so i’m getting a little apprehensive about my new job. last night i had an unexpected flood of anxiety as i was lying there trying to drift off – a sudden overload of doubt and insecurity ran up and down my nerves, twanging my synapses awake into a whirring cycle of worry, making sleep impossible.

i’m not at all sure where this is coming from. when it comes to work, i’ve almost always felt soundly confident in my ability to learn and adapt quickly, to perform above expectations, and to integrate my skills and experience to any new situation. in short, i’m damn good at my job. it’s one of the things i’ve always prided myself on and felt secure in.

what i will admit, though, is that adapting to the arcane environment that is local government, has been a steep learning curve – it’s a completely different system to that of the u.s., and the council workplace is one where my natural personality can be a liability rather than a strength. i’m frequently too eager, too forthright, too opinionated in a workplace that more often values quiet reserve, common convention and deference to unspoken politics. and over the 5 years at my current workplace, that hasn’t changed… but over time, as people got to know me, i have become more accepted for my foreign quirks. people have gotten used to my unconventional approach, because they’ve gotten used to *me*.

i’m still strange to them – but i’m no longer a stranger.

and at a new job, i’ll have to start all over again. this is where the doubt creeps in – this uncertainty about fitting in. about not only being the unknown outsider, but the outsider who still doesn’t always get the social cues. it took me five long years at my current workplace to prove myself, to get comfortable, to make friends, to figure it out.

and i’ve just put myself back at square one.

supertramp – goodbye stranger

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there’s a little coffee shop around the corner from us. actually, there are two.

one is a more posh looking “starbucks” style shop, with minimalist modern furnishings and frosted glass windows, advertising free wi-fi. it’s been open since we’ve moved to this area. i’ve never been in there – mostly because, for a coffee shop, they bizarrely don’t seem to open before 10:00 am.

the other is just across the street from the posh place, and it opened about 6 months after we moved here. it was previously a greasy spoon cafe, which was gutted and re-opened as a mom-and-pop coffee and tea shop. i walked past it every day as it was undergoing the endless renovations, and every day i would see this little old genteel-looking gentleman wearing a fedora and a suitjacket in the shop, sitting having a cup of coffee, going over bluepints. and when it finally opened, it had refashioned itself as an intimate little coffee nook, with a old-fashioned curio cabinet full of pastries and glass stands displaying fresh cakes. it looked cute and cozy – and as always, the little old man with the fedora was there every day, reading the paper, sipping an espresso, or smoking his slim, brown cigarettes.

it looked like the kind of warm, inviting neighbourhood place that you feel good about patronising. and i kept meaning to go in, i really did….yet somehow, i never quite made it.

but i kept walking past it every day. and at first there seemed to be a reasonable trickle of patrons sitting at the little scattered tables, enjoying their lattes and muffins on mismatched china. but after several months, it looked as though the trickle had started to dry up. seeing a customer inside slowly became the exception rather than the rule. a few months later, there was a sandwichboard propped outside the storefront which advertised their homemade soups and made-to-order sandwiches. it didn’t appear to have the desired effect. a few months after that, there was a puzzling new sign for biryanis, chips and curries. they started opening earlier and staying open later.

and yet, the shop stayed empty. except for the little old man in the hat. he was there early. he was there late. he was always there.

and then, a few weeks ago, they installed several computers at one wall. they attached a little paper sign to the sandwichboard advertising their internet cafe services.

upon seeing this, my heart sank. there is more than a hint of desperation to this recent development. the street is already full of grotty internet cafes, kebab shops and curry houses.

and my heart sank because somewhere, deep down, i know that what i am watching is the long, slow, downward spiral of that little old man’s long-cherished dream. that little man, with his careful dress, and his old-fashioned hat, is slowly haemorrhaging to death from a thousand tiny disappointments. for every person that walks past without stopping, his humble goal gets further and further away. it makes my chest ache just to think about it.

and in some strange way, i also feel responsible. as if, because i did not do my part to try to contribute to the success of his homespun business, i am somehow complicit in its failure. i did nothing to support it, therefore by omission, i helped bring it down. i get a twinge of guilt in my gut every time i walk past and see the empty tables accusing me.

empty except, of course, for the little old man and his fedora. it’s probably just my imagination projecting, but his brow seems heavier, his shoulders more stooped. he stands in the door, waiting with anticipation for customers that never arrive.

