vacanza

I'm not always great at giving myself a break (my last post a case in point). But right now I am deeply thrilled. C and I leave this weekend for our first real vacation together. Costa Rica has been high on the Must Visit list for ages. I am so excited. I just can't hide it.

meditate

These days it's crucial that I listen, pause, and then take my next step. And meditate. Oh yes.

Knowing that I am afraid of change, of feeling out of control, of spinning down a tight tunnel of tension and anxiety - is not enough. I have to take action to redirect myself. I have to calm down. I can. Even with my mind screaming at me that I am a failure.

Yesterday, I took an online accounting assessment for school. When I hit "Grade," the computer gurgled for a moment and then reported back: I'm sorry, but you failed.

Which, at the time, I read to mean: You are a failure. You can't do anything right. You aren't smart enough. You're going to screw everything up.

Where do these thoughts come from? Looking over my life, I find no evidence to suggest the fruition of any such prophecy. So it can't be logic that hammers away at me at 6:30 in the morning, as I lie awake wide-eyed like a nervous guppy.

Kristin broke it down. You are being a bitch to yourself. Be sweet to you like you are to me.

This is a good idea.

Congratulations

I just got off the phone with Leah the Linksys Lady. I always feel a little sick when I call tech people. It's the sensation of impotency that comes with needing something from a world that seems almost extraterrestrial - and thus needing someone else to go in and get it for you.

Forking over my credit card details so that some unknown entity could remotely access my computer was intense. But the Linksys Lady solved my issues, and as I watched her click around on my laptop and type codes with lots of periods into fields that I didn't even know existed (let alone what the eff they mean) - I watched my investment pay off.

When my Google page appeared - to replace that most odious of pages: "You are not connected to the Internet" - I exclaimed, It's up! It's up! and Leah said, Congratulations. And I really did feel like a new mother.

At least for this little Late Adopter, high tech is as mysterious as the birds and the bees.

swap

I am a huge fan of what my friend Dan calls PTOT or Put This Over There "if you're not into the whole brevity thing." (Name the film this quote comes from.) PTOT means when you have something you don't need anymore, and someone else needs or wants it, you find them and give it to them. It's the highest order of recycling. Trade it, swap it, hand it over. No mess, no fuss; just joy, and mindfully reallocated resources.

Bottom line: I made out like a bandit at Celia's clothing swap last night. I have a fierce new wardrobe, for which I paid $0.00. Whoever said there's no such thing as a free lunch wasn't very creative.

MLK

Friday morning was the start of the MLK Summer Scholars, a program funded by The Boston Globe and John Hancock that coaches under-privileged youth in interviewing, writing, money, and other business skills. As a volunteer mentor, I sat at a table with my 9 students amongst 650 kids from all over Boston.

Students talked about what MLK stood for and the most pressing problems facing teens today. "Indifference is more dangerous than ignorance," one boy shared. "Indifference is more dangerous than anything."

I thought about this while reading Krugman's Boiling the Frog. Excuses, indifference, and the status quo are killing our economy and the environment.

I am so over the "old folks" looking to the young ones to get out there and redirect the great lumbering behemoth of human progress. I am so over everyone (including me) staring at Obama on the TV and hoping he fixes it soon.

We are not victims. Obama said as much when he started the United We Serve Challenge, which is going on right now, by the way.

For those in the Boston area, I urge you to check out Boston Cares (I've been a member since 2007). The amount of service you do is flexible, and you can sign up for projects last minute. Becoming a member takes about 45 minutes of your time while you attend a new volunteer orientation session.

If you're unemployed, as many of us are, this is an enlivening and inspired way to spend your free time. Volunteering creates connection and a sense of purpose, a nice reprieve from the vast sea of mass media terror and paralysis.

Start somewhere. "It won't make a difference" is a lie.

MLK's inspiration M.K. Gandhi said it best: You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.

