In honor of Mark Twain

Summer hangs sweet in the air like honey.

Or it would, if San Francisco had a regular summer like the rest of the world.

Summer in San Francisco has its own alchemy: instead of relying on vitamin d and long outdoor hours, the city lives off social electricity, music festivals and taquerias and cafes and the rare sunny day at Dolores Park. This year the fog doesn't depress me; rather it is the one constant during a time of personal change. I'm finishing my last few weeks as an International Student Advisor at an international school downtown and will begin an M.F.A. program at San Francisco State in late August. I have three weeks between my last day at work and my first day at school, two of which I plan to spend in Chile with my best friend Laurel. I finally got full-size sheets on my first full-size bed. My mother is retiring, most of my friends split their time between grad school, full-time employment, and traveling the world, and we have a fabulous president for the first time since I was twelve years old.

Life is good.

Except Ahmadinejad won (allegedly) the presidential election in Iran. Except for that, and the murder of a Holocaust Memorial guard in D.C., and the rising prices of education, life is damn good. Summer is the best time of year, even when the MUNI lines light up in the damp evening fog, and bikinis are reserved for the rare trip inland. I feel the need to dig deep for the stories that, soon enough, I'll be required to produce, and yet my mind needs tilling. It's time to turn over the sod that two years of admin does to your head.

Last week, we had to say goodbye to a group of thirty students who had completed our longest-offered program, the Academic Year. I've met hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students since I started my job in spring 2008, and there are always a few students in every group that stand out. This particular group, however, were not just students--they were peers. I felt that our school matured with them, as we perfected our customer service and fine-tuned our academics. Many of these students began their English studies in our lowest level, and progressed through the cycles to our more advanced classes. Many of them were in my own classes. One of them was our intern. They were a group of men and women from Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and Germany. Both individually and as a group, they made an impression on me, and reminded me that being good at any job, even if it is not your dream job, has its rewards, and they can be overpowering.

In the tradition of all things exciting, the transition from full-time worker to full-time student is a bit daunting. Am I really a writer? I keep asking myself. Is this the right investment? What will I get from this? To be fair, these are all questions I've asked of my current job, and previous ones as well. What is the best way to be professional in this world? Does it even matter?

It helps that, for the first time in many months, I find myself gravitating toward a relationship I hadn't expected. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to learn the little intimate details of another person, the small things that he might not reveal to just anyone, and how all the bullshit tends to fall by the wayside. In many ways, I feel like things are fuller, rounder, and more complete, and those things that are beyond our control are just that -- beyond.

Job ending. Students leaving. Travel planned. Boys with glasses. Sounds like summer.

the coldest winter in my life was a summer in San Francisco -- Mark Twain

What independence feels like, again

I moved to a different apartment last weekend, and perhaps my favorite thing about it is my fire escape. Fire escape. That just might be the most poetic combination of English words I can imagine. Fire. Passion. Power. Energy. Escape. Freedom. Possibility. Potential. And the two together: the best possible place to sit in the evening, watching the buses as they pass, listening to the pops and whirs of the Chinese restaurant just downstairs, admiring the moon as it rises.

I forgot how much I like the quiet. How nice the evenings are in early spring. How green Glen Park is, and how promising it is to be alone, but not lonely.

Passover starts this week. Passover has always been one of my favorite holidays because it requires its observers to worship storytelling itself. Everything we eat and everything we do is a symbol of something mythical, something legendary, something worthy of retelling. Perhaps my most recent interpretation of religion can be summed up in the way I eat: matzoh ball soup with a side of applewood bacon, green salad and oranges. And yet everything I eat has a story behind it: the butcher's shop down the block with its retro decor, the avocadoes that remind me of my Haitian friends in Spain.

My life right now is that awkward moment between decisions. Do I go to grad school this year? Do I wait it out? Do I work? Do I travel? Is it possible to do all of the above? Waiting is hard for me, and yet I find peace in indecision. It's a bit like waiting for a flower to open. I'm still stuck as a bud.

Stay tuned...

Mills College!

I got in!

To Mills!

College!

For writing!

I am using this space to indicate a level of excitement that supercedes my need to write properly.

My mom bought me these Shepherd-Ferry-Obama-"Change" earrings back in October. I think finally that message has seeped into my personal life, and that, my friends, is long-awaited.

:)

The joys of Engrish

I am helping produce an ESL newsletter for our school. Every Wednesday I teach a study club for an hour and a half, where I perch on tables in our fifth-floor lunch room with a cluster of would-be journalists to talk about writing. Each month we produce one issue for the following month.

The longer I work with international students, the bigger kick I get out of the way we all (not just ESL learners) communicate. Here's a sampling of our current headlines and stories:

DUSTIN: MMM, HIS STUDENTS, AND JUICY
(an "in-depth" interview with a teacher about March Mustache Madness, with a reference to a Dating Game play we performed a few weeks ago, in which a fellow male coworker dressed in drag as a girl named 'Juicy')
RUSSIA: WELCOME TO OUR 11 TIME ZONES
THE ART OF CORALINE
DR. NICK & HIS NURSE
(this is our version of "Dear Abby," as written by a Chinese kid who wants to be a psychologist, and his sarcastic Brazilian friend)

and, one of my personal favorites, a student comic which depicts a group of pigeons trying to speak English.

I forgot how much of a better human being I am when I get to do creative things. Our newsletter has been a big success, and I have learned so much by the sheer force of student enthusiasm. Not only that, but in between registering students in classes, grading level tests, organizing orientation materials, and answering the phone, I can also devote a healthy amount of time to a group project that actually students together, in English.

