Body Smelting

This story is about simple genius. 

I am not a morning person.  Have I said that before?  It’s an important fact of my life.  11am is really too early. I prefer to sleep until noon or 1 because I don’t usually go to bed until 4am but these days I’m usually up at 11. I like being awake at night; it is quiet and no one bothers me which means I can get a lot of work done.  And this schedule works for me—normally.  My classes don’t start till 2pm.  But sometimes I have to do things with the rest of the world and then it’s a problem.  Last Saturday I had to attend an all-day leadership training at my church that began at 9am.  First of all, scheduling anything at 9am on a Saturday is flat out rude.  Honestly.  Second, scheduling something all day on a Saturday is also rude.  Saturday is everyone’s I-don’t-have-to-do-shit-today day and that is sacred and should not be tampered with.  But I digress.

Since I don’t have a car and am dependent on the T and my own two feet for transportation, getting to my church takes over an hour.  Which means if I need to be there by 9, I need to leave at 7:45, which means I have to get up at 7:30. (Yes. Fifteen minutes is enough time for me to put clothes on and brush my teeth. It’s not rocket science.) But as I might have mentioned before, any hour before 9am is really more like a hypothesis than a fact and I have serious trouble recognizing it as a legitimate reality.  So when Saturday came around and my phone started playing a lively Romanian pop song at 7:30am, as I myself had programmed it to do, I was extremely upset and confused.  I don’t understand why this is happening.  What day is it? What time is it? I rolled over and clumsily checked the time on my phone.  JESUS! It’s 7:30?! What’s happening today?! Am I getting married? Knighted? Did I win a fracking Nobel Prize? Why in god’s name would I get up this early?  Oh . . . leadership training. God, who wants to be a leader? Snooze. Snore. Knowing myself as well as I do, I had actually set three alarms.  Unfortunately, I outsmarted my attempts to outsmart myself by simply turning off the other alarms.

Listen.  I cannot be held responsible for anything I do under the influence of sleep deprivation.  The farther away from 11am it gets the less rational and the more delirious I will be.  7:30 is no man or woman’s land—it’s an equal opportunity wilderness.  7:30 is Cinco-de-Mayo-drunk-can’t-remember-my-name-or-how-many-shots-this-is land.  7:30 is accidently-took-those-doses-of-codine-too-close-together-slipping-into-a-coma land.  Okay?  Luckily, I’m extremely self-aware so I outsmarted my outsmarting my outsmarting myself by asking my roommate to call me and wake me up before she left for her breakfast date.  She actually called me twice, God bless her. She called at 8:30 and I told her in a sleep-drunken slur that I was going late and hung up.  She called me again at 9:15.  At that point, I was at least cognizant enough to know I really needed to get up and get going.  So I got up and stumbled around the apartment for a few minutes . . . got dressed . . . I think I ate a donut but I really can’t remember.  I decided to call a taxi because that would only take twenty minutes as opposed to an hour and a half and I was already late.  So around 9:40 I stumbled down the steps of my apartment and drearily crawled into a cab and muttered—“270 Bridge Avenue.”  I had to repeat it three times before he understood me.  God! It takes so much energy to talk in the morning.

I sat in the back staring into space and clearing the lingering morning phlegm out of my throat.  Several minutes passed before I realized the driver was talking to me.

“Huh?” I inquired, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. He was in the middle of a sentence.

“. . . every day. You don’t need no doctor.” 

“What?”  He repeated himself and said something about a doctor and cold water but I was having trouble focusing and I missed it again. “Sorry . . . what’s that?”

“I hear you cough.  I tell you—you take cold shower everyday, you say adios to doctor.  You never get sick.” It might have been the suggestion that cold showers could ward off illness indefinitely or the sound of “adios” being pronounced with a thick Russian accent but something told me I needed to be fully awake for this.  I snap to pretty quick when I sense something weird or funny is about to happen.  So my middle-aged Russian taxi driver with bizarre medical advice was way better than a pot of coffee. 

“So you take a cold shower every day?”

“Yes.  Cold shower every day.  I never get sick.” 

“That’s crazy maybe I should try it.” I suppressed a grin.

He went on to explain to me how he came to know about this preemptive home remedy.  When he was a boy in Russia he overheard a man asking his friend’s father why he never got sick.  The friend's father told the man that he took a cold shower every day and that was why he never got sick.  So this man went home and took a cold shower. “Next day,” my driver paused for dramatic effect, “he go to hospital.” What?! Uh . . . you’re losin’ me Sasha.

“He went to the hospital?”

