Mardi Gras, anyway

So, having finally managed to eat a meal at Local Harvest Cafe on Morgan Ford, I'm feeling a bit community-fuzzy.  In a good way, of course.  Valentine's Day, before noon, and the place was packed.  I turned to Mike and said, "so this is where all the young folks are hiding."  The clientele was all roughly our age and persuasion: 20-somethings, neatly yet indy-pendently dressed, some bearded, some bespectacled, lots of colorful scarves.  Conversations about Mardi Gras madness (avoiding it), and organic foods (seeking it out).  The tables were so densely packed that it was difficult not to join the conversations of diners sitting beside you.  So we did; join. 

 

"Did you do Mardi Gras?"
"I've never gone."
"I don't want to break the streak."

Even a well-timed, intelligent nod was welcomed.  The type of people I want to know; and in the continuing theatre of life, I know characters much like them on my own stage.  Somehow, I keep thinking, I have to make my way into this community.

Anyway, the menu was just as inviting.  The short brunch list included the meals Mike and I ordered: homemade veggie burger, and stuffed French toast.  The burger, I keep saying, was the best I've ever had.  A mash of black beans, and a soft vegetable cake, homemade mayo, lettuce: the works.  Savory, chewy, nourishing.  Mike's French toast made of local handcrafted brown bread layered with cream cheese, chopped nuts, and soaked in maple syrup.  The menu consisted of locally smoked meats, organic and locally grown vegetables, free range eggs and grass-fed dairy.  The walls, just as crowded with literature as the floor with diners.  What's local?  What's organic?  Who do we source from?

More on the Saint Louis locavore movement to come.
Free Blog Counter

Olympic Musing

The Olympics started on Friday night.  We weren't home for the opening ceremonies, but have watched parts of many of the competitions since then.  Mike has said that his mom loves the Olympics because of the special-interest stories; where he or she is from, what adversity, what opportunity has gotten him or her to this place in the nick of time.  The way I was raised, these stories were always scorned as competitive melodrama, but it's nice to think of them positively.

More later.
Free Blog Counter

There's something about education reform, about educational value systems, and lopsided and impersonal education that preoccupies me and that I want to investigate. Do personal tutoring and homeschooling create more well-rounded pupils, more well-rounded citizens and compassionate characters? Can we create systems that equally value all ways of learning, all personal interests and still fully educate students in all subjects? Can we encourage kids, boys AND girls, to have the confidence and the knowledge-base to purse what futures they will?

Why, if I want to go into business, can't I? Why does a test stop me Why aren't there viable alternatives or affordable methods to pursue traditional means?

Perhaps this test, this math score, tells me that I wold struggle, maybe needlessly in their eyes, at business school. Accounting might just stump me completely. This test tells me that those educators won't want to waste their time on someone like me, with a compassionate yet mathematically illogical mind. I must, therefore, seek alternative routes to my future. A future that involves collaboration as well as innovation, compassion as well as logic, and revolution as well as standard practices.

I'm heartbroken that my attempt at traditional methods was not wholly successful. And I'm trying to remind myself that, in view of all of the above, I am not stupid.

Free Blog Counter

...is back at it again

I'm flirting with Tropic of Cancer right now, and want to be a beautiful writer again. This life of the bohemian, the hobo literature - I want the bravery to strike out with a pocketful of coins and a packed bag full of underwear and blank notebooks.

Henry Miller does successfully what I think Jack Kerouac attempted and failed - at least in capturing my attention - to exploit the beauty of stream of consciousness writing.

It's helpful, I think, that I've read Anais Nin before Henry Miller. Nin has softened my opinion of Miller's bravado. Kerouac always seemed like a chauvenist, but perhaps it was a literary pose, and he was as delicate as Miller.

Free Blog Counter

Now What?

I haven't been writing lately, on- or off-line. I've had a lot of trouble concentrating, really. When I try to lay down my thoughts, I'm daunted by a sense of, well, trite-ness. All I manage to write about lately are accounts of various events, and even those remain half-finished. I've considered a daily blog or journal entry, to keep some creative juices flowing, but feel unmotivated or unworthy or something. Life is so much more than I have time to devote writing about.

Which isn't to say that I'm not enjoying life. Far from it. I've been in a whirlwind life in the last few weeks. I'm working full time (well, I'm AT work full-time, that doesn't quite mean I'm busy full-time... this is why I'm frustrated and ready to go back to school). I've registered for two courses at UWM (Business Math and Entrepreneurship; thrilled and horrified at the idea of entering Academia again). My parents have promised to pay for my ticket to visit Austin and UT-Austin in March, so I've got a vacation looming on my spring horizons. And I've started a relationship with the most intelligent and mature boy I've dated yet.

