Ordinary Extraordinary

The Empress Needs New Clothes

After a week of comparatively serious posts, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about clothes.

Specifically, the fact that I need some.

For some reason it didn't really occur to me that training for a marathon might have some impact on the shape of my body. I knew that I'd be getting fitter and therefore would probably be losing weight, but I didn't follow that thought process all the way through. As it turns out, clothes do not shrink in relation to your body. Who knew?

It is really disheartening to get out of bed feeling better about your body than you have in years only to get dressed and realize that nothing you own is flattering to your new shape. Even my favorite go-to outfits, the ones I could always count on to look great no matter how I was feeling, no longer fit properly. My slam dunk first-date sweater, the one that was tight enough to be titillating (pardon the pun) but not so tight as to be obscene, is too big. Now what am I to wear to bring the boys to the yard?

Oh, right, at the moment I can't get a date in this town to save my life. No need to really panic about the date wardrobe then. Ahem.

I know, this is what my father would call "a high class problem," don't cry for me too much. But the fact remains that I need new clothes and I am in no position to purchase any.

*sigh*

I need a Fairy Godfather.

Still looking for something serious? Fine: Oliver stone blasts Bush and points out that fanaticism is the result of our overreaction to 9/11.

Privacy

I have a relatively unpopular view of privacy where celebrities are concerned; I believe that they should have some.

Celebrities become famous through the love and support of their fans so yes, they do have an obligation to be gracious and thankful. When they walk the red carpet at awards shows or embark on press junkets to promote new projects, absolutely they should be smiling, waving, glad handing, and signing autographs. All of that is part of their chosen profession; those things count as being "at work."

That does not mean that we, the general public, are entitled to know every single detail of their lives outside of work. Would you want your co-workers knowing the minutia of what you and your boyfriend did on vacation, or how awful you looked when you ran out to get coffee in your pajamas Sunday morning? Would you want them to approach you at a restaurant and ask you to "just look over this file real quick" while you're eating with your family?

No, of course you wouldn't. You enjoy your privacy.

It is a celebrity's responsibility to be aware of their behavior whenever they are in public, that is the cost of fame. You want to get busted for driving drunk then scream racial epithets at the arresting officers? Well, that's pretty much on you.  Want to reveal the intimacies of your relationship on national television? You don't get to cry about the public mocking you with the information you've willingly provided. And if you are ever stupid enough to let someone record you having sex? I will personally slap you for being shocked and hurt when those tapes inevitably make their way to the internet. These are all issues of common sense (and common decency, for that matter).

But the paparazzi have become ruthless in their pursuit of celebrities who are just going about their daily lives. Hiding in the bushes outside a daycare to snap photos of Maddox Jolie-Pitt, pursuing cars driven by celebrities and causing accidents, egging on stalkers to confront their famous prey in a public forum, all of it makes me angry.

It's the interest in celebrities' very personal affairs, though, that makes me furious - the attitude that the public is somehow entitled to know intensely private information.

This morning's coverage of T.O.'s "suicide attempt" made my blood boil. Most specifically, these two sentences:

Watson and fire department spokesman Joel Lavender cited privacy laws for the lack of information they could provide. Lavender said more details could come from the 911 call. The Associated Press filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to get the contents of the call.

and

At the police news conference, Watson released a version of the police narrative with certain sections blacked out. The full report was obtained by several news outlets and reported first by WFAA. The AP received the full version from WFAA.

The Freedom of Information Act applies explicitly and solely to federal government agencies. Unless the F.B.I. was the first agency to respond (doubtful), the police report & 911 call transcript are not federal documents and are therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I wish I could say this was the first time that a media outlet has invoked the FOIA in order to get more celebrity "dirt," but it's not. This happens all the time.

Lyndon Johnson signed the FOIA into law as a means of enforcing government's (now, largely theoretical) subservience to the people; it is not supposed to be a tool with which the media strips away an individual's right to privacy. As a patriot, I deeply resent it being used as such.

To the Associated Press and WFAA: Fuck you. You are nothing more than vulgar ambulance chasers. How could you possibly believe yourselves entitled to such information? A man may have just tried to kill himself and you'd like to smear the details of it all over the evening news?

Seriously, fuck you.

Publicist Wanted

I'll let y'all in on a little secret:

I'm rooting for Britney Spears.

Yes, she's young. Yes, she's made some mistakes. Yes, she's country. Yes, she has questionable taste in men. But you know what? I've met Britney and she's really not a bad sort. She's kind, and friendly, with a good head on her shoulders underneath all that bleached hair. The paparazzi have pursued her mercilessly and exposed every single stumble as evidence that she is the worst person/mother/wife/hick ever. They've succeeded admirably in painting (and maintaining) an extremely unflattering picture of her.

But who among us hasn't gone to Vegas and done something colossally stupid? Who hasn't dated their share of "winners"? What new mother hasn't done something that, when frozen in time, would make her appear to be completely unfit for the job?

Most of us have the luxury of making our mistakes and then slinking away to mull them over / eat our weight in Ben & Jerry's in privacy. Not so for Britney who was flung into the spotlight with little or no preparation and who continues to live there, under the strongest of magnifying glasses.

Besides, I love to root for the underdog. It would give me great pleasure to see news coverage of the blow-out party that's thrown to celebrate her twenty-fifth anniversary with Mr. Popozao.

After watching her interview with Matt Lauer tonight, I can safely say that I have identified the root of ALL Britney's problems: her publicist needs to be shot fired.

If Britney's whole point in doing this interview was to prove (among other things) that she's not a redneck, who in the holy hell let 6-months-pregnant Britney get on national television wearing a short denim skirt with a sheer low-cut tank top and chunky heeled flip-flops? With hair & make-up by Noxzema Jackson? Chewing GUM no less? I was so distracted by the clevage and the gum smacking that I could barely pay attention to what she was saying and I'm on her side.

Nothing proves the case for a good publicist more than Tom Cruise. He may have been the most powerful celebrity in Hollywood last year, but that was before he fired Pat Kingsley and started all the TomKat / couch jumping / imaginary baby nonsense that has made his stock plummet. Clearly he's been insane all along, but under Kingsley's watchful eye the public never knew. It's possible that she may actually be a magician... who else could keep that much crazy out of the tabloids for so long?

Seriously Brit Brit, fire your publicist and call Pat. Tomorrow.

Ready or Not

When there are two things on the table, it's easy to make a choice. When there are thirty? The whole decision becomes much more complicated.

So said my neighbor, F, on Sunday as we were standing outside chatting.

F & his finacee are expecting another child. After he shared this news with me and I'd offered my best wishes, we got to talking about why people our age (25-35, for the purposes of this exercise) are so consumed with the idea of being ready for everything.

We spend our college years trying to get ready for the outside world and our careers trying to be ready for advancement. We won't enter relationships unless we're ready, or contemplate getting married, buying a house, or starting a family unless both people feel ready for the challenge. Most days we won't even leave the house or return a phone call until we feel ready to do so.