i’ve still never been in for a cup of coffee.

i doubt i ever will.

death cab for cutie – a movie script ending

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so i voted. i was tired and annoyed, and jonno complained, but i dragged him with me down the street anyway. in the end, i voted for the (hopeless) green party as my first choice, and labour as my second choice. i have no illusions that either will win, and i’m not thrilled with either choice… but just the act of voting still gives me a little rush, each and every time.

it’s funny – my mum used to take us with her into the voting booth when she went to her polling station, and i remember being impressed at the awesome privileges of adulthood. it seemed like such a solemn, important, *potent* responsibility. i guess i still see it that way.

i’m fond of saying that if you don’t exercise your choice, you let everyone else make the choice for you – and effectively abdicate your right to complain. you had a chance to try to do something about it, and decided you couldn’t be bothered… too late now to whinge.

and no matter how crummy the candidates are, or how lost in the sea my vote is, i can’t help but be eternally grateful that my vote will be *counted*. someone will mark my choices, and add them to the chorus of voices. individually we cannot effect change, but as a collection of individuals, we can change our piece of the world.

and as tired as i was, and disillusioned as i felt, i couldn’t help but think about the people in zimbabwe tonight. wondering what they might give to have their voice heard, their vote counted. to be able to effect change in their piece of the world.

in the end, i didn’t vote because my one ballot matters so much – i voted because theirs has mattered so little. for years they’ve lived under a military dictatorship that has run their country into the ground – poverty, hunger and unemployment are rampant. yet election after election, in the face of violence, massive corruption, and overwhelming disillusionment, they still turn out and vote.

and if the people of zimbabwe can continue to vote, in the face of all that adversity… how can i possibly not?

the acorn – hold your breath

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“such beauty exists in this world as my eyes would not have believed, and it restores me – heals the damage of neglect like a balm, smoothes the thin patches and fills up the careworn gaps of my soul.”

it’s earth day.

i know the tendency is to roll one’s eyes at yeat another “designated liberal cause day” – but the longer i live in major cities, the more i appreciate nature. i *need* that place to escape to. i need to know that there’s somewhere i can go and stand amongst trees, or at the edge of the sea and be still, and have stillness echo back. someplace where the air is so pure, it hurts to breathe a little. it touches a deep primordial chord in me.

as a kid, my parents bought some land out in western massachusetts. it was only 12 acres or so, but it was ours. to camp on. to build imaginary forts in. to share with woodland creatures. those memories – leaving berries on our giant rock for the birds, naming our giant tree, playing with newts and toads, peeling off chunks of moss and bark for decoration – gave us a sense, not of ownership, but of stewardship. a discarded beercan or evidence of an old campfire felt like a personal transgression. it was our patch of land and we loved it fiercely, as only kids with bare feet, pine needles and wild imagination could.

but besides just our land, we camped a lot as kids. all across the u.s. and back, twice. we were fortunate enough to see most of the major national parks in the u.s. and much of canada. we saw geysers and sequoias and canyons and bison and deserts. we went on innumerable park ranger hikes, exploring the minutia of nature’s miracles up close, and gazing out at stunning expanses of vista. seems like everywhere we went was tied into nature somehow – mom was always identifying plants and birds, dad was always building log cabins and wooden boats. we were always sailing, or biking or hiking somewhere.

and as an adult, i’ve been privileged to see some of the great natural wonders of the world. places so beautiful, they knocked the wind out of me. places of such intense beauty, it overwhelmed the senses. from dramatic exotica to quiet pastures.

i have been so terribly lucky in this lifetime – that i know what it’s like to play with pinecones, to toast marshmallows under the stars, to glide down a glassy bend of river in a canoe, to stand at the foot of a mountain looking up at the peak.

but my favourite place will always be that little patch of woods where i grew up. that little plot, with its pedestrian rocks and trees and toads, is just as important to me as the most majestic of mountains. that’s what i think of when i think about protecting the earth. it’s what taught me the importance of stewardship, and it scares me to think about a future where that kind of childhood is no longer possible.

donavon frankenreiter – wondering where the lions are (bruce cockburn cover)

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“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

- Carl Sagan

shamelessly stolen from everybody cares, everbody understands. it was just too good not to.

ben lee – float on (modest mouse cover)

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calling a truce is hard work.