All of this terrified me at first. I spent a few weeks gripping the moorings like a drunken sailor, panicking and thinking this wasn't the life I prepared for. A music major somehow became a film student who is now preparing for business school. Music and food and race and writing, and it's scary putting aside daydreams but not losing them? Or making them into viable options somehow requires doing tedious things? Do what you have to do in order to do what you want to do.

So, I don't know. We'll see what the upcoming days will bring.

Best of 2008: Films

My eyes are a bit bleary this morning; deep dark circles make me look ill, I think. I slept on the couch - the house was empty, and I'd told Z to stay at home so that I could sleep in peace. And so I pulled my comforter off of my bed, threw all the sofa pillows on the floor, and curled into a tight ball, squashed by the eager advances of the dog. He loves to sleep under the covers too, you see.

I woke up once, stretched out and sweating, and I remember dreaming but I don't remember what. The night before, drawn low by medication withdrawal, I dreamt wretched dreams, awakened by Z's Arabic somniloquy. I sleep badly regardless. Always tired, never resting, always on the go...

I'm writing because we're about to ring in the new year. Nothing momentous about 2009 - we have survived snow and floods and biblical disasters, and here comes 2009. Nothing special, only that I will be 25 and Barack Obama will be our next president.

I'm writing because everyone else seems to be. Compiling "Best of 2008" lists, assessing the year behind us, making New Year's Resolutions, and I feel I must include my own opinions. Before midnight, I want some contemplation of my own. Now seems the time to address what we are thankful for, what we have endured and triumphed over, and not on the misguided and manufactured patriotism of Thanksgiving day.

I'll start with a best of 2008 movies. I think that's the easiest to compile.

I always feel like I never see as many movies as I'd like, but it's surprising how many I can list. Of movies that were released in 2008:

• Be Kind, Rewind
• Penelope
• The Visitor
• Iron Man
• The Fall
• Wall-E
• The Dark Knight
• Tropic Thunder
• Burn After Reading
• Synecdoche, NY
• Milk
• The Spirit

I used to keep a movie journal, in which I listed each movie I watched, cast and crew credits, and list of questions and details that eventually grew too long to maintain. Well, a brief description of each film follows, since the details of my movie journal are too grandiose for now.

Be Kind, Rewind I just watched last week, over the Christmas holiday. I rented it, and watched it at home on my sister's small TV. I think many movies lose their magic when not seen on the big screen, and this may have been one of them. Michel Gondry blew me away with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and chamed me with Science of Sleep, but Be Kind Rewind felt unfinished or unexpectedly ordinary. I do love Mos Def, though, and Melonie Diaz.

I saw Penelope in the theater, and adored it, in spite of its obvious use of scrims to hide the copious make up used for Christina Ricci's snout. I loved the costumes, and exited the theater feeling hopeful, in spite of myself.

I watched The Visitor at home. I had high hopes for the film, having enjoyed Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent a great deal. I expected the same quiet ease in humor, but received an awkward representation of illegal immigration.

Iron Man, well, I wanted to see it in the theater but never did. So Dad bought it to watch with Melanie and me. Melanie watched it one lazy afternoon, and then I watched it, leaving Dad with an unwatched DVD. I didn't like it much. I thought Terrance Howard's character simple, and the requisite evil middle eastern terrorists boring. I may have enjoyed it in the theater, or at least Robert Downey Jr's well-sculpted body and gleeful performance, but not much else.

Oh man, The Fall. The Fall grabbed me by the hair and shook me until rendered drunk. This is one of those movies that I loved so dearly that I feel like a dufus trying to describe why. I have never seen Tarsem Singh's The Cell, although I've heard surprisingly good things about the serial killer film starring Jennifer Lopez. I knew nothing of what The Fall promised to be, I only followed the excited advice of a friend, attended the movie with a crowd of friends, and stood dumbfounded outside the theater when it was over. A gleeful experiement in dream location shooting, storytelling, and historical drama, I wondered at first if the film was self-indulgent, but quickly came to the conclusion of "to hell with self-indulgent: the film is gorgeous!"

Wall-E was cute.

The Dark Knight felt somewhat protracted. I thought Heath Ledger was pretty awesome, but I like Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne far more than his Batman. Aaron Eckhardt grew on my because of his performance as Two Face, which felt all too short. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as much as I love her, is not much for playing damsels in distress.

Tropic Thunder was so stupid it made me mad.

I was a little worried about Burn After Reading. I had heard from others that it fell short of the Coen Brothers' mark, but I enjoyed it. I still quote Brad Pitt's "sensative shit" and am almost enamored of Tilda Swinton's harsh, androgynous beauty. John Malkovich still gives me the heebie jeebies though, which is probably his point.

I liked Synecdoche, NY; Charlie Kaufman is an innovative writer. But I probably won't remember much about it. Perhaps it was too complex for me.

