so this is winter

This was taken from my front window, looking out on the sunrise, the tree missing its leaves, and the buildings down the street. Cute neighborhood, no?

There is 100% chance of snow tomorrow. I don't know how they can predict something 100% when they have about a 20% success rate when predicting Chicago's weather... nevertheless, I have my snow boots on and I'm ready to go. A California girl can't afford to be caught in a "wintry mix" without her snow boots on.

mid-life crisis

I've been thinking about this guy a lot today.

Not because he's handsome or inspiring -- I only have enough room for one handsome, inspiring boyfriend in my life -- but because what he's doing is radical. He's traveling around North America doing a different job every week for a year. He's a hippie -- he's sleeping on people's couches and he has dreadlocks. He somehow doesn't need money -- he's doing all these jobs and receiving no pay, the companies are only making a suggested donation to a charity. He's a really a fictional character in a sense, an online personae, yet his mission is very real: to find a job that he loves.

Isn't this what we all want to do with our lives? Work at a job we love and consequently never work a day in our lives? This is why we go to college, major in what interests US not what interests our parents, this is why we head into our adult lives hopeful and starry-eyed. But how many people actually have the luxury of finding and doing what they love? I, for one, feel stuck. I need to pay the bills (not to mention that I need something else to put on my resume), so I need to stay where I am. It's not ideal, it's not my dream job, but it's something. There are so many jobs in this world, but the vast majority are closed, meaning unless you have the experience and the skills, you can't hope to get the job. For now, I'm a journalist. I'm not even the journalist I think I'd like to be, but I'm doing what I'm doing, blindly following the career path in my head that may or may not actually work with my life. Maybe I don't want to commit the hours to my chosen profession. What then? And what about those who are stuck somewhere less strategic? Like a temp job or a secretarial job; something they couldn't do forever? What do they do?

I've always thought I might like book publishing or advertising or editing or even public relations: I know how to edit and read and deal with people, but without real experience, I can't even hope to break into these fields. My perfect job could be waiting somewhere I will never get to because I chose to focus on newspaper internships and jobs in college, not get experience in every possible job I think I might like to work someday. I also had to pick a major, and in order to ease my mind of the gravity of my decision when I was a senior in high school and a freshman and sophomore in college, I told myself that it didn't really matter what I picked as long as I liked it. But it did in a sense because majors automatically close a lot of doors. I've also been thinking that maybe I should have become an architect. In order to break into that field I would need to become a student again, study for years, go into major debt, and again, send out my resume in hopes that someone, anyone, will hire me. Or maybe I should become a cook: go to culinary school and join my sisters in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the grand opening of our new restaurant Lindsey'S Peach. Or was it Linsapa's (pronounced: Linseppe's)?

So here I am, my peers beside me. We're motivated, smart, and we have college degrees: but all we see when we look at our options for now and in the future are closed doors. Sean Aiken (the man that prompted my rant today) is 36 weeks into his adventure, and nothing really has struck a chord with him besides his job in advertising or raising funds for cancer research: perhaps not entirely related to his degree in business administration. Of course, he could write a book now, become a travel book writer, start a T-shirt company, or whatever because people know his name, but even the man who has "tried every job" can't identify definitively the one he loves. Come to think of it, I know very few people who like their jobs without a "but"... maybe Juli and maybe my uncle. Maybe it depends on the type of person you are. Would I have said even last year that I liked my job at the Daily Nexus, when now I look back with such longing?

My argument is unraveling at the seams. I could go back to school and become an architect, I could even go back to school and become a doctor, or a teacher, or anything I wanted. I, like most of my peers with college degrees, have that luxury. I realize not everyone does. I think my problem right now is just deciding one way or the other, and at some point giving up on everything else. I don't have to do that yet, but I just hope that when the time comes I feel like I have landed somewhere worthwhile.

ruby slippers

I come home to California for Thanksgiving and I barely step foot outside. Even so, I know what the air will feel like if I do and I can picture all the local landmarks. Things don't change, and even though I haven't been here for close to six months, I can still picture my surroundings so effortlessly. The ocean and beaches to the West. The beach side communities, Camp Pendleton, and later Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to the North. The city of San Diego, the harbor, and Mexico to the South. The desert and mountains to the East.