my body and i have been engaged in a war for years. or, more accurately, i’ve been waging a one-sided offensive attack against my body for most of my life.

i’ve done some pretty horrible things to my body. and ironically, when i was at my unhealthiest (vomiting daily, smoking a pack and a half a day), i got the most compliments. i’ve never been a skinny girl, and it’s hard to look back on those dramatically slimmer photos of myself without a little bit of wistful envy. even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to look at those pictures and see them for what they really were: a sad, sick girl who was trying so hard to be in control, but so desperately out of it.

it’s even harder to see that picture objectively when i’m not thrilled with (what seems to be) a here-to-stay older, heavier, softer version of myself. i first gained a few extra pounds when i quit smoking – but i was happy enough to make that tradeoff. then i put on a few more pounds when we went travelling – but i certainly wasn’t worried about dieting while traipsing about seeing the world. it was only the other day that i realised i’ve been working at this same extra ten pounds now for the past two years. and it occurred to me that maybe this is the new normal for me.

and ten pounds isn’t a lot, i know, though i admit i’d love to lose it. but honestly, what i really want, more than anything else, is to not feel a slave to my body image issues. i am so goddamn tired of thinking about my weight – it feels like something dead and festering that i’ve been lugging around, year after interminable year. something toxic that has taken up so much headspace, for so very long. because truth be told, no matter what the scale says, or how easily my belt buckles – i’ve never been happy. never. even at my thinnest, i wasn’t happy. even at my strongest, i wasn’t happy. it’s extremely upsetting to think about the amount of time and energy i’ve invested in being miserable over the course of my life.

what i want is this: to exercise because it makes me feel good, and not out of a burgeoning panicky fear of a number. to eat mostly healthy stuff, but indulge in occasional treats without berating myself as being weak-willed. to accept that i’m no longer the same jean size i was in my 20s, and to understand that that’s normal – not feel like it’s a deeply personal failing.

i just want to be happy with my body. for once in my life, i want to feel happy in my skin. it shouldn’t be such a big thing, but just thinking about how overwhelmingly intense that sense of relief would be, makes me well up. the idea of being free of that heavy burden – the self-criticism, the internalised hatred, the fear – would be even better than being 9 stone again. it would be the best kind of weight i could ever shed.

after all these years, i think i’m finally beginning to understand that being happy in my body actually has very little to do with my body. it’s not the amount of space my physique takes up in my clothes – it’s the amount of space i let it take up in my brain.

changing my body, as much of a struggle as that has always been, is not the hard part. changing my perspective is far, far more difficult.

it’s hard to let go. and to trust that letting go of my rigid need for control, does not mean i will spiral out of control. because for most of my life, i thought the important thing was to forcibly subjugate my physical self to my mind’s will, to make it do what i wanted, to show it who was boss. my corporeal desires and needs and limits were something to be conquered. and i did – often at the expense of my health, both physical and mental.

i am slowly realising i can only achieve that lasting peace that i so yearn for, by starting with a ceasefire. stop viewing myself as the enemy. stop attacking myself with guilt and shame. so i find myself trying to broker a truce. trying to find a middle ground i can live with by redrawing the boundaries, letting go of that fear, and practicing some tolerance.

it’s new ground for me. i’m still in negotiation talks with the thighs.

the promise ring – happiness is all the rage

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five years ago today, i landed at heathrow airport, to begin what i did not know would be a new life.

each year as i reflect on my u.k. anniversary, i’m struck by how my perspective has changed from the years before. this relationship is a complicated, ever-evolving bond, that confuses even myself at times with its fluctuations and intensity. surprises me with how i can hold both love and disdain for my adopted/adoptive country in the same hand. how i can feel both tenderly protective, and angry. how i can feel grateful for some aspects and disgusted by others.

stopping to think about it, however, i guess i shouldn’t be so surprised. it is, after all, much the same way i feel about america.

and now we have plans to leave. shed this cramped city like a too tight skin. i think about leaving a lot lately, and it brings a quick lump to my throat. i’ve always known this would not be somewhere i would live forever, even as i wanted so desperately to become a permanent part of it. as eager as i am to move on, there is so much i am loathe to say goodbye to – family, friends, identity and lifestyle. the tension of being pulled apart by so many contradictory feelings is overwhelming and heartrending at times. yanking up roots is sometimes necessary, but always painful.