Milk reinforced a burgeoning respect for Sean Penn and left me debating the relative qualities of Emile Hirsch (in Milk) and Shia LeBeouf (not in Milk, but in other films I've seen recently). Milk was successfully understated for a biopic.

The Spirit has left me (embarrassingly) eager to learn all about comic books. (Not helped by the fact that I'm currently reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.) A movie I thought I'd hate because of the archetypal characters, but was easily convinced otherwise.

How exactly do I make a best of list? How do I make it anything more than a list of items that hit me at the right time, right place, mood and situation? I could compare my choices to those of otheres, but reading the criticisms of other people makes me mad because their choices are often as arbitrary as my own, and so many people present their favorite things as legitimate in spite of biases and subjectivity. Anyway, my Best of Films in 2008 are as follows: Penelope, The Fall, Milk. In no particular order, of course. Just a short list of films that affected me positively.

Nevertheless

So I've taken my first steps. Towards life, I suppose.

Last week, in utter frustration with my goals and decisions, I scratched out an application to the UWM graduate school non-degree program in business so I can take some classes for credit (mainly as refresher courses in math, since the last math class I took was affectionately called "Math Stupids".) I'm waiting to hear back about whether I'm officially accepted, I've requested a transcript from Hampshire, and I've picked out the courses I want. Business Math and an Entrepreneurship class, if I can take them.

What I've really been struggling with lately is this idea of a career and the image of myself as a working woman. It's very strange to go from the unfocused person that I was to making decisions that will affect my life in the long run; to go from puzzled Hampsire hippie to a girl in high heels and a button down shirt, and business school aspirations.

I try and remind myself that entrepreneurship is something very different from corporate business and there will certainly be awesome, inspiring and innovative people in whatever department and school I choose.

Nevertheless, it's weird.

Tremendous Potential

I've been feeling a strange mixture of disappointment and anger lately. I've felt that so many people simply won't step up and claim responsibility, for each other, for our actions, for the future. And the hardest part is realizing my own complicity in this process.

This is why I've always railed against the concept of "deserve." For example, I have angrily been repeating to myself "I deserve honest, I deserve for you to contact me, I deserve to know or set my own fate," while at the same time shying away from giving honest, contact and peace of mind to others. If one person deserves, everyone deserves. If everyone deserves, no one deserves more than others. Is that a flawed belief?

This confusion, then, this disappointment has lit an angry fire in my breast, one that screams for justice, for honest, for goodwill.

Ever since Obama was elected, I have wanted to pursue my ideal life. Like Lori said at My American Melting Pot, "I'm using Obama's amazing journey to become the 44th president of the United States to inspire me to make my dreams come true."

And as John said at A Life Worth Living Ideally, "I guess in the end the moral is to do what you love no matter what and the byproduct will allow us to be the sunshine in all the lives of others that we touch."

There are plans brewing inside me, plans I'm afraid to voice, because I've always felt that a voiced wish becomes vulnerable, but I think it's time to get started. Somehow. And like so many people have said, harnessing anger and disappointment can be the perfect way to start living the ideal life, whether it's ideal for your alone or ideal for everyone, something right will feed the positive energy in the world. Even if fueled by anger.

"Whatever it takes to get me to do the right thing at the right time is fine by me, whether that is anger or whatever. Anger can be a problem but it has tremendous potential too. It's just figuring out what to do with it." Sean Penn

Looking Forward (eventually)

I know I should be thinking about Barack's election realistically - he isn't our savior and we have so far to go - but let me just be the silly 24 year old that I am and celebrate in irrepressible glee for a few days (might I say gloat?), and then we can get down to the business at hand.

November 4, 2008

Oh. My. God.

An Empty Belly is the Best Cook

On the blog My American Melting Pot, Lori asks the question "what is white American eating," and I thought I'd respond.

I've thought about American cuisine a lot lately - national cuisine, micro-culture cuisines - and I've been doing something like a comparative culinary "study" of my heritage, and what differences I've noticed are pretty stark: not in the cuisine itself, but in the culture that grows up around it.

One important different, I think, in the culinary cultures of black American and white America is the pride. Every relative on my Southern, black creole side is damn proud of their food. In spite of the claims that black food developed from rejected scraps from the slave owner's table, black American food seems to be a source of pride, and a binding cultural fact. Culinary anthropologist and southern cooking denizen Vertamae Grosvenor has expressed a desire to demolish the myth that African American cuisine arose out of lack, but was instead built out of a rich culinary history and a great deal of creativity. Just look at the common ingredients throughout the African Diaspora: okra, cassava, chilies, yams, beans, etc. You can't tell me that's spontaneous and created from scraps only. Hell, you could argue that what we know as Southern food is built on these African offerings. But that is a topic for later.

