Monthly Archive

With the amount of knowledge we’re all expected to absorb on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that certain things, certain memories, get rather crunched back in the depths of thought storage. Although my archives are awfully dusty, when I find occasion to grab a flashlight and start shifting around, I’m pretty impressed with the degree of organization. 

Some drawers in those archives came under scrutiny this weekend when my high school friend walked back onto the scene, and gave me the chance to rediscover the relics there and polish them up a little bit.

She wasn’t married, hadn’t gained a hundred pounds, didn’t have children. Of course I recognized her, of course she was—and I was—the same.  Older and adult, sure, but we were still us. I don’t know why I got myself worked up,  though the unknown can be a bit distressing.  She was doing her thing much the way I’m doing mine; a parallel life that, by some shift, found reason to cross over once more. 

I think I talked my throat raw catching up.  And not just catching up: remembering and reliving, too.  It was like my mind jumped back to high school, and I suddenly found myself fluent in the sagas du jour: homework assignments that seemed impossible; TV shows that had everyone talking; who was fighting with whom in our class.  The teachers we had and the wrongs their exams surely wrought on our young minds; who got what car when she was sixteen; and the best ways to leverage our uniform to prevail in traffic court.

I represented Sweden in our 9th grade model UN, for instance.  Totally forgot about that.  I got an A in pre-calc mainly by cashing in on the liberal extra credit system.  She had no idea; I had no idea I still knew.  But there I was, high school me in the head of who I am today, chattering away.  Like how we used to make up—as in, really, truly fabricate—ridiculously involved Biology projects that we had to work on all day Saturday at her house, when all we’d really do is watch her taped Friends and Party of Five episodes.  My mom didn’t allow my sisters and I to watch these shows.  Why?  Because they promoted bad family values, apparently.  I don’t think she realized what life was like behind the veil of our convent school (and yes, there were nuns involved).

In a lot of ways, our high school was a breeding ground for sheer ridiculousness.  It was a tiny grouping of unusually privileged girls, most of whom had no responsibility or appreciation for their situations. We had the shenanigans of most high schools taken to an extreme by basically unbridled resources:  drinking in the parking lot, but from a stash of grey goose in the trunk of someone’s beemer; drugs, but lines of coke in the bathroom of the country-club class Christmas party.

This is where she and I got on so well, my friend and I.  We were—and are still—more the quiet type.  Not shy, and not unliked, but not your outgoing popular girl.  We were naïve beyond ourselves, but we weren’t stupid.  We both knew exactly what was going on, and though we weren’t exactly invited to participate, we wouldn’t have.  We were too busy being kids, or doing homework, or something. 

I surprised myself with how much I remembered, but with that remembering came again those feelings—what it was like, who I was, who I wanted to be and the fears that I’d never get there.  It was validating to be able to go to that place as the more confident magda of the future, and I think it was for her, too. But still, it’s with a bit of a smile that I file these memories back away.  I like touring the museum of me, but I think much of what I see is best left beneath the glass.  Preserved, but no longer living; instructive, but not precedential.  I exit back into the cold air, but I know it’s still waiting for me whenever I choose to journey back.  

Things are looking up on the magda-at-work front.  Way up.

Around 4.30 today, a caravan of executives left their penthouse perches and trotted on down to my windowless hovel-style office.  

They came bearing gifts and accolades; they came to congratulate me on winning the latest editorial excellence award.  As in, I beat out everyone; my story was the best one of everything published in the third quarter.  

I deserved it.  It sounds cocky to say that, and I’m not generally one for tooting my own horn or anything.  Sometimes circumstances merit a little bit of boundary-shifting, however, and this is definitely one of those instances. 

The story that won was the product of an insanely difficult assignment my boss sent me on last June.  It was an assignment that really should have been his, but his wife scheduled a family vacation that same week. I kicked ass and took names, but it was. not. easy.   Hence, I’m granting myself a brief window in which to jump around and congratulate myself with as many flowery and over-the-top adjectives as I like.  Yay yay yay.

As much as I loved the surprise visit today, one of the best things was the look on my boss’ face.  He didn’t even realize I was a contender, see; I nominated myself.  Being all stealth and crafty-like, I read the small print correlating to the asterix asking managing editors to submit stories from their staffs.  * Editors may also submit their own work, accompanied by an explanatory letter of merit. 

My boss generally considers my work “in progress” or “developing,” I think mostly owing to my age and just-out-of-school status.  Let’s see him belittle me now, now that a mass e-mail has gone out to global corporate saying “bow to magda, she’s the best EVER.” Or, you know, something similar.  

My morning mantra remains “your mission is to take the building with minimal loss of life,” but that mission should be getting a heck of a lot easier to execute. 

(And a word about the weekend: amazing.  Absolutely amazing, and currently hanging out in my drafts folder.  Coming soon, stay tuned, and all that).  

Yesterday would have been an ideal day for my horoscope to have read “Expect a mysterious visitor from the East.”

A long-lost friend e-mailed overnight, her words couriered to my gmail and awaiting attention when I finally snapped to it in the office.  I’m thinking of coming down to DC, she said; would tomorrow work? 

Though it seems cliché, “long lost” is probably the most accurate description for this girl.  Or maybe “re-found, but it took a long time coming.”  She was one of my closest friends in high school, but her family moved back to their native Japan immediately after graduation.  As in, in less than a week, her house had a new family, and I’d never see her perched at the Starbucks again.  We corresponded through letters and cards freshman year, but the distance took its toll and we went  bit wayward.  In short: I haven’t spoken to her since 1999.

