Flying Home

(From a few days ago when I flew home.)

Back to Texas again. With a fresh infection of the travel bug. The smell of plane, the sensation of tarmac peeling away beneath us, and the sight of farmland patched in corduroy and green velvet 34,000 feet below never fails to move me. Somebody medicate me!

I thoroughly enjoyed the flight, despite the lingering feeling of needing spinal decompression and the slight nausea that came over me every time the flight attendant came down the tiny aisle accompanied by his noxious phantom of Man Perfume. This was no Axe, I’m telling you. More like Guillotine.

Two little girls about nine years old sat opposite me. They were the most identical twins I’ve ever seen, slight, pale, and blonde, with big blue eyes. They wore identical jumpers with leggings, had identical braids the same length, and identical blue baseball caps. One had glasses and both of them were extremely shy. Whenever I spoke to the one with glasses, who was closest to me, she sort of giggled and turned to the other twin. The other twin was apparently the boss/spokesperson. She told me her name was Kira. They were exceptionally polite. I didn’t talk to them much because I didn’t want to freak them out any more than I already had. They didn’t talk to me, put down their trays when I did, got cran-apple juice as I did, and generally surveyed me from the corners of their eyes. They played “I Went to a Chinese Restaurant,” and I engrossed myself in the first 98 pages of China Road and thought about China, Afghanistan and everything in between.

Two favorite quotes from China Road so far:

(On Democracy) “Once you allow people to choose their own pizza toppings, sooner or later they are going to want to choose their political leaders.” Pg. 18

“So, take my advice. If you’re planning any sensitive journalistic missions to China, pack your Jockeys.” Pg. 87

(Concluding his explanation of how he maintains security by hiding the minidisk of his recorder in his underwear when doing hard core journalism.) Rob Gifford cracks me up.

My other neighbors on the flight included a middle aged couple and their high school aged son on the way to Vancouver for a cruise. I am prone to unjustly judging people who go on cruises. No offense meant to a reader who might have happened to go on a cruise. So while I was not reading China Road or trying to engage the wallflower twins I concentrated on not judging the cruisers. And thinking about how it’s been forever and ever since I held a baby, a thought triggered by the mother of an infant bound comfortingly to her chest in a brown sling. It looked like an Anne Geddes baby. Her toddler, a boy with brown hair, enjoyed the landing immensely but seemed a little confused. He kept giggling and saying, “Lots of bumps Mommy. Bumps! Bumps!” It was somewhere between a happy giggle and a nervous giggle.

As we disembarked I helped retrieve the twins’ bags and they seemed to be warming up after all. I decided the cruisers were decent people after all probably in need of a vacation and took a chainsaw to the log in my eye. Part of this decision was influence by the fact that they had packed peanut butter and jelly for lunch just like me. The baby was precious and never cried for more than a few minutes and the boy was happy to have his seat belt off.

And now, I am home.

What I Do on My Day Off

It's really wonderful to have a day of rest. By rest I mean a day in which I only worked for four hours, researched for one hour, and spent the remainder walking in the woods with a friend, picking up a book from the library, biking to Wal-Mart for trash bags and toilet paper, cleaning the apartment whilst listening to audio Russian lessons and YouTube videos about free market economies, and finally, baking up some hot cross buns with which I have every intention of blowing Panera Bread's mind.

The buns aren't done yet, and they will probably be minus the crosses. It seems wrong to make hot cross buns on a not-Easter weekend, but this is coming from someone who doesn't do Christmas music before Thanksgiving either. Just ask Brittany, my room mate. She knows.
Still to come is the book I got from the library, about Ghengis Khan. I'm in one of those Central Asian moods again, mostly due to a study abroad program my supervisor suggested casually at work yesterday. It's in Kyrgyzstan. (Anybody wanna buy a vowel?)

This is a map from a Wikipedia article about Kyrgyzstan that I was reading earlier. Kyrgyzstan is the little one tucked between Khazakstan and China and smattered with brown, indicating that people there speak a lot of, well, Kyrgyz. It borders Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and it's just a hop-skip-and-jump (only over a few of the most colossal mountain ranges on the planet) to Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

According to Wikipedia, which was quite thoroughly cited for once, the population is mostly Muslim, with some Russian and Ukrainian orthodoxy thrown in. It used to be part of the USSR. Interesting place. And then there is this program that almost seems too good to be true for a history major who would like to get acquainted with that mysterious part of the world and already has a smidgin of Russian to give her a start. There are summer internship opportunities with NGOs if you go in the spring. And to top it all off, the program is in Bishkek, the capital, where I believe there are some friends of friends living. So the ends of the earth are not really that far. And of course Ukraine is right on the way and I could make a little jaunt to see some people who are very dear to me.