because if there’s anything i’ve learned since getting off the plane back in 2003, it’s that it’s impossible to leave home without leaving some part of yourself behind.

arriving at this place was damn hard.

but leaving will be even harder still.

foo fighters – home

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yesterday was the vernal equinox – that point at which the balance between night and day begins to swing back in my favour, the dark recedes and the fullness of light and everything it brings, is elevated.

the world has already begun regreening itself in these parts. there is a freshness emerging that pierces the air and hits the back of your lungs with an invigorating sting.

watching the dormant spring back to life never fails to astonish me, even as i eagerly anticipate it every year. it’s incredible to think about the complex biochemical processes which occur, deep inside the seemingly-moribund and near-extinct, bringing forth a flourish of renewal and growth from the brink of death. all because the sun returns just in the nick of time.

these past few weeks have been hard – i’ve felt like some vital organ was withering and hardening inside me, forming a thick, bitter crust. i’ve been waiting to turn a corner, waiting for a weight to shift – needing a change in some inner balance to bring the pendulum back into rhythm.

the easter holiday signifies rebirth for many. and while i no longer celebrate the story which inspires it, i will participate in spirit when i plant my tiny seeds and my tiny hopes in my carefully tended flowerbox this weekend, and anxiously await rebirth in the form of tomatoes.

a miracle if there ever was one.

ryan adams – so alive

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I’ve been feeling a bit guilty lately about supporting Obama over Hillary in the presidential campaign. In fact, in many ways, i feel like a bit of a traitor.

I mean, I know why I like Obama better (I have this silly thing about voting for someone I can actually believe in, and for me Hillary’s vote for the war was indefensible). I’ve written here before about the thought process which ultimately decided who got my vote.

But I cannot ignore this feeling that I’m somehow letting down the side. Undermining the all-important work and sacrific of generations of feminists before me which *got us* to this pivotal and incredibly symbollic point. And the unvoiced fears of what happens if Hillary doesn’t win – the fear that her loss will be used to corroborate every naysayers argument that ever was.

The country just wasn’t ready for it. Back to the drawing board. Try again in another 50 years.

If Hillary doesn’t win, when will we next have a *real* contender for first woman President of the US? Hillary has become (you should pardon the tongue-in-cheek expression) our “great white hope”.

I heard a podcast the other day which postulated that younger women who are supporting Obama are only doing so because they want so desperately to believe we live in a gender-neutral la-la-land, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Now I’m certainly not naive enough to believe that the political world I live in is genderless. But the inescapable fact remains: I don’t want to vote based on gender identity. As someone else I know put it, “I resent having to stop every time I’m annoyed with [Hillary] to examine my feelings and make certain I’m not buying in to some repressed, societal sexism.”

And more to the point, I don’t want to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, for the same reason I don’t want people to vote *against* Hillary because she’s a woman. If I truly believe her gender shouldn’t be a factor for those who would vote against a woman for President, then I have to believe it shouldn’t be a factor for me. In other words, if I vote based on gender, I am not only acknowledging that gender bias exists (because of course it does), but also validating it by giving it more merit than other, much more important factors.

That’s not naivete. I simply don’t think you get where you want to go by pointing yourself in the wrong direction.

And I’d like to believe that the ultimate goal of feminism is about women having all choices available to them in equal measure.

I’m grateful for the choice to have a female candidate, and I will continue to fight for the right to ensure that choice continues.

But given the choice? I choose Obama.

wilco – side with the seeds

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amity just texted me to tell me my favourite movie, E.T. is on television. which is rather apt because i just got off the phone with my sister.

Back in 1982 when I was 9 and my sister was 4, my parents took us on a cross-country camping trip for our summer holiday. We went camping for 3 months, from Massachusetts to California and back. And while as an adult, I am ever-so-grateful to have had that experience, at the time, I was pretty annoyed – as any nine year old who had to spend the summer doing “educational” things would be.

So then, we got back from camping, and went back to class in the autumn, my friends were all asking, “Have you seen E.T., have you seen E.T.??!!” Because seeing E.T. was apparently *the* only important thing to do that summer, and it was one of the first summer blockbusters ever. I, being stuck in a tent for 12 weeks, had missed out on THE seminal cultural experience for my peergroup.