In Chicago I don't have such an effortless connection to my surroundings. The gridded streets confuse me sometimes, and I don't know which way is North, South, West, or East (well, generally, the lake) and what the landmarks in those directions look like. I don't know what the air will feel like when I step outside or how strong the wind will me: I'm chained to my thermometer. I don't know what happens when you drive past the city limits and reach the part of Illinois that grows the corn and soybeans that we all eat. It's a black hole, most of it, and the surrounding states are even a darker shade of black.

After four years in Santa Barbara I had a pretty good idea of my surroundings. But I don't know if I'll ever get to that point in Chicago: It's such a huge, mysterious city with sprawling suburbs, that I don't know if I'll ever see these places I hear about in the news and from Chicago natives. But until then, I'm not sure I'll ever feel like I'm home.

I am not alone

Chicago is the most caffeinated U.S. city

Thanks, Dad, for looking out for me.

I am happy to report that I have not had caffeine for the last two days and have not gotten a headache. It's a mystery to me, but I'm not complaining.

the red pen

The two subscribers to the World Jewish Digest who also read a la deriva won't be getting their December copies for another few weeks... but when you do, please note that the Uganda brief that has my name on it meant to read like below. The other readers of my blog should save themselves the trouble and not bother to subscribe:

---

Much to the dismay of the people standing in the back of the room, those who were lucky enough to find seats kept filtering in and out of the back door to the bathroom down the hall. At the front of the room stood Aaron Kintu Moses, director of education and acting spiritual leader of the Abayudaya, or Jewish, community in Uganda. He was proudly discussing the new water tanks that held, for most of the residents, their first taste of running water.

The sounds of screaming children wafting through the open door from the middle school Halloween dance down the hall did not facilitate a perfect understanding of Moses’ strongly accented English, but the photos circulating around the room—of children excitedly using the new spigot to wash their hands—filled in the blanks. Moses, clad in a green dress shirt, a red tie, and a blue Bucharian kippah, wore a face of equal elation and pride as he spoke erev Shabbat to Congregation Hakafa at a community center in Winnetka, Ill.— an affluent suburb of Chicago—about his community of 800 Jews in central-eastern Uganda. In addition to limited running water during the rainy season, the community now has five synagogues, a primary school and a secondary school.

“This is so good,” Moses said to an overfilled room of assorted ages and backgrounds. “It is so important to have brothers and sisters together from all around the world, to come together as Jews.”

The Winnetka visit was only one stop on Moses’ month-long speaking tour at Reform and Conservative congregations around the United States. He hopes to educate fellow Jews on the history of the Abayudaya, collect contributions to help the population grow and advertise for the fifth annual two-week long trip to visit the community, which will take place next month.

Although the Abayudaya have been practicing Jewish customs learned from military and political leader Semei Kakungulu since 1919, 300 of them underwent formal halakhic conversion to Judaism in 2002. The conversion was conducted by Rabbi Howard Gorin of Congregation Tikvat Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Rockville, Md., with a team of other conservative rabbis. Gorin said this trip was his first to Africa, but he has since been back to Uganda, and will soon visit the Jewish communities in Nigeria.

“One of my biggest fears was that this would be a nominally Jewish community,” said Gorin, “But this was an organic Jewish community—they were so powerful in their commitment and it even more powerful because they were practicing in Uganda.” He says the conversion was especially important to the Abayudaya because served as a formal introduction to the Jewish community worldwide.

Moses discovered his own Judaism during the reign of President Idi Amin (1971-1978), a ruler who was notoriously unaccepting of other religions and ethnicities. He said people, such as his father, were jailed and harassed for being Jewish. Moses himself was punished by his teachers for not going to school on Shabbat as he was required to.

