Y Tu Palta Tambien

February Letter, #2

2012-02-02T18:41:00.001-05:00

Today's letter was brought to you by Washingtonian chocolate and Washingtonian wine. Don't cry for me Argentina.

This all, of course, inspired by the ambitious, witty, red-headed Washingtonian to whom I'm sending today's letter. She and I moved away from Chicago around the same time, and we relate on a Pacific Northwestern level about the perils and wonders of multiple hometowns.

While I wrote, I listened to an album that I know she'd enjoy.

February Letter Project

2012-02-01T10:32:00.003-05:00

It always takes me until about February to come up with an impressive set of New Year's Resolutions. I always have about 25 of them, like eat more vegetables, stop saying "OMG!" all the time, hang my coat up when I get home, stop describing people I don't know as "stupid idiots."

Of course, the resolutions tend to peeter out around March, but that's not really the point. Like Dave B said, any opportunity to make a choice that will improve your life is worth taking. Even the brave act of making that promise is worth celebrating, which explains the hubbub over weddings.

So, let's celebrate me and my New Year's resolutions, shall we? We shall. The theme of the year is "health." Boring. To me. BUT! I have become very aware of my own mortality lately, ever since I turned 25. This is no laughing matter, son! I have a huge wrinkle above my eyebrow, and it's just staring at me, as if to say, "Every day you are getting mushier and your insides don't love all the potato chips you eat and you will be deaf by 27--TURN DOWN BEYONCE, WOMAN!"

I read recently this small quote: "Health is freedom." Small but true. When you are healthy, you can do nearly anything! I want to be a healthy person because I want to do nearly anything, but I know that health comes in all sorts of forms, which is why I'm going to devote each month of this year to a different aspect of health. Here's my calendar:

January: Relationship Health. I meant to be a very forgiving and loving person all of January, but I forgot, so I'll try it again this month.

February: Social Health. Here's where the Letter Project comes in! I'm going to be attentive to my social network. Not necessarily the internet kind, though I think facebook and blogs and what have you are wonderful for social health, especially the poking bit. Rather, I'm going to go back to one of my first loves--letter writing--and pen a special note to a dear one every day of the month.

March: Spiritual Health. This will coincide very nicely with Lent.

April: Cooking with produce. I always get most excited to eat well when there is good produce to be had, and I want to learn how to cook with fruits and vegetables so as to highlight their winning qualities. April produce is splendid for this activity. Strawberry pie and asparagus quiche are really good for you, right?

May: Physical strength. Not yet sure how this will go down. Besides walking, and dancing in my kitchen I suppose, I am a huge wimp when it comes to exercise--especially the kind that requires my ability to lift things.

June: Mental Health. Maybe I'll finally learn how to play Sudoku? And enjoy it??

July: Dental Health. Major flossing.

August: Mindful of Beverages. This is the one I dread, so I put it in my least favorite month. I never aspire to stop drinking coffee, but I recognize my slight addiction. At the very least, I hope to truly enjoy every cup of coffee I drink, and not just guzzle it down because I'll get a headache if I don't. Also, alcohol. Woof.

September: Back to Spiritual Health. This month, I want to learn how to meditate for longer than 30 seconds. And I don't mean meditating on how much I dislike January Jones and how much I want sour gummy bears. September will also be renamed Yoga Palooza, at least in the Mari Household.

October: Cardio Health. This probably involves jumping. Also, eating heart-healthy foods...like dark chocolate and red wine.

November: Cooking with whole grains. I already eat mostly whole grains, at least that's how I like to think of myself, but I'd love to learn how to cook whole wheat pasta that doesn't taste like The New York Times, make good oaty sweets, and bake my own crackers and granola.

December: Back to mental health. Start learning a new language, or improve on an old one. Also, take a look at my year, which I have resolved to document with care this year. I am trying to make note of every movie seen, book read, and song loved. Want to hear my January playlist? Here it be! These songs are particularly fitting for the balmy winter we all seem to be enjoying.

The goal is to get into good habits that will last past the assigned month. We'll see.

So, let us begin! First letter o' the month goes to my dear friend Jessie. My hope for everybody is to have a friend like Jessie. She is something else, that lady. A human sparkle, if we're going to be honest with ourselves.

And for that, she gets a Taylor Swift Valentine's Day card! You are jealous.

P.S. There are still a couple slots open in February for letters! Send me your address if you want to prevent me from sending fan mail to Zac Efron the last 4 days of the month.

Golden Globes Fashion Report 2012

2012-01-15T22:13:00.002-05:00

It is that time of year again, Friends Mine! The time when there's a new award show every three days, and I sit in my mom's kitchen making immature comments about the way celebrities are dressed! You are thrilled.

Oh Charlize, stop looking so proud of yourself in your pink cotton candy toga mess.

I love the Farmiga family. Little Farmiga, you are a vision in beige.

Am I being made to believe that Nicole's boobs are bullet-proof?

Jessica Biel said that she was tired of looking so hot all the time, so she decided to try looking "artsy." She told her stylist, "Get me that lace dress that the weird Enya chick with the red hair wore to the Grammys, but put a slit in it so people know that I do Pilates." And Jessica saw that it was good. And everyone else said, "Did the girl from 7th Heaven wear a tablecloth?"

Kate is a class machine and her elegance cannot be crushed by one dumb decision to wear a cream skirt with a top that she got at the Filene's going out of business sale.

Emma's visual interpretation of The Hunger Games doesn't really work for her.

Tilda, we get it, you're edgy, and you look like a suburban transvestite grandmother.

The pixie cut is to Michelle Williams what ruffles are to Zooey Deschanel. It's adorable, but at some point it will need to stop. Just glad it hasn't stopped quite yet.

Love the hair. Dress is a little Ren Fest for me.

This dress looks like it's an interior design inspiration board for an Egyptian-themed casino.

Angie, you are standing next to Brad Pitt--look happier about it! Also look happy that you chose a beautiful dress for once, except why did you match your purse and lipstick with that collar thing you weirdo? The Globes ain't prom.

No.

I think Rooney Mara is the new Kristen Stewart, meaning that she's going to try to look as pale and uncomfortable at every awards show as possible.

Hey Person, your face is the same color as your dress. And also that belt makes your hips look crazy. And also who are you?

I was impressed with Zooey Deschanel for not wearing any ruffles or bows or winking kittens on her dress. But then she has to tilt her head to the side. When will she start acting like a 31-year-old and not a sexy baby??

Claire knocked it out of the Jackie O/Minimalism/Cleavage-Free/Perfect Hair Park.

Giuliana Rancic knows that nobody will say anything mean about her because of what she's been through this year, so she decided to wear the ugliest dress known to man. Well played, Giuliana.

My thumb is up to Octavia's dress, but I cannot offer the same thumb to her prom hair.

This couple is adorable and "Beginners" was my favorite movie of 2011.

HOLD THE PHONE--Sofia Vergara has curves?! Good thing we have a reminder because I haven't seen her in a form-fitting trumpet dress in...oh wait.

Black mermaid dress, check. Dangly earrings, check. Poofy up-do, check. Must be Debra Messing.

Freida Pinto, you're the most beautiful woman in the world according to me. What demented soul would wrap you in a mass of fabric tied with a black belt from Forever 21 and give you Avatar hair?

Natalie's bustle makes her dress look like she's the front half of the gay donkey in the church Christmas pageant.

Shailene Woodley looks like The Chrysler Building and does anybody remember when she was on The OC?!?

Evan Rachel Wood stole her hairstyle from Tilda and her dress from a mythical feathered reptile. To conclude, there is nothing good about this look but I like it.

Good night!

Repeat the Sounding Joy

2011-12-21T17:48:00.001-05:00

Greetings be to you, dear ones! Happy Holidays and Challah-Days (eight, to be exact!) and deck the halls and what have you.

It's time for an annual list! I already published it on The Facebook, but until we all get Google Plus and everything's in one place, I'm just going to have to cover all my social media bases. Remember when we all had Xanga and life was so simple?!

This list is going to be all about music, so let's start off with a Christmas tune. Now that I'm older than I used to be and I actually understand lyrics (though I never know what Joanna Newsom is talking about), sacred Christmas music is so exciting to me because it's so meaningful. I've been really into "O Holy Night" for the past few years, for obvious reasons. (If the reasons are not obvious, read the lyrics and get back to me.)

This year, "Joy to the World" is really buttering my biscuits. "While fields and floods, rocks, fields, and plains repeat the sounding joy" is pure poetry, and "heaven and nature sing" gives me a downright peaceful image of woodland creatures singing to the sky.

But the verse that really gets me is this:

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

What beautiful words.

I once got a wonderful email from my Irish friend signed, "I bid you adieu with well-wishes and the wonders of His love," and it was delightful unto my soul.

My favorite version is Sufjan's, duh, and you should give it a good listen if you haven't in a while:

Joy to the World by Sufjan Stevens on Grooveshark

Now, onto the Best Music of 2011, from someone who mostly listens to Dolly Parton and Justin Bieber!

Most magical concert experience: Beirut, Rams Head Live
Concert most likely to see me dancing so hard that I was sore for three days: Tune-Yards, Black Cat

Most nostalgic concert at most beautiful venue: Bright Eyes with M. Ward, Wolf Trap

Luckiest concert opportunity in 2nd most beautiful venue: Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, 2640 Space

Most likely to be the best concert of my life: Josh Ritter on 12/31, Amherst MA
Favorite song by a Baltimore band: Civilian, Wye Oak

Most accurate and informative depiction of love: Poison & Wine, The Civil Wars

Happiest sad song: Bedroom Eyes, Dum Dum Girls

Best Impression of Simon & Garfunkel: Born With a Broken Heart, David Wax Museum

2nd Best Impression of Simon & Garfunkel: Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes

Sweetest description of first love: Towers, Bon Iver

Most incredible voice e’er to be recorded on a dance song: Powa, Tune-Yards

Most likely to make me LOL: Threw It On the Ground, The Lonely Island

Most empowering hip-hop song: She’s Enough, Atmosphere

Best use of electric guitar: Cruel, St. Vincent

Most likely to make me feel like everything will be just fine: Ours, Taylor Swift

Most likely to be quoted by me at office holiday parties: Whisky is My Drink, Limbotheque

Favorite music video: Take It As It Comes, Vivian Girls

Most danceable love song: Velcro, Bell X1

Most Likely to be played on rainy days: One and Only, Adele

Best cover of classic song: I Want You Back, The Civil Wars

2nd Best cover of a classic song: Moon River, Josh Ritter

3rd Best cover of a classic song: Bein’ Green, Andrew Bird

Best cover of contemporary song: Pursuit of Happiness, Lissie

Best cover of her own song: Littlest Birds, Jolie Holland

Best use of harmonica: A Change of Days, Smith’s Cloud

Most likely to bring out my inner Sasha Fierce: Set Fire to the Rain, Adele

Most likely to make me cry: If I Had a Boat, James Vincent McMorrow

Most likely to accompany me during a post-Hurricane-Irene walk: Holocene, Bon Iver

Most relatable love song: Time Spent in Los Angeles, Dawes

Catchiest song by a Chicago band: Weekend, Smith Westerns

Catchiest song by a middle schooler: Friday, Rebecca Black

Best country song by a soul singer: Don’t You Remember, Adele

Most Bright-Eyes-esque new Bright Eyes song: Jejune Stars, Bright Eyes

Most beautiful love song: And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop, James Vincent McMorrow

Most likely to be sung by me to anyone who will or won’t listen: I’m His Girl, Friends

Best song that makes me want to be dead: Video Games, Lana del Rey

Best hijack of Irish pub song melody: Rox in the Box, The Decemberists

Most likely to make me challenge the nearest person to a dance-off: Love on Top, Beyonce

Most likely to make me feel like I just lost of the love of my life: Someone Like You, Adele

Most likely to be stuck in my head for 3 months: Countdown, Beyonce

Best use of Motown: Otis feat. Otis Redding, Kanye West and JAY Z

Most likely to accompany me during cooking adventures: Yes, Maria, Yes; David Wax Museum

Dreamiest rock song: Beginner’s Mind, Bright Eyes

2nd favorite Vanessa Carlton song about California: Dear California, Vanessa Carlton

Most forgivable grammatical error in a song title: If This Was a Movie, Taylor Swift

Most surprisingly popular song that made me feel inordinately proud of my vaguely personal connection to this band: We Are Young, Fun.

Most likely to be played on repeat at work: I Love You But I Don’t Know What to Say, Ryan Adams

Most likely to be played while driving to West Virgina: My Father’s Father, The Civil Wars

Most likely to make me miss home (Seattle): Coeur D’Alene, The Head and the Heart

Most likely to make me miss home (Chicago): Chicago, Smith’s Cloud

Most likely to be played by me non-stop all December: Mistletoe, Justin Bieber

Most likely to have been inspired by contemporary evangelical worship songs: Shake It Out, Florence + The Machine

Most likely to make me want to change my life: We Don’t Eat, James Vincent McMorrow

Most likely to make me feel like I'm in a Sofia Coppola movie: Mariah, Cass McCombs

Most likely to make me feel understood and not alone: Down in the Valley, The Head and the Heart

Most likely to make me want to slow-dance: A Case of You, James Blake

Best Americana song: Scarlet Town, Gillian Welch (not on Spotify--sad face!)

Best old-timey gospel-influenced a cappella song: Bright Morning Stars, Abigail Washburn

Most likely to be analyzed for Lenten themes: Don’t Carry It All, The Decemberists

Most likely to be analyzed for Advent themes: Winter Song, The Head and the Heart

Most likely to bring back happiest memories of 2011 (and most beautiful song of all time?): East Harlem, Beirut

Looking forward to music of 2012, mostly because there will be a new Taylor Swift album involved!

My Soul Has Known a Better Life Than This

2011-12-04T18:31:00.002-05:00

Advent tidings to you and yours! What do you want for Christmas? About 3/4ths of my list consists of glitzy cocktail rings. Don't ask me why. Turning 25 has turned me into a middle aged cruise ship cabaret singer, I guess. Sorry!

The past few years I've been a bit slow-going into the Christmas spirit. Because of my well-documented love for fall, I always feel kind of sad on Thanksgiving knowing that there are only so many more hours to enjoy the likes of leaves and pumpkins and Bon Iver. It is my deepest wish that Christmas move back a few weeks so we can have a bit more of fall, but I don't expect this to come to pass in my lifetime. I expect that in heaven it is always fall (God's favorite season, obvs).

The other day I brought this up to Joe, a fellow fall fan but Christmas enthusiast to the Starbucks level. I complained about the usual stuff: my job, my hair, how I don't know if I'm ever going to really make it (my definitition of "really making it" is having a different perfume for every season). I talked about how I wasn't really feeling Christmasy yet, maybe because of its destruction of fall, or maybe I just wasn't ready to be totally full-on joyful, or maybe it's just hard to get excited about a Savior when we celebrate his birth every year and people are still killing each other and they still don't sell OPI nail polish at CVS. (Despite multiple requests.)

Joe's response was: "Remember that darkness calls FORTH light, it doesn't smother it. Remember also remember that winter is a rough time for you, even in a city as beautiful as Baltimore. I also want to add that while your spirit isn't christmasy NOW, it is CERTAINLY Adventy."

(Joe uses a lot of caps, which I appreciate.)

He was so right! I am not exactly in the Christmas spirit these days, save for my obsession with Justin Bieber's new classic "Mistletoe" and also peppermint bark, but I am SO in the Advent spirit.

During Advent, I think a lot about Mary and Joseph. Not the dishy ones portrayed in the giant plastic lawn nativity sets you can buy at Walmart, you know, the ones who are looking at baby Jesus like he's the Hope Diamond or Tickle Me Elmo or something.

I mean the knocked-up teenage girl and her meek, smelly teenage husband with callouses on his hands. The ones who were bullied in the town square because no one understood their weird personalities and no one believed that Mary wasn't cheating on him. The ones who gave birth in a cold barn with no painkillers on shelves or midwives on call. The ones who were terrified of a murderous king who was killing all infant boys. I mean them.
I get the feeling that Mary wasn't in the Christmas spirit during her pregnancy, and I get the feeling that Joseph had a lot of other things on his mind than rocking around the Christmas tree.

