner* coming up for Thanksgiving, and driving up her old priest’s car, I practically shouted with joy. There are resources for my mom, and people she trusts, and I can keep holding out hope that she will come along. As I gear up to talk to her tonight about the upcoming holidays and my relationship and my heart, I’m trying to stay inside of that hope.

*Would that serious a Catholic use the word partner about an opposite-sex couple? I can’t imagine that.

The difference between a free weekday when you are unemployed and a free weekday when you are working is totally incredible. Today I fetched my friend from the subway, fresh off a red-eye from the West Coast, and proceeded to eat muffins in Prospect Park, make onion chutney to put on fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, and finally get the view from my the roof of my building. It is amazing. And so utterly different than I felt when I was writing to-do lists, mostly consisting of writing cover letters, each morning. And of course, never checking off every item on a list.

I just bought State by State on a whim, and I am carefully reading the essays in order of my interest & allegiance. First, Vermont (a comic from Alison Bechdel, obvs the first priority), then Washington (written by Carrie Brownstein), then Connecticut, and then finally I am getting to New York. I keep getting distracted by the tables in the appendix of the book — overwhelmed that NY is #50 in the statistic “population born elsewhere in U.S.” at 17.7% (Nevada is at 71.5%!), among others. When I panic that the tables say that red states, particularly Utah, are experiencing the most population growth, I am reminded that this growth is how Colorado and Virginia are going Democratic. Red and blue are not static, even by the day, and especially not on fivethirtyeight.com. The personal narratives of states in this book are so appealing at a time when I am thinking of states as gradations of red and blue electoral votes, and as potential senate seat pickups, and battlegrounds for initiatives and propositions. So far each piece has captured a messy and complicated relationship with their homestate, which is a compelling antidote for my political myopia at this time of year.

On Connecticut, says Rick Moody:

Connecticut is a state that hard’s to love, but which I love anyhow, as one often loves what wounds – if only for the familiarity. It’s a state where almost nothing is made, where the affluence of the state as a whole is in marked contrast to the deprivation and desperation of the cities….A state that does nothing first or best, but which did once, indisputably, build the finest roadways in the land.

And on Washington, says Carrie Brownstein:

Although Washington has a reputation for being rainy, its not the wetness that’s difficult. Rather, it’s the way the light never quite meets the day — in fall and winter, there is a bluish-gray sky that barely appears in the morning; then a faintly perceptible recession of that same muted color signifies night. The whole day is a half-opened eye, and this heavy-lidded weather can last months.

I cannot wait to be back in Washington in 10 days. Pho, coffee, drizzly grey weather, campaign work, coniferous trees, and hopefully the best Election Night that I have ever experienced.

i started off the day wanting to tackle a huge project of sorts — i would walk across the brooklyn bridge! no, walk to coney island! i wanted something evocative to place me deeper in this place, and something to tell as a story to others and myself. i had just thrown up (gross, i know) and seemed to have shaken off the sickly feeling that made yesterday pretty dismal.

instead i ended up cultivating the familiar routines today. an everything bagel with butter, ice coffee, sitting on a blanket in prospect park talking with friends and reading the paper. talking as someone else cooks, then returning home to cook for someone (yam and pepita quesadillas with honey-chipotle sauce, be still my heart). i was chatting with someone who recently visited friends in new haven and remarked that life seemed so easy there – quick and easy travelling, lots of space, etc. but today felt like the best kind of nyc-easy i’ve found so far, full of comfort food and unexpectedly falling into sharing a day with friends. a puppy straight out of cute overload kept bounding over to us in the park. i was carrying a carton of eggs into a coffeeshop and the barista offered a suggestion about how to make poached eggs, as if he somehow knew that i’ve been wanting lately to put oozey poached eggs on top of everything i eat.

this kind of leisure, on day 2 of a 3-day weekend, is perfect. at work on friday i was reading an article about the history of the building where the lgbt center is housed, and my favorite paragraph made such an amazing point:

“Within three years, the building was doing new duty as a vocational institution called the West Side Continuation School. Renamed yet again as the West Side Vocational High School, it offered music
appreciation programs during the Great Depression “for adults with enforced leisure,” as a city welfare official described the jobless multitudes.”

and when the thought of this other, terrifying kind of leisure makes my heart palpitate, i read this article (united states of anxiety, read it now) over and over again. tonight i threw some parsley leaves in boiling water, let them all steep for 30 minutes, and now i am drinking some parsley tea. at first this tasted pretty gross, but it’s growing on me now – i am not sure if the taste is actually improving or i am growing fonder of the idea of self-determination over my body. i am hoping this fixes my bodily woes, or at least lets me fixate on a small task i can do.

when i moved to brooklyn i did not bring any keys with me. those first few days here were so disorienting, in part, because my leaving the house routine shifted. instead of grasping for wallet, phone, and keys, i only had 2 items to remember. it is very weird to not have keys to anything. now i have 6 keys to 2 homes plus a key to the lgbt community center (a home for nyc queers), which i somehow all carry on a rei carabiner –something i would never do in seattle. such obvious, rich symbolism here.