“I would be lashed by my teachers because I wouldn’t go to school on Shabbat,” Moses said. “I also saw my father be put in prison because he built a Sukkah—the government thought he was building a place for rebels to meet.”

During this time period, the number of Jews in Uganda fell from 3,000 to 300. Following Amin’s reign, however, Moses helped to build the community to its present day numbers. Today, Moses said, Jewish children go to school alongside the local Christians and Muslims, praying in synagogues made of mud and shells.

Following a brief oneg—celebration—the Winnetka congregants left their makeshift synagogue in the community house made of wood and drywall, wallpaper and flowered curtains, and got in their cars to drive home.

---

This is what should have printed, but due to an extreme error in judgment, a complete lack of respect, and my inability to fight back, an atrocity actually appears on the page. Embarrassingly enough, "raise awareness" actually appeared in the edit: I tried to edit it out.

I sometimes wonder why I care.

harmless addiction

It's 3:45 and I'm drinking my cup of pomegranate white tea as fast as I can, hoping I can catch the faint wisps of pain brewing in my forehead before they become an aching caffeine headache that can't be cured with pain killers.

I knew this would become a problem a few weeks ago when I was looking forward to that soothing and awakening cup of tea each morning when I arrived at work. And now that it's gotten cold, it's extra nice to hold that warm cup, swirling with (fake) milk, and check my email.

But Saturday I didn't have my customary cup of caffeinated tea in the morning, and was struck with a pounding headache at 4:00 p.m. that didn't go away until I broke down and had a cup of English breakfast tea with dinner.

I don't like addictions. I don't like withdrawal headaches. But I love tea. And though decaf herbal tea is delicious at times, I prefer the whites and blacks and greens that usually come with an added dose of caffeine. It's not that I need the caffeine (though my addiction insists that I do), it's that I like the warm liquid in my hands and in my belly on a cold day.

edit: you can write but you can't edit edit

This morning when I turned on my computer I was greeted by an unknown symbol in the lower right hand corner of my web browser. A cloud with little stars. They are, apparently, now predicting snow showers and a low of 29 on Tuesday. And WIND on Monday.

Now what?

(edit)
Well now, I watch the weather and see that they changed their minds after all. Partly cloudy with a 20% chance of precipitation. I do, however, have plans to build a snowman in the park and go sledding with one of my roommates when it does snow: making childhood memories I don't have. Whoopee!

Blommer Chocolates

On certain days, at certain times, when the wind is blowing just right, it smells like chocolate in downtown Chicago. It's not a sickeningly sweet chocolate smell, it's just a faint hint that hangs on the wind and flies through the city streets. There are so many disgusting things that cities can smell like, and sometimes Chicago can too, but on chocolate days, even when it's cold, it makes it all the more worthwhile to live here.

disconnected stories with the same theme

I walked to the train this morning, ears freezing off my head, cheeks stinging, wondering how I'm going to survive the winter. I'm never going to wear my hair up. I'm going to invent a nose warmer with my sister and start a company. I'm going to get a black ski mask and never show anyone my face. I'm going to wear ear muffs. I can't wait 'til it's cold enough to wear my winter coat: then I will be warm.

-----

I stood on the packed train this morning, wedged between a tall guy in a smelly red fleece jacket, a guy in a hat reading the New York Times, and the door. It was so packed that I didn't have to worry about falling: gripping as tight as I could onto the metal pole, bending my knees, or shifting my weight. I was sweating inside my new wool sweater (from a thrift store, $5), a scarf, my new brown boots, and my California-winter jacket. I turned my face up to the train map above me and wished I was almost at my stop.