I get the feeling that Jesus' birth flipped their world upside down and actually made it kind of terrible for a while, but his birth gave them tangible hope and faith. It is possible to be terrified of a murderous king and still have faith. It is possible to be bullied for being a poor rural laborer married to the town hussie, and still have faith. It is possible to give excruciatingly painful birth to a screaming homely baby who is apparently God, and still have faith.

This is all rather impressive, because all Eddie's has to do is run out of the kind of mini pies, and I'm threatening to change religions.

A couple weeks ago, I saw a video on facebook of beagle dogs who had just been released from years of living in a lab. Normally I would never watch such a video because I can't stand animal abuse stories, but I was promised by YouTube that this would be uplifting. Indeed it was. Beagles are famously intelligent and mild-tempered, which makes them ideal pets as well as test subjects. This video depicted the efforts of an organization that takes beagles out of labs and puts them in loving homes.

The story was pretty remarkable: these dogs had lived for years in a lab and had never known a life outside the cage or among other dogs. They looked healthy, but their lives resembled nothing of what they had been bred to do (hunt, run, be loved). As soon as they began coming out of their cages onto sun-bathed grass, you could see how joyful they became to finally get to live the life they were made to live. They played with each other, delightedly received attention from humans, and ran around happily as though the last few years had just been a bad dream.

This video happens to be the best depiction of Advent I've ever seen. The beagles had never known what it felt like to live outside of their cages. They weren't actively miserable, but they're smart enough to know that they weren't happy. Something inside of them made them flip out when given the chance to live how God made them--loyal, playful, and active. It was like they knew all along that this was exactly how it should be. In cages, they looked like like personality-less lab animals; in the sunshine, their personalities emerged and they looked as beagle-ish as beagles can look.

Til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth is the line I kept thinking while watching that. When Christ appeared, it was as though we knew what we were supposed to be doing for the first time. So THIS is what it's about. The great confusion and madness and terror and pain are all part of the story, and the story is about Love.

Brett Dennen sings in one of his lovelier songs, "My soul has known a better life than this." I will stop talking about beagles soon but let me add this last thing about those beagles: their souls had known a better life than the one they led. And as soon as they experienced it, it was like they knew about it all along. Their souls had a memory of the lives they should have been living.

Our souls, too, have a memory of Love and how we are part of the Great Story. Tales of Good vs. Evil resonate with us because of this memory, as does falling in love, being a mother, giving to the needy, doing something heroic, eating a slice of really good bread. These moments all point back to the Love that formed us and dwells in our souls.

So I write my Christmas cards knowing that these snippets of heaven are moments of a life to come--a life full of figurative sunshine and grass. Or, in my case, neverending fall.

Zen and the Art of Pumpkin Pie Eating

2011-11-08T18:13:00.006-05:00

Dear Everyone Who Is Putting Christmas Decorations Up, and THAT DOES NOT EXCLUDE YOU, WHOLE FOODS: You are hurting my feelings.

We are only allowed to talk about fall and Thanksgiving at the most. Here is an example of an appropriate interaction this time of year, which in fact occured happened as I was typing via the text message:

Boyfriend: How many pumpkin pies should we have on Thanksgiving? One each?
Moi: Le duh, and one for each cat.

(I like to text in French.)

My homeboy Josh Ritter knows how to fall it up. I want this. Christmas is coming.

I know I have been mega neglecting this here blog, mostly due to this here blog. I sure have given you people enough new blogs to follow in the past few years (Kacie, I can only hope you deleted "Mari and Jesus" from your Reader), but I am dedicated to posting on this one every single day. Except Sundays. Similar to God, I need a rest. If you are not interested in men's fashion, nor Baltimore, it is not the blog for you. I suggest you read Feminist Ryan Gosling instead. Who would not be interested in a feminist Ryan Gosling? Nobody would not. That sentiment necessitated a double negative.

In October I went to Chicago. When I was not talking about myself ad nauseum to various loved ones, I did a lot of staring out of the El window, and feeling sorry for myself. One afternoon when I was riding past Roscoe Village on the bus, I got so nostalgic that I started crying. But then I realized I was singing out loud on the bus to Taylor Swift and it killed the mood a bit.

One of the best pieces of advice e'er bestowed on my head was Jon's reply to my question: "When it comes to my butt-crazy emotions, how do I just be zen about it?" Jon said in his Professorly Jon Way, "You say to yourself, 'Hm. That's a feeling. Now I gotta do a thing.'"

So, in the case of my visit to Chicago, whenever I'd start getting in a Monstrous Nostalgic Funk Fest for no reason, I'd think to myself, "Self, that's a feeling. Now I gotta eat a pie in a pumpkin."

Isn't it always the little things you miss about a place? Standing under the El tracks, for instance. Why on earth would I miss that strange activity? I was always worried about pigeons pooping on me. What a thing to miss.

I didn't really start loving fall until Chicago. When I was younger, up until college really, spring was my favorite. I still have a very special place in my heart for spring. I love Easter, I love rain, and flowers, and sunshine, and I cannot get enough of baby birds. It reminds me of that really beautiful scene in "The Secret Garden" when the garden starts blooming and a choir of angels or English girls starts singing and Mary finds herself, and if you know what I'm talking about, I love you.

Chicago made me love fall because I hated summer so much. Is that not a terrible reason to love a season? Sad but true. I was sweaty and upset during a midsommer El ride after my sophomore year, and I didn't understand why I was in such a funk. Joe and Jon, in an effort to quell my quiet sobs, started telling me how it was going to be "sweater weather" soon, and I did not know then that those two words would hereby officially change my life. We started talking about the things that would be happening to us soon and very soon: Cider! Leaves! Pumpkins! SWEATERS! ("Sweaters" was a very important word to me in 2006.)

Now how I love this quiet season, the one which prepares the earth for new life. The one who rips the ground apart to keep the little lives of trees and snails warm all the long dark winter. The one who gives you shiny days to roam pumpkin patches, grey days to reflect and shut up and write in your journal about how you need to become a more grace-full girlfriend, a more reliable friend, a more thoughtful Christian, a more passionate life-liver.

Thank you, Chicago, for giving me this love of mine: this season which teaches me so much about God and life, which illustrates both leaving and coming home, which reminds me that things change and things become better. People change and people become better.

I worry a lot that I'm not changing enough, I'm not growing enough. All I really want to do is become more and more of myself, but I worry that maybe my Chicago Self is still in Chicago eating pumpkins in pie or walking around Graceland Cemetery, or buying gourds at Gene's to put around my Lincoln Square room or even taking the Blue Line back to my West Town room wherein I felt the first chill of fall through my window last year and it meant that everything was about to change dramatically.

Then I come back to Baltimore and realize that my self is altogether very much here, in this place where I had always thought I'd live. Even when I was an itty-bitty, I used to tell people I wanted to live on the east coast. Well, that's how I remember it. Maybe I used to tell people I wanted to live in a vat of macaroni and cheese. But in the memory of my posh continental childhood, I wanted to live on the east coast. Dream: realized.

My hot pink iPod is still on Chicago time. I thought it would change by itself, but it's a pretty solid midwesterner. I smiled when I looked down to see that it displayed the proper time as I roamed around Chicago. It seemed fitting that one little item in my luggage wouldn't want to leave.

There is no Chicago Mari still eating pies in pumpkins in Chicago. I mean, when I'm visiting, that's one thing, but there is no Alternate Me there right now. It's probably a no-brainer to you, but it's a bit of a jarring thing to realize. When I walked down Michigan to see a few new stores (Top Shop! Magnolia Bakery! Man, that Prairie City has gotten swanky!), I was surprised I didn't know about them, that no one had alerted me, that my internal Chicago Self would betray my own memories. There is no Chicago Mari Life to jump into and take off where I left. There is no Chicago Mari keeping tabs on new bakeries on Michigan Ave. Oddly enough.

There is only the Baltimore Mari. Baltimore Mari, who lives in a neighborhood where Poe roameth (roamethed? What is the past tense of roameth? KJV Online Bible, help me out?), with shutters and wrought iron fences and lamp posts and statues of colonial-types on horses. Baltimore Mari, reunited with the ocean (though with a different name), who bikes on cobblestone streets (ow) and falls in love every day with a different building (she's a player).

Baltimore Mari walks through a neighborhood that can only be described as the Wrigleyville of the Chesapeake (pink polos and all), actually LOVES it, spots a man drinking scotch and reading The History of Love with his dog outside a pub with a clipper ship logo, under the most beautiful apartment window seen outside of Pinterest, and thinks "What could be more lovely than this moment?"

For real.

Baltimore Mari misses the Sarahs.

I heard once, in Philosophy class, or maybe it was just outside Philosophy class, that to live this life means to always be lacking something. This world is far from perfect, this body far from whole, this soul far from complete.

But lacking anything, I find, brings a whole new something into my life. The night is the absence of day, but is also the addition of mystery, silence, solitude, pensiveness. (Or a dance party, if you are that way inclined.)The absence of warmth and bounty is winter, but it too brings on its own set of blessings: snow, light, life-affirming chill. Those in mourning or going through break-ups know that the absence of a person can make them all the more present.

Chicago, I am just now seeing the ways in which you formed me. I didn't realize until I left you that so many of my revelations came about while walking on your urban beach, that your trains gave me the best excuse to devote 1.5 hrs a day to reading or listening to music or thinking thoughts through, that your fall was the first fall I truly adored--and would set the standard high for all falls to come.

Good thing Baltimore has the most beautiful 68-degree red-leafed chilled-sun fall this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

This Will Be Our Year: A Birthday Photo Journey

2011-09-28T22:22:00.002-04:00

Ever since I moved here, I have been planning my birthday. To refresh your memory, I moved here in mid-December. My birthday is in late September, for those of you who don't know how to work a calendar. Moral of the story: I have been planning my birthday for nine months. I knew I wanted to go to Woodberry, and hoped against hope I would know someone by now who would want to go with me. 9-month-old wish: granted!

I guess I was going for a sort of Margot Frank look? Feel free to note how my nail color matches my lip color. Thanks.

I tried to get a shot of my new watch in this one, and also the toilet paper roll.

I am obsessed with this picture. I want it tattooed on me. I think JPM looks like an old timey movie star!

Tiny biscuits

Cornbread in charming pan

This soup tasted like New England, according to those who know.

Gingham napkin. Le cute.

Scallops

Pork

I ordered the CMP and just now, upon looking at this picture, realized it had malt ice cream. No wonder it didn't taste like vanilla.

Yum.

It is pictures like this which make me realize I should never make this face.

Go shorty, it's my birthday!

My Draper boyfriend.

This beautiful place

Dear Woodberry Kitchen, be my home.

I am such a sucker for vignettes like this.

I bet you're glad I took more pictures of myself in a bathroom mirror!

I found this to be real quaint.

Bye Woodberry, you're the best!

And you tell me I am home

2011-09-27T22:17:00.002-04:00

I've had a creative shut-down the past couple months which seems to be lingering on along with the muggy weather and the mosquito community's extended vacay in Baltimore. But, work has settled down and the weather will too, and this weekend I will ride my bike through breezes and end up at a cafe that promises "Ultimate Cider," which I'm imagining is more or less the best thing that will ever happen to me.

Tomorrow begins my Quarter Life Crisis, and my dearly beloved bestowed upon me a bicycle for the occasion!

Wallet-sized photos are available upon request.

I haven't biked much since my last barista job in Chicago when I would ride down the middle of Lawrence many hours before light and people came out. It was so enjoyable having the city to myself that ungodly sacred hour, when the only audible sounds were my crackling chain and aging tires gliding on uneven concrete and over masses of leaves scattered into the street. (In typical Mari fashion I think of this specific time of my life with great fondness, even though I'm sure that I hated it.)

Biking in Baltimore is slightly different than the experience in Chicago for these two main reasons:

a) It is not flat

b) All the drivers are always drunk at all times

But, even with those challenges, I am happy as ten clams to explore the city in a new way, even if I am still a slowpoke and even the small hills make me feel like I am mostly dead. I had nearly forgotten how fun it is.

I went to San Francisco and took a lot of pictures, mostly of people, but also a few million of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If this girl had looked up from her phone, she could have scheduled two dates back-to-back.

This man gave me two donuts for the price of one. So I guess we're best friends now.

This woman!

Am I ever going to get over cropped pants? Unlikely.

I want this man's outfit.

I wish I had taken a better picture of this babe because she looked so amazing just sitting on a convertible in North Beach, being all Italian with her silk scarf and crazy shoes. I want to be her when I grow up.

This is a picture of someone who does not look like me when she rides a bike. By which I mean her mouth is not permanently agape.

Every house in San Francisco looked like a popsicle color. Even the kind of popsicle that is tan-colored.

If you told me that the picture below was taken in Seattle, I would say "No, it was taken in Tiburon." But I would also concede that it looks exactly like Seattle.

I look like a maniac in this picture, but it was a moment where I was really really happy about nothing, and not everybody has a picture of themselves going genuinely bonkers.

Bay windows have my heart.

My stance and seriousness here make me laugh. I think I was photographing a sign that said "We have noodles!"

Marin County, I am proud to have been born in you.

I think my hair looks really pretty here. Don't you?

The Bridge looks so elegant and graceful from far away, so beastly and terrifying up close.

Baltimore was warm the evening I returned, and not unpleasantly so. It felt more homey than anything else: dark, comfy, rickety, worn-in. I liked that feeling.

My cat is curled up with my modem right now, which I'll accept as his way of saying Happy Birthday.

Good night to you.

The September Issue

2011-09-07T18:01:00.005-04:00

I'm very happy to announce, though it was not entirely my decision, that fall is here (not officially, you Season Police, but if December can mean winter then September can mean fall, that's just Aristotelian logic for you, thanks college). To celebrate, I am headed off to San Francisco next week and will of course take a lot of pictures of espresso cups and other charming things for you, but now is the time for a fashion report.

This year, something new and very exciting was brought to my attention. That thing was the OPI Muppets Nail Polish Collection for Holiday 2011. Yet another thing was British fashion designer Margaret Howell, whom I hereby proclaim the Heroine of Loveliness. I found her fall designs on some hip blog written by someone who wears stripes all day and bikes around Brooklyn and doesn't seem to have a job (?), and I almost choked on my Pirate's Booty. I'm in lurve!

Her collection is menswear-influenced (heavy, clunky, exquisitely-tailored), but the silhouettes are darling and the fabrics and colors are quite feminine. That is, tomboy feminine, which is the new regular feminine as far as the internet is concerned these days.

Now as I struggle to still my beating heart I'm going to talk about my favorite types of tomboys, and Margaret Howell covers them all!

The Coco Chanel: Tomboys look particularly glamorous and Chanel-like if they have a long flowy mane of wavy locks. I have been growing my hair out for 8 months and it turns out that your hair doesn't automatically look shiny and curly and beautiful just because it's longer, so I spend a lot of time whining about how my hair is boring and basically a dud. My boyfriend loves hearing me complain about my hair!!

The good news is, everyone can add a hat to her head and instantly look like Blossom! Err...Coco.

I love to wear hats, almost as much as I love making expressions that convey annoyance and/or hatred.

This girl shares my love for both things.

The Katharine Hepburn: This is clearly all about the pants involved. Wide-leg slacks say "Hello world, I'm my own woman! I am also headstrong!"

My grandma models for us an adorable, casual take on The KH. She is the one on the right below, wearing floofy pants with heeled Oxfords and a plain shirt jazzed up with a fetching scarf. Brilliant!

I'm not sure why this picture turned out so crazy. What I am sure about is that I love my new denim trousers. They are wide and comfortable and make me feel like I'm a feisty dame whose nickname is something really spunky like Scooter or Zippy, or Flipper.

The Vassar Student: This one is rather difficult to pull off because it walks a fine line between schoolgirl (yeesh) and equestrian (guh). When done well, the look is strong, ambitious, and interesting.

And the boys like it too!

Loafers, belts, plaid, and wool are the key ingredients.

My only contribution to incorporating this style into my wardrobe are these new suede color-blocked loafers that I want to frame and mount above my mantle, when I'm not wearing them with trouser socks and my beloved corduroy skirt. They also look really good under fluorescent light in the foreground of office carpet, I thought.

A lot of people mess up this whole style by adding a tie.

If you want a tie-like accessory but you don't want to look like an idiot, I recommend a long scarf tied in a knot. Same effect but you can keep your self-respect!

