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Ebb & Flow

Seattle’s hallmark fall mist filters down through brittle leaves to parched soil. From a single, mossy branch at the top of my plum tree, five purple orbs dangle enticingly – the last vestiges of the growing season.

Deterred by the empty fridge, my growling stomach convinces me that coffee and plums will work just fine for a Saturday morning breakfast.

But then, emerging from the shaded side of a rhododendron, an obese squirrel lazily lopes toward my bounty, sniffing at the decimated plum skins and pits he and his brethren have littered around the yard as he nears the tree’s gnarled trunk.

Animal instinct kicks in, and my disheveled fro grows menacingly – my own hackles. The dogs scatter as I run out the back door, dragging a paint-spattered utility ladder in my wake. The ensuing ruckus from the ladder clanging down the squeaky mud porch stairs startles my nemesis, freezing him midway up the trunk, his marble-like eyes fixated on the insane person running toward him, hissing madly.

He flees. I win. Breakfast is secured.

Back inside, I slice my spoils and drizzle them with honey. Coffee steams in my mug, and Joanna sits nearby, pulling at the stitching of my childhood Care Bear turned dog toy.

On the faded, leather-topped drum table above her, a shock of pink from an African violet’s flower catches my attention. Sometime in the night, its tiny buds sprang to life – blooming quietly, elegantly, fully; the cupped blooms fill with morning light – nature’s entreating communion chalices.

***

After my second cup of coffee, I decide to check in with the rest of the world and open my email. Just a week ago, I’d refresh my inbox every five minutes – hoping for relief in the form of a subject line reading, “Job Offer.” Now that that particularly exhausting, yet satisfyingly cleared hurdle is behind me, I’ve purposefully unplugged – looking skyward, reading, working outside, painting, and relegating my phone to my mental dustbin until I need it.

A property management company rep has responded to my email about altering the lease with a sterile: “We’ll need to ensure that your income alone can cover rent. Please send your most recent pay stub.” Although the response isn’t entirely unexpected, I’m suddenly awash with anxiety – my eyes darting around to freshly painted walls, out the windows to cleared planting beds and newly rooted shrubs.

All this could be taken away with one email, one turn of phrase.

I delete “Thanks a fucking lot!” and reply appropriately, infusing my message with the requisite saccharine subservience most tenants convey to avoid falling out of grace with their landlords. I know this is a business to them, and they couldn’t care less about all of the time, effort, and expense Andy and I both dumped into this heap; that there’s still some persistent electrical problem; that every morning I clear away cobwebs, courtesy of my arachnid roommates; that I’m constantly fighting against some natural element to reclaim this house of paste and popsicle sticks. (#FirstWorldproblems)

But as unintentionally hurtful as the message was, the subtext is nothing new. Just like everyone else, I have to carve out my own niche of existence and defend it.

To live means to fight. It’ll never be an easy ride, and that’s okay.

Living in this cute, rotting house, I’m constantly reminded of the transitory nature of material things. Years from now, will someone be sitting on this sun porch, scribbling away in a notebook or chatting over coffee with friends? Or will these walls and weathered floors be splintered into the earth and overtaken by ivy, or gone entirely and replaced with a McMansion block devoid of personality? I wonder where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing. If I’ll drive by one day to remember my new beginning in this little house.

Part of me accepting the inevitability of change is acknowledging that I’m constantly in motion, colliding with possibilities, obliterating obstacles while creating life, energy, and fulfilling moments in which I feel complete – as though I’ve curled up in my most threadbare, comfy clothes on my weathered sofa with a mug of hot cocoa in hand, watching a storm roll in through the open windows.

Letting the wind blast my face, the cool air filling my lungs – my mind marveling at life’s ebb and flow.

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Doh-si-DOE-si-Dough

After I throw an assortment of event envelopes, overstuffed folders, wire racks, and a styrofoam head into the backseat, I motion to my guest, letting her know the passenger seat is clear.

She opens the door cautiously, her Louboutin stilettos hovering over the floor mat for about five seconds, quivering as if she’s about to step onto a sheet of ice. My car reeks of cardboard, but her heavy perfume still manages to overpower it. I imagine the fragrance name being something like “Wealth Drops” – squeezed from the eyes of locally-sourced poor people for your pleasure.

Before I get in, I do a quick stretch-deodorant check; thankfully, my Old Spice is still holding up.

