Garter Skirts and Legos

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 3: Almost Ready to Say I Do

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:05:00 +0000

I was amused. That was not the reaction he was going for, but there it was: amusement. The pastor stood at the front of the church admonishing the bride and groom. "What time did I say to be at the church?" "And what time is it now? All heads turned to look at the clock. "He has got to be kidding," I thought. But he wasn't. Stern and lecturing, he went on. And I was so, so very amused. The wedding had started ten minutes late. Ten minutes! This was Nigeria. In any other context, probably even any other wedding, ten minutes late would be early. But Kyura and Innocent are polite, good natured people and were so happy just to be there at the altar, they let him lecture, nodded some conciliatory yes, sir's and waited patiently for him to finish so they could get on with the wedding.

It wasn't really Kyura's fault we'd arrived late anyway; we'd set off from the assistant pastor's guest house in due time, but friends and family needed more pictures, and then a series of transit vans bringing guests from town had blocked the way from the pastors' yards to the church yard, so we couldn't get to the church.

Day 3: The morning had begun like any wedding morning. The bride woke early and the requisite flock descended on her with all the plumes of fancy necessary to transform her and themselves into momentary oddities of perfection: the hair stylist, the make-up artist, the maid of honor, the photographer, and all the helper-friends. We burst into the serene morning and bustled about the room and yard helping, getting out of the way, getting in the way, getting beautiful, getting excited. The hairdresser started her work first, finger-rolling Kyura's long extensions and pinning them into tight pin curls.

Hairdresser finger-curling and twisting the hair for pinning

Adding the finishing touches

The make-up artist wasn't far behind, and once the hair was finished, the make-up could begin. No electricity, so Kyura sat near the window for the best light. Contouring is very in in Nigeria right now, so even though Kyura's not much of a heavy make-up wearer generally, for her wedding, she was getting the full contouring treatment. Her Maid of Honor was getting the same make-up treatment outside. For someone who doesn't do contouring make-up or watch YouTube instructional videos on it, this was quite a scene to behold. Sometimes their faces were green, sometimes yellow. Frequently, there were harsh lines and strange spots. But as the artists worked their magic and their spongy blenders, faces reappeared from the wavy lines and strange colors; slightly altered faces, but still pretty. The room didn't have a mirror. The make-up artist had brought a small one of her own for Kyura, and someone had fetched a large mirror shard from the house for others. Someone turned to me, "Are you going to put on make-up, too?" "I already did mine." Like I said, I don't contour, and it was unlikely anyone here was going to know the right combinations of colors, or even have the right colors, for my face. I was satisfied with my usual powder, eyebrow pencil and mascara.

Contouring the bride's cheeks

Maid of Honor getting her makeup done outside

All of this doing-up took several hours. In the meantime, the photographer and videographer slid in and out of the commotion, capturing moments for posterity and designing beautiful settings to showcase important elements of the day. I trailed the photographer and tried to make myself useful, carrying things for her, holding things, and for a bit, using all my weight to pull a plastic-twine clothesline taut so she could get photos of the wedding dress hanging in the breeze without the dress's train dangling in the dirt of the dusty courtyard.

Photographer setting up a shot with the dress and bouquet

The church does not allow women to enter without their heads covered. Kyura, of course, had her veil. The guests would all have elaborate hair wraps. Kyura had someone collect a red-orange shawl from her old closet at her parents' house for me. One of her other friends wrapped it tight around my head for me, despite others' arguing that the church wouldn't turn me away if my head were bare. I had no desire to offend anyone or play my oyibo card like that. The Maid of Honor had a special hair piece with a little mini veil of its own. The silver tones in the white lace went perfectly with the silver beading on her long pink dress.

The Maid of Honor looks in the mirror while her hairpiece is adjusted

All of us friends, aside from the Maid of Honor, wore outfits out of the same matching fabrics as is the custom in Nigeria. The tailor made mine in advance, a fun 1960s-style tent dress that was nice and cool. Even while we were getting the bride and ourselves ready, the tailor was back at the house finishing dresses for wedding guests, whirling away on the treadle machine in a room next to the one that had been Kyura's up until last night.

Soon, we were all ready.

The bride.

Kyura ready for her wedding

And her friends.

(I particularly love this photo because the brilliant photographer turned the camera at such an angle that I don't look like a giant freak. Notice the window in the background; imagine if the picture were turned so that the window frame were level...)

It was time to go to the church!

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 2: Good-bye Home

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 02:37:00 +0000

There comes a point in most people's lives when their home becomes their parent's home. Growing up, it is collective, my home, meaning mine and my parents and my siblings and whoever else lives there with us, it's ours. But at some point, that group doesn't include you anymore, and your home is no longer yours; your home is some other place where you stay without all those other folks. For myself, and I think for a lot of us in the U.S. who first leave home for college, that transition happens sort of gradually. You have a dorm or maybe even an apartment where you stay at school, but home is still your home. Maybe you have still have a room there, or at least most of your stuff accumulated during your first 18 years, possibly even still being added to with new accumulations that you just don't really need in your dorm. Eventually, you go, move to another place, take a few more things. At some point, your parents turn your room into a guest room, or an excessively gigantic sewing room bursting with fabric, patterns and sewing machines. You start confusing your friends by calling that place, where you used to have a space, and wherever you stay now "home," meaning it equally for both. And someday, you find yourself saying to your sisters, "are you going to Mommy and Daddy's today?" and you realize you're quite dispossessed of your home and you aren't even really sure how it happened. For Kyura, however, that transition was a big bright line that she could mark almost down to the minute.

Day 2: Good-bye Home

Good Friday had been a strange mix of lackadaisy and bustle during the day. Kyura's family's home in Jos was as full of people as the house in the village had been, perhaps even more so.

Friends bustling and chillin

All the female friends were posted up in the room Kyura and her sister had shared growing up. Lounging on the beds; taking tea from trays, sipping sweet gulps of Milo and chewing soft white bread; taking turns disappearing to bathe with buckets of water scooped from the large plastic cans stored in the corner of the large bathroom, plastic cans restocked throughout the day with fresh water drawn by two young men hauling rubber bag-full after rubber-bag full of cool refreshment from the well in the side yard; helping Kyura style her hair, iron her dress---when the power was compliant enough to course through the padded copper wires and into the iron---, and prepare for the day.

Drawing water

The rest of the house was alive with it's own activity. Kitchen staff prepared a constant stream of food for family and guests. The seamstress for the wedding whirled away on a treadle machine in the next room, producing and altering dress after matching orange and yellow dress in an array of styles.

Like any other bride the day before her wedding, Kyura needed to get her nails done. And like so many other brides, she'd been talked into fake nails that were so very un-Kyura but manageable enough to last through the wedding. We trooped along with her, to the side porch where the manicurist pulled up a stool to do her work in the natural light of the sun. The tube of Chinese nail glue the manicurist bought turned out to be empty, so she ran out to a small shop and quickly returned with a new, and better stocked, package. Relatives came out to the porch to say hello as they passed through the house, aunties and young cousins. A few of us sat on chairs brought out from the sitting room or leaned against the porch rail, chatting while the manicurist did her craft and the boys in the yard hauled up water. Kyura fielded phone call after phone, mini-crisis after mini-crisis: calls from friends looking for places to stay for the wedding, the printers not having the programs ready for Inno to collect, the reception decorators not seeing the transferred funds in their bank accounts due to the Easter banking holidays. Kyura handled it all calmly from her porch throne.

Later in the afternoon, the groom's family would be coming to ask for Kyura. Inno's uncles would apply to Kyura's uncles for their niece to leave her home and come to theirs. If there was a set time for this, I have no idea when it was, but being Nigeria, if there was a set time for this, it's unlikely the uncles came anytime near that time. The sitting room filled with family elders from both sides, arranged on the thick sofas and chairs in a large circle. Kyura's sister brought out snacks and beverages and served each person. home, no longer her home.

Dancers

Outside, male elders with jingly metal bands fastened around their ankles sang and danced in a circle. Others joined, from the house? from the town? There were so many people everywhere I wasn't sure where most had come from. I joined, we danced until the group suddenly fell quiet. Discussions began. I snuck in the back with the seamstress, hiding rather conspicuously on a tall bar stool behind a pushed-aside dining table, watching, not really understanding much more than that this was important and solemn and emotional. Kyura was called in and kneeled before her parents. Before long, she was being led out of the house, shrouded in a veil, another

Procession (to the car) to the church

procession of singing and dancing, another car ride away from home to a new place. Away from

At the request of the groom's family, Kyura's family had given her over to the custody of the church until the wedding morning. She, her maid of honor and her eldest aunt would stay at the church, in the care of the best man and the groom's family, until the morn. We followed on foot. The church where the wedding was to take place was separated from Kyura's parents' house only by a lane, and a very large cement wall on the edge of that lane. For tonight, Kyura had no home; her parent's house was no longer hers, and her husband's house was not yet hers. For tonight, she was to make do in the guest house of the assistant pastor. And make do it would certainly be.

The assistant pastor's guest house, or perhaps it was to be a servant's house, was a small one-room cement building out back of his home on the church property. It had an en-suite restroom divided from the room by a curtain. Kyura's wedding dress was hung from the curtain rod, tulle and beads pressing against the protective coating of the clear garment bag, saving the pure white dress from the dust of the walls. There was no furniture, just two old mattresses, one on the floor and one against the wall, the one against the wall in far worse condition. Kyura's aunt took one look at it and sent someone for a mat from the family home. A mosquito net hung matted in a twisted ball and low above the laid-out mattress. Agreement was quickly made not to let the net free for fear of what might fall, or crawl, out of it. Another runner was dispatched to the home for bug spray. The room had a single window next to the door. An electric fan was courried from the house. There was one outlet. Even when the power was on, it didn't work.