Skip ahead a decade, and out of nowhere comes a Christmas card to me, at my parents’ house.  I’m back in the States; I’d love to see you; it’s been so long!

She’s studying at Princeton these days, and is detouring south for a quick catch-up weekend. I floated for a while on the joy of our rediscovery.  I’m getting nervous now.  Is she going to have fun here, with the grown up me?  I’m afraid that I’m not going to live up to her memory, and the more I dwell on it, the worse it gets.  We were good friends as teenagers. And we haven’t spoken since.  So very much has changed in me, and for me, since then—and I’m scared she won’t like me. I recognize the irony here: I’m new and grown up, but still find myself fainting for my teenage insecurities.  It’s like that sometimes. 

I’m looking around my apartment, the pieces of my life, and I’m trying to be objective: who is this girl who lives here, who breathes in this life? What’s she about, and would you recognize her if you last put down her book at 17?  I don’t think she’s going to know me at all.  And of course this goes both ways: what if I don’t know her?

3.30pm, her train arrives.  When I close my laptop and head out there, these fears? They’ll close, too.  I hope. 

There’s a lot I needed to do tonight, and coming home stumbling drunk at 7pm didn’t really help that.  It was a long and ridiculous day, and when the opportunity presented itself to meet a few friends after work, yeah, I took it.  And Grey’s Anatomy is a re-run again tonight, so here I am.  I’m staring at the phone, at three missed calls, and listening to a voicemail I’m not planning to return from my most recent ex-boyfriend.

Mr. Quiet and I dated for about a year during my last year of law school.  He was a very sweet, very nice guy, but we would have made better friends than romantic compatriots for two key reasons: (1) although I came to greatly care for him, I was really only looking to pass the time, which was incredibly selfish and wrong; (2) I was his first girlfriend ever.  His first holding-hands person, his first kiss, the whole shebang.  Definitely not my first.  It was a bit awkward, to be honest.

The thing of it was, though, that we just got along so well.  We really were glorified best friends, but of course like any relationship that ultimately ends in combustion, there were some loose wires that ultimately proved fatal.  He wasn’t sure he wanted kids, for one.  There’s nothing I want more than to be a mom.  Not too soon, sure, but I see little magdas on the horizon, no doubt.

Church was also a pretty serious divide between us.  It would take a skilled imagination indeed to cast me as any kind of devout, but faith and tradition are really important to me.  Mr. Quiet was not so much into that.  He flat-out refused to come to church with me. “It’s not for me,” he’d say.  I’d talk about how my dad’s faith has been so instrumental in the way I’ve shaped myself, and he told me straight up—more than once—that he was never going to be that guy.  It was easy for me to dismiss these differences because, once again, I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere.  The scars from some pretty detrimental relationships were still pretty fresh at that point, and I was enjoying the glow of just being, just finding appreciation in another’s eyes with minimal effort.  I later learned, and none too soon, that this just isn’t what love is about.

Just after we’d crossed the year threshold, I moved to DC. It fizzled, and fast.  He wasn’t one of those guys who can carry a conversation telephonically, and that hit hard.  I found myself saddled to a man who wasn’t there, who wasn’t want I really wanted, and who couldn’t fill the void of loneliness and longing that moving somewhere foreign necessarily opens.  I ended it, after about a month, and another month found me dating J.  Even had it never gone anywhere, I saw in J a spark I knew I’d never draw out of Mr. Quiet.

I didn’t tell Mr. Quiet about J, at least not at first; our friendship was thus (perhaps fraudulently) preserved.  I finally fessed up when I was home in August. It was awkward, but it was ok, and I legitimately thought I’d lose him.

Au contraire, the stars say, chuckling.  Our conversations remained a calm constant, but since the new year, Mr. Quiet appears to have gone aggressively on the offense, presumably on seeing that J and I are still together.  Why now? Why this week?  What, does he think I’m finally going to realize that he’s the one, leave J, and move back home?  It’s all rather depressing.

He’s been sending long-winded e-mails about how hard he’s working, and what his ambitious career plans are.  He’s asking me about nice restaurants around home, if he ever took me there (um, NO, we were in school on student budgets, but whatever); he says he’s making a list for when I come home next.  It’s like he’s painting himself as Mr. Spectacular, despite the common knowledge that I already have one of those.

But it goes on.  His last installment talked about how he can’t wait to have kids.  Then he tells me about this new church he’s found, and how he goes to the 8am mass Sundays before heading to the office to bill more hours.  He said he read the whole bible last year, and this year would like to really study it.  He says he never realized how spiritual he was. 

Ok, hold it, wait just a moment.  He’s no longer playing fair.  I feel like I’m being manipulated, which hurts a little bit because really, aside from the selfishness and J-concealment, I really thought we were on pretty solid ground as friends.  I also don’t really like that this seems to have come positively out of nowhere.  Where were these pages of perfection when I was trying to make it work?  Why now, now that I finally feel happy and settled?  I think it’s possible that I may have hurt him far more seriously than I realize.  For this, I am truly sorry.

