John My Beloved

Just watch this.

#VEGASMEGABIRTHDAYWOW

I made these for my two best friends:

An old writing adage for Becky.

And a classy piece of art for Meghan.

Becky and Meghan are born two days apart and have always thrown absurd, wonderful joint birthday parties. This year, we lived it up in Las Vegas (where Becky's getting her MFA).

It was ... absurdly fun. And I know fun usually implies something vapid or forced, but I genuinely had a wonderful, memorable time. I know this is one of those memories that'll be savored, one that will acquire a hazy syrupy glow of nostalgia and fondness.

Needless to say, being with Becky and Meg was right. When you've been friends for as long as we have, being together feels like the universe coming back into focus. I also got to spend time with the inestimable Felipe and Alex! Love those fellas.

I also got to spend time with Becky's Vegas friends, and I can now pretty confidently count many of them as my friends, too.

There were shenanigans which included alcoholic milkshakes, a giant metal praying mantis that shot fireballs out of her antennae, Truth or Dare, an unexpectedly fancy whiskey attic, spontaneous indoor rock climbing, the cheesiest diner I've ever seen, and even a writing craft lecture.

It's okay - I'd be jealous, too.

Okay, confession:
I was a little anxious about the trip before I left. I have a history of being deeply and painfully socially awkward. I've mostly grown out of it, but there's still a part of me that doesn't really believe that I'm no longer the wallflower I used to be.

A lot of my middle school awkwardness stayed with me through college (instead of dissipating, as it does for most people, as I understand it) because most of my peers were excessively cool. They were these unbelievably witty, esoteric, insightful artists and writers. They practically bled that weird brand of raggedy insouciant sophistication that's so unique to privileged but-trying-so-hard-to-not-seem-privileged college kids.

All of them seemed so Together. Like, they had things Figured Out. They had opinions and knew the difference between a syrah and a merlot. They lounged around and talked in these scornful, beautiful, careless voices. Compared to them, I felt like a dorky, too-earnest, naive kid, struggling to keep up with the grown ups. I was completely in awe of them, and completely intimidated by them. I always felt that I had to prove myself, that I had to earn my way into their exclusive circle.

Someone would crack a joke that hinged on an obscure piece of literature I hadn't read, and I would hear, "Impress me - then maybe we can be friends."

Someone would disinterestedly dismiss a comment I'd made and I would kick myself for being so stupid.

And, perversely, instead of becoming disgusted by the whole thing, it just made me try even harder, scrutinize myself even more. I have a problem with confrontation - my Asian heritage shows up in the form of accommodation and acquiescence, I guess - so instead of realizing that the reason I'd never live up to their expectations was that their standards were unreasonably high, I just accepted that I wasn't good enough.

Even as an adult, I've believed that - when getting to know people - I can't let anyone know what a total and complete dorkasaurus I am. I can't get loud or enthusiastic. Just play it cool, okay? Stop bouncing around, stop trying so hard, give people some room, geez.

I was worried, before I flew out for the birthday weekend, that I'd fall back into my old awkwardness. And then, while journaling at the airport, it suddenly hit me. I'll never be as good at cool as that one kid I went to school with. I'll never be as fun as that one girl I know. But, damnit, I am the best at being Leta. There is no one who is better at it.

And I'm rad. I know it's not cool to be all braggy-self-lovey, but I don't care. I'm awesome. A dork, yes. Over-excitable? Definitely. I am absolutely an unforgivable know-it-all (who doesn't even know that much about anything in particular), and I do get awkward and shy sometimes. But I also meet people with the expectation that I'll like them - I don't need people to impress me before I'll admit them into my life. I laugh really hard at stupid things. I like board games and staying at home sometimes, and I read books over and over, and I haven't read Faulkner or much TC Boyle, and I don't like a lot of music I probably should like, and I prefer cider over liquor and plain old apple juice over cider, and I give amazing high fives and I love hugs and am a terrible dancer and I don't really know what's cool, and that's okay with me.

What the hell. I don't need cool.

