On Dwelling

I'd like to think of myself as something of an emotional expert. That is, I'm extremely emotional. And therefore I must be an expert.

I believe that emotions need to be felt the whole way through. Dwelling on problems is futile, but dwelling in emotions is an discipline that is equal parts endurance, bravery, and self-awareness. Dwelling is the opposite of fixing, but it is soothing. It's not going to solve anything, but it will heal.

And now I'll share with you some ways I've learned to dwell in various emotional situations, when they happen to arise:

After a sleepless night due to the heat wave that might actually just be the beginning of summer, I suggest you take a cool morning walk through the neighborhood. Stop to take in the dreamy sight of brick painted mint, and lace in doorways. Remark at the hush of the streets and how even the sky looks sleepy.

After every errand you planned to run on Sunday was postponed because you forgot that stores open late on Sunday, because you're usually at church I guess, I suggest you not try to kill time by going to H&M. It really does more harm than good. Instead, I suggest you go on an exploration. Kill time by staring at your favorite blue house, wondering what kinds of lives its inhabitants must lead.

After you got comically lost in Chevy Chase, Maryland, while trying to find the venue for an event that was entirely your responsibility, and the weekend's unrelenting humidity made your silk dress feel like some kind of tropical torture, I suggest you make lemonade. In a tin pitcher. With some raspberry sorbet plopped in for good measure. Sip, and sip, and sip.

After you got a haircut that was on an expensive and thoughtless whim, one that you insist makes you look like Dora the Explorer, take a moment to grieve your long hair: the two years it took to grow it out, the excitement you felt upon feeling new and different. Rub your fingers through it as though it's a stranger to your body, and feel the ghost pains of what now lies limp and lifeless on the salon's tile floor.

Then, I suggest, do anything to make yourself feel French. Wear a striped shirt. Read poetry you don't understand. Drink espresso and nibble on biscotti. Nibbling is the key here. Remember that Amelie and Jean Seberg had short hair, and what's good enough for them is certainly good enough for you.

After your co-worker snapped at you in the morning, unaware of the turmoil and confusion inside your heart which caused a shocking and embarrassing display of chin-trembling and tear-wiping, I suggest you spend time with a woman named Eileen.

You may want to tell her all about your trip to Target the other day and how you went for toothpaste and ended up with a new purse, a fan, a lamp, and the most expensive face wash you've ever owned. She'll say, slowly, in her signature aquarium-gravel voice that you miss every day you don't hear it: "You got to shop with me, girl! You got to shop with me! I will say YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BUY ONLY ONE THING GIRL. Only one thing girl. Only one thing girl. Only one thing."

For your daily art project, Eileen will suggest drawing a Bible story. She'll think on it, and decide to draw the Last Supper. You may talk about it a bit, asking about all the characters involved, how they might have felt, what details should be included.

"I'm going to draw Jesus. And I'm going to draw his bisciples." (Bisciples is how Eileen will say "disciples," and it will delight you.)

"I think Jesus felt sad and lonely. I think the bisciples were confused, but they were happy to be eating."

Then, there is a far worse situation than a haircut regret. It is the one you may find yourself in after you've made a phone call that felt like a bad dream.

After you've uncurled yourself from a clenched bundle of limbs, as your eyes and your soul fill up with fluid because you abandoned a beautiful cottage for the dramatic and sublime isolation of the desert which actually seemed better, and somehow easier...

After you've made the decision to go into the deepest mangled forest of your heart to where the wild things are, and you stand before the largest and terrifying monster of them all. He towers before you, his nasty fur thick and matted. He exposes his enormous fangs and claws, and snarls at you and then he roars to you the ultimate lie that causes you to shrink further and further into the forest floor among the dead leaves and worms: "You are not capable of love, and you don't deserve love."

After all this, you catch your breath and wonder how long you can withstand this extraordinary level of fear and pain.

For such a moment, I suggest you make yourself a hot beverage. Tea or coffee will do. It will force you to breathe deeply and regulate your heaving sobs til they are more manageable whimpers. It will center you, calm you, the way a cat purrs when it's scared, to mimic comfort.

Of course, tea and coffee can only go so far. At this point, you must force yourself upon your friends. I didn't mean it like that. I meant it as in, text the one who lives where you do, tell her you are coming over. No need to be polite. Tell her you cannot be alone. Because she is compassionate and wise, she will say, "I'm recording the Kardashians. I just opened some wine, and got food from down the block for dinner. There is more than enough for both of us."