I work for a weekly publication that arrives in the inboxes of the elite (aka, our blessed subscribers) each and every Wednesday morning. Tuesdays thus are reserved for assembling the issue and, ultimately, releasing it: this latter bit falls to me. Ta da! I’m imagining a light beaming down on me, there’s wild applause, and I’m doing a little curtsy. But I’m getting beside myself.

We publish in-house, in what I have always suspected is an industrial revolution-era workshop somewhere in the basement, where there are heavy metal printing presses, men in ink-stained aprons, and loud clanking noises that permeate the day and night. We send them our proofs before checking out at 5.30, then they stay up all night arranging the little letters on the plates and running them off, manually. Despite these somewhat throw-back conditions, these printing-men appreciate an e-mail letting them know your pages are on the way. I’ve still not figured how this fits into my mindscape, but I’m working on it.

January 23 was our release day (obviously, you say; let’s get to the point!). I wrote the same in my e-mail, but I caught myself just staring at it. January 23, January 23, hmmm, there’s something that looks really familiar about that.

Dad’s birthday.

Today is my dad’s birthday, and I only remembered with about six hours to spare. Shame! On! Me! I actually bought a card a few weeks back, but some sort of disconnect since then has left it to languish in my desk drawer.

My dad, my hero, the man with the plan and He Who Does All Most Excellently. I never, ever forget a sister’s birthday, or my mom’s birthday, or even an aunt’s birthday. What’s up with me, seriously?

I think karma must owe me one, because my parents are up in their mountain house this week. This means that he’ll get my card along with all the others when he returns back home. Unless he notices that the card was postmarked, um, today, he’ll never know. Thanks for that one (upward nod). I’ve e-mailed, and will call, so all seems smooth.

But still. I’ve got to get my act together! I’ve got to make paying attention, living not so much inside myself, more of a priority. Aarg. I really am such a piece of work sometimes; it’s a bit amazing that a man as clever and put together as my dad is so much a part of me.

Leaving work last week, I was seriously tempted to make up fantastic plans for the weekend.  You: “What are you doing this weekend, magda?” Me: “I’m so glad you asked!  Tonight I’ve been invited to a black-tie dinner at the Italian embassy, then I’ll do my Saturday morning volunteering early before jetting off for the weekend with J in the Virgin Islands, where we’ll share a little bungalow and tropical drinks and plenty of warm sunshine till Monday night.” You: “Liar!”

You would, unfortunately, be correct.  J and I had tentative plans to head up to his parents’ house in NY, but that dissolved when J was called away on work-related affairs all. freaking. weekend. On the side of his still at times undecided career, J helps manage a band, at least as far as their legal affairs are concerned. That band has a recording session this weekend, and as their lawyer he pretty much needs to be there to examine the contracts, rights disclosures, etc., etc. that go along with it.  This has left me pretty much to my own defenses this weekend, which I initially thought would be a bit of a drag.  I was wrong.  There’s something really precious about nothing., and I think I’ve just been too busy with everything to notice.  I haven’t had such a lazy few days since after finals, feels like.  Even when I’m not out with J or various other DC friends, I find myself busy, with an agenda; go do this, see this, find this.  Not this weekend.  This weekend has been all about me; my own little rejuvenating spa, right here in this apartment. 

Welcome to the spa chez magda, a priceless little oasis in hectic city.  Our qualified relaxation specialists are at your beck and call, and will assist you in finding tranquility and inner harmony for three blissful days.  Highlights from our service menu include:

• long mineral baths with your choice of wines from our extensive counter-top cellars
• kitchen adventures, including forays into spiced nuts and kick-ass cookies
• organizational help, bringing you a step closer to your resolutions by guiding your closet inventory and removing unworn and extraneous items
• breakfast in bed, featuring beer pancakes, a chez magda specialty (born of the college days of yore, when we wanted pancakes but had run clean out of milk in the house.  Beer to the rescue! So light and fluffy.  Totally amazing, and forever a staple since).
• pajama parties involving ice cream, popcorn, Chinese takeout and a veritable Doris Day movie marathon
• construction projects.

That last bullet references a bookcase-building adventure I entered into Saturday, which really was quite monstrous but worked out in the end. 

I have a lot of books; many that I read often, some that I like to look at, and a fair number of school texts that realistically should have been sold back, but that I couldn’t part with.  I read them! Look how big and imposing they are! I’m so smart!  Or something along those lines. 

In any event, most of them got left at my parents’ house when I moved out here.  My moving company was essentially the good ol’ guys at UPS: I didn’t have that many effects, save some not -really-worth-its-weight IKEA-style apartment furniture.  My sister, having just gotten married at the time, was all too happy to relieve me of me of the bulkier pieces.  The rest went into the boxes, but books are frighteningly expensive to ship—thus, they mostly stayed behind. 

My mom was slowly shipping them, stretching installments out over a few months in those handy flat-rate boxes.  I was always delighted to receive them—look, remember these? I loved this one!—but I really had nowhere to put them once they were here.  I’d line them all, carefully and ordered, along my bedroom baseboard.  Mom visited last March, and she was having none of that.  “This? This is what you’ve done with the books I’ve shipped?  No more until you get a proper bookshelf!”

I thought about this for a time, but like other things, it slipped my mind.  I didn’t so much mind the books-on-the-floor scenario; not ideal, but it worked.

Seeing all my books being held captive at home over Christmas had me quickly singing a different tune, however, and I resolved to find a bookshelf post haste.