And I had a fucking blast in Vegas with everyone! There were probably people who don't think much of me, who think I'm a boring so-what with boring so-what thoughts. But I like most everyone I met, and I don't care if they know that I like them. I don't care if they know what a spaz I can be, or how nerdy I can get, or how earnest and eager and - sure - naive I am about some things. I don't care if they know how much I loved it. There seems to be this weird taboo against talking about or showing or admitting how much you really like something, and I've decided that this is foolish.

I loved it. The whole trip. Everything.

I loved meeting everyone and getting to know people and making friends. I loved being myself with my two best friends in the world. I loved seeing how much everyone loves Becky. I loved being wholehearted and holding nothing back. I loved that there were people who have only known me like this - trying to be no one else but myself.

It's a shift that's been coming on for a long time. I don't need to be cool and superior. I can afford to expose my own ignorance, because how else do you remedy it? I can afford to not hold back, even if I end up going too far, because what's the use of anything you do by halves?

I know I had a point with this post, but I've forgotten what it was I was trying to say.

This just turned into an indulgent, self-congratulatory pep talk for me. But I couldn't write this post without going into all the personal revelations that accompanied the trip.

I don't have a good way to end this, so I'll just wrap up by saying that I can't wait to go back.

The friends that eat each other stay together. For eternity.

So this is obviously a thing that happens between good friends.

Totally normal. Nothing strange or unusual about this friendship.

good boy

I miss you.

I'm glad I was home, and not still in Chicago.  I'm glad I got to sit with you and scratch your ears.

I still can't really believe you're not around.  I still feel like I'll walk in the door and there you'll be, your ridiculous, adorable stub of a tail wagging visibly.  Like if I sit on the floor, you'll try to crawl into my lap, even though you're really too big to be a lap dog.

I want to throw plastic bottles around the yard for you to chase - I even want to hear you crunching and squeaking them to pieces.  I have no idea why you liked them so much; you were such a loveable weirdo, and I think that's what I miss most.

The worst part is that I wasn't prepared to say goodbye to you.  I mean, no one ever is.  But you were supposed to have another good ten years.  In that last week, I wasn't even seriously worried, because I just figured you'd get better.  That's how it works.  You were young and otherwise healthy.  You'd get better and live a long happy life.  I'd get to see if your one still-floppy ear would ever stiffen up.  I'd get to see if you ever lost your soft puppy fur.

But I guess that's not how it always works.

Part of me thinks it's maybe a little bit silly to get so worked up and heartbroken over a dog.  That's the part that tries to be sensible and cynical.  The stupid part.

Because you weren't just a dog.  Well, okay, you were - but you were one hell of a dog.  And you deserve every tear and honest, un-self-censored pang of grief.

And no dog is "just" a dog, because dogs are loyalty and love made flesh.  No matter what terrible things humanity has done or ever will do, we can point to dogs and say, "Well, at least we made one good and beautiful thing."

You were no exception.  I miss the way you'd sit on my feet, or crawl under Nick's legs when we were sitting on the couch, because you wanted to be as close to us as you possibly could.

We didn't do a good job training you - you never did learn to stop pulling on the leash - but you always wanted to please.  It's a silly thing, but you even ate nicely.  You didn't gobble your kibbles, and you always waited for me to put a treat in your bowl before you tried eating it.  You'd leave the kitchen when we told you to stop hunting for scraps while we were cooking.  You always came when we called.  You didn't like baths or being brushed, but you stood still and let us do it anyway.

I can still see you lying on the cool tiles by the front door, belly up and legs splayed in the air, the very picture of relaxation.  It broke my heart in those last minutes, saying goodbye, when you scooted off the blankets at the vet's office so you could lie on the smooth linoleum.  It was so much harder saying goodbye knowing you were still there.

If someone said I could go back and relive the two years with you, but that it would always end this way, I would do it.  Because even knowing you for too short a time is worth all the heartache and pain I feel now.

I'm so glad I got to meet you.

I wish we'd had longer.  I don't think I'll ever stop missing you.

You were a good dog.  The best.

Chicagoland

A few weeks ago, I went back to Chicago (only the second time I've done so since moving westward three years ago).

