My Deadly Sin

envy, noun, she felt a twinge of envy for the people on board.
a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.

My sister Whitney's are medium-sized, pretty white. They lay gracefully, quietly between her lips. Speaking only when spoken to, despite their gleaming presence. Despite the fact that they have much to say.

David's sit straight, with good posture, but only on top. On the bottom they are bold, turning their backs or sides to the front. Their rebellion hidden, like his. But the top row does all the talking, makes all the public appearances. They flash and his smile is born. They talk, you listen. Keen and honest, they lure you in.

My dad's are the perfect set--minus a few empty holes where stubbornness and frugality went on strike against root-canals and crowns. But they are hidden in the back, way back in the darkness that hides behind the glow of his upper and lowers. Their edges are sharp--clean lines that make almost-squares in some places and triangles in others. They are tough, like he is, biting into an apple or hitting the bone without flinching.

I want pretty teeth, in-the-public eye teeth, tough teeth. Big, bright white teeth. Big, bright white normal-sized Chicklet teeth. Not baby Chicklet teeth. Not barely-there teeth. Not braces 1, teeth 0 teeth. I want Julia Robert's-high-pitched-laugh-cackle teeth. Too-loud teeth. Not-afraid-to-eat too-much-red-meat teeth. Silly teeth. You-just-got-Punk'd teeth. John-Mayer-wants-your-wonderland teeth. Caught-one-without-bait teeth. Oh-my-God-Becky-look-at-her-bu- teeth. Too white teeth. So-perfect-it's-kind-of-annoying teeth. So-important-they-require-excessive-dashes teeth. Clearly.

When I brush them I scrub. I push and prod them with toothbrushes and fingernails, thinking I can get them to go one way or the other. They don't budge. I press Crest WhiteStrips down onto the top of them every 30 seconds I have them on. I say to them, Soak it up, babies. I coax them with compliments, and big glasses of milk. C'mon little guys, grow big and strong. But they stay in their shells, refusing to be inched out. With fists, I slam my hands down on the counter by the sink. Fine, I tell them, defeated, the show must got on. I smile wide, I smile soft. I smile deep, I smile skinny. But no matter what, when I catch a glimpse of myself in mirrors, they're there, just the way they usually are. Lazily hanging, the way a teenager looks after her sibblings. Half there. Lingering in the doorway. One eye half-open, the other sleeping. Half there. With a bad attitude and secretly, a boyfriend down the street. Half there. Longing for contact. A blunt-force trauma kind of blow to the head to cause them to detach. To send them free falling.

Hm...

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1907918,00.html

Good Riddance?

riddance, noun
the action of getting rid of a troublesome or unwanted person or thing.

Go to CNN.com home page and try to find a story about the post-election fall out in Iran. SO GLAD all of that is over. I was getting really tired of having that Peace In Iran image as my profile picture on Facebook, I was tired of seeing people get beaten, and I was tired of fearing for the continued oppression of the Iranian people. I mean, I've been having a rough couple of weeks. I can finally sleep soundly now because the streets aren't crowded with marching feet and voices, and people are back in their homes. Peace.

But the trouble is, I can't sleep. I tossed and turned all night. I kicked the comforter off, I took a sip of water, I tried wrapping the sheet around me, I tried adjusting my pillows this way and that. I couldn't sleep, and not just because it was warm. I'm bothered.

I know there is not peace in Iran. I know that the election officials are standing by the original results, and that there is still plenty of punishment to be handed out on the heads of the protestors. I know that those who took to the streets in black and green, even those with broken bones and still-tender wounds, have yet to feel the real wrath of their leaders. And I sit here and try to wrap my head around all of it. Try to be rational with myself, as I have for the past few weeks and ask, what can I do? I mean, really, get on a plane? Call my congressman? And though I know it probably isn't true, though I accept that the losses of Michael and Farrah swooped in with pitch-perfect sound, a resounding distraction from "all of that," I can't help but wonder if it's because the boiler plate got a little too hot. That the accusations from inside Iranian leadership got to be a bit too sharp of a sword to swallow. How could they turn "meddling" into "instigating" and "infiltrating?" How could the repition of the headline "Ahmadinejad likens Obama's meddling to Bush antics," work its way into the American mind and screw things up?

