I have never had a lot of friends... Acquaintances, yes. Fellow partiers, definitely. But friends? Not so much. I have, however, been fortunate enough to have more "good" friends than most -- good friends are those whose phone numbers and birthdays I will always remember, who I make a great effort to hang out with or stay in touch with if they live elsewhere, people who I have known for many years and will know for many years to come. It's probably because I really only have the energy for the real lasting friendships. I'm not good at spreading myself too thin for shallow social purposes.
This weekend I had a good friend and her girlfriend in town, and I really came to appreciate the length of time we've known each other, the hilarious and ridiculous memories we share, and the complete opposite senses of style we have... It made me realize that everyone I consider a good friend of mine is pretty unique and unlike me in many ways. Sure, I have many things in common with most of them. They're all, for the most part, middle class white kids from the suburbs who come from Catholic backgrounds, have had pretty stable family lives, and now work full time jobs or are in some sort of graduate school. Pretty boring, except that we probably bonded in the first place because of our bad habits and our liberal mentalities.
I realize, however, that I have individuals all over the place with whom I can share different occasions and events and memories and plans.... I have collected a circle of intimates who can and do mesh when the time is right, but who exist mostly in separate bubbles. Obviously, many of them overlap beautifully as I've grown to know them over the years. Some I've known since elementary school, since middle school, since high school, since college... Some I've only gotten to know within the last year. It's like a huge Venn diagram of multiple circles overlapping that eventually creates one huge circle with me in the middle, floating amongst them.
Throughout my formative years, I both envied and feared the girls who could maintain a definitive "group" -- the ones who gathered year after year on someone's stairs for Prom pictures and bought pages of pasted pictures in the yearbook and then joined sororities and did all that crazy social stuff. But that's just not me -- groups have always seemed so frightening, so constricting... Perhaps they were (and still are) an easy social outlet, but for me, I just don't have the energy or the extroversion to understand how the politics work and how to maintain those kinds of relationships where everyone is friends with everyone else and everyone is equally close and, and, and... As you can see, even the thought of it overwhelms me. I suppose I've just always been too much of a loner, too much of an only child -- I crave my space and I value my time. I want to be able to pick and choose who I share my space with, who I spend my time with, and usually this means I can really only handle a limited amount of close relationships.
Limited in quantity, I suppose, but not quality, and I think I do have quality friendships. I have always been fearful of putting "too many eggs in one basket" in a sense. I have done this in the past with friends and in the process ended up ignoring others. But I'm older now and I realize the incredible importance of nurturing the close friendships that I have had for some time and being open to new ones. And all the while I can recognize and appreciate the vast differences between myself and those I am really truly friends with, and love them for all their quirks and flaws and for everything we disagree on. I would rather have 3 close friends who are unlike me in a million ways than 300 who are exactly the same.
I suppose I don't really have a point to all this. I just appreciate my friends and I don't need a big group to do it in. I just love everyone for who they are, and that's that. So thanks, friends. I think you're all really nice...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Water World
Having put down my book for now, I'm concentrating on all the magazines and literary journals I have lying around my apartment. I have subscriptions to Time Out New York, Harper's, The Sun, Slice, and of course, National Geographic. It's ridiculous that I have all this paper lying around that I simply don't read, so yesterday I officially replaced the book in my bag with my newest copy of National Geographic, the magazine I've had a subscription to since I was a child, the magazine I refuse to throw away, the magazine that I can safely say has seen me through the good and the bad and will forever be my solace and escape. Well, perhaps until today.
The most recent issue focuses entirely on water -- the dwindling supply of fresh water, the hardship faced by most people to get sufficient clean water, its significance in culture and religion, and the steps we must take to save, purify, and replenish our water sources. Working for a nonprofit, I have heard my share about the woes of the world and the humanitarian issues surrounding water supplies. But today I thought so much more...
