Pura Vida

I posted a year or so ago about Kiel James Patrick bracelets, and how they provided actual, real customer service. Kiel is a great guy and has stood by his word and I love to buy his things when I can. It can be really hard to find companies that actually practice what they preach and stand by their values, but I found another one - Pura Vida bracelets. Pura vida means "pure life," meaning you should enjoy every moment and not take anything for granted. The company was founded by 2 friends who were in Costa Rica when they noticed a guy named Jorge selling handmade bracelets. They started talking with him, and found out he and his family were living in a single room.The friends asked him to make 400 bracelets to take back with them to the US, and when they did, they sold out like crazy. They were simple string bracelets, but the simplicity spoke for itself. They teamed up with Jorge, who finally had enough money to buy a house for his family, and to this day, the bracelets are handmade in Costa Rica, providing jobs for locals. A portion of all their sales go to the Surfrider Foundation, which helps keep beaches and oceans clean, and they also sell charity bracelets - $1 from each bracelet goes to the charity for which it is made. (The bracelets themselves are only $5 for regular ones). The charities range from March of Dimes to the Wounded Warrior project to numerous cancer funds.

Everyone with whom I have spoken there has been wonderful in replacing broken bracelets to making sure I got them in time, and I've been happy to support them.

obligatory end-of-year book list.

Columbia just sent us a new revised packet of course listings and master classes....and their line up this coming Spring is fantastic, I have to say. Eileen Myles, Sloane Crosley, Emily Fox Gordon, Elisa Albert....super excited. I would love to take ALL THE CLASSES. I just read Albert's book (I blogged about it in the last post), and would love to take her class. Myles is a poetry goddess superstar, Gordon's essays are great, and Crosley is awesome. sigh.

I'm seeing all these lists everywhere about the Best Books of 2011, and I feel like I should list some. I don't have specific rankings, but here are some books I read this year that I loved:

1. Blue Nights, by Joan Didion. Memoir of losing her daughter, Quintana, and thoughts about aging, death, life and mortality. Didion can do no wrong.

2. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. A beautiful, richly described, vibrant book about two illusionists who fall in love, despite being pitted against one another to be the best. I stayed up until the early morning hours reading this and finished my ARC of it in 2 days.

3. We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love and Literature at Iowa Writers' Workshop, by Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer. A book filled with alumni rememberances about the Workshop, how they write, their thoughts on process, etc. Honest, engaging and insightful for any writer.

4. The Cure for Grief, by Nellie Hermann. Quietly devastating but cautiously optimistic, this is a book about a young girl whose family implodes, leaving her to deal with the loss of her father and two brothers to mental and physical illnesses.

5. Death is Not an Option, by Suzanne Rivecca. A wonderful short story collection about strength, life, survival and love.

6. The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits (coming out in March 2012). I read this ARC back in November and wanted to skip class to finish it, it was that good. I didn't love her other books, but this one, about a young woman with psychic gifts who is caught in a web of deceit and magic, is brilliantly crafted.

7. Anthropology of an American Girl, by Hilary Thayer Hamann. Despite the 400+ pages, I finished this in 2 days this past summer. The book follows Eveline through her adolescence and young adulthood in the late 1970s and early 80s, and Hamann captures miniscule details perfectly, which transport the reader right into the richly written prose.

8. Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat. Some years are a miss, this year's collection is a hit. Essays on family, illness, writing and more fill this book, with a few contributors who are alums of the Columbia MFA program, actually. There was not one essay in this collection (which includes Zadie Smith) that I did not like, which is amazing.

9. Hold Still, by Nina LaCour. This is a YA book that rivals "13 Reasons Why," and I actually think is a little bit better. After Caitlin's best friend Ingrid commits suicide, she finds Ingrid's journal in her room. While still struggling with grief, she begins reading the journal to find out why Ingrid killed herself, and in the process, finds out how to continue living.

10. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake, by Jenny Wingfield. A great Southern story about a family who returns to the father's hometown, where the daughter Swan (reminiscient of Harper Lee's Scout) befriends an abused little boy, with devastating yet ultimately positive results.

To read over break: new issues of Ecotone and Ploughshares; "Blue Blood:Duke vs Carolina;" Best Food Writing 2011; Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011; Narrative Medicine

read ALL the blogs!