We backed off. The world did, maybe. BBC states that Ahmadinejad cancelled a trip to Africa, 3 More British Journalists were released, and that Iran is standing by the original election results. Everything seems so quiet. So still. But is it? Or could it be that with all the noise and headlines--more than 10 on CNN's homepage on "Michael's legacy" or life-- it gets difficult to hear anything other than the noise we generate. Are they still chanting over there? Are they still asking, crying out, "where's my vote?" Is there no longer a reason (a way) to march?

This is growing up, though I don't mean to make this about me. It isn't. This accepting that well enough has a right to be left alone. (That it may be the ONLY right it has.) This acknowledging that things are not right there, they may never be, but the risk of us getting our hands dirty is more than we can wager. This admitting that we have to keep our best interests at heart. This is growing up. Just like my argument last night, over dinner, that it is better for a big company to come into a tiny foreign city and employ 200 workers, even though it puts a local Mom-and-Pop shop, that only employed 10, out of business. Am I really saying this? I thought as I argued. Do I really believe what I'm saying? That the employment there is what must prevail, that disposable income in that small community is more important than the preservation of that community's very culture? When does it stop being "about that?" When does one accept it enough to turn to the person who is arguing that side and scoff something to the effect of "Perhaps you'll understand when you're a bit older, when you have a family of your own...when you have to think and provide for someone other than just yourself."

Is there really just nothing we can do about it? Why is "sell all my worldly possessions and move to a hut in Tanzania" more like a joke, followed by laughter, than something moving? Something heartfelt. An admission that brings you to tears. I can't even make up an answer. To any of the questions that I'm asking, and perhaps that makes it all the more ridiculous and infantile. But I'm still asking, and I'm still losing sleep, and I'm still hoping that I'll never understand.

World,

I am now blogging to you. (plus Lindsey).

Small Victories, Or Not.

arbitrary
adjective
1 an arbitrary decision: capricious, whimsical, random, chance, unpredictable; casual, wanton, unmotivated, motiveless, unreasoned, unsupported, irrational, illogical, groundless, unjustified; personal, discretionary, subjective. antonym: reasoned, rational.

Today I'm eating my sandwich out of a one-gallon freezer bag because we ran out of sandwich baggies. I just decided that coffee and turkey & cheese don't agree. I want to move somewhere exotic. I need to decorate my room. And Better Homes & Gardens is sending me 55 Tips for a Fabulous Fourth! My sandwich is "disappearing" too quickly. I hate it when that happens.

Every part of me is running in overdrive today thanks to two gigantic mugs of really strong, black coffee and very little food in my stomach. (Cue the sandwich remedy.) In these moments, when my sandwich is gone and I'm still hungry, I think too much and often decide that I'm going to change my life. From my desk.

So I think, wouldn't it be nice to pick up a year from now and move to Cali. or the south of France? If I chose the West coast, I'd look for a small beach bunaglow in Santa Barbara, If France, I'd go with a little hut in Marseille or Toulouse. I don't need anything extravagant. I don't even want internet. The more time I spend away from the beach, the more I miss the atmosphere, the sounds, the calm. I'm definitely one of the unfortunate types who needs that mental reinforcement, that atmospherical (?) push to take a deep breath, relax. All of this isn't to say that I've abandoned my dreams (from prev. post) of escaping this...mess, (wow, really full circle) I am still all for that. But if I have to work, if I have to live somewhere with running water, then here. Or There.

And then, I should stop by Home Depot on my way home, buy some paint (green, or gray) and paint my room. Finally patch those curtains. Paint that canvas that is hidden behind the dresser and hang it over the bed. My dream would be to find a non-tacky shade of gold and paint my oversized room gold. It would be perfect for the Indian-theme I secretly want. Is it weird that the two qualitites I want my bedroom to possess are as follows: colorful and crowded. And Indian. Right now it's too empty, too bright with its never-ending white walls and light pouring in from the walls and skylights.

