Redeem with ruby slippers

I'm still very frustrated, but I can't handle signing off for the day on such a negative, depleted note. I found this picture from J. Crew and couldn't help but be charmed-- when I was a little girl I desperately wanted a pair of ruby slippers! (I still sometimes do).

Another item on the childhood want list? A fancy dress coat was a must, accessorized with bows. I was Victoriana-obsessed even back then! To this day, I still want a fur muff.

FURIOUS

I've presented myself here as a pretty idealistic person-- generally believing the best in people, thinking good things come to those who do good, and that the evil get their due in the end. Well, right now I am so disillusioned that I'm contemplating revising my entire universe.
What did I just find out, after being on the phone with the Department of Labor for an hour (after an entire week last week when they sweetly apologized in an automated voice for the fact that their system was "down")? That my former employer is contesting my unemployment benefits. That is just par for the course, right there.
I don't know how much more hostility, guile, and disgusting behavior I have to endure at the hands of these people. For almost a year and a half I was belittled and unappreciated. For six months of that time, I was downright abused. What do people say when I tell them what I suffered? "Wow, that sounds worse than The Devil Wears Prada." That's an understatement if I ever heard one. People do not deserve to have doors slammed in their faces. They do not deserve to be told they are stupid during department meetings. They do not deserve to do incredible work and be prevented from attending the meetings where the results would be presented, so that someone else could take the credit for my toil. They do not deserve to work their hardest, hours overtime, and have that all be for naught because of enduring prejudices against their personalities. And most of all, they do not deserve to have the people who could have stopped the abuse stand idly by and claim that they saw nothing and I was overreacting.
After what I endured for these months, another person might have said "Farewell, world." That is not who I am. I am someone who fights injustices, not someone who gives in to them. I was made to feel so bad about myself, to think that I was worthless, to be driven into depressive depths the like of which I have no verbal capacity to describe. And you know what I did about it? I showed them that something was very, very wrong, and instead of recognizing it, they shot the messenger.
I've talked to my parents about this, and they claim that they could see my employer had abusive tendencies from the first week I started working. If that's true, then I feel so stupid. I could have stopped all of this before it spiralled out of control and came back to eat me.
I feel like shriveling up into a ball. But ridiculously, something inside me is still cleaving to those ideals that the nice ones finish first. Something is harkening back to every fairy tale I've ever read and reminding me that the witch ends up incinerated or melted, while the heroine ends up dancing in a color-changing dress or finding her dreams in her own backyard. Stupid, stupid, idealistic me.

We be jamming

I had brunch at Cafe 202 today-- pancakes with creme fraiche and blackberry compote. Delicious. Next in the lineup was a stroll through Chelsea Market, which always delights me with its old-world charm. The Chelsea Market Baskets store, especially! I prefer no-name brands from far-away countries. Saw some strawberry-rhubarb jam, which made me think about strange forms of comfort...

When I was younger, we used to go to Girl Scout camp in the summer for a weekend camping trip. We hiked through the woods in the dark and illuminated our path by chomping spearmints and watching the sparks fly from our mouths. We made American flag pendants out of safety pins and tiny beads. But what I remember most of all is making the sun jam. At that young age, it was thrilling to make with our own hands something that we'd only seen on grocery store shelves.

Now I only buy jam. I scoff at jellies-- they are the poor man's jam, watered down and unspreadable. Jam needs to be plopped, dolloped, layered, and jelly simply isn't capable of doing that. On nights when I have no food in my apartment I can make a supper out of bread and jam. And in the words of the little badger cub Frances in Bread and Jam for Frances, "Jam in the morning, jam at noon, bread and jam by the light of the moon, jam...is...very...nice."