The Cluttered Tomboy: This is the one that effortlessly mixes fabrics and patterns (Official Fall Patterns: hounds tooth, plaid, herringbone, and corduroy) to create an autumnal layered look that says "I am creative, and also cozy!"

It is basically the outfit version of the Weasley Burrow.

I feel most myself in cluttered outfits, which may explain why the entire contents of my closet fell on my cat yesterday as I tried to stuff a new plaid shirt into the middle of it.

This little girl is the ultimate Cluttered Tomboy (compliment). I tried to dress like her the other day and ended up looking like a suburban housewife newsboy. I have no regrets.

This girl also nails it. Except that big glasses should probably stop existing now.

The Tough Girl: This outfit tells the world that you are hardworking, unapologetic, and, in the case below, a factory worker.

My tough Texan grandma knows that toughness is a state of mind.

I know this woman below has a name but I forgot what it is. She is dressed in another category of Tough Girl Tomboy which is called Seattle in 1992 Tomboy. I'm secretly hoping this is stylish only because it is not beneath me to wear sweatshirts tied around my waist that I've had since elementary school.

The Men's Warehouse: If you really want to go all out Tomboy, you are allowed to wear some men's clothing. You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.

This coat and hat combo reminds me of my stylish dad, but the cropped pants add a crisp, modern, womanly touch. GEEZ could someone just for once in my life describe one of my outfits as "crisp, modern, and womanly?" And throw in an ice cream sandwich??

Janie Cai can wear a tie and manage to look like a grown-up person with original thoughts; I think it's because the rest of her outfits are so obviously mature, and also unique? I don't know you guys, all I know is that the blazer below reminds me of sorbet and now I want pie. It makes sense to me.

Here's Grandma Andrew again; she shows that masculine pieces can toughen up a ladylike flowered dress like nobody's business.

The 1998 Yuppie: When I saw this outfit below, I OBVIOUSLY had only one thought...

Kathleen Kelly, duh. During her reign as America's Cutie Wooty, Meg Ryan and her concert of characters perfected the 90s yuppie (accessories: Starbucks cappucino with chocolate shavings, black Macintosh laptop) along with the adorable pleated trousers (you didn't think those three words went together, did you!) and turtleneck combo which Tom Hanks couldn't help but go gaga over.

EmersonMade gives us similar designs, but updated for those of us who have traded our black Macintoshes for iPads! Or those of us who have traded our desktops for 6-year-old Dell laptops that can't function while the battery's in it!

You will fit right in at the farmers market with that giant flower! By which I mean you will fit in among the bouquets of flowers.

Okay well now you're all set to dress like my grandma this fall!

Adventures in Mosaics

2011-08-11T23:38:00.009-04:00

And it came to pass in the town of Baltimore that I was laboring both day and night, verily working like an elf to place exchange students around the country before their schools start. Believe you me it is a very stressful job in this season, and let me just go ahead and say it: Pakistan is not the easiest country to work with.

Yesterday I began crying at my desk around noon, and frankly couldn't stop even after leaving my office, upon which I promptly got spat on by the man who sits outside my office building and spits on people. As if I didn't have enough to worry about.

But lo, a text message from my boss appeared in the night, reluctantly delivering the blessed news that I would be granted one day off "so that [I] won't die." (Her words, though she was probably paraphrasing me.) (I can be a little dramatic sometimes.)

So today I woke up at the luxurious hour of eight, took a long shower complete with a European hair conditioning treatment and I actually remembered to wash my face for once, and I bought myself some French thing for breakfast which I elegantly gobbled as I waited for the bus.

The bus and I traveled to the Baltimore I love best. Not the Inner Harbor, the neighborhood of my workplace and Baltimore's answer to Navy Pier--not that anyone asked the question.

But the other side of the Harbor, the Harbor I love so well. The one with the cranes which look like dinosaurs, the cargo ships, the docks, and the Domino Sugars plant. It is hardly my secret, but it feels like mine. Maybe because it looks like Seattle.

Except more historical.

I paid a visit to the neighborhood art museum.

I stopped to consider the mosaic pieces, ceramic squirrels and all. If there is one type of art I love, it's mosaics. The best art, I think, is art that communicates a process--not a conclusion.

Good art speaks about the journey home: the joy, suffering, and banality of it all.

Hey what's up guys it's me Mari

Good art compels us to pursue life, to be more engaged in the world around us.

Art compels me to do ballet in front of a bus

I do not claim to know one thing about prayer, but when I pray, I want it to feel the way it feels when I am experiencing art, especially music--the most immediate form of art. When I am listening to music, I am more aware of everything around me. I feel more deeply, I think more deeply. My memory is sparked, my mind is alert, my soul is engaged. If prayer is about feeling loved and returning love, I'd imagine it feels a lot like listening to music.

There are people who say they are in love with someone else because "When I'm with him, nothing else matters." --The Bachelorette

But if you're truly in love, shouldn't everything matter one million times more? This is how I feel about music, the way I feel about prayer. In experiencing God, experiencing art, I should not want to shut off the world, but go into it, be a part of it, be in love with it.

Just like good art, prayer communicates a process--not a conclusion. Prayer is field notes on the journey home.

Cowboy spotting at the art museum.

The rat is Baltimore's mascot. Hey, at least it's not a cockroach!

I used to think prayer had to begin with a thesis statement, that I really had to know where I was going with it before I could start. I thought there had to be certainty about these things. But that's before I learned that certainty is the opposite of faith, and that you were allowed to listen to music and call it prayer. That's not even some New Age thing I made up; it's official theology.

I want this.

Dr. Snell had a sign on his office door with a quote from Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan: "Be attentive! Be intelligent! Be reasonable! Be responsible! Be in love (with God)!"

I think about this sign a lot. What does it mean to be in love with God? Does it mean being separate from the world, fixed only on heavenly things such as clouds or cherubs? Does it mean befriending the guy who spits on people?

For me, being in love with God means being very much a part of the world, and for me the world means the city. I feel in love with God on East Baltimore Street, even among the spitters and the men outside The Hustler Club. I feel in love with God in Istanbul, in Manhattan. I do not feel in love with God in the suburbs, in nice quiet places where nice quiet people go about their nice quiet lives.

I feel in love with God in the midst of a confusing journey, not a satisfied ending. In the suburbs, in nice places, things are complete, whole, finished. In the rush of the city, things are undone, in progress, yet to be discovered. I'm sure some people can be in love with God in quiet spaces, in meadows for example, but I am not one of them. I have more than a few complaints about the Bible, but one of the most pressing is that there is no psalm about finding God in the city. They're all about valleys and mountains and sheep fields. Snore.

If I can get through the rest of this summer with Baltimore, we'll be in business. These temperatures have been something else, and I took it as a personal offense that it's 65 in Chicago today. Whereas in this swampland I have to eat half a pint of ice cream daily just to recover from my commute home, and today I took two showers which is a world record.

If the opposite of being in love is boredom, then I can truthfully say I am much farther on the side of in love with Baltimore than I am the dreaded, sinful opposite. I can say this much about my new city: Never, ever will it leave me twitchy and glassy-eyed. Even if I am grumbling and tired, there is always something here worth being excited about. Baltimore is always offering at least one thing for my delight that I can't possibly turn down.

Like a dapper gent.

Or the elaborate tops of buildings in Mt. Vernon Square.

Or a dog loving life in a fountain.

A shady spot for reading, or snacking on French pastries.

A horse walking down the street.

The house that got lost on its way to New Orleans.

A cheerful bike.

The perfect window.

My street.

My apartment building.

As much as I moan and groan about the adventures which involve Professional Spitters and tropical conditions, one is never in need of adventure in this place. And adventure is plenty enough to keep me in love. You can have several varieties of adventure in Baltimore on any given day, some involving rats and some not involving rats. Some even involving beet ice cream. I mean really. Who needs temperate weather and clean water when there is beet ice cream to be had??

(You may think I'm being sarcastic but I'm not. Beet ice cream can right many wrongs in this world.)

More than anything else, I lust for adventure. I taunt myself with photos of faraway lands, exotic foods, new cities. To one like me, being in love is being on an adventure, being on a journey. I'm not dumb enough to believe that journeys are always exciting and death-defying; I know a lot of times they are mundane and disappointing. If we're going to call being a Christian an adventure, and let's just go there because this is my blog and you know what you're getting yourself into by reading it, then the whole of Ordinary Time (generally, the summer months before Advent begins) is banal as all get out and you are just waiting for Mary to get knocked up by the Holy Spirit already so we can blast the organ and bust open the incense and start singing the litany.

Are you still with me?

I am in love with a person who is an adventure in and of himself; he contains multitudes the likes of which this world may never entirely know, but that I am anxious to begin to uncover for myself. It is easy to be in love with him because he is exciting like a whole city, an epic journey. He is not safe, but he is good.

And I am reminding myself to be in love with a God who will not leave me bored if I keep myself engaged in the world. Which is very easy to do, if your immediate world is spitting on you (can you even get over that story? I clearly cannot), but also if the world is covering you in warm summer sun devoid of humidity. Which I hope will happen tomorrow because I'm going to be wearing a silk dress. It's Restaurant Week, you guys, and I've got a hot date! And it's going to be literally hot!

According to me, the best part of August is that it's almost September. So, things are looking up. In September I will not be working 25 hours a day, and I will be showering less frequently. I hope to return back to my usual blogging rate of one Milo Ventimiglia reference a fortnight and a special fall fashion report from your trusted correspondent, who has become less trusted lately as she has been dressing like a 9-year-old Shania Twain this summer but still knows how to read The Sartorialist so she knows what's up. And now refers to herself in third person apparently.

Good night!

Nightly News from Your Chesapeake Correspondent

2011-07-10T23:43:00.006-04:00

Here are some updates about my life so you can sleep at night:

1. New skills: I'm always trying to come up with some new hobby, but my problem is that I really hate most hobbies. By which I mean I hate knitting, by which I mean I am terrible at it and it makes me cry. It seems like something I should want to do (does it?), but in actuality I only want to knit to prove how charming and whimsical my life is and my true self would prefer to buy overpriced scarves at Anthropologie and call it a day.

So I've been thinking about developing a new skill that my heart of hearts wants to possess--something I actually admire in people and something that would have meaningful impact on my life, and not make me cry. I've concluded that this skill is storytelling.

Even though interesting and funny and bizarre things are constantly happening to me, I am not a great storyteller. I think it's because I'm not Irish. Also my goals seem a bit off. As it stands now, my hope is that my personal stories convey three things to people:
a) Mari Andrew is extremely intelligent
b) Mari Andrew is extremely attractive
c) Mari Andrew is extremely hilarious

I think I'm approaching it from the wrong angle.

I find that when I'm telling a story and I can tell that people are getting bored or not paying attention, I start making things up. I'd prefer not to tell lies to my friends in an effort to hold their attention and make them think I'm smart and funny. I want to tell good stories because I love talking about myself of course, but I also think it is an important social art (in the same category as a good handshake, good vocabulary, and the understanding that it is not always appropriate to chew gum), and it is important that my friends find me amusing so they aren't embarrassed to bring me to parties.

I want to tell stories like your Irish grandfather. But how? Where do I begin? A book? A class? If anyone has good beginner's tips, let me know. For now, I'm going to conduct a major reserach study project in which I listen to Moth podcasts, StoryCorps, and Josh Ritter songs and unearth their secrets.

2. On belonging: I re-read this post of mine the other night for no reason at all except that sometimes I like to read posts from 2008 so I can make fun of my various horrible hair situations because I am a tortured soul who delights in the tragedy of my own dramatic life, and also remember that moving is always strange and difficult and wonderful, no matter where you go. After four major moves (and more than a dozen interurban moves) in my day, I am more convinced than ever of this fact: Nothing happens here that doesn't happen there. That's an Avett Brothers quote, which means I don't even need to defend it because if you can't trust Seth Avett then who in God's green earth can you trust, but I'm going to anyway.

East coasters are not more high-strung. West coasters are not more laid back. Midwesterners are not nicer, or more boring--depending on your chosen stereotype. There are bad waiters, hospitable strangers, mean bus drivers, kind cashiers, good friend groups, bad friend groups, bigots, crazy people, anarchists, idiots, and hippie-dippies everywhere.

I cannot tell you one difference between the personalities of Seattlites, Chicagoans, Florentines, Santiaguinos, or Baltimoreans. Not because I'm not an avid people watcher--observation is my favorite activity (besides reading nail polish blogs). But because I have belonged to these groups of people--I identify with all of them, almost equally.

I can relate to my own self from a couple years ago, when I spoke of belonging as possessing. Belonging to Baltimore's people involves having Baltimore friends. Belonging to Baltimore's city landscape involves having home, an herb garden, a mailbox with your crooked name plate on it. Belonging to Baltimore's neighborhoods involves having favorite little corners and favorite little sights: the green gable on top of the triangular house, the crack between red wooden door and red brick wall which allows a generous view of a backyard that would look appropriate in Guatemala. The guy who is always, always smoking outside the Middle Eastern pizza restaurant. The jolly businessman who so purposefully rides a segway up and down Charles Street.

The more I possess, the more I belong. I know that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that someone who does yoga should say, but taking ownership of things creates some sort of intimacy of mutual belonging. Plus, there are a lot of things I say that someone who does yoga shouldn't say. Like GET ME MORE FUN SIZE CANDY BARS NOW OR YOU'RE DEAD, for example.

3. Food: You know what is delicious? Chocolate chip cookies made with graham flour. You know how I know this? I am in love with a man who makes them. Yes. I love chocolate chip cookies. He loves to make chocolate chip cookies. In Science, we call this a symbiotic relationship. This is an educational blog.

(This man also makes the most green broccoli soup, fragrant and filling coconut curry, spectacular cornbread pancakes, and a mean batch of fig newtons. In Math, we call this 2 good 2 be true.)

There are a few restaurants in Baltimore I have been stalking for over a year, but I've been too busy on Saturdays nights, singing The Circle of Life with my kitten as Simba and googling "Pippa Middleton's Wimbledon Outfit," to go out and eat at them. But I am proud to announce I have been eating more Indian food than I ever have (paneer!), and accompanying my dining partner to suburban dim sum restaurants (pork buns!). My dining partner knows even more about Asian food than the great Yours Truly, in fact his cat is named after a Korean dumpling, and I guess Food Update is going to be all about my boyfriend!

4. Youth Pastor: I forgot to tell you this rather important fact about myself: I am a youth pastor now. What? I know, that's what I said. Many of you may think it sounds normal because I'm the most religious person you've ever met in your life, and you wish I would talk about God for a living so I can stop embarrassing myself (or yourself) by yapping on and on about it on my blog and in your ears. Or, you think it sounds normal because I act like a 13-year-old girl so it would make sense that I would befriend them for a living. Or maybe you are thinking both of these things. Or maybe you have fallen asleep while reading this blog and you're now having nightmares about segways.

Anyway, in my own brain, it seems like a surprising career move for me because the most mysterious things in life (besides the appeal of Dr. Who) are God and teenagers. And now I'm going to be responsible for talking to teenagers about God. At first I thought that this entailed finding theological undertones in Justin Bieber songs. Then I tried to talk to one of the junior high girls about Justin Bieber and she told me that she didn't like Justin and preferred jazz. Major terrible disappointment.

(This is the part where I told her that I didn't like him much either. Now you are thinking: How could I lie to my own youth group student?! I'll pay for this on Judgment Day, don't worry.)

Now I am not so sure what it will entail. BUT, I am excited. I am honored. I am grateful beyond language for the trust that my dear priests put in me, for their encouragement to take risks. It will be an adventure, is all I can suppose about it. And also I can say it is a good thing I am not above trying to fit in with 13-year-old girls by hiding my love for Justin Bieber.

5.New Glasses: Due to an unfortunate dancing accident, I had to get new glasses last week. Someone told me I look like Don Draper in them. I really think this is the best compliment you could give someone, even if that someone is not a man.

Good night!

Letter to Philadelphia

2011-07-05T08:06:00.001-04:00

Dear Philadelphia,

Do you remember when I almost moved to you?

Although first considering Seattle, Portland (Maine), Providence, New York, and Guyana, I ultimately narrowed it down to You, San Francisco, and Baltimore. You were the second runner up, after San Francisco.