Best man trying to make the fan work

The best man arrived with a screwdriver, removed the outlet and attempted to wire the fan's plug directly to the wall. It still didn't work; probably a blessing that these wires were lifeless! A solution was concocted in the form of multiple power strips and strings of wire run in a line over from the assistant pastor's house, a plastic bag wrapped around the part where bare wires were twisted together on the ground outside. It worked, at least when there was electricity in general. A battery lantern was fetched from the house.

The groom's family brought dinner. Rice and some sort of soup or stew, tea. Dishes were fetched from the house. We sat on plastic lawn chairs that had been brought in. Kyura and the maid of honor sat tepidly on the floor mattress. We chatted and laughed and amused ourselves with the ridiculousness of this place as a bride-to-be suite. We laughed at the Nigerianess of everything about the room and the on-and-off electricity and the broken outlet and the creepy mosquito net and the scary mattress against the wall and the huge number of friends and family helping with everything and the perfect-despite-it-all haze that surrounded every piece of the events leading up to the big day. And we bid goodnight to Kyura, her aunt, and the maid of honor, to sleep as best they good, as we retired to our own lodgings until the morn. Sheets and blankets were fetched from Kyura's parents' house.

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 1: A Proper Village Send-Off

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 00:55:00 +0000

Back in April, I went to my friend Kyura's wedding. We hadn't seen each other since attending a conference together in Uganda in 2010, so when she invited me to her wedding, I just had to go, even though it meant postponing an already long-overdue visit back to Zambia. But I have found that attending friends' weddings is really important to me. Even if I hardly get to see them during the festivities, just showing up often means so much. This one was extra special because I actually got to spend a ton of time with the bride.

The wedding festivities took place over four days, beginning with a send-off ceremony and celebration for the bride, culminating with the wedding itself, and ending with a special thanksgiving for all their blessings.

Day 1: The Send-Off

I arrived in the village with one of Kyura's friends, shuttled there by a trusted driver who was willing to take us hours down the road from Kaduna and off the paved highways to the family's village. Looking around, I could see how much wealthier Nigeria is than Zambia. I'd never been in a Nigerian village before. There were powerlines running through the sky, nevermind that they probably were lifeless more often than live; metal roofs on every house I could see; everyone had shoes, even the children; and the roads, though dirt, were in decent condition. The family house was large and cement, with elegant columns lining the porch, like a plantation home, or a country estate for old British landed gentry. Of course, either of those would have been lacking the corridors full of stored water in 50-gallon drums and 20-liter gerry cans, the rumbling of the generator whirling electricity to cell phone chargers and lightbulbs, and the plastic patio chairs on which village women sat pouring local maize drink into empty plastic bottles. Nonetheless, I was impressed.

Kyura and her friends were inside. The house was full of people, many of them bustling, preparing food and drink and clothes. Others, like myself, lost in the action, sitting on plush sofas in the dim parlor, chatting tentatively to strangers who would be good friends in a few days, eating lunch? dinner? a snack? something anyway, from plastic plates on our laps. A giant bowl of cooked cucumber and tomato salad(?) makes for an interesting whatever that insert-appropriate-eating-session-here was. I eventually found my way to the real action, where Kyura's closest friends, and the day's chiefmate, were helping her get ready for the send-off celebration. This would be the day for her family's village to officially say good-bye to her, to send her from her home to the home of her husband. It was like a giant wedding reception for just the bride. There was even a cake cutting.

Kyura wore a long green skirt decorated with lace and beads, an intricately beaded ivory top and a head wrap bordering between yellow and ivory dotted with green rhinestones. A group of elder village women arrived at the family house dancing and singing, yellow wrappers with orange stripes and white shirts a unifying dress code, corn-husk-and-seed rattles tied around their ankles provided percussion to accompany their voices as they stepped forward and back, holding long sticks in as they sang. They led the procession from the family house to the school grounds where the send off would be. As they danced, Kyura rode behind in a car, saving her long dress and new shoes from the mud of the morning's rains.

Dancing at the Send-Off

The school grounds were decorated with canopies and bunting in white, seafoam and evergreen. Guests of honor---family, friends, local dignitaries---sat under the canopies. Rows of villagers lined the edges of the school yard. Kyura's close friends who were accompanying her sat under a white canopy, surrounding the satin covered sofa where she and her chiefmate sat. An MC in the center of the yard led the celebration: dancing and prayers, one group then another, dignitaries, father's family, mother's family, friends of the bride, the groom's family, etc. Each was called up in their turn to dance with the bride-to-be, to shower her in cash, everything from 10 naira notes to 1000s, none of which the bride deigned to pick up. There was a special cadre of pre-teen girls for that. Dressed in black and white, they would swoop into the dancing masses and scoop the bills into cardboard box lids, taking their full lids to a special side place where they'd empty them into bigger boxes and return to the dancing for refills.

Prayers are offered for the bride

Village leaders, politicians, religious leaders and family members came forward to say a few words. I couldn't understand all the words as much of it was in the local language and some in Hausa, but the happy and joyful sentiments were obvious no matter the language. Kyura's parents told her how very proud they were of their dutiful daughter. She wasn't the only one crying.

Dinner under the canopies

While the dancing continued, plates of jollof rice, chicken, moin moin, salad, and I-don't-even-know-what-else-cuz-it-all-has-meat were passed around to those under the canopies. As the festivities wound down, brightly-colored styrofoam take-away containers of food were passed out to the villagers. Notebooks, buckets, plastic basins, and other keepsakes we would refer to here as swag were passed out to attendees on behalf of the bride's family, the groom's family, friends of the bride, aunties, etc. Guests were also giving presents, bringing them to the white canopy with the satin couch, wrapped packages in all kinds of shiny paper, and even a bright pink potty-chair---can't beat planning ahead.

As the celebration at the school grounds ended, the festivities continued back at the family house for those who weren't exhausted. The rest of us, including the bride and most of us friends, hit the hay, or foam rather, for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we would travel into Jos.

Homemade Gifts Keep on Giving

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 01:01:00 +0000

Usually when I post about sewing, I post about my own projects. But today's a little different; this is one of Munchkinhead's amazing creations.

Munchkinhead is queen of pattern-less wonders, so I was extra surprised when my birthday box contained a blouse sewn by her from a retro pattern. Mommy helped, but Munchkinhead's careful attention to detail was evident in many places where I could tell Mommy or I would have been like "forget that step; that's too much work!" It's a sheer cream chiffon with butterflies, hummingbirds and flowers.

Seam binding on the hole for the head to go through.

The side seams are French-seamed so the delicate fabric won't unravel. The collar and arm-hole seams are completely covered by seam binding in a perfectly matching color. The collar ties lie flat and straight with no pulls or tucks, their exact evenness giving me my best possible chance at tying a half-way decent bow. And all the stitching lines, even the hem, are straight and even. Mommy used to have me practice sewing straight lines by running lined paper through a threadless sewing machine; I wasn't any good at it then and I'm only slightly better now. Munchkinhead's lines look like someone's called "ten-hut!" and they're ready to march.

It's one of my favorite blouses now. I wear it almost every week, and every time I do, I get a new compliment from someone. "Thank you, my sister made it for me." And then I call or text Munchkinhead to tell her, especially when that compliment is from someone famous.

Me in my fabulous Munchkinhead blouse.

Angelfood Cake with Rose Glaze

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:39:00 +0000

Growing up in Wisconsin, it was customary for schoolchildren to bring treats to class on their birthdays. I always assumed this was true for everyone, after all, it happened on all the tv shows on Nick at Night, too. After living on the coasts, however, I've learned that in fact this was one of those holdovers from a more innocent age that middle America was able to keep while big-city coastal folks gave into fear mongering about razor blades and allergies. I get the sense even middle America has sadly gone that way now, too. But not me. I still take treats for my birthday. Granted it's to work rather than school, and as my coworkers are adults who are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whether my food will purposely or inadvertently kill them.

This year for my birthday, I decided to try one of my old favorites from growing up, with a new twist of my own. Mommy used to make me the most wonderful confetti angel-food cakes. Spongy and spring-like, I remember how the mix from the box would foam as she put the beaters into the bowl. This came right before my favorite part, licking the beaters.

My top criteria for any recipe is not needing to run to the store. Luckily, I seemed to have all the ingredients I needed. The recipe called for egg whites not by egg, but by cup. After I separated enough egg whites, I saw why. 8 eggs. Eight!

Egg yolks ready for the fridge. There were a lot of custards in my future

I usually do all my mixing by hand with my sturdy nsima stick from Ba Joyce's grandfather, but it was clear I was not going to successfully beat egg whites with a thick slap of wood. I tried using my egg whisk, but that was also insufficient. So, I pulled out my pretty pink handmixer from Mommy and went to town on those egg whites.---But not too much to town because that would cause them to collapse.---I think I did ok; the cake came out fluffy. I didn't have a tube pan, so I used my bundt pan. Getting the cake out was a little difficult, but not too bad. So by this point, so far so good. I have a warm and fairly whole fluffy angel food cake. Then I got a little too creative.