While I certainly advocate being prepared for things (or at least aware of what you're getting into), we as a generation seem to be wasting years of our life pursuing this false sense of foundation... missing opportunities that don't wait for us to feel ready to take them.

Are we ever really ready? And what happens if we're not? Time doesn't stop and wait for us to catch up; the world, as we well know, moves heedlessly on. Why do we cling so desperately to this all-consuming need for preparedness?

F's first child was a surprise to say the least; he and G were only 23 and had barely admitted to being ready for a relationship - parenthood was at the end of several as-yet uncompleted checklists. But there it was, staring them in the face, whether they were ready or not.

Five years later the two of them are still happy together and they are raising a bright, happy, well-adjusted daughter whose laugh carries for a block and whose smile should probably be classified as a deadly weapon. F assures me that, though the experience has not always been easy, it has been rewarding and it's given him a unique perspective on the nature of self-imposed timelines and the need for readiness:

You can't think in timelines when it comes to relationships, just throw them out completely. She and I would never have met had we not both happened to be in the same place at the same time and we definitely wouldn't have had our daughter when we did if we'd waited until we were "ready." You can't plan that stuff and you can't ever be ready for it. All you can do is pay attention and hope that you can see, and rise to, the opportunities when they present themselves.

I think that's true of all areas of our life, not just relationships. We are blessed in that we have so many more choices available to us than previous generations did, but we are also crippled by the overwhelming number of those choices. Somewhere along with the limitless possibilities and big dreams, we also picked up this paralyzing fear of making the wrong choice - that one false move could somehow doom the rest of our lives.

And so, we plan. Endlessly. In fact we are so mired in planning, and timelines, and in the need to "sort ourselves out" that our lives are flying right past us and we are missing them.

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
-John Lennon

Life is capricious, and savage, and serendipitous. You meet people with whom a relationship seems both impossible and inevitable. You stumble across a job that makes your heart sing, even though you have no formal training for it. A tragedy changes your life in just a few seconds. Things happen every day, regardless of whether or not you're ready for them.

And you know what? We will never be ready for those things. Ever. But isn't that the feral beauty of Life? That even if something seems ill-advised, or poorly timed, or not at all what you were expecting, you've no choice but to buck everything, cross your fingers, and dive right in?

Instead we hang back, preparing endlessly, and those opportunities pass us by.

What are we waiting for?

Ready or not, here I come.

There is No Bumper Sticker Solution

One of the advantages to my new dear-god-that's-early work schedule is that I get to watch the good half of the Today show... the actual news stories and interviews with political figures, rather than the cooking segments and fashion shows.

Yesterday, Katie interviewed Bill Frist (Senate Majority Leader) and today, Matt interviewed Rex Tillerson (CEO, ExxonMobil) about gas prices. Though both interviews were interesting, Katie & Matt kept probing the two men for short, quick answers and then later replayed sound bites out of context to make their answers seem to be something they weren't (shocking, I know).

People, there is no bumper sticker solution.

Yes, Sentaor Frist sounded like a wind-up parrot as he repeated "supply and demand Katie, supply and demand" ad nauseam, and yes, his $100 rebate is so ridiculous as to be laughable. But this is an exceedigly complex issue and everyone is too busy clamoring for a quick fix to understand the breadth and depth of it.

I have to applaud Rex Tillerson for having the courage to be interviewed on the Today Show, though I'm sure he knew what he was in for. (10 minutes of brilliant interview and the only sound bite that NBC replays is the one in which Tillerson says that his company is in the business of making money. Well, duh! Hello, free market economy) He brought up several important points:

Although oil companies are reporting record profits, only 30% of their profits come from U.S. sales. The rest are from international sales. These days? That's largely China.

Of those U.S. profits, only a small fraction are from gasoline sales; they make most of their money on the upstream, not from the pump.

Even after the merger, ExxonMobil controls only 8% of the gasoline market - a market in which competition is rapidly increasing.

After adjusting for inflation, gasoline is less expensive today than it was during the gas crisis in the 70s

Clearly the issue is not as simple as "record profits = price gouging and monopoly."

If prices at the pump rose in direct proportion to the price of crude oil, we'd all be paying $14 a gallon for gasoline.

Matt was skeptical when Tillerson said that the major oil companies are not getting together and fixing fuel prices, but ExxonMobil's CEO is absolutely correct. The Federal Trade Commission has an entire panel devoted to ferreting out price collusion in the oil industry and they have never ONCE found an instance of it. Ever.

I am tired of hearing about the people who have to hock their jewelry, or re-arrange their carpools, or take the desperate measure du jour to put gas in their cars. The fact is that in the American free market economy there will always be people on the margins. There will always be a segment of the population that is in debt to the last possible penny, who live at the absolute limit of their means. For them, a fifty cent raise in gas prices or a half percent raise in taxes, will upset their entire budget because they have left such a narrow margin for error.

We cannot regulate the economy based on that small percentage of the population. Besides, to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, there are some positives to our rapidly rising gas prices...

Environmentalists should be jumping for joy that fuel has gotten so expensive: cost is the only effective motivator in curbing consumption. People won't start carpooling because it's "bad" to waste gasoline; but they'll sure as hell do it if commuting solo starts to constrict their wallets.

Likewise anyone who has a mutual fund (if you have a 401K, you are invested in a mutual fund) should be thrilled with oil companies' rising profits: almost all of them involve an oil company.

That being said, you know what? There are two things that the federal government could do right now to lower gas prices but nobody is talking about them.

Grassroots Effort

On April 10th, my blog will be hijacked by a historical figure.

Yours should be too.

(Also? Sorry about Tuesday & Wednesday's entries going up today... I accidentally published them to "draft" when I wrote them. Oops!)

A Word About Wedding Registries

Today's post boys and girls is about wedding gifts. I've reached that time in my life when I find myself purchasing lots of nuptial presents (5 weddings between now and June - whee!) and I would like to make an announcement:

People, your registires are getting out of hand*.

Silk bathrobes? Cosmetics? Pet items? $2500 leather couches? Picture frames?  Tealights?

Come on.

Weddings are joyous, glorious occasions wherein a couple's friends and family gather together to celebrate their union and wish them well for the future. They are not all-expenses-paid shopping sprees at Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, and Macy's.

I love you people, but I am increasingly tempted to adopt stars in your names or ship you lumps of coal wrapped in dove-embossed paper.

Let's go over some basic etiquette/ground rules, shall we?