And since videos didn’t even really catch on for several more years, I didn’t actually see it until I was about 15. My sister and I finally saw it for the first time together… and, being 10, she cried. And I just can’t bear seeing her upset, I’ve never been able to stand seeing her in pain – when my little sister cries, I cry reflexively. So I cried, she cried more, which made me cry even harder…

She and I continue to cry every time we see it, in a kind of unspoken empathic response – much like the one that exists between elliot and e.t. in the movie. When it was re-released in 2002 for the 20th anniversary, we went to the movie theatre together to watch it on the big screen for the very first time. Within minutes of the opening credits, at the scene where E.T. gets left behind by his spaceship, I glanced over and saw her chin beginning to tremble in the darkness, and that was it – we both ended up sobbing our way through the entire movie.

And since my move to the UK, it has become a kind of symbollic metaphor for our relationship – my needing to leave, her wanting me to stay, the bond that exists at the core of us making parting deeply painful, but our lives inexorably drawing us in different directions. she is my elliot, and i am her e.t. and just as in the climactic scene of the movie, when e.t. says “come”, and elliot says “stay”, no matter how far away i may go, i need only remind her that “i’ll be right here”.

And that’s why I love E.T., and why i can’t help but cry every time i see it – as I am doing now. because my sister is so very important to me, and because it always makes me think of how very much I love (and miss) my sister.

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“it never rains but it pours.”

it’s been pouring here today. more than pouring – a violent lashing rain blowing under doorjambs, around window seals, down chimneys. a watery invasion, leaking in from around edges i wasn’t even aware of. this is marching in like a lion to be sure.

and it’s been pouring here as well. the list of things going wrong in the past few weeks continues to mount. a $1500 cheque is offically lost by my bank. the doctor who was supposed to refer me to another doctor, hasn’t – i have to go back to my gp and start again. the british psychological society still hasn’t evaluated my degree, and now that i’ve changed my plans i can’t get back the £100 i paid. work has, unbelievably, managed to get even worse, with no glimmer of any opportunities on the horizon. and this morning i awoke to the flat seeping water from all sides.

and me, helpless to stop it.

i know that these things arrive with a thunderclap and cloudburst. that sometimes life just sweeps you off your feet in an flash flood of problems, and there’s nothing to be done but to ride it out, surrender any illusions of control. and that eventually the storms will recede, and i will forget the sensation of drowning until the next time.

but today, i found myself caught in a downpour – soaked to the bone, face lifted in abject surrender to the sky, shivering and cursing the heavens.

jose gonzales – storm

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Too good not to copy: Charlotte and Amity have both done this meme, and it immediately resonated with me. So here are 15 things I’ve never said, but wished I could have:

1. It makes me sad that you don’t love yourself enough to let others love you.
2. Our relationship feels wildly imbalanced, but you think everything is fine. That hurts.
3. He cheated on you.
4. I wouldn’t have moved if I had known it would mean losing you. I miss you.
5. I know you got pregnant “accidentally on purpose”.
6. I sometimes think about what life would be like without you. It scares me. But the fact that I know I would be okay scares me even more.
7. The reason you’ve never found “the one” is because you expect a servant rather than a partner – until you come down off your high horse, you’ll never be happy.
8. You almost cost me my sanity – but I still have a giant crush on you.
9. I’ll never forgive you for picking him over me when I needed you most.
10. You used me to prop you up. I pretended I didn’t know you were lying to my face. You were never my friend, just a leech I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of.
11. I love you. I hope I get to tell you in person one day.
12. I think your faith in God is misplaced – but I am moved by the comfort you get from it.
13. You sound ridiculous during sex.
14. What bothers me isn’t that you take credit for my work – it’s that you think I’m too stupid to know you’re doing it.
15. I wish I’d had the courage to kiss you.

dismemberment plan – what do you want me to say?

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so as good as the trip to vancouver was, it has stirred up all sorts of conflicting feelings for me – tapped into that deep well of dissatisfaction that’s always roiling just beneath the deceptively smooth surface. i had just started on my plans to get my masters degree, had resigned myself to being here for another few years, had just applied for a new job.

and now…

i want to go now. yesterday, really. the thought of staying put another few years makes me want to cry. i feel crushed, trapped, ground down by this city. and now, having caught a glimpse of what life could be like, being back here feels like being pushed back into a cage.

i need to get out, i know that much.

i just don’t know how.