I told Sarah that you were too similar to Chicago. I didn't remember this until Saturday when I gave you the same review I first gave Chicago: It's like a more manageable New York. (Apparently this is one of my favorite compliments to give a city.)

Philadelphia, this weekend you reminded me how beautiful you are, you with your buildings that look like clouds and your train stations that look like Ayn Rand books. I'm glad to see you are well.

How am I? Life here in Baltimore has been a solid good. The wonderfuls and the terribles even out to an average good score, a score I am thankful to give. I am brought to the heights of beauty on a daily basis. I am often brought to lows I wasn't expecting. Just banal stuff really--the overwhelming number of steps it takes to make a true blue new friend, the stressful tension between newness and monotony. An unkind word or a peak in heat will drive me to drink (Earl Grey, or Prosecco on a particularly tough day) while watching a comfort-movie to the effect of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I am still as sensitive as ever as I struggle to deepen and expand my roots into Baltimore's hardened ground. Send me a harrow, if you think of it.

I easily become homesick, but it's usually for a place I can't identify. As we walked through your bustling Reading Market, I was ready to board the next plane to Seattle to spend a crumpet-filled bread-stuffed fish-slathered raspberry-soaked day at Pike Place. But it is rare when I can pinpoint nostalgia so specifically.

It is difficult for me to appreciate a new experience for what it is rather than for what it is not. I compare new friends to old friends, new job to old job, Reading Market to Pike Place Market.

I am working on valuing tiny moments of beauty and grace, opportunities to grow, and the spaces in between comparisons, fears, and doubts. These are the spaces where learning and self-discovery occur, and friendships form.

Are you sick of all these mixed metaphors? Let's talk more about you, Philadelphia.

Your food, for example. You had me at squidgy fennel seed pretzels, but then you had to show off your sleek summer squash.

Your (special) baklava, music to my eyes.

Your abundance of fresh flours.

Not to mention your Chinatown.

Your overstuffed festivals, your celebratory bunting, your people with their enigmatic languages who sound like members of an ancient meticulous society who have studied and perfected vowels over millenia so that our own English syllables sound hopelessly clunky and gauche.

Your brick buildings which retain both heat and tradition, covered in paint and multilingual awning.

Your ambrosial restaurants--their arresting scents of duck and bean paste, their more subtle and mysterious aromas of oolong and broth.

The expressions of your citizens: pensive, skeptical, joyful, observant.

Your food again! Your cognac-colored handmade noodles drenched in sweet pork sauce care-fully seasoned with crisp green onions; your beef soup with its surprising spice and supple herb arrangements on top, a small green garden refreshing an antique recipe.

Philadelphia, I must admit that I became a bit wistful while sitting in one of your elegant parks. It was difficult not to make comparisons between flashy, stylish You, and creaky, well-worn Baltimore.

Ever since Sugar wrote about ghost ships and sister lives, I have been wondering about the thousands of ghost ships launched by my move. I don't obsess over these lives, but I do think about them from time to time, enough that I'd like to send a postcard out to sea once in a while.

In fact, some day I would like to check in on these lives, mourn them briefly, kiss the tops of their heads and wish them well, then contentedly return to my true life and enjoy all of it in all its messy, imperfect, surprising splendor.

In my head, of course, my sister-life in Philadelphia involves sitting outside reading a posh book, drinking a posh cappucino, and working for a posh cookbook publishing company. I think I own a dog.

My San Francisco sister-life is slightly less ideal: I am a barista once again, paying thousands of dollars to rent a large broom closet, but I do enjoy my walks around Telegraph Hill (my legs are looking shapelier than ever).

Oh, glorified assumption.

I covet the ability to visit a city without constantly wondering what it would be like to live there (it's a lot of mental work!). Unless, of course, the city is...Tampa.

Philadelphia, you make it very easy to imagine a life with you.

Even so, Philadelphia--even with your fountain shoppes where artist-friends met in Florence scoop me up the creamiest homemade peach ice cream--I do not wish you over Baltimore.

In fact, the thought of how quickly I might have moved someplace else gives me the feeling that I might be sick.

Philadelphia, you will always be beautiful to me. I cherish my memories of you and I hope to return soon and very soon.

But let's make one thing clear: my heart belongs in Baltimore.

It was a little melancholy to leave you.

But it was lovely to return home.

It was the first time I returned home to Baltimore from another place. It felt like a relief, which I think is what returning home is meant to feel like. Even so, I'm glad I'm not too far from you, Philadelphia. Your food and your architecture will lure me away from my own favorite food (the Indian buffet, the Vietnamese living room/restaurant, the red chard from the market) and architecture (the mansion-garden down the street, our own art deco tower, the stately post office). But you will not be able to keep me away for too long.

Truly,

Mari

Ar Larv Nar Yark

2011-06-29T09:09:00.001-04:00

One of the best things about living on the east coast is the security that I'm always within a brief bus or train ride of a couple other spectacular cities, and just a couple hours from my favorite of all cities.

I was on Long Island for business early this week, supervising 800 teenagers who were heading back to their respective countries after a year in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, or something to that effect.
My duties were:
-Wake up at 3am. Wait for buses to arrive. Direct sleepy Scandinavians to the Rest Area. Direct my sleepy self to the cafeteria to take a secret nap behind the trash bins.
-Supervise the Rest Area. Make sure children are not making out with each other. We don't need any half-Austrian half-Swedish babies on our watch.
-Keep track of a tall gentleman named Jens
-Make sure students do not steal extra pasta salad. Steal pasta salad for myself.
-Keep the one Mexican girl company as she waits for her ride. Ana told me that she didn't hate living in the suburbs of Cleveland this year (to my surprise), and that she hailed from the "Joo-ca-tan" Peninsula. (Were I Alvy Singer I may have accused her of anti-semitisim, but I thought her accent was charming.)
-Wait for buses to leave. Watch Italian children hug each other and cry for for five minutes per person. Begin loading buses an hour early for this purpose.
-Cry on my own bus home, because it turns out they rented a walk-in freezer to bring us back to Baltimore

My new friend Joseph was kind enough to make some educational videos for those of us who are not familiar with his home city.

Here is Joseph speaking in a Long Island accent:

Here is Joseph giving us the Penn Station intercom experience:

You're welcome.

Heralding a summer's early sway, and other stories

2011-06-19T23:00:00.002-04:00

June is shaping out to be a pretty fantastic month. So far it has involved M. Ward and some band whose lead singer sounds like Neil Young opening for Bright Eyes, a very entertaining Woody Allen movie, and one night when I decided it would be a great idea to order six books, a cheese board in the shape of Maryland, and a sparkly pair of socks, which should all be arriving soon. Good to know that my ideal weekend activities in 2011 are the exact same as they were in 2003. (Also I have the exact same haircut.) Add to June's List of Good Qualities: Kristina is visiting me this week and putting you all to shame since she also visited me in Chile. One million points for Kristina!

The only trash talking I have for June is that it was humid, and that I couldn't sleep very well most nights because I was too busy having pretend conversations in my head or listening to Ke$ha via my neighbor who has no concept of being quiet in the middle of the night.

You don't need me to convince you that transitions are difficult, and this one is no exception. But strange and wonderful surprises are everywhere to be found, and my heightened sensitivity as a newcomer to this coast have made them all the more delightful.

Like this chubby old train in the middle of a city forest:

Last week, I was trying to encourage one of my nearest and dearest by recounting to her a recent anecdote from the my own life. She replied yeah okay, but my story was a fairy tale, and therefore is unusual and too good to be true. Since then, I have been thinking about fairy tales and the fact of the matter is that most of them are in fact too good not to be true. But what gives fantastical stories power and meaning in our lives isn't their factuality, but the world they evoke--much truer than we habitually allow ourselves to believe.

Fairy tales have a reputation for being all dreams and fluff, created out of wishful thinking for an idyllic world so different from our harsher, darker one. But I am inclined not to agree with this, and the more I read of Buechner and Tolkein and Lewis, the more firmly I take my stance.

Fairy tales begin in ordinary places: a farmhouse in Kansas, the maid's quarters in a dank cellar, a toy shop. Like anyone in the world, the protagonist wants something: the girl, a heart, the way back home. It is no easy journey to attain these prizes, but it is never unclear how badly our hero wants them. Characters always have to enter a world where evil is caricatured so that mythical creatures seem every bit as real and frightening as the dangers of our own world. Characters long for familiarity because their ordinary starting places seem simple and luxurious--wonderful even--in contrast to these ambiguous dark fantasy lands where good and evil are not easily recognizable.

Even the darkest worlds portrayed in stories cast light on the beauty we know must exist. The witch about to be burned at the stake in The Seventh Seal asks the knight why he wants to meet the devil. The knight replies, "I want to ask him about God. He, if anyone, must know." It would seem that the mysterious, frightening woods in all their murky terror know much more about the power of light than fields of daisies who bask in it all day.

Our obsession with darkness hints at our longing for the light, and makes our stories that much more compelling to read.

I think fairy tales get the reputation for being light and sweet and perfect because they nearly always conclude and they lived happily ever after. But what did it take to get to that happiness? A great deal of sorrow, fear, insecurity, and bravery. The endings are only powerful and poignant because of the tears and ache which brought them to a final place of joy.

And this joy rarely comes because the hero got what he wanted, but because he found out who he was and what he meant. After what seems like years of searching for the Wizard who will make him whole, the lion finds out that he had shown more bravery than any of his friends along the Yellow Brick Road. The Ugly Duckling is revealed to be a beautiful swan, the beautiful queen is revealed to be a wicked witch. Rather than a transformation where creatures change into what they hope to be, the happy ending simply reveals what they truly are.

"You know that what you believe is a fairy tale," said a pseudo-poet to me while drinking espresso-dark beer. I took reactionary offense to his claim, but upon further reflection, he had a good point. The fairy tale which has had the largest impact on my life starts in the most ordinary of all places--a Palestinian stable on a not-so-silent night. Not too far away, danger lurks. Thousands of babies are being murdered as their mothers weep together in desperate unity. The teenagers who escaped with their own baby keep him in a feeding trough and struggle to entertain the surprise guests from out-of-town.

The world of this fairy tale is as mysterious and strange as any other. Evil doesn't always look so bad, and Good looks like a man who yells at his mom, gets irritated with friends, and gets tipsy at dinner parties. This man doesn't tell you a doctrine; he tells you stories. He delivers un-funny punchlines but doesn't bother clarifying them because he has the social skills not to explain his own jokes. He knows betrayal, heartache, and loneliness. He fails to save the life of one of his best friends. He is Love Incarnate, but you'd never know it from the way townsfolk react to this news. "That's our Messiah? I mean, look at him." Tall tan Swedish body-builder he ain't. People don't expect a savior to look and act like a total weirdo.

In one of my favorite fantasy stories, Evil looks like a sexy queen, and Good looks like he's about to rip you to shreds. Lucy asks, "Is he safe?"
"Of course he isn't safe," answers Mr. Beaver. "But he is good."

Our fairy tale continues. We the protagonists want to know the worth of our soul, we want to know who we are, and we want to know we are loved. Like other characters who become their true selves as soon as they know they are loved (Cinderella, The Beast, The Frog, Phil Connors in Groundhog Day), we can only know these things through a relationship. Our relationship happens to be with the Creator of the Universe.

At the end of The Wizard of Oz, our four characters are disappointed to find that the powerful sorcerer they thought had all the answers was nothing but a wrinkly old man from Nebraska. Like the Palestinian townsfolk, they are dismayed by the looks of their savior. Upset that he has let them down, the Wizard gives the Scarecrow a brain-shaped sack of pins, the Tinman a sawdust heart, and the Lion a placebo potion of courage. The characters don't realize they possess these qualities until they are told that they have them. These tokens, in all their obvious powerlessness, reveal to the characters their true and nascent identities.

There is tragedy in these tokens, but only because we know the story that came before--the heartache, longing, insecurity, and fear.

Tragedy soaks our own communion bread, because we know the sacrifice it symbolizes and the grief that imbues our thankfulness. This bread is a poignant token of what we already know to be true--that we are loved. When one offers one's full self for the sake of love, this is when transformation happens.

The Lion was always brave, the Tinman always sincere, the Scarecrow always strategic and wise. But until they entered into community, until they formed relationships, until they were told who they were and that they were loved, they had no idea of what they, in fact, already possessed.

Christians who treat God like their fairy godmother are just asking for trouble. Communion won't get you the girl, a heart, the way back home. Seeking the Savior and expecting to find a hunky genie who will make you rich and Brad Pitt's girlfriend will get you nowhere. But seeking communion, our own token, will remind you of who you are and that you are loved. It is a reminder of what we have always had--the love of our Creator.

Mumford and Sons (back to them) sing Love: it will not betray, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free, be more like the man you were made to be. There is a design, an alignment, a cry of my heart to see the beauty of love as it was made to be.

I am not an expert on Love, as Marcus Mumford is, but fairy tales, Pixar movies, and the good-evil meta-narrative that permeates the world, teach me that love will not change me into what I wish I could be, nor will it grant me a wish I believe will make me happy. The beauty of love as it was made to be is the beauty of knowing who you are created to be, who you already are.

The more I give and receive love, the more I reveal my true self and the true self of others. It is a difficult thing to do, and would be much easier to eat snacks all day. This world with its murky forests and confusing creatures is magical and horrible and glorious and tragic, but I can guarantee you the ending of our story: love wins.

Frederick Buechner (back to him) writes, For all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name.

"Oh na na, what's my name?" asks Rihanna in the song What's my Name? I think we all want to know the answer to this question. I think we all want to know who we are, what we're meant for, why we're here, and what we mean. God never gives us this answer; instead he gives us a story. It's a story that sounds a lot like a fairy tale. And if a fairy tale is what I believe in, so be it, because the story is exciting enough to keep me reading on.

In other news, Baltimore is a secretly beautiful place, you guys.

Things to Like About This Weather For People Who Don't Like This Weather

2011-06-04T14:30:00.011-04:00

Well everyone, it seems that summer is pretty much here. Time flies! Has it really been a year since the release of "California Gurls" by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg? Has it really been six months since I broke my glasses at my goodbye party? Apparently so. Guess it's safe to say I can finally stop asking people how their holidays were.

The return of a season is always a really good time for me to change my mind about things. Remember how I liked Glee, then hated it, then started liking it again, then started telling everyone that it's a racist show, then started loving it? Now I am back to disliking it. Remember how I was so anti-baby-corn for a while? Now I'm on board. Remember how I all but vowed never ever to try hot yoga in my entire life? Guess who went to hot yoga last week and didn't even faint once! I feel like a new woman!

One of the things I'm trying to change my mind about is my attitude toward summer. I need to get over this, you guys. Just because I don't enjoy feeling like I'm trapped in the flaming tombs and boiling blood-rivers in the 6th Circle of Hell doesn't mean I need to go around huffing and puffing about it all the time.

In fact, I'm devoting this afternoon's post to talking about things to like about this weather for People Who Don't Like This Weather. (Not pictured: whiskey sours, bonfires, bluegrass, watermelon, and standing in front of the air conditioning until you are confident that your brain has solidified back into its intended shape from a warm heap of tapioca pudding.) The list begins:

1. Gardens: In my perfect life, summer feels like soil between my toes and tastes like the peppery finish of fresh-picked arugula on my tongue. It looks like giant primordial cabbages that resemble stegosaurus snacks, and match my shoes. It smells like young beet leaves and dark wild strawberries which are so bright they look poisonous. Do I sound like a voice-over for a Pure Michigan commercial? If so, my work here is done.

2. Seasonally-appropriate footwear: When you're wearing your new striped Cuban Cigar Box tennis shoes which make your feet look even bigger than they already are but they're Italian and canvas and summery so WHO EVEN CARES, no one will have to know that your true self would rather be buried six feet under blankets with a slice of apple pie and a linen-bound book with a hound at your feet. People will assume that you just got back from the Riviera where you were wearing a lot of breezy white dresses and floppy sunhats and hanging out with your best friend Pippa Middleton.

There is also the winning bare-legs-and-flats combo.

3. Pretty hair: Seeing all these summery hairstyles about town makes me excited to grow mine out! Look at all the fun you can have...