-----

A woman in the elevator mentioned to her companion that it's supposed to snow next week. A flutter in my chest and a million things running through my head: what will I wear? what shoes will I wear? How cold will it be? When will it happen? Where will I be? Isn't it too early for snow? Is this the beginning of the winter? My cheeks red, my eyes twinkling, myself getting suddenly three feet shorter, a sled appearing in my hand I gazed out the window, looking for a cloud. I burst into the office, smiling, and said quickly to my co-worker, a Chicago suburbs native, "Someone in the elevator said it's supposed to snow next week." "No way," she said. "Don't ruin my morning." Well, anyway, weather.com says it's not supposed to snow next week. In fact, the lows don't get below freezing and the highs don't get below 45. I'm going to buy wool socks and long underwear and sweater tights and long-sleeved shirts and more wool sweaters that aren't itchy and I'll be fine. And snow? This is me in snow:


-----

I always write about the cold. I have other things to say, but sitting here at my desk, still in my wool sweater, sipping my tea, the cold is what I think about. Because it might not be warm outside, but it's not warm inside either. My fingers are chilly on the keyboard, my nose is frigid. About that nose warmer.

my world is burning

It's so hard to sit here at work like always, gazing out the window at a wall of windows, and imagine the fire that's burning somewhere moderately near my house in San Diego.

apartment-renting blues

I need someone to fix my shower.

This morning in my zeal to stop our ever-dripping shower head I put a bit too much pressure on the "Hot" handle and it broke off in my hand. Probably a testament to the fact that my landlord paid $3 for it at Ikea or Walgreens... or Deals, my favorite dollar store (and he, in turn, paid someone $3 to install it). I don't know how it broke, all I know is that it will not reattach because it's broken, I can't turn on the hot water with a wrench, and my roommates and I are sentenced to cold showers, no showers, showers at boyfriend's apartments, or public showers at the local pool until it is fixed.

I feel so powerless to fix it. I have called my landlord twice and the fix-it man twice, still no appointment. And none of my roommates or I are even there during the day anyway to get this taken care of. This sounds familiar, right? (My bathroom fiasco in Spain, for all you loyal readers.) Well, at least the toilet works. I keep telling myself that am a journalist: If anyone can make this happen, I can. Today I successfully navigated a website entirely in Hebrew (which I do not speak or read) to locate an email address. I can make a couple of Americans fix my shower in a timely manner. It just makes me nervous because this request is so urgent: It's not like we can live with it like we live with the nonfunctional buzzer and intercom, the clogged dishwasher, and the dripping shower...

the march of the cold

I came to the realization very quickly this evening, while standing on a street corner waiting for a bus, that my flimsy summer flats just don't cut it anymore. They don't block gusts of wind, they don't keep my feet dry in a light drizzle: they do absolutely nothing to keep out the 48-degree air.

I'm getting a little worried.

suddenly, everything has changed

I slept with my air conditioner on last night. Last night and for the past week because the persistent 80- or 90-degree heat found its way into my room and couldn't be drawn away -- not with the help of fans, not with open windows. Today I'm thinking it might be time to put it away because finally, finally the weathermen are predicting what I assume to be more normal temperatures for this time of year in the 50s and 60s.

The change occurred in the span of about three hours last night. I stepped inside (to see my boyfriend perform improv) at about 7:00 p.m. wearing short sleeves and sandals, the heat and humidity noticeable. I stepped outside again at about 10:00 p.m. and had to put on my sweater: the air felt lighter, crisper, slightly cooler. This morning I made my way to the train station wearing a sweater and a scarf, crunching fallen leaves as I walked down the street. It was, as my neighbor remarked at the door, a beautiful morning. Tomorrow I suspect I'll be wearing a jacket: the temperature is supposed to drop another 10 or 15 degrees.

Weather aside, the world felt different this morning too. Last night was really the first night that I've "gone out" with a girl friend. One of my roommates to be specific, and the evening consisted of everything a good night should: comedy, lots of talking and laughing, beer, and no regard to time. Of course, I realized this morning as I crunched my way to the train station 15 minutes behind schedule, gambling on the fact that the train would only take 30 minutes, that Monday was not a very strategic night for this experience. Nevertheless, as I sat on a bar stool last night just talking, and again this morning in my kitchen, I started feeling what I felt most of last year: the feeling that starts in my stomach and spreads to my racing heart and up to my content brain, the feeling that I am doing the right thing. What's more, this feeling spread through my sleepy eyes and pounding head to my desk at work and suddenly my to-do list didn't seem so dire and my work here didn't seem so final. This is what I do now, not forever.