• These are gifts, not the cover charge for your exclusive party. Guests are not obligated to do anything other than show up and behave themselves once they've RSVP'd.
• Including a "registry card" with your invitation is vulgar in the extreme. Blame it on my WASPishness, but for some reason this particular gaffe drives me insane. Registry information should only be given at a guest's request or included with shower invitations sent by someone other than the engaged couple.
• Unless you are asking your guests to donate to a specific cause (your "Downpayment for a House Fund" or your favorite charitable organization), requesting money in lieu of gifts is tacky.
• Exercise some common sense. Registries should be a tool for you to subtlely express your tastes (preferred china pattern and flatware style, for example) and your need for "big ticket" household items ($300 mixer - good. $1700 sleigh bed - bad). They should not be detailed shopping lists for your home makeover.
• Allow your guests some margin for creativity and personal expression in their gift giving. Making it known that you will be unhappy receiving a gift not found on the registry is tasteless, rude, and virtually guarantees you the aforementioned dove-wrapped coal.
• Send a Thank You note. Seriously. After your guests have been gracious enough to jump through your registry hoop, the least you can do is acknowledge their effort and expense.
• Before you send that note, though? Make sure you are absolutely certain you know what the gift is. I will never forget the day my parents got a note thanking them for the lovely linen napkins when my parents had, in fact, given the couple embroidered linen placemats.

___
*No, of course I'm not talking about you *g*

What This Girl Wants

The ever fabulous chowyunsmut recently blogged about what she's looking for in a mate* and that got me thinking.

It's often been said that the older we get, the less likely we are to find a long term relationship - not because there are suddenly less people in the world, but because we get "too picky" as we get older.

I prefer to think of it as having a more refined dating palette.

Other tastes mature (Remember all that Boone's Farm you drank in college thinking it was high-quality wine?), why shouldn't our taste in partners do the same? I've written before about what a girl wants and I still stand by these words: If you want to kiss me, fucking kiss me. But that's not really everything, is it?

pages 11 and 12

I went on a cleaning spree this weekend and re-organized most of my drawers and closets.

(I know, I know... I'm a wild woman. Living life at this speed is bound to kill me eventually. It's a risk I'm willing to take.)

Tucked into the very back of a top shelf, abandoned with a few stray puzzle pieces and two bottle caps, were pages 11 and 12 of a letter from a prisoner at the Los Angeles County jail to a woman named Michelle.

I've no idea how old this letter is, who Michelle is, how she knows this unnamed prisoner, or what the other ten pages of the letter contained, but I was intrigued by the carefully penciled pages.

All capitalizations, emphases, punctuations, and grammatical oddities are the work of the author:

Eyes Wide Open

The essay below has been circling around my little corner of the intarweb lately. It moved me, so I wanted to re-post it here.

The Awakening
Author Unknown

A time comes in your life when you finally get it... When in the midst of all your fears and insanity you stop dead in your tracks, and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out - ENOUGH!

Enough fighting and crying or struggling to hold on. And, like a child quieting down after a blind tantrum, your sobs begin to subside, you shudder once or twice, you blink back your tears, and through a mantle of wet lashes you begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize that it's time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change or for happiness, safety and security to come galloping over the next horizon. You come to terms with the fact that he is not Prince Charming and you are not Cinderella and that in the real world there aren't always fairy tale endings (or beginnings for that matter), and that any guarantee of "happily ever after" must begin with you; and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are...and that's OK. (They are entitled to their own views and opinions.) And you learn the importance of loving and championing yourself; and in the process a sense of newfound confidence is born of self-approval.

You stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you (or didn't do for you) and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected. You learn that people don't always say what they mean or mean what they say, and that not everyone will always be there for you; and that it's not always about you.

So, you learn to stand on your own, and to take care of yourself; and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers... and you begin to accept people as they are, and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties; and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.

You realize that much of the way you view yourself and the world around you is as a result of all the messages and opinions that have been ingrained into your psyche. And you begin to sift through all that you've been fed about how you should behave, how you should look, and how much you should weigh; what you should wear and where you should shop, and what you should drive; how and where you should live, and what you should do for a living; who you should sleep with, who you should marry, and what you should expect of a marriage; the importance of having and raising children, or what you owe your parents.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. And you begin reassessing and redefining who you are and what you really stand for. You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you've outgrown, or should never have bought into, to begin with; and in the process you learn to go with your instincts.

You learn that it is truly in giving that we receive. And that there is power and glory in creating and contributing; and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a "consumer" looking for your next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life. You learn that you don't know everything, it's not your job to save the world ... and that you can't teach a pig to sing. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility, and the importance of setting boundaries, and learning to say NO.

You learn that the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry, and that martyrs get burned at the stake.

Then you learn about love. Romantic love and familial love. How to love, how much to give in love, when to stop giving, and when to walk away.

You learn not to project your needs or your feelings onto a relationship. You learn that you will not be more beautiful, more intelligent, more lovable or important because of the man on your arm or the child that bears your name. (If there were a way to bold this even more, I would.)

You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn that just as people grow and change, so it is with love...and you learn that you don't have the right to demand love on your terms ... just to make you happy.

And, you learn that alone does not mean lonely. And you look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that you will never be a size 5 or a perfect 10, and you stop trying to compete with the image inside your head and agonizing over how you "stack up."

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs. You learn that feelings of entitlement are perfectly OK.... And that it is your right to want things and to ask for the things that you want...and that sometimes it is necessary to make demands.

You come to the realization that you deserve to be treated with love, kindness, sensitivity and respect; and you won't settle for less. And, you allow only the hands of a lover who cherishes you to glorify you with his/her touch ... and in the process you internalize the meaning of self-respect.

And you learn that your body really is your temple, and you begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin eating a balanced diet, drinking more water and taking more time to exercise. You learn that fatigue diminishes the spirit and can create doubt and fear. So you take more time to rest.

And, just as food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play. You learn, that for the most part, in life you get what you believe you deserve... and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for, and that wishing for something to happen is different from working toward making it happen.

More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You also learn that no one can do it all alone and that it's OK to risk asking for help.

You learn that the only thing you must truly fear is the great robber baron of all time. FEAR itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it, and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your terms.

And you learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom. You learn that life isn't always fair, you don't always get what you think you deserve; and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people. On these occasions you learn not to personalize things.

You learn that God isn't punishing you or failing to answer your prayers. It's just life happening. And you learn to deal with evil in its most primal state-the ego.

You learn that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you, and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to admit when you are wrong and to building bridges instead of walls. You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.

Slowly, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself; and you to make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever, settle for less than your heart's desire. And you hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind. And you make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility.

Finally, with courage in your heart you take a stand; you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best as you can.

Mosh

I have been fascinated by Eminem since he first broke into the music scene in 1999 (click here to read about how I applied Eminem to Freud's Structural Model of Personality). He is a compelling pop-culture figure who unifies seemingly incompatible groups under the banner of his powerful, in-your-face music. To quote Sacha Jenkins (Spin magazine), he who understands [Eminem] understands the fabric of American society—beautiful stitches, stains, rips, and all.

Eminem's latest song, Mosh, is an aggressive anti-Bush piece that urges his followers to take responsibility for the condition of our country and to change it by going to the polls on November 2nd and voting.

Someone's trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying
we're responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered
This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding,
How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist
Now this is our, final hour
Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify the times it, and multiply it by six
Teen million people are equal of this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech
Let the President answer on high anarchy

(read the complete lyrics here)

From the Music for America website:

Eminem is making a play for the times, to be a cultural leader of a revolutionary generation. . . [Eminem] is a man with mass appeal. "Mosh" uses that appeal for unity, for a focus in the fighting spirit of the hip hop nation; focus to organize, gather, and achieve some great ends.