death cab for cutie – the sound of settling

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it’s 3 am and i can’t sleep. my mind whirls and ticks inexorably, drifting from one random bubble to another, until it finally wanders into the realm of loose ends that live in the murky depths of the past – unfinished business, uneven relationships, faded friendships. half-formed thoughts and semi-conscious memories that float unbidden from the back of my brain. nebulous question marks hanging around the edges of tentative awareness about people and events that trailed off unsatisfactorily, dissolving into the dark leaving only a faint afterimage in wakefulness. insubstantial “what ifs” and “whys”, interlopers in the deepest hours of night – the trace elements of previous lives that surface only when the scrim of watchful defense is drowsily lowered.

they are invisible during the day, these threads – there are no telltale seams or edges showing. the present moves too fast to dwell in the vagaries of the unanswerable past. doors close, life moves on.

but tossing and turning in the wee hours of the morning, these loose ends tangle and conspire to hold me hostage to sleep.

it’s 3:30, and i’m awake.

the weakerthans – night windows

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kim and i met up for an afternoon out. we hit up wahaca for a late lunch and margaritas, then book shopping and a pilgrimage to the cybercandy store, where i spent nearly £20 on sweets from my childhood.

we weren’t allowed sweets or sodas in our house growing up, and as an early sugar addict, i had to get my fix. not coincidentally then, some of my earliest memories about candy involve stealing.

for example, the first time i tried stealing anything, i was probably about 7 and i had convinced my (younger) brother to stuff a roll of lifesavers in his underwear. we were caught at our bumbling attempts at subterfuge, and forced to spend a whole saturday composing letters of apology, then a further saturday presenting those letters to the stern store manager in person.

as a result, let’s just say we got very good at stealing, very quickly. we were, however, too scared to throw away the wrappers from our purloined contraband, so we stuffed all the incriminating evidence into my kid sister’s toy desk. i’m not sure whatever happened to those wrappers, or what kind of rap my sister ended up taking – being 5 years younger and a whole lot smaller, she was often easily “persuaded” to confess.

later, i became adept at filching money from my mother’s purse – just a few cents here or there. i would stop off at droughan’s drugstore – a true five and dime relic around the corner from school – and buy loose penny candies and lucky rabbits’ feet keychains in rainbow colours. of course, i couldn’t bring the rabbits’ feet home without arousing suspicion, so i left them at my desk at school, festooned around the back of my chair. but at the end of the school year when we had to clean out our desks, what could i do? i brought them home and planted them in my brother’s belongings. when my mother found them, she believed she’d finally caught my brother red-handed…and given the amount of trouble my brother was usually in, it wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination. once again, someone else took the blame for my illicit activities.

because sweets were so restricted in our house, there were no sugary sodas kept in the pantry. instead, there was always a two litre of my mother’s diet tab. back then it was flavoured with saccharine, leaving a bitter aftertaste in the mouth – but i didn’t care. i would slyly steal big slugs of it, slowly loosening the cap to avoid the telltale hiss. when the levels dipped too low, i’d have to top up the bottle with a little water. my mother must have known… but i never got caught.

and so standing in the middle of the candy shop, gleefully filling my bucket with nostalgic goodies, i can only conclude that my parents’ experiment with raising a sugar-free child failed spectacularly, and turned me into a light-fingered thief along the way.

probably not the outcome they intended.

new edition – candy girl

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this expat experience is always unfolding, always new, in ways i never could have anticipated.

i had a lunch date with an american friend of mine this afternoon. she’s in the process of getting married, moving over, changing her life upside-down to be with the man she loves. and as we’re friends of a newish sort, much of the conversation ended up gravitating towards what it’s like to undertake such a monumental leap of faith. the kind of courage it takes to throw yourself into a new environment, with only the solid assurance of your own capabilities to rely on. and she was talking about how it is both an exciting and scary prospect, in equal measure – which is true, of course. but in my attempts to reassure her that it’s not really as frightening as it seems once you are actually in it, doing it, i realised that i’d forgotten just how overwhelming a prospect it once was for me too. i was sitting there blithely glossing over just how hard it can be to make that leap – to believe not only in the uncertain future, but to believe in yourself and your ability to embrace whatever unforseen things that future may hold. to commit to that future with everything you have in the present, and to commit to trusting in yourself with your whole heart.

it’s not easy. in fact, it’s damn hard. to pretend that it’s not, is to invalidate those feelings – those conflicting, exhilarating, anxious, happy, terrifying feelings, that every expat has had.