I went for an interview with an amazing company (for a job which, sadly, I did not get), and plane ticket pricing granted me the excuse to stay through the weekend, i.e. Have rad times with all my friends.

As much as I love living out west amid the mountains and treehuggers, I really do miss home.  Which isn't so much a place (I'm not particularly tied to the midwest, though I do enjoy it) as it is the close community of friends I literally grew up with.  Home is also with Nick, but it's a different sort of happiness and safety.  When I was in Chicago, I missed him.  When I'm in Denver, I miss my childhood friends.  Having two homes in two different places can be difficult.

Becky and Meghan and Molly knew me when I wore baggy t-shirts and smudgy tennis shoes.  We went through the awkward, rocky, embarrassing teenage years together.  We speak like each other.  We fight and bicker and laugh and communicate via weird noises.  I'm pretty sure they know me better than practically anyone.

But I tend to do this to myself.  I went to school in Iowa instead of staying in Chicago.  I moved to Colorado shortly after I graduated college.  I think I do it to test myself.  I'm a homebody, and I tend to not leave my comfort zone.  Moving away from everything is a way to force myself to cut down the safety nets of familiarity.

Being back among Becky and Meghan and Molly and seeing Chris, an old college friend, was invigorating.

I've been away from female friends for too long.  I forgot how much fun it is to just sit and talk (okay, so it was really just gossiping).  We drank beers out on the deck in the evenings, sweating in the humid summer air.  We went to see an improv show that took an audience suggestion and made it into a complete Shakespearean style play.  We got nerdy and discussed Harry Potter and the Avengers.  We went to see Moonrise Kingdom.  We partied it up in the suburbs and played with dogs and kittens.  We spent the greater part of an evening in hysterics, rewording the chorus to Call Me Maybe - an abominably irritating song which became awesome when we got hold of it:

I just met you,
and this is crazy -
but here's my number.
I've got a boner.

Because we're so classy.

It was a much needed vacation among my dearest friends.

Thing to make you cry with joy #1: Guy proposes with a giant song and dance number

Okay, so I know stuff like this sets women's expectations way too high, but ... come on, it's so, so wonderful. You can't not love it.

Questions without answers

Lately, life has been filled with stress and uncertainty. Well. More than usual. It's mostly to do with trying and failing to find a job, attempting to figure out what I want to be doing, not knowing where to go next. The usual post-collegiate sense of failure and ineptitude, compounded by the three year gap since graduation, during which time I was supposed to have been busy getting my act together.

It's not hopeless, I know. It only feels like all that initial potential has been slowly draining away. But, I tend to think that things will work out one way or another. I tend to think that it's good to be proactive, but not useful burning up energy worrying - because one day soon, I'll find a decent job and life will continue. It's the inertia of being alive.

During a recent phone call with my parents, in which I was discussing my lack of success in finding steady employment, my father advised me to pray about it in the hopes that god would open the door to a job.

This was a loaded statement, heavy with worry for my damned soul and disapproval of my sinful ways and disappointment at my failure to keep to the religious line. It breaks my heart every time I hear it, or any of its many incarnations, come from my parents' mouths.

Of my circle of friends, I was probably the one who clung to religion the longest - at least, outwardly. I was good at it, good at acting the right way and saying the right things. It was easy, and it won me approval. Approval and acceptance were, for many years, the main motivator behind being religious. Which is terribly tragic. Sometimes I reread old journals and see myself struggling with religion, desperately repeating that I'd always believe, hoping to convince myself. It was a security blanket I held onto long after I ceased to really trust in its ability to grant protection or comfort.

One of the hardest things for me was admitting to myself what I'd known for a long time: that all the worst experiences and thoughts I've ever had have stemmed from the misplaced sense of inadequacy and guilt that was ingrained in me by religion. It was hard to admit that religion had driven a wedge between me and my parents. But my fear of letting go of the comfortable lie I'd built was overcome by my desire to live honestly. I was able to let myself say out loud that I've never seen religion do anything to edify or empower, instead of just choking back the words.