When you begin exploring white American cuisine, you start meeting with, well, shame. One of the staples of my family's Thanksgiving spread remains to this day green bean casserole. This goofy dish is by all accounts wholly unnatural: canned green beans, canned mushroom soup, canned fried onion. I don't think there is one fresh ingredient throughout its prefabricated stratosphere. If you ask my sister, the green bean casserole queen, she'll proudly tell you how to make it. And I still love to eat it. But one college Thanksgiving, too broke to fly home from the East Coast, Melanie and I visited some family friends in Thanksgiving. Besides the two of us, the remaining party consisted of East Coasters, and over an elegant yet non-traditional table, the New Englanders mocked green bean casserole to the chagrin of us interloping Midwesterners.

Foods like these - macaroni and cheese from the box, hot dogs, canned cranberry sauce - that are closely tied to my WASP heritage. But, at the same time whole empires are being built to shame us out of enjoying "American food," these foods keep selling briskly on the market.

I recently read an article entitled "The State of American Cuisine" that address this; issued by the James Beard Foundation, written by two food academics, the article is based on surveys conducted for the Taste American national food festival. Survey respondents were asked the following questions: do you believe there is an American cuisine? If you believe there is an American cuisine, how would you define it? If you don't believe there is an American cuisine, why not? Out of 131 respondents, roughly 90% said yes and 10% said no, and references to unique regional cuisine aside, most examples listed could be claimed as white American cuisine. More on this later.

There were frequent references to the melting pot of American cuisine. "American cuisine reflects the multicultural background of Americans. We are a country of people from many countries, living together in one melting pot. American cuisine, similarly, is the fusion of cuisines from many places." My suspicion of the idea of an American melting pot aside, I agree that American cuisine may be unique in its "eagerness for cultural borrowing." There are, of course, other nations with equally diverse immigration rates, who have borrowed many culinary treats - Brazil's booming sushi market, for example - but no other nation that I've experienced has borrowed cuisines at the expense of developing its own culinary heritage. America doesn't have a national dish like many other countries do.

American cuisine, some anthropologists and chefs have claimed, varies too greatly from region to region, and trying to pinpoint a quintessential cuisine leaves no room for variety. But this is true of any nation; we tend to forget that southern Italian cuisine varies greatly from Northern, that coastal Indian food varies from that of the interior, that Buddhist Chinese food varies from Muslim Chinese food. So we can't, as respondents wanted to, claim that America has no overarching cuisine because Southern, East Coastal, Southwestern and Midwestern foods are supposedly vastly different. You'll find variety anywhere.

Before reading the article, I made a list of what I thought were white American foods; the authors of the article compiled a similar list of respondents' ideas of typical American cuisine (by now it seems apparent that most respondents were making the assumption that American cuisine is white American, and that all other cuisines are regional, cultural, and racial, and which require an accompanying adjective). My list consisted of items specifically remembered from my childhood: margarine, English muffins, runny eggs and bacon, caramel corn, apple pie, supermarket bread, bread stuffing with chicken liver, boxed macaroni and cheese, and cabbage and bacon. Survey respondents added to that list hamburgers, barbecue, fried chicken, pot roast, pancakes, ketchup, corn on the cob, pizza, and meatloaf.

A lot of items on this list are dishes borrowed from imported cuisines but adapted to our American lifestyle. One respondent said this: "American cuisine is the fast, easy and common. The cereal, milk and orange juice in the morning, the peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and the hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken and apple pie for dinner. These are American, and are associated with America." Sometime after World War II, the focus became cooking for the family on the go. Meals became less about community and more about swift ease.

So what is white American cuisine? From what I can tell, it is easy, pre-fabricated, or somewhat snobbishly multicultural. Where the common recipes thrown together by grandma are served at the same table as multicultural culinary borrowings.

And so forth.

Something Piquant this way Comes

This is a recipe I found in a beat-up old cookbook of my mom's. Paul Prudhomme is a chef from St. Landry Parish in Louisiana, right damn smack next to the parish where the Stagg family hails from. He always looked like Dom Delouise to me. I had to make due with a meager pantry, but it turned out delicious(ly?)


Paul Prudhomme's Apple-Raisin Stuffing

Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup rice
2 tsp each salt & pepper
1 tsp each garlic powder, mustard powder, and cayenne pepper
1 large chopped, un-peeled apple
2 cups chicken/beef/veggie stock

Heat enough oil to coat the bottom of a heavy sauce pot. Heat the oil until you, if you're at all like me, feel you'll go mad from the waiting. Heat the oil until it smokes, but turn it down a smidge or you'll set the alarms off. I've done that. Often.

Scrape the onions and green pepper - scritch scritch splash - into the pot and stir them up good. Let them brown, just a few minutes. Once they're aromatic and caramel-y colored, add a few tablespoons of butter and a generous handful of raisins. Let the butter melt and the raisins plump, which will take another 3 or 4 delicious minutes.