Foamed egg whites

I decided to try not just a rose glaze, but also a rose butter cream frosting. I found basic recipes for glaze and butter cream frosting and added rose water and red food coloring to both. The butter cream frosting would not cream. I don't know if it was the store-brand butter or adding the rose water to early or something else, but it would not cream. The butter stayed globbed up, globs of butter rolled in sugar, which is still yummy.---My specialty is tasty mush disasters.---I sliced the cake in half horizontally and spread a layer of the sweet gobby goo, putting the top of the cake back on to create a gigantic sugary sandwich. "Angel food cake with rose butter filling." It's all about the presentation, right, verbal included?

And then I kept going. The rose glaze turned out like it ought to have. Win! Except I did something a tad foolish. I put the cake on my cake carrying platter and drizzled the cake with the glaze. Sounds perfectly fine and dandy, except this was the night before I was taking the cake to work. The glaze had .all. .night. to soak into the cake, and boy did it ever. The next morning, when I opened my cake carrier to set up a little come-and-get-it-station in our break room, whole sections of the cake were bright pink and the bottom of the cake was rimmed in pink syrup. Mmmmm.

Birthday cake! Angel food cake with rose butter filling and a rose glaze (the night before all the glaze soaked in).

Actually, it was quite delicious, just best in small portions. All the better for work, more to go around!

Suzy Homemaker Signing On

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 03:30:00 +0000

The world sucks right now. Or rather, aspects of the world that suck are suddenly on our own doorsteps instead of far-off places where we can pretend they either aren’t real or don’t affect of, neither of which is really true. So here we are, with one crises after another clamoring for our attention everywhere we turn. Every social media site, every newspaper, and---it seems like---every conversation. People have been pining for ‘the good ol’ days’ and hate and war are certainly parts of the those ‘good’ ol’ days.

I prefer the other parts, propriety, dignity, homemade meals and hand-stitched clothes. Things that were old fashioned even when I was growing up but very much a part of my childhood. In adulthood they are the things to which I cling for comfort. And, on here at least, will be the sand for my ostrich-head. Out there, outside the walls, beyond the swaying crinkled sheer curtain, there is no place for ostriches. Out there requires strength. Here there will be only beauty. ---and a few of my definitely not beautiful but-oh-so-tasty piles of delicious mush dinners.

I’m not an Academic, I only Play one on the Weekends

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 01:53:00 +0000

Some things I just can’t process. I may think I need to step back, or re-experience it, or talk it out. But in the end, some things I just cannot process. This conference was one of those things.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences over the past ten years. ---This is what law school does, prepares you to sit in overly air-conditioned rooms, staring at poorly designed slides on giant screens, collecting all sorts of branded bits and bobbles. It’s practically baked into the profession by regulatory authorities that require you to stay re-educated by trading several hours of your time each year for bad wi-fi and stale bagels.---But this conference was different for me. This was the first time I was attending an “academic” conference. No continuing legal education credit on offer here. No mix of practitioners in with the academics. This was a wholly different animal; and to make matters worse, it was multi-disciplinary.

There were a lot of big words I couldn’t follow. Words I knew the meanings of on their own; were they to be on a vocabulary quiz, I could match the definitions to them. But strung together in long sentences with little words in between, I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. But even the bits I could understand left me feeling like the sentence ended with a semi-colon. A complete thought, yes. But, so?

The conference was called Race+IP. People talked about race. People talked about IP. Some people even talked about both. Some things seemed obvious, some over-simplified, some as though they were searching for racism, and others as though they were racializing a much broader oppression. A lot of things seemed like there was no there there. And I was lost.

‘The music industry is terrible to black folks.’ The examples given: that Pharrell lost to the Marvin Gaye estate, that Lil Wayne was owed $10 million by Cash Money, that Clyde Stubblefield’s creative products were owned by James Brown. Somehow irrelevant that all the advantage-takers in those scenarios are also black. And brushed away as a side note that the the music industry is terrible to anyone not already in power, that it entrenches the existing power structure and fights long and hard to further entrench, re-entrench, forever entrench that structure. It is true that the power structure includes few blacks. But racializing the inequities of the system leaves out all the others who cannot benefit, all the others who may want to fight. Shrinking the size of an army does not help win the war.

Then there was this session about how Cadillac is a black brand. (I did not know this, but it might explain why at least once a month a 50-year black man asks if Chester is for sale.) GM was apparently upset about the association between the Caddy and black entertainers in the 50s and 60s. Really, brand owners were racist? How shocking. This is nothing new, nor anything old. But what does this have to do with IP, other than that brands are IP? I didn’t get it. I must have zoned out and missed something.

Add on top of the confusion a bad head cold, an atmosphere of self-aggrandizement with West coast-style Liberal assumptions, and horrible weather, and well, this wasn’t the best first-time experience of this sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll leave these conferences to the real academics. I think I prefer being a lawyer.

Africa

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:41:00 +0000

Africa is raw. Tangible, raw life. Every box, every line we draw in the West is washed away in a cloud of red dust. Africa is freedom. Freedom of the truest sort where life is burrowed so deeply into the very essence of the world that one becomes the expanse of the deep blue sky, breathes the heavy deep rustling of the large mango tree leaves, is powered by the strength of the ancient volcanic rocks that dot the landscape like hoards of mythical sleeping beasts, and wears that deep red dirt that creeps into every nook and cranny of every being and everything. Distinctions between seeming opposites, such as indoor and outdoor, disappear altogether. Everything comes from the earth in ways in which one cannot help but be acutely aware. Water pulled from the earth, dinner roaming the earth, the sun being the best and most reliable light of all. The earth is yours and you are the earth’s. And everyone moves together in it, all a part of it. What appears to be narrow two-lane roads become four or five or six lanes as pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, three-wheel scooters, cars and lumbering lorries surge together, sweeping between and past and among each other. People cut through when they have a chance and make way when others need room in a gracefully understanding manner one would never see in places where people feel entitled to whatever bit of road they’re on as though it belongs to them and only them simple because they are there. Life has not had the living sanitized out of it. Numbness cannot survive. Alertness, awareness, oneness with everything around you is a must. But such exertion is not exhausting; it is invigorating. It is living.

Don't Do Drugs

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 00:25:00 +0000

“Don’t do drugs.” A high-schooler behind me said it to her friend when the commotion started. “Don’t do drugs.” A mom said it to her young child as they climbed off the bus with the first exodus of people. “Don’t do drugs.” A man said it to whoever happened to be within ear shot as we all moved down the sidewalk to board the approaching bus. “Don’t do drugs.” I think I heard that phrase uttered more tonight than in the entire 1980s combined.

I was sitting on the bus minding my own business, reading about verb usage in United Nations Conferences of the Parties decisions as I am apt to do these days during my commute, when a voice yelled out, “Don’t touch me!”

Not the most unusual thing for a rather crowded bus at rush hour. My passing thought was probably something along the lines of “it’s good she’s standing up for herself.” But the yelling continued. “Stop touching me! Don’t touch me!” Over and over. By this point, everyone on the bus was looking, and it was clear no one was touching her. The woman was sitting in the sideways seats at the front of the bus yelling into the bus in general.

But that changed. She turned to the man on the seat adjacent to hers and started yelling directly at him. "Don't touch me!" He tried calmly saying he wasn’t touching her, a few times. She kept yelling and started getting up in his face. Then he got agitated. “Stop touching me!” “Stop spitting on me!” “Don’t touch me!” “I’m not touching you; don’t spit on me.”

And then the threats. From her, all from her. She’d spewed a few into the air before, before she turned on this man, but now they were clearly all directed at him. They both stood up. I don’t know who stood up first, but she started swinging. He put his hands up, trying to block her punches. Some guys from the back of the bus yelled, “Don’t hit that woman." "You can’t hit no woman.” The man was trying to duck, but there was nowhere to go on the crowded bus. The bus driver tried to get them both of the bus. The man backed out, the lady still swinging at him, while he voiced the inequity of his having to leave the bus.

The woman sat down briefly. Then she jumped up and raged down the aisle towards a young lady who was standing near the back door, looking at her phone, not paying no mind to any of the ruckus. The lady saw the woman coming and froze in shock. A man in a construction safety vest jumped up immediately in between the two, blocking the woman’s arms from coming down on the surprised lady.

The man in the safety vest backed the woman up a bit, but she started to send jabs into his gut and swing for his shoulders. A third gentleman jumped up and tried to pin the woman’s flailing arms. She fell to the bus floor, both guys going down with her. They wrestled her off the bus as passengers off-loaded themselves by the back door.

Soon, half the bus was empty, the bus driver was outside with the woman, the two men who’d gotten her off the bus and the man she’d first attacked. The other passengers mulled around on the sidewalk at the back of the bus, waiting for the next bus.

Those of us on the bus waited a bit. The driver came back on, but he didn’t sit down. He pulled a bright green safety vest out from behind his chair, put it on and calmly stepped back off the bus. The woman was still yelling outside. Someone hollered that another bus had arrived. The rest of us streamed off the bus to trade our immobilized one for one that might actually get us to our destinations.

And then we saw why the driver hadn’t come back in, why he got his safety vest, why we weren’t going anywhere. The woman had thrown herself under the front of the bus, directly in front of the right tire. She was lying there, in the road, a limb flung on the muddy curb, yelling about how WMATA (the transit agency) better give her something. The bus driver just stood nearby, nonchalant, waiting patiently.

The rest of us moseyed on down to the arriving bus. “She spit on me and my daughter,” the man who was first attacked. “I’m just trying to get to work,” the guy who helped get her off the bus. “How she gonna hold everyone up like that?” a lady dragging a stroller up the steps of the bus. “Don’t do drugs,” somebody, to someone, to everyone.

Just another commute home in DC.

