Orange You Glad...

It's nearly 2am, late for a college kid to be up working... on winter break. The fragrant box of Holiday Satsumas sitting next to me on the counter exercise a passionate romance with my nose. I shamelessly eat one. When selecting my second post-holiday Satsuma I realize how soft the peel is. and while I peel it, realize how ripe the fruit must be. last call by produce time. Time for eatin. a memory from a few days earlier hops to the front of my stream of conscious: The mandarin orange's cousin was sitting in my car. A friend picked it up to move and laughed. "Rachel," she said. "Do you know how soft this Satsuma is?" I did. "How long has it been sitting here? Are you going to throw it out?"

And now, enjoying the fragrance, anticipation, and pure suppleness of this ready little orange, I think about who else might find a Satsuma in a similar condition. Who else might revel in the fruit's ripened glory? While this box of little guys are all from the United States, I imagine a farmer or little boy in China, Turkey, or South America, picking one up off the ground. Suddenly, the fruit in my talons was the connection between me and a world i have only imagined. While I select fruit from a box sitting next to me, someone else might pull it off a tree or pick it up off the ground. While I work on my Mac making an invitation for my parents' 25th anniversary party, and someday hope to be paid for this skillset, someone else is walking down a dirt road, well set in their lifelong profession. It's 2 o'clock in the morning and I have the leisure, safety, and privilege to sit in a house and "work" on something completely intangible.

It's moments like these that connect me to the greater world. Thinking about the things we all share, and the circumstances that separate us. This time, though, I think our lives aren't so far apart, tiered away from each other. Just different. Because anyone with good sense can enjoy a really ripe Satsuma.



(image courtesy of Pappaliscious > http://flickr.com/photos/pappalicious/1463641070/)

Rumpled Braid

She patted my shoulder and leaned in close, with a firm, pressed smile in her rosy face. "Excuse me," she said.

Startled, I pulled down my glasses instead of my headphones, to hear her. When responding to spontaneous strangers, I feel the pressure to pick one action and stick with it. You know, like saying, "You too" to someone who said, "Thanks". Yeah, I don't know anyone who's discovered a way to remedy these passing social pressures. And either way, you're going to kick yourself, whether or not you try to right the situation.

"Can I just tell you," her hand pressed onto my shoulder, she was unusually close, but not threatening or uncomfortable. I tried to imagine what she wanted to tell me. There was definitely a "dear" vibe. Her physical impression was too strong for a passing warning, or 'I know your mother' conversation.

So, there I sat, inches away from her face, glasses pulled down to the tip of my nose, peering up blindly, eyebrows arched cluelessly. "You have the prettiest hair," she said definitively. The man accompanying her looked on approvingly. She patted my shoulder again, as I feebly thanked her, and they walked out the door.

For a moment, I paused my work and listen flow. Last night, I took a shower and braided my hair before bed, so it would turn out in, at least, some sort of predictable mess the next day. This morning when I went out to our local greasy spoon to eat grease and use free WiFi, I assumed no one would notice my hair . And, being in my own neighborhood, didn't care. Well, I guess it just goes to show. One woman's rumpled braid is another woman's adoration.

It is no small task to be yourself, though for some it's merely morning laze. But this is the greatest gift you can give. Share your light and joy with the world around you. Prepare for the best in the universe's smiling reflection, and fear not the worst. Have a meaningful holiday everyone.

Monday, Monday...

so good to me. Monday, Monday, it was all I hoped it would be.

It sure was. Well, it's been a while since last our souls melded, bloggerland. I find myself at the edge of paradise once again tonight, looking over my shoulder at the most amazing day of the term. The day's experience was not something to be passed up, and required heartfelt documentation. Where better than a place of perpetual bliss... my blog.

The Simpsons, a great inspiration, once ran an episode which featured a life coach character. He asks a group of Springfield slack jawed locals, "Life is hard, right?" Their answer returns staggered, "Yeah, sure, uh-huh." "WRONG!" says the man,pointing an accusing finger in the collective face of the crowd. "Life is easy! You suck!" He goes on to tell the classroom that "you've got to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face!" When it comes to impossible days and weeks that are all Mondays, this character's declaration is food for my soul.

Meetings upon meetings, upon cameras and video and handshakes and questions. When the day's obligations were through a small group of UO Ad students were privileged enough to take out two of the biggest minds in the advertising industry. The experience was priceless. During classroom presentations each made some mind widening comments, but spending personal time with the two professionals caused my exploring brain cells to set up vacation in a far flung corner.

Not only did I receive an in depth and human look into the life and industry of these guys, but I learned about myself as well. In my mind, and occasionally outloud, I would identify or disagree with a direction, a path, an angle. Listening to the opinion of an established individual and also forming my own take became the most thrilling brainhurricane of the quarter.