And from MTV.com:

"Mosh" portrays Eminem as a powerful rebellious figure who just by using his voice and music has the ability to mobilize people who are fed up with the president.

The video for Mosh, directed by Geurilla News Network's Ian Inaba, begins with the sound of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance and a shot of a jet flying low over a school before exploding offscreen. The imagery is powerful and disturbing: Lloyd Banks harrassed by police, a poverty-stricken woman evicted from her apartment while Bush announces tax cuts on television, an army private being re-assigned to Iraq on the day he returns home. As Eminem raps about disarming George W. Bush, his followers (identically clad in black hooded sweatshirts) storm the White House to register to vote.

Watch the video for Mosh here. I got chills the first time I saw it.

Though they've been slammed by critics, I don't think that that Eminem's Mosh and P. Diddy's Vote or Die campaign are too aggressive. People under the age of 30 in this country don't vote. The reasons for that are long and involved, but the point is that they're not voting and they should be. This is what it takes to get youth voters to the polls.

And as we proceed, to mosh through this desert storm, in these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present, and mosh for the future of our next generation, to speak and be heard, Mr. President, Mr. Senator, (can you hear us?)

Phone Envy

It is no secret that, in Los Angeles, phone envy is as common as breast envy or Gucci envy: it's all about what you're packing in your purse, pocket, or Louis Vuitton phone case.

There are those who believe that having a BlackBerry is the only way to go while others staunchly defend the hipper Sidekick (a small minority believe that a cell-phone-and-PDA combination is actually the wisest solution). Casual conversations about "hands free" devices quickly turn to heated debates as people draw sides on ear buds vs. boom mics and voice dialing vs. hot keys. The battles to personalize phones rage endlessly... wallpapers, pictures, faceplates covered in Swarovski crystal. Competition over who downloaded the cooler ringtone can get downright ugly.

Los Angelenos can be more vehement in their support of their wireless provider than they are in support of their preferred presidential candidate. It's a jungle out here and your machete had better look sleek, keep the power of the internet at your fingertips, and ring with polyphonic majesty.

For the past two years I have been staying out of the cell phone fray, quietly making calls and sending text messages on my comparatively low-tech Motorola t720. I downloaded a fun ringtone, laughed over the fact that I could play Tetris on my phone, and didn't think much more about it. I think it is safe to say that unless I had to call someone, my phone didn't cross my mind at all.

It didn't cross my mind, that is, until my phone started to fall apart a few months ago. First, the battery lost power and I had to charge it after even a 2 minute phone call. Then the headset jack broke and I couldn't use my coveted hands-free device. Finally, the microphone started to go and I had to whack the phone three quick times in succession before the person I'd called could hear me. It was time to join the melee and upgrade my phone.

Since Verizon Wireless has a great upgrade plan, all I had to do was walk into a store and pick a new phone. Foolish mortal: easier said than done.

The sales associate at the Verizon store helped walk me through the myriad of choices. BlackBerries, Treos, and LGs - oh my! When I mentioned that I didn't really need a phone with a camera or web browsing capabilites, she looked stricken "But, all the phones have this stuff these days! It's just, like, standard!"

I finally settled on an LG VX7000. It has a camera that shoots still images and video at night, in the sun, or under flourescent lights. I can browse the web, send text messages, and download my own photos to use as wallpaper (two different wallpapers - one for the main screen and one for the front screen thankyouverymuch). It has a calendar, message organizer, and a tip calculator. Plus, it has a GPS locater option that I can enable if I suddenly find myself lost in the wilderness with my phone.

Oh, and I can also call people!

This phone has so many bells and whistles that it came with a 40 page manual AND a reference CD; I admit that I've been having fun with all the new features. I downloaded the music from the Spiderman credits as my ringtone (geek!) and I've been amusing myself by playing with the camera. For the next three days (until a newer model comes out), I have the slickest phone in town, baby.

Except for one minor detail: the MULTI-COLORED FLASHING LIGHT that strobes through blue, pink, green, yellow and white every time the phone rings, or a text message comes through, or I make a call. It doesn't talk about this light anywhere in the manual nor is it mentioned in any of the product descriptions. It's like a little extra... surprise.

A little surprise that I can't figure out how to turn off.

Can I still be slick when my phone flashes like a 70's disco floor?

My Favorite Season

I love fall. bronxelf and I would surely go head to head over this opinion as she loathes autumn, but I love it.

Although living in Los Angeles means that I miss the turning of the leaves and the chill in the air, there is one surefire sign of fall that happens no matter where you live in the United States: the start of football season.

I. Love. Football.

I have always loved football. When I was young my parents and I would spend entire Sundays watching football, often eating homemade chili or beef vegetable soup off of TV trays in the den. Oddly, my mother is actually the more vocal fan in the family and I learned the art of yelling at the officials from her. (On second thought, that's not odd at all if you know my mother) I surprise my male friends by being as much (or more) of a fan than they are.

In spite of the lack of fall-like weather, one of the major advantages of living on the West Coast is that there is football on from the moment I wake up on Saturday and Sunday mornings - I can watch football while I eat my breakfast! Coffee and play action, what better way to start a morning?

Too bad Los Angeles doesn't actually have a team. Yet. If all goes as planned, we'll have one by 2008.

Though I am a die hard Trojan (I never missed a home game while I was in school) and a Giants fan from birth, I'm not the type of fan who cheers for one team to the exclusion of all others. I love the game and I prefer watching a great game over watching one of my favored teams blow out their opponent.

Unless of course that opponent is UCLA, Notre Dame, the Raiders, or the Cowboys. Those teams can all get blown right out of the water every time.

Man, I love football season.

Angels in the Green Room

To say that the cast & crew of my show is diverse would be an undersatement. The puppeteers range in age from 20 to 40 and represent every ethnicity, gender, faith, sexuality, and political party; the crew shows the same depth and breadth.

The Green Rooom, therefore, can be very exciting between shows. These three want to play video games, this one wants to discuss the presidential election, those few want to listen to the latest track that one of the puppeteers mixed, still others are doing homework or trying to sneak a DVD in while the video game is paused. Rarely, if ever, is the entire cast and crew involved in the same thing for longer than ten seconds.

Today, every single member of the production sat still, quiet and enthralled, for all six hours of HBO's Angels in America.

We'd canceled the first four shows while we waited for a performer to arrive (a replacement for one who had gone home sick before the first show) so we had four and a half hours to kill before performing even a single show. One of the puppeteers tentatively volunteered that he'd brought Angels in America on DVD if anyone was interested in watching it. I expected at least half the group to roll their eyes and pull out the Xbox, but not one did. Instead, we all settled in to watch.