After

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:03:00 +0000

I thought going to the service would make things better, ease the cold dull pain inside. Instead, it tore open a wide giant gash and poured the burning salt of reality into the wound. My cheeks burn as that salt oozes from my body in tears. My soul burns as that salt drips into a stalactite dagger of anger that I didn’t know I could have, that I become all the angrier for having. For someone whose entire life was full of love and giving and perseverance, these are the wrong emotions to have, the wrong emotions to be left with, sadness and anger. But they are here, and they are real. And I do not know how to make them go away without distraction and time.

When are memories not enough? When are they ever enough? The best memories exist to be re-lived, and when they cannot be recreated, they must be retold. I want to tell stories; I want to hear stories. But how, and where, and who? I do not know in what way to begin.

The stories I remember, the ones I could tell, I cannot tell them well. They would quickly turn into inside jokes, and she would not like that. She was all about inclusion, always about making sure no one was left out. She passed that trait on to her children. And, I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that. I am going to miss her so much, but I am very glad the best parts of her live on in them and in everyone whose lives she touched.

She gave us the gift of her light, and more importantly, she showed us how to share our own. Mine’s hiding under a bushel of anger and sadness right now. She wouldn’t like that, but she’d understand. And she’d probably tell me to light that bushel on fire and let the glow burn even brighter.

Hide and Don't Seek

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:44:00 +0000

I missed my legs. I have them; they’re attached to me. But, I was feeling like I hadn’t seen them in a while and I missed them. It’s winter—season of warm and woolly. I’ve been wearing knit tights, long skirts—sometimes ankle-length—and NineWest wedge boots that don’t set off the metal detectors at work. I missed my stilettos. And my legs. The clip clip that punctuates the air and the lines that punctuate the space.

So, I put on nude stockings and my strappy black & white stilettos—and I quickly remember why I’d stopped.

Except, I’m not sure I knew that’s why I stopped when I stopped. But now, now I’m sure. After the first stare—the stare I tried to move behind but the staring eyes were attached to a rotating neck and a twistable torso. After the first car horn and rolling down window I quickly turned away from as though my back cannot hear beep-beep. After the first attempt at a “hey there” met with a curt “hello.” I knew. I hated this.

This, this drives me into piles of woollies and clunky wedge boots, even as I give myself other excuses: it’s cold outside; it’s cold inside; I don’t want to take my shoes off to go into work; my favorite coworker is amused when I look ridiculous. Plenty of excuses, legitimate reasons perhaps, but excuses all the same. The truth is, I’m hiding. Hiding my body from the world just as I did when I was 13. Except then, I hid it because people didn’t like it; now I hide it because they do.

Big t-shirts, 18-sizes too big if they’ve could’ve been. Drowning. “Hey, goldenrail, what’s flatter, you or a board?” A sinking log. The Heckle brothers living up to their family name. I just wanted to get home, to walk down the sidewalk without yells from across the street. I just want to get home, to walk down the sidewalk without yells from across the street. Why is this always too much to ask?

Always too much, unless I’m hiding.

I nearly started to cry, realizing how much of my life I’ve spent hiding. I hate it.

And tomorrow, I will hide.

But I don't wanna say goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 07:00:00 +0000

It’s 1am. I should be asleep. But I’m not. My mind is busy, playing through memories. Playing through memories that I don’t want to be old or forgotten, unable to be duplicated, unable to be replicated, replayed, relived.

As I’ve gotten older, I feel like death has become less real to me. It should be the other way around, where death is more real than when I was child in a world where magic existed. I think it’s because the people leaving are people I don’t see daily, or even regularly. It’s easy to forget they’re not there, wherever they usually are, until you see someone or hear a voice or a laugh, and for a split second, you think it’s someone you know and love and care about. And then you remember. You remember it cannot be them, they are gone. Or maybe it actually is them, in those moments, a fleeting, twinkling, dancing, laughing moment to say hello, to say “remember me?”, to say “remember me.”

I almost had one of those moments today. On my plane. A voice, a voice I almost knew. But the news was still too raw to be caught in a foolish forgetful hope. Yet that timber, that tone, while uttering some other words I didn’t hear, still said, “remember me.” And now I lie here, awake in the dark, obeying the command, remembering.

It is that shining gleam in her eyes when her daughter was crowned Junior Miss that makes the tears flow hardest. She was so very, very proud. Always proud of her children, their achievements, her own children and those of us she’d welcomed in with open arms and southern hospitality.

It is her insistence, against her eleven-year old daughter’s attempts to assert “friend-girl” as a thing and three teenagers’ clear awkwardness, that it was so wonderful for her son to have his girlfriends over for dinner that brings choked-up giggles spilling from my throat, morphing into sobs and back to giggles again. Sobs. Giggles. Sobs. Sobs.

It is knowing she’s cheering loudest and hardest from the stands, waving a pompom and hooting and hollering as we snap our horns down that makes me feel a warm giant hug though surrounded by thin air alone in my cold apartment.

It is that broad, joyful smile that makes the corners of my mouth turn up to smile back even as my lip quivers and my heart crinkles into the deepest frown.

It is plates of eggs and bacon, folding chairs on lawns, red pew cushions, and a big blue easy chair that unleash a booming, echoing, “so, what’s going on with you?” bouncing around inside my head, waiting for an answer.

And it is realisticness compounded with a firm resolve that reminds me that within my memories of this wonderful woman lies a superhero’s cape—those who believe can do anything. Even while acknowledging the mountains that need to be climbed along the way, the hurdles that need to be jumped, and the rivers that need to be crossed. “Well, there may be a big mountain and eight lions on this path, but I think there’s a real possibility he can do this if he just...” That was so often her attitude; it may be tough, but there's a way. And of course, she always had plenty of input on what that way was, too.

It doesn’t matter that the station agent gave us a schedule and we’ve been standing on the platform watching the train come in; I’m still mad it arrived. Mad it didn’t delay more. Mad it was even on its way already. It’s always too soon when people you love go, but sometimes, it really is too soon.

So. I’ll let the memories play, until life goes on enough to bring one of those twinkling moments. And then, I will obey. I will remember her.

Cultural Popcorn

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 23:06:00 +0000

I received my first Christmas card of the season today, from my high school World Cultures teacher. World Cultures was one component of a course called “Humanities.” It included, aside from World Cultures, Speech and English class as well.

Looking back at that course from my life now, I’m almost tempted to laugh. A sad, somewhat disbelieving, somewhat awed chuckle with a hint of mirth. She taught us so much, tried to teach us so much more. She was herself quite cultured in the world and endeavored to share all her experiences with her students. We were not cultured, our blue-collar town on the edge of a decaying manufacturing giant, a city with ethnic lines left from immigration patterns a hundred years ago, a place where we could tell the difference between those with German, Polish or Swedish heritage, but not between the first-generation Chinese, Vietnamese or Laotian immigrants. A classroom full of students the majority of whom, I can say from my last high school reunion, were not destined for four-year college or moving out of the state.

It was the 1996-97 school year; she tried to teach us about the Rwandan genocide. The facts were learned, but nothing really sank in until last year when I saw Unexplored Interior at Mosaic Theater here in D.C. Her teaching had put a seed in my head, but not like a bean seed to sprout and grow gradually, like a popcorn seed that exploded with meaning and awe as I started to understand just what she had taken on in even trying to get us to understand something so inconceivable to our young minds even while the world was still seeking to understand how and why and what.

She brought in couscous for us try on a world food day. I’d never heard of it before; I don’t think any of us in class had ever had it before. I liked it but went home and ate my potatoes and veggies; for the next dozen-some years couscous remained an exotic dish to come across in the fancy instant-food section of the grocery store where very salty little just-add-water cups of soup and grain appeared. Now, there are 6 tubs of couscous in my pantry, owing to my inability to properly manage my Amazon Subscribe and Save subscriptions, or my ability to accidentally order massive quantities of things I don’t need---however you want to view it.

She organized and chaperoned a group trip to Paris---she was also the French teacher---giving us opportunities to see places like Versailles and Monet’s garden up close. Again, places I wouldn’t even begin to understand until much later, until some other experience of life connected dots she’d drawn on my brain.

There are probably many more seeds sitting in my head, waiting to pop, many more dots on my brain waiting for life to draw the connecting lines.

I thought of her last week, standing in Switzerland, looking at artistic Christmas cards written in French, wondering if she could have imagined this 20 years ago, imagined that I’d be standing there, in Geneva, yards from my ridiculously fancy hotel, in a suit, on official travel, staring at tiny paper birds adorning a script “Meilleurs Voeux.” She always saw so much more in us than we could possibly see in ourselves. She challenged us to dream beyond our classroom walls, our snowy streets, our giant lake.

She taught us about far-off places I thought I’d never see and tried to get us to see the same in the differences, the us in every them.

I am so very thankful for that, and thankful that my Christmas season has begun with a beautiful card from her and a thoughtful note that continues to emphasize the us in every them.

The Beach

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 03:29:00 +0000

I went to the beach this morning. I went to the beach in bare feet. Crossed the street from my hotel to the beach. Stepped onto the hard pavement. Took jarring steps down to the corner, across the warm asphalt. Stepped onto the rough curb. Walked through the prickly parking lot with its tiny stones that poke your heels. And stepped into the warm sand of the beach.

I wriggled my toes, grains sneaking into the crevices. Warm grains from the top of the beach, hot from basking in the rising sun. Cold grains from below, hiding in the damp darkness of the beach’s underlayer. Temperatures and textures mingling around my digits, coaxing me into feeling again.