Now you add the rice. Stir in the spices, and keep stirring the rice. Let the oil coat the rice, and you want all the spices to penetrate. Add the apples. You want the vegetables and fruit and rice and spice to all mix together for a few minutes.

Add the stock. Cover the pot and bring the rice to a boil. Turn the heat down and let simmer for 5 minutes or so. Finally, remove the rice from the heat and let all those flavors meld and pique and settle; about 30 minutes.

Don't be hasty like me. Be a patient cook. Not everything needs to be al dente.

The Coming Election

I'm nervous. Very very nervous. I try not to think about it, but wish I were strong enough to dedicate the next week to making sure Barack Obama gets to the White House. Because he gives me hope. Because he offers solutions. Because he's a mixed brother with an almost unbelievably American background and he makes me giddy.

Me? Miss Apathetic? Good lord.

I'll write about it, if I can think about it. If I can make sense of this coming history.

Carmen Van Kerkhove, founder and publisher of Racialicious, posted on her own website some tips on staying involved in the next week.

So what can you do to help at this historic time?

First of all, make sure you protect your own vote by reading this 12-step checklist of what to do before, on, and after Election Day. And share the list with your family and friends by using this form here.

Then, do one or all of these 3
things:
1. Volunteer for the campaign.

2. Call or visit voters in battleground states.

3. Find and join an event in your local area.

Free Blog Counter

Confronting the Stranger

Last Tuesday dark and mild, I rode my bike across the river, somewhat stoned. It was an exhilerating ride. I felt swift and immortal, wobbling along the rutted road, probably not paying as much attention as I should have, seeing as I had no bike light or helmet.

I came home and wrote about how alive I felt. Because I was feeling so much.

What made me feel so alive was this battering sense of mortality. At some point, midway across the bridge, I was suddenly aware that I could be dead or that I could die. Not that I hadn't realized such a thing before. As a girl, I would literally lose my breath at the idea that one day death would conquer us all. I was once obsessed with and horrified of the idea of death. But as I got older, I thought about it less and less. Not because I had dealt with the fear, but because I had to tuck it away in order to go on living.

But now, on the eve of my grandfather's funeral, I want to address this. Somehow. I need to. He deserves it. As do my father's parents and eldest sister, who have long since passed. In their memory, I somehow need to confront the idea of death. Of life well spent. What we leave behind; besides the funeral arrangements and pathetic odds and ends that get donated or sold at estate sales.

I tell you what: estate sales have always creeped me out, and I've lived a legacy of estate sales. My grandmother lives and breathes these events, and my mom and aunt plunder them with antiquing glee. All I ever saw were old ladies and lanky men in trucker hats, crates and tables of faded belongings that someone's own family couldn't make use of. The scariest and saddest estate sales were the ones that never even made it out of the house; overwhelmed family members who stuck price labels on items throughout the house and yard signs around the block, drawing you in to their misfortune and hidden history. Why do I want to see your grandmother's sordid collection of commemorative spoons? I never know whether to sneer or to cry. Because of the death hanging over the arrangements.

I wonder when I first became aware of death? The first death I can remember is that of my paternal grandmother, and yet, 20 years later, all I remember are small details; very little about the idea of death. A 4-year-old's sense of responsibility; a new flowered dress with matching straw hat for the service; my grandfather, stately in a brown suit, taking the podium; being puzzled over my crying sister; the laden table of food awaiting the guests, flush against the dark wood-paneled wall. This is the first death I'm aware of, but there is no accompanying sense of the universality of death. Not at 4.

I must have become aware of my own death shortly thereafter, because, as comical as it may seem, at 5 or 6, I shut my windows to the idea of vampires and was unable to reopen them for more than 10 years. Mythical death, or the paralyzing idea of undeath struck me then.

I've sometimes wondered if I am so mystified by death because I've had so few confrontations with it. One grandparent at 4, a grandparent and an aunt at 22, and now my grandfather. I can't help but think it's all downhill from here. Like a waterfall, more people in my life will pass. And more will force me to think about death.

I never had any sort of religious introduction to death, no explanations or justifications. There is no hell or heaven in my history, just life and, well, not life. I've listened to, maybe even contributed to conversations regarding afterlife. One friend may think after-life is equal opportunity, another hopes we each go where we believe we'll go.

Death was never introduced to me, so how do you confront a stranger? How do you discuss a mystery?

Free Blog Counter

Jazz and Autumn Leaves

Something about autumn makes me want to listen to jazz. The reedy voice of Billie Holiday, the somber passion of John Coltrane, somehow seem to accompany the shower of autumn leaves. Yesterday, I listened to Nina Simone the entire 45 minute walk to and 45 minute walk from work. Nothing has ever made me hold my head up so high.