All this contributed to my feeling this morning, as I strode across LaSalle in the direction of my building in my mini-heels and scarf, that I belong here. I belong where there is the sun glinting in the windows of skyscrapers in the morning, where there are honking cars and people wearing suits crossing the street. I belong where there is, finally, fall.

weird weather

Last year, runners in the Chicago Marathon had to wear pants and long sleeves.

just wondering

For the past almost three months and even before that I have been looking at everything in terms of "when I have a job." I knew (rather, I hoped) my unemployment was temporary, so I tried not to get involved in too much or make too many plans for fear I would have to reprioritize and reschedule once I started my variable freelance work, part-time job, or full-time job. Now that I am on the eve of starting my job and a few short weeks away from actually earning an income, I'm wondering what I should do.

In college (and even high school) I was limited to the few activities I had already chosen: the newspaper, my classes, my internship, swimming, and socializing. Here I have a blank slate. A beaded bag just waiting to be filled. Now that I possess this freedom to do what I like I feel paralyzed by it. Maybe I don't want to join a swim team. Maybe, with the winter looming, I don't want to purchase a bike and try to be a triathlete. Maybe I don't want to take a cooking, yoga, photography, or art class (they're all ridiculously expensive anyway). Maybe I don't want to pick up guitar again or learn a new instrument. Maybe I don't want to freelance. Maybe I don't want to write the Great American Novel (or Short Story). Maybe with nearly ten hours of my daylight committed to work and transportation there there's no time for anything else. If I load everything up now, then, like college, I will have no time to be flexible: spend a quiet night at home with my boyfriend, go out with a promising new friend, curl up in all the blankets and scarves I can find when it's 20-below outside and read a book, go to sleep early. I always loathed that my jam-packed schedule in high school and college didn't permit me to be spontaneous. Now I'm wondering if I really want that spontaneity: whether I will still feel busy and purposeful or just plain idle if I have it.

The Aon Center

This is where I work. Well, today and tomorrow anyway. It is, I believe, the second tallest building in Chicago; it has 83 floors and at least eight banks of elevators. I have an office with a window that overlooks the river, the lake, and the mess of city below. I have a thick credit card-shaped pass that says "Visitor" and demands that it be "surrendered before leaving the premises." There's a picture of a middle-aged man on the door that supposedly says my name: Mike. Apparently he doesn't do much all day long, because since I got here at 9:00 I've only proofed three ads. All for Dell. There are cassette tapes, yes, cassette tapes of 70s and 80s punk bands and some others I've never heard of lining the walls of the office.

Funny story about this building I learned on the architecture tour I took a couple of weeks ago. The building was originally designed to be the world's tallest marble building (apparently Chicago has a bit of a Napoleon complex that it's compensating for with all its tall buildings) -- clad in the same marble as Michaelangelo's David. The weather proved too much for the stone and it had to be re-clad thirty years later in white granite (for, as one might imagine, quite a hefty price). Nevertheless, it is still quite an imposing figure on Chicago's skyline.

when it rains, it pours

I have a job.

Beginning next week, and extending every day from now until whenever I decide to quit, except Federal holidays, Jewish holidays, and weekends, I will be joining the thousands of people dressed in suits who commute downtown to work. I will sit or stand among my fellow commuters for the 45-minute train ride, I will walk the block to my building from the L stop, and I will ride the elevator up the skyscraper until I get to my office. Or cubicle. I am the new Editorial Assistant at the World Jewish Digest.

I'm not sure exactly what that entails yet. But it is some combination of what I want to be doing: writing, editing (and some administrative work).