I stepped. I walked. Each pace a new sensation of rough and smooth, grains of sand, grains of warm, grains of cold. Advancing towards the water. I picked my way through the seaweed line at the edge of the last tide’s waves. Rushing through little swarms of tiny flitting bugs. Aiming to avoid mushy green splurting between my toes. Across the washed-up branches. And onto the cold, wet, smooth spance of sand. The sand that sinks under your heels and leans you backwards as if saying, “stay, sit, do not go, be one with us, be another grain, a piece of the wide expanse, a tiny morsel of the world.”

And down, down the sight slant towards the water. I stood there. Quietly. My long dress bunched into my hands just above my knees. The sun warming my calves, my shoulders and my face. I stood. I watched.

The waves cresting, peaking, rolling over themselves into tubes, tunnels, caresses. Silky smooth panels crashing into frothy, bubbly white. Running onto the beach. Rushing forwards, up the slant, onto the dark cool sand.

I stood. I listened. Roars as the waves built, rushing up, cresting into screams, dying down into licks, falling back as whispers. Birds overhead, birds in the distance. Birds peeping quick, high-pitched little cheeps. Birds honking, loud, long snaps. Swooping, diving, floating. Riding the swells far out on the sea, far from the beach, beyond the sand to which I clung tight.

I stood. The waves rose and fell. Cresting with anger, receding in resignation.

I stood. Wave edges lapping in front of me. Coming. Going. Coming. Going. This one near. This one far.

I stood. Large waves roaring down the beach. Splashing against the sand. Edging closer. Coming. Coming towards me. Rushing around my legs, froth nipping at my knees, swirling past me and back out to sea, sand scurrying out from under my feet.

I stood in the ocean. Rough, beautiful, powerful, peaceful cold ocean.

And without moving, I stood again on the beach.

A Reprieve in Geneve

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:22:00 +0000

I spent most of last week in Geneva. I’d gone to visit WIPO. This is a pretty big deal, visiting WIPO. As a Midwestern city girl, WIPO is much like Harvard or New York, one of the places on tv that doesn’t really exist in real life. But it does, and like Harvard and New York, now I’ve seen it.

My three favorite things about Geneva were the roads, the silence, and the shutters. The cheese definitely deserves an honorable mention. And I mean the cheese at the grocery store, the big blocks of hefty, strong Swiss-made cheeses, and maybe a few of the soft French cheeses. I could easily get by on meals of bread and a bit of cheese. The cheese was priced about the same as American brands of cheese back in DC, so it was still a bit of a splurge. (In DC, these are usually from Pennsylvania and Vermont and occasionally from Wisconsin.) But of course, these types of cheeses would be imported back home and thus far more expensive. My big find for the cheese was a tube of mustard that went splendidly with the Emmantaler and with fresh rolls and baquettes. I wasn’t completely sure it was mustard, but “moustarde” and “Dijon” both sounded like mustard-y words to me, so I took my chances. Boy was that a good gamble; it was so delicious! Cleared the sinuses and woke you up really good too, perfect for a bright breakfast.

The skyline in Geneva is an odd mix of glassy new, blocky mid-century and quintessentially Swiss. The different styles nearly all had some type of exterior window covering. Some had awnings that could be dropped down, others had horizontal blinds that rolled down. A few had metal doors similar to the ones on mass storage units in the U.S. But my favorite were the shutters. Real shutters that opened and closed instead of being silly ornaments stuck to the sides of windows for which they are clearly far too small. I loved to walk down the streets and look at all the variety of shutter positions, latched open against the building, shut tight, flung open and hanging ajar high above the bustling roads. Someday, I would like a home with shutters.

The streets were narrow and made of all sorts of different materials, sometimes pavement, sometimes brick, sometimes cobblestone. I struggled to tell street from sidewalk from bike lane from tram line. At first, this made me very nervous as I had no idea if I was supposed to be where I was in any given spot. But then I realized, everyone was okay pretty much everywhere. People were sharing the space, paying attention, deferring to others as needed. Everyone seemed to acknowledge that others needed to use the same space. It was so much nicer than the I-have-a-right-to-be-exactly-where-I-am-wherever-that-is-all-the-time mentality from back home. Much less ground was needed to accommodate the movement of massive numbers of people. And with narrower streets, it felt less like one was traversing a big city or long distances; it was easier to walk a mile surrounded by buildings and activity than across stretches of pavement and parking lots.

And with sharing the space and moving all those people came an immeasurably pleasant silence. Oh, there was talking and laughter and engine rumbles and tram dings and the noise of a city, but there was no incessant automated yelling like one must endure on a daily basis back home. No “STEP AWAY FROM THE DOORS! THE DOORS ARE CLOSING!” No “THE FARE FOR THIS BUS IS ONE DOLLAR AND SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS!” No “THE WALK SIGN IS ON TO CROSS! THE WALK SIGN IS ON TO CROSS!” Even at the grocery store automated check-outs, no “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA! UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA!” No glaring signs screaming at you to don’t do this or not do that, to stay away, to go this way and to not go that. No we-must-put-warning-labels-on-everything-or-someone-will-sue-us-signs. It was so nice. So refreshing. So amazing to be in a place where people were left to get by on their common sense; and you know what, they did ok. Don’t want to get hit by a tram? Move when the tram is coming. People open the tram, bus and train doors themselves by pushing a button. If the door is closing, push the button and it will open again. And the people are so polite. Not in the Southern or Midwestern smiling and speaking nicely polite. In a very matter-of-fact way that said “I acknowledge your existence and your need to get where you’re going, too.” And that was that. It was so very pleasant. I want to live in a world like that all the time.

These are a Few of My Favorite Seats

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 13:50:00 +0000

My favorite seats on the airplane are the front row. As part of the insiders club (see prior post) of people who fly Southwest so much they know how to work the system, I’ve developed a strategy that gets me one of those seats about 90% of the time I fly. Sharing that strategy puts it a bit at risk as it may increase intelligent competition for my desired seats, but I’ll do it anyway. After all, there’s plenty of flights I’m not on, and it could help people on those, too.

The short version is: pack light and be nimble. When you get on the plane, you have to act quickly and get out of the aisle.

As I said, I like the front row. In order of preference, 1A, 1F, 1C, 1D, 1B, 1E---window on the left, window on the right, aisle on the left, aisle on the right, middles. These seats are desired because they have tons of legroom, but they have downsides that temper this. A lot of people don’t realize the downsides until they try to take the seat. If someone is attempting to go for one of my favs, I wait patiently until they are situated. There’s a decent chance they will give up and move.

After a few flights, you start to see what prevents people from being able to sit in the front row.

1) They don’t want to forgo a tray table. I don’t mind this and I consider that I will not have a table when choosing what I want to do on the plane (knit, read, write, etc.).

2) Their rollerbag does not fit in the smaller front bins. I don’t carry-on a rollerbag.

3) They have too much luggage. They may not have a rollerbag, but they have one small item and one larger item. Both have to go up in the front row, but they often can’t find space for the larger bag. If I do not check my luggage, I carry two small bags---my purse and a bag the size of my purse---that can both easily be tucked into small spaces left in the overhead bin.

4) They haven’t figured out what they want to use on the plane and aren’t ready to store both their bags, so they give up and go for a seat with under-the-seat-in-front-of-you accessible-during-flight storage space. I choose what I want to do on the flight before boarding and keep that one item in my hands when boarding.

5) The aisle or window is more important to them than the row. I’d rather have the middle in the front row than a window or aisle elsewhere. Because middle seats are generally less desirable but are fairly high up on my list of preferences, I can often get a front row seat even if I’m boarding at the end of the A’s.

I make some decisions before getting to the airport, primarily whether I will check a bag or not. This depends mostly on the speed of baggage claim at my destination and whether I will be leaving the secure area on a layover. (I love layovers in Kansas City; hi, Alfred!) I know that baggage claims at OAK and DCA take ages but that it’s relatively quick at MKE and MCI. If I’m flying into MKE or MCI, I may check a bag so I only have my purse to carry on. If my trip will involve flights into OAK or DCA, I try to avoid checking luggage.

I also have backup seats in mind in case the front row is full. I consider the likelihood of needing to go to these at two points, when I get my boarding position the night before and when everyone lines up for boarding. Having to go to backups depends partly on my boarding number but also on where the plane has come from (likelihood of large number of through passengers), number of preboarders and their ailments---preboarders are likely to take the front row, especially if they have leg injuries or canes.---, the number of Business Select passengers (boarding spot 18 can actually be boarding spot 3 if there are no Business Select), and the amount of rollerbags in front of me, which as discussed above generally disqualifies people from the front row. I know that a flight out of MKE is very unlikely to have many Business Select passengers unless it’s going to LAS; every flight to Vegas seems to have lots of Business Select people, as if they’re saying “hey, I’m already throwing away a ton of money on this trip, let’s go big all the way!”

Considering all these things, I pack for the goal of the front row based on my calculated likelihood of getting it. If I’m in the B group on a flight with a layover or stop in Vegas, I’m going to pack for not getting the front row and probably just pass it up even if it is available. But B group and flights going through Vegas are rather rare for me, so I’m in pretty good shape for getting a nice front row seat where I can stretch my legs.

The Democracy of Southwest Air

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 13:52:00 +0000

When Mr. Trizzle dragged me on my first Southwest flight, I hated it. I didn’t understand the system, it made me feel like a cow being led to slaughter, I panicked about what seat I would get. I hated it. Over the past nearly-decade, I’ve come to love Southwest. (Now I have all those feelings, including the cow bit, on other airlines.) I’ve also realized something about Southwest. Southwest is the quintessential representation of how a democratic society actually works in practice.