I have an obnoxiously red KitchenAid mixer on my counter that serves (in my opinion) as a daily reminder of two things: 1. That I am not married 2. That I am not domestic (enough). So sometimes I move it around, or leave it plugged in overnight, or flip through the instruction manual that came with it, and ultimately, leave it untouched. But last night it was being extraordinarly bright red and flashy and I just couldn't take it anymore, so I had to handle the situation. I made some really delicious cranberry almond cookies that turned out perfectly golden and delicious. I'm proud of myself. The more I push myself in the kitchen, the more confidence I get. Homemade lasagna, penne a la vodka: TBD. But for now, it's just the nightly challenge of boiling various shapes of pasta noodles and heating sauce. Small victories, for now at least.

Just So You Know

(D)avid, adjective
1 an avid reader of science fiction
keen, eager, enthusiastic, ardent, passionate, zealous, hard-core; devoted, dedicated, wholehearted, earnest. See note at eager . antonym apathetic.

This morning, while driving to work, I thought of you as I often do on my drives, even on jaunts to the grocery store, anytime I’m without you. I drank my orange juice and pictured us last night as we were lying in bed, picking on each other and play fighting. I thought of us hysterically laughing in whispers so as not to wake up Callie, then settling down and turning our backs to one another to succumb to sleep and another week and our most-preferred sleeping positions. I started thinking about how quickly I transitioned from sleeping alone while we’ve been apart these last six months back to feeling the bottom of your feet pressing into the backs of my calves in the middle of the night. When I wake up suddenly, or just before you do, and I find your hand on my pillow, or I turn to face the wall and see the very tip of your head—a cluster of your hair, a thin strip of your forehead— sticking out from the top of the covers, I am not alarmed. I’ve fallen back in to being used to you.

I’m used to you here: your soggy towels leaving small pools of moisture on the carpet, on the comforter. Your glasses left behind on top of a pile of books on the coffee table. Your white t-shirts stuffed in baskets, or drawers—sometimes hidden in corners with holes in the sleeves. Your optimism, making me feel so rich with love when we are so poor. Your assurance never failing to keep me believing.

I like you here in our robin’s-egg blue house with our dogs. Where pasta is what’s for dinner every night, and we buy wine when we can’t afford it, and you always ask me to stay up and watch movies with you, but when I decline—say I’m too tired— you follow me upstairs to bed, anyway. You make every day fun. Every day an adventure. Every day one that ends with me smiling and laughing in your arms.

(A Kind of) Death In Birth

orphan noun

1 a child whose parents are dead.
• a person or thing bereft of protection, position, etc. : radioactive wastes are the main orphan of the nuclear era. 2 Printing the first line of a paragraph set as the last line of a page or column, considered undesirable.

Willy's mother died from complications during childbirth. Bringing him--but not just him, also his three identical siblings, Theo; Idda and Stella-- into the world. They are orphans kept alive by the staff at the Berega Orphanage, in Berega, Tanzania, where they are provided with the necessities and nurturing needed in their crucial first years. Commonly, they are reintegrated into their extended families between the ages of 2 and 3.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I complained to David that I just wanted to work in a field that I actually liked. One that I felt challenged me and stimulated me. One that ignited passion within me. He just smiled and comforted me as he usually does and sent me on my way, and when I got to work I found this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/world/africa/25orphan.html) in the New York Times. I saw and read about Willy and Theo and their sisters and my heart clenched, or eased up as I read about their struggle and the success they have found with the help of the Berega Orphanage. They are not just given food and health care, they are shown and given love. They are challenged to develop relationships and maintain them. No one makes a huge profit, or is able to build their resume from their work there, or can claim any other fame besides a brief Times article, and no one takes from it the workers' names, anyway. We only remember the names and faces of Willy, Theo, Stella and Idda.