So many dreams. The crazy thing is, these opportunities are open to me. And it's not something I take lightly. Even though spending the night in a yurt and learning a language a tiny portion of the world's population uses (not Russian, the other "Stan" languages) seems frivolous, it isn't. I don't understand where my life is headed exactly, but I know that something beautiful happens when worlds collide. Something in my soul is wrapped up in this part of the world. When I tell people I'm planning to major in history, they say "Going to be a teacher, hm?" And I look at the floor and say "No, not exactly."

It isn't that being a teacher is tame by any means. Ask any teacher with a classroom full, working 8 to 5 and then into the evening, riding the highs and lows of light bulb moments and discipline issues. This is an ultimate and fulfilling goal for some people, and rightly so. But for me, there is an urge to push further, past the expected. Maybe it's stubbornness or pride, wanting to prove the expectations wrong. Wanting to prove the voices in my head wrong when they tell me I don't have the gumption to do certain things, to talk to people I don't know how to talk to, or to learn to do jobs I never thought I could do.

Well. I don't have the gumption. Not yet. Or the skills. Not to do some of the things in my head.
But one thing I am learning at school, at my job with Kay, who seems to know how to push me way out of my comfort zone without actually making me bitter, is that I can learn. I can't just sit around waiting for ninja skillz to fall on my head. And in beautiful correspondence with that is the promise of Proverbs that God does give wisdom to those who seek it. It's a thing to be sought.

Well. In the time that has elapsed since I started this entry, I have managed to burn the hot not-crossed buns. This is a grave disappointment, because I was so proud of them and they took a lot of time to make. I will probably eat them anyway. A little charcoal never hurt anybody. After all, it's just the undersides that are pushing inedible. Darned oven. Turn my back for six minutes and it's toast. I mean buns. You know what I mean. My head is still in the steppes of Central Asia.

And now for my rendezvous with Genghis Khan, that old scoundrel...

In Which I Forget an Important Purchase and Wind Up Cooking Ground Beef in My Mostly Deserted Dorm at Midnight

It is 12:42 am and I am still not quite ready to go to bed. In fact, I've just spent the last little while (while not on the internet) reading a novel and cooking meat in the basement. Which I must say, is an excellent way to end an excellent day, which this has been...

Although now I want to eat the meat. I wouldn't have been cooking it at such an odd hour if I hadn't been so forgetful. But then, finals week seems to be a good enough occasion for dementia. I went to the farmer's market with my friend Kaleigh and her mom, who ran into another friend and her mom, and I was there without my mom...which was a sad situation. But anyway, I put my big girl panties on and got over it.

I bought a half pound of salad greens and splurged on a pound of ground beef from the college farm. Then I put it in my backpack. Where it stayed until this morning when I suddenly snapped out of deep meditation on the faithfulness of Jesus in Hebrews chapter 2 to remember it. The frozen beef had thawed (luckily in a plastic bag) but it still felt refrigerated and had kept the greens cold while it was at it. Brittany and I don't call our room "The Lair" for nothing. It has been damp and chill in here for several weeks now and there was one night I could swear my blankets were sprouting mushrooms.

Having been warned of the dangers of refreezing raw beef, (I do have my food handlers license, after all, courtesy of the Berea College labor program) I made a mental note to cook the beef today, and then I put it in the fridge. Where it stayed until tonight, when I suddenly snapped out of my Facebook reveries and realized it was yet lying uncooked and bloody in the recesses of the icebox, where four whole dollars and a hunk of cow meat would go to waste if I didn't face my responsibilities.

The only problem is that my skillets are packed off in storage as of Wednesday and most of the suite mates have left, taking their generally free-for-responsible-public-use dish collections with them. A lone saucepan was left in the cabinet, which one of the remaining three suite mates claimed. It is only about six inches in diameter. And the community hot plate is packed away as well, which meant that I trundled down to a deserted basement at half-past midnight with the pilfered pot, a spoon, the copy of The Devil and Miss Prym that a graduating friend loaned me, and my bloody meat.

There was just room enough in that pot for the pound of meat, and with a good bit of stirring, I got it sizzling. Then I turned to the book, which I've been enjoying the past few nights. It is by Paul Coelho, a Brazilian author, but it has been translated into a lot of different languages. He also wrote The Alchemist, which I haven't read. The Devil and Miss Prym is a sort of philosophical thriller; short, a quick and engaging read, with deep questions. One of the main characters is on a mission to figure out whether people are naturally good, naturally evil, or both.

