Sounds of Silence

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Now what? Jesus.

I am Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. I am sunk like a stone in the bottom of the pool in total isolation. Cue the Simon and Garfunkle. Everyone is wondering when I am going to get out, dry off, and start acting like a person again.

Something huge happens and you have no where to put it. After diligently keeping a civil war general's log of everything that happened this summer, people expect for me to sum it up with some succinct answer about the general order of things.

Hey, remember that time you went to France with your high school French class? Well, when you got back no one asked you, 'What's the meaning of life'. Right?

I don't know exactly why I am so sensitive about this. Maybe I have imaginary audience. Or maybe it's my mother on an hour long phone call trying to figure out why I haven't called in two weeks. Either way, it's giving me ants of the pants.

My Dad said to me as the trip was coming to a close, "Jeez, Lauren. I'm not sure if the end of this is going to send you into a spiraling depression or energize you." Thanks, Pops. I'm not sure either. I have all the energy of a caffeinated toddler but not a single place to channel it. So I spin on my floor like Homer Simpson and listen to the Flotation Walls. It can't be healthy.

But I don't feel like drinking. I don't feel like attending parties. I don't feel like going to the bar. I missed everyone a whole bunch. But seeing people just makes me feel further away. I feel like I am communicating absolutely nothing when I make small talk. I am fully aware that this is the lament of any person in their late twenties who is not married. I aint sayin' my sadness is unique. I'm just sayin' I got it.

So, until I figure out the meaning of life, I'm just going to wander around Bexley at night, clumsily navigating potholes in the road on my Tomasso. Text me if you get some ideas.

schooling

It's working. I'm doing it. I'm learning. I think.
If nothing else, I'm really enjoying not going to an office every day. I'm still working, but i'm now my own boss. Which means i have ordered myself to ride my bike, drink coffee and people watch in the short north. What a slave driver!

I'm taking four classes. All of which are labor/research intensive. I guess i'm ok with that. I must admit, i'm learning a lot more from staring at the internet than i am from any of the lectures of i have attended. The major problem with all of my professors is that they color all of their teaching with the theme of the last 500 page academic journal they wrote. So i'm learning plenty about the interests of these women but almost nothing about the topic of the course.

I'd like to think that i'd be a little more objective.

The students are the same way. They can answer absolutely no question from an autonomous or objective perspective. EVERYTHING begins with something like this, "i mean... i don't know exactly what you're talking about, but i know this one time when my neighbors dog...."
ARGH.

And, as expected, i feel old as dirt. I am the only student sans topknot, deep tan, tights, uggs, and north face jacket. I have no stories about how wild the brewery district was last night and i have no desire to chill on "oval beach" with you.

Despite 5 quizzes, one test, a presentation and a 5 page paper within the first two weeks of school, i am basking in the glory of nuzzling up to ye old lap top, chugging a gallon of coffee and not wearing a monkey suit.

love.

COLLEGE!

This spring i will be returning to The Ohio State University to pursue a degree in Social Work. Actually, to be honest the title of my degree will be a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Science. I realize this sounds made up. But the fact of the matter is, a little shift in field of major is the difference between 5 years until becoming a counselor and 2 1/2 years. So, the choice was obvious. Made up major it is.

I am, at once, totally thrilled and totally terrified. I am excited at the prospect of escaping the daily grind of this grown up position that I have half-assedly filled for the last three years. But I also know me. And i know that the giddiness i feel at the thought of being a college student again could send me right back into the kind of behavior i participated in when i was a student previously. (You know, back in 1989.) this kind of behavior being taking any drugs handed to me, wandering to buckeye donuts late at night, drinking so much that i'm not sure what karaoke song i'm singing and crashing my bicycle into things.

If i don't manage to treat this like a full time job, i may just fuck up big time. Now is the time to muster up any maturity i might have and sally forth back into the world of academia. I wonder if i've got it in me.

Life, the Rager

Well, the holidays are over and i, for one, am glad.
now i can go on enjoying my unhighlighted calendar days. as i have said before, christmas is an illusion; no different from any other day. just like friday, it is a construct. monday can be just as good as friday. and i think if people start viewing it as such they could stop throwing away so many perfectly good mondays.
if you view tuesday as punishing torture, then it will so be. if you spend every sunday through thursday anticipating the weekend, life will surely be wasted.
this is the problem my mother seems to have in a much greater sense.
'Fuck all the rest of these days, if i can just make it to vacation, i will be ok.'
I simply cannot live this way.

Ram Dass encourages us to "be here now". And i can't think of a more beautiful thing to say. Right now you may not be at the most miraculously righteous rager of your life, but guess what?
You have arms and legs and eyes to see and ears to hear, lungs to breathe, skin to touch and people to love.
Take stock of all the good things that are happening to you at this very moment. And forget that you are not at Skully's, chugging dollar shots will all of your favorite friends.
Today is a day, just like the rest. I, for one, will be living out the rest of this tuesday like the most righteous party of my life.

Ella Amitay-Sadovsky, Flower arrangement

Family Tradition

Thanks to not answering my phone for the last two weeks, this holiday season has proved itself to be the least stressful in recent history. My mother, as everyone knows, is unparalleled in her ability to make a even Buddhist monk develop an ulcer.

I have felt successful in that i have skirted many typical holiday duties this December. I was not forced to watch a "Muppet Christmas Carol" while decorating the tree. I was not guilted into driving 3 hours away for "Ethnic Christmas". I didn't have to clean or put up lights at my Grandma Butler's house. And I am nearly positive no one is going to make me read aloud Nephew Fred's "God bless it" speech at the dinner table.

I find myself being frustrated with my mother, thinking that she is a bit of a fuddy-duddy, insisting upon reprising the dance we've done for 28 years. Not because the traditions themselves are fun and rich with the memory of years past, but because being catholic is something that causes her to flog us with a myriad of senseless traditions akin to her beloved (and punishing) 2 hour mass.

Growing up, i had often boasted of the fact that my family had fun and off-the-wall Christmas rituals. "Ethnic Christmas" being one of them. It began two years before i was born. Out of boredom, creative zest or simply because their pockets were empty, the Kraft family decided that spaghetti would be served in lieu of a christmas bird. The next year the tradition was dubbed "Italian christmas" and the following year it was decided upon that we would celebrate the food and traditions of a new country. And thus ethnic Christmas was born. (Later to devolve entirely into a wacky costumes, politically incorrect interpretations of culture and family drunkenness.)

Looking back, i miss this kind of thing. And i have to wonder that if a quiet afternoon spent in my apartment, watching netflix and drinking coffee, is really better than the time spent butchering the holiday traditions of other countries with my family. I have to say, I'm not sure.

One final tradition of the holiday season is the reading of "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote. The reading is done in the family mini-van on the way to my Grandma Kraft's house just before or after Christmas Day. Typically there is a good bit of snow dusting the pine and Christmas music plays in the background as we drive. My brother sleeps, his huge body taking up the length of the van. My sister grimaces while my mother reads to show her displeasure with an act so maudlin. (She still cries every time.) My father drives and from time to time, wipes a tear from his eye. (He has gotten soft now that his children have grown.) And my mother and I unabashedly weep like children. Who can maintain a stiff upper lip when there is 'a leafless, birdless coming of winter" or when "a lost pair of kites hurry towards heaven"?

This year we will not be driving to my Grandmother's house, as she has sold it and moved to a more manageable condo.

There is a good chance "Christmas Memory" will not be read this year. A staple of our family culture. Part of the old dance we've always done. A senseless act used to punish us all and bring us some false sense of togetherness.

I will surely miss it. What a fuddy-duddy I have become.

adventure anxiety