It occured to me, maybe just now, that I'll never find what I'm looking for where I am. I know I'll never find it on my own anyway, without God's guidance, but I'll never find what my heart longs for in an office such as this one, or behind a desk in a plush computer chair. I will always feel drained or bored or uninterested--despite brief periods when business or distraction give me the illusion of interest. My heart beats for the Berega's kind of service. Here I am given too much time and space to fill with my self, and my own ego, my own "stuff." I don't want any of it, rather, I find myself longing to watch children grow. These children. To play a part in all of it. To cradle a newborn baby in my arms who was welcomed into the world on the coattails of his mother's farewell. Whose hope brought on by new life was a mere spark in a shadow cast by his mother's death. To cradle that tiny bundle of life in my arms and demand that this one has value, matchless worth. That this one deserves a chance, deserves all the opportunity the world can afford.

After all, what relevance does a decent-paying job, or a mid-level position, or a mid-sized townhouse, or even the mountain of student-loan debt it took to lift me up to this level even matter? In the face of a life that has one small window, one opening to either bloom or be lost, how can I worry about the grip that Sallie Mae now (though it will always be something) has on me? I'm asking because I'd really like to know. I know all hearts don't beat the same rhythm, for the same reason but why do I feel so stupid to ask? I'm sick of ignorning these feelings, of fully feeling them, only to moments later cast them off as ridiculous, childish. BECAUSE, I say to myself, you have to pay your bills. And who will feed the dog? Gas is not going to pay for itself to be pumped into that tank. Silly Lia. But I don't want to care about these things anymore. I don't want to care if my credit is destroyed, because I don't want to have credit. I want to forget what credit is and how it could have once "ruined my life." I don't want to know, and I won't need to know because I want to be so far from the concept of credit and bills, in the town of Berega, in Tanzania, living blissfully unaware, in love and with reckless abandon of my old self, and my old selfish ways, and everything before, after and all the things in between.

More Mess, Please.

revamp verb they plan to revamp the kitchen
renovate, redecorate, refurbish, recondition, rehabilitate, overhaul, make over; upgrade, refit, re-equip; remodel, refashion, redesign, restyle; informal do up, give something a facelift, rehab.

Ah, facelift. I like it. I'm dusting this old thing off. Trying to put prettier things on top in hopes to make the awful class-enforced blog posts that came before this one quiet down, or just go away.

I just tried to list 6 things about myself and I'm not sure why. Hello, Lindsey. You are the only person reading this and you already know all 6. Want to guess anyway, though? Didn't think so.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here. What I do know is that I am trying to force myself to write again. To write daily, which, in truth, is something I have never done--except maybe for a brief stint freshman year, and it was poetry, awful poetry. (Awful.) I love to write. I love to make up elaborate stories and characters with overly indulgent details, I love to research and observe and look up statistics for essays on tiny moments we often catch merely glimpses of, I love to plop short globs of language, clumsily and abrupt, atop slender swimming lines of poetry. I am in love with it, but it taxes me. I am overwhelmed by what I could write, or what I couldn't, or what would be too painful to pen down. I am anxious, and these days, too fidgety to sit still long enough to let some magic happen.

Last night I sat on our plump leather couch reading Jhumpa, and felt that ache I feel. When the way a line, or a charater's expression, peels the skin right off of me and climbs inside. I ache for the passion a couple feels when they share a first kiss while making dinner, then collapse into each other, and crawl into the bedroom to make love, forgetting the food, simmering (soon burning) in pots and pans strewn across the top of the stove, and the uncorked wine. Let loose. So loose that the fact that the frying pan has to be thrown out afterwards doesn't even matter. It is casually mentioned, a short sentence that follows them slipping back into their clothes, laughing as they order bad Chinese food and split some left-over beer from the back of the fridge. Effortlessly, it is life. It is messy: she has couscous in her hair. It is messy: he smells like onions. It is messy: their sticky bodies draped over one another's on top of a nondescript bedspread, in a nondescriptly messy New York apartment.

I'd like a little more messy, please. I'd like a little more loose. I want to forget about the pots and pan, too. Let the charred dishes sit in the sink and get dirtier. I'd like to stay up too late and eat more bad Chinese. I'd like to make more messes with my writing. I'd like to slosh onto pages instead of tip toe. I'd like to fail miserably at writing a 100-page Sci-Fi novel. I'd like to be proud of pages wrinkled from indifference, and traced in brown watercolor coffee stains that no one will ever read. I'd like to live a little more, write a lot more.