Does anyone remember that episode of Friends where Joey asks, "Remember when your mom would send you to the movies with a jar of jam and a spoon?" I think that sounds heavenly. In fact, if I don't find an interim job soon, I may have to explore the old plan from college-- moving to Colonial Williamsburg and being a jam maker. Of course, it would be far more satisfying to take in as much of this city as I can, try to forget the past and embrace the future, and come back at the end of the day and have a wonderful cup of tea and bread with jam on lovely vintage floral china...Oh, the simple things in life.

you're toast and jam

and you're cotton candy

you're double rainbows

beside a setting sun

you're wood burning outside

there's a fire growing

you're sweet as green apples

you must be the one

~chantal kreviazuk

beautiful reflection in Chelsea Market

Break from thought

I have been thinking far too much about choices. Yes, I feel that in the next few months I will be moving at warp speed, doing about eight different things at once, but I can't obsess and obsess all of the time. Back in college, whenever I was writing a literature paper, I would skim over the book, make a quote outline, make a thematic outline, read literary criticism, make an outline of those ideas, and then try to come up with a comprehensive thesis and the process by which I would prove it. At some point, rather than bringing clarity, my over-examination would render me completely clueless. I would begin doubting the points that I had previously thought were innovative or brilliant. Often, in the process of untangling and outline-writing and thinking, I would end up forgetting what the book was about! This once culminated in a The Great Gatsby-related meltdown. So I'll put my thoughts to rest, for right now.
I have been looking at lots of other blogs for inspiration. Going back to the writing a literature paper metaphor, I used to peruse many different sources of literary criticism before I even came up with a paper topic. Other people's ideas help me to develop my own. I never plagiarize-- but I definitely use those ideas as a launching off point, usually as a way to start my paper (I liked to begin with a quote) and then seque into a related or contradictory stream of thought. So in my inspirational blog tour, I uncovered m. writes, which I think is streamlined, quirky, and beautiful (three favorite adjectives). I like the "stream of consciousness" style of posting, which I have used a bit on my blog. A lot of the posts involve recent thoughts, topics of interest, or beautiful pictures. It's beauty in every form. So Marta, I hope you don't mind me borrowing from your "dear diary" post and trying to make it my own. Here goes:
I love the smell of: ginger. I used to have a "ginger ale" shower gel, as embarrassing as that is. I thought it smelled fresh and delicious-- like a jolt of "wake up" energy. WAKE UP!!! IT'S GINGER!!
I love the sound of: little kid giggles, especially when they're playing with their daddies.
I love the taste of: cranberry gel in a can. For some reason, unless I know that the cranberries were originally in a can-shaped cylandrical mold, they are meaningless to me. And I love the taste of tears, which may be a bad omen.
I love the sight of: the hands of someone I love. I like to trace the lines of hands and compare his larger, tougher hands to my tiny, delicate, bitten ones.
I love the feel of: being bundled, happy, safe and secure where I am in the moment. It usually involves soulmates, blankets, tea, cold feet turning warm, or all of the above. Unfortunately that type of satisfaction happens less often than it should...but I'm working toward being able to bundle myself in my own layers of comfort and security.

My hands are small I know

But they're not yours, they are my own

But they're not yours, they are my own

And I am never broken.

My decision process, in pictures

New York has some really beautiful sights and places that have become meaningful and special to me over the past year and a half. Can I really leave all of that behind?

Like The Upper East Side, by Central Park...

                                                                       Or Bryant Park, in any weather...

                                                         Marie's Crisis, where my inner freak lets loose...

                                  And Magnolia, which provided solace on so many dreary days of work doldrums.

But then, DC has a certain appeal. The peace. The trees. The tons of friends I have there. The academic atmosphere. What to do?

Cat's cradle

WAY too many hands...

Arrrgh, my head feels tangled and STUCK. Did you ever play that game Cat's Cradle when you were younger? I did-- I was pretty good at it, making Cup and Saucer, Eiffel Tower, and Jacob's Ladder easily and then untangling my fingers from the loop of string. Well, right now it feels like I have one massive tangle, way too many hands, and a flurry of swearing and cursing inhabiting my mind.

Today I've focused mostly on moving as soon as possible. Picking myself up and throwing myself into life in a completely different city, with new people and new problems to distract me. I called DC area graduate schools-- is it strange that they make the education program websites as hard as possible to understand? like they're trying to weed out bad educators?-- and apparently I can start classes as a non degree-seeking student as early as mid-January. I can then compile an official application, become a degree-seeking student, transfer the credits so that they apply toward my education degree, and pursue my MEd and student teaching minus the courses I took as a non degree-seeking student. Phew! Which then means that in a little over a month, I need to choose a school, get them the information they need, break the lease on my apartment, find a sublet for six months (prior to student housing), move, deposit my furniture in a storage locker, find a job to allow me to pay rent and live, and not pass out from overexertion.