When I got to work, I did some reading on Simone, and have so far really liked what I've seen. She trained in classical piano at Juilliard, funding her education through teaching piano lessons and playing in jazz clubs. She became heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement in the early 60s, infusing her records and live performances with powerful messages on equality, love, and violence. She expatriated in 1970 (I tried to think of a better word...), spending time in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, before settling in Southern France, joining the likes of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker.

Side note: I've been following the blog of a contemprary expatriate Miles Marshall Lewis who is developing his memoir on "life in Paris following in the footsteps of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Chester Himes but (of course) with the prerequisite hiphop generation twist." I'm pretty stoked for this book's arrival. You should check him out if you're interested in thoughts on race, nationality, popular culture and the arts. Terribly interesting.

Thoughts when on a sugar high

"Under the pavement - a beach!"

"In food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of man."

I feel like all of my co-workers have something that they live for outside of the office. Something greater than a hobby; an obsession or a goal. Cecilia is a singer with performances to prepare. Stephane is training for marathons. Lisa performs folk music. Amber has the baby and Barry his music and Carter his kids. But me? I cook and craft and bike with no real goals.

In a fit of distractedness at work, I came across a little more inspiration. I printed out some information on The Congress for the New Urbanism, which put me on a tentative path, or it has at least got me thinking. The CNU is an organization which promotes pedestrian-friendly, "neighborhood-based development." Established by architects, its ranks have swelled to the thousands with landscape architects, planners, economists, real estate agents and developers, lawyers, government officials, educators, citizen activists, and students.

Reading about the CNU puts in mind how I felt after reading the interview with David Pinder in Bad Subjects (which, sadly, appears to be defunct.) I have so many thoughts about this city: biking and busing and walking, economic access to various modes of transportation and the racial and cultural opinions on each; the supposed economic boom as evidenced by multitudes of expensive new housing but belied by a breakdown in education; the ease and encouragement of business venture but lack of assistance in sustainability. To name a few.

I ran into Aytan on Tuesday, and he mentioned an impending need for free and low-cost housing. In all of the news on the economic crisis and corporate bail-outs, no one actually mentions the small-scale impact: that all these companies pushed through mortgage loans that couldn't be paid; houses were foreclosed; the people in those houses must go somewhere, no? I've heard no anchorman, no politician, no pundit mention the housing - or lack of housing - crisis. Shame on them all.

But on my other hand is my obsession with food communities. I printed out an article called "Mezze Ideology: Community, Class, and Multicultural Cuisine." (Shame on me; I oughtn't use so much paper. But there's something about a page I can tote around that makes so much more sense than an article read on a computer screen.)

There's a subscript to the title that says something about the author giving his colleagues a "lesson in class and generosity." I think this makes the article sound trite or didactic, which I didn't find to be so. Like the folks at Re-Thinking Soup at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Schaffer attempted through food to both build community and discuss food politics. I'd like to do that. He mentions reciprocity in hospitality, too, and MAN I wish other people would have dinner parties and invite me. I love hosting potlucks, but I'd like to be, well... repaid.

On that selfish note, I'll be back with more later.

Sugar high dwindling. Body aching. Silly homemade applesauce cookies.

The X-Files and tiny investigators

I've been watching episodes from the first season of the X-Files with Melanie and Rosy lately. My dad and my sister were deep into the show when it was airing on television, but being the squeamish, easily frightened child that I was (resulting in the squeamish, easily frightened adult that I currently am) I never really watched it with them.

But now I've caught more episodes in the last 30 days than I had ever seen in the show's 10 year run. And while it's hard for me to turn away from an investigation story after I've watched the first intriguing 10 minutes, I know it's bad for me to watch.

Why?

Because every time I watch a particularly bothersome episode, I go to bed with a series of freaked out dreams. I couldn't even tell you what my dreams were about last night. Only that I was unable to sleep.

There was one non-frightening dream, though, that I had around 3 in the morning.

The dream involved two tiny investigators. Like a couple inches tall. They had all of the equipment needed to solve crime in and around homes where big people live; a car, for instance. A tiny tiny car. But they are driving around in their tiny car and are trumped by a forest of broccoli; they can't get through, but they need to in order to continue their investigation. And then, skipping forward in time, they have to enter the Kenmore. So these tiny people don thick, arctic circle clothing and enter the frigid land of the refrigerator.

That's all I remember of the dream. Cute, no?

The Year without a Summer

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by the truck I'd been dreaming about. My body felt like I'd been exercising strenuously the day before rather than the under-the-weather ache I'd felt the last time I'd forgotten to take my medication.

However, I woke up elated. Fresh. Eager to take on the day. Probably a little manic. Something I hadn't felt in quite a long time.