I found the winning candidate at the Crate & Barrel outlet (which I love, by the way—the store, that is).  Also, outlet prices=good things, less money.  Also=good things, no delivery men to come and assemble them.  Hmmm.

The first problem was when the box of disassembled bookshelf wouldn’t fit in my car.  Come on! I drive a compact sedan.  It’s not like I’m tooling around in a Miata or something, seriously.  In any event, the loading dock guy and I spent a rousing twenty minutes ripping open the box and reloading the pieces into my backseat.  Of course, this meant that it took me about four trips from the garage to my apartment, lacking now the cohesive box-ness of it all.

There were frequent references in the directions to “with another adult,” and “you’ll need two people for this step.” Whatever, said I.  Hurrah for the single people! Hurrah for independent competence!  Hurrah for not relying on another!  Except, I think another person might have actually been useful in this instance.  The thing was a complete fiasco to build, and there was actually a point at the end—the very, very, absolute end, when all that was left was to slide the shelves into place—when they wouldn’t go.  It just wouldn’t come together.  It was then that I realized that the very first piece was in backwards, which was like a massive blow to my go-single-girl ego. However.  I am not the kind of girl who goes around letting bookshelves win, so I took it apart and rebuilt it in its entirety.  It was quite fulfilling, at the end of it.  Now I can look at it and say, biatch bookshelf, I own you.  I know all the sweat and tears that went into building you.  So there, I win.  Hold some books or something.

Photos, to commemorate this momentous feat:

 before (chaos!)

…And after (perfection!)

I seriously should be allowed at least one day like this a week.  

I’m feeling a little bit like a whore. I just thought I’d throw that out there.

J and I had dinner plans with some friends of ours in the city last night, which meant I missed my Catholic women’s group. Again. In fact, I haven’t gone since I last wrote about it here.  I sent a sad-style regret e-mail; sorry, can’t come, it’s restaurant week and I’m out with my heathen friends, see ya ’round.

Dinner ran long and I stayed with J, which in truth was the plan all along. That plan hit a sharp corner upon seeing uber-Catholic girl on the train this morning, however, while I was riding in precisely the opposite direction I should have been had I been coming from home.

There are lots of good answers to the question “why are you coming south this morning?” None of them include “because I stayed the night with J.” Let’s see … I had an early meeting. I got sidetracked and forgot to get off, so had to turn around. I moved. I got a new job. LOTS OF OPTIONS, magda. But no. In a moment of extreme caffeine deprived non-creativity, I just told her straight. Immediately I wished I was in the movies, and could just freeze the frame and say “or…not,” then do a re-take.

I got off at the next stop, after she told me she was “so, so sad” for me. Wrath, shock, and anger I would have been fine with. Pity, well, I’m not so sure.

About an hour later, she sent me an invite to come hear a speaker who (by cruel coincidence) is speaking oh-so-conveniently this next Monday. The talk? “The thrill of the chaste: finding fulfillment while keeping your clothes on!” Holy hell! I can’t go. I just can’t; I wouldn’t be able to take it.

When I think back on my conservative and well-churched upbringing, I’m a bit depressed looking at my life today, the choices I’ve made. (But as a brief parenthetical in my defense: I’ve always been completely monogamous. Always. And sex is not something I take lightly). My mom still thinks I’m a virgin; my sister and her husband both were when they got married. That’s how we were taught, what was presented as “right.” I think there’s a lot of validity to abstinence until “the one,” and I know plenty of people who really have felt it fulfilling to wait until marriage. I don’t condemn it, it just isn’t—and hasn’t been—for me. I don’t think that the way I live now is wrong, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t ever give me a moment’s pause.

This, my friends, is where “magda” was born. My real name? Not so much. But oh, so appropriate. Catholic school taught me well (in some things more than others, clearly, but moving on…) The biblical Magda—Mary Magdalene—was a whore. A bona fide prostitute, and she was great. Kind of a whore, but great. And Jesus loved her anyway.

Of course she changed after a time, and left her whoredom behind her; but she did it because she wanted to, because she found something better, because she felt she could—not because someone told her she had to. There really is a difference.

As magda I do my own thing; I write on unlined paper in spaces lacking definite parameters. I do it to chart myself, and to check myself; I look at where I’ve been, and decide if it’s where I want to keep going. If not? Then I’ll change, and it will be marvelous and well planned. So I may be a bit of Magdalene. I suspect, however, that everything is going to work out in the end.

New to me, new to you; all this since 9 a.m. 

I have pockets in my coat.  They aren’t actually pretend—the stitching is only temporary so dust doesn’t get in at the store, apparently.  I’ve had this particular coat for more than a year now, but just this day cut those stitches free.

It’s snowing outside.  Really, really hard.  My office has no windows, see, and my boss—despite being blessed with a fantastic corner office—keeps his blinds tightly drawn at all times.  Odd, surely. 

Writing a story about electronic contracts and cross-border trade is unbearably boring and invites numerous distractions.

Online French newspapers publish comics in French.  I don’t know why I never thought of that, and am seriously impressed with myself that I understood most of what was going on therein. 

One of my top-ten list ghetto-cheap wines was on sale when I bought a sandwich.  Two bottles are sitting in my desk.  I find this outrageously amusing. 

Drafting this list in the publishing template makes it look, to passers-by, like I’m actually doing work.  Which, I daresay, I should be.  Alas.

It’s hard to forget the first one. The first kiss; the first apartment; the first A+; the first day. The first friend.