If you went to Mills College and wrote your Latin American Studies thesis on Indigenous Women and Governance in Guatemala, you can wear stylish hats or scarves to sweep back your choppy long bob.

If you go to New York on the weekends to ride your Electra Amsterdam Classic around Echo Park in search of the perfect espresso, you can wear your hair in two messy chic buns inspired by 18th-century Scandinavian princesses.

If you are an art teacher at a middle-class private school in Canton who misses the existence of Domino Magazine but will happily read Entertainment Weekly in the meantime, you can pull your highlighted wavy hair back with Ann Taylor Loft sunglasses to show off your cute bright earrings.

If you just moved to Baltimore from Bellingham, Washington, and now you live in Mt. Washington where you decorated your apartment with tapestries you got in Andhra Pradesh and photos of your years in Cape Verde with the Peace Corps, you can let your hair get long and flowy and dance while drinking cheap beer until you run into your friend in the middle of the street.

If you attend Mad Men parties at your friend's condo with the exposed brick and mid-century furniture, host a documentary club at your own apartment, and you went to see Sufjan Stevens at Carnegie Hall last year, you can wear your hair back in a loose chignon which you learned how to do on a design blog while you listen to your boyfriend talk about Kierkegaard with his fellow non-profit arts foundation co-workers.

There is something for everyone!

4. Stripes: You cannot be a red-blooded God-fearing American woman and not harbor a secret desire to be a Parisian baker. But most of us can't be a Parisian baker, so we wear stripes to make up for it. And Summer is the most stripe-friendly season!

(The one-toe-up stance is optional, but encouraged for optimum experience.)

5. Itty-bitties: Summer is also the time when we remember that children exist!

Oh and stately dogs that look like they belong in an Edward Hopper field.

6. Deliciousness: Hard cider for picnics and Vietnamese food to follow.

Okay summer, you're on my good side.

Last and least, in case you haven't had enough self-indulgence from me lately, here is a video of me talking about things I really love! Unclear as to why I: Referenced Marilyn Manson, talked about a moisturizing spray for 20% of the time, broke my own favorite grammar rule (less/fewer), and didn't initially find it embarrassing to record myself putting on lip gloss. Cheers!

I'll see you all this comin' fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountain

2011-05-22T22:47:00.001-04:00

First of all, congratulations everyone for surviving the Apocalypse! I was a smidgen worried that some of you would be swept up into eternal glory never to be seen or heard from again, but it would seem that everybody is still here and most of Baltimore still looks vaguely post-Apocalyptic, Rapture or no Rapture. Plus we got a book sale out of the deal.

Second of all, The Bachelorette begins once again tomorrow, giving me one more reason to keep on keeping on. Of course, I am deeply disappointed that Ashley of all idiots was chosen for this very important role. Ashley is not America's sweetheart, nor does she have any life tragedy which necessitates that ABC blesses her with everlasting love.

Give me Pure Evil Michelle! Give me Skeletor Waitress! Give me Always-Crying Chantal! Give me the even more unbearably-named Shawntel and let her talk about the embalming process every single date! But what have I done to deserve an entire season of the squealy girl with hair extensions that look like they're about to eat me alive, whose only claims to fame are that she's a dental student who dropped out to chase the most boring man in the history of the world around South Africa, and speaks a non-existent Maine dialect of French--and poorly at that? What, I ask??

Don't worry, I will obviously still watch every second of every episode, and probably talk and write about it way more often than is socially acceptable to anyone. Adjust your RSS feed as you see fit.

In other news of the world, Baltimore seems to really want me here. Unlike Seattle which was always a bit too beautiful for my taste, and Chicago which always kept its distance, Baltimore woos me with sweet nothings and gifts even in the midst of our lovers' spats. The moment I begin lamenting its noticeable lack of Sarahs and baklava shops, the city sends me a heartfelt letter in the form of stratus clouds and sailboats.

Or a train ride through sunshine-dappled woods (I'm sorry, but there is no other way to describe it) to a neighborhood which is the spitting image of the first of my homes.

At every turn, I was reminded of Seattle in Mt Washington. I even spotted a banana slug--the King of Pacific Northwest Wildlife.

And prayer flags, which a good amount of Seattlites use as curtains.

Julie took me on a field trip to her baby vegetable garden. I'm sure she thought I was a complete nutbean because I was probably acting like it was the first time I've ever seen nature.

I've missed you, Trees!

Magical sights everwhere, like adolescent dill, and bees showing off their impressive work ethic.

There was a free public art museum running the length of the riverbank, and during our visit I joyfully added another Love mural to my mental collection.

Dear Future, I would like to live in this house someday. Is that so much to ask? xoxo

We feasted on sweet potato fries and watermelon beer as the sky darkened outside.

Which inspired a photo shoot next to Whole Foods. Why the grumpy facial expressions and the West Side Story-esque poses? Your guess is as good as mine.

We sat among bird cutouts and Mongolian blankets as we discussed prophetic dreams and lip gloss, and I stayed too late.

Today was Farmers Market Day with my wonderful mother.

We discovered a food that is delicious well beyond its literal description: whole wheat naan stuffed with paneer. No stranger to Indian food, I've had such the thing before--but this particular feast must have been sprinkled with Jesus Dust or sprayed with Wizard Glitter or something. It was beautifully good.

Which may account for the reason why this photo looks like my own version of a Madonna and Child. Me=Mary, Naan=Baby Jesus. (And other ways to successfully evade the Rapture.)

So many people enjoying themselves and their falafel.

So much good cardamom-saffron lemonade.

And music of the Andalusian sort.

And goat for all your goat needs.

This weekend's adventures, coupled with one or two other fantastic life-developments, may imply that I won't hate summer this year as much as I usually do. Surprisingly enough, my current soul-season is actually echoing the hemisphere's current season for once: Like the admirably confident but irritatingly offbeat spring, I'm going all out accepting my paradoxes and oddities, embracing my contradictions and moods.

The problem with me and summer is that I so rarely feel like the world does during summer. I can't relate to the earth when it's erupting right and left in garish hues and shamefully perfect skies. I'm constantly in a fall sort of state: melancholy, quiet, reflective, moody, unapologetically imperfect. But perhaps the bounty and newness and excitement I'm feeling inside will align with the upcoming bounty and newness and excitement of the northern earth. After all, summer marks the year coming into its fullness--its most colorful, abundant, extreme season, full of heightened emotions and the brightest shades of nail polish.

Plus, I recently bought sandals and shorts for the first time in my adult life, and I don't feel entirely un-Mari-ish in them.

Maybe summer is a lot more enjoyable when you resist the temptation to keep wearing plaid skirts and olive tights, and instead choose to wear bright red shoes which a man whom you suspect is the Second Coming of Art Garfunkel picked out for you at the store because he held it up to your arm and declared it compatible with your unfortunate skin tone. This guy also kept superfluously saying the word "jute." (For obvious reasons I almost invited him to my birthday party, four months in advance.)

Maybe a good starting place would be to listen to less sad men with guitars and angry women with pianos, and more...Taio Cruz?

But starting in a month. The only music I care to listen to these days is mumbly dudes wailing mellifluous harmonies in the foreground of Ranchera-inspired accoustics. Any suggestions...besides Bowerbirds and David Wax Museum?

Well, I am now very tired and I need to be well-rested tomorrow because there's going to be an open bar at our office party and I want to be fully awake to enjoy it. Good night, dears.

I'm as nowhere as I can be, could you add some somewhere to me?

2011-05-07T20:47:00.005-04:00

As it's said that Chicago was built for fall, I've a hunch that Baltimore is built for spring--what with all the cherry trees (whose pickled blossoms are delish), sidewalk gardens (often full of a flower I've never seen before, which comes in a classic Crayola magenta), and gorgeous skies (with sheep-shaped clouds) who love showing off this time of year.

Today was the Platonic ideal of a spring day: crisp, sunny, warm, but with a moody bit of rain in the afternoon which started right as my neighbor Suzanne and I decided to buy waffle sticks dipped in chocolate and topped with Heath Bar crumbles and whipped cream.

We gobbled them up before they got soggy.

I ducked into my favorite coffee shop--one where the baristas know me by the nickname "Colors" because I am always dressed in different colors? Question mark to denote confusion regarding this topic.

Then, after the clouds recovered from their tantrum, I took a walk through my favorite neighborhood.

(Right after I took this picture, a man appeared in the window. Seasoned expert that I am at extaordinarily awkward situations, such as that of pointing a camera at someone's face through his living room window, I quickly waved and then started running. Catch me on local news.)

(I have been this girl one million times.)

Got a bit of journaling done at my little oasis (it's not enough that I blog; I need to journal too. Can't get enough of myself, apparently.)

(Check out my hot new purse. Makes me feel like a Spaniard, or a businessman.)

Walked over this vibrant bridge into a new neighborhood.

(As I was taking these graffiti pictures, a gent began yelling at me in Spanish. Not having heard Spanish in about six months--have I mentioned I miss Mexican food?--I could not for the life of me understand him, so I just kept on my merry way, and eventually, so did he.)

I've spent the last few Friday nights at the Charles Theater, alone in the back row of a crowded showing. I find it especially enjoyable to bring my own merlot in a coffee thermos and buy a nutella crepe from next door. This is all fun and games until my barista asks on Monday morning, "Hey, do you want me to toss out this wine before pouring your coffee?"

The sweetest surprise came in the mail this afternoon! The story begins here: A few years ago, my dear friend Hannah sent me the anchor postcard pictured below, which I assumed she bought on an etsy site or at a posh boutique in Wicker Park. As a lover of both stationery and All Things Nautical, I always wondered where I could get more of its kind, but assumed I'd never see the likes of it again. Come to find out, my own friend Lauren made this card with her own two hands!

Given that she is my trusty penpal, plus a generous and artistic lass, she fashioned a few more of these cards for me in all different colors and styles, and I am ever so excited to use them. If you're on my Pen Pal List, expect one of these original works of art soon and very soon, and consider yourself very lucky to boast a Lauren original.

Springtime projects in store: 1) A Fire Escape Herb Garden, 2) Buy a Kite, 3) Find a route for walks at night that will not contribute to an untimely death. When asked where a gal could walk around after dark in this city, my co-workers replied, "Stay home and watch The Wire. It will have the same effect." Pish.

Oasis

2011-05-02T19:33:00.005-04:00

I've been fortunate enough to find an oasis in every place I've inhabited; that is, a sacred quiet place to bring thoughts, worries, a bike, a book, a boy. In Seattle it was the nearby woods; in Chicago, Loyola Beach; in Florence, the peaceful East Bank of the Arno River; in Chile, palm-tree-lined Homboldt Park.

After a couple months of active searching, I do believe I have found my little oasis in Baltimore. It is lush, and lovely, and inspiring, and is poetically hidden and tucked away amidst main streets.

Some day I will live in one of these houses, and behind the lace curtain on the top floor I will write a novel loosely based on my own experiences growing up with three sisters in New England during the Civil War and how I came to meet a German philosophy professor who encouraged me to become a serious writer and then proposed to me under an umbrella.

Until then, I will schlep my current reads to my new little secret spot in the city, letting cherry blossoms fall in as they may between the pages.

Beneath an Orange Sky: A Triduum Folk Opera

2011-04-19T21:50:00.006-04:00

Me: Guess what I'm doing this weekend!
Lee: What?
Me: Getting bagels in Reisterstown!
Lee: MARI. It's Passover. Every Jew on the eastern seaboard is in Florida. You're not getting any bagels from anyone this weekend.

It's that time of year, my dudes. The Mass Exodus of Reisterstown, the week when I might as well just camp out at church, and my Annual Triduum Playlist!

2nd annual, that is. This year, it's a musical. Consider it Godspell for the modern age. The Greatest Story Ever Told, by narrative folk singers.

The only way for Holy Week to make any sense at all is if I view it as a rehearsal. It's not once and for all. Good Friday isn't going to put anyone on Xanax. Easter isn't going to be the end to anyone's problems, unless your problem was giving up chocolate or alcohol for Lent, in which case, that's your own grave you dug and I can hardly feel sorry for you.

We know that we're rehearsing. We know it's going to happen again next year, same time, same place.

One of the greatest spiritual stories of our time is "Groundhog Day." This movie is all about liturgy. The Christian Life is practice, a process--not the final result. This is what liturgy is. This is what the Christian calendar does. It's not that Easter will conclude our pain or restore all our hope, but instead compell us to practice hope and rehearse joy.

The Passion Play, which nearly every liturgical church performs in some way or another during Holy Week, is the re-telling of a well-worn tale. It's a narrative, not a lecture; a story, not an essay. Like a song, like any form of art, a play can compell us and turn us toward something greater than ourselves, but it doesn't tell us what to do.

Here's my own musical version. We'll start at Maundy Thursday, which I guess is the prelude to the Triduum.

I begin with a song called "Hymn #101." Let's discuss it.

I spend a lot of time wondering why people go to church. I mean. I know why I go to church. But I can't really figure it out for anyone else. I guess some people go to escape the fiery pits of hell. But for hippies like me who doesn't believe in hell, there has to be a more proactive draw, and it's gotta be pretty proactive to drag people out of bed on a Sunday morning without the guarantee of mimosas.

So I'm especially intrigued/puzzled as to what came over the disciples that they would quit their fishing careers and follow a dirty socialist hippie who wasn't always nice to them all over town. Sometimes I think it's because wherever Jesus was, there was wine too. (I don't believe for a moment that those rambling tripped-out parables were told in sober daylight.)

But these guys were willing to die for his message, and it seems that they could just as easily get alcohol from crashing the nearest Canaan wedding. The Gospels describe these guys as just regular old schmucks, many of them really slow on the uptake, not terribly progressive, and not particularly well-spoken either. What did they see in Jesus? What reasons could they possibly have for adopting this radical lifestyle for which they risked ridicule, persecution, and death?

Well, I have no idea. But, I know why they would be his friend. In fact, I have found a poetic list of reasons, in the form of a ballad by 23-year-old Chicagoan, Joe Pug. I have no idea what Joe is actually talking about in this song; for all I know he's arguing the merits of his bowling league.

But it sounds a lot like going to church, of attending the Last Supper, of choosing this oft-unappealing lifestyle of wishing aloud among the over-dressed crowd, of testing the timber of one's heart.

This next tune is Jesus' solo. It begins with a plea for forgiveness (of others) and ends with a benediction: "Always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name." From what I understand, one of Jesus' great offenses is that he called God "Father," and bid us to do the same. He told us that we were all his brothers, that we shared the same father, that we shared the same name--"child of God."

No need to get over-alarmed; I'm comin' home.

If you want to completely obliterate my entire day, make me listen to this next song.

Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, begins the heartbreaker with the line, "This my excavation/Today is Qumran." He explains the Qumran reference in an interview: "It's referring to the excavations where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit."

What he said.

None of the apostles saw Good Friday coming. The Messiah wasn't supposed to die. It sort of ruined everyone's plans. I'm sure that their collective faith was dramatically shaken, and it's not entirely clear if any of them truly recovered. Once the initial shock wore off, they were forced into a melancholy decision: Would they run with it, or would it destroy their faith?

This song brings up a lot of these life-altering questions, and also just sets the tone for serious sorrow. I'm going to give St. John (the most poetic of the apostles) this solo.

Also, this is also a really great make-out song. But that is neither here nor there.

Ever the drama queen, this is Mary-Magdalene's solo:

I imagine this sung by the three Marys who went to visit Jesus' tomb. It has a sacred feel to it but it also sounds somewhat auspicious.

Early in the morning, I'll come calling, I'll come calling after you
Though you seldom answer, still I wonder, what will pass here when you do
Delicate in grasses, bright and ashen, breathing sweet a ruby nest
Early in the morning, in the morning, withered, singing we will rest

Our next tune brings us into the Great Easter Vigil, my favorite service of the whole wide year.

Alexi Murdoch's whiskey-warmed Scottish drawl would sound mighty beautiful singing fireside folk tunes into the morning. That is what this song sounds like to me. It comes across as an improvised mix of wise murmurs and long sacred silences, very much like the Easter Vigil itself. The silences aren't boring; they're filled with potential, they're heavy with suspence. Battered and broken-hearted though Murdoch would have us believe he is (judging by an unkempt beard and sullen eyes), he sounds downright joyful once he gets going in this song.

