What we both underestimated was the power of a well-proportioned kitchen. Why would we go look at kitchens? We were (and are, don’t get me wrong) a couple of dumb college kids, punch-drunk with the idea of moving in together. We barely looked at the apartments; we were too busy looking at each other and thinking about all the, uh, christening we would get to do WITHOUT ROOMMATES.

We found an apartment with a large living room, a large bedroom (enough space for 2 desks!) and, best of all, a. Walk. In. Closet. I still hold that having that closet has saved our relationship on more than one occasion. Not only because there is (usually) enough space for BOTH OF OUR SHIT, but it is also the only place that you can go and close the door and not have to hear or look at the person you are mad at. Does that sound dangerously like a temper tantrum? You bet it does.

As previously mentioned, in all the euphoria surrounding an apartment that met all two of our combined requirements, we missed the fact that our kitchen is the size of my left foot. There is literally a refrigerator, a sink, and stove and nothing else. The little counter space we do have is dominated by a toaster oven that Alex insists is too small (“How am I supposed to toast enough bread to eat??” he asks. To which I respond, “NO ONE EATS AN ENTIRE LOAF OF BREAD AT ONCE DUMBASS.”) and my coffee maker, which, no I will not keep in cupboard because our cupboards are all taken. All of them. There isn’t even enough space to keep a proper set of mugs. Cooking in there is a pain, and absolutely impossible if another person is just INNOCENTLY trying to help.

Basically, cooking in our kitchen is a one-person job, which sucks when it’s my turn to cook.

Today, Alex and I decided that it was time to reorganize our kitchen, and I must say for being a kitchen that is too small to really stand in, we had a lot of shit packed in there. We pulled out an entire years worth of unopened canned food, prepackaged lunches, and unopened spices and other general unexpired items that we had – I swear to god – intended to eat and use. So we put everything in bags and made a few phone calls, and we are going to donate a whole bunch of food to a homeless shelter close to our apartment. After seeing all that food that effectively went to waste, Alex and I decided to be much more careful about how much food we buy, because really, while I can afford to sit here in my beautiful apartment and bitch about my small kitchen, there are so many others whose kitchens are empty or non-existent, and I am only happy that I can help in some small way.

In this particular episode, Stewart discusses the recent Mosque debate/debacle/general hot mess. In a seriousness that isn’t always present in his political commentary, he talked about the fear mongering being done around the issue and the disservice it is doing to our nation as a whole. In fact, he quoted Charlton Heston, a man not often quoted with much seriousness. Heston was speaking out after the liberal left demanded that the NRA not hold its annual conference near the site of the Columbine shooting. Jon Stewart admitted that he was one of the people demanding that the NRA cease and desist; that he was angry and worked up and totally, absolutely wrong. Heston was right: there will always be tragic events, and that is no reason to persecute entire communities of people.

“This cycle of tragedy-driven hatred must stop, because so much more connects us than that which divides us because tragedy has been, and will always be with us. Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can’t become an ax for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. when an isolated, terrible event occurs, our phones ring, demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief. – Charlton Heston, March 2, 1999

Source

Connecting two sick kids with a nation-wide group of largely reasonable people who just happen to hold a different set of beliefs (in fact, Alex’s dad is a card-carrying member of the NRA, and I quite like him) is just as insane as connecting a few sick extremists to a nation-wide group of largely reasonable people who just happen to hold a different set of beliefs. Regardless of political or religion affiliation, I think everyone can agree with that logic: one does not represent all, no matter how much we want them to.

Personally, the fact that Jon Stewart looked back to his own reaction to the NRA/Columbine event and could admit that he was wrong at the time only strengthens he current position. He understands what it’s like to be on the other side of the debate, and can admit that he has changed his mind. That, my friends, is feminism at its finest. When you can look back and admit your own biases and pitfalls, relinquish your hold on objectivity and admit that you, just like every other person who has ever lived, have your own bad of shit that comes with the opinion being offered, you are a feminist.

When he dropped me off, it was sad but also sort of liberating, like I could go see a movie by myself again. Or I could drive from Davis to LA without someone in the car. Alex and I recently talked about this. When we move back to LA we each need to drive, and he didn’t want me to drive alone. I reminded him that I had made that drive by myself, with a broken radio and a dead phone, several times before we were even glimmers of hope in each other’s minds. He shrugged and said he just didn’t want me to be bored, but I think there is something deeper there, something that I have forgotten to foster while in the shadow of this powerful love between us: my fierce and undeniable independent streak.