Say a prayer, thank God for such a friend.

Take the bus, ring the doorbell. She will pour you what appears to be half a bottle of wine into what appears to be a serving bowl with a stem attached, and she will assure you that you did the right thing. She will listen to you, she will joke with you. She will hurt with you and tell you funny stories. She will also aid in a Google search of remaining eligible Kennedys.

In the next few days, the only thing to do is to nourish yourself body and mind. You may find yourself crying at CVS because you suddenly remembered that cooking together (and being cooked for) is something that you cherished, something that you miss so much that you feel like you need a few extra bodies to absorb all the emotions you are feeling in your one and only. It will compel you to buckle over in the middle of the home goods aisle and you will have to leave CVS, and for that matter the neighborhood, at the single passing thought of a wooden spoon.

This is a time for mourning: of the wooden spoon, of the shared kitchen, of the sacred nights of black tea roasted chicken with a surprise dessert.

You summon the pallbearers to solemnly lay the spoon into the ground, and gently cover it with crimson rose petals.

Then, it is a time for radically courageous cooking. It is a time to remember that you, too, know how to cook, and now you must learn to do it even better for there is no one to help. You have to try something you've never tried before: lamb manoush, for example. It is your first time cooking meat and your first time using many of these spices. It will drench your kitchen with smells of toasted sesame, thyme, and cumin, and it will strengthen your body for the good things to come.

Lavish yourself with the luxuries of the best books, movies, and walks. This is not a time to skimp on beauty. This is a time for the very best of the very best. Keep one Anne Lamott book on every flat surface in your room. Buy flowers. Wear hot pink lipstick to work. Splurge on a yoga studio membership downtown, where the room looks like a ranch resort in Napa Valley with its cherry wood ceilings and wall-sized windows that expose the gorgeous city and you completely forget you're not Gwyneth Paltrow til you go back outside. Listen to Spanish guitar, 70s rock bands, and Swedish folk music.

Give yourself every reason to believe that you are on a great and wonder-filled journey, even if you're not convinced. Dress like it. Eat like it. Watch Italian movies like it. Voyage like it.

Read over the text messages that say "You're Hemingway levels of brave. Hang in there baby." Read Shauna Niequist like she's going out of style. And read your favorite quote over and over til it's all over your heart, in every corner, even in the scariest forest, even where the largest monster lives.


"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."
--Frederick Buechner

This Post Dedicated To Mark Zuckerberg and the DC Metro

Does anybody remember facebook back when it was The Facebook?

Back when you could submit your school up to five times a day to be the newest university to have access to it?

Back when you had to select from one of eight majors, and Philosophy was spelled wrong? When everyone's wall had about three entries and you could post in an order you chose? When photos weren't in the picture at all, and "liking" meant nothing and the homepage was your own profile instead of a "news feed" and everyone got all nervous when "Interested In" became a new field for which to submit otherwise-guarded secrets about your personality to the open internet arena? When, eventually, you had to text some 12-digit number in order to put your gritty cell phone pictures up?

Remember when you got to fill out a small profile (interests, books, music), and people actually read it? And formed crushes based on it?

Just me?

Until tonight, I didn't remember any of that, until I passed over the Potomac (I think) River. My nose basically pressed upon the glass of the metro car as I took in the sunset, like a cartoon person. My eyes darted around as I tried to commit it all to memory before we passed under the bridge: DC's signature low buildings, the mess of pine trees along the riverbank, the way the sun turned the river's ceiling burnt orange.

I remembered my very first The Facebook interest: "cities with rivers."

I don't remember what I was referring to; it was probably partly Chicago, partly some imagined next destination--Paris or Rome or whatever. I thought it sounded romantic and exotic and possibly alluring to boys who listed Bob Dylan and Pavement in their favorite music lists.

Tonight on the last car of the crowded subway, as the sun blasted through those rain-stained windows in such a shocking flash that I actually lept up a bit in my seat, I thought about "cities with rivers" and felt so happy to be living in one.