it’s only because i’m able to look back on that time from the place i’m at now – secure in the knowledge that whatever i was feeling then, i made it through somehow – that those emotions and memories have faded. because it wasn’t easy – not at all.

but it’s good to be able to say now, with sincerity, that it also wasn’t as hard as i thought.

and that one day, she’ll be able to say the same.

motion city soundtrack – everything is alright

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and so it ends.

all in all, 2007 was pretty uneventful for me. and that’s not a particularly bad thing – after several years of constant change, i think i needed this year to settle in, to allow things to settle. at first glance, that might look like settling for, or settling down – but it’s not the same. not at all. i am no longer afraid of moving slowly – only of standing still.

if the past few years have been writ in big bold strokes, this year was found in the small details. so much of life is in the details. so much love is in the details. real growth happens in tiny increments, often invisible to the naked eye, or passing observation – and the most important change only ever happens from the inside.

but new year’s eve is as good a time as any to look back and realise just how far you’ve come, and where you want to go. i was reading some old journals the other day and found this:

you know how sometimes you are able to step completely outside your life, and it’s like looking at the earth from the moon? seeing it as this miraculously blue and beautiful planet – a glittering marble. and when you’re in it, it’s hard to appreciate just how amazing it is. because your days so often are filled with the pavement in front of you as you trudge along, and the sky full of clouds above. and that’s just the way it is – most of the time, life is the dull and endless pavement.

but every so often, it’s a bright, shiny new marble.

and so that’s what i’m hoping for more of in 2008 – learning to step outside the grey, see beyond the clouds and pavement, and appreciate this glittering marble while i’m on it.

happy new year to you all!

wishing you peace, love and joy –

jen

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i really enjoyed this exercise last year. it’s a way of boiling a year down to the essence – if you can only dedicate 24 words to 2007, what *really* mattered in your life? what can you say about it that means something?

it is simultaneously ridiculously simple, and very difficult. so here’s my best shot at 365 days in 24 words.

settling back in, re-establishing roots. our cat came and curled up in our hearts. flew to families two years missed. finally, relievedly, deservedly british.

ra ra riot – each year

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it’s getting towards the end of the year – which means it’s the time when people begin totting up the happenings of the past 365 days, putting them in win/loss columns, ascribing in one way or another, some fixed value to those days, that tries to slot them into the giant cosmic jigsaw puzzle that is the “larger picture”.

i remember being really excited by the “end of year” lists when i was younger, for some unfathomable reason. the best and worst movies of the year. the best and worst news items. the best books, the worst music albums. i even had a strange fondness for the lists of notable people who’d died that year. i guess part of me liked putting the year into concrete, summary terms – as if such lists made a good year “good” or a bad year “bad”. it made it easy to chalk it up, and move briskly on to a fresh new page with the feeling of having completed an essential task. a mental dusting of the hands – good, that’s another year done. it was only when i got older that making such lists became a lot more difficult. very rarely do life experiences fall neatly into one column or another.

and yet there is still a magnetic attraction to them. a need to compartmentalise, separate the cream, leave behind the chaff (if you’ll pardon the mangled metaphors). i suppose that trying to grasp the totality of such a long and varied period of time is simply too hard.

and so we list.

my best moments of 2007:

• my lunch hour walks
• getting zeke
• going home for a long overdue visit
• having my citizenship application approved
• finishing my 3rd marathon
• reconnecting with old friends i thought i’d lost
• seeing the sox win a second world series

my worst moments of 2007:

• saying goodbye to my grandfather
• having my citizenship application rejected
• hating my job
• hearing about the demise of coney island
• realising dave grohl is no longer my hero

my personal best posts of 2007 (for reasons known only to me):

• here comes the sun. it’s all right.
• as i plant tomatoes on easter sunday
• something inside that you wanna say, say it out loud, it will be okay
• milkshakes and flags
• you can fool yourself, and maybe someone else like me
• and me with my umbrella
• imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
• if the world’s at large, why should i remain?
• brooklyn love story, circa 1992
• beachy head marathon runner #1282, that’s me

the zombies – this will be our year

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in two days, i turn 35.

usually around this time of year, i have an annual grump about how old i feel. but even though i am definitely on the wrong side of the thirties now, i am making an effort to be more positive – on that note, i am totally stealing this idea for a birthday post from charlotte.