The choral finale is springtime jubilation. The lead singer is St. Thomas, and of course the other apostles are the back-up dancers. Costume change involves sparkles and sequins.

Then all the actors bow, accept bouquets of flowers, autograph their headshots, and do it all again next year.

Cherry Blossoms, The Gates of Hades, and Poe's Ghost: Baltimore's Best and Worst

2011-04-03T21:51:00.006-04:00

I've always liked underdog cities.

Though I must admit part of their appeal is the fun of complaining about them, I like cities who don't need to act too polished, too tough, or too fashionable to fit in with the cool kids' table. When cities have to rely on something other than their looks, they develop good personalities.

And I like Baltimore's personality.

Something nice about showing people around Baltimore: they have zero expectations. There aren't songs about it. There certainly aren't tourism efforts. The only two TV shows set in Baltimore are The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street. The only movie I had seen depicting Baltimore was Hairspray. There you have it.

This is why I call Baltimore the Helena Bonham Carter of cities (well, I've called it that three times). No one ever expects her to show up at the Oscars looking gorgeous or sexy, so she's free to look fabulous instead. She can be trashy, wacky, surprising, outdated--and Kelly Osbourne is still going to gush over her outfit on Fashion Police.

Baltimore can be tacky; no one blames it. Baltimore can be the #2 worst city for crime in the country; at least it's not #1. And when Baltimore does something right, we cheer it on as though it's 6th-grade Mari playing dodge ball in P.E. We give it inordinate praise, take it out for a celebratory dinner, buy it a present, and promises that it will never have to play dodge ball again.

So, Baltimore, I'm taking you out to dinner. Here is what I like about you. Well, okay, here is what I don't hate about you:

1. The food. For someone who's such a nut about seafood, it's surprising I managed to stay in the midwest as long as I did. I would order fish in Illinois, but it was always a mental exercise in avoiding thoughts of salmon flopping around crowded tubs in southern Indiana, fed chicken meal and dyed pink before arriving at a Chicago restaurant. As a true blue Seattlite (read: fish enthusiast and pretentious hippie), it is a relief to know the source of my seafood, and be able to see it from my office building.

Beyond seafood, I like the mentality of the chefs here. Even at the "trendiest" restaurants (it must be noted that "trendy" for Baltimore is probably akin to "seafood" for the midwest), it seems that deliciousness wins, and diners have good manners. My culinary expertise doesn't extend far beyond Top Chef (though I totally called Richard Blais, by the by), I know that executive chefs aren't pushing aside their peers to get to Baltimore. It's a stepping stone toward Philly or D.C., and of course ultimately New York.

But who cares. The chefs here take risks because they know we'll love them anyway. They make good food because they know we'll demand it. And we get to try a lot of mistakes that New Yorkers don't have the good fortune to ever taste. Besides, I like my food a little rough around the edges. Particularly scallops.

2. The east-coastiness. The east coast always seemed like a really good idea to me. As a lifelong Anglophile, history dork, lover of New York, romanticizer of the ocean, and appreciator of all four seasons, I imagined it the perfect fit. As a little west coaster, I always idealized the exotic east: Buildings from 1622! High society! Catholics! Brownstones! Cobblestones! The Kennedys! I must say, the novelty has hardly waned. There is a very romantic sense of history here, and I eat it up.

I love the egalitarian mentality (or at least facade) where both hard-bitten fishermen and hat-and-glove-wearing ladies-who-lunch break bread at the same harbor. Unlike cliquish up-and-coming cities who push out the riff-raff (Portland, I'm looking at you), Baltimore embraces the world. Give me your tired, your poor--they're all here. All of them. Some better looking than others, but everyone looks a little better under the light of an alley lamp post.

3. The southern-ness of it. Considering that I was born and raised very far above the Mason-Dixon line, please forgive a heat-intolerant Yankee when I confess that this is as far south as I'll probably ever end up (famous last words). But there are days when Baltimore, positioned just a hair below the dividing line, reminds me of my joyful respect for southern culture.

People are so nice here. I thought midwesterners were supposed to be America's own batch of sweeties, but the Mid Atlantic is over here putting The Heartland to shame. Folks sit on their front steps and greet passersby; businessmen give dollars to the harbor homeless men; compliments are given freely and indiscriminately; and Baltimore's own official term of endearment, "hon," is used early and often.

Not to mention the short, mild winter. Baltimoreans would argue my boldness in saying so, but I must say this is the first winter without a post-Ides blizzard I've experienced in a great number of years.

4. Free buses and museums. Such luxuries make the city feel like a truly public space.

5. The size. For someone whose greatest pleasure is walking, Baltimore is a modest dream. I can cover the length of the city on foot in a morning, but it doesn't seem small--just walkable, like a European city.

I very much appreciate the small businesses that thrive here because the large-city competitors are minimal. The movie theatres around town all remind me of places my mom and I used to go on rainy Saturday afternoons--the ones with with red velvet curtains, old clunky popcorn makers, and plushy seats without cup holders. Considering that weekend matinees at The Charles constitute 80% of my social life, this kind of comfort is important.

A smaller city means that one's impact is bigger. It is very empowering to live in a place like this. Such a very small contribution to a community actually has a tangible effect, and the opportunities are everywhere.

6. My church. You had to know this was coming. My church in Chicago was spectacular, and my church in Baltimore is spectacular. How rare is it to find two spectacular church homes in one's lifetime? I would say fairly.

Last night was spent with our youth group discussing questions of faith--quandaries such as, Why do bad things happen if God is good? Does hell exist? Do prayers get answered? I would love to have had this kind of dialogue available to me in high school. These kids have no idea how lucky they are to get to talk about these issues with enormously intelligent adults (like me, obvs) and actually have their opinions and doubts recognized and respected.

None of these questions were answered (I take anyone's intellect into question who can provide me with 100% certain answers on matters of faith), but I was once again reminded of the specific specialness of this holy community, and I am thankful.

Now, for balance, a few things I'm not so keen on...

1. The Power Plant at the Inner Harbor: Dear Inner Harbor, the only thing worse than being Navy Pier is wanting to be Navy Pier. xoxo, Mari

2. The front doors of my office building. Here's the hell I'm living every single day: My office building has TWO SETS of very heavy, very awkward doors. They are difficult enough for me to open for myself, but some schlub always always shows up just a couple steps behind me, forcing me to have to keep it open because of course I'm very considerate. And it is so difficult.

So sometimes I pretend that I didn't see the bloke behind me, and I just run in really fast. But then I all but slam the heavy Gates of Hades in the guy's face, and then I am responsible for an emergency. Plus it makes me look like a jerk.

Can anybody relate?? There's gotta be a Seinfeld episode about this.

3. Sometimes getting the feeling that Baltimore is just one large crime-ridden ghetto of D.C. It is so very rare that I worry about crime, and reports of such have never bothered me to the point of changing my routine in the slightest. I've never been cautious or particularly safe, maybe because I never felt like I really needed to.

But Baltimore feels different. Perhaps it's just more obvious. For example, I just learned the hand signals that I see every day while walking to work: one finger for gypsy cabs, two for drugs, three for prostitution. I don't love that.

Something I do love: The Baltimore Guide's "Neighborhood Watch." They give you the details you want ("A man was accosted by an acquaintance who said, 'You talked about me while I was in jail' and attacked him"), the attitude you share ("Some lowlife stole an 82-year-old woman's walker from her front steps"), and local color ("A woman told police that a man threatened her with a gun and said, 'Give me your pocketbook, hon.'")

4. Mount Vernon at night completely gives me the creeps. I'm convinced that at any moment, the ghost of Poe or John Eager Howard is going to gallop up to me and start threatening me in old-timey English. Definitely more worried about this than the crime.

5. I miss old friends. Newly moved, and freshly single, I am spending quite a lot of time alone lately.

I cherish my solitude, but the missing of specific people makes for times of lonesome longing. This is just the reality of things for a nomad, but it never seems to get any easier. Being lonely by yourself isn't too hard, but being lonely with people is downright insufferable. New acquaintances still don't know my last name. They inadvertently point out my most obvious traits: "Wow, you walk fast." They bring up important subjects like Justin Bieber and expect me not to care. They ask if I've heard of a store called Anthropologie. They say things like "This weather sucks" in reference to the rain and expect me to agree.

I miss the people who tease me: the people who know better than to invite me to parties where no one dances, the ones who buy me GQ magazine for my birthday, who text me banal observations throughout the day because they know that all these small insignificant nothings add up to the most large meaningful something. I love being new but I love being known. I long for the intimacy of close friendship--the kind where I don't have to explain myself.

For now, my small social life provides me with plenty of time for the things I love so well: dining with a book, walking alone with my iPod, or watching old movies with my kitten. And, apparently, my new obsession with taking pictures of cherry blossoms--#7 on my list of things I love about Baltimore.

We'll all be washed and buried one day my girl

2011-03-16T21:01:00.012-04:00

We all know that I suck at Lent.

Every year, I try to give up something I truly love, like Klondike bars, for the sake of Jesus. Every year, I fail. I try to come up with some poetic conclusion about it; I turn it into a lesson about humanity or grace. But I am well convinced of my humanity to begin with, and grace is present all year round, so really the moral of the story is that I have very little self-discipline, at least when it comes to giving up sweets, coffee, alcohol, meat, or anything that our loving Lord created so that we may be ever reminded of His goodness.

This year, I'm trying something new. I'm cooking every night. I'm actually praying, which is somewhat rare for me. I'm writing letters. And I'm listening to Mumford & Sons. While not traditional spiritual practices, Marcus Mumford and sauteed spinach are putting me in right relationship with God.

If you want to learn anything about love, beauty, truth, and God, give Mumford & Sons a thorough listen. Not since U2 (I love Bono, get over it) have I heard such honest, good lyrics so chock-full of Biblical themes.

And you will learn as you listen through the track list of Sigh No More that there is very little that's comforting about love, beauty, truth, and God. These songs are disturbing, jarring, and shockingly truthful. There is nothing about these songs that affirm the present. There is nothing in this album that tells you to stay where you are. These are songs that provoke a revolution. This is an album that wants to change your life.

Look no further than "Little Lion Man," a loud, haunting, enormously provocative single which stings me with every listen. There is no way you can hear this song out and not feel pangs of regret, conviction, and humility. The line "Your grace is wasted in your face" is piercing. This track's lyrics scathe my heart and all but bring me to my knees in repentance.

There is no resolve in this song; there is nothing hidden. It is the truest of the true; there is no bridge that affirms "Now everything is okay." We get the feeling that this story never becomes okay.

We get a similar message on Ash Wednesday. We line up before the priest to receive a message of truth: "You are going to die."

Of course, it is said a bit more poetically: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Episcopal writer Sara Miles articulates the allure of the experience: "People say thank you to that hard blessing because finally, despite all the lies of our culture, it means nothing is hidden, or pretend, or made-up anymore." In this statement, the priest proclaims what no one, no matter their faith, can deny: I will die, and you will die.

Recently, my dear friend Ryan wrote a wonderful piece about magical thinking, a way of seeing the world so that every fortunate coincidence becomes an answer to prayer, a sign from God. Since I read it, I've been thinking about the arguments against the existence of God and the notion that Christians are deceiving themselves because it's comforting to believe that there is a giant old man in the sky who creates rainbows and listens to our long-winded prayers or desperate pleas.

No doubt there is a warm fuzzy feeling I get thinking about the senseless and powerful love that my Creator has for me. But that's where my comfort with Christianity comes to a screeching halt. All you have to do is look to the cross to realize that the Christian life is not one of comfort. All you have to do is go to an Ash Wednesday service to be reminded of the only truth any of us are guaranteed, and it is a gloomy truth.

I get squeamish when people tell me that a recent good fortune was "an answer to prayer." It is all I can do to hold my tongue and not ask the questions that God has yet to answer: Why does my 6-year-old niece carry a brain tumor in her small sweet head? How could God sit back and watch as my pastor's 2-year-old son died of cancer?

I will not know the answers to these questions for a long time, and the truth is that sometimes I think I don't want to know. Magical thinking this ain't. As the poetic genius Jay-Z once said, this is as real as it gets.

On Ash Wednesday, and at times during Lent, we get the feeling that the story never becomes okay. We talk of death, we discuss our shortcomings, we confess our trespasses like nobody's business.

There is no resolve to Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man." It remains a tough song to stomach, particularly if you're feeling even the slightest twinge of guilt about anything. But there is a resolution to it. It doesn't come on that track, but in another, titled Roll Away Your Stone, appropriately enough. When I first heard it, this verse made me cry:

It seems as if all my bridges have been burned,
You say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive at the restart

Simple enough, but I have read entire books devoted to grace, which end up saying this exact same thing in many more words. As much as I study grace, it never becomes less amazing to me.

We are used to songs that resolve themselves by the last verse. We live in a society that desires immediate absolution. We exist in a time and place so obsessed with having it all, that denying ourselves anything for 40 days and 40 nights seems completely backward and absurd.

But Mumford & Sons does not pay much mind to what we're used to, and neither does Lent. Sigh No More is an album that demands our longing for a better world, and Lent is a season that demands our attention to the present and asks that we change.

Lent is not a comforting time. It shakes things up, stirs our conscience, snaps us awake.

Sigh No More is not a comforting album. It pokes at our hearts, prods at our souls, calls us to action.

Lent arrives at a time when the world is busy stirring up something new. Our friends in the southern hemisphere are anticipating fall. Those who left in t-shirts this morning may find they need a sweater for the walk home. We in the northern hemisphere find life emerging out of a world wet from birth. The sky remains murky but there are auspicious bits of green everywhere. Something feels strange; something is changing from the depths of our earth. We are changing, adjusting our habits to fit the changing weather and tilting our perspective to accommodate the new light.

This poem, attributed to Sir Francis Drake in 1577, articulates the Lenten experience beautifully, and what happens when we allow God to disturb us, enrage us, provoke us, change us:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the Waters of Life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery:
Where losing sight of land
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push us in the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

At the end of Lent, we will suffer together on a dismal Friday, then rejoice with communal rounds of Alleluias on a sacred Saturday eve. On Easter, death will still be very present in our world. People will still be mourning loved ones, shelter, land in Japan. Libya will still endure conflict. Homeless people will still wander my church's portico. My sweet little niece will still have a tumor.

But Easter is a hint of a world to come, a world that Mumford & Sons hints at in After the Storm:

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

Easter is a tiny taste of the joy of final resolution, when, at last, the story really will become okay. "Awake my soul," Marcus Mumford sings repeatedly in the foreground of a vigorous banjo, almost a folk-rock Taize chant which resolves in the proclamation, "You were made to meet your maker." And that resolution is real, every bit as real as the truth that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Lenten practice begins here:

And ends here:

Mari's Oscars Special 2011

2011-02-27T21:16:00.007-05:00

Now that I have critiqued the fashion from last year’s Oscars and this year’s Golden Globes, this is something my mother has come to expect from me. My four remaining readers will get to reap the benefits, and by benefits I mean a lone photo of Colin Firth.

Onward!

Um, Mila Kunis, your pasties are showing.

Oops, Scarlett forgot to brush her hair.

Oops, her dress is made out of wallpaper from a scene in “Harold and Maude.”

Oh! My grandma used to have this tablecloth in her dining room!

Have you ever thought, "I wonder if I can find a red Speedo bathing suit I had when I was 12 except in evening gown form?" Here is your answer.

She looks like a shredded cameo. Oh how I love her.

Hailee Steinfeld, I love you. Thank you for not dressing like a whore and thank you for wearing a $2 Goody headband to the Oscars. Both of these accomplishments win you a very special place in my heart.

Penelope Cruz is one perm and two evening gloves away from 1983 Cruise Director. Maybe I have to be a gay man to appreciate this dress. Or a straight man. But for different reasons.

There are too many wonderful things about this dress. Where do I begin?? She looks like a Russian nesting doll on a space voyage, for starters. Second, I think some of these embellishments came from a seafood restaurant in Greektown. Ah crap now I'm totes craving calamari. Third, I feel like maybe this is a large elegant antique mother-of-pearl picture frame from some stage actress' 1940s boudoir, which is now functioning as a frame for her boobs. Fourth, this color might be the true meaning of Easter.

Amy Adams' wavy hairstyle makes her look like a 70s Italian international spy/bombshell. I know, I know--red hair? Italian? Spy? What? Yes. That's the power of Amy Adams.