True friends are a rare breed. They’re a sort of soulmates, people who know you and accept you and love you despite your flaws, who challenge you to overcome those flaws, and who serve as guides and companions in the thicket where we all find ourselves.

When I moved to DC a year ago, I initially stuck to group of college and law school acquaintances. These people, while not true friends, were familiar; they liked me and I liked them. We had a common background. With time, we’ve nurtured these seedling relationships into something stronger.

As much fun as we have, though, none of them are really close.  None are “best friend” material, in other words, as hoaky and 3rd-grade as that term looks written out.  I think I have about four “best friends” in my life—a “grew up with me” friend, a high school friend, a college friend, and a law school friend. All of them live impossibly far away, but we make it work. I don’t remember intending to narrow down a favorite in every category, and perhaps the limitation isn’t really fair; I do keep up with most people. These four, though–these four are something else.

I’ve been missing that sister-like female companionship out here. It seems odd, but in a lot of ways, post-academic friendships seem more to parallel dating than family except for, well, you know, the obvious.  Seriously, though—it seems us girls are almost scouting for new friendships, rather than just growing up with them.  We’re looking for new potentials, new opportunities; we’re looking for women to be close to who are maybe more in line with What We Do Now than Who We Were Then.  It’s a heck of a lot harder than it used to be, at least so far in my experience.

I’ll call my first DC friend FF. (First friend—oh so creative am I). She works in my company; I sat next to her at a training course. She was young. She had curly hair. She was friendly. Right there, beneath the fluorescent lights, we had an understanding; we glanced each other across the room, and we just knew. It was like friendship-love at first sight. We called, we e-mailed, we went to each others’ apartments and downed bottle after bottle of wine. I threw her a birthday party; we watched Grey’s Anatomy every week; we’d spend whole Saturdays walking the mall and taking ridiculously posed photos by the monuments. It was bliss. And then … and then it wasn’t, and I’m still not sue why.

We never did have a falling out, nor did we really disagree. It just kind of stopped working. Here again, the dating analogy: it was one of those “seemed nice for awhile, but not going to go the distance” type things. She was never going to be someone who I’d share enough with to really, really know. She was a companion—but not a real friend. We both realized it. It’s hard, even now, to delineate how that happened.

We came from similar backgrounds, and had—at least superficially—similar interests. We both really wanted it to work. In the end, though, what we had in common wasn’t enough. I didn’t stop liking her, but I realized that I’d never really love her. We just didn’t have it—past the initial fireworks, we were two pretty different girls. Just as fast as it flew together, it began unraveling. We both seemed to step back, watching in silence from our respective corners as the yarn became, once again, individuated strands.

Our wine dates fizzled into coffee breaks, then whittled down to e-mails. We’ve exchanged polite regrets to loosely veiled formality invites. I saw her in the elevator this afternoon; she was coming back from coffee, alone; I was returning from a late lunch. Alone. We smiled; we assured each other that we were fine, things were going well, yes, you too, have a great afternoon. Though we spend our days separated by but one floor, she could be in another country.

I’m still mourning this friendship, and I’m still confused by it.  I don’t know what there is to mend there, and I think we’ve each moved on—but still, I miss her. She was the first.

I’m also a little bit alarmed that we seem to be heading towards an elevator relationship, a la Meredith and Derek. Gaaah! I don’t even know what happened. As I tell my single friends, though—hang tight! The right ones are out there. Somewhere.

If I were to compose a list of my favorite places to just sit and think, I imagine it would go something like this, ordered only as places cross my mind:

• The Egypt room at the Met in New York
• The intimate upstairs of Caffe Vita in Seattle
• The sofa in the formal living room at my parents’ house
• The floor of my walk-in closet
• The caribou coffee overlooking the subway entrance at metro center
• The picture windows at Reagan National
• The room with Japanese screens in the Sackler Gallery 

I sat in the screen room over the weekend, part of my “you live on the metro, so get out there and see the city” campaign.  Japanese art conveys a delicate poignancy and taps, I think, a larger longing within me.  The woodblock paintings.  The brush strokes forming mountains, trees, steeply sloping roofs.  Koi.  Paper umbrellas and wood-block shoes.  I’m drawn in, and I don’t know why. 

Edo, the floating world.  Sometimes I’d like to float along; enjoy the beauty of the moment, but consciously detach.  Be a cherry blossom for a bit.  I look at the screens and I see something elusive, something defying capture.  I feel almost haunted, like I’m seeking something I’ll never find.  Art only does this to me when I have the luxury of being very still. 

But the floating world’s fate was pretty much sealed, right?  Edo burned, was transformed, became today’s Tokyo.

I lived for a time in Japan, on the southern island of Kyushu; under the auspices of “studying,” but I think we all know how that usually goes.  Where simplicity and tradition and formality meet cutting edge, high-tech, and English-world-style popularity there is an interesting people indeed.  There I was a floater: in one season, out the next, picking and choosing.   I didn’t find what I was looking for.  I went to Cathedrals and monasteries, saw shrines packed between high rises, spent  rolls and rolls of film documenting power lines crossing through ancient Shinto gates.  It’s like worlds colliding, like you can actually see it.  I look at these meticulously painted geishas, and I can’t help but feel I know their fate. Haunting, yes.  Also probably nonsensical, but there you are.   

Here is what I know about Lucille. 

