i have a needlessly complicated relationship with new year’s resolutions, or any resolutions for that matter. this is because:

1) my tendency is to select lofty, ambitious resolutions that i don’t have a prayer of maintaining for even the most marginally significant amount of time. and when i do inevitably break them, i feel too defeated and and weak and frustrated to continue to implement these good things, even if on a smaller scale or a less frequent basis. i may actually end up attempting these things less than before i made resolutions out of them. my loss.

2) sometimes i decide, given my very human propensity to break these resolutions, that i will not resolve anything at all. (theoretically, if you harbor no expectations for yourself, you won’t wind up feeling disappointed when you fail to meet those expectations.) when i choose to live in this cynical space, however, i am constantly made aware of the fact that i am cutting myself off from opportunities for transcendence, growth, and surprise. a life of voluntary stagnance is not, after all, life – because life is characterized by desire and the movement that springs from it.

this new year’s, i am opting for the middle ground. i have resolutions, but they are small and perhaps overly simple. i wish i could be one of those people who makes insanely difficult resolutions and keeps them, because my mind tells me this is more admirable (GO BIG OR GO HOME. MORE IS BETTER. etc). but for whatever reason, i am not that person yet. so, in the spirit of dwelling with myself in knowledge, here are my resolutions:

* walk down to the lake on a more frequent basis. it would be foolish for me to believe that i will live a block from lake michigan’s shores forever; and if/when the day comes for me to leave this place, i can guarantee that i will kick myself for not taking fuller advantage of this proximity. plus, the lake is good for my soul.

* write and send more hand-written letters, and notes. with the united states postal service going under, and no pony express on the horizon, who knows how much longer hand-written mail will be a part of our social fabric? i used to love writing letters. i need to rediscover that passion and cherish it for whatever time we have left. besides, if we all did our part to revive this dying form of communication, maybe we could keep the postal service running and help our floundering economy in the process. WIN.

* cultivate an attitude of abundance, and live into its reality in my life. i am tired of always having a mental list of things that i want. i have more than my share – not only of possessions, but of opportunities and relationships and love and community and hope. i’m exhausted by the ugliness of my own discontent and covetousness, and ashamed of my spirit of complaint. it is time for me to acknowledge, with Rilke, that i have been given

everywhere joy in relation and nowhere grasping;
world in abundance and earth enough.

now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. now
the immense loneliness begins.

-rilke

well, christmas is over… and the world, already ragged from the labor of the holidays, is gearing up for that final push that ushers in the new year. within a week, the city of chicago will enter a state of winter hibernation. without our conscious consent, we will find ourselves settling into the deepening silence, unwinding into a sweet and soft sort of melancholia. the hipster boys with their bike-rolled capris will give way to the solitary men in peacoats, their faces lined by the cold, curling against the elements, curling into themselves. and we will all scatter from these streets, hurrying from the lung-tightening wind and the ominous afternoon dark into our fleecy burrows, these little nests we have made beautiful with candles and quilts and pie-scented oven warmth.

i love winter.

i love the wistfulness and introspection of it. i love the comparative isolation of it, the way the useless over-stimulating clamor of the summer gives way to a deeper, simpler kind of community: the kind you can find with the one or two friends who will actually make the trek to your apartment for a cup of tea. i love that winter slows us, and beckons us generously into that liminal space where we can finally hear ourselves think. i love that the nose-biting, finger-tingling cold pushes us inward… in to our homes, in to ourselves, until we can learn to sit with the reality of who and where we are.

something in me feels a deep thirst for this coming winter. this was a year characterized by over-extension; but for all my frenetic activity, i have come away feeling restless and underwhelmed. it is time for me to retreat into myself a bit, to heal, to refocus, to reprioritize, and to replenish; and luckily for me, this is the season in which old things are gradually, tenderly put away… and new things sit breathless in the anticipation of their birth.

so welcome, winter, my old friend. i’ve been expecting you.

and again, it is autumn.

i savor the plum wine of twilight, holding its burning chill in the back of my throat. i dance slow half-moons through clusters of tiny yellow leaves; i catch them in my hair, in the pockets of my scarf, and between boot laces. on the train, blanketed in the warm crush of strangers, i curl one knee beneath me and stare out into the city’s great silence. these days, i sense anew my smallness beneath the groaning trees; i hold my nostalgia like bread.

on this particular autumn day, i feel the age in my bones, and in my breath, and am not sure why.

i find myself sliding into a definition of adulthood that i don’t ever recall subscribing to. as of when does learning of a friend’s suicide result in an unbearably slender 45 minutes of tears in the back office before returning to my desk? in what reality, after a startling cancer diagnosis, do i choose between attending a friend’s wedding and rationing my vacation days to prepare for a death that may or may not happen? when did my friends start getting divorced, losing jobs, losing children?