What struck me this morning is how very integral water is to life -- we are made up of 2/3 water, after all -- and yet how in Western civilization we really take it for granted. Apparently the average American uses 100 gallons of water per day. PER DAY. And yet there are entire families in developing nations that subsist on less than 5 per day. This is shocking. As I've said in former posts, I would rather help animals than people, which is true, but the simple fact that I feel that way speaks to the unbelievable luxury that I have been born into as a middle-class American citizen -- I literally have the luxury of caring for animals. And what's more, the animals that I care for use and require the same water that so many people in the world have no access to... and yet I can fill my cat's water dish at any time of the day.
I turn on the tap and fresh, clean, drinkable water flows freely. Whenever I leave a water glass out for too long, I know I run the risk of the cat getting to it and contaminating it with her stinky little kitty germs, so these glasses usually get dumped. I try to pour them into my plants as much as possible, but still, I recognize that the waste is enormous. The simple fact that my cat has an endless source of water at her disposal is amazing, when you think about the people that cannot access fresh water. Pair this with the fact that I can keep plants that serve absolutely no purpose other than that they are aesthetically pleasing (though my basil and new aloe plant are useful), and these plants require water, then you realize just how accustomed we are to this abundant supply and how jarring it is that there are women and children who must trek for miles up and down mountains to bring just a few gallons of water to their homes.
The article follows a woman named Binayo, who at 25 already has 3 children (she's my age!) and must leave her 4-year-old son to care for his younger brothers while she climbs down and back up a mountain to fetch water 3 times a day. Her husband drinks beer with the other men in the village made of the water she brings -- clearly not only is there a serious problem with the water supply itself, but with the culture that allows this division of labor. In so many cultures, water and women go hand in hand, so the idea of gaining access to clean water is really a women's issue, as well as a children's issue. And those are issues I am very much ok with.
The amount of lives, especially of vulnerable young children, saved by access to fresh drinking water is unbelievable. The amount of disease and death that can be allayed by teaching proper hygiene techniques is astounding. Plus, when less time is spent having to trek to get the water, which is usually a woman's job, more girls have time to go to school and more women have time to grow crops and start businesses. When more women are educated and financially empowered, villages and nations grow economically, terrorism is allayed, and there is peace on Earth... Well, that's a stretch, but the benefits are pretty amazing. When you go about alleviating ridiculous work for women like hauling water, you change societies for the better. Just ask Nicholas Kristof.
Will water become my new cause du jour? Probably not. But it is something to think about the next time I take an extra long shower, the next time I leave a full water glass where the cat can get it, and the next time I make plans to do a long term volunteering trip where I plan on taking care of cute Tanzanian babies and teaching adorable Indian children the ABCs. Perhaps those trips will involve more hard labor of a pipe-building nature than I previously imagined...
Only time will tell. For now, I will read my National Geographics and other magazines from cover to cover. I will also recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be able to have this immense supply of paper and water at my disposal, how lucky I am to be able to bathe and watch my hands each day, and how unlucky I am that more and more I cannot turn a blind eye to certain global issues and will most likely be forever haunted by the realization I simply am not doing enough to help and probably never will. I talk (or type) a good game.
The most recent issue focuses entirely on water -- the dwindling supply of fresh water, the hardship faced by most people to get sufficient clean water, its significance in culture and religion, and the steps we must take to save, purify, and replenish our water sources. Working for a nonprofit, I have heard my share about the woes of the world and the humanitarian issues surrounding water supplies. But today I thought so much more...
What struck me this morning is how very integral water is to life -- we are made up of 2/3 water, after all -- and yet how in Western civilization we really take it for granted. Apparently the average American uses 100 gallons of water per day. PER DAY. And yet there are entire families in developing nations that subsist on less than 5 per day. This is shocking. As I've said in former posts, I would rather help animals than people, which is true, but the simple fact that I feel that way speaks to the unbelievable luxury that I have been born into as a middle-class American citizen -- I literally have the luxury of caring for animals. And what's more, the animals that I care for use and require the same water that so many people in the world have no access to... and yet I can fill my cat's water dish at any time of the day.