Several of the puppeteers were too young to understand some of the historical foundations of the story, we had to pause occasionally so I could explain who Roy Cohn is or why Ethel is important, but every single person was absorbed by the story. We took choreographed restroom/smoke/food breaks and no one tried to switch DVDs while we were out of the room. In fact, everyone was so invested in the movie that all of us stayed for an hour after the final show to watch the last chapter of Perestroika.

It was a beautiful and unique day... a rare period of absolute unity.

It's odd to me that Angels in America of all things should be the unifying element. Having stage managed both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika (and having seen the HBO version a few times), I adore Angels in America and am intimately familiar with all of it's complexities. But the film is very long and the language is difficult and unnatural. The topics of homosexuality and a world abandoned by God are repellent to a few of the devoutly Christian members of my production. The younger cast & crew members have never lived in a world without AIDS so the terror and uncertainty of that time is foreign to them. The political framework was lost on almost everyone.

And yet, the greater lessons of Kushner's work are universal. Something in the very human struggles that all of the characters face touches people of every demographic. At it's core Angels in America is about the struggle for life, and we are all addicted to being alive.

But still. Still. Bless me anyway.

I want more life. I can't help myself. I do.

I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much, much worse, but...You see them living anyway.

When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate, but...Bless me anyway. I want more life. -Prior Walter, Angels in America: Perestroika

Burning Off

When I first moved to Los Angeles, the climate in late summer / early fall absolutely baffled me. Weather is fairly dependable on the East Coast... what you find in the morning upon waking is generally what you will encounter for the rest of the day. (Except in Maine. The weather is decidedly undependable in Maine.) Not so in Los Angeles where the marine layer makes the days start out gray and cold before burning off to reveal warm sun and blue skies. My first autumn in Southern California was a lesson in the fine art of layering - a constant struggle to wear the right combinations of clothing to be comfortable all day.

The change of seasons combined with the recent return of Apollo has caused me to spend a lot of time reflecting on my first few months in Southern California. I have been living here for 9 years - a full third of my life.

I am so different now than I was when I arrived.

In August of 1995, I was 18 years old and so ready for the next phase of my life that as soon as I'd dropped the last box on the floor of my dorm room, I hugged my parents and ran back upstairs to get started on the new me. I had to call them later in the day to make sure that, in my haste, I had remembered to say "goodbye." The world suddenly seemed so open, so different than the dark and confining world of high school. I wanted to try everything, do everything, learn everything, know everybody.

I was an idea of myself as an adult... an outline waiting to be filled in with the rich colors and textures of life experience.

At 27 years old, the outline has changed many times... portions erased and re-drawn, textures and colors added in carelessly overlapping strokes... but I have finally become myself. I have learned that being an adult is not a static destination but a life-long journey. Some part of me, the very core of me has vulcanized since my first day at college. Now new experiences add to the complexity and beauty of the outline rather than changing it entirely. I have found myself and remain myself in the face of challenges, changes, triumphs, and defeats.

The heavy gray clouds of adolescent morning have burned off, leaving me to bask in the rays of a warm and inviting day.

Comic Relief

Lately I've had a hard time finding topics about which to write. Well... that's not exactly true. I have plenty of topics, but they're all equally introspective and depressing and unless you are Sylvia Plath or Morrissey, your angst-ridden words aren't terribly interesting to anyone but yourself. Since I am neither of those people, I've been quiet. With both the Faboo Roomie and I being in dire financial straights at the moment, life has been pretty bleak.

Yesterday, there was a bright spot. There were long moments wherein the Faboo Roomie and I found ourselves laughing hysterically, frightening the cats with our shrieks.

That's right: our U.S. Census survey arrived in the mail. For the second time. Apparently we got one three weeks ago but The Faboo Roomie discounted it as junk mail and threw it in the trash. This one, therefore, was delivered in an envelope that announced You are required by law to respond to this survey. The front page of the booklet further warned that our participation in this survey is "so important" that government officials may try to contact (us) by phone or personal visit if (our) survey is not received.

Immediately I had visions of Census officers in SS uniforms breaking down my door at 3am, jerking me out of bed, and shining a flashlight in my eyes while pelting me hard and fast with questions about how many children live in the home and whether we have a gas heater or an electric one. Not wanting to risk that late night visit, we set to filling out the survey immediately.

If you've never filled out a Census survey before, let me make a few suggestions:

* Get a cup of coffee. Better yet, make a pot. Or two.
* Find a comfortable place to sit; you'll be there for awhile.
* Read each question carefully before answering.
* Scan the booklet and answer the easy ones first. If you have time at the end, go back and work on the harder questions.
* You get 200 points just for printing your name correctly.
* Take frequent breaks to use the restroom and stretch your legs.

First, there are several pages devoted to describing all of the people who live in your residence. Age. Gender. Ethnicity. Income. Favorite Color. Preferred Sexual Position. Brand of Toothpaste.

Then, there are pages and pages of questions about your residence that read like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Do you own this residence, or rent? If you own, turn to page 32 to answer lots of questions about your mortgage. If you rent, skip ahead to page 42.

The questions start out normally enough but then get increasingly bizarre. How much annual income does this residence gain from agriculture on the property? Does this residence have full plumbing facilities: hot and cold running water, a sink or shower, and a toilet? Is this residence a permanently placed mobile home? What is the capital of Burundi? Who convinced Donald Trump that the dramatic comb-over was a good idea?

For a split second, I want to screw with the Census Bureau. I want to convince them that I am an Eskimo living in a permanent motor home without plumbing in the middle of Los Angeles and making my living growing corn. But visions of the aforementioned "personal visits" stay my hand and convince me to answer the questions as best I can. Sadly, I have no idea how many units are in my building, how long ago it was built, or how many rooms (not including hallways, bathrooms, or partial rooms of course) there are total in all of the units.

I do know, however, that the capital of Burundi is Bujumbura.

After the "general" questions, there are two additional pages that each individual at the residence has to fill out... even more in-depth questions than the first section broken down by age. Answer this question if you are above the age of 7. Answer the next three questions if you are above the age of 13. If you are in your thirties but still behave like a 13-year-old, please skip to the last section.

At the end of the booklet there are several pages intentionally left blank - I can only assume those are for the extra credit essay question.

Thankfully, we no longer need to worry about Census takers pounding on our door in the middle of the night; The Faboo Roomie mailed it off this morning.

Good thing the survey came with a postage-paid return envelope, though - I don't think we could have afforded to mail a book to Washington.

Patriotism

With all of the furor that has been created since 9-11, there has been a lot of talk about patriotism... accusations that speaking out against the President is unpatriotic, blindly following the President's choices under the shroud of patriotism, the word is being tossed around almost as often as the word freedom.

What then IS patriotism? What does it mean to be a patriot?

The most basic answer is that a patriot is one who "loves, supports, and defends one's country". Patriot is synonymous with nationalist, but clearly the word has taken on a more intense meaning lately.

I do not believe that to be patriotic one must blindly follow the word of the government, meekly accepting their word as law. This country was founded by people who refused to be cowed by their King's rule.