WOW OMG I AM COMPLETELY SHOCKED ANNE HATHAWAY IS WEARING A RED MERMAID GOWN. (Not really shocked at all actually.)

I think it shows the depth of my maturity and sophisticated taste that I can manage to adore this look even though it includes neither glitter nor an asymmetrical neckline, nor the color magenta which always gives you bonus points on this blog. Of course, I do have an "I Love Everything Michelle Williams Does/Says/Wears/Scribbles/Recycles" Policy.

Again! How does Natalie Portman manage to look perfect while wearing an eggplant maternity outfit with the tackiest neckline known to man and earrings which are clearly tassels from a lampshade off the set of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas?!?

Aww, the Oscar Statue's date was Gwyneth Paltrow. Aww, they decided to wear matching outfits.

Kimono! Bangs! Wilma Flintstone necklace! I don't get it!

Another mermaid red dress? This is becoming a soporif...zzzz....

Colin Firth in Tom Ford?? Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Who's that idiot with my future husband??

Blast From the Red Sparkly Past

2011-02-19T19:41:00.006-05:00

Today I found a letter I wrote in 2001 addressed to myself in 2011, tucked amongst essays about the school bus ("I try to get most of my thinking done on the school bus because when I think in hallways, I tend to run into walls") and Halloween ("I will wear a cashmere cardigan, pleated skirt, beret, and red lipstick; my outfit is completely subject to interpretation") in a ruby red sequined journal I got for my 14th birthday.

I write these types of letters fairly often, but I tend to receive them anachronistically. I felt very fortunate to have found this in its due time, and felt even further encouraged that my journal in all its sparkling sanguine glory had a sticker on the back that read "Mount Vernon," for, this day, I moved to a neighborhood called Mount Vernon.

2001 Mari would love that.

Dear 2011 Self,

How are you? I wish I knew.

Let’s see, I hope by now you have graduated college. I wonder where you went. I wonder where you live now. Some east coast city, I hope? Boston or New York please?

I bet some of your friends are married. I bet that’s weird. I wonder if you’re married. That’s weird, but if so, congratulations and I’m sure it was beautiful.

I hope you at least have a boyfriend. If not, please get to it.

I think about you a lot. I wonder what you’re like. Right now, it’s kind of hard having the personality that we have. I hope that you are finding that it’s much easier to be a different, sensitive, emotional, analytical introvert in the real world than it is in high school. I feel like I should have never been a teenager. I take comfort that there are so many poets and authors who were loners as young people and then became famous and normal. Maybe you are now famous and normal.

I hope so many things for you, and more future you. I hope you know at least some Latin, German, Finnish, Russian, and Hungarian. I hope you have read every Mark Twain book, that you have lived in a foreign country, that you know how to swing dance and cook a Thanksgiving dinner. I hope you have learned how to decorate cookies and cake and that you bake bread once a week for the homeless. I hope you knit on rainy days and you subscribe to National Geographic.

If you haven’t gotten to all that, don’t freak out (I know you will)--you have time. But try your best please. I’m trying my best for you. I’m going to study all weekend for this history test so I can get an A and you can go to college.

Most importantly, I hope you are nice. I hope you give a lot of compliments. I hope you go to church every Sunday and call your mother way too often. Please be a safe driver.

Embrace your twenties, for both our sakes. Decorate your living space like a young Martha Stewart. Stop for Thai food on the way home from work and eat by yourself while watching Woody Allen movies. Have cute keychains on your car keys. Don't forget that you’re too complicated a person to live an ordinary life just like everybody else. Don't forget that you might not always fit in, but you will have good stories for the book I hope you’ve started by now.

Love,
Your Dorky 14-Year-Old Self

I love my grandiloquent Carpe Diem rant at the end and that it includes "cute keychains." I wonder why I considered this a crux of 20-something quintessence.

Here I am in 2001. Yes I was a heartbreaker.

Part II: Paul Said to Peter, "You gotta rock yourself a little harder."

2011-02-03T11:01:00.001-05:00

Now I go to a church called Old St. Paul’s, though I rarely call it that. I often shorten it to “OSP” because I like to pretend I go to a place called Office of State Personnel on Sunday mornings. You know, different strokes for different folks.

Anyway, I am historically much less fond of Saint Paul than I am of Saint Peter. I just can't relate. Paul is the guy who used to be a real jerk but then he basically became the most upstanding gentleman ever. He went from Chris Brown to Tom Hanks in a matter of days.

Now Paul actually tithes 10% of his income. He reads the Bible before bed. He looks away during Victoria’s Secret commercials, and he hasn’t touched a beer since 14 Superbowls ago. He tells strangers that he would gladly die in their place and he would endure a life of suffering for the sake of the Gospel.

If you tell me you relate to Paul, I’m sorry, you are lying. Or you are Desmond Tutu.

In addition to him being Mr. Perfect all the time, I have bad-mouthed Paul before for acting like a dillweed when it comes to women and gay people in the Church. Feminist he ain’t, and I know I am not alone in my skepticism. I recently attended a wedding wherein the pastor began her homily, “It is not often that I agree with Paul by which I mean it is never…”

But, I am warming up to Paul. I can say with 297% certainty that, were he alive today, there’s no way no how no McCain that he would tell women to shut up and tell gay people not to stop “acting gay.” I don’t usually try to talk for people in the Bible (I just project all my opinions on them), but I am convinced that Paul was not talking about educated female clergy members and faithful relationships.

In my new church loyalty, I am also trying to find ways I can actually in some minor way relate to him, and that he can teach me. Here are a few:

1. He wrote letters.

In fact, Paul is the patron saint of journalists, authors, newspaper editorial staff, publishers, reporters, and saddle makers (unrelated).

Unlike illiterate Peter, Paul was a well-educated teacher. It is sometimes difficult to see his master of prose really shine through in his letters, with all their mixed metaphors and dangling prepositions. But how can we blame him for a few excessive semicolons? Most of the time, he was probably swaying from one side of the ship to the next, his typewriter and papers flying every which way. The novelty Parthenon paperweight he picked up at the gift shop in Athens was comically futile as the Aegean Sea tossed his belongings to and fro.

Paul kept in touch with his dear ones by writing many letters, some of which constitute a major portion of the Bible. Paul took time, energy, and a great deal of postage stamps to send letters which showed his love and care for those far away. It shows that he valued friendship, he loved keeping in touch, and he cherished the written word’s ability to encourage and cheer someone from afar.

2. He was melancholy.

Not too long ago, Joe asked me how my day was. I sighed heavily, and recounted, “I woke up feeling really worried and sad so I went to a coffee shop and wrote in my journal for a couple hours, then I started crying so I took a long walk in the rain while listening to depressing music, and then I got really overwhelmed about the world’s problems so I cried some more, and then ate dinner.”

Joe replied, “Oh, so a typical day for you.” (Hardy har har, Joe!)

It sounds like this was a typical day for Paul too. Much like Yeats’ Irishman, Paul had “an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him during periods of joy.” For me, this sense of tragedy is having grown up in America’s gloomiest city and harboring an unfortunate proclivity for Italian movies and folk music; for Paul, it was probably much deeper. Scholars agree that he likely suffered a chronic painful illness, as if he didn’t have enough troubles.

I am particularly fond of melancholy Christians because they make the most sense to me. When you reject hardship, pain, sadness, and trials, you reject life. Life is so beautiful and so difficult. Poets know this, and Fellini knows this, and Joni Mitchell knows this, and Paul knows this. Which brings me to my next point…

3. He knows how to suffer.

If you ever start feeling sorry for yourself, think about Paul. First of all, he was not very attractive, per the descriptions of his large nose, small build, and unibrow. I’m serious, he had a unibrow. He was beaten more times than you can shake a rod at, he was thrown in prison for years, he was stoned (for healing a crippled man, no less!), he was shipwrecked, he was tossed about at sea for days, and now you’re just warming up.

He was constantly in danger, he often went without sleep, he didn't have a home, he labored and hungered and thirsted and ached without so much as a day off. It should also be noted that he was likely beheaded.

And yet, he constantly proclaimed the goodness and love of God.

When Paul wrote, Rejoice in the Lord always—I will say it again: rejoice!, he did not mean “Be happy all the time,” because that would be a destructive and ultimately shallow, unthinking way to live. Furthermore, he does not mean “Rejoice in your circumstances,” but rather, “Rejoice that God loves you. Rejoice that God is good, always. Rejoice that God made you and will some day be reunited with you.”

Our society, bless its heart, has an inadequate view of suffering and an obsession with creating a pain-free life. Instead of putting our efforts toward such an impossible fantasy world, perhaps we should work toward considering the joyful part of our suffering: that is, the good that God can form and work in us in the midst of pain.

Even while shackled up in a dungeon freezing cold and desperate for a plate of fish and chips, Paul rejoiced by singing his favorite hymns. Perhaps he sang “Shine Jesus Shine” and then realized it was no good without an acoustic guitar and the ability to sway. I imagine he moved onto the Psalms, which are full of hope in the midst of despair and suffering.

Or perhaps he sang some prayers from the prophets, such as my very favorite from Zephaniah: Quiet me with your holy love and rejoice over me with singing. Paul rejoiced in the fact that he was wrapped in God’s holy love like a Snuggie, and that he would some day be out of his misery and in God’s arms forever. And in the meantime, he wrote letters.

4. Paul was born a ramblin’ man.

Dustin recently diagnosed me with “Location ADD.” I resent this, mostly because I know it’s true.

In the past I have felt guilty for my inability to sit still, bloom where I’m planted, and commit to a community. I see the good that can come of devoting oneself to one place, one neighborhood, one group of friends. But Paul, and lots of other world roamin’ Bible thumpers, show that God has plans for travelers too.

Every instance of God communicating with people in the Bible involves an invitation to leave the present behind—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. He often told people to leave on epic journeys that may never result in their homecoming.

God wants us to change and grow and try new things. We are not created to enjoy a mediocre life, but instead to take risks and undergo transformations that will potentially result in a more spectacular future. For some, that can happen by staying in one place. For me, I grow best when I’m on the road again. I have stopped resenting this in myself and have chosen to consider myself a Pauline—a nomadic writer of the melancholy sort.

Part I: Peter said to Paul, "You know all those words we wrote are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go."

2011-02-03T10:43:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s February 3^rd. My Chicagoan friends are buried alive (good luck, guys!), and I still don’t have a job. Man, this economy, am I right?! If a girl like me who got a BA in Medieval Flemish Stained Glass and knows all the words to “Livin’ La Vida Loca” can’t get a job, I honestly don’t know who can.

But, tomorrow I begin moving into my apartment (stay tuned for lots of pictures of my bathroom) which means I’ll be much closer to interesting things like sidewalks, and also to my church which is my local hang-out these days. It’s like the “Cheers” of downtown Baltimore.

Transitioning churches can be a little rough for an old fuddy-duddy like me, but the differences are positive and the people are just wonderful. The biggest change is the name. From St. Peter’s to St. Paul’s, I am covering the two mega apostles. Let’s talk about this.

My ex-boyfriend used to accuse me of wanting a Paul-like life—that is, wanting one defining experience to make sense of everything for me. He argued that I, ever awaiting my own personal divine revelation or love-at-first-sight or moment of perfect clarity, didn’t see the value in a “Peter” life—that is, a life of doubts, trials, paired with moments of wonder, poetry, and beauty. Whereas Paul’s conversion was ecstatic and explosive, Paul’s coming to faith was much more hesitant, but ultimately just as powerful.

I always thought he was just being annoying, but as soon as I started going to a church called St. Peter’s, I became much more endeared to our fisherman patron saint and began identifying with him and learning from him. I came to see the value in stumbles and doubts, and the goodness of realizing that I am not loved in spite of but because of them.

Here are other ways I relate to Peter:

1. Peter often said the wrong thing.

The other Sunday during youth group, Youth Pastor Jim asked, “We all know what liturgy is, right? We’re cool with liturgy?” The youngins nodded yes.

“Okay, Ana,” Jim said, “Can you tell us what liturgy is?”

Pithy, 13-year-old Ana took no time to answer, “I don’t actually know; I just thought I’d listen to you guys and figure it out as we go along.”

Ana’s strategy is how I get through life. Most often I don’t have the answer, or even an answer; I never really quite know what is happening and I usually come up with the wrong conclusion, or ask the wrong question altogether. This is why I relate to Peter.

He was the pitiful bloke at church who brought generic-brand frozen pizza to potlucks, who wore too-short pants which exposed the entirety of his thick white 3-pairs-for-a-dollar-at-Walgreens athletic socks when he sat down. He got important dates wrong, he was useless at spelling, and he didn’t own an iron.

When Jesus asked how many times we are to forgive our enemies, Peter offered “seven times, ” probably assuming he was going to win a gift certificate to Red Lobster or a new dining room set in exchange for his brilliance, but instead, Jesus flipped out. He rebutted that we need to forgive our enemies SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN times and even then we were just getting started.

Another time when Jesus walked on water, Peter decided he’d join in the fun, only he started sinking, because he wasn’t God. Another error in judgment.

Even so, Jesus eventually promotes this nincompoop to Head of the Church. Jesus builds his church on this sinner, this buffoon. Peter struggles with faith and struggles with Jesus’ pop quizzes and struggles with simple fashion rules, but ultimately he is called “The Rock,” the very foundation of the Church. It’s like promoting Ramona Quimby to Queen of the World, but who am I to judge Jesus’ HR skills.

The point is, if a guy like Peter can become Head of the Church, there’s hope for all of us who wear our pants too short. I mean, that’s not my problem but maybe it’s yours.

2. He showed up.

If Woody Allen is to be believed that 80% of success in life is just showing up, Peter was right on the money.

At the end of John, Jesus tells Peter to follow him. He adds that things will probably be hard for him if he does. I’m not sure why Jesus didn’t decide to lie about the difficulty factor, but that’s Jesus, the Honest Abe of Nazareth.

Peter points to John and asks Jesus, “How about that guy? Will things be hard for him too?!” Jesus doesn’t reply; he just repeats “Follow me, Pete.” Well-played, Jesus.

I’m sure that Peter’s conversations with Jesus sounded a lot like Thomas Merton’s famous prayer: I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end…I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Sometimes Peter followed from afar, but he always followed. He didn’t always know what he was doing, but he kept doing it anyway. He would have made an excellent Episcopalian.

3. Just because you look and act like a hot-shot doesn’t mean you’re awesome.

Let’s examine Peter vs. Judas for a moment, shall we? Entering the showdown…

Judas on one side. Judas is financially secure. He’s like that cheesy guy in high school who was in the Future Accountants of America Squad, and you always thought, “Pssh, who needs math? I love photography! Anybody see a wall of graffiti I can capture in black and white?!” and then five years later you look up this idiot on facebook and he has an internship at some financial firm in New York and he actually doesn’t look miserable at all—in fact he has his arm around several blond women in every single picture and a bottle of liquor you can’t pronounce. All this, while you’re in your mom’s basement, “liking” every status you see. (Based on a true story.)

Judas is also good-looking with a chin cleft and tan biceps. He is a cunning, manipulative politician. He wears Tom Ford suits with monogrammed cufflinks. He has thick hair. This guy is a success.

Peter’s in the other corner. He smells like fish after a long day out at sea. He makes almost no money, and spends what he has on gadgets that he orders from infomercials at 2am. He can’t read, he can’t dance, he wears acid-washed jeans from Village Discount, and he has a terribly receding hairline. He’s still using a cell phone the size of a cinder block and he makes the most inappropriate jokes at fine dining restaurants.

He is not somebody you’d want to try to save your life, nor is he someone you would take as your date to a wedding.

Yet, during the showdown, the audience sees that Peter has emerged the more honorable man. Cowardly impulses and blustering social ineptitude aside, Peter is one of the most revered men in our Church for his unfailing devotion. Judas, on the other hand, is synonymous with betrayal.

Judas’ financial success and political power are traits still coveted by the world. But Peter, that fumbling, hapless, blustering fisherman, becomes one of our most beloved saints, the bishop of Antioch, our foundation, and our Rock.

Fashion Report: Golden Globes

2011-01-16T21:22:00.000-05:00

Hello friends,

It's time for me to covet and critique! Here is your Golden Globes Fashion Report 2011.