i heard from my ex today. he is seeing someone, now: a british woman, an actress, an athlete. she has an elegant name. i picture the two of them, cramped in the delightfully prosaic thinness of a london flat. i see her walking barefoot in one of his dress shirts, making him coffee, making him laugh; i see him spinning her into that space between his knees and rubbing his fingers down the long, slow slide of her hips. oddly, i am not as pained as i always imagined i would be. i feel, instead, almost transcendent: some untouchable spirit in the air above them, looking on their joyful fumbling with compassion and understanding. in this new world where everything is transient and so very much is being lost, i hope they find some solace in the brief warmth of each other’s bodies. at least, let them have that.

is this what it means, to grow up? that everything is suddenly and somehow ok? that i am grieving less, and less, and less, as my griefs become more, and more, and more, because there are only so many tears, and only so much heart, and only so much brokenness i can fit beneath this tender skin?

once, a boy i did not know (and still don’t) came over to the apartment. he sat down at our chipped piano, clutching a piece of paper on which he had scrawled, half-apologetically, the lyrics of an unfamiliar song. his fingers floated over the keys in a comfortable yearning, the way the fingers of a blind man read the faces of those he loves. and when he sang, i remember thinking the sound of his melancholy was the most beautiful in all the world. at some point, many hours into the deepening night, that sheet, littered with his ink and abandon, slid to the floor and tucked itself beneath our piano.

the next morning, as i collected empty beer bottles and created uneasy stacks of stained paper plates in the oh-so-hesitant autumn light, i found it. i folded and pocketed it, as discreetly and softly as i knew how, and stashed it away in my box of precious things. i think i was a little bit in love that night. i think, maybe, i still am.

oh, strange and gentle one, i wonder if you know how i carried you with me through the rest of that week. how i carried you with me like a memory, like a talisman, like an antidote.

even now, i carry you.

it is late June in Chicago. i am sitting beside my window, looking out over the slumped body of my marbled pothos plant: the silent sufferer of my own frenetic neglect and the sweltering heat of a Chicago summer. pothos plants, at their healthiest, are lovely; long, elegantly draping tendrils spill out over the edges of their terracotta pots, boasting clusters of lush, emerald-green teardrop leaves. my housemate, kara, is a goddess of growing things. she keeps a pothos plant in the living room and hers is, naturally, gorgeous. but mine looks nothing like that. mine is a half-wilted, scraggly waif; its anemic, yellowing leaves hang dejected from drying stems. i would make a horrible mother.

the past few days since my return from Ireland have been difficult, and full of grief. that week in Ireland, while beautiful and healing in many respects, was a pilgrimage of loss. i went to Ireland for closure. i went to Ireland to say goodbye. i traveled deep into the place of my pain, and called down upon myself a day of reckoning. when it was over, i stood on a cliff overlooking the sea, opened my hands, and released into the rain-drenched wind the hurts and unanswered questions that i’ve carried for the past year.

in the days since my return, i’ve had lots of time to think about loss, and goodbyes, and chapters, and change, and letting go, and moving on. these concepts have found ways to reinvent and resurrect themselves countless times within the past week. it would be needlessly boring and self-involved for me to go down the list of people who are moving away, people who may never come back, and people who i’ve unwittingly left behind. some of these movements are metaphorical, and some are measured by all-too-literal oceans. if i dwell on these changes too long, nostalgia hardens into a little pebble in my chest, and i cannot breathe for aching.

how do we navigate this transient life, with all of its many fractures and fragmentations? how do we stretch our hearts and wring them dry until they are capable of canvasing whole continents, and oceans, to cover the ones we love? how do we balance the pain of some absences with the joy of other presences, without minimizing or invalidating either?

i am only one person. i am limited by my 5’4″, rather diminutive physical frame; i am limited by a 24-hour day and a 7-day week; i am limited by depletable energies and a less-than-resilient emotional makeup. i cannot be equally invested in everyone, at all times. and yet i cannot content myself with the constant missing, either. this is the reality in which i find myself, presently: a reality in which my heart is pulled in a million different directions and i am never completely whole.

and yet somehow, despite its pain, this is the type of life that find myself signing up for over, and over, and over again. i am a collector of experiences, of faces, and of communities. i am a wanderer, a nomad, an adventurer. i am both receptive to new things and unwilling to let go of old things; i stuff myself full of the places and people that i cherish, and wonder when every inch of me is saturated with memory, will there finally come a splitting point in this all-too-fragile skin? and what then?