This comes at a perfect time: just when I was going to have to start applying for more jobs, just when I was getting completely, unalterably bored, just when I was about to run out of money. And because I am so bored, I am using my last two weekdays of freedom to do some freelance proofreading at some sort of company downtown. It pays double the most I've ever been paid per hour.

exploring modern sexuality

I first became acquainted with the term "ex-gay" a few months ago when Chad Thompson came to speak at UCSB, parading his book titled Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Christian Approach. Mislead by the title as I'm sure the author intended, I threw the flier on my busy university editor desk and vowed to deal with it later. But what I thought was a Christian telling people "It's OK to be gay" had the queer community in furor: it was actually, if you read the fine print, a reformed homosexual Christian telling people "You can change. I did." Rather, from his website, "Provide a living counterexample for those who say that homosexual people can never change."

It's a baffling assertion, really, that it's possible to change one's own sexuality using only self control and a really serious devotion to God and religion. My knowledge of sexuality comes from within, of course, and I'm pretty devoutly heterosexual. My knowledge of religion comes from myself, of course, and I'm pretty casually Jewish. Two identifications that I suppose make it very difficult for me to understand what it's like to be homosexual and Christian. Nevertheless, I was lead to believe that homosexuality is nature, not nurture. The same way my hair is brown, I'm short, and my eyes are brownish hazelish, nature is difficult to change.

To be fair, there is something to be said for people who are able to find something they don't like in themselves and decide to change it. That's hard to do. But I'm not sure if it's quite that easy with the question of sexuality. Ted Haggard accomplished it in a couple weeks. Larry Craig probably will too if he ever decides to admit he was, indeed, soliciting sex in a men's airport restroom. The bottom line is these people can say whatever they want to appease themselves and others who think it's wrong, but we won't ever know what they think about at night before they fall asleep, whether they are ever satisfied again being just heterosexual. Really, it doesn't matter: they are only denying themselves of love, pleasure, and honesty. It's sad, really. Another ex-gay Charlene Cothran (founder of Venus magazine based in Chicago) did an interview with a New York freelance writer that's published here (see April 10, 2007). It's fascinating and I admire the writer, for having the huevos to ask her most of the questions he did, and her, for answering them. So he asks her whether she's still attracted to women. Well, it seems to me that would be the hardest to change: it's easy enough to abstain from sex, dating, and to change your "Looking For" on Facebook to read the opposite gender, but pure, physical attraction is rather involuntary. So she answered: "I would say after 29 years of walking in the sin of lesbianism that if the devil were going to try and tempt me that he's probably not going to send a football player, if you will, because that didn’t do it for me. You follow me? I’ve got sense enough to know if he tries to tempt me he's probably going to send something that resembled the thing that I was entangled with. You follow me?" I follow. And it's a great answer. But basically she's saying, "Yes, I'm still attracted to women, but I think it's evil so I try to shut it out."

Why shut it out? I find it incredibly disheartening that religion is the trigger and the proof behind many of these "reforms." Religion that's supposed to facilitate a good life (happy and healthy?) and a pleasant afterlife. That's for another day. It's just tragic that they would be so devout as to deny themselves of having a completely loving, happy relationship with another person: same sex or opposite.

groundhog

Somewhat appropriately I got my first glimpse of the cold today. A week ago, a cloudless sky and bright sun meant I would have been foolish to leave the house in anything other than shorts. Today, the sun looked only deceptively bright, and people started pulling out fall jackets for their commutes. It was, in fact, the first time Chicago's morning streets have seen me in something other than short sleeves or a tank top. It's nice to be cozy, but pulling out my jackets from the back of my closet also unearthed a sense of unease about the coming winter. Unease, mostly, because I don't know what to expect. And I don't yet have half the apparel I think I need to survive the winter.

HOY

Now that I live in a big, decadent American city, I had to wonder a little more about today's date when I boarded the inbound train this morning. Six years ago today my mom was shaking me awake before my alarm saying, "Lindsey, something has happened. You've gotta see this." This year at around the same time I was riding public transportation with the beautiful Chicago skyline shining in the background.