There is a blog I love, called Hyperbole and a Half. I don't remember who told me about it or when I first started reading it, but it's great. I laugh out loud as I read it. AAAAAANNNNNDDD she has a book deal. So kinda jealous. But it's hilarious. And reading about cancer is not, so that's why she has the book deal. Below are some pictures from her blog.

I kind of want to be her.

lifecycles.

All that stands between me and winter break are two books, a paper, and workshop critiques. And 3 classes. I need this break. I need to read for pleasure, need to read brain candy YA books or sports books or US Weekly. I don't want to see a New Yorker or a Believer once over break. I'll make an exception for lit journals like Ecotone and Ploughshares. My brain is just wiped out. This week in particular has kind of kicked my ass. I just went through a whole bunch of bureaucratic/administrative red tape that did not end in my favor. So I can't do my Independent Study, which is like, the ONE thing I was really excited about for next semester. I never really got a firm reason why, but I think it's internal stuff. It was a whole week of stressful emails and conversations that never really met on the same common ground, ending in disappointment and, I admit, a very small feeling of defeat. But I hate feeling defeated, and after an afternoon of moping, got my scrappy self together and I know that somehow, I will pursue my interests in a really in-depth way. And when I am a famous writer, on panels with Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, I will say, "Let me tell you about this one time I wasn't allowed to do this Independent Study...."

A girl can dream, can't she?

Then I found out I didn't get the research fellowship for which I interviewed. I was really crushed, and honestly - without sounding like a total asshole - I do have more research experience than almost everyone in the program. I've done research at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the UNC Schools of Public Health and Nursing, and the Cancer Institute of NJ. I don't think that's too shabby. But, I guess it wasn't what they were looking for. Which is a shame, because I genuinely enjoy research. Which may explain why I am blogging on a Friday night.

But honestly, all of that is small in the grand scheme of things. My aunt is on hospice and if she lives through the year, I will be pleasantly surprised. She looked almost ghoulish at Thanksgiving, with her skin stretched across her face and greyish skin; not the aunt I know. Cancer is relentless, it is fucking relentless - especially ovarian cancer. I never really found cancer "scary" before, like the "civilians" who don't do cancer research (that's how I thought of it). But since I've stopped reading oncology textbooks in my spare time, I better understand those feelings. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I've been thinking a lot about death, terminal illness, and what we think of as a "good" death, and dying with dignity. I've also been thinking a lot about grief. I have been a lucky girl. Although I have had my hardships and lost people I've loved, my life has been relatively spared from serious grief. I am lucky enough to still have 3 grandparents who are feisty and alive (although one is slipping into Alzheimer's - the other two have more active social lives than me), I have two parents who are well, a brother and nephew, and a cousin/his wife/their baby. I haven't wanted for much, and for the most part, haven't really struggled in school. I know I am lucky, and I am very thankful for this. But death and dying bring grief to everyone. And I guess maybe I am highly attuned to it now because I'm writing/reading constantly and have opened myself up more. But grief has a particular quality to it. It's sort of like a shadow or a mist that lays itself on you and is absorbed, and then expands until there is no room for anything else. It is constantly tumbling, like an ocean before a storm - sometimes it is fiercely violent, other times there's just rolling waves. But always there. I felt something similar to grief but not exactly, when Lambee had breast cancer. I would sit on the bus back to my neighborhood after classes and look out the window and think, there is so much sadness in the world. Because everything became tinged with fear and a sort of grief those first few weeks.

And of course, me being me, I've turned to books. I'd probably have a binder full of research on hospice/grief if I weren't drowning in schoolwork, just like I had bags full of research/peer-reviewed journal articles when Lambee had cancer. So I've mostly been reading fiction and some nonfiction. The Book of Dahlia. She's actually a graduate of Columbia's MFA program. Blue Nights. It's Joan Didion; no explanation needed. The Cure for Grief. This was written by one of my professors (also a graduate of the program). I've read it several times before, but each time there's a different nuance; I find different things. It's funny though; not many people want to ever talk about death/dying/grief, even in the abstract. You ask people for book recommendations and they stare blankly at you, or offer up religious texts. (Which, hey, I'm not knocking "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" or "Blue Like Jazz" - I've read both. I just don't want that right now).

I'm just rambling now. Not enough sleep, too much caffeine.

Listening: The Like, "Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?"

Reading: too much stuff.

Snacking: Twizzlers, Haribo gummy bears

Thirty one.