while cooking dinner with my housemates last night, i realized that someday, when God moves, this chapter will also close. and i tried to memorize the pattern of Elizabeth’s laughter, the perfect timing of Kacie’s witty but completely sensible one-liners. i begged my fingers to remember the soft, spongy cubes of tofu, and the pert asparagus stalks. i drank in the fragrances of ginger and soy, the comforting hum of NPR behind the sharply clattering pots and pans. i hung on to those last trailing notes, suspended in mid-air, after we sang over our meal. because someday, this will be what i miss. someday this, too, will be a memory. because that is the way of things.

for now, i breathe deeply. my rooms smells of laundry detergent. and wafting in from the kitchen is the pungent sweetness of vanilla extract, home-brewed, that anointed our counters last night amid shards of brown glass.

a silent film. because some things don’t need words.

No, not the bone. Although I’m sure that’s pretty great, too.

I can honestly say that one of my favorite things about moving to Chicago has been the discovery of a tiny, distinctly midwestern retail company called “Moosejaw.” With a total of seven stores (six in Michigan, one in Chicago), Moosejaw is rapidly proving itself to be the “little engine that could.” Building on its grassroots fan-base through personable, attentive customer service and a generous peppering of random humor in its marketing, Moosejaw has developed a significant internet presence and a store-wide inventory of outdoor apparel and gear that includes such big-name brands as North Face, Patagonia, and Mountain Hardware. I basically owe my entire winter wardrobe (and the relative ease with which I managed to procure it) to Moosejaw.

Where to begin. First of all, the marketing minds behind Moosejaw are wickedly clever. They’ve successfully tapped into our generation’s love of random, absurd humor and used it to create a comfortable, casual space in which to make business transactions.

The label on the inside pocket of my Moosejaw jacket.

Please note the things that Moosejaw specializes in. All of them.

At the top of the Moosejaw website, there are several tabs that help you navigate around the site. One is for regular inventory, one is for the sale outlet, and one provides you with information about Moosejaw’s phenomenal rewards program. But in addition to these rather sensible sections, the Moosejaw website also has a page entitled “Madness” – which includes monthly contests, dating advice, opportunities to make out with your loved one, and a picture of a wooden squirrel. Here you will also find links to the Moosejaw blog, twitter, flickr, and Facebook page… all of which Moosejaw uses to create a indelible sense of community and a correspondingly fierce loyalty among its customers. The descriptions of items that Moosejaw sells often have a sneaky bit of hilarity hidden in there somewhere. The confirmation e-mails are out-and-out ridiculous. And you know what? It WORKS. A quick visit to Moosejaw’s facebook page will prove it. People write on the Moosejaw wall as though it’s the wall of a good friend; they share their hopes and dreams and wishes, their bad jokes, or even a recent picture of their infant or spouse.

… and the DEALS! Oh good lord, the deals. Perhaps because it is a small company but intent on growth, Moosejaw offers a new promotional deal every month. I just so happened to time my purchases in such a way as to capitalize on several of these promotional deals AND Moosejaw’s generous rewards program AT THE SAME TIME. The result? Well, see for yourself.

This is what I ordered:

Moosejaw 660-fill down jacket. Smartwool socks (3) and a Smartwool beanie.

And these are things I got for free:

Moosejaw canvas messenger bag. Billabong sundress and two billabong t-shirts. A North Face chamois hoodie and North Face Denali Thermal gloves. Two moosejaw flags (!) and a bumper sticker.

As if that wasn’t enough, Moosejaw’s customer service is truly excellent. From the moment that customer service rep answers the phone with a surprisingly moose-like intonation of “MoooOOOOooosejaw!”… up until the time when you finally hang up, you have the sense that you are being guided through the purchasing process by a warm and capable (albeit a bit eccentric) friend. I recently went into the Chicago store with a question about a wonky receipt, and shortly had all six employees gathered around the receipt, working with me and each other to determine what went wrong in their computer system, and why, and how it could be corrected. Talk about attentive service!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Moosejaw’s slogan is “Love the Madness.” That, my friends, is sufficient proof of its taste and caliber in and of itself. Love the madness?

Why, yes. Yes, I do.

* please don’t count my “um”s. my forensics coach would kill me if he knew.
* at 4:37 and following, i am doodling. hence the strange scratching noise.

That’s an imposing title for a post in which I really don’t have all that much to say.