In the midst of reading I managed to not burn the meat or set off the infamous Kettering fire alarm and thereby incur the wrath of several dozen lingering dorm mates. It had a wonderful flavor; I could tell that must have been an exceptionally happy cow. It lived a good life.

I found, while I was cooking, a quote I especially liked in the book:

"Silence does not always mean consent-- usually all it meant was that the people were incapable of coming up with an immediate response."

-The Devil and Miss Prym

Often true for me, I thought. And often the case in classes this semester, which made me grateful for required online forum posts. And as I contemplated this I climbed the stairs and located a yogurt container for my meat in my small, boxed pantry. Then I contemplated the pros and cons of using the cucumber melon body wash to clean the dishes since the other dish soap was gone and someone had obviously set the body wash there for that purpose. It didn't strike me as being the most healthy thing to put on the dishes, but then, what is Ajax?

I taste tested the meat again--lean, juicy, and almost sweet. Oh, lasagna. And then I put it in the fridge. Where, one may predict with reasonable certainty, it will stay until I suddenly wake in the middle of the night in the new apartment tomorrow night to realize that I have left my pound of precious ground beef in the dorm fridge, never to be seen again.

Umbrellas

There was a day a couple of weeks back when I was completely taken with raindrops. So with rain on the brain, I sat down to doodle and soon two umbrellas, three people, and a whole lot of raindrops appeared.

When I was done I was left with several questions, which you may also be asking.

1. Who the heck are these people?

2. Why are they sitting on the curb during a rainstorm?

3. And how are raindrops supposed to look when they hit the ground? (Because obviously none of these have made it yet).

Good luck. If you figure out any of the answers, let me know. Later I realized that the picture is perhaps a fictionalized composite account of true events. I was duped into drawing it by my subconscious. Sneaky little blighter. And I must say that Umbrellas by Sleeping at Last (from their album Keep No Score) may have also had subconscious influence. I wasn't thinking of it at the time, but it is one of my favorite songs.

And with that, I bid you all adieu. May the sun soon shine on your umbrella.

Sirens

There is nothing that can ruin the experience of an awesome thunderstorm like a tornado siren. That is, having the tornado sirens go off and the guy on the intercom telling you to tune your radios to the weather channel. (Personally I think it sounds like something out of a concentration camp...and who uses a radio on a college campus?). It suddenly goes from "Feeling-the-Raw-Power-of-the-Universe" to "Maybe-We-Should-Head-to-the-Basement."

I enjoy a good thunderstorm, but a tornado siren can really ruin the effect. I suppose I should be grateful that we're so lucky as to have the system on campus, but last night I was far from grateful when it went off whining and screaming at 1:37 am and I was snugly tucked beneath my covers. False alarms have been rather abundant lately and I was beginning to resent the whole system.

I wouldn't have bothered to get up if it had been raining; the trouble was that it was so warm and quiet, and that kind of got me. So I went to the window and looked out. Nothing. Brittany, my room mate, is used to these disturbances, and she slumbered on, as did the rest of the suite, I assume. Except for one suite mate, who was checking the weather on her computer in the suite. Naturally it was the two girls from Texas and Kansas City, MO who were concerned about tornadoes. Both of us peered out the double doors trying to ascertain whether the sky was yellow or not.

Yes, we are on tornado watch, Cecelia confirmed. Suddenly overcome with sleepiness again, curiosity satisfied, I went back to bed. The wind was picking up, but the wind always picks up here because of the hill that Kettering sits on. When it began to rain normally, I felt better.

So I lay there, listening for abnormal noises above the racket of the
air conditioning unit that wasn't even on and wondering why it
was making that Noise and thinking about how Kettering
Hall was like a Fortress it was such a sturdy building
with bricks All Around Us and how hopefully if
there Happened To Be a Tornado the window
wouldn't shatter like they do In Movies and
sever any Major Arteries and maybe I
should put the quilt over my head
Just In Case and how nobody
ever thinks things like
tornados could Ever
Really Happen
to them but
Sometimes
they do

just ask dorothy.

Quit Whining, Start Working

"You cannot live with the heart of a rabbit."

That is an Albanian proverb that I read once, and it always comes back to haunt me. There are lots of things I'm not afraid of, like flying, but there are plenty of things I'm afraid of down inside, like painting.

I have a tiny adorable watercolor set that some very dear people sent me in a magical package on my birthday. There are 12 chunks of watercolor, each perfectly wrapped in plastic and a label that I couldn't bring myself to open. But the real reason wasn't the darling packaging. It was my rabbit heart.