I turn on the tap and fresh, clean, drinkable water flows freely. Whenever I leave a water glass out for too long, I know I run the risk of the cat getting to it and contaminating it with her stinky little kitty germs, so these glasses usually get dumped. I try to pour them into my plants as much as possible, but still, I recognize that the waste is enormous. The simple fact that my cat has an endless source of water at her disposal is amazing, when you think about the people that cannot access fresh water. Pair this with the fact that I can keep plants that serve absolutely no purpose other than that they are aesthetically pleasing (though my basil and new aloe plant are useful), and these plants require water, then you realize just how accustomed we are to this abundant supply and how jarring it is that there are women and children who must trek for miles up and down mountains to bring just a few gallons of water to their homes.
The article follows a woman named Binayo, who at 25 already has 3 children (she's my age!) and must leave her 4-year-old son to care for his younger brothers while she climbs down and back up a mountain to fetch water 3 times a day. Her husband drinks beer with the other men in the village made of the water she brings -- clearly not only is there a serious problem with the water supply itself, but with the culture that allows this division of labor. In so many cultures, water and women go hand in hand, so the idea of gaining access to clean water is really a women's issue, as well as a children's issue. And those are issues I am very much ok with.
The amount of lives, especially of vulnerable young children, saved by access to fresh drinking water is unbelievable. The amount of disease and death that can be allayed by teaching proper hygiene techniques is astounding. Plus, when less time is spent having to trek to get the water, which is usually a woman's job, more girls have time to go to school and more women have time to grow crops and start businesses. When more women are educated and financially empowered, villages and nations grow economically, terrorism is allayed, and there is peace on Earth... Well, that's a stretch, but the benefits are pretty amazing. When you go about alleviating ridiculous work for women like hauling water, you change societies for the better. Just ask Nicholas Kristof.
Will water become my new cause du jour? Probably not. But it is something to think about the next time I take an extra long shower, the next time I leave a full water glass where the cat can get it, and the next time I make plans to do a long term volunteering trip where I plan on taking care of cute Tanzanian babies and teaching adorable Indian children the ABCs. Perhaps those trips will involve more hard labor of a pipe-building nature than I previously imagined...
Only time will tell. For now, I will read my National Geographics and other magazines from cover to cover. I will also recognize how incredibly lucky I am to be able to have this immense supply of paper and water at my disposal, how lucky I am to be able to bathe and watch my hands each day, and how unlucky I am that more and more I cannot turn a blind eye to certain global issues and will most likely be forever haunted by the realization I simply am not doing enough to help and probably never will. I talk (or type) a good game.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Quote of the (Yester)Day
Upon entering my bedroom around noon on Sunday after deciding to go back to sleep for a few hours, I saw that Nick's eyes were open...
Me: Oh good, you're awake! Now we can cuddle!
Nick: You're abusive.
I laughed good and hard, then promptly snuggled up to him only to realize that he was once again fast asleep. When I reminded him of this last night he said he didn't remember the exchange at all. But he found it mighty amusing... Jerkface.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Spring Forward
I am sitting in my apartment wearing shorts and a tank top. My hair is slathered with deep conditioner and wrapped in plastic wrap, and my face is spotted with a green mint masque. I just pained my toenails and I feel beautiful.
All 6 of my windows are open wide so I can catch any sounds and breezes that might float through. I have incense burning and I have watered all my plants. The road to springtime redemption has offically begun on this already delightful first day of the long-awaited season.
Nick and I just ate some eggs and toast with a big glass of milk, and now he's playing the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds." Soon we're going to go pick up two end tables from a neighbor who is moving to London, who has also offered to throw in a beautiful aloe plant as well as any other knickknacks we might find useful. Maybe we'll take some laundry to be done, partly as an excuse to stroll through our lovely neighborhood.
I'm going to paint my nails later, perhaps go out to eat, and then tonight I'm off to see "The Cherry Orchard" with a very dear friend.
Ahhh..... What a lovely first day of spring...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Blast from the Past
I realize that I have not blogged for a few days, much to the chagrin of a certain someone (you know who you are...get your own blog!). But I suppose I actually do have stuff to talk about, so that's exciting...
On Tuesday, a friend of mine from 4th grade called me at 2:00 p.m. to say she and a friend would be in NYC in, oh, just about an hour. She was actually lost in south Jersey, had nowhere to stay, thought she could drive and park in Times Square, and thought she could make it a day trip. I said no, you drive to my apartment, park in my neighborhood, I will take you on a tour of the city, and that's that. So they did, and I did, and it was grand.