According to the Declaration of Independence, it is in fact our right as citizens of The United States of America to oversee our representative government:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

A true patriot is someone who understands the birth and evolution of this country and fights to defend the original principles on which it was founded.

I am a patriot. I have traveled widely and, although I have found many amazing places where I could live quite happily, I still maintain that this is the best country on earth. I believe that the "Charters of Freedom" (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights) are some of the most brilliant documents ever crafted by man. I vehemently support (most of) the ideals that led to the founding of this country.

BUT...

I do not support the current administration. I think that George W. Bush is dangerous, power-hungry and leading this country one step closer to fascism every day.

As a patriot, as someone who loves this country and everything it should stand for, it is my right and my responsbility to SPEAK OUT against this government that has begun to destroy our Lives, our Liberty, and our pursuit of Happiness.

Happy Independence Day.

Summer Snapshots

Summer has always been my favorite season. As an adult it just means fantastic weather and the occasional long weekend, but when I was young(er) summer meant three glorious months away from school and, most importantly, summer camp.

Camp Arcadia was my salvation. Whereas school was a dark hole of ostracism and unhappiness, Arcadia was light and laughter and fun - I belonged there. So many good things came from my years spent as a camper and counselor at Arcadia: an unquenchable desire to bravely explore the world around me, a reverence for the untamed outdoors, my best friend. Yes, Firebug and I were assigned to the same cabin (Southfield West!) seventeen years ago and we have been best friends since!

I called Firebug earlier as I was driving home for work, feeling nostalgic for our days at Arcadia and desperately wanting to be eleven again if only for a day. She absolutely understood what I was feeling and we had one of those half-spoken conversations that make other people wonder if you've lost your mind completely.

Me: Do you know what we'd be doing right now if we were eleven? Rehearsing Antics & Horribles!
She: Oh, do you remember how we used to have every root of that hill memorized so that we could run down it and it felt so good?
Me: I remember you falling down the steps of Senior 1 on that rainy day.
She: Was that me? All I remember is pain...
Me: And the 3am drives back from Kawanhee. We should have been dead in the woods so many times by now.
She: Oh god, the Ridge.
Me: I remember the first time we went, feeling like I wasn't old enough to be there yet.
She: And I had that one wine cooler.
Me: Do you remember the mudpie song?
She: It made no sense. Damnit, somebody is riding my bumper and I need to switch lanes...
Me: Just throw your wilderness paddle at him.
She: Wilderness paddle!! And basic paddle. Not so basic...
Us: *sigh* I want to be eleven again

Now as I write this, I'm looking at a snapshot taken of the two of us at the Final Banquet one of the last years that we were campers. I think we must be 13 or 14, our noses are sunburned and our hair is tangled with highlights from a summer spent in the sun. Our Sunday shirts are stained with a summer's worth of hot fudge and barbecue sauce, but we don't notice. Looking at this picture I can still hear the din of the dining room, remember the texture of the dishes, smell the scent of pine on the air, and my mind is flooded with flashes of memory... snapshots of summer.

...the first night alone at summer camp. I wasn't scared or homesick, but nost of the girls in my cabin were. I just layed in my bunk looking out at the meadow and wishing that the summer would never end.

...the first freezing cold swim in the lake every summer. The first year that I was a counselor, the water was so cold that when I dove in to take my lifeguarding test, I started to hyperventilate.

...Sunday morning assemblies in the Pine Grove. We would all sit outside, sorted by age and cabin, and listen to the lulling voices of the camp directors. Louise would always read a story at the end (Sacajawea or Durer's Praying Hands) - that was my favorite part.

...wilderness trips. 5 days canoeing Lake Umbagog, 7 days paddling the Allagash river, a week at JMG testing camp.

...my first kiss, stolen along the side of the dining hall at Camp O-at-ka (a boy's camp nearby) moments before all my friends came around the corner to pile into the vans.

...celebrating my birthday at camp with a banner and a silly hat and running a lap around the dining hall while everyone sang and cheered.

...rolling down the hill from the tennis courts and trying to stop before you hit the gravel road.

...lying in our bunks, whispering late into the night and trying not to be overheard by the counselor on Night Duty.

...getting certified as a lifeguard and as a Junior Maine Guide.

...the Fourth of July bonfire down by the lake. The whole camp huddled around the fire singing songs and waving cold sparklers in the air.

...singing. Sining at assembly, during meals, at every campfire and camp function. So much joyful mostly-on-key singing.

...lazy Wednesday afternoons where we could walk or canoe into town to buy a snack, or not.

...writing letters. Getting letters.

...Rest Hour.

...splitting my first log of wood, starting my first campfire all by myself, sharpening my own Buck knife.

...real Maine days.

...taking the Champion seat in the annual horseshow and getting my name engraved on the trophy.

...Parent Camper Weekend.

...toasted marshmallows, spaghetti, gorp.

...playing capture the flag on the lower field until it was too dark to see.

...rainy days so cold that we were bundled into jeans, sweaters AND turtlenecks.

...closing candlelight ceremony where everyone in the camp set a small candle adrift on the lake on a little wooden boat. It was quite a rush to see if you could find your boat the next year.

...driving away from the gates of Arcadia after my last summer as a counselor, knowing that I probably wouldn't return until I was bringing my own daughters for their first summers.

Ah, how I miss those summers.

Writer's Dam. Damn.

Though I have been keeping a blog (in one form or another) since 1998, amandarin is a new project.

I began blogging because it was a way for me to add some structure and discipline to something that was previously only an occasional hobby. My goal was simply to write something, anything, every day - an attempt to sharpen my style and refine my own unique voice. The bonus of publishing it publicly was that others would be able to read my words and give me feedback. However, as blogging evolved, I found my writing becoming something I didn't like. Rather than the well-thought-out essays that I had started out composing, my blog entries became like sound bites - mere tidbits of information. There were plenty of brief anecdotes, pictures with few word captions, and links to other (more verbose) blogs, but no depth. There were none of my thoughts or feelings... just bits of fluff and inconsequence. One of my weblogs was very popular for awhile, but I took it down because I was disappointed with the quality (or lack thereof) of my own writing.

amandarin is a return to my original vision of blogging and I am excited to be launching it. For the first time in a long time, my mind is swimming with ideas for pieces that are just begging to be written. I have started to keep a list of ideas as they occur to me so that I can get back to them whenever I find myself lacking for a topic.

But...

I feel as though my inspiration is dammed up. I know the ideas are there, pounding and swirling againt each other, but only the smallest drops seem to make it over the wall that is containing them. I have been writing in bites for so long that my creativity trails off after the first few sentences. I have a handful of posts saved as drafts because they started off strongly and then stopped, leaving me bewildered as to how to finish them. Clearly, this is evidence that my return to this style writing was none too soon.

I'm hoping that this struggle will make me a stronger, more focused writer.

I'm hoping that the dam will break soon and my ideas will come tumbling forth as they used to.

I'm hoping that you all will bear with me while I sort this all out.