Tonight in Dr. Porter's Behavioral Science class we had presentations on Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. One presentation was on the 10,000 hour rule, which is simply this:

"Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours....Ten thousand hours is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert--in anything." Outliers, pg. 40

It's a little disheartening to think that it takes ten thousand hours to get really good at just about anything, and that's only if your ducks were in a row to begin with, the stars were aligned, and your mom's great uncle's half-sister-once-removed left you a substantial inheritance. I'm taking it all with a grain of salt, because I realize that there are a lot more factors involved in being good at something than just practice.

But the main thing that hit me was that, well, I can't stand there forever staring at the clouds, waiting for the storm to come. God gave work as a gift to humankind. Two hands, a mind, a will. Sanctified in Him. If I want to get good at something, I need to stop comparing and start creating. I need to quite whining and get to work.

That Glazed Look: A Safety Zone for Daydreams

Mediterranean is a word well put together. In fact, its pleasant combination of syllables compelled me to stare at it a good long while when class was beginning last Monday (I think) at ten and the projector screen was there in front of us plastering the wall in a map of 16^th century Europe. A scintillating time and location in history, that.

This blog will be primarily about what is going on in my head at times like the one I have just described. A sort of public safety zone for daydreams. Please feel free to share yours (with blogworthy discretion of course).

I manage to retain a good bit from classes, take notes, and enjoy it all while still living a sort of second daydream life behind the eyes. If you’ve ever noticed how musicians get that glazed look over their eyes when they are really engaging their instruments, well, it’s a little like that. Only I am not very musical and it takes a lot of concentration to live at all, so I guess the music is life itself that I am playing, and the instruments…heart, mind, and soul.

These moments of ocular obscurity stand quite farther out in memory when one is caught in them. A prime example was the class period, several weeks back, when the class was in the middle of a discussion during Behavioral Science. I always have a lot to think about in this class, and usually traverse the whole spectrum of emotions in the space of an hour and fifty minutes. Though previously engaged in the discussion, I had connected the topic to an article we had read several weeks before. It was “Social Animal,” by David Brooks, from the New Yorker, and it was about psychology type things. So it wasn’t too far off course.

Brooks pointed out lots of quirky detail of behavior in men and women and they made me laugh. He wrote about the guy “concoct[ing] elaborate fantasies in which he heroically saved her from harm.” Which made me wonder if that’s a typical guy thing…or if that’s a rare kind of daydream? Or if girls concoct elaborate fantasies about saving people too?

And that’s where I was when Dr. Porter looked at me and said, “So what do you think about that, Cassie?” Which was as good as to say, “Come back to earth and join us for a while.” But of course my thoughts had a perfectly good connection to the conversation topic (which now escapes my memory)…I just couldn’t…couldn’t…Well. I told him exactly what I was thinking, because, honest, there was a correlation.

So yes, I do sometimes even daydream about people daydreaming and then daydream about it later to put it on a blog, which, if you are susceptible to this yourself, may find yourself daydreaming about in weeks to come. Good luck with that. As for me, I’m still wondering if guys really concoct elaborate fantasies of rescuing females…

Heralding the Birth of the Second-Born Blogchild

I’m having another blog. That is, the idea came over me this morning as I sat drinking a very milky cup of instant Starbucks and staring glassy-eyed out the double doors in my dorm suite. I had been staring at the hill on the other side of Alumni Field for some time, basking in my general fondness of it and thinking about how it looked like a volcano. And then I realized that I was going to start another blog.

So here I am, pregnant with an unexpected brainchild. I’m thinking it could have come at a better time, but confound it all, what’s that Jewish saying? L’Chaim—to life! Let’s have it then. I’m sure it is due in part to the eschewing of a certain cranial contraceptive—Facebook. My casual statuses satisfied that momentary creative urge but never got a chance to develop into even a paragraph. Even a week of refraining from posting statuses has proved sufficient time to get the creative cells aligning in my fertile brain.

And now?

Now I’m pacing the floor while devouring the remnants of a pint of Blue Bell Happy Tracks. I feel a distinct urge to paint something saffron yellow, for no particular reason. The birds were singing this evening with as much confusion and vigor as I feel at the thought of producing something from my soul again, though it be small and though it come into a world of quickened pace.

My erstwhile blogchild has grown up, distanced itself from me, and retired. I had considerable feelings of angst for it last fall when I came to school, but times have changed, and my writing must change too. This coming blogchild, like my youngest brother, will certainly have a more relaxed upbringing than my colicky firstborn.