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Saturday, July 13, 2002
quote
"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." -- Joseph Campbell
23:59
impulses
I'm not exactly sure where the impulse to guilt-trip came from. Maybe straight from Italy. But being around my family for a week showed me how we've perfected The Guilt Trip, over the years, into an art form. My parents started it. Didn't do your laundry? "I told you to do the laundry, I can't believe you didn't remember." ... Didn't call your grandmother? "Aww. She misses you, she needs you." My sisters and I took it one step further. We made it more subtle, more refined. Borrowed the car when someone else already said they needed it? Get ready for a sonata of expressions, sighs, deep breaths. The tone of voice is disappointed, meek. "I told you that I needed it." That's all fairly acceptable, of course, when dealing with fellow Guilt Trippers. But what scares me is when I find myself employing The Guilt Trip on unsuspecting friends. Without even realizing what I'm doing, I go for The Guilt Trip in a clutch. Sometimes it works. But my closest friends are on to me. And there's nothing worse than a Failed Guilt Trip. Because then you feel guilty for trying it.
23:52
Friday, July 12, 2002
moving-in story
My desk is old, cheap and ugly. My family bought it for our first PC, when I was 8. It's the plywood kind, assembled only with wood glue and covered in oak-look paper. Last fall, my dad and I hauled it out of the basement and moved it to my new apartment in Evanston. "Throw it out at the end of the year," he told me. At the end of the year, I couldn't decide whether I should toss it. But it fit just fine in Eliina's big truck, so I kept it, for no real reason. Maybe just so I didn't have to leave one more familiar thing behind. And at home, when I unloaded the desk from the truck, my dad looked at me sideways. "Weren't you going to throw that thing out?"
My dad has always waged a war against excessive possessions. It may be because he's living in a house full of women who like to accumulate junk. But when it comes time to clean, his mantra is "just throw it out." Garbage day is a big day for him. "Tomorrow's garbage day!" he announces happily, as though we've all been waiting for this day to clear out our secret stash of trash. When it was time to move to Emmaus for the summer, I wanted to take the desk with me. Mostly because I didn't have any other furniture. My dad wanted nothing more than to leave it at home. Debate ensued. I won.
But when we arrived in Emmaus, my dad pulled it out of the truck to find that one side of it had broken off. It's constructed with a top and two sides instead of four legs, so the side is crucial to the whole standing-up thing. This is it, I thought. The desk's day had come. But suddenly my dad turned into Mr. Optimism. "I can fix it!" he said, sizing it up. I was skeptical. He hadn't fixed anything at all in approximately 15 years. But he moved the desk up to my empty bedroom single-handedly, even though everyone told him to put it down. Then he found my toolkit and looked at the broken desk like a painter eyeing a blank canvas. I held the desk propped on the broken side while he tapped a screw into place and then drove it in with much difficulty, still sweating like crazy from moving it up there, hoping to hit a spot that would join the two pieces together. It worked. Choirs sang "halleluia" somewhere in the distance.
One more screw would hold the side in place sturdily. This time, he tried and failed three times before hitting purchase on the other side. Finally it held. "That'll hold it for a long time," he said, eyes lit up. "That's more stable than it ever was before." The desk looked more rickety than ever to me, but I didn't argue. "It'll probably even last another move," he said.
08:22
Thursday, July 11, 2002
update
So, it's been a while since I've said anything here. But I'm doing stuff. I'm working at organicgardening.com and organicstyle.com for the summer in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. It's a little town that reminds me a lot of my hometown, part rural and part suburban, with some sections that burst with character and some sections that could have been lifted from any town in the U.S. I'm living in the generic chain-store neighborhood, about five minutes away from falling-apart places with names like Chuck's Furniture Repair. I'm writing stuff for this site in my head every day, but unfortunately haven't been posting it. Next week I'll be used to this work schedule thing, and I'll be back on track.
18:10
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
update
I'm sitting in an office in Pennsylvania. A freight train passes by now and then, with the whistle blowing. I didn't know freight trains still ran every day, much less blew their whistles like in old Disney cartoons. I'm working in a small building with rose-colored walls and a library full of books on gardening. Right outside my window, a huge, old tree waves its branches at me. I've spent the day battling a fly which will not go away. I don't want to kill it, so I've been trying to guide it out by turning all the lights in my office off and hoping it will flee for the hallway. No such luck. It's rattling around behind the blinds on my window, stopping now and then to circle my head confusedly.
13:19
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