Alex gave me a couple of 20s when he dropped me off with a kiss, to get myself a few magazines and some food in the terminal, which was really nice of him. I was at the airport almost 2 hours early, so I skipped the books and went straight for the wine bar next to the last gate in the terminal. Who needs books when you have over priced appetizers and bowl-sized glasses of wine?

So here I am, at the wine bar, sipping a lovely Pinot Grigio, waiting for my flight with a heavy heart. Yet, there is some clarity in this trip, a slow and somewhat belated rediscovery of something that went untended in these last years. While my return to my family unaccompanied for the first time in quite a while is tainted with loss and grief, there is also a small spark of something long lost awakened in me. I felt it as soon as Alex drove away: my sense of adventure.

I have never felt uncomfortable eating in restaurants by myself, and I have always loved seeing movies sans escort, and today that spark dictates my actions once again. No one but myself to keep me company, and today that’s the way I want it. Some time to spend with myself, in the small space between the awesome power of the life I share with Alex, and my role in that, and the relationship to my family that is about to change forever, alone with myself and what I want and need in this moment. It is a small moment of healing, and I am grateful for it. I am grateful for this small wine bar in the airport, hours before my flight “home” – my last flight of this sort.

I’ll take it, for all that this moment is, and I will cherish it forever. And hopefully, next week, I will go see a movie by myself, and buy myself dinner and another glass of wine, and kiss myself goodnight, in the space between the awesome power of the time I share with Alex and all the relationships I cultivate with the other people I invite into my life.

When I graduated high school, I didn’t cry. I know a lot of people did, and I don’t think that it’s weak or silly to do so, but I just wasn’t overcome by emotion. I knew a lot of good people in high school, and I only miss a handful.

I cried a lot when I stopped talking to my roommates/best friends my second year in college. The whole situation was just so inelegant. I still miss them every single day.

I have cried after every one of my cats has died.

I cried all the way through the seventh Harry Potter book, and still periodically pull out my well-worn copy and read the saddest parts (the forest scene and the dedication at the beginning) and cry like a five year old with a skinned knee. And when I skinned knee I mean gushing flesh wound. Like amputation.

I have cried over boyfriends – a few of which were not worth crying over, and a few where that definitely were.

All in all, there has been more crying that not when I’m around goodbyes.

Tonight, as I packed my bag to visit my house in LA one last time, I cried very much. I cried while I tried to decide what to wear on these last days, which pajamas would do my bed justice. I cried as I packed my camera, and my little notebook that I would use to try and capture the last of my heated emotions about the house I’ve called home for so long.

I cried while Alex held me and didn’t try to answer impossible questions such as, “how does one say goodbye?” How do you get on a plane, hold your shit together, and step into your childhood home when you know it’s the last time. How do you leave when you know that this is it? That your parents are done packing and you’ve taken the last of your stuff to your own apartment and that in less than 2 weeks time, the house will be temporarily empty, waiting to be filled with another family. Waiting to make new memories that have nothing to do with you; memories that you can only guess at. Memories that will fill another life up, and then be the source of their tears when its time for them to move on.

“With dignity,” was the only response that Alex gave.

And tonight, as I cry away the pain with snot running down my nose and mouth and mascara caking around my eyes, dignity seems to be further away than its ever been. But tomorrow, it will be all that I have left to give my house, while its still mostly mine. Even if it has to be found in the spaces between my tears, dignity will be there as I say goodbye.

And I’m sure if I’m listening hard enough, listening the right way, my childhood house will whisper the only words that will comfort me: “I’ll miss you too, Devon. More than you’ll know. Goodbye, and thank you for all the fun we’ve had.”

Because that’s exactly what I’d say if I were in the house’s place.

When I was very young, I made it my personal mission in life to avoid all regrets. I blame this particular life goal on my 12-year-old precocious self and her unlimited access to literature that was way above my head, if not in comprehension then certainly in emotional content. Of course, by the time I was 16 I had failed miserably.

My first boyfriend was a perfectly wonderful boy named Eric. He was a full year younger than me and also Jewish. I only mention this because even at the tender age of 16 I was basically dating Alex: a sweet, younger Jewish boy who cared for me deeply and loved me passionately. As passionately as a 15 year old freshman can love a mysterious (read: gawky) 16-year-old sophomore, anyway.