Original sin, humanity's inevitable fall, the essential brokenness and darkness of the world, any instances of good being instances of god - these are tenets of religion that have never sat well with me.

It's cheap. It's disingenuous.

To blame the horror and iniquities of life on humanity, and to credit its moments of grace and kindness to a deity, is so cowardly and despairing.

My parents want me to be religious. I know it comes from a place of love and concern; from their point of view, faith was the only thing that got them through their turbulent times. The generosity of their friends, the support of their community (which was largely religious) was attributed to a strong shared sense of faith, and to the ministrations of a god that watches out for his own. (I think it should have been attributed to the bonds of friendship and loyalty.) So I understand why they want faith for me. They find contentment and relief in "letting things go" and "giving it to god." They distrust the world, have experienced the dangers of putting your trust in people, who can fail you. They want me to think of my eternal soul, of the place I'll hold after I die. They want me to recognize and accept a loving and caring god.

And given half the chance would I take any of it back?
It's a fine romance, but it's left me so undone.

But I want to live in the world, among this flawed and imperfect people, a member of a beautiful and strange species. I'm not just a visitor here, as so many sermons have said. I'm a resident. This is my one real home.

I want to participate in the human pursuit of knowledge, in flexing our young ancient wild minds. I want to fall down and make mistakes. I want to be picked up and dusted off by other people who have fallen down and made mistakes, too. Failure is an occupational hazard, a mark of courage, a rite of passage - not something shameful, something to need forgiveness for.

I put my trust in my friends. Yes, people can fail you, can leave you wounded and lost. But shutting out the good for fear of potential pain is widely regarded as a culpably stupid course of action. It has always been my friends who supported me whether I knew I needed it or not. It was never faith that soothed me when I was hurting, never a sense of god's presence that healed a broken heart. It was the sense of camaraderie and love among friends, the immediacy of their understanding of being hurt and flawed, the balm of human empathy, and the tangibility of held hands and wordless loving embraces.

I don't need to think of a creator to feel awe when I stand at the edge of Lake Michigan, or when watching a sunset over the Rockies. I see the time, the staggeringly slow geological processes, that led to their births. And it's amazing. The thought that I'm able to stand here, aware and vibrant, is made all the more wonderful for the thought that it happened by chance rather than by design. In the heaving, roiling battle between life and entropy, this lonesome planet coughed intelligent life onto its shores. That makes us precious and rare.

For me, it's so much more freeing and humbling and awe-inspiring to think that I'm just one small, fleeting being in the vast universe, using this 1.5 kilograms of soggy brain tissue to imagine and question.

Disease and war and danger is understandable in a world that evolved by trial and error, without a master plan. It's unforgivable in a world supposedly guarded by a loving creator. The difference between living on a world that's evolving and a world that's the pinnacle achievement of an all-powerful god is that the evolving planet will keep evolving. Religion tries to take the despicable way out, running away from our problems to a different plane of existence.

I don't want the simple, narrow answers or the thin comfort that religion provides. The beauty of life lies in the risks we take, the recognition of our own smallness and worth, the marveling we might do at our achievements and the glorious world we find ourselves in, the seeking we do in the darkness, the lights and fires we set along our brief timelines.

My limitations are what make me worthwhile. My existence is made precious because it is ephemeral, because it's doomed but not despairing, because it reaches for the universe that dwarfs it, because it is so improbable and hopeful and lonely and loving.

I'm ready to suffer, and I'm ready to hope.

I'm never going to stop asking the questions, because no answer is ever going to be big enough for all the goddamned wonder I have for the minutest vibrations of atoms, the grand sweeping swirl of galaxies, the ridiculous amazing complexities of humanity.

I'm a child of four billion years of evolutionary success, and I will never stop being in love with this universe.

Love & ... Aliens?

"And I watched those constellations shift, hoping that they would part and I would see her face.  It was at that moment, in that very small town of 30,000 or so, that I truly appreciated the vastness of the universe and the searching we might do in it."  - John Hodgman

I don't have anything to add to this. It's funny and touching and weird. Just watch it.