Theoretically, every passenger on a Southwest flight is equal. Every chair is the same, every section of the plane receives the same service. Everyone has an equal opportunity to obtain the spot that is best for them. No seats are assigned; everyone is free to take any seat once they board. You board in the order of check-in. Check-in opens to everyone at the same time. Anyone can have any seat. Theoretically.

Whether you can get your ideal seat depends on a number of factors, the two most important being how many other people are vying for that same seat (competition) and your spot in line (your starting point in the community).

Spots in line, starting positions in the society, are determined by check-in. Everyone can check-in for the flight beginning 24 hours before departure. The sooner you check-in, the closer to the front of the line you are. Everyone has an equal shot. Except they don’t.

Within that theoretical equal playing field of checkin, there are a number of factors that give people advantages. At the most basic level, those with the free time and the best support networks have the best shot at a good starting position. checking in right at the 24-hour mark. These are the folks who can make themselves free in a location with internet access on a computer or phone exactly 24 hours before their flight or who can call on a friend or relative to be so. Those who do not have easy internet access or who do not have the flexibility in their schedules or people available to help them out are at a disadvantage. I.e. there are certain basics the society takes as a given and those who do not have those basics start off a bit behind.

Then there are groups with actual advantages, those who get better starting positions because they have something beyond the norm. Some of these advantages are obvious, some less so. First, there are those with money, those who can buy their way to the top, whose money gets them special privileges and access to places ahead of others. These are the Business Select customers who pay a premium up to 3x the regular fare for the first 15 spots in line. They also get a bonus of special treatment in the form of a free alcoholic beverage.

There’s also the slightly lower-class-trying-to-be-rich folks who don’t fork out the full amount for a Business Select ticket but can pay a small premium for the airline to check them in before people can start checking themselves in. These are the folks who purchase Early Bird Checkin.

These moneyed privileges are well-known. The privileges and how the privileges are obtained are obvious. Theoretically, anyone can join these groups. Everyone is offered a Business Select ticket; everyone is offered Early Bird Checkin. Just as anyone can buy a ticket to that fundraising dinner or purchase that season ticket next to the big-wig they want to meet. What matters is not that the privilege is offered, what matters is that the conditions on which is offered make it accessible only to some.

But there are additional ways to obtain advantages, privileged groups that are less apparent. These are the insiders.

First are the folks who have earned special treatment, the equivalent of folks with connections. These are those who have achieved A-List status (this is where I am now and holy cow is it fabulous!). In some ways, this is purchased because it requires earning a lot of points, which means buying a lot of plane tickets, but it is not an extra cost beyond the plane tickets. A-List members are checked-in automatically without purchasing either the very pricey Business Select or the premium Early Bird Checkin. In fact, they are checked in before the Early Birds, getting the best non-Business Select spots possible. (And I imagine this connection gets even greater when you obtain A+ status and certainly when you earn the companion pass that allows someone to fly free with you on every trip.) These people are so connected to the system, by virtue of their flying with Southwest so often, that the system works for them.

Second are the folks who know the system so well they know how to work within it so that it works for them without outright privileges being given. These are the folks who move through the relevant parts of society so frequently, who fly Southwest so often, they have learned the tricks to getting their ideal outcome. They know their routes. They know the planes; they know what’s likely to benefit them. I have been in this group for a long time, but I will save my strategy for a later post.

Lastly, there are the protected classes. Those who might otherwise be run-down by the masses if the system did not offer them special protections. On Southwest, these are the Preboarders: the elderly, handicap and young children travelling alone who board the plane before everyone else. At first glance, they may seem privileged, but being a protected class comes at a cost. There are seats in which they are not allowed to sit, there are places within the system they cannot go, and they must wait for assistance from the system before they can do anything, before they can board or deplane.

Southwest’s egalitarian boarding system puts everyone on equal footing, except for those that have the money, connections or insider information to give themselves a better chance of getting what they want. In this case, it’s just a seat on an airplane. In society, it’s quite a bit more.

Fighting Racism

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 20:12:00 +0000

The other week, I wound up in two separate altercations with angry black women. The problem is, I saw them as angry black women.

They were being stubborn, and as I saw it, incredibly illogical.* There are three things that get me super upset, illogicalness, inefficiency and being called a liar. These two were pushing the first two buttons. They yelled and swore at me. Somehow, I managed to stay polite and not do either of those things back (which for anyone who knows me is a big deal and a long-fought-for small achievement). But even though I was somewhat proud of myself for staying relatively calm, there was this nagging extra anger.

When I was upset, agitated, riled up, my mind immediately went to racial stereotypes. The fact that I did that made me even more upset. At them. At the women for perpetuating the stereotype. I was like, here they are, making things worse for… fill in any of the black females in my life. I was mad at them for being black and angry when I needed to be angry at myself for attributing anything about the situation to their blackness, for thinking of them as angry black women instead of just upset people.

When I was in the middle of trying to deal with these ladies on the street, I started analyzing their behavior, “maybe they are being extra stubborn because I’m white and doing what I ‘want’ would be submitting to the man.” But maybe they weren’t. Whether they were or not is on them, not me. Their projection of race into the confrontation would be on them, but my projection of race into the confrontation is on me. And I put it there, and then blamed them for my putting it there.

I feel like I start to understand people who join white supremacist groups. It’s not that their beliefs are correct, far from it. It’s that it is easier to hate. It is easier to hate and be around people who justify that hate instead of challenging it. It is easier to hate than to forgive yourself for being unable to love.

All of us need to battle racism everyday. The majority of us---and we are still the majority in this country despite whatever Trump may claim---the majority of us have to battle it in ourselves first.

*One was refusing to take the right-away she legally had; the other was trying to take a right-away she logistically did not have.

The Bees

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 12:50:00 +0000

People run and laugh and play. Me, I watch the bees.

They lounge in chairs, drowsy with the mid-day sun or enveloped in books. Me, I watch the bees.

They swing paddles, bob whiffle balls high over the nets. They soak in the cool energy of the icy, still pool. Me, I watch the bees.

Tiny yellow flowers dot the expansive dip in the lawn. A long inverse ridge running just below the sloping rise of the main hill. Barely noticeable save for something for the mover to run over, to cut down, to sever flower head from flower stem. Yellow petals from blades of grass. Does anyone notice the flowers? See how they’re only in the dip?

Is there something special about this low point? Does the rain gathering here provide extra water? Do the sloped sides add needed shade? Or is it just that the lawnmower isn’t equipped to handle subtle changes in terrain and the blades rotate above the flowers but do not catch them, none but the tallest, the proudest cut down, the smallest left to flourish? Do we see what we do not look for?

The bees scuttle from flower to flower, spending no more than a second on each blossom. A schmorgasboard of delight, bright, beautiful dinner. Do mid-day flowers need a name?

Chubby bodies, all five tiny petals disappear below as the bees drink up the inside nectar. How many? Two? Four? Seven? There’s another, and another---or is that the same one? They move so quickly, flitting from plate to plate, it’s hard to tell.

The people grow louder, the day taking off, the pool tranquility replaced with splashing, the din of conversation echoing until it dissipates in the pure blue sky. The bees, the bees go on eating. And me, I watch the bees.

I Guess I Need a Book Club

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 11:50:00 +0000

If I am ever going to have any hope of reading another book again, I must write about this one. The characters have moved into my head. Brought their knapsacks and their dishes. Heck, brought their own futons and set up house in that crowded, cobwebed maze that calls itself my brain. They throw house parties. Invite their friends, strangers, other characters. I won’t be surprised to find Lizzie Bennet throwing a glassful of water in Furo Wariboko’s face. They have infested my being and will not let me be. So I must write about this book.

Blackass---I can hear my mother’s “ahem,” with its pushed-out air emphasizing the m. It’s the opposite of what I imagine that African term “sucked his teeth” to be. I could try to call it Blackvampire, but that hardly works. It is in fact Furo Wariboko’s bum that is black. His other ass-ness however, the part that could be described as vapmire-ness, is all white. Oyibo white.

Furo Wariboko is the main character in this Kafka allusion. I guess it’s not really an allusion as the author, A. Ignoni Barrett, acknowledges Gregor before we meet Furo, acknowledges his tribute to Metamorphosis.

Like many American high school students, I endured Metamorphosis. Endured is the right word. I did not endure Blackass; I devoured it. And then it devoured me.

Furo Wariboko awakes to find himself transformed---expressed far more eloquently than that---into a white man. An oyibo man in Lagos, Nigeria, in not-so-well-off, Nigerian’s Lagos, Nigeria. And his adventures begin.

In an inverting of my Americanah experience, I struggled to picture Furo as a white man. His physical appearance was described frequently as he discovered and rediscovered and was reminded of himself. Yet I kept picturing a Nigerian man. Until Furo’s insides began to match his outside. As Furo accepted his whiteness, as he adapted to, embraced and abused the privileges suddenly in his possession, the Furo Wariboko in my head more and more matched the description in the book. As Furo’s soul became oybio, so did the vision of him.

One of the reviews on the back of the book says “it will scorch your fingers and singe your eyelashes.” The reviewer is not lying. There is so much more I want to say about this book, but I cannot without leaving hoards of spoilers armed with pitchforks. I need more people to read this book so I can talk about it! Be one of those people? Pretty please, with sugar on top, and a black ass?

P.S. The use of Twitter in this book is amazingly delightful. I tried to follow one of the character’s handles from my phone and was surprised to receive their last tweet, a tweet saying goodbye to the author.