She was born on a farm in Oklahoma smack in the middle of August, a birthday she would share with my mom some 40 years later.  Having spent many of my childhood August days in Oklahoma, I can imagine pretty well what it must have been like.  The ground would have been cracking in the heat, but there probably would have been a whisper of a breeze.  Just enough to creak some hinges, rustle some leaves, and tickle some of the grass fields. There wouldn’t have been any clouds, and the sun would seem to be pulsing in the sky.  The farm buildings would have had blurred edges, would have wavered in the distance: an illusion popular with heat rays the world over.

The furthest she went in school was the 8th grade.  I imagine her school to have been one of those all-grades-in-one-room situations.  This was Depression-era Henryetta, Oklahoma, after all.  I bet she was really smart. 

She was married after she graduated.  She was 14; her husband was 25.  This is where my ability to realistically imagine ceases; I have no place to start wondering what that must have been like.  I was still firmly a kid after 8th grade, running around in purple overalls and colored scrunchies. (My mom’s meticulously chronicled photo albums tragically capture the bad right alongside the really good, much to my well-vocalized chagrin). I hadn’t even gotten my period yet, and was certainly in no position to run a farmhouse.  She did it, though; I don’t know how she felt, whether she was happy, what she thought about as she tended the farm, the kitchen, the husband.  I don’t know if it’s what she wanted at all.

She had her first child when she was 15; a daughter.  Two more daughters came next in quick succession; no more children after that.  I wonder, actually, if his didn’t have something to do with having no sons.  On a farm, wouldn’t male labor be more prized?  I wonder if she was happy, or if she felt ashamed.  I wonder if her husband was a good dad; if he was around; if he raised those girls or if she did. 

I used to sit on her lap as a kid, and she crocheted dresses for my barbies. She made some of the kitchen towels in my apartment. She sent a Christmas card every year, something very religious and meaningful.

She was part Cherokee, I don’t know quite how much.  They say that blood is why I have such high cheekbones.

She was my great-grandma, and my dad went to her funeral today.  The sadness I feel is mostly this: I really didn’t know her at all.  

Dear Sucky Boss,

Don’t think I’m not onto you.  Your congenial, happy-go-lucky attitude is such a sham, and even if I’m the only one, I know that you do jack shit in the office. 

I hate that you’ve made me senior staff a year out of school without giving me any of the corresponding training or coaching.  It’s not fair to hold me up against veteran writers and tell me in front of the staff that I need to “kick it up a few notches.”  I did not apply for this position; you forced me into it.  And the kickbacks you received for coming in under budget? You know, for all those months you failed to hire anyone, then found a girl just out of law school, at the lowest paygrade, whose training falls largely on my desk?  Enjoy that money.  Or, better yet, put in a college savings plan.  You’ll need it, with all those bastard children running around.  Yup, I know all about them.  Know why?  I’m nice.  People talk to me.  People feel sorry for me, because I work for you.  I know all about how you knocked up a former editor, then left your wife and kids when your girlfriend got pregnant.

You treat me like shit.  I thank God every day that you are not my father.  My dad is my hero; he’s a role model of everything good and wonderful. 

I’m tired of working hard so that you can smile stupidly and get recognized.  You tell me to work harder, to do better, without demonstrating one iota of what that might possibly look like.  Count yourself lucky that I don’t follow your model, or our publication would be scrapped.  Would you still be calling my work “a low value stuff” if you knew what you’d be without it?

I’m not holding my breath that you’ll realize how valuable I really am.  You’ll be disappointed with me as long as I work for you.  You’ll be working there far longer than I will, however, which is strangely consoling.  I can’t WAIT for the day I can tell you I’m out.

Till then, I remain,

Your tired-of-being-walked-on employee.

P.S.  You shouldn’t leave the ringer on your iPhone on so loud when you’re out of the office for 3-hour lunches.  I’ve wanted to smash its shiny screen in so badly, but have resisted because the constant ringing reminds the whole floor that you suck and are out of the office, again.  Don’t be surprised, however, if the ringtone changes from your obnoxious daughter’s “Hey Dad, answer the phone!” To “Hey Jackass, GO FUCK YOURSELF.” Preferably also in her voice.

Coming home from the gym tonight, I walked down the hall and it smelled like dinner.  This is not uncommon: a lot of the neighbors I haven’t met seem to be fantastic cooks who can spare the time to whip up something gourmet and delicious while still mysteriously working long enough hours to afford this extortionist-style rent.

Tonight, though? Tonight the smell was coming from my apartment.  Mine.  And it was marvelous. 

My little sister, since she’s turned all domestic and gotten married, gave me a rice cooker for Christmas.  Really a pain to haul back from the West Coast, but truly tremendous because, turns out, the thing will cook dinner for you.

Pop in some rice, some chicken broth to cook it in, and some vegetables to steam and behold. Add a liberal pour of wine, and you’ve all you’ll need.  Not as good as being home, but hey; I take it where I can get it.  

When I heard a rap at my door this morning around 8a, I assumed it was the neighbors coming to tell me to please turn down that music.  I was working my espresso machine, but still wanted to rock out since my morning pilates class didn’t really do it on the energy boost front this morning: hence, loud music.  I’ve never actually met my neighbors, come to think of it, which is incredibly loner-ish of me.  It’s a quiet floor, though, what can I say.  I rarely see people out and about. 