I am 31 today. So much has happened in the last year, for which I am very thankful. In some ways I look back and I cannot believe how much has changed. I read what I wrote last year and I think so far, I've done what I said I was going to do. I hope I have. This time last year I wanted to make choices based on hope, not fear. Making the choice to go to Columbia and move to NY was definitely not made out of fear - I wanted to move back to NC - now that would have been my fear talking. And though I miss Carolina every single day, sometimes to the point of tears, I'm glad, in the end, that I made the choice to come to NY. Last year I said that I wanted my thirties to be about abundance and not restriction - and I think that's an ongoing process. I want to take up space and be heard, not just sit there and go with the crowd and be a pretty face. I want to DO something. Hopefully I will.

This time last year I could have never have imagined I would be here now. I didn't think I'd get in to Columbia - it was a total reach. I wasn't sure what my life path was, and whether I was truly good at anything. When I got into Columbia, even after several times of me deciding not to go, I somehow made it here....and am finding out that maybe, just maybe, I can do this.

I was kind of sad the other day, because last year was the best birthday I've ever had. I was in Chapel Hill, I spent the night doing quintessentially Chapel Hill things - dinner at Top of the Hill, cupcakes at Sugarland and drinks at Spanky's. I was with friends I loved and was very happy. This year.....yes, while I am happy to be at Columbia, sometimes it is honestly very hard to be happy in NY. Sometimes the sadness is so overwhelming that it steals my speech; I can't even construct the words to hold a conversation. But my friend from undergrad A came to NY from Chicago, and we went to go see Avenue Q with her brothers - amazing show - and then we went to dinner at Zen Palate and had a drink at a NOLA-themed bar/lounge. It was a good night. Today we're going for brunch and then exploring Central Park...and maybe I will go to my favorite indie bookstore in the city, McNally Jackson. I wanted to work there but never got a reply email. Sad face.

At 31, maybe it's a bit late to finally figure out what you want to do with your life. I'd be lying if I said I didn't envy my friends with stable jobs, who have a mortgage and are settled into family life. I do wish I could be like them, going on vacations and not stressing over every little bill or rent payment or student loan. But I'll get there. And honestly, although I am STILL in school and am swamped with work and sometimes wonder if it really is or will be worth it......there's a part of me that knows that I'm doing what I love, what I've always loved and yet never really ran with it. I'm reading and writing. A ton. My success isn't how I always pictured it would be. But maybe it's enough that I'm doing something I truly love - how many people can really say that?

Not enough people, in my opinion.

the end is in sight.....

In less than two weeks my first semester of art school will be done, and three semesters of coursework will remain. I'm not sure I've ever been so busy in my life. Now, reading 3 books a week seems normal. I've accepted being constantly tired, my eyes overworked from reading for hours. Coffee has replaced much of the blood in my veins, and yet it never seems to be enough. I had an interview for a fellowship this morning (not the major one that covers all your costs - didn't even make the interview round for that one). It's a research fellowship, which actually fits with my interests/abilities better, I think. Crossing my fingers. Workshop has greatly improved since the first one. Now I'm actually getting really great feedback from the professor and my peers. The changes they suggest are sometimes obvious ones, and other times totally brilliant ones that I never would have thought of. But that's what 11 new pairs of eyes on your writing gives you, I guess. I'm definitely more confident in my writing, which I feel has grown stronger.

It's been interesting, this journey from medical-oriented study to art school. I'm not sure I see myself as creative or as an artist yet, and I always feel like I'm "pretending" to be an artist when I say I go to art school or the School of the Arts. I haven't yet totally embraced that aspect of myself into my identity. I've managed to incorporate my medical knowledge/research into personal essays and plan on taking Narrative Medicine classes, so I think it's turned out to be a good match. Sometimes I still have that rush of overwhelming fear and panic - what the hell was I thinking, actually believing I could be a writer and make a living out of this - but I try to push that away with being in the here and now. I just have to believe it will work out in the end, that doing something I love - have loved forever - will be enough of a safety net to keep me afloat.

Limited time only.