I've run this cycle of manic depression, I suppose, for the last 10 years, and decided about this time last year to attempt a change. I had tried therapy, and stopped, both because it was too expensive and because I'm skeptical of the psychology machine. All of the members of my immediate family, unbeknownst to me, had been taking psychiatric drugs, for a variety of ailments: situational depression, anxiety, clinical depression, bipolar disorder. I wanted to strike some compromise. Between skepticism of psychotherapy, a desire to get help, and a feeling of being victimized by these hereditary ailments. (Hereditary or lifestyle - nurture vs. nature. I'm still not sure which.)

So I visited a psychiatrist. I wanted an easy solution; I didn't want to think too deeply about the fact that I was going against my own long-held decision to find other means than psychotherapy. I was in a new relationship, I was at a relatively new job, I had a new living situation; I didn't want to fuck things up by doubting what I wanted to believe was progress.

The psychiatrist had treated my entire family at one time. I know now that very few psychiatrists or psychologists will do that. They are risking unbiased opinions if they do. Both my mom and my sister had stopped seeing him, and this worried me, but my dad had offered to front the co-pay for me, and in a financially influenced crunch, I went to this doctor.

He quickly and with very little ceremony, prescribed Cymbalta. I had heard of it, mainly from television commercials, and was eager to take the proffered free samples. (I had no insurance; I felt that I wasn't in much of a place to be choosy.)

The first thing I noticed was an increased ability to concentrate. I've always been an easily distractable person, prone to restless movement and mind. The weekend that I started taking Cymbalta, I was schedule to drive to Rochester, MN with my then-boyfriend and his family. I noticed, triumphantly, that I was able to read with very little distractedness, for the entire 4 hour drive.

After that, for the next few months, I felt productive, hopeful and less prone to anxiety attacks. Great, I thought; even if Dr. W. makes me uneasy, I'm not negatively dwelling on things to the point of complete inaction.

My sister warned me that first night I came home with Cymbalta that Dr. W. was too quick to prescribe without discussing causes of anxiety nor side effect of medicating; Cymbalta has some wicked withdrawal side effects, she told me. I had recently started taking a regimen of birth control, and felt confident that I could keep to a schedule of medication that would help me to avoid missing any dosages.

And I was. Able to keep my doses timed, with the help of a phone alarm and a disregard for social disapproval of taking BC in public. Until May, when I missed my first dose - I was at Riversplash with a group of friends and, in a reaction to the crush of the crowd, started bugging out. I retreated into a painful self-scrutiny that no friend and no beer could yank me out of. I got home and took the meds and fell asleep and thought, never again.

Then, in late June, I missed another dose; I was unexpectedly at my boyfriend's house and had forgotten to pack my little plastic box of pills. At his apartment by myself (he was at a rehearsal, and I had gotten stuck with no transportation), I had no crowd to worry me, but my body started aching. I began feeling more and more tense, my head started pounding, and my mouth went dry as a desert. I didn't think much about it except to demand Nic drive me to my apartment when he got home so that I could take my medication before going back to his place to sleep.

I haven't missed it again until last night. I left the Cymbalta at home when I had to stay at work until 9. I kept myself distracted, there was a pleasing mix of interaction and alone-time, and when I got home, I fell asleep shortly, forgetting to take it. Didn't even think about the withdrawal that was sure to come.

I realize now that I may need those manic up moments to accomplish things; Cymbalta had been suppressing the down times as well as the up times, and I hadn't even realized until last month that I'd been feeling glum and grey for the year that I'm been taking Cymbalta and birth control.

I did a little research this morning on the side effects of Cymbalta (please don't think I went a full year without researching this; it's only now that it has galvanized me to action.) Some are far out of my range of experience (auditory hallucinations, brain zaps), but some I was experiencing (nausea, body aches, chronic fatigue) and hadn't realized they were related to the drug.

I spoke with Kate recently about holistically approaching my (mental) health, and have mad appointments in that direction.

What's strange is that I've missed these manic up days. I know, if I stop taking Cymbalta, that withdrawal will be very difficult, and the manic down days will surely suck, but, well... we'll see.

Why I'm so tired today

Buendia called me last night. Midnight, actually. To apologize. It was surreal. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, I tend to reach for it automatically, without even waking up. And he asnwered the phone in an expectant monotone; "hi." As if I hadn't erased him from my phone and should know immediately who it was calling me at 11:51 on a Wednesday, two months after we broke up. Maybe it sounds silly that I erased him from my phone, but it was to preserve myself. Any temptation to call him would have been a temptation to beg, and I don't ever want to put myself in that position of indignity.

We spoke for over an hour, and I don't even know about what. How many times can he apologize and justify, how many times can I ask the same questions? "I got scared," he said, "I don't think I know how to love after Barbara. I'm in a dark place. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"I'm hurting," were my responses, "why are you calling?"