Christmas was lovely. Dad was generous enough to purchase my flight home as my Christmas present, and… truth be told, that’s all I really wanted. I’ve been reveling in the chance to see each of my parents and siblings again, albeit briefly. And, once again, I’ve been impressed by just how vibrant and diverse my family is. My younger sister, Lydia, has taken a liking to Lolita Dresses. She’s purchased a few, but recently went shopping for fabric so that she and my mom can tailor-make her next one. One of my brothers, John, just started wearing women’s costume jewelry in conjunction with outfits that make him look like some sort of hipster pirate. He’s also become very passionate about “hooping” as a sport and an art form. He’s set on getting a hoop with LED lights, and maybe also one with kevlar wicks so he can light himself on fire.

Make no mistake: my family is raucous, boisterous, ridiculously idiosyncratic and certifiably insane. Collectively, we possess an easy overabundance of creative energy and curiousity that renders us, at best, an acquired taste. We are poets, dancers, inventors, artists, musicians, philosophers and physicists… eccentric, compulsive, and colorful.

I remember, at times, worrying about introducing people to my “crazy” family. Dating a man from a wealthy, comparatively “proper” British family who dressed in grey and black Giorgio Armani and referred to their gourmet dinner parties as “gorgeous” placed a special strain on my perception of my family. I felt like I was moving in two completely different worlds, and the thought of these two worlds colliding caused an endless parade of anxious dreams and emotional breakdowns. I couldn’t visit his family without feeling suddenly apologetic about mine.

But you know what? I’m done with that.

Since I’ve been home for Christmas break, we’ve done a family art project that we based loosely off Kandinsky’s Color Study of Squares and Concentric Circles. Kandinsky’s Color Study looks like this:

We were each given a square bit of canvas and the same supply of paints, and were told to paint circles. My square ended up looking like this:

I also helped create this one, since Taylor never finished hers:

And this is this finished product: all of our individual canvases mounted on a 3-D platform. It’s now adorning the open space directly above the mantlepiece of our fireplace.

When I look at this, I think to myself… Yup. I’m done.

I’m done apologizing for my family. I LOVE my family. I love the fact that we all dress differently, that our home is a riot of color and life where nothing really matches. I love that no conversational topic is taboo around our holiday table, and that we used part of our Christmas vacation to make art.

My family is comprised of some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. And given the choice, I will always throw my lot in with people of mayhem and magic; if life is, after all, a journey… who wants to travel with the well-adjusted and soulless? The companions we need, friends, are the rag-tag outcasts and fringe-dwellers of society, the impecunious wanderers. What we need are gypsies.

 

When I first moved to Chicago, I immediately observed two things that appeared to be eminently and inescapably true about the city’s general populace. They were as follows:

1. Everybody in Chicago runs.
2. Everybody in Chicago has a dog.

At the time, I had never run in my life (and I mean, never). I was the lucky girl who had always managed to procure a timely medical excuse prior to running the mile in high school and college PE classes. I had worked a desk job for the past five years and, besides participating in the occasional dance class, was about as sedentary as one of my great-grandmother’s paperweights.

As for dogs, well. Not only did I NOT own one, but I had NEVER owned one. And, based largely on a simple lack of exposure to them (for which I hold my animal-hating father entirely responsible), I had concluded that I didn’t like dogs. What I had experienced of them included pungent whiffs of that unmistakeable “wet dog” smell and noxious doggy breath, copious amounts of canine saliva being slathered excitedly all over my arms and face, and a sore bum from knocked on my ass by certain dogs (who weighed more than I do) attempting to say hello. I didn’t just dislike dogs; I found their presence frightening and uncomfortable.

So, there I was: an anti-canine, super-sedentary person residing in a city full of puppy-owners and over-pronation. I remember calling home and lamenting the fact that I had chosen the wrong city. “I don’t beloooooong here!” I wailed. “I’m never going to fit in!”

Well, it’s been six months. And I hardly know how to explain what has transpired. Is it the contagion of living in such close proximity to people and their various passions? Is it exposure? Is it a matter of getting over negative memories in order to give things a second chance? Is it something as simple as growing up?

All I know is, in the past six months, I have tried running and really enjoyed it. I have found myself in the regular company of a handful of dogs, and have absolutely fallen head-over-heels in love with them.

How can you resist those EYES?

Granted, these dogs have all been small… so while the noxious smells and puppy saliva are still issues, they are present in smaller and much more manageable amounts per capita. I don’t plan to own a Siberian Husky or an English Mastiff in the very near future, but then again, who knows. I’m already surprising myself.

So, Self, you’ve decided you like running, eh? And dogs? Sometimes I think these things belong on a “List of Changes Your Ex-Boyfriends Would Be Really Glad to Hear About,” along with the fact that you’re becoming a very decent cook, and that you’ve learned how to pack everything you need for a week-long vacation into a single backpack.

But seriously. Rock on, girl. Always be flexible enough to redefine (and rediscover) yourself.