Alas.  At the door I found one of the maintenance men.  He doesn’t speak English too well, but I’ve always been nice to him.  He knows my name; when I see him around, he says hi, gives me a hug which is a little weird but whatever, foreign little maintenance man, it’s totally harmless.

Anyway, he had a Christmas present for me.  He said he thought I’d moved out, I was gone for so long (two weeks, sheesh, but I have been doing a fair bit of staying over at J’s…).  I told him a present was unnecessary, but he was so sweet about it that I accepted.  He left, and I opened it.

Lingerie.  The pervy maintenance man gave me a set of lacy red thongs and a box of bath products from Victoria’s Secret’s “Seduction” line.  Oh. Holy. God!! I returned the same over my lunch hour for store credit, but seriously?

The bath stuff alone would have creeped me out, but the underwear is so crossing the line.  Completely inappropriate.  I can’t help but think, is this how I’m repaid for being nice, for being friendly? I hate that this is what I have to deal with just for being female in our society.  Can a girl not be moderately attractive without the insult of appearing all-but-naked in every passing man’s eye? Can she not be objectified, be classed as something to see rather than someone to know?  I have done nothing to let this individual think that I’m at all interested in him, or that I’m the kind of girl that would accept intimate gifts from a man not her boyfriend.  I seriously know him, um, not at all.  That he visualizes me in lacy red thongs is absolutely appalling. 

I could complain, but he’d probably get fired.  I don’t want that at all; I don’t want to get him in trouble because honestly, in my heart, I think he meant well.  I don’t really think he’s a true pervert; I just that his affections are somewhat misdirected.  In any event, I’m good a rationalizing and, some may say, martyring myself because, sigh, that’s just the way it is.  This is my dilemma: tell J, or don’t tell J?  J will be furious (hooray! A manly man who’ll defend my honor and be my protector!) but he’ll want to do something (and will probably fly off the handle at me for being so nice and accepting the gift and passively returning it, instead of confronting the guy or marching directly to management). Hmmm. Sometimes I worry that I’m too nice, like those girls you read about in the news—you know, the ones who have gotten themselves into horrible, horrible situations and you read their stories and are like, chuh, the warning signs were there, honey, what the hell were you thinking?  I definitely don’t want to be that girl. 

I’m sitting here in my apartment by myself, though, and I admit I’m getting a little bit paranoid.  Pervy maintenance man has keys that will let him into this apartment.  He knows where I live, and that I live alone.  I am locking my bedroom door from within from this night forward, and will possibly invest in a pick-ax.  Or maybe a lead pipe.  Magda, in the bedroom, with the lead pipe.  Muah hah ha.  In the meantime, though, I’m trekking to Arlingon to spend the night in my home-away-from-home where I will lie securely in the arms of the man I love. 

I don’t know quite how it is that I again find myself blogging near midnight when I’m dead tired, but absolutely itching to write something, anything, on this site I’m slowly growing to love.  I still don’t know what made me do it, register this space, but here I am, and I’m warming up to it.

I found this quote today that just made me feel all warm and happy, so I’ll share it (with proper accreditation, of course, as I respect copyright and all that.  Sometimes.  True.). 

“All humans are storytellers with their own unique point of view.  When we understand this, we no longer feel the need to impose our story on others or to defend what we believe.  Instead, we see all of us as artists with the right to create our own art.”

It’s from Don Miguel Ruiz’ The Four Agreements, but I actually got it out of my new day planner.

This is how hilarious my mom is: I tell her I want two calendars for Christmas, one that’s bound and I can carry in my work bag, and the other that is one of those ones where the pages pull off to sit on my desk at work.  She gives me a wall calendar.  “With pockets—so you won’t need the others!”  Sweet, mom, and I adore you for the thought.  But really, really, I live by my day planner. 

Of course, being practically mid-January now, all of the calendars at the bookstore are totally picked over.  Unless they’re student-oriented, they all involve cats and dogs, and while that’s nice, it’s just not me.  No domesticated animals, ok? I am definitely not a pet kind of girl.  I like dogs.  Just not in my house.  I actually love cats, but I’m allergic, so not in my house either. 

Which left me to the Four Agreements calendar.  I think this was fate laughing as it delivered a swift kick to my behind.  J has been pestering me to read “this really great book,” and I keep “conveniently” finding myself with another (fiction, pleasure-reading) novel in hand.   Seriously, he’s been raving about this for months, and I’ve been blowing it off as unneeded psycho-babble that I, being of course perfect in everything, needn’t bother considering (HA! Laughs, snorts, etc. emerge from the peanut gallery).

I accepted what I had coming and bought the calendar, and so far, I like it.  Correction: I get it.  Yes!  I’m an artist in my own life, and a storyteller!  I’m just here, saying it how it is for me, and trying not to judge those differently situated. 

Ruiz goes on: “How do you create a beautiful story? By being authentic.  When the main character is authentic. It is easy to write your story with integrity, with common sense, with love.”

Dang.  I hate it when J is just so right. 

Such is life, though, yes?  Here’s me, and I’m the star of my own story, which is unfolding here, across screens and in pixels that travel unknown paths across cables and through space, jumbled and convoluted only to be reunited with perfect order on arrival.  It’s a mystery.  It’s my mystery.  I’m falling in love with this space, with my thoughts, my story.

I’m going to buy this book, stat.  Stay tuned.   