Erika

As I stepped through the door last night armed with 2 bottles of wine and some parmigiano reggiano from Wisconsin (Italian immigration is never letting me through again), Erika greeting me with her usual squeak and squeeze. She was sporting a tight black tank top with an image of three sequined cocktail glasses and the caption: Group Therapy.

She immediately advised me that there were 2 Romanian seamen in her back yard. Knowing Erika, of course there were.

Erika likes Show (not Tell) so I was presented to the two strapping, twenty-something Romanian lads lounging on the back patio. One had just sailed across the Atlantic in a Tall Ship. The other is a first-year graduate at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Justin, Jess, and Jeremy (yes, three J's; no, they haven't had t-shirts made) arrived and were duly presented. Waker finished cooking, dinner and wine were ingested, and Essential Romanian was practiced (don't ask about course content).

Then, before they hit the deck as it were, Erika gave them ice pops. You know, those retro treats that look like giant toothpaste tubes of Drano. The fact that she even had them on hand - and that it was important to her to offer them to the Romanians - is just an example of her charm. Erika is the great unifier. Adopter of the universe. Mama to all. Cheerful Shakti. World traveled multiculturalist I-will-not-be-shhhh'd! trail blazing minx.

Doru tried to pull rank at the table and command Marius to eat his scary-looking ice pop.

I said: Don't listen to him. He is not the commanding officer here. Erika is...

To which Waker replied: Erika isn't the commanding officer; Erika is God.

In her world, she sure is. Don't mess.

apple

The moment I can't get out of my head is of the chirpy student in yesterday's language class - the one who worked so hard to say Friday. At the break she came up to me and the full-time teacher and said Teacher, teacher! and held out a perfect apple. She mimed a saw; we should cut it in half to share. The teacher didn't want to take it and politely repeated no thank you. But she kept trying to give it to us, so I put out both hands and accepted.

I'm eating the apple now and it feels like something holy. Because someone who has next to nothing - who had her roots pulled out and was roughly transplanted in foreign soil with strange f-sounds and endless paperwork - somewhere, she learned that you should bring an apple to the teacher. So she did.

These are the kinds of moments that knock me over.

service

This morning I biked through the rain to downtown Boston. As I smashed through puddles and trucks surged past me I thought, Why am I doing this? It's disgusting out here, and now my butt is soaked. I don't have to do this.

No, I didn't. It's true. But I showed up (with a soggy ass) to tutor refugees in vocational English.

Pretty much on arrival I was left to my own devices with a basic literacy group of 8. I have next to no teaching experience, but the teacher who threw me in said "this is trial by fire."

So we hammered through the days of the week. One initially silent woman lit up when she got the hang of the word Friday. She chirped with joy: FRY DAY. FRY DAY. Another woman covered her face and wept.

Then we pulled out the calendar, and I pointed to squares while the class chorused the day of the week, month, and numerical date for each square. The weeping woman uncovered her face and chimed in. The shy ones mouthed along.

During the last hour, I sat with a woman who spoke and read English well. She was practicing for job interviews. When I asked, Please tell me about your work experience, she took off her glasses, bravely held my eye, and explained that she had been a gynecologist in Afghanistan for 17 years. But she believed that she had the skills to be a good cashier. As she listed her skills and an applied example of each, my heart broke a little.

But a cracked heart is a good thing. It lets more light in. And suddenly something as trivial as a soggy ass doesn't matter a bit.

food

In Italy, food is love. If you love someone, you feed them. So it follows that all these Italians loving up on each other at dinner parties are probably not dishing growth-hormoned, Eboli-infested, faux-organic, battery-caged crap. Italy never went there with food because that's not love. That's poison.

Unfortunately, America went there. And after three months in Italy, my relationship with American food is strained at best. I constantly ask, "Where did this food come from?" and rarely trust the answer. (The Italians look at me like I'm asking where babies come from.)

What I love about America is our wide-eyed, dog-eared optimism. Woven into our national fabric are stories of the Little Guy demanding a better world. It's the "Dagnabit! Let's get out there and do something about this" approach. Today's Times Magazine story Street Farmer is an inspiring example.