Jenny and I met in the second half of 4th grade at Pleasant Valley Elementary School after she moved with her family from Niagara Falls. We quickly became friends and were "BFF" through 7th grade...though how, I don't know. We were so unlike each other, and we still are. She was tall and drop dead gorgeous and tough as nails and amazing at sports and smart as a whip but not so good in school... I was average in looks, below average in athletics (though a dedicated little ballerina) and above average in my reading level and vocabulary. As far as I can tell, little has changed. She had more than a year on me in age, so I guess that contributed to her interest in boys far before me, though we still sat on the floor playing Barbies long past the age it was appropriate. We ran through the woods in dress up clothes pretending we were princesses or riding our bikes and pretending they were horses, and we sat on my porch for hours experimenting with hideous makeup until we looked like baby prostitutes... We played softball in my yard, went sledding down her giant hill, got our fair share of poison ivy on multiple occasions, and did a lot of walking up and down the windy mountain road that connected our houses for a good 3 years. She hid out at my house when her parents yelled at her too much, I hid out at her house so we could play with the puppies and bunnies that always seemed to be breeding there. We saw a lot of animal life and death together... I guess our love for animals and nature was really the thing we had most in common. By 7th grade, she had made a new best friend who I was (and I'm sure still am) terribly incompatible with, and that was pretty much that. We stayed in touch all these years, but hadn't seen one another since we were 16. Until Tuesday...
Jenny and her friend Wendy showed up in my neighborhood, I got them to a parking space, and as we ascended the elevator to my apartment, she did or said something that made me say, "You haven't changed at all!" "Neither have you!" she quickly retorted. And it seemed very true. We chilled out for an hour or so at my apartment, then Nick and I proceeded to take them on a grand and whirlwind tour of NYC. Dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Village, a walk through Washington Square Park and up through Union Square, the subway to Times Square, a long and horrible walk through that godawful place, then a walk to Radio City and Rockefeller Center, lots of pictures and window shopping, and finally Grand Central Station. For leaving Brooklyn at 6:30 p.m., I'd say we did a pretty damn good tour. We took the train back down to Union Square, got a few drinks at Park Bar, then went back to the neighborhood, stopped into my bar, and went home. It was exhausting and enlightening.
During those hours I realized how very different we are, were, and will always be. Jenny is married to what seems like kind of a lame guy who is in the Army and is a few years younger than her, but she has a 4-year-old stepdaugther who she has basically raised for the last few years who calls her Mom and who she is fighting to protect from her mentally ill biological mother. This is hard for me to believe, but she clearly loves this little girl with all her heart. It's really amazing the different paths we've taken... She's lived in California and Florida and New York and Maryland, still loves the outdoors like she always did, and goes hiking every day with her daughter and her dog, but didn't go to college and doesn't have a job, and is now living with her husband's parents in Virginia. She couldn't believe I could stand to live in a city and I could see the culture shock so clearly on her face... Most of our memories together involve my house and the woods I grew up in, and now our most recent memories involve this godforsaken city I now call home and have for more than 6 years. Insanity.
It's so strange to reconnect with someone who you share so many memories with but haven't seen in so long... But those memories are so distant and foggy that as they become clearer through more and more conversation, you wonder about the child you were and the adult you've become and can't quite figure out what happened in between. There's a huge rift in our friendship... We're the same as we always were, to some extent, but I don't know what we'll be in the future. It was amazing to reconnect with her, but I wonder what it has in store. Do we even have anything in common anymore besides a distant childhood in a world we've completely left behind? This sounds like the beginning of a bad novel that middle-aged women in the suburbs read. Ugh. I'm going to leave it at that and ponder this some more.
It's Friday afternoon... I'm done daydreaming and analyzing the past. It's time to move forward with the weekend...