35 things i have learned:

1. it really is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

2. everything teaches you something, if you allow it to.

3. sometimes, you get what you pay for. can openers are not worth skimping on.

4. at any given place in the u.k. you are never more than 72 miles from a shore (thanks, “life in the u.k.” test!)

5. quality over quantity really matters when it comes to friends

6. everybody’s got their something.

7. the world is a very small place – i am separated from other people and cultures by far less than i ever would have guessed.

8. the metabolism really does a nosedive after you hit 30.

9. everyone should have one semi-impressive “go to” recipe that they love and have mastered.

10. life with a pet is 10,000 times better than life without one.

11. wine gives me headaches. to the extent that it’s not even worth drinking it anymore

12. i think, at 35, i may finally be over the whole “being born on christmas sucks” thing.

13. relationships are work – but anything worth doing is worth doing well.

14. writing is important. writing is the act of creating history.

15. electric showers are a very, very bad idea. you only need to experience the bizarre sensation of being gently electrocuted whilst shampooing your hair *once* to be completely freaked out by all electric showers ever after.

16. you really can live very happily with very little *stuff*.

17. that being said, i miss owning furniture.

18. art is what makes us human. everybody has a bit of artist in them somewhere. too few people are ever encouraged to find it.

19. you never really ever do completely get over having your heart broken.

20. being kind is more important than being right.

21. i am never right as often as i think i am.

22. to say “i love you” is to make yourself vulnerable… but you should still say it. say it first, say it often.

23. kids are amazing, fantastic creatures – and yet there are still children that grow up without families to love them. that we allow that to happen is our single greatest failing as a society. the foster care system is a crime against children.

24. “marriage” and “wedding” are not synonymous. in fact, one has very little to do with the other.

25. we all need to be heard.

26. there are two kinds of people in this world: people who “get” running, and people who don’t.

27. touch is so important that babies can die without it. hugging, kissing, touching are all ways to stay alive.

28. never order from a menu you can’t read.

29. the first cigarette you ever smoke is the stupidest… except perhaps the one you pick up after you’ve already been quit.

30. money doesn’t grow on trees. people should learn how to handle money in school – it’s more important than learning french.

31. coffee is elixir of the gods.

32. the body is an amazing machine – but treating it well and truly appreciating it are struggles for most everyone.

33. 99% of people in the world all want the same thing – a better future for their children. while we may disagree on how to go about achieving that, there is more that unites us than divides us.

34. 99% of people in the world are good. no matter what the news would have you believe, there is really very little to fear.

35. understanding is the weapon. empathy is the antidote. hate cannot grow in the presence of tolerance. love is the only thing that matters on this shiny little marble. it is the truth behind every major religion, it is the only thing that gives meaning to life, it is the most important thing to cultivate, and the most abundant gift you can give. love is all.

and there you have it. 35 life lessons i have picked up along the way. maybe i have earned these grey hairs after all

tom cochrane – life is a highway

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yesterday evening was the winter solstice – the shortest day, the longest night. the point at which, blessedly, finally, the earth begins to turn back towards the sun.

the incas were sun worshippers, and all their most sacred places and rituals reflected that. in visiting machu picchu, you first approach the ancient city by bowing your head at dawn to pass through intipunku, the “sun gate”. in the city itself, you learn about how all the walls and windows and temples were built to align with the angles of the rays of the solstice, to try to capture every last gasp of light before the sun sank behind the surrounding mountains. you learn how their calendar revolved around the festivals of capac raymi and inti raymi, celebrating the solstices and the return of the sun each year. you see the large column of stone placed at the highest point of the city, dedicated as Intihuatana – “the hitching post of the sun”, where priests conducted rituals to bind the suns precious rays to the earth and prevent their escape.

and as i explored the temples and touched the stones, i could feel it resonate within me – i instinctually understood this compulsive need to try to grasp at the light, to hold fast to something so essential and lifegiving. i could understand the panic that must have settled into into their chests when, day after day, the darkness continued to grow and the sun faded. and i could almost sense the jubilation that must have washed over them upon the sun’s annual return – the kind of intense relief that makes one giddy and lightheaded, a little drunk with joy.

i could feel that in the air at machu picchu, because i feel it now. i need light as much as i need air. and today, knowing that the longest night is on the wane, i am giddy with relief.

frente! – open up your heart and let the sun shine in

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