The whole love affair lasted all of four months and was extremely intense, so intense that it sent me running the opposite direction. The poor guy didn’t stand a chance against my early onset commitment issues.

I broke up with him over the phone, lying on my bathroom floor while my best friend was on hold on the other line. Not one of my prouder moments, I’ll admit, by one of the more necessary ones.

Almost immediately, I regretted what I had done.

About nine months later I worked up the courage to ask him out again, this time I was a senior and he was a (very handsome and popular) junior, and to my absolute shock and delight- he agreed. (There are some very embarrassing journal entries from this period of my life.)

About three weeks later, on a rainy afternoon, he walked over to my locker and dumped me. I would love to tell you that it was horrible and unceremonious and that he was just mean, but it was so heartbreakingly eloquent that I couldn’t find it in me to resent him.

I remember two things about that conversation: one: that I was wearing the most hideous sweater I have ever and will ever own. I thought it was adorable and made me look endearing and charming. It didn’t, I assure you. It made me look hideous. And second I remember the reason he gave me for breaking my fragile high school heart. He said that we had already had the conversations and the spark that made us special. We were trying to pull a Mulligan – start fresh, do-over. Redo. And that was just impossible. There is no redo button, even if you really, REALLY want one. And boy, did I REALLYFUCKINGWANTONE.

At the time, I’m sure I nodded dumbly and watched his ass as it walked away, because I am just not as smooth as those bitchy popular blondes in the TV high schools. And later that night, I came and wrote one final journal entry about Eric in my book and then cried like I had never cried before.

To this day, I haven’t cried like that over a boy.

Even then, in that moment, I knew that he was one of my more important high school lessons. I knew that the regret that he brought was not the last regret that I would have, but he was the first.

And tonight, as I drink a rather large glass of wine while revisiting this memory, I cannot help but think about other regrets, not the least of which is ignoring this blog for this long. Other regrets include: not reapplying for the columnist job for the Aggie, not taking visual art classes sooner, not traveling abroad for a semester, and not making out with the French exchange student at that party freshman year. Such is life.

My classes are chock full of tree-hugging, Anna Karenina-reading, bullshit-spewing English-double-major students that sneeze at my five pages of crap and call my bluff with their own eight-to-ten page masterpieces that the professor only half reads. If each of those students has written 200 or so essays in their college careers, we are talking about a FUCK TON OF PAGES. Pages upon pages of analysis, prose, God-awful poetry and sometimes, if you’re really lucky and in the right class, rants about the degeneration of American politics. I once wrote a rant about the degeneration of American politics. It was about my general dislike of Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin and pretty much every other American vice president in history.

That paper was four pages, thank you very much.

If we took all of these pages and lined them up, read them all, and then let our brains leak out of our ears, we would realize very quickly that there is not one original thought among them. There is nothing more than hundreds of thousands of pages of bull shit wrapped up in ribbon and shiny language. Some people are really good at it, and their ideas almost seem original, thoughtful and intelligent. And then you realize that they are just trying to get an “A” on this paper and have done nothing but parrot back what their professor lectured on. Because these professors, overworked and underpaid, only half read these papers and they like to see their own ideas rehashed on paper. It makes them feel good. Wouldn’t it make you feel good to see your words, printed on a page as evidence of human evolution? You would be the reason this paper was written, and that is fucking awesome.

So my question is this: is there such a thing as originality? Can we avoid cliches in our writing? Can a blog about my life really invent language or words or concepts that have not already been relayed for centuries? Can a picture actually be edgy and revolutionary? Does art ever capture a new emotion, or even an old emotion in a totally different way? Does Flannery O’ Conner’s narrative about obsession with a wooden leg translate into something new and original? Or is the most we can hope for that O’ Conner has given us a non-cliche, above the daily grind of tired phrases such as “eyes so green they sparkled like emeralds?” Does one war photo hit us harder than another?

Does my account of my life reshape the way the world sees twenty-something college students? Or am I just another voice int the crowd, throwing my three-to-five page long bullshit essays into the din in the hopes that it gets read and understood and turned into a cliche?

I should be so lucky. I would be honored to write in cliches, and I would be tickled pink to create new ones. I hope that my rather unoriginal (yet rather interesting) voice is heard, if not as a roar than as a whisper.