On Tuesday, a friend of mine from 4th grade called me at 2:00 p.m. to say she and a friend would be in NYC in, oh, just about an hour. She was actually lost in south Jersey, had nowhere to stay, thought she could drive and park in Times Square, and thought she could make it a day trip. I said no, you drive to my apartment, park in my neighborhood, I will take you on a tour of the city, and that's that. So they did, and I did, and it was grand.
Jenny and I met in the second half of 4th grade at Pleasant Valley Elementary School after she moved with her family from Niagara Falls. We quickly became friends and were "BFF" through 7th grade...though how, I don't know. We were so unlike each other, and we still are. She was tall and drop dead gorgeous and tough as nails and amazing at sports and smart as a whip but not so good in school... I was average in looks, below average in athletics (though a dedicated little ballerina) and above average in my reading level and vocabulary. As far as I can tell, little has changed. She had more than a year on me in age, so I guess that contributed to her interest in boys far before me, though we still sat on the floor playing Barbies long past the age it was appropriate. We ran through the woods in dress up clothes pretending we were princesses or riding our bikes and pretending they were horses, and we sat on my porch for hours experimenting with hideous makeup until we looked like baby prostitutes... We played softball in my yard, went sledding down her giant hill, got our fair share of poison ivy on multiple occasions, and did a lot of walking up and down the windy mountain road that connected our houses for a good 3 years. She hid out at my house when her parents yelled at her too much, I hid out at her house so we could play with the puppies and bunnies that always seemed to be breeding there. We saw a lot of animal life and death together... I guess our love for animals and nature was really the thing we had most in common. By 7th grade, she had made a new best friend who I was (and I'm sure still am) terribly incompatible with, and that was pretty much that. We stayed in touch all these years, but hadn't seen one another since we were 16. Until Tuesday...
Jenny and her friend Wendy showed up in my neighborhood, I got them to a parking space, and as we ascended the elevator to my apartment, she did or said something that made me say, "You haven't changed at all!" "Neither have you!" she quickly retorted. And it seemed very true. We chilled out for an hour or so at my apartment, then Nick and I proceeded to take them on a grand and whirlwind tour of NYC. Dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Village, a walk through Washington Square Park and up through Union Square, the subway to Times Square, a long and horrible walk through that godawful place, then a walk to Radio City and Rockefeller Center, lots of pictures and window shopping, and finally Grand Central Station. For leaving Brooklyn at 6:30 p.m., I'd say we did a pretty damn good tour. We took the train back down to Union Square, got a few drinks at Park Bar, then went back to the neighborhood, stopped into my bar, and went home. It was exhausting and enlightening.
During those hours I realized how very different we are, were, and will always be. Jenny is married to what seems like kind of a lame guy who is in the Army and is a few years younger than her, but she has a 4-year-old stepdaugther who she has basically raised for the last few years who calls her Mom and who she is fighting to protect from her mentally ill biological mother. This is hard for me to believe, but she clearly loves this little girl with all her heart. It's really amazing the different paths we've taken... She's lived in California and Florida and New York and Maryland, still loves the outdoors like she always did, and goes hiking every day with her daughter and her dog, but didn't go to college and doesn't have a job, and is now living with her husband's parents in Virginia. She couldn't believe I could stand to live in a city and I could see the culture shock so clearly on her face... Most of our memories together involve my house and the woods I grew up in, and now our most recent memories involve this godforsaken city I now call home and have for more than 6 years. Insanity.
It's so strange to reconnect with someone who you share so many memories with but haven't seen in so long... But those memories are so distant and foggy that as they become clearer through more and more conversation, you wonder about the child you were and the adult you've become and can't quite figure out what happened in between. There's a huge rift in our friendship... We're the same as we always were, to some extent, but I don't know what we'll be in the future. It was amazing to reconnect with her, but I wonder what it has in store. Do we even have anything in common anymore besides a distant childhood in a world we've completely left behind? This sounds like the beginning of a bad novel that middle-aged women in the suburbs read. Ugh. I'm going to leave it at that and ponder this some more.
It's Friday afternoon... I'm done daydreaming and analyzing the past. It's time to move forward with the weekend...
Monday, March 15, 2010
Cervantes says...
"The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings."
-- Miguel de Cervantes
-- Miguel de Cervantes
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