What would you do if you were told you had weeks to live? We've all thought about this at one point or another in our lives - "If I had 6 months to live," "If I had a month to live..." But what happens if you find yourself in a situation where you are faced with exactly that? My aunt will be going home on hospice sometime this week, after living with ovarian cancer for two years. Her oncologist said she has weeks. I keep thinking about hearing those words, and how scary it must be, late at night, lost in your own thoughts knowing your time is limited. Granted, all of us have limited time here, but to be told a quantifiable number is beyond comprehension. Because realistically, she is weak. On a feeding tube. Sick. Forget all those things you'd think you'd do - go here and there, eat this and that - what if you can't do that in the time you have left?

We like to talk about a "good death," or "dying with dignity." And I'm all for that. I am all for palliative medicine and not using extreme measures at the end of life that are only going to cause pain and suffering. I am all for dying at home, with loved ones by your side, being lucid enough to be able to tell everyone how you feel. But really, when you think about it, when it comes, it is really good? Is there such a thing as a good death? I don't know. Maybe it's something personal for each person, and only you can be the judge of what is "good."

And as schmaltzy as it sounds, why wait until you hear that from a doctor? By that point, there are good odds you might not be able to do all those things on your "Bucket List." One of the many reasons I chose to follow my passion and write is because I realized that life is short. Why waste the time I have on earth doing something I'm not crazy about? I think lots of people put things off until they "have time," or "when the time is right," or whatever. And planning and responsibility is a good thing - but some people, myself included - tend to get so busy in the planning and worrying and waiting that we miss our chance.

Last year on my birthday, I vowed that my thirties would be about abundance, about making choices based in love and hope instead of fear. So far, it has been a struggle, but the choices I have made from those places have paid off exponentially. I don't want to turn 40 and say "I wish I'd done that." G-d forbid I get sick and am told I have limited time, I don't want to lay in the hospital and fiercely wish I'd done certain things.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and lots of people take the time to think about what they're thankful for. An "attitude of gratitude," if you will. Because when you are filled with gratitude, it's hard to feel anything like emptiness or sadness. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my entire family, my new friends in NY, supportive people, my health and my life.

What more is there?

Online Dating Tales, part 2.

Ah yes. What has come to be a rite of passage for my generation: the lovely world of online dating. Or searching for dates. After a conversation with my friend Alex tonight, I decided to hop online to the site I'm on and peruse some options. All week long there's been this deafening clanging in the apartment, and I finally realized that it was just my biological clock. So. I put in some advanced search criteria: male, Jewish, ages 27-37, doesn't smoke/drugs, rarely drinks and has at least gone to graduate school. There were a few really good ones that I emailed one from Tel Aviv who seemed smart and funny, and another who got his PhD at MIT and listed books I liked and was pretty funny in his responses. But then....then, there were those special ones.

Like the one wearing a hat with deer antlers, made out of aluminum foil. Or the one wearing a clown hat and nose. Or the shirtless one wearing a tie, whose screen name was "iwantsexmeow." Or the lawyer whose profile picture was a picture of him, arguing in court. (douchebag much?). Then there was one who admitted he used to be a sex addict. Another one spelled "licorice" as "liquorish," and one who listed Lolita as his fave book - guys, even if it IS your fave book, DON'T list it. Then...this one takes the cake. For the part that says "I spend a lot of time thinking about", he wrote, "What do boogers smell like? I mean, they're in your nose all the time, but why can't we smell them?" YEAH. And these were some of the results I got with the *advanced* search.

Is it so much to ask for an educated, intelligent, somewhat mature, nonsmoker guy who is well read and has good playlists on his iPod? Is it so much to ask for a guy who wants kids sooner rather than later, who hates crowded bars and likes wasting hours in bookstores? Or a guy who will bring me flowers for no good reason? (Although my dad may have spoiled me in that respect - my future guy has a lot to live up to!). Where is the guy who wants to move back to Chapel Hill with me, the guy who likes his independence and knows I need mine, too? The one who likes watching college basketball, who can shit-talk with me about teams?

Many women my age are finding it hard to meet a good guy. And until you've been here, you have no idea how slim the pickings are. You'd be shocked as to how many smoke pot still, or drink frequently (too frequently for my tastes). It's rough out there.

Baby Mine.

I went to the New York Public Library today, since there's one 2 blocks from my apt, to get a library card. They opened at 10, and since I had to sell back some books to the indie bookstore, I got there early. I walked around the 'hood, got a soda....and was still 10 minutes early. So I waited outside the library, which normally would be fine.