Don't get me wrong, babes. There are many things to hate about DC. I hate how you have to put your metro card in the turnstile slot AGAIN when you're exiting. Man I really hate that. Also I hate the humidity. I hate the stupid rule about not being able to build past a certain height; it makes rent insanely expensive and prevents a lot of possible growth and a potentially rad skyline. I hate having to cross the street four times at Dupont Circle.

But there is so much to love. Oh, there is a ton to love. First things first: they sell alcohol at grocery stores here. It may sound like whatever to you people, but Maryland's drinking laws are from the Stone Age and you can't even buy Three Buck Chuck at the Trader Joe's! You can't even buy honeycrisp cider at the Whole Foods! You can't even buy Ciroc at the CVS! It is a thing of pure amazement that I didn't leave sooner.

Malbec brought to you by the good people of Whole Foods DC.

Aside from that, there is U Street. There is 18th Street. There is the cinematic cityscape, built by artists who honor our civilization with every garrish Boroque detail on library doors. There is the exhilirating urban front line, as Latin dancers spill out onto the sidewalk from packed bars and open-air restaurants with a nightly mojito special are patroned by men in suits and linen pants alike. There are outdoor markets that sell fresh crabs, snails, and lychee drinks. There are enchanted streets not big enough for cars to go through, where every house is painted a different color: cerulean, hot pink, tangerine.

Some day I will live in the blue one. I will name it Casa Azul, and I will paint myself along with my pet monkeys and parrots.

Oops just forgot I'm not Frida Kahlo.

DC is one of those cities that reminds you of somewhere, or maybe reminds you of everywhere: Asia, Europe, streets in Queens, the Caribbean. I will never tire of that feeling. It is thrilling. 

There are things I neither love nor hate about DC, but are a fact of moving. There are the accidentally lonely nights when I expected to enjoy staying in and cooking for myself, catching up on TV shows and forcing myself to do some Spanish drills. Instead, I end up calling my boyfriend while he's in the middle of a social activity and crying about how I don't have enough Nutella.

There are the moments of disorientation when I'm wondering if I should really be at the White House Park after dark, and I don't even know if the White House Park has a name but I'm pretty sure it's not considered the White House Lawn if "Veep" is to be trusted. In those moments, I am 150% sure I am about to be murdered, and I feel tremendously foreign.

There are moments when I catch a vignette so reminiscent of Chicago that it steals my breath. I don't know how to feel in those moments, so I keep walking.

There are moments that are beautiful, but that do not solidify DC as home for me. Like how I see the same father reading to his toddler son every day on the metro, snuggling in close and pointing out every noun in the pictures. He reads aloud so gently and sweetly that it is almost too much to witness. It is something so lovely, but still foreign. Maybe because he reads in Portuguese.

Barack's home, my home. They're basically the same I think.

It's still my interest, this city with a river. I am interested in what it's going to teach me, how it will form me, and all its memories that will some day be so powerful that upon seeing a vignette of DC in another place, I'll have to look away.

Live Your Best Life: Or, What I Would Write for O Magazine

Yesterday my lovebunny and I attended a lecture given by Andrew Zimmern, host of "Bizarre Foods." It was a fun, buzzed crowd (the preceeding event was a food festival with free everything, including beer and wine) and Andrew was the right person to give the closing talk. On his show he is annoyingly irreverant, but in person his genuine passion trumps his raunchy sarcasm.

He reiterated all the thoughts on food I've collected in the past few years: that food is not fuel, but communion. That food is meant to be shared, and to be used as a means through which to share. That maybe it isn't the poorest inner-city neighborhoods that need to be educated on food, but the middle class white guys in the suburbs. That the best is yet to come, and we have a lot to look forward to in the next decade in terms of restaurants and food trends.

That it was the right decision for me to start eating meat again: I want to taste every single thing on this blessed bountiful earth. "We worship the salmon because we eat the salmon" is a Sherman Alexie quote that makes sense to me on a base level and a spiritual level, which are two levels that food spans seamlessly.

(Yesterday I had my first experience with dried goat jerky. There is no going back.)

He also talked a bit about travel. He said that travel is the single most formative experience one can have, aside from pain and misery. He said that we become our very best selves while traveling: more polite, more interested, aware, adventurous, compassionate, outgoing, gracious, and open-minded.

Of course, I completely agree with this sentiment, and wish I had said it first.

Others may feel all of these things while camping or hiking, to which I say: Bravo! I always wish I were more outdoorsy and could find a genuine sense of awe and grace out in the wild. Instead, I find a genuine sense of terror and itchiness.