But then all of these doubts creep back into my head, just as I start to think that yes, I can do all of this, and yes, it is the right decision. I haven't even had time to investigate DC schools and see if that's where I want to go. What if NYU or UVA have the graduate programs that were meant for me? Then there is the fact that whereas I've always said that I had no good friends in New York and maybe I should just pick up and leave, that is no longer true. I have found a few friends who have been unbelievably supportive and who possess the same sort of artsy, contemplative, fun, and quirky personality that I do. Knowing that my friend Kate lives three blocks away and is always up for lazy bonding has been a huge help in the past couple of weeks, and having way too many people cram into my apartment and pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of workplace abuse turned that day from one of confusion to one of triumph. I love my English cottage apartment and have no idea how I would find one I like as much elsewhere. I have no idea how to find a job in DC, and isn't being unemployed in DC just as dangerous/pathetic as it is in New York? And then there's the biggest knot, the one that stubbornly refuses to be untied: I feel like moving is admitting failure and giving up. In more than one capacity. It's saying, "I couldn't do this," but most of all, it's saying "I'm putting physical space now instead of just verbal space...and in addition to dumping the bad times, I'm dumping the good times too." It's a reality check in the worst way: being forced to realize that things are permanently severed with someone I cared/care about through my own departure, my own clearing of the premises.

I didn't want to get that personal here, and I feel that this entry is straddling the vague/clear threshold. But one last thing I will say before I continue to try to make decisions is that one of my dear New York friends has recently started a blog as well (sparrowsoul.blogspot.com) and yesterday posted an entry called "how I learned love." One thing that I can say for the last year, with all of its ups and downs and ambiguities, is that I without doubt learned love, when I was just starting to think that I was incapable of it. But in the past year I loved with my entire being, fingertips to toes, in dreams and while awake, and that is a pretty spectacular accomplishment.

"white. a blank page or canvas. his favorite. so many possibilities..."

Gleaming life

"The Boggle Hole is a cove tucked beneath cliffs, where a beck runs down across sand to the sea, from an old mill which is now a youth hostel. They walked down through flowering lanes...Here was abundance, here was growth, here were banks of gleaming scented life."

~Possession

Writing yesterday about Possession made me think about my own travels through England, to places that my peers missed in their quests to "do Europe." I loved Yorkshire. I loved the people, their friendliness and lack of wariness about strangers. I loved the moors and the cliffs. I loved the mulled wine served by every pub, the rough accents, the mist that pervaded the air. I took several trips up there, and it is because of Possession that I made a trip to the tiny cliffside community of Robin Hood's Bay. Something about the place breathed life-- the water, the eroded cliff, the tidal pools. I walked along the road from my tiny bed and breakfast on one cliff to the next nearby cliff, then down an incline, to the Boggle Hole itself.

I loved going off by myself. Now I try to keep myself busy, because too much thinking is a bad thing. I'm still very much in recovery mode, much to my dismay. I think my problem is that once I make my mind up to move on from "the cracks" and the many different forms of broken hearts out in the world, I have no idea how to proceed. It makes me think of this quote I once saw, although I have no clue where it's from: "When your heart gets broken, you start to see the cracks in everything. It's my belief that the world is out to harden us, and it's our mission never to let it."