“Alrighty, off to lunch!” I chirp over-enthusiastically. Given that my colleague and I just got tasked with interviewing this prospective candidate for our boss over lunch, I muster everything I can to keep from entertaining my first thought, which is to bash my head into the steering wheel.

Her expensively manicured hands buckle the seatbelt over her Chanel blazer; she sits painfully upright, so much so that I quickly check to ensure I didn’t knock the headrest at a right angle. But when I look, I’m blinded by the diamond-encrusted Prada glasses, tipped down to her nose as she surveys the immediate area.

“So, this cafe isn’t walkable, then?” she curtly coughs.

“Nope. And you don’t really want to walk around this area. Even if you’re just running to Subway.”

I opt to leave out describing the pedestrian walkways around our building as “stabby.” After all, I’m trying to keep it classy.

Maneuvering through traffic, I try to keep the already awkward conversation moving while avoiding adding vehicular manslaughter to our lunch menu.

“So, what specifically about the position struck you – drew you in?”

I don’t really pay attention to her response, letting the canned question fall into an abyss-like chasm in my mind the minute it falls from my mouth. By the time she finishes, and I follow up with the expected, “Well, that’s great!” we pull into the parking lot.

While she and my coworker get out and grab a spot in line, I circle and search for a parking place. But after I park, I rummage through the pile of crap I threw onto the backseat to ensure the manila folder with my recently printed resumes and talking points for in-process interviews weren’t bent or mangled. Interviewing possible bosses while searching for a different job myself always makes for an interesting experience – and affords me the ability to hone my question-and-answer delivery.

***

Over lunch, the candidate picks at her spinach salad, coating the top with salt and selectively eating only the bacon from atop the leafy mound. The chunks of feta sprinkled among the bacon clash with the large pearls perfectly overlaying her blouse.

Rattling off a few more canned questions, I listen dutifully to her rehearsed answers and nod at the appropriate times, interjecting an occasional “Mhmm” or “Ah, I see.” Whether it’s because I’m full, or the day has gotten to me, I start to drift off. It seems I can’t escape the exhaustion that comes with interviewing – from either side of the table.

In my daze, I recall my most recent in-person interview, and fantasize about the possibility of leaving, of starting anew in a position where the “DOE” salary in the job announcement translates into something meaningful – either something close to what I’m currently making, or even a little more. Like most cities, Seattle’s liberal culture and attractive amenities come at an absurdly high cost of living – something that doesn’t exactly mesh with a nonprofit salary. What’s more crushingly painful is the fact that I’ve never made as much as I’m currently making, and am terrified that I’m trapped – that I’ll never escape, and be forced to spend my professional years in a gray cube.

The clang of our interviewee’s fork falling onto the floor snaps me back to the dull present. I mutter an, “Oh, I see…” in response to her latest name-dropping line, and glance at my phone.

“OH, we should probably get going!” I boom excitedly. I’m so ready for this misery to be over.

When we return, I rattle off an email to the hiring committee with my feedback, none of which is positive – the title of the email reading: No Hire.

After I hit Send, I hope that a prospective employer isn’t doing exactly the same thing to me.

***

Nearly a month later, I’m wrapping up the phone conversation with my soon-to-be new boss.

I hang up, and scream so loudly that Joanna freezes in place, and even sinks a little into the floor.

It’s happened.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll submit my notice. All the work-related nightmares of wrapping up one job and starting another will surely follow, but for now, I plan to cherish the excitement that comes from changing directions – to charting a new, needed path.

This year hasn’t been easy, but hopefully this is a turning point.

***

The HR lead facilitating my exit interview has hung her head no fewer than three times and moaned lowly, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

I nod, assuring her that every anecdote I’ve relayed, every painfully problematic Office Space-like bit of commentary is absolutely true.

She scribbles down everything down on her pre-printed questionnaire. With every statement, I feel a little lighter. When we finish, I return to my cubicle, exhale, and start pulling out pushpins, amassing papers into a large recycling pile.

I’d hoped this job would be the one; alas, it’s been everything but.

***

Today is my first day at my new job. Like a Kindergartner, I’m terrified, exhilarated, and sleep-deprived.

When I step out the door, I begin writing another chapter.

I hope it’s worth a read.

I hope I make a difference.

I hope I feel proud again.

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Mint Condition

Dust quietly layers the sideboard as the week-old carnations brown and droop. The apartment still smells faintly of cumin and chili powder and paprika from last night’s chickpea dish, and Toby attacks his new toy before dragging its stuffed carcass into our bedroom, his lair.