Always Assume the Worst

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 00:26:00 +0000

There’s a tweet string from the other week that irked me quite a bit. It’s a rant, a rant about copyright. Whatever. There are tons of rants about copyright online. But this one, this one needles me because it is so myopic. It seems unable to grasp the big picture. This is not missing the forest for the trees. This is missing the forest for the twig. “Fear-driven copyright policy making is driven by a single-minded concern for abuse, and gives primacy to preventing it before it manifests.” the tweeter argues.

“You fool!” I yell, not to the post’s author (who is a very decent and generally rather intelligent chap), to society-at-large, to everyone. This is our entire society, through-and-through. This is what our lives have become. Everything is based on fear and the assumption that anyone and everyone of us is up to no good at any given moment.

This bubbling, oozing poison, this swamp of despair into which we have sunk our societal pillars on which we try to build, and which somehow surprises us when it comes popping up in bursting, boiling bubbles, splattering us with its muck. It is the way we approach everything, guns, driving, shopping, terrorism, transit riding, being black, life.

At the airport: Prove to us you aren’t even thinking about trying to bring down this plane. Give us your bags; give us your bodies. Prove to us you are not plotting evil. We assume you are. If you are not, you’ll have on qualms about proving it. And we will make the laws assuming you will try to get around them. You may try to bring on a dangerous chemical, so we will ban all liquids, etc., etc.

On the LA subway: Prove to us you didn’t jump the stall gates; give us your ticket. We assume you didn’t pay. If you did, you’ll have no qualms about proving it.

At a ‘random’ check-point at 2am, stopping all cars: Prove to us you weren’t drinking. Give us your breath, your blood, your time. We assume you’re drunk. If you are not, you’ll have no qualms about proving it.

At the store (or the library!): Prove to us you aren’t trying to steal anything. Let us see inside your bag; let us search your purse, your person. We assume you’re stealing. If you are not, you will have no qualms about proving it.

At sporting events, prove to us you aren’t trying to sneak anything in. Let us see inside your bag; let us search your purse, your person. We assume you’re trying to smuggle in a drink, a snack, a weapon. If you are not, you will have no qualms about proving it. And we will make more rules assuming you are trying to get around them. You may try to hide something in secret pocket, so we will allow only certain clear bags into the park, etc., etc.

On the corner: Prove you live here. Prove you aren’t scouting the place. Prove we should let you walk here. Prove you aren’t trafficking illegal goods. Give us your answers, your time, your attention. Let us search your car, your person. We assume you don’t belong; we assume you must be doing something nefarious. If we’re wrong, you will have no qualms about proving it. And we will make laws to prevent you from being here. You may be plotting something with your friends, so we will make gangs illegal and declare that three or more people congregated in the same area is a gang; we will declare the steps of your publicly-owned apartment complex a No Loitering Zone; etc., etc.

And we build and build, making every potential step in the process illegal in-and-of-itself. You might drink from the previously opened wine bottle in your back seat while driving, so it is illegal to have it in your back seat. You might attack someone with your pepper-spray, so it is illegal to bring it into the building. Minors might graffiti buildings, so it is illegal to sell them spray paint. Etc. Etc. Etc. Never mind there may be legitimate reasons for any of these things. Everything is predicated on fear, assumption of the worst, and assumption that every law and rule must be made for those who will try to get around them.

Constantly, every day, prove, prove, prove. Prove you are not doing wrong, prove you are not a bad person. Obey us and prove! Because not obeying is also illegal. Everyone is a suspect, everyone is bad until they prove otherwise.

It takes its toll, these constant accusations, incessantly being fed the idea that you can presume good of no one. Incessantly being fed the idea that no one can presume good of you.

How about we worry about when people actually do something harmful, instead of worrying about steps that could be taking steps that could be towards doing something harmful? In all areas of life.

Birth and Death

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 09:18:00 +0000

A message with an apology and “I didn’t know how else to reach you,” is never one with good news. Especially not when it comes from someone so far in your past you honestly probably wouldn’t have remembered them if someone had asked you to name everyone that was part of your life that particular year. You might have remembered them with respect to their role in your life---oh yes, and there was the new volunteer who replaced me at my site---but not by name.

Yet, when that name popped up on my Google Chat, I knew exactly who it was. I knew the name lingering inside the chat window’s large block of text even more: Ba Joyce.

Ba Joyce.

One of my bamaamas, my Zambian moms. Bamaamas are like kids I think; you’re not supposed to have a favorite. Maybe there’s an exception for the one that bore you; that one can be your favorite. But the ones that are your other bamaamas, the ones that help raise you (even when you’re already grown), and feed you and teach you how to cook and wash and speak Tonga, and live. The ones you wish you’d asked to teach you how to pee standing up.---I understand the concept; I was just never gutsy enough to try it.---Those bamaamas, I don’t think you’re supposed to have favorites. But I did. I had two, and Ba Joyce was one of them.

“I was in Zambia…”

Zed! Oh, Zed! Just the day before I had been describing Zambia to someone, “Zambia itself will crawl in your heart and never leave. It will burrow like a panya in the grass of your roof, with a scratching that forbids you forget it’s there no matter how infrequently you actually see it.” At the sight of “I was in Zambia,” every bit of burrowed Zambia burst forth.

And then it exploded.

“Ba Joyce recently passed away during childbirth.”

Ba Joyce.

Ba Joyce bore her second son the week I moved into the village. Her passing through my life bookended by childbirth. One of those many things we take for granted here. One of those common, everyday, planned things that used to truly be a miracle.

Ba Joyce.

“Ba Joyce recently passed away during childbirth.”

“The family is still clearly mourning her loss.”

Ba Joyce.

The family.

The family without Ba Joyce.

Ba Joyce.

My eyes welled up as my body filled with ambivalence. Not the American ambivalence of not caring; the British ambivalence of feeling two conflicting emotions at once that I learned from Kryten. A strange taffy pull that brought even more tears. Devastation that Ba Joyce was dead. Elation that others were not.

Ba Timmy was out in the village, visiting us. We were nearing close-of-service (COS in Peace Corps parlance), pack-up-your-bags-and-say-goodbye time. “When are you coming back to visit?” Ba Lenix had asked. “Oh, probably in about five years,” Ba Timmy had answered. Ba Lenix let out a sort of snorty chuckle, a chortle if you will, “We will all be dead.”

I feared he was right. At 36, he was already past what was then the Zambian average life expectancy. At that time, the HIV rate in the country was hovering at about 20%. Simply statistically speaking, a family with one husband and four wives was not an optimistic proposition. It had only been a few months since I had sat in the shade shelling beans with my favorite bamaamas asking about why one of their others wives had gone to the mission hospital some 20+ km away, since deep and serious eyes had looked at me as a voice tried to laugh a laugh that caught in a throat, since I had heard “tuyakufwa.”

There was something else, too. I knew my situation was not like Ba Timmy’s. Funding a trip to a quasi-remote African village would not be in my near future. Not in five years, probably not in ten. When my mother and grandmother came out to visit the year before, it truly had been a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Even if I were to move back to Africa, I doubt Mommy would visit again. But then, going to see your twenty-four-year old daughter in a small community she’s made home is very different from visiting your nearly middle-aged child in a block of flats in some bustling metropolis.

I used to write to them, my family, my Zam-fam. I used to write letters and Christmas cards and little notes to say hello. I’d send along pre-paid postage vouchers from USPS so they could write back. “Ndamueya!” I’d write, “ndamueya maningi!” I was not lying; I think about them everyday.

To get mail to the village, I would send it to the post box in Monze, the nearest town, for the government school in Chona, about 10km from our village of Cheelo. There was a wonderful family who lived in Chona. The parents taught at the school and the older sons ran the family transport business, carrying things and people and goats to and from Monze. They would collect the mail and send it over to Cheelo with a passenger who might be going that way. Perhaps another Cheelo resident or someone passing through on their way to somewhere like Namateba. But the mail started coming back, unopened, months later, having gone across the Atlantic, through Lusaka, to Livingstone, to Monze and back. The school had closed its P.O. box.

Occasionally, I’d meet a Zambian or someone who was traveling to Zambia. “Can you take a letter for me?” And I’d hope the magic informal mail system of people who know people going that way would work. I don’t know if my letters ever made it.

We lost touch.

“Ba Joyce recently passed away.”

Years. But still, ndabaeya maningi, everyday. Sometimes, I see them in my dreams. I see them running towards me as I run towards them, coming up the path past the cattle stall and Ba Lenix’s special cisyu field. I see them around the fire as we munch on roasted mapopwe. I hear them yelling “Ba Nchimunya, Ba Nchimunya!” and laughing while my face aches from the stretched smile I simply cannot contract back into fitting on my face.

Even when I am not asleep, I talk to them. Imaginary conversations in the shower and on bike rides and in the car and walking down the street. “Ndaunka ku mbeleka kwa ciinga.” I’m sure my Tonga is worse than ever, but my thoughts are always in it. There is no one here to know if I am accidently yelling “prostitutes!” into the air or asking if someone’s menstruated. I imagine introducing them to Mr. Trizzle, standing sort of scared and unsure on the packed dirt, afraid of what allergens might jump out and bite him. “Ah-ah, where is Ba Mr. Mindala?” I try to punt the question. “ezyi Ba Trizzle, bali benzuma. Ndabayanda. Bali kabotu maningi.” “Ba Nchimunya, muntu isiya?” Ba Fare would laugh, not really asking a question. And they would make him feel so welcome and stuff him full of nsima. The good nsima made from mbusu ground in the village, not that tasteless store-bought mealie meal from town. And Bay Joyce would hang back a little bit, a huge smile on her face, “Banina Daddy Bunny. Mwabola?” before coming in for a hug. “Inzya, ndabola” I have come. Finally. At last.