each time i acquire something new to carry with me, something that signifies my belonging in this city, i get very excited. first i got a brooklyn library card at the brooklyn book festival, and now my card from the park slope food co-op. the co-op is a wonder full of children clamoring for organic/minimally treated produce, nosy shoppers, and people in orange vests who will walk your grocery cart to your apartment/car/stop (once a month i am one of these people!!!)

this week i had my first instance of a multiple sighting of someone on my train commuting to work in the morning – a disheveled lubavitcher carrying lots of texts in plastic baggies. first i saw him tuesday, and then this morning he leaned into me and asked, “sir, are you a jew?” and i did have to say no. though if i had said yes, and he engaged me with his bagged pamphlets, i wonder how he would have continued. it has been a weird week of questions about gender identification- i have been asked everything from my PGP’s (preferred gender pronouns, apparently) to if i am a “transitioner.” plus one aggressive case of questioning on the street from a stranger.

i now have 2 places in nyc that i love to get coffee – Joe and 9th Street Espresso. at one this week i had my requisite first celebrity sighting (anthony from sex and the city), and at the other the very familiar seeming barista asked me if was from seattle. it turns out that he was a barista at one of my favorite seattle coffee shops, and just moved to nyc. “i can be your barista now in new york city too!” he exclaimed, and it could not have made me happier.

i arrived in brooklyn at 6 am on a friday morning, and with 2 checked bags of 48 lbs each, plus 2 carry-ons, i was moved to new york. it was strange how simple it was, in some ways, to move – people came over to rummage through my stuff and take what they liked, with some cajoling from me. i threw out cds, old clothes, half-empty bottles of things i would not finish and could not bring to new york. i said a lot of goodbyes and pushed through tears and now i am here, in a beautiful brooklyn heights brownstone listening to the rain.

my first full day in new york was full of being a consumer – amazing brunch at prune in the east village, wandering into soho to encounter 2 club monacos within 4 blocks of each other (one with an excess of extra-small shirts on sale), and 2 h&ms within 2 blocks of each other (one with exactly the kind of underwear i was looking for). my new glasses had been falling off of my face, and then i stumbled right into the store of the designer who fixed them for free. new york city seemed full of little victories, consumerist or not.

a month later the victories look different – today i discovered the n train, soaring aboveground and then whizzing by all the local stops. and i voluntarily and solitarily chose an express train, rather than staying on the safety of the local for the benefit of an uninterrupted ride. i chose this, i tell myself, when i was ready for it. i navigated an interview in midtown on madison avenue, and dealt with the panic of having a gender expression that makes it feel hard to be “business formal.” i have joined the ranks of many at the park slope co-op, and sunday i will have my debut workshift walking people and their groceries to their stoops/cars/subway stop. i have a park slope brownstone now, on a block that will tomorrow host a blockparty complete with a cheesecake making contest, stickball, and a sing-along outdoor screening of west side story. well, i shouldn’t say “i have a park slope brownstone” — as that would make me the envy of many. but i rent this apartment, and i eat dinner on the stoop and tentatively push pins into the wall and claim a space here. i have made out on the promenade in front of the famous waterfalls, been to the cloisters, and almost made it into free night at the guggenheim (next time!). and these things will keep happening — so much on the horizon, i just need to be patient through these strange days.

what else is there to say besides work work work? and i have become so fearful of having a blog discovered via the copious google alerts for everything related to my job, so there is mostly a kind of paralysis around blogging.

needless to say, i am working right now. coordinating volunteers from a little table at a festival, as they check in and check out and gather signatures from the masses. i have been slowly crossing off things from my massive to-do list, most notably finally deciding on a reading for the wedding i’m going to next weekend. i wanted something about love, and community, and extending families and the possibilities of change — because all that seemed most appropriate for me to bring. instead my reading (to have without holding, by marge piercy) is about complicated, painful, intimate, transformative romantic couple love – but i adore it anyway. i am enchanted with the idea of reading it on this island where the wedding will take place, partciularly the lines:

“You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing”

and i will look at my friend (dressed in blue, of course) and be so proud and excited.

early summer has found seattle, finally. we have moved half of our living room onto the back porch, and just simply call it “the porch living room.” we ate dinner and drank wine there last night, and i cannot wait to sleep there on warm nights. plus, artisinal ice cream has found seattle (!!) so what can i claim as this city’s inadequacies anymore? i guess this is why i am finally making concrete plans to leave. thinking about living in nyc makes me so aware of the ease of my life in seattle – driving around wherever/whenever i want, being able to walk to the homes of most of my friends, feeling safe in sleeping on the porch, which has only an unlockable fence between it and the street. it is so easy to live here. last weekend i stayed in the home of a friend, and had this beautiful renovated loft shed for the weekend. obviously the fact that rebecca was visiting made the experience much more heightened, and of course everything seemed to be many more levels of perfect. the lilacs and magnolias were blooming, rebecca was in awe of the monkey puzzle tree and i remembered just how great they are, and while walking i finally found the bakery i’ve been lazily searching for in seattle for over 2 years. everything is coming together in a new way, and that’s part of why i feel ready to go.