I close my eyes, sink into the reverberating sounds from the living room fan, and let my mind doze.

In two days, I start my new job. After a little over two months of applications, rejections, and interviews, I finally snagged a position that I’m actually really happy about. Even still, its imminent kickoff triggers all the typical qualms that most everyone whispers to themselves – all of which boil down to something along the lines of “Don’t cock it up.” But at least this time around, I’m not quite as fretful as I was starting over in LA – mostly because I’m not completely recreating my career. And I now know that mastering nonprofit code-switching is the key to succeeding in Nonprofit World. All that aside, it’ll be nice to get back into the swing of things, and do some good.

***

Lately, I’ve pulled back a bit from the world. Everywhere I turn – and every time I read through my Facebook feed, or peruse some news site – there’s so much ugliness and tragedy and terror that I want to curl into a ball and sleep, or throw a vase against the wall.

It seems I’m lacking a much needed groundswell of inspiration – something wholly necessary to offset the stressful annoyance of trying to bring this whole publishing-a-book goal to fruition. I’ve been hoping that the greasy sheen of oil pastels or the earthy richness of potting soil will jump-start my mind like a drained car battery.

Doodling...

More doodling...

And another doodle...

But there’re no sparks to be felt, no gears shifting around upstairs.

Usually, my recourse would involve complaining and violin-playing, and then I’d get over it. Now – whether it’s a few more years of wisdom, or a few more reality checks under my belt – I’ve found that putting a little good out into the world and having the courage to keep going are more appropriate responses. Because even if these tacks don’t spur some genius idea, or break through that writer’s block, I know that I haven’t fed into the defeatist mentality that lords over so many folks’ minds. My mind is still free.

***

Sirens howl through the afternoon heat, and I reach out and rub the tabletop geranium’s fuzzy leaves, their peppery fragrance steeping under my fingernails.

I look over at the mint plant’s new, fragile shoots bending upward toward the light – growing slowly, silently, and gracefully.

Growing, slowly but surely...

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Identity Crisis vs. Artistic License

Right after I learn about resource guarding — watching the animal behavior specialist use a dummy hand to pull a laden food bowl out from under the snout of a rambunctious lab mix — we get into a conversation about the politics of blood sports. And then, lo!

“It’s always so difficult — to intercede, disrupt culturally-inculcated rituals — especially with many practices being so deeply socially conditioned. Everything is culturally relative.”

Silence. Cocked heads. My not-so-inner anthropologist reemerges.

***

Driving back, the social worker turned graphic designer chuckles from the passenger seat.

“I was totally thinking the same thing. You know, about cultural relativity.”

We stare ahead at stopping traffic, our banter lost to deafening fire engine sirens.

Two fish out of water and into the fray. But still laughing.

***

Describing life in Los Angeles is like creating a palimpsest — by the time I visually digest some entrancing detail, the whole scene before me gets scrubbed and repainted with new characters, new life. Every single day is a photographic cornucopia. Everywhere you turn, something catches the eye; it’s sensory overload at its finest and most vulnerable. And I’m right there, taking it all in — as creator, voyeur, element — wondering how I’m adding to the portrait of humanity stretched out before me. Feeling like one of Bob Ross’ happy trees — plunked down in some vast vista just for the hell of it.

Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” bleeds out of my cracked windows. The city is grumbling awake around me: the humming cars, echoing honks, socially acceptable running of red lights — all becoming more familiar than alien.

Sunlight diffuses through the early morning, smoggy haze, curling around a Korean church cross; it glances along the church-sponsored billboard that faces a Starbucks and reads “What path is right for you?” I consider the message, sip my coffee, then smile at the line wrapping around the tiny building like a fat man’s belt around a twiggy teenager. It seems more people are considering caffeine than the messiah. At least this Friday.

The retiree I pass every morning is just leaving with his towering venti something or other; I’m earlier than usual. Soon enough, the car crawls to a stop again; a man uses an old shirt to wash himself on the sidewalk; before the light changes, he tosses it into his cart, then stoops back inside a bamboo lean-to. A street later, I turn at the 76 gas station where the attendant is buffing the pumps, then pass the crumbling Art Deco radiator repair shop. The strikingly turquoise facade of Mel’s Fish Shack assaults my eyes, and teenagers with bright shoes and leggings lean against the building, rousing slightly at the approaching school bus. Blocks past Jan Ette’s Liquor Store — the broken, disjointed line made up of figures with hardened faces — I turned down an alley, and up to the back of the office.