Possess me

For my bookclub, I've been reading The Thirteenth Tale, which I love so far and which reminds me of one of my favorite books, Possession by A.S. Byatt. Possession is one of those books that lends itself to hot chocolate or earl grey tea and dreams of the moors-- but it also lends itself to about three months of plowing through Victorian letters and journal entries, academic theory, and stories of isolation, art, myth, and love. You can't rush this type of book, and I recommend reading it with a pen by your side to write questions in the margins.
A lot of the book investigates biography and scholarship, which is of course of immense interest to me (on my road to understanding myself and seeking those out who understand me). Biography is about being recognized, not just for the steps that you took but more for the things that you felt. Judith Thurman writes about this phenomenon in her new collection of essays Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, in which she covers both Possession and another sort of favorite "autobiography," Jane Eyre. Of Charlotte Bronte, Thurman writes that "the gauntlet that she throws down so defiantly but yearningly to her heroes, suitors, friends, critics, readers, and biographers is the challenge to recognize her." Biographers and scholars should investigate and write with that same sort of "imaginative sympathy and penetration." This is why the modern scholars in Possession are so fascinating to me-- they differ from the thieves and collectors (scavengers, if you will) by finding what their subjects intended to say and reflecting that out in a type of verbal mirror. I seek that type of recognization in my good friends, loves, and family, but it is harder to find than you may think. There are far more scavengers than there are looking glasses, when it comes to "kindred spirits" (to borrow a term from Anne Shirley).
Back to Possession. Some of the passages are so gorgeous that I just have to share them here:

"They say that women change: 'tis so: but you
Are ever-constant in your changefulness,
Like that still thread of falling river, one
From source to last embrace in the still pool
Ever-renewed and ever-moving on
From first to last a myriad water-drops
And you-- I love you for it-- are the force
That moves and holds the form."

"They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on the beach, and not removed...One night they fell asleep, side by side, on Maud's bed, where they had been sharing a glass of Calvados. He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase."

And, one of my favorite poems that Byatt includes, by Robert Graves:
"She tells her love while half asleep,
in the dark hours,
with half-words whispered low:
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
and puts out grass and flowers
despite the snow,
despite the falling snow."

A place where I can bid my heart "Be still"

I am in love with Anthropologie's newest website holiday feature, which is called Sweet Treats and groups items according to delicious eats and drinks in rich jewel tones, aka "cranberry relish" and "creme de menthe." My favorite part, however, is the styling of the photos. They remind me of an enchanted garden.
Which brings me to... Is anyone else thrilled about the Annotated Secret Garden? Granted, I love A Little Princess more than The Secret Garden, but there is something so magical about the idea of a misunderstood, unhappy child finding herself and her loves in life in a walled garden. Mary was special because she saw the garden's beauty even when it was frozen over, full of tangled, tortured vines and hard gray ground. Something stirring from within (signified in the chirp of the robin, perhaps?) called to her and let her know that the garden was "wick"-- that even though nobody else could see the potential, the life, the GREEN, it was still there just waiting to be released.Obviously I love that idea of self-discovery, but there's something about the cultivation of a sanctuary-- one whose beauty could not be appreciated by anyone else-- that I feel is necessary to development of children and adults alike. When I was a little girl, my secret place was actually a tree on my neighbor's lawn. Every time I was upset, I would pack my pink plastic suitcase, flee several yards down, and hoist myself up into the tree branches. I would sit there until my parents found me, neighbors started staring, or the position became too uncomfortable for my legs. Granted, now this is one of those "when I was six years old I was ridiculous and ran away to a tree" stories, but the point is that I needed a place that I, and only I, saw as truly special. When I was studying abroad in England it was Yorkshire, which is where, strangely, Mary Lenox travels to in The Secret Garden. In New York? Well, I am still trying to find my special place. Sometimes it's Alice's Tea Cup. Sometimes it's my English garden-styled apartment. Sometimes it's with a close friend, a glass of wine, and bad television. Most of the time though, it's a bit out of reach, a vague idea, or something I've yet to find...

Oh, Jezebel, Jezebel...

A quick post this morning, a little inspiration in the early hours.

I am newly obsessed with Jezebel's "19th century silhouettes and 21st century epigraphs" on gorgeous gorgeous stationary. It makes me want to send rose-scented notes to my many admirers! (Snap out of it, snap out of it, you are not Zelda Fitzgerald...)

I love the poetry of the epigraphs, many of which refer to Shakespeare, fin-de-siecle literature (my favorite) or the madcap days of the jazz age. So if anyone wants to send me an early birthday present, these will do!
Leigh Batnick, I take my hat off to you, you mad, mad bibliophile. I share your obsession and your love of ephemera and, as you marvelously put it, "flotsam and jetsam." Now, I know I'm not Zelda Fitzgerald, but at least let me pull an Aubrey Beardsley and frequent Cafe Royal, okay (see fabulous blog post about Cafe Royal!)? Well, if I have to stay in the states, I guess Cafe des Artistes will do....

a madcap, punch drunk ballad for aubrey and oscar

eliot's ghost treads the phosphorescent snow

Speak, memory

This is going to be one eclectic post. When I was at the wedding this weekend, someone asked me to describe my blog and I said "A verbal collage." Well, we'll test that idea tonight I guess.