3" of Power

I feel sexy when I walk in high heels. The tension in my calf muscles, the subtle sway of my hips, the rhythmic click-click-click of the delicate stilettos striking the ground in time with my stride - it's impossible not to smile coyly and hold my head a little higher. There is something so powerfully feminine about walking confidently in high heeled shoes that I wish I could wear them all the time.

Today I decided to break in the black sandals that I bought a few weeks ago. Two delicate straps across the toes decorated by a leather flower and a 3" stiletto heel all held in place by a think ankle strap with a silver buckle. These shoes are divine.

When I saw them peeking at my from the bottom of the rack during the Nordstrom's shoe sale, I approached them with skepticism. Surely these beautiful shoes weren't actually my size... on a regular day it's a battle to find women's shoes in size 11 that don't look like they belong on either a softball coach or a drag queen. But during the Nordstrom's sale? Forget it - the few pairs they do have in my size are usually snapped up in the first five minutes. I picked them up and looked cautiously at the insole. Size 11! Still, I contained my excitement. Surely they would be too narrow - not only are my feet long, they're broad (oh yes, I have Flintstone feet). I slid my foot out of my sandal and let my toes slide slowly across the arch of the shoe, down towards the delicate black leather straps. I winced, expecting resistance as I pushed my toes between the straps, but there was none. I looked down in wonder, it fit perfectly. I buckled up the ankle strap and held my foot out in front of me, admiring the instant elongation of my leg and the arch in my foot. When one of the salesmen approached me to ask if I wanted to purchase the shoes, it was all I could not to dance my way to the register singing "Yes, yes, yes!"

They've been sitting in my closet since the day I bought them, tempting me. Of course I wore them around my apartment a bit to break them in, but they wanted to go outside, to click along sidewalks and across dancefloors, to show me off one step at a time. Though I didn't have any special plans (well, aside from lunch with Matt & D), today seemed like the day.

Let me tell you, these shoes have POWER. When I couldn't find a place to park for lunch, these shoes convinced a parking attendant to let me into a $15 lot for free. When the guy at the grocery store was about to steal the last grocery basket from right under my fingertips, these shoes made him stop and hand it to me with a smile. When I stopped by Boy 2's house to hang out for a bit, these shoes made him pause and say Wow, those are sexy.

I must find a way to wear these shoes with EVERYTHING.

Revenge Against the Red Tags

The garbage men in my parents' town are very fastidious; they will only haul away certain items. If they think that your trashcans contain illegal items, they will leave a nasty red tag on the handle of the can and not haul it away until the items have been removed. The most illicit item on their list? Construction waste.

When I was a child, I had a rabbit (Bonnie-Bob by name, but that's a story for a different post) who lived in a luxury hutch. The cage was five feet long and almost three feet deep, it required a lot of cedar chips every week.

Cedar chips look suspiciously like construction waste to the untrained eye.

After the first week that the grabage men refused to take away our trash becuase of the "construction waste", my father called the town to explain about my rabbit and his cedar chips. The manager at the Department of Sanitation assured my father that he would explain the situation to our garbage men and that they would take away the trash with no further problems. We got periodic red tags on our trash cans until the day Bonnie-Bob's sucessor died - in a ridiculous exercise in smuggling and intrigue, my father was reduced to trying to hide the cedar chips under other trash or in sealed bags.

The red tags were a source of frustration and annoyance... until my father got his revenge. Over the course of 9 months, he managed to throw out an entire car body in the curbside trash cans without getting one red tag.

We had an old Pontiac whose enginge was good but whose body was beyond repair. After lifting the engine out, we didn't know what to do with the leftover body. With a mischevious gleam in his eye, my father got out his Sawz-All and his polaroid (for documentation purposes, of course) and went to work. He sprinkled a few pieces in amongst the trash every week and took pictures as the remains of the car got smaller and smaller until finally, the entire car had been hauled away by the garbage men.

Now whenever my father finds a red tag on his trashcans, he just laughs.

Metallic Heartbeat

I had an MRI tonight. I have suffered from hypertension for the last five years and, although hypertension runs down both sides of my family, blood pressure as stubbornly high as mine is rare in women my age. So my new doctor ordered a battery of tests. Blood panels, urinalysis, an EKG, and finally an MRI to see if I have renal artery stenosis.

It was a bizarre experience.

Aside from the normal procedure of not eating or drinking for 4 hours before the test, I had to prepare myself to make sure that I had no metal anywhere in or on my body. Interestingly, this includes not wearing deodorant as almost all commercial deodorants contain aluminum which will skew the machine's ability to take clear pictures. I only had to take out four earrings... I can't imagine what a production this would be for some people I know.

When I got to the magnetron room (wearing only a hospital gown and my shoes - stylish) the technician, Sean, briefed me about the procedure. He had excellent bedside manner - he spoke softly but clearly and conversationally and he paused often to ask if I had any questions or needed anything to be explained in more depth. Though I had asked when I made the appointment, I had not been told that my MRI would require an IV full of contrast. I'm not afraid of needles, but I'd never had an IV before so the new sensation of being able to feel every vein in the right side of my body was a bit... odd. After testing the IV with a saline stream, Sean settled me on the bed as comfortably as possible, set a panic buton in my left hand, strapped me in snugly (remaining still is very important for clear results), put earplugs in my ears and headphones over the earplugs, and covered me with ten pounds of antennas to amplify the signal. Total imobilization and almost complete sensory deprivation.

Then, he sent me into the machine.

They are not kidding when they say that the machines are small. The backs of my hands scraped against the top as I moved inside and my shoulders were just as wide as the interior; I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to. Both ends of the machine are open (on the newer versions anyway) so Sean patted my forehead reassuringly once I was in position and pointed out that if I looked all the way up, I could see the ceiling. For the few moments that it took him to get settled in the observation room, all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the low metallic thrum of the machine. The ceiling wasn't particularly comforting to me, so I focused on the blue line that marked the center of the machine's interior.

For forty five minutes, I looked at that line.

The first half of the test was almost meditative. Every few minutes, Sean's voice would come through the headphones asking me to hold my breath. I would count the clicks or thuds or beeps that the machine made before I could breathe again. The rest of the time I just laid there, looking at the blue line and listening to the pulse of the machine. It was like a distant, metallic heartbeat... soothing in its rhythm and tone, but unsettling in its mechanization.

The second half of the test required the contrast to be injected in my veins. It burned all the way up to my shoulder when it was injected and I could smell it ever so faintly. I still had to hold my breath periodically, but now the machine was making louder, higher-pitched noises and vibrating more forcefully. I was relieved when Sean's voice told me that the test was finished, the pictures were clear, and that I could get out of the machine.

I was dizzy when I sat up and felt faintly sick from the contrast in my veins; Sean assured me that both of those things were normal. I thanked him for his kindness before heading back to the patient area to change my clothes.

Now, I just wait.

The Ghost of Apollo

Once, there was a boy.

The girls who fluttered around him at parties called him “Adonis” in giggled whispers. To them, he was. A philosopher, an athlete, an artist… handsome, charming, devoted, and determined to hunt the beasts that might kill him… they raised him to the status of a god and worshipped around him as the Adonites of old.