Now I am not a fashion expert in the strictest sense...but I happen to read InStyle Magazine at the dentist's office and I recently watched an I Love Lucy episode called "The Fashion Show." So I think I know what I'm doing.

Here goes!

Elisabeth Moss’ earrings look like feathers, her hair looks like twigs, and her dress looks like a fancy satin leaf wrapped around her body. In conclusion, she looks like Mother Earth Goes to Prom.

This number appears as though it was fashioned out of a bedsheet a la The Little Mermaid, but Sofia Vergara could make bermuda shorts with a cardigan sweater vest look amazing so who cares.

I LOVE this color; it is very similar to a paint color I just chose for my dining room table! The top of this dress is kind of 80s Dance Party Barbie, and I’m still deciding whether or not that’s a good thing. The bottom looks like it’s going to swallow something.

January Jones, stop looking so smug, your dress is dumb.

Okay Sarah Hyland, I know you're like 18, but do you really not know that you're not supposed to wear a flesh-colored corset from a Renaissance Fair costume to the Golden Globes? Also, put those boobs away--where's your momma?!

Does Jennifer Love plan to put snacks in that cone?

Justin Bieber should have read his GQ before getting dressed tonight. The fit of these pants make me want to cry a little bit. Or are those residual tears from Chris Colfer's acceptance speech? (And you wonder why I think I have the soul of a gay man.)

Just because Anne Hathaway gets to make out with Jake Gyllenhaal all the time doesn't mean I'm jealous of her stupid dress.

I fancy myself the kind of person who has absolutely nothing in common with anyone who drives a Hummer, reads books by Chelsea Handler, wants a Kate Gosselin haircut, never misses an episode of "King of Queens," and thinks this dress is attractive:

Does that mean that me and Julianne Moore are over?? Nah, I will love "The Kids Are All Right" no matter what you wear, Julianne!

I recently proclaimed that Baltimore is the Helena Bonham Carter of cities. I rest my case.

Megan Fox, take your death stare and your skirt slits and your lame tattoo and go away.

This dress looks exactly like my binder in 7th grade. I LIKE.

Also her hair is my spirit animal.

Another lady rocking 1998 couture is the adorable Hailee Steinfeld. Pretty sure I wore this same dress to my middle school graduation dance.

Merry Christmas to you too, Angelina Jolie.

Okay Natalie Portman, we get it, you're perfect. You don't need to prove it to us by wearing a maternity dress inspired by the Valentine-themed novelty items in the Dollar Bin at Target and still make it look classy and beautiful.

I used to think asymmetrical necklines were tacky. Now I demand nothing less! What was my problem?! It's flattering, it's retro, and it is a whole lot more interesting and mature than the ubiquitous, redundant strapless dress favored at weddings, Homecoming dances, and Quinceaneras everywhere.

My least favorite character in the Glee cast had my favorite dress in the Glee cast. She looks like Michael Curtiz's interpretation of Helen of Troy, which is to say that it looks like a high-class toga.

Andrew Garfield, will you marry me?

No response from Andrew.

The Theology of Mr. Potato Head, or How Toy Story 3 Changed My 2010

2010-12-31T21:13:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, folks!

The social crux of my New Year's Eve was watching "The Next Food Network Star" in the kitchen as my mother played a game of online Scrabble a few feet away. So now I can focus on 2010 reflections.

Was my favorite album of the year Speak Now or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Yes friends, you can be both a Taylor and a Kanye fan. It's one of the miracles of modern science.

As far as movies goes, The Kids Are All Right was life affirming and funny and wise, and Exit Through the Gift Shop was the most entertaining film I have seen since Operation Dumbo Drop.

But, the movie which taught me the most about life, love, and other mysteries, is Toy Story 3. This movie has more God in its credits reel than Mel Gibson will ever have in his entire filmography.

Here is what I learned from it:

1. No one believes me, but I think this story is an allegory about Christ and the Church. If that doesn't make you want to add it to your Netflix queue...then you're a lot cooler than I'll ever be.

Okay, but let me break it down: So, the toys by themselves have very little meaning. Toys without a child to play with them are just plastic forms or wooden shapes. Andy, the toys' owner, gives them each a soul, a life, a story.

The toys become fearful as soon as they believe that their owner is gone and, with him, the meaning of their lives. They not only love Andy as he loved them, but their existence means very little without him. A life without Andy means a life without a story--a story which, for so many years, involved a sense of danger, a great adventure, a quest for good in the face of evil.

There are moments of confusion and pain during the Christian life in which God feels very far away. I rarely doubt God's existence, but I often doubt His love and grace. The toys know that Andy once cared about them, but when separated from him they are confused about his love.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’

Christ even experienced the same doubt as he died: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

In the times that we are happy and prosperous, we hardly have any sense of needing God. Our conversations with Him during these moments are praise-filled and self-assured. But in more silent moments of fear and loneliness, it is difficult to remember a time when we were ever on speaking terms.

When Andy was a child and his care for his toys was evident, they could not have believed their lives could ever look any different. How distant he seems when the toys leave home with only a scratchy signature on their feet to remind them of their owner's love.

As usual, I am reminded of O Holy Night. Besides All I Want For Christmas is You (obviously), this is my favorite Christmas carol for its poetic narration of the human experience and the utter beauty of being reunited with God through Christ. The line 'til He appeared and the soul felt its worth describes the sheer delight and relief of knowing you are truly loved.

Humans without souls are silly-looking creatures of bone and flesh with brains to tell us that we need to eat and sleep and take our hand off the hot stove. But our souls tell us who we are, why we're here, what we mean. The soul gives us our first memory of God, that every time we meet a beautiful person, partake in a joyful meal, hear a glorious song, or get a sternum-ache during the viewing of a particularly emotional Fellini movie or the sight of a particularly stirring Vermeer painting...we are reminded of the power and love with which we were created and have our being.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices is the line that gets me every time. Toward the end of the movie, we witness the toys experience this kind of joy. They are finally reunited with the same love which gave them life, and their weariness is met with a renewed confidence that their lives are meaningful, and most importantly, that they are loved.

2. The characters are admirable. The toys have dynamic personalities and distinct flaws--Woody is clearly the only child who never entirely learned to share, and Buzz's arrogance has hardly faltered--but they are good.

I had a chemistry teacher in high school who told us on our first day of class that cheating was the only offense that would get you kicked out of his classroom for good. He explained, "When stripped of all else, you have your integrity."

I think about this all the time. I certainly thought about it for every chemistry test I got handed back with a giant red D+ on it. "Hey, at least I have my integrity," I thought (my mother was less impressed with my honor). And I still think about it when I make important decisions, like when I'm considering whether or not to steal a seventh sample of dark chocolate truffles at Whole Foods.

Toy Story 3 illustrated my teacher's adage beautifully. Toward the end of the story, the characters truly possess nothing else but their integrity. There is a moment when they can decide to get rid of The Enemy (a fuzzy pink bear) once and for all, and instead, they offer him redemption.

At another point, they have no other option but to die. They face their doom with dignity, holding hands to signify that they are a team and that their priority is family. When one toy was weak, the others helped out. When another triumphed, he gave credit to the rest. They chose to live and die as a team, selflessly and respectfully.

Despite fear and confusion after separating from Andy, the toys continued to believe that their lives mattered. They fought for one another, defended each other, and they continually showed grace to those who hurt them. And, despite feelings of neglect and worry, they always believed that they would some day be reunited with Andy. They never truly lost hope, even while facing death, that love was worth seeking and defending.

3. The characters sought adventure. This is the part of the movie that most affected me personally. The toys made lofty goals, followed wild ambitions, and retained a sense of overwhelming wonder and desire.

Viewers of the movie never doubted that the characters knew what they wanted and so badly wanted it. The toys were willing to sacrifice for their team and take risks for the sake of their meaningful aspirations. They attacked life as if it were something to be attacked.

After seeing the film, my 3D goggles completely soggy with tears, I began to think about the questions the characters asked: What does my life mean? What do I want? What am I willing to sacrifice for the things I want and the people I love?

It was the prompting of these questions which inspired me to make a couple tricky decisions--my move being one of them--and begin to live in a way that would make for a much better adventure, for a much more beautiful, interesting, and surprising story.

I realized that I had begun prioritizing familiarity, which as you all probably have discovered for yourselves is not much of a virtue. It is nice to be comfortable, but staying within the familiar will not get my life's story far beyond Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Mari.

This year, I hope to push my story into wilder chapters, ones which provide opportunities for risk-taking, decision-making, and character-building. I hope there are opportunities to show grace to the proverbial fuzzy pink bears in my life, to hold hands with the aphoristic Buzz Lightyears, and to show others the love that was first shown to me.

I also aspire to floss daily, and eat more vegetables.

Annapolis

2010-12-28T19:42:00.000-05:00

...is really pretty.

So am I! Do you like this squinty face? Should I send this picture in to Tyra Banks and report that I've learned how to "smile with my eyes" per her instruction?

In Annapolis, it's very easy to pretend you are a dignified English gent who sailed the stormy seas for to make his fortune on the middle eastern coast of the New World. I know it's easy because I did it all day.

So many idiots name their boats stuff like "Magestic Thought" and "Imagine." If I had a boat, I would name it something truly clever like "Fickle Pickle" or "Whitney Houston."

My mom and I had coffee, which I took as an opportunity to remove my coat and show the world this outrageous necklace. I wish I loved everything as much as I love this necklace.

I even painted my nails to match it. If you think that's a joke, you don't know me very well.

I officially have Boat Fever. I wish that were a romantic, 17th-century disease, but it is rather the state of my mind lately, which gives thought to nothing else except for boats and cake decorating shows.

Here is my mother looking like a dish! I set that shopping bag down by her foot but don't hold that against this photo.

Here is me walking through the streets of Annapolis, probably thinking about cake decorating shows.

Then we visited the State Capitol, because I want to get on good terms with Maryland.

This is the entrance. Not sure what's going on with this flag.

You can consider this next picture your electronic Christmas card from me. Ho ho ho!

I made my mom take a picture of me with George Washington of course.

Then I danced in front of him, which my mother also wisely documented for purposes of posterity.

The State Capitol building can only provide so many hours of fun, so we kept walking and saw many houses that I would like to inhabit.

There was one with a British flag; it's probably the house that Prince William bought for me as a surprise engagement gift. Oh wait.

As you can see, I've become something of a shutter nut since moving to the east coast. I'm bonkers about shutters, which probably means that New England is where I belong.

However, I'm a complete wimp when it comes to cold weather, as evidenced by the time I spent during Chicago winters defrosting my extremities, pouting under heat lamps, and exclaiming SOMEBODY GET ME INSIDE OR EVERYONE'S DEAD to complete strangers.

Lucky for me they invented Maryland which has the architecture of New England but weather suitable for people who hate being miserable.

I can't get enough of shutters. If there were a Shutter of the Month Club, I'd be the first to join.

How clever is this person? Holly in a flower box instead of dead plantlife! I'm so impressed.

This site is the location of my imaginary future household.

My first thought upon seeing this sampler was, "Aw, that's cute." Then I thought, "Wow, what a profound statement." Then I thought about it for the rest of the afternoon, when I wasn't busy eating a cannoli.

I am still in "OMG THE OCEAN" mode. I have even decided to give my apartment a nautical theme. My mother is concerned that I'm going to "overdo it." Which of course is completely preposterous. It's not like I almost bought a crab-shaped door-knocker today. Or a sign that said "Sailor Parking Only." Or this gigantic ceiling whale.

Does somebody want to explain the Maryland flag to me? Here, allow me to use the internet.

"The flag of the state of Maryland consists of the heraldic banner of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore."

That is officially the least helpful thing I've ever read on Wikipedia.

Here is the china we use in my imaginary future household. We bring it out when we have Beyonce and Jay-Z over for dinner.

If I lived in this house I'd probably spend too much time waving to people from the balcony while singing "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." Probably better that I don't.

Ever wondered what a wreath made out of apples would look like? Wonder no more.

Tomorrow I go to look at an apartment in Baltimore. I will judge it by its ability to display tasteful nautical decor. And possibly a giant ceiling whale, if one of you wants to make me the happiest person alive.

I've been listening to P!nk, watching the E! True Hollywood Story of Jennifer Lopez, and doodling puffins

2010-12-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

Every Christmas, starting last Christmas, I gift my mother a calendar compiled of little doodles accompanied by the verses from her favored hymns.

Being a certified Mom, she loves this stuff! Here is a sneak peek of this heartfelt nonsense:

This blog has been a little Jesus-heavy (not that you didn't know what you were getting yourself into), so here is a bonus array of completely (well, mostly) secular images from the streets of Baltimore:

Y'all come and visit!

O Little Town of Baltimore

2010-12-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

A few important things happened over the past week.

a) The Senate repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, which, as the illustrious Andrew Freeman pointed out, means that the US Military is well on its way to becoming a more open and welcoming place than the Church.

b) I bought some soy nog. 'Tis the sesason!

c) I moved to the Chesapeake Bay!

So far, it has been charming the pants off of me.

It's sort of cute that people here think it's cold.

Even the 7-11 is charming.

Maybe this is Baltimore's Wrigleyville.

This is the Baltimore Police Station, which is where a television show called "The Wire" takes place. I've heard that this show is pretty good, but it sounds way too interesting and awesome for my taste. I generally prefer following more simple plotlines, like those depicted in "Cake Boss" and "Down Home With the Neelys."

Both those shows were on at the same time the other night--it was like Sophie's Choice Part II. I went with "Cake Boss," but I'll always wonder what happened with those fried green beans.

I found a coffee shop, phew.

These benches are ridiculous and wonderful.

I think I picked the right city.

I'm fixing to bring my gentleman friend to this pub. I trust I won't need to drag him in there kicking and screaming.

Then, I returned to this place: this place which draws curly-haired friends from Brazil and tomato-loving Michiganders, a place where I met somebody who gets to direct graffiti projects for a living, and one whose work enables her to stand up for the most vulnerable on a day-to-day basis. We sip coffee, we discuss "Toy Story 3." These are good, good people.

My new church's service starts at 9, which means it's going to be mighty hard to pretend I'm not hungover.

The church all decorated for Christmas took my own breath away. In all the hubbub of moving, I have not had a chance to quiet down and wonder at it all. Heck, I just got around to buying soy nog--what is wrong with me?!

It is wondrous.

While Easter celebrates God being God, Christmas celebrates God being human. The holiday might have rejoiced in his first steps, first decision, first sip of wine. Christmas feels magical and beautiful and seems somehow other-worldly...when the story behind it is unapologetically human: an epic, but typical, story of weakness and fear overcome by love.

I heard recently on the Food Network that the meaning of Christmas is "giving." That's an interesting theory, but the true meaning of Christmas is a touch less poetic. It's a sloppy, messy humanity--a painful birth, a screaming baby, an exhausting journey from the east.

The meaning of Christmas is that the Creator came down to this world to struggle in it, work in it, fail in it, fall in love in it, make friends in it, tell stories in it, frolic in it, die in it.

The story of the Christ's birth reflects his own essence: fully God, fully man. As Mary in the fulness of her pregnancy struggled up heat-soaked hills riding a tiring donkey, her mission certainly seemed less than godly. As Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to escape the threat of the murder of their son, their journey felt far from divine. During those not-so-silent nights, Mary was surely questioning the angelic claim that her helpless, hungry son was the Messiah.

This is as real as it gets.

Yet, their incredibly human story is told with hallowed symbolism: the shepherds who watched over sacrificial lambs, the Wise Men who offered extravagant incense fit only for a king, the star of royal beauty bright which directed them to Bethlehem--House of Bread--where the infant Bread of Life lay, wrapped in swaddling clothes. And Mary, our God-bearer, whose literal embodiment of the Creator's love humbly instructs us to embody God's love in our hearts and in our souls.

The theophoric name for Jesus is Emmanuel, which in Hebrew means God with us. Perhaps this means that God is always around for a chat, or that he is cheering on humanity at large, but I believe it also implies the extraordinary way he chose to reveal himself to us: as an infant.

To show us his mercy, God put himself at ours. To show us his grace, God invoked it from us. To show us his power, God humbled himself to our lovely, lowly world. Indeed, a Palestinian infant expressed the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.

Merry Christmas, and buy soy nog early and often.