I am so proud of my department and the amazing people we foster and feature. After a long day of only the advertising department in the UO Jschool, with its lofty demands and recommendations, I walked home feeling completely charged. I think this is a good sign. The best sign.

Mad World

So, it's true, without argument, that I'm a little nutz. We all are. And, from time to time, it shows more than usual. Yeah it scares the people you don't know, but it just feels great to let it go and indulge your instincts.

Then there are those other times, when you feel the same roar in your chest, but you can't let it out. It's trapped inside your body and if you don't find the cork it's going to explode you. Sometimes it does. We have meltdowns. We lash out at others. We cry, slash tires, break things, and make compulsive decisions. What is it that keeps us from sublimating our emotions? Why do they overwhelm us? Where is the tipping point from enjoying the ride to screaming bloody-murder at the driver?

Maybe we just feel un-heard. What you want is to yell, to scream it all out. When you are with the people you love and trust, you can. We perhaps enjoy the fact of that relationship more than the act of spilling our wildness into society. We spill it out on the streets, splash it onto other people's cars, pick fights that aren't ours and act out because, too often we feel our society pushing that ferocity on us. We feel un-fairly pressured, mis measured, our worth folded up in our wallets. As human beings we want to be more, than a drone in a box, a number on a screen. And if we can't convince ourselves that we are, we corrupt. In the smallest ways of the smallest people we tell the city to shove it. We attack other drones to prove that we are real. Mischief becomes vandalism, becomes hate. Directed at the whole, we think we will be separated, liberated to our individualism. But our individualism is not what earns us freedom, it is what unites us.

To recognize others, and see the human in them, is to see the human in yourself. Act in celebration of our lives, instead of defiance of our collective. I have yet to understand what it means to be an individual, and stand on our own tooth-pick legs. Right now what I try to do is listen, for the answers. But I can barely hear above the roar in my own head.

College RiffRaft

First Friday
6.29.07
2100

So. Here I am in Nowhere, Oregon. Wait, I didn’t check my sources on that. Roseburg. Roseburg,Oregon. I am working my first full-time, forty hour a week, ironically boring, teeth-pulling, job. I am also spending what could very well be the first weekend all by my lonesome. And, as it was recently pointed out to me by the omnipotent and cruel world, I am college rift-raft.

“Why, Rachel,” you might say, “you are eighteen years old and already becoming a college junior. You are working a full-time job that offers great security. You are the Miss Miss —vice president— of AdSociety. You have a 3.5 college GPA, the UO Women’s Center created a new position in order to accommodate your talents…” etc. But, my dear friends, consider this: I do not have a car. I ride a borrowed bicycle which operates as well as a sixty-five-year-old cutting fire line. I have no friends, and absolutely no social agenda. Essentially, nothing to do outside of work. I don’t have internet service, so I bum it where I can, like behind a wall of the Sleep Inn. There, while sitting on concrete ground, because the world is my comfy car seat, I was hit on by a self-proclaimed meth-head in his late forties.

Apparently he was just fired from his job, as a trucker, who did toot the horn when civilian drivers made the “toot toot” motion. But he had never been a bus driver. He is now burdened with a restraining order from his wife of eighteen years, even though he is not a violent person. He asked me where I live and what I do, which I tried to be vague about. And he instructed that if he was being too nosy I should just bitch-slap him. He wishes he had attended college, but instead moved to the crank capital of the United States, Roseburg. He was clean for a year and a half, but is now doing methamphetamines again. I didn’t throw in that, perhaps, this is why he was fired from his job. No, I couldn’t go grab a bite to eat because I had imaginary dinner reservations with friends who were still out in the field, who might save me from this meth-head, even though they weren’t real. And no, I wasn’t old enough to drink. Yes, you are old enough to be my father. Yes there is “more money” in Western Washington. And I am about done with this conversation. And I hope he doesn’t try to steal my really-nice computer. Good luck finding a new job. Oh dear lord, I am riff-raft.

I have $50 to live on before my first paycheck rolls in. I stole salt packets from the coffee shop where my Mac couldn’t connect to the Internet. You see, sitting on the ground outside of a third rate hotel was not my first plan. And, by the way, the bench was occupied. I am riff-raft. At the grocery store on Tuesday, I had to choose between olive oil and a spatula. In the end, I decided that I could turn my chicken with a fork, but for the pasta to taste good, I needed the oil. The next day I was invited to the Forest Leadership Team’s barbeque. Because my last name begins with the letter “H” I was requested to bring a salad. I have lettuce, but when I looked at it, I realized that I did not have the resources to bring said dinner item. So, hoping charm and improvisation would count for something, I brought my flute instead. Riff-Raft.