But I have not.

And there is no Ba Joyce to smile and greet the mother of stuffed rabbit.

No Ba Joyce.

Ba Joyce.

“Ba Joyce recently passed away.”

Ba Joyce.

No Ba Joyce.

Mazoka, bamaama benu babolide. Ino, mwakalona lyoonse, antomwe. Amudokamane. Pesi, mebo,ndaousa. Ndamueya, bonse.

Say Hello to Chester

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 12:14:00 +0000

Vehicles are supposed to be female. There’s a rule somewhere, probably in some old seafaring guide, a Viking legend or buried deep in a dusty pile of books in an etymologists’ study. But this time, this time that just didn’t work. I took one look at those wide-set eyes and pointy grin and knew immediately, his name was Chester.

I found Chester online, through some sort of search that lead me to Woodbridge Auto Auction. A 1994 Cadillac Seville with barely 90,000 miles. That pointed grin smiled from the ad. “Black,” read the advert, though I could clearly see this Cadillac was not black. Burgundy? Brown? Rustic bear? Not black. More like latte inside, ‘spresso out.

He was going up for auction on Saturday. I would be in Orlando. The auction house offered an option: pay for a hold to keep it off the auction; if you like it, the payment goes towards the cost of the car, if you don’t, refund.
Getting a hold on Chester turned out to be much easier than getting to Woodbridge. An airplane (from Orlando), Metro, a bus, and a strange walk along the highway with a Hungarian in search of cowboy boots later, I was peering under Chester’s hood.

I brought him home on a Wednesday. He spent the next two weeks in and out of the mechanic’s. One does not buy a 22-year old car from an auction house and expect it to be in working order. No, one buys a 22-year old car from an auction house at a nice as-is price and gets a list of repair needs with the title.
Chester went to the mechanic who had managed Betty’s transition to hospice. Woody’s an excellent mechanic, and most of all, understands attachment to a car. He and his team replaced two broken engine brackets, sealed a hole in the exhaust pipe, located a tiny leak in the oil pan and generally tidied him up into tip-top shape.

I took him home and parked him behind Betty. “This is your new brother. I know it’s strange to be replaced by a sibling, but it’s what we have to do now. Tell him all about the area, where we usually go, and what it’s like to ride with me, ok?” I patted her hood and tried to ignore the pinch in my chest.

For the next several weeks, I moved Betty and Chester around the neighborhood. Every Tuesday and every Wednesday, for Wednesday and Thursday street sweeping. Sometimes they rested together, one in front of the other. Sometimes they were on different blocks.

Slowly, I moved things from Betty to Chester. First the crate of fluids---oil, brake fluid, windshield washer fluid, engine coolant, bungee cords, rags, the large sheet for hauling things on the roof. Then odds and ends---maps, the car seat I’d recently gotten from a friend at church so I can drive other people’s children (and scare dates as a side-effect, apparently). Putting Betty’s mixtape in Chester just seemed wrong. He has a cd player, so I put in one of my favorite cds, U.S.D.A.’s Cold Summer. He ate it. Just ate it. Wouldn’t play it. Wouldn’t give it back. Just gulp, gone. I tried everything to get that cd out. Paperclips, pens, every button on the stereo. Eventually, I gave up and put in a mixtape I’d made before Betty’s that turned out to be too depressing.

Emotional music, songs like Low Man’s Lyric, November Rain and Landslide are great for moody nights when the darkness of your apartment matches the darkness of your soul. They are not great for driving around traffic-clogged cities. Chester needed a mixtape of his own.

I went out to him, “Chester, I made you your own mixtape. I’m going to take this random one out so you can hear yours.” I hit eject. Chester was so happy to have his own mixtape, he spit out the depressing tape and my U.S.D.A. cd! I smiled and knew we were going to get along just fine.

Chester is doing well so far. Someone took a gouge out of his front bumper, about two feet over from where John at the local hardware store drilled the front license plate on (no charge; such a sweetheart!). I may color it in with marker. This past weekend, he took a piece of road debris to the face and will now need to have a doctor’s visit, but it looks like that shouldn’t be too costly.

Chester’s very spacious inside, so much so that if I put the seat all the way back, I can’t reach the pedals! (So that’s what it feels like to be Munchkinhead.) His trunk is a bit smaller than Betty’s, but it does well enough. His hood is longer; he’s packing a V8. And my goodness does he purr on the highway. Slowly, I am learning him. Learning how he handles, learning his size, learning his quirks. We’ve managed to parallel park on the left-side of a narrow one-way street, now it’s just a matter of making it second nature.

I still miss Betty---she was laid to rest in July---but I am very glad to have found Chester. We have many adventures ahead of us.

Born on a Tuesday; Read on a Wednesday, and a Thursday, and a Friday…

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 20:36:00 +0000

After months of waiting for it to be available in the U.S., I have finally gotten my hands on Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday, and I do not want to let go. I like the way it feels, the texture of the cover. Often, I sit and rub my hand along it, over the smooth almost flesh-like page. Gripping the back and front together around the spine, feeling all the sides at once.

Sometimes, I need to close the book and grasp the supple tome just to remind myself that I am real and I am here, in a chair in my apartment, at an airport, on a plane, in a hotel, wherever I might be reading. That I am here, and me, and born on a Sunday, not on a Tuesday.

It is not glossy. It is not like the dust jacket on a hardcover or the plastic-y coating on a mass-market paperback. It is soft, though firm. It is as though the paper was coated like the wax print wrappers Nigerian women wear. Like even in its international printing and distribution Nigeria seeps through, out of the book, and into you.

I like the way Elnathan John does like Adichie and puts phrases in English right after they appear in another language. I like even more that he only does it sometimes, leaving us to get the meaning from the context and emotion of the situation instead of doing it in definitions of words we know carrying their own heavy connotations and histories in our lives.

There is much in the book that is difficult, but anything that makes us face our own empty humanness is difficult. So are things that tie tongues in knots. There’s a lot of Hausa and Arabic, and I cannot tell one from the other, written out in Latin script. There are phrases I recognize from working with colleagues on the Arabic Creative Commons licenses---insha Allah---and phrases I know from Ziriums’s songs and Malcom X’s biography---salamu alaiku; alaiku wasalam. But there are many others unfamiliar that I cannot even stutter out in my head. How does one pronounce a g, h & f all together in a row? It’s like playing scrabble with Cat. No wonder Dantala thinks English sounds “soft and easy like one does not need to open one’s mouth a lot or use a lot of air or energy.” Imagine if he ever heard Italian!

The reviews on the back of the book compare Elnathan to Achebe. But Born on a Tuesday feels far more accessible to an outsider than Achebe. Perhaps I just know Nigeria better than I did. I hope, though, that it is more accessible, that it is read widely, and that those of us whose story this is not see how easily it could become a story that is ours. And that they---we---make it so that it never is. Insha Allah.

“I am not sure if it is the hope of money that lures them or the fact that the [ ] movement is something new. Everyone likes something new. Eventually people get tired and some other new things takes over. It isn’t grounded. Something that has no roots and springs up with leaves and branches everything is bound to crash from the weight. They can’t see this now.”

– Born on a Tuesday, pg. 89

Born on a Tuesday, Elnathan John; Black Cat 2015

Are Those Ruffles Under Your Skirt?

noreply@blogger.com (goldenrail) — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 02:40:00 +0000

Ruffles!

"I call dibs on the bloomers in Mommy's sewing room!" I yelled to my sisters over Twitter. I'd found them lying around, probably on a pile on the large cutting table that had been pushed to the wall to make room for Munchkinhead and me to share an air mattress on the floor. It was the ruffles that first got my eye. Ruffled eyelet against more ruffles in a sort of softened army green. I love ruffles, almost as much as I love sparkles.

"What's this?" I picked them up and unfolded them. "Bloomers!" Mommy quickly informed me that Munchkinhead had already told her she couldn't get rid of them and very well might have plans for them. Like an eager toddler yelling "MINE!", I pulled them on, over the skirt of the black suit I was still wearing from playing grown-up at work earlier in the day. But that was hours ago and 1,000 miles away, literally. Now, I was home, in Mommy's house, where no one ever grows up, delighting in the ruffled bloomers with the elastic that easily went over my skirt and rested snuggly against my waist. "They fit! They fit!" I jumped up-and-down. That means they won't fit Munchkinhead. I call dibs!" I tweeted Munchkinhead and Alfred to let them know. Alfred more as a courtesy, in case aliens had invaded her brain and made her suddenly interested in ruffled bloomers.

Toro toro toro!

Munchkinhead was glad of my excitement. She had been disappointed that the bloomers did not fit her. Like many things in Mommy's sewing room, no one had any idea where they'd come from. Munchkinhead had forbidden Mommy from getting rid of them not because of some grand plan in mind, but because she did not want to see something so wonderful as bull-fighter-covered ruffled bloomers tossed away. Yes, upon examining them more closely, later in the evening while playing board games with family and The Great Ecclestone, I discovered the pattern on these darling things was little bull fighters waving soft army green cloth in front of angry stamping dark green bulls. How deliciously what-the-vampire.

I wore those bloomers most of the weekend, sometimes as shorts with a t-shirt---because Mommy's house is the only place one can look that ridiculous---sometimes under my dresses like proper bloomers go. Then I could tumble in the grass and hang from the swingset to my heart's delight. And Mommy didn't need to worry about saying, "get down from there, you have a dress on." I love bloomers.

Bloomers or the clothesline