Once again, I have insomnia. I'm not quite sure what to do about this. When I was a little girl, whenever I couldn't sleep my father would pretend to be a sheep and jump over my bed. (Did I mention that I was the firstborn and the only girl?) That would be a bit creepy if he did that now, plus I live nowhere near my parents and my bed is lofted. So that is clearly not an option. Meet Me in St. Louis was on last night (again, at 2 AM-- this insomnia is fairly consistent) and I recorded it, so attempting to fall asleep on the couch to Judy Garland's trills is a possibility. But there is something about Judy Garland that defies sleep. Her voice is so alive that snoozing during her singing seems almost blasphemous.

I believe that the voice is a very powerful thing. Whenever I am in a relationship with someone, I always notice the quality of his speaking voice and see that as an embodiment of his persona. I've dated people before where you could hear their smile in their voice. I've heard about being able to tell that someone is upset through hesitances in their speech patterns, but smiling conferred through the voice quality itself? To me that suggests someone extraordinary, as if his happiness could not help bubbling up and coming through every medium, even a perfectly normal conversation. Maybe that's why I like champagne and blowing bubbles so much: the idea that simple substances simply cannot suppress their desire to bubble up and fizzzzzzzz. :-) Champagne can soothe frazzled nerves, but so can that little tickle in the voice of a friend or loved one that lets you know that somebody knows you well and is the type of person whose effervescence is an ever-present source of comfort.

Granted, I've never met Judy Garland or talked to her on the phone. But that little quiver in her voice when she sings reminds me of that comforting quality, where deep from the chest, through the throat, through the mouth comes very real feeling. Sometimes the trill is melancholy, as in "The Boy Next Door." Sometimes it is joyful, as in the triumphant final note of "The Trolley Song." I dare you to not be smiling when Judy throws out her arms, almost knocking over the "boy next door" who has crept up next to her.

Speaking of things creeping up, I've been sensing the stress starting to tap at my door. Starting over is far more difficult than I ever could have imagined, and it makes me want to revert to my tried-and-true response: run far, far away. I picture the "overwhelmedness" as those contorted creatures from Ghost, you know, the ones who come to take people to Hell? I'm trying to take things one step at a time, and I guess if I ever feel down I could just think of the line "Clang clang clang went the trolley, ding ding ding went the bell." Delivered with that vibrato from another (although hers was artificial) redhead, it seems to have the power to snap anyone out of a bad mood based on sheer ridiculousness of lyrics! Whatever, I'll keep "chug chug chugging" along... :-)

Save the last dance for me

I just got back from my friends Chris and Sara's wedding in Washington, DC, which was so beautiful and meaningful. They are one of those couples that I feel is as close to perfect as it can get-- Chris mellows Sara out, Sara brings Chris out of his shell, they have strong lives both with and without each other, and they are unconditionally supportive of each other. I have been good friends with Sara since our sophomore year of college, and throughout our friendship she has been absolutely phenomenal. During the past rocky year, she was available for phone calls at any hour and, if I called her upset on a weekend, she would say "Hop on a train and come see me" as if that were the obvious answer. We would have girls nights in with funfetti cupcakes and 80s movies, and Chris would be incredible and leave us the apartment, sleep at a friend's house, and bring us coffee in the morning. We would then all have breakfast together, and I would never once feel like a third wheel. They are true friends and to me, better than a fairy tale. They are real love, personified, and they inspire me to no end.

Overall the weekend was a dream. The marriage of two of my favorite people, the reunion with friends who to some extent know me better than I know myself, and unconditional support for the decisions I've made over the past couple of weeks. Sara and Chris are each other's soulmates, but I think that I have many: the friends who I can depend on in any situation. One of those is Sara. I cannot wait to see the evolution of their marriage. Congratulations, Chris and Sara! I love you both.