I wanted to tell him that the time we spent together were my only sunny summer days. I wanted to tell him that I'm ill at the thought of staying here one more year, yet afraid to get up and go. I wanted to tell him that in his place popped up 3 boys I don't know how to handle - one who wants me, one who I want, and one, well, I'm sure in the years we've known each other we've never known what we want from each other. I wanted someone to listen to me explain why work is killing me right now, and the escapist medication and alcohol are not helping.

"I haven't been sleeping," he said. I've been sleeping, Nic; I've been sleeping too much. I'm tired and listless, and he helped to put some of that into motion. Or lack of motion, rather. His dropping out of my life brought up all these questions that I've asked repeatedly and have yet to compile any answers.

To what extent do I need my family nearby?
How do I make new friends and challenge myself socially?
What do I think my value as an employee is and should be?
Do I want to move forward to higher education now or later? Or ever?
How much can I rely on medication, conversation and exercise to purge my demons?
How do I learn to trust myself in relationships?
When will I realize my own self-worth?

This growing up stuff is awkward. Painful. Sometimes terribly exciting. When I was little, I imagined that all problems would be easily solved, that there would be no more turmoil or insecurities. Hmph.

Why I'm Not Going to the mNSC Meeting Tonight

For weeks I've asked myself at every meeting of the mNSC, in an accusatory voice, Why are you doing this? Some part of me felt persecuted - no: under scrutiny. As if somehow I was not a legitimate member. I didn't care in the right way, I wasn't dedicated to the right degree. My body may have been there, it may have been useful for lifting and lugging, but I wasn't quite right in the social scheme.

I always have to acknowledge that in deploring someone elses' sense of superiority over others that the heart of the issue may be my own sense of inferiority.

However, how I'd really come to view the mNSC meetings were as social gatherings. A slim few, a small core, were pumped, were dedicated to setting goals and achieving them, but somehow the remainder was there only to meet with like-minded people and had no real goals to accomplish. Which is alright, but there seemed to be a denial of this designation.

What I'd like to see is this group of kids acknowledging within themselves why they are members, what they personally wish to achieve. But who am I to question the motives of others? Can I answer my own questions?

I joined mNSC out of hope. Hope to meet new people, hope to physically bash down some racial walls, hope to woo the heart of someone unexpected. Why did I remain? I clung to the former and latter while becoming disillusioned with the remainder.

I guess that this post really is about is this:

Why is social/racial reform important to me? Growing up biracial in one of the most stringently segregated American cities, I became self-obsessed. Race became my banner, my ten under which all other issues gathered in my mind. Even when I harbor a secret doubt that racism can ever be eliminated - or perhaps because of this reason - I fight. A losing battle? Against myself, indoctrinated by and beneficiary of of the racist institution. Against my peers, post-modern, post-civil rights ironical defeatists. Against society, self-perpetuating and self-congratulatory.

What am I fighting for if I don't think there's an end? I'm fighting for the fight. In all other subjects, I am unwilling to face the possibility of confrontation; on the subject of race, I'll battle, tooth and nail.

My dad said last night that Sarah Palin is so unimpressive because she has no philosophy behind her words. Without a philosophy, he said, a person cannot answer questions on the fly. Do I have a philosophy? I do see racism as an institution; on which is structured to underprivilege the brown and boost the pale. Economically, biologically, academically, psychologically. There is so much history I do not know, but I have a voracious appetite to learn. My solution has long been to foster discussion; and it still is. Until discussion becomes repetitive, and I am easily bored. After discussion comes direct action; constantly innovative direct action. There must be philosophers, planners, and actors, right?

I was going to write a two paragraph explanation for why I'm not going to tonight's mNSC meeting, but now this.

What is my philosophy? We're all dirtied by the institution. We all have chosen our own fight, I have chosen race. Maybe I fight out of guilt. The tragic mulatto, that's me. But I can only hope that as long as I recognize my biases, and avoid harming anyone because of them, then I've fought the good fight.

Whatever that is.

What do I personally wish to achieve? A Milwaukee that provides children with the opportunities I had and didn't have. A Milwaukee known less for its beer and cheese and racial segregation, and known rather for its successful artistic initiatives, its progressive educational policies, its encouraging economic climate.

The words in the mission statement of the mNSC are beautiful. This gathering of young, white middle class hopefuls so promising. But historically, I would be wary of that very group, myself (half-white that I am) included. We may wreak more havoc than foster positive social relationships if we aren't careful.

I can only hope. And keep fighting.

Questions of legitimacy aside, I would like the kids in mNSC to become more accountable, more self-aware, more organized, less defensive. For instance, a group cannot become a sustainable, reliable non-profit if the members are unwilling to designate some small structure. For instance, a group of white, middle class kids cannot successfully fight racial and economic injustice by providing free culture for kids just like themselves. For instance, progress cannot be made if different ideas will not be entertained.
Free Blog Counter