Last night, 6 of us prepared a feast and ate it in Kristin's back garden. I made bruschetta and a quinoa with peppers, cilantro, and soy croutons. Kristin made bluefish and salmon filets and a bountiful salad of arugula, avocado, tomatoes and red onions. Ian made homestyle mojitos with fresh mint. Catherine made a knock-your-socks-off salad of watermelon, feta, onions, parsley and olives. Chris and John grilled chicken sausage topped with yellow peppers and onions.

Cooking and sharing food together. Simple. Tribal. True.

Sun

If I could cross stitch, I'd sew a wall doily that reads:

Today was a tough one. I get it.

But take a deep breath

And remember,

Tomorrow you'll feel different.

The sun might even come up.

Thank You to the sun today. And Happy Fourth.

Tribe

A striking Trinidadian girl who works at Cambridge Savings Bank misses her family. "You know," she told me, "I'm just tired. Everything was fresh and exciting when I first got here. But now I want things that I never really noticed when I had them. Like my sister cooking me dinner. Or my mom doing my laundry."

"I get it," I said. "You want to be with your tribe."

I'm a revivified native species. After 6 1/2 years in Oz, I'm happily kicking cow patties in Kansas. Life in San Francisco could be chaos or merriment, but I never sensed the ground under my feet. My social network might spurn me at any second - or I might get tired of them. What was our bond made of? Often, of silly string.

This past weekend my extended family - uncles, aunts, cousins, cuz-nieces, cuz-nephew - the whole kit and caboodle - we had ourselves a family meeting. And it wasn't simple or entirely pleasant. But I found myself thinking: Okay, this might get ugly -- oops, there it just did -- but these people cannot kick each other out of the party. Or un-friend on Facebook. Or send-straight-to-voicemail and hope the other guy takes the hint... This is a FAMILY. We're stuck with each other.

I love that.

In the age of 10-minute marriages and high-speed internet break-ups and blocked profiles and websites for ranting about your crappy ex-FWB, people you cannot shake off are a sober blessing. We are so far from the thatched village compound and the shamans and the whole primordial thang (and I'm not saying I want to go back, mind you)... But tribe is still crucial.

Sure, you need both for healthy development. Like rotating the plant so it doesn't bend over trying to reach the light source. But there's no place like home.

Plenty

Today I am in the experience of plenty. Plenty of time, plenty of space, plenty of cleaning products, plenty of money, plenty of love - plenty of rain! (The rain ceased for precisely one hour so that I could go run around the reservoir. Thank you!) It's certainly a nice place to be. The state will pass I'm sure, but since I was in it today, I can create it again.

Rain

I don't feel like doing my accounting homework right now and Kristin said "always write." So here I am. The year is 2009 and I'm starting my first blog. I am truly a slow processor. Late adopter. Rubber stopper.

It's wet out there, man. Erno said the jetstream stalled and that's why it rained the entire month of June. What if it doesn't start up again?!? It's not like we can take it to the shop.

Would make it easier to move to Italy. I got back a week ago - from 90-degree sun and tomatoes that would make you cry. Now I'm wet and cold and everything tastes like nothing.

I'm on a strict new diet: Italian cinema only. Listening - even to rumbly mumbly Roman - helps me hold on to la lingua madre. Started with the Master. La Strada is beautifully dark in that broken soul kind of way. His bride Giulietta Masina was a vision.

An old friend from San Francisco just invited me to the Dutch Antilles at the end of this month. No, it's not a scandal; it's a group vacation proposition. He got laid off and wants to travel. Bless his heart. (Meanwhile I'm rooting through loose change debating whether it's wise to order take-out tonight.)

Bizarrely, his proposed dates of travel match the time that Mr. C wants to go on vacation. I would love to see Michael again. Plus he worked at Geo and has a few tricks up his sleeve to keep airfare and lodging costs down. Bonaire is famous for diving and for not being a tropical vacation hell hole. Maybe Mr. C will go for it?