Others may find it at home with their loved ones in their hometown where they grew up and where their grandparents grew up and where their grandparents before them settled. I don't think travel is the be all end all of full living.

But as for me and my house, we love exploring cities. I speak fluent city. In new cities, I am the best version of myself. Which for me means that I remember to put on deodorant and sometimes I even wear lipgloss.

Moving to DC has brought out the best in me: the me that wants to learn Spanish for real this time, and maybe even dabble in Arabic. The me that says "dabble in." The me that takes pictures everywhere and falls in love with everything, like the closed-up bar that reads only "California" and "No trespassing." The me that dreams of turning it into a little shop of some sort: a clothes store or bookstore or studio for teaching the lost art of reality TV marathons. Just trying to make the most of my talents.

I wonder how I can bottle that energy and that spirit of exploration and save it for a rainy day, the type of day I experienced so often during my last months in Chicago: boredom within a booming metropolis.

I don't want to let it go this time. I want to continue marveling at Ghananian sandwich shops and women who grow out their hair past their waist and think to pair chambray and neon, the many drum circles and the many popsicle stands invaded by French schoolchildren. I want to continue to feel polite, aware, and adventurous, without leaving my city. Because lord knows it's going to take a significant boost in my bank account to travel again anytime soon.

It's not so much that I want to keep moving as I want to feel enlivened and excited at home. I love coming home to my lovebird and I love going on banal errands with my mom. Going out and coming back, that is what I was made for. I aim to treasure them both equally, because it is a very nice thing indeed when there is someone waiting for you who remembers your favorite cheese, and a bed with a you-sized dent in the middle.

In between familiar and exotic is the place I'd like to live.

Good thing Washington DC is basically the definition of that weirdo limbo: it's the most American and most foreign city we've got going for us in these States United.

People it looks like France in this place, except if I see one more woman wearing a beret I'll probably start screaming.

Lawyers and Bus Stations, Busboys and Poets

I love moving for the same reason I love traveling: Out of the familiar, mundanities become marvelous and new. Greeting a stranger, going grocery shopping, taking an evening walk--once banal fixtures of daily routine--transform into exotic or funny or beautiful stories of sensual and memorable moments.

The same lunch you've packed for years suddenly includes new details--homemade fig newtons leftover from the burst of inspiration you had last night at 10pm when your roommate brewed oolong tea and you watched the moon nestle into a different position in the sky. The same song you've heard in midwestern coffee shops sounds pristine from the mouth of a gravel-voiced street musician wearing a type of hat you don't know the name of. The pillow you've used since college feels and smells distinctly, overwhelmingly familiar when moved to a new bedroom.

You begin describing your meals in poems: This morning, Maria and I chatted and breakfasted with each a tin cup of prim warm coffee, a plump fork full of chalky brie, yogurt plopped with a slotted spoon onto crispy toasts and splattered with honey crystals, and a small blue dish of tart raspberries whose juice collected into a pink pool that leaked between Mexican tiles.

You begin associating streets with songs and rooms with smells and aquaintances with nicknames: Mango Lady, Sunglasses Girl, Small Coffee Guava Croissant Man, Hookah Hair Halal Guy.

You begin memorizing subway maps like your favorite painting and learning the stations like a new language, trying them in a sentence and exploring their appropriate context: "Next stop, Farragut North."

Expectations are colliding with reality. I envision DC in a series of images: a bronze paperweight of The White House, decadent Carravaggio paintings in stately museums with marble columns and a dapper security staff. I envision the cover of "Our Country's Presidents: Completely Revised and Expanded" with the head of George Washington in the foreground of the Capitol Building. I envision a blanket of pale pink petals on the lawn of the Mall, and billboard ads for The West Wing.

I have no idea where the White House is from my neighborhood and I watch Season 3 of Sex and the City while a dozen museums close a few miles away. Outside, I hear a couple walking out to a bar on the next street. They go out late (clearly not Americans) and even the woman's laugh sounds foreign. She wears skinny black leather pants with skinny black leather heels and a bun on the very top of her head. They live in a Victorian house with succulents and three bikes out front.

This is how the city sounds when the politicians go home for the night: clicks of high heels, foreign laughter, and Joao Gilberto's saxophone from the turntable in my dining room.