Except Tuesdays are storytime. And, like everything else child-related in Manhattan, it's competitive as hell. Apparently you need tickets to go to storytime, and it's first come first serve. So here I am, in the middle of all these strollers - Bugaboos, Maclarens, Quinny Buzz, B.O.Bs (yes, it's sad I know all the stroller brands) - hoping my ankles don't get clipped during the mass rush to the circulation desk. But as I was standing there amongst all the babies, nannies and mothers (no dads in the crowd, I noticed), I felt a little pang of lacking. Lacking in the sense that these mothers are probably around my age, but their lives are completely different. And granted, maybe the fact that I would rip my hair out if I were a stay-at-home mom says something about where I am in life right now, but the thought caught me off-guard. In high school, 30 seems so "old". I'm sure I thought I'd be married with kids by THIRTY. But now, it seems kind of young, to me. I feel like I have so much time to live still ahead of me. In fact, a friend of mine in her late 40s had a baby over the weekend and sent me the picture of her newborn daughter today. But in that moment, I missed Trey, my heart kind of ached for a baby, and I thought, yes, I've been fairly sucessful in academia and am getting a wonderful degree and following my dreams for the first real time ever and it's scary as hell but thrilling at the same time and I'm letting wonder wash over me daily......but they still have the baby. And I'm not sure what to make of that thought. Maybe it's the biological clock on which I keep hitting snooze. Maybe it was just all that nice baby cuteness surrounding me (although the ear-splitting screaming, not so much). I mean, don't get me wrong - I can throw down with the best of them when it comes to childcare. Boppys, tummy time, Exersaucers, Gyminis, Bumbos, Sleep Sacks, Bugaboos, Maclarens, butt paste, Ferber Method, sibling rivalry, good diaper bags, Pack n Plays -- been there, done it all. I've been around so much of that that I already know which styles I'd want for my own kid. Which pacis are good, which bottles cause less gas, good swaddling techniques and how to comfortably carry a kid in a Baby Bjorn? Yup, know all that too. Stayed up much of the night to lay my hand on a baby's chest to make sure he's still breathing, or just to watch him sleep because he's the most peaceful, beautiful thing you've ever seen? Yup, done that. Know that there's got to be a G-d somewhere because the newborn in front of you is healthy and perfect and it's amazing how human life works? Uh-huh. Had a baby/toddler fall asleep on you or in your arms and just sat there for a while, enjoying their warm weight on you and their hand resting on your arm? Yup. See G-d in the smile of a baby or hear it in his toddler laughter? Definitely. Had a toddler spit food in your face while trying to feed his twin sisters? Er, yes. Stayed up all night with said twin sisters because they keep waking up throughout the night at separate times? Oh yeah. I've also had a baby have explosive diarrhea and have to strip him down in the mall bathroom, only to find out there were no baby wipes in the baby bag, and have baby crap all down the front of me (THANKS, BRAD!). So I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that parenting is not easy, glamorous or always fun. But I'm good at it. And I love it. And maybe that's the loss I felt this morning.

But it's something to look forward to.

real life:NY

The readjustment to being back in NY hasn't been the easiest. Every time I'm walking down the sidewalk and another person is walking in the opposite direction, or walking their dog, I always glance up at their face, hopeful that we'll say hi to each other, acknowledging the other's existence. But it never, ever happens. Ever. In NC, this would be considered rude. In Southern Village, even children would say hi if they passed you on the trails or in the neighborhood. I miss that. Such a thin, seemingly insignificant thread, but it ties us to one another. And sometimes, when you're barely hanging on, a tug on the thread reminds you that hope exists, that connection is still there.

In NY, they'd probably take scissors and cut you loose.

Things have definitely more stressful. Applying for two types of fellowships and for spots to get into an amazing class, reading book after book after book (this week I have Nabokov and Styron...uplifting, huh?), and papers looming on the horizon. And, of course, writing Something Brilliant for workshop and critiquing classmates' work. I love the books, for the most part, but I've been distracted and my productivity hasn't been as much as I'd like. I found a professor I've connected with; she's in fiction, though -- and I get the feeling that the genres don't really mix that much, despite what they say here. I know departments are very territorial, which is disconcerting. I'm still trying to figure out where me and my writing fit in, where my niche is. I'm stressed about finances, stressed about classes, missing Carolina and hoping I get that summer internship at Algonquin. There just never seems to be enough time to do everything I need to.