Writing has always been my indoor bird, the fierce and forgotten passion that keeps banging itself against the window. Maybe one day it will open. I want to write and be inspired and offer creative ideas. It's taken me a little while to realize that banging my head against my own windows--comparing myself to others, worrying about the rent, failing to find the time to write and read--is the act of creative expression itself. I'm so grateful to recognize that there's a window there in the first place.

In the meantime, I inadvertently pick up ESL grammatical mistakes, and get to show students exactly how expressive they are, and can be.

2.10.01

Every year it's a bit different.

The first year, it was tragic. Every detail of February 10 was etched so clearly in my mind: the hard calluses on my palms from rowing competitions, the uncanny thirst in the back of my throat, that sinking feeling that I'd be doomed to adolescence forever. There were details that I'd attributed as somehow significant: the tulip painting on the hospital wall, the blue lights of the Tower Theatre mirroring the scene from the Sacramento River, the haunting chords of a Dave Matthews song. Everything is epic at 16 years old. What boys think is important. What teachers say could influence career choices. And what a body feels like--there are few things that dictate puberty more than the clash of control and instinct.

The second year, the memory was no less vivid. The illusion of control followed me to a more adult life--my freshman year of college. I circled the Lagoon that day, watching the gulls hem the coastline, realizing with a sudden finality that growing up meant taking ownership over imperfect organs.

Every year it changes. Those first three years, February seemed so mournful. I wrote poems to cells. I was still angry. I explained everything all the time to anyone who so much as blinked in my direction.

The fourth year I was abroad. That was the year I decided an anniversary didn't have to be sad. We landed on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, at midnight, and the minute it was February 10, I felt something new: defiance, in the form of optimism. And then I got dressed for Carnaval and learned how to relax in Spanish.

This eighth year, February 10 means something entirely different. February 10 is pancreas day, Julia day, adulthood day. I feel extraordinarily lucky. Not everyone can pinpoint the loss of idealism to one specific day. There are so few moments of perfect drama in our lives--of actual, novel-worthy frustration, unembellished, random crises of faith. For so many people, personal tragedy is not something so easily calculated: how does one quantify depression? Or the injustice of homophobia? Of lost opportunity to some invisible, imperfect law of human nature?

Mine is an unfairness I can chart, plot, and review. Mine is a plague of minimal pain. Mine is never a solitary journey. Mine is the confusion that actual life plots for all of us--the rearrangement of meals, the reminder that nobody is invincible, that there are consequences to every decision. Diabetes has always been a lesson in opportunity cost and effect, and while I never really appreciated my high school economics class, these things are more easily understood when one measures them in the form of a finger prick.

Eight years later, I no longer wonder who I'd be without diabetes. I'd be someone else, with some other Trojan horse, accomplishing other things. It doesn't matter. I am who I am just as a tree is just a tree, and a dog is just a dog. There is comfort to be found in identifying as something or someone. I am a diabetic, but I am also a woman, and a professional, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a person with opinions and aspirations. And, at times, catapulting blood sugar.

February 10. I look forward to the year that there are even more important anniversaries than this one.

1-20-09

The sun rose slowly over the Washington Monument on January 20, 2009. Flocks of seagulls swarmed the air, reflecting the excitement from the ground. The air was bitterly cold, fresh and clean. Journalists, tourists, officials and ROTC volunteers poured into the National Mall in steady streams.

By some awesome trick of the universe, I was there. I was there in long johns, jeans, leg warmers, three sweaters, a ski jacket, scarf, beanie and gloves. Michelle and I packed the Washington Post, a bag of carrots, apples and crackers, and two fleece blankets. We were far from the Lincoln Memorial--very far, but much closer to meaningful change than I have ever been.

What did it feel like? I've never been the type to quote "America the Beautiful" or remember the Pledge of Allegiance verbatim--any sense of American identity I have is the result of open debate, often defiance for the system we have yet to reform. It is hard to let one's guard down after several years of tuning out the status quo. Mine is a generation used to being let down by the global gag rule, by decreasing funds for public education and hard-fought battles against racial profiling and homophobia. But last Tuesday--the Presidential Inauguration at the Capitol steps--the crowd was pulsing with growing optimism.



"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met."

We sat in the cold for five hours. The longer we sat, the more surrounded we became. Surrounded by little old black women from Tennessee and Alabama, waving Obama flags, by twenty-year-old college reporters with manual cameras, by five-year-olds decked out in snowsuits. Every time I stood up, the sea of people grew to meet me. The energy of the crowd was raw, unadulterated. And somehow, I was there.

It took well over an hour to leave the Mall. We huddled like penguins, wandering en masse toward any available exit. Both my shoes had loose laces, but the combination of the crowd and the freezing cold kept me from leaning down to fix the problem. Each step forward resulted in two tugs in opposite directions, and yet it was symbolic of that thread that tied us all there, filing past national monuments and weaving through political officials like the latest group of tired and hungry masses.

The promise of renewal is strong.

One week later, it is hard to believe how much of the universe shifted that day. I've read and watched a lot of interviews in which citizens express their fears that Obama has been idolized to an unhealthy extent, and that his is an unlikely journey. Perhaps, and yet anyone standing in National Mall on Inauguration day will tell you that the sheer power of belief--of honest, critical expression--is enough to mobilize the most diverse groups.



On January 20, 2009, I felt vindicated. I know I wasn't the only one.

Poem I Like

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.