I alone knew that he fancied himself more Apollo than Adonis.

Touched by the Muses from a young age, music, history, and poetry belonged to him.

A temper that could be devastating when it was (rarely) let loose… an inexplicable drive to pursue things he shouldn’t… the power to ignite with a single touch… a certain cocky arrogance and belief in his own brilliance.

From radiant beauty to fierce rationality, he was Apollo incarnate.

The words Gnothi se auton are inscribed on Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi: Know thyself*. He helped set me on the path to knowing myself. He vanquished the python of fear that was coiled tight around my soul and freed a tenuous and fragile light, a light that has only grown brighter as the years pass.

We occupied our own world, hovering somewhere between friends and lovers… a surreality that defied the need for labels or categories. What we had was enough.

In the fall of our second year, I made the terrible mistake of trying to slap a label on us. I “confessed” things clumsily, using clichéd phrases that couldn’t possibly describe the truth of how I felt.

Soon after that he moved to Greece without saying goodbye. I was devastated.

He appeared suddenly at my birthday party the following August. Half-drunk and too stunned for rational thought, I spent the evening vacillating awkwardly between my obligation to my (jealous) boyfriend and my desire to savor this unexpected time with Apollo.

As I lay in bed that night beside my sleeping boyfriend, I knew that I had made the wrong choice.

I have not seen Apollo in five years; I have not spoken to him in almost a year and a half. Our phone calls grew further and further apart, our conversations more and more perfunctory.

He accused me once of becoming shallow… of forgetting myself and falling into the abyss of egoism and pettiness that can consume my industry. I wanted to rage and scream and tell him that he only thought I was shallow because we barely talked often enough or long enough to cover more than the basics of our lives. I wanted to speak until I was hoarse, explaining everything I’d wanted to share with him over the years but hadn’t been able to. I wanted to make him understand.

I believe that my eloquent response at the time was “Oh”.

If I were to look at this situation with reason devoid of passion, I would see that all Apollo and I are to each other any more is memories. I would see that those memories are most definitely colored by our emotions at the time. I would see that it is terribly unlikely that we will ever meet or converse again. I would see that I am clinging to shadows.

But my passions remember the look in his eye the first night we met, they remember the way his hands looked splayed across the pages of a book or the keys of a piano, they remember the soothing timbre of his voice that made my breath catch in my throat every time.

The ghost of what we were, or what we could have been, or what we should have been, haunts me to this day. Memories rise unbidden in my mind, catching me off guard. When the phone rings, some small part of me still hopes that it is he.

I want to let go, I want to free my thoughts, I want to keep my current relationships from being colored by the past.

But I never want to forget what we had.

How do I exorcise the ghost without losing the memories?

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"The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his "Know Thyself", which is at least as good as "Hail". We answer the God back with "EI" (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of Being... The opposite principle which we find in the universe, whatever its origin, is that which binds beings together and prevails over the corporeal weakness tending to destruction. To my thinking the word "EI" is confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that Thou Art, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such things belong to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over Nature in its perishing and becoming, whether to effect either process or to undergo it. This appears from the names, in themselves opposite and contradictory. He is called Apollo, another is called Pluto; he is Delius (apparent), the other Aidoneus (invisible); he is Phoebus (bright), the other Skotios (full of darkness); by his side are the Muses, and Memory, with the other are Oblivion and Silence; he is Theorius and Phanæus, the other is "King of dim Night and ineffectual Sleep." –Plutarch (once caretaker of the Oracle at Delphi)

Why I Hate the "Church" of Scientology

One evening between Thanksgiving and Chritmas of 2001, I got a phone call that changed my life. This is what I wrote at the time in response to that phone call.

One of my best friends (now ex-friend?) called me his Enemy. The whole world shifted. I was momentarily devoid of the ability to react.

Then I began to cry... those ugly, gut-wrenching barking sobs that accompany only the most acute emotional pain. The cats paced around the spot where I was curled on the floor, meowing softly and looking alternately at each other and at me. They didn't know how to help, so they curled up next to me (the same two cats who can't be within 3 feet of each other without a wrestling match) and tried to purr my sadness away.

I cried for at least an hour. I cried until my voice was hoarse and my eyes were nearly swollen shut. I cried until I was calm enough to try to make sense of the words: Our lives now travel down different paths and I see anyone who is against Scientology as my enemy. Enemy: Adversary. Slanderer. Traitor. Criminal. Villain. Someone who was once an extension of me, one of my closest friends, sees me as a target of hatred. How do I even begin to understand that?

I am not a supporter of the Church of Scientology. I have read "Dianetics" and I have read several papers and articles, both for and against Scientology. It all just sounds false to me. L. Ron Hubbard wrote pulp science fiction before he decided that he could solve the problems of our society and I think that his writings read like cheap sci-fi novels. BUT, I am a supporter of Drew. When he attributed his being clean, sober & responsible to what he'd learned during his auditing sessions, I was happy for him. As I tried to explain to Drew time and time again, I can support him without supporting his church.

Evidently the Church of Scientology disagrees; because I do not actively support the church, I have become the Enemy. I, who supported him when he was too weak to support himself. I, who spent holidays with his family as easily as I would spend them with my own. I, who have laughed with him, cried with him, adventured with him and slept safely beside him. I am the Enemy. Those words cut me so deeply that it almost numbed me. I was literally breathless with pain and confusion.

I have known for many months that Drew and I are on different paths. It happens, it is the natural course of growing and maturing. People ebb and flow in and out of each other's lives. I didn't try to change it, I simply assumed that we would travel alone for awhile and reunite when the time was right. When we were chatting tonight, I knew that we had reached that last crossroads. He was talking about moving to Salt Lake City and how much he was looking forward to his new life. I said: I just hope you find what you're looking for Drew, I'll miss having you in my life. He knew as well as I did that this would be one of our last conversations for awhile, so he could have left it at that. He could have told me that he had loved as a friend once, wished me good luck on my path and just left it at that. But he didn't. There was a point to be made, one last push to get me on the Scientology bandwagon. I pushed back, as I always have when he mentions my studying Scientology, and he became cruel. I think that's what stunned me. Drew and I have five and a half years of friendship behind us and those years have not always been rosy. We've been mean and we've been petty. But we have never been cruel.

He called me an Enemy, and closed nearly six years of friendship by saying this: I hope life continues to treat you well....like your accident this morning (Ed: I had gotten into a fender bender outside my apartment that morning). Reactive minds are great aren't they?

The man who spoke these words is not the Drew that I was proud to call my friend. He is someone else, some shadow of that man. In my heart, there will always be a special place reserved for the shy boy in the USC tie who sat next to me Freshman year. I will remember our first trip to Leavey library, the day that we moved into our apartment, and Thanksgiving of 1999 (which we spent at his mother's house in Nevada). I will treasure the memory of a smile, a burst of laughter, a hug. Hopefully I will be able to pull together enough of those good moments to fill the yawning blackness of this one.