Where I jot these observations down in my journal, turn a page, and laugh out loud.

Journeys.

Journeys do have a way of morphing you into someone else; not necessarily someone better or worse than who you were. Just another iteration of sorts; someone with a bit more mileage, courtesy of some life lessons.

***

At a manager meeting, the President is detailing the process they had to go through years ago before one of the shelters could be built.

“Well, they had a whole team of, uh, history people who made sure we weren’t building on a burial ground and whatnot.”

I smile slightly — mentally recalling all of ghosts of archaeology projects past and thinking how odd it is that, now, I’m completely on the opposite side of the fence. And how liberating that feels.

That night, I break a juice glass, then mend it — proclaiming, “We have a new bud vase.” As the glue dries, I think about how we’re always changing; figuring out how best to function. One minute we’re someone, somewhere; the next, we’re becoming something else entirely.

Becoming whole, becoming new.

***

I’ve written repeatedly about how fun, strange, and bizarre moving across the country has been, and my fears, anxieties, and dreams of what will come on this coast. But it’s really just now starting to sink in that this place is our new home.

That we’re not on some extended vacation.

That my fieldwork days of wielding a trowel and shovel are over.

That this new chapter is as painfully hard to write as it is amazingly easy.

That life is as crazy as it is beautiful.

Even if it sometimes feels like everything around me is new and scary and transfixing and disturbing, it’s all part of the same world. Part of a place that I’m creating — like ripping apart Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, and pasting it over part of some untitled Keith Haring drawing.

It’s all a mosaic. And it works — the subtle control and levity, melding together.

The artist in a studio somewhere, contemplating.

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Managing [the] Change

I stare straight ahead, settling my hardened gaze on the stenciled “7.” Then reach for my coffee mug. The mug I just remembered I left on the side table by the door.

“Dammit.”

The low din of welding equipment from the open-air, fenced auto shops begins to rise through the alley corridor, and I watch a shop mechanic push a battered, paint-splattered cart back and forth between piles of rusted metal.

No need to reverse.

As if sensing the morning melancholy creeping over me, Linkin Park’s “The Messenger” fills the quiet car with its haunting lyrics.

When you feel you’re alone
Cut off from this cruel world…

My breathing increases, then slows. And I start feeling overwhelmed, over my head — completely ill-equipped to figure out how to transition from a life doing something I never really loved to something I enjoy — maybe even love — but don’t know how to do yet.

Your instinct’s telling you to run…

But while my fingers dance atop the gearshift, I know that reverse is not an escape. It’s a convenient, comfortable trap.

Listen to your heart
Those angel voices
They’ll sing to you
They’ll be your guide…

Settling is something I grew accustomed to doing, and for all the wrong reasons. I was happy enough — on the weekends. I was fulfilled at work — when I spent the whole day on Apartment Therapy and in Starbucks. I felt like I was making a difference — away from work, when I volunteered at the LGBT Center of Raleigh.

And, thinking back, I realize that what I’m feeling isn’t just newbie pre-workday jitters — it’s homesickness. Neither for the political climate, nor the Bubbas. Just little reminders of what made us both feel at home in North Carolina.

***

Starting over is so absurdly romanticized — so much so people think any stride toward the future will involve some serendipitous meeting with a stranger, and a life transformed. What they don’t always think of is the exhaustion, heartache, and weariness that comes with really, truly starting over.

But with substantial effort comes substantial gain. And as I work to recreate myself as a coworker, manager, and animal advocate, I have to remind myself that all of those queasy, uneasy feelings are part of the ride — part of the transformation.

And soon enough, I’ll look back on this and smile. Because I know that we’ll have made ourselves happy.

Back home.

***

Andy calls while I’m sitting outside eating lunch.

We talk. Fret. Worry about things we have to get done.

But then the wind blows a bit and rustles the three palms towering overhead. I look up, feel the warmth of the sun, look around the courtyard, and think. Just think.

Then realize how foolish and selfish it is of me to obsess about such things — as I sit in a courtyard I never would have envisioned. As someone I never would have known walks out of a building I never knew existed, eating a cookie I made. And smiling at me.

I think how bizarrely interconnected we become, and how — through jokes and laughs and small gains — our ties become stronger, united.

Bound together in a very familiar, yet very alien way.

That is very much welcomed.