I guess we'll just have to see, won't we?

Last Blog

On the whole, I am very content with the English education I've earned at UNCW, but in my senior seminar this semester I've noticed there is a missing link between me and some of my classmates. As we face the task of creating an online portfolio to reflect our accomplishments in the department, many of my classmates are in panic at creating even the simplest of pages. I am no expert web-page maker, but I'm confused that the levels of technological literacy are so varied among professional writing majors.

I am lucky to have taken classes on technical writing, design, writing and technology, classes that have taught me to maneuver technology with confidence. I have learned to tools of design and layout, such as the CRAP method, as well as how to implement technology such as Camtasia Studios to create an effective tutorial to teach others something. I am thankful for these tools because as I go out into the "real world" I feel confident that I can achieve tasks effectively and in a timely matter.

As for several of my classmates, I wish that they had been encouraged to take some technology classes so they would feel more confident in their degree. The times are changing, and more and more writing is being done online. Magazines hire writers, editors and design staff for strictly online work. One must be proficient in a wide range of softwares, and be able to manipulate his or her writing in a way that can be converted on paper and on a screen. I think that the Professional Writing program should require students to take more technology classes to augment their technological literacy, so that they can be better suited for the working world.

Second-to-last Blog

I have always loved to take pictures, but this semester has brought me closer to the issue of how technology serves our memories and the way we see the world. I like the way that, through a camera lens, I control how others see the world. If I choose to shoot from a downward angle, high above the subject or scene, I can provoke a completely different sentiment in those who view my picture, than if I decide to lay down at the base of a tree and photograph up its long, slim trunk.

Our photo project this semester was a refreshing change from the reading, and I'm grateful that I was forced to go out into parts of Wilmington that I wouldn't normally have gone, and observe and snap photos. I was proud of the pictures I took, and I felt that each were unique to me, despite the fact that another class member may have taken a similar photo. Working backwards, I'll first discuss the image on the far right (of the above three) that I took at the playground at Greenfield Lake. This picture has a lot of meaning to be because I will always remember that I took it while crawling around a jungle jim, and sliding through plastic tubes on my stomach. I am no small girl, so the sight of it was probably rather alarming, but the experience was priceless. I was alone on the playground, except for two small children, no older than four, so I was free to play like a kid. I swung on the swing set, slid down the slide. I'm graduating in a week, and it was so refreshing to play and take pictures that reflected the childlike simplicity of an empty playground. The photograph I showed here is of the inside of a multi-colored slide. I like it because, somehow, through the lens of the camera, the fact that it is a slide is lost. It could be anything, it could stand for something significant, something meaningful. For me, it is a daily reminder not to forget to play a little bit every day.

The second photograph represents the summer of 2007 which I spent abroad in Dijon, France. I lived with a kind widow Madame Devoux, and her cat whose name I can't remember. My time spent in France was the most enriching of my life. I have studied french for the last ten years, and can speak it fluently. It was my first experience overseas, so my senses were piqued and I wanted to take everything in that I could. I had classes every day except Saturdays and Sundays, so it was hard to find time to travel and I'd often beat myself over not going into Paris enough, or visiting surrounding countries due to my schoolwork, but I realized toward the end of the trip that the quiet, simple moments were what I would remember most. On sunny afternoons, I used to sit with my host mother in her backyard and discuss literature and politics, and she would hum and play with her cat. She had a beautiful garden and we would pick cherries from her cherry tree for dessert each night. This is a photograph I took of one of the flowers in her garden against the slate-colored sky of an on-coming storm. Each time I see it, I am back in Madame Devoux's garden, where I find beauty in simplicity and peacefulness. 

Finally, the first picture I chose to discuss is a photograph taken in 1989 of me and my father and my two older sisters. We're standing on a beach in Massachusetts in the wintertime. I love this photograph because it's one of those childhood photographs that depicts only contentment and love. Though I often complain about how technology ruins some of the "magic" of family moments or making memories, a camera is to thank for this beautiful image of my father and sisters that brings me comfort, and makes me happy.