Today, she and I napped together. It was amazing, she just came right up to me, sat down on my chest and promptly fell asleep. As did I. About an hour later, I woke up and Maude (our perfect baby angel’s perfect baby angel name) was nowhere to be found. I freaked out in ways that I cannot adequately describe. I searched all over, and when I couldn’t find her, I pictured all sorts of grotesque things that might have happened. Had she gotten caught behind the book shelf? Did she squeeze through a crack in the front door? On the verge of tears, I called Alex, who told me to calm down and look under the bed. She was there. And I was so relieved. I picked her up and sternly said, “Don’t scare Mommy like that ever again!”

And then I realized that I had become that crazy woman.

When Alex came home, he had 3 bags of cat toys and treats. He had the a look of absolute joy on his face as he opened all her new presents. That’s when I realized that he had become that crazy man.

We keep discussing how this was the best decision we’ve ever made. We can’t stop looking at her and cuddling her and being crazy “parents” who worry and dote and are generally unglued.

Be prepared, Internet. We have already taken hundreds of pictures and we’ve had her for just under 24 hours. We have an entire Facebook album dedicated to her. Because we are slightly unglued and she is the cutest kitty baby angel to have ever lived.

Some days the so-called “pain of living” is unbearable, manifesting in cruel albeit mildly ironic ways. Some days my wrists hurt, my lower back aches like an old woman or my feet swell up such that I can’t wear my regular shoes. I’m not sure how much of this is mental and how much of it is sleeping in a bed that I find vaguely uncomfortable for no particular reason and how much if it is my body telling me that it wants in on this depression thing too.

Today, it’s my wrists and fingers. Sitting in class, I did my best to keep my hot coffee cup near where my pinkie meets my palm on my right hand. I clenched my teeth to keep from crying, and I almost couldn’t stop myself when I realized that what the class was talking about was either way too sophisticated for my quasi-analytical mind or I just didn’t really give a shit about the book we were talking about. It was probably a combination of both. It’s not that I’m stupid, I just don’t see why I’m spending my time talking about a book written 150 years ago. Moreover, I don’t know why I now need to write a 6-page paper comparing the 150-year-old book to a 600-year-old book about a completely different topic. Does this seem like a pointless exercise in futility to anyone else? Or is that the hopelessness talking again?

It seems unlikely that anything (especially long-winded drills in critical thinking) will ever spark my interest again. This is where I feel the most hopeless; I feel left behind while everyone around me finds joy and passion in their tasks. I simply do not find anything enjoyable anymore, and it is making me absolutely miserable.

So you can see where that might be a problem for me.

I read an article in this month’s Oprah Magazine about a woman who is committing the next 60 days to the Bikram Yoga Challenge. She basically goes to yoga everyday, and not just any yoga. No, that would be sane. This woman is going to HOT yoga. The studio is heated to 105 degrees or higher for optimal toxin flushing and facilitating flexibility. You basically drip sweat, and it is nasty.

I read this article, which chronicles this woman’s first 30 days of her challenge, and I made the wild, ridiculous decision to take the challenge as well. So today was Day 1, and it pretty much sucked. I’m not going to lie to you, it was hard, it smelled really bad and I came home looking like I took a swim, which is beyond gross.

I have always been a skeptic of the bullshit that surrounds yoga and meditation. “It’s so therapeutic” or “it’s so calming” or (my favorite) “Yes, you can loose weight with some sissy stretching” have always seemed like drink-the-koolaid behavior. However, as I was going through the poses something incredible happened. My constant inner voice was silent. Begrudgingly silent, like she had been hit upside the head and was stunned into an inarticulate pile of mush. And that was nice.

During the rest periods, you are supposed to lie in what is known as the “corpse pose” – on your back, silent, unmoving, just gazing up at the ceiling. What is noticed is that I felt very much alive (and beat up – maybe there’s something to this sissy stretching nonsense) in those moments. My heart was pounding, my breath was calm and the inner bitch was absent. Lying there, all I focused on was leaving the bitch out of this moment, and I did my best to take her criticisms floating around in my head and leave them in that hot, smelly room. It worked, if only for that moment, and suddenly the last 90 minutes of “toxin-flushing” was not in vain, but rather – dare I say it – therapeutic. But don’t tell my inner bitch I just said that because she thinks yoga is dumb.