My coworkers are counting down the hours till they get to leave—or, if they’re my boss, they’ve already left, who am I kidding—but I’m still in my pajamas with a big mug of tea, staring out comfortably into the picture windows, watching the delicately falling snow.  The vacation is well deserved, but the closer I get to reality’s impending return, the more depressed I feel.  Today is Thursday.  I leave here on Saturday, and it’s back to the ho-hum, lonely existence of everyday working on Monday.  It makes me feel a bit sick, really. 

I wish I could cover my life with the snow, rain down whiteness on my struggles and imperfections.  Rocks and brambles are the peaks and valleys of a temporal, perfect landscape. The trees that in the spring looked scraggly and perhaps not quite complete are, blanketed in their winter niceties, pillars of nobility.

But even here, the snow will melt; the sun will again scorch the landscape, and the river will bubble once more.  This idyll will not last, but it will come again. 

There’s something really tempting about the snow, but it’s kind of like a mondo-sized chocolate cheesecake.  It’s great to eat two, even three days in a row.  But after that? After that, you’ve just got to move on.  Enjoy it while it’s here, but be ready to go back to normal. Normal sometimes sucks.  It’s bran cereal and whole-grain bread and plenty of raw vegetables.  But you do it for the cheesecake days, which can’t last forever—but they sure deserve to be enjoyed. 

I tried to break up with J last night.  In fact, I told him we were over, that my resolution was to have no boyfriend, that I was fantastically unhappy and needed out.  Not entirely true.

It was the culmination of several bad months, and while I know I shouldn’t have let it get so out of hand, in a lot of ways I think it was necessary.  I won’t get into the specifics, as they require more back knowledge than these pithy writings and entries provide. It was mostly about our differences, and how I’ve been reading them as larger signs of Why We Won’t Work.  I’m intuiting flashing neon arrows and warning signs when maybe all I should see is Slow: Curve, or Roads Slippery When Wet.  It was about our mentalities: he’s success-driven, and I’m not.  Our families: mine’s close-knit and very Christian, and his is hard-nosed and quasi-Jewish.  Our careers: I’m happy to have a job that’s stable and constant, and he’s all over the board.  Example1. When we met, J was a bigtime attorney in a bigtime firm, with insane hours but a routine.  I appreciate routine.  He left that job after a year though, which made sense because, um, it was miserable.  Even for me.  He’s dissatisfied again, however, and is thinking now—and seriously pursuing—wildly varied ideas involving business and the outdoors and global marketing.  His training?  Not really in any of these disciplines.

On its face, it’s easy for me to pin my fears on this uncertainty, but that isn’t really fair.  In truth, I’m scared that we’ve come all this way and he doesn’t even know me.  The way we relate is dissimilar, and being abstracted from our home environment makes even the smallest specks seem life-threatening. I feel a lot like he’s stepped into the role of parent, correcting me and challenging me.  He’s been challenging me a lot, come to think of it, since we started dating.  Challenge is good.  But I’m tired of feeling like I have to live up to expectation in order to be loved.  I think this may be all in my mind.  Still, though, I—like most anyone, I imagine—do not like feeling this way.

He’s sitting next to me now at the kitchen table of my parents’ house, high up in the mountains where our DC life is ages, and hours, away.  I am happy.  But I’m scared.  It’s getting to the point where people are asking me when we’re going to “make it official.”  An alarming number of people asked me if I thought a ring would come over new years.  Maybe this was just my way of making sure it wouldn’t.  Hi, I’m magda, and self-sabotage is my middle name.

I didn’t mean to tell him it was over, and thankfully he wasn’t too keen to let it stick. We spent about an hour in the sauna hashing it out, which—for the record—is not advisable.  I’m going to be drinking gatorade for about a week.  We revisited it this morning, and again after skiing this afternoon, and I think we’re in a better place now.  I have been unhappy, that much is true. It isn’t all his fault, though.  And I think we’re going to make it work.  I ate my back-eyed peas and pulled a wishbone anyway; keep your fingers crossed for good measure, though, okay? 

She smiles when, every afternoon, she laces up her toeshoes.  She’ll tell anyone how much she loves it. I think about it all the time, she says; I’d live in the studio if I could!

Her face can lie, but her heart can’t.  The mirror is her lover, but her nemesis.  It magnifies every flaw.  How her bun doesn’t quite lie flat; they way her plie isn’t quite as deep; the arch in her leg that is just this much shy of conformation.  She becomes a creature of self-loathing.  It’s an addiction, this idea of perfection; there’s a formula, and the longer she stands in critique, the harder it will be for her to accept the reflection.

She’ll spend five years and three Christmas breaks chasing perfection, and hurting herself along the way.  Rehearsals early in the morning till late at night while her friends are out skating, out skiing, out shopping.  “I have a goal,” she’ll say; “I have a calling. They’ll see.”  The friends will eventually tire of watching her as a court dancer, as sugarplum fairy; they won’t understand her exuberation at being second understudy for Clara. The invitations to come over, to hang out, to sleep over will slowly peter out.  She won’t notice, not at first.

The love of a few will eventually pull her out, change her views, and put meat back on her skeletal ballerina’s frame.

There are dark chapters in each of our lives.  Mine begins like this. Every Christmas, when we go en masse to the Nutcracker, it closes when I realize all that I have, all that I am, and all that I have become.  To all the other Clara hopefuls out there, past or present, hang tight.