“Yes.  Because he don’t go gradual.” Obviously. “You got to go gradual or you get sick. First day: hot.  Next day: less warm.  Then next day: little less warm.  Then: cool. Then, you go cold. You don’t need no doctor.  But you got to go gradual.” 

“Ah. I see. Makes sense.”  About that time there was a young man in a light jacket and scarf walking near the cab and Sasha decided to make an example of him. 

“You see that man?” I nodded. “He need more clothes.  I don’t need.  I have just this jacket all winter,” he pointed to the thin jacket he was wearing. “I don’t get cold you know you take cold shower every day it don’t matter you go outside with no shirt you okay.  You don’t get sick.” 

“That’s pretty amazing.” I had stopped trying to hide my grin just as Sasha spotted another young man with no shirt jogging near our cab.  He was probably twenty-something and as buff as an Abercrombie model. 

“You see that guy?”

“Yeah.” Oh, I’m trakin’ Sasha.

“I run like that guy.  No. I run better than that guy. I run like horse. I forty-five. You know my doctor say I have body of twenty-five year old. I run like horse.”

“Oh, really?” THIS IS AWESOME!

“Yeah. You take cold shower.  You take hot shower.  Then: three to five minutes in the cold water. Every day. You don’t get sick.” 

“Oh, so you take a hot shower first and then switch?”

“Yes. But you got to go gradual . . .”

“Right.”

“ . . . or you go to hospital.” 

“Got it.” The best thing about my cabbie comrade was that I didn’t even have to egg him on.  Completely unbidden he proceeded to layout some pretty complex arguments in defense of the daily cold shower. 

“You know people get sick when the weather change and the temperature change because the pressure and they body get sick.  You change temperature every day you don’t get bothered.” I thought that was convincing enough but he wasn’t done. “You know it’s like the metal.  It’s like the sword.  In the ancient times, when they make the sword, it go in the really hot and then in the really cold and it make the metal you know you can’t break it.” Smelting? “Your body is a sword.” I should smelt myself? “You take cold shower every day you body get strong.”  Yes, he’s saying I should smelt my body. Okay. I’ll take that under advisement.

“I see. That’s true.” He was already making his next point.

“You know in the world of your body the bacteria they get comfortable.  They happy.  They grow.  And you in hot shower all the time they happy in the world of your body.  But you change temperature.  You go cold.  They don’t like they got to go.  You take cold shower they can’t live in the world of your body. They got to go. They don’t like it.”  Damn your impeccable logic, Sasha!

“Huh. I never thought of that.”

“You know—genius thing so simple.” I almost died.  He pointed out the window, “You see the wheels on the car.  You know before they don’t have wheel.  They try to push square thing. It don’t go.  It don’t move easy.  Then. They push round thing. It go easy.  They got the wheel.  Genius thing so simple.” That’s probably exactly how it happened.

Sadly by that time our ride was coming to an end.  I paid him and promised to try taking a cold shower every day to keep myself healthy through the winter.

“You got to go gradual.”

“Right. Gradual. Thanks!”

I laughed so hard later with my friends when I told them about my educational taxi ride—complete with a pretty convincing Russian accent. A few days later my roommate was chopping onions in the kitchen and complaining because they made her cry. 

“Here!” I said. “You have to put the onion root on your head.  If you do that you won’t cry.”  She looked at me like I was insane.  “No, it’s true. I used to cry all the time when I cut onions but I learned this trick from an old Mexican woman. It works I swear to God. I do it all the time and I never cry anymore.  And! It works for everyone I know who’s tried it.” This is all actually true by the way.  You should try it. I know. I was a skeptic too.  So is everyone until they do it.  It will change your whole relationship with onions. I swear.  Anyway, my roommate looks at me and says in her best Russian accent—

“Yeah. You take cold shower every day you don't need no doctor.”

I couldn’t convince her to try the onion-root-on-head-defense against tears.  But I know it works. I have no idea why.  And don’t say it’s a mental thing because I thought it was stupid when I tried it the first time. So you know what? Maybe genius things really are that simple. Maybe there’s something to Sasha’s cold shower theory. Maybe I should try it.  Don’t worry.  I’ll make sure to go gradual. 

Treacherous Vegetables

This story is about unadulterated misery. 

I love miniature things.  Miniature anything.  I love babies because they are mini people.  I love baby animals for the same reason.  I love mini flowers.  I love mini office supplies.  I really love mini food.  It’s just so adorable! OMG! It makes me so happy. I kind of freak out any time I see something adorable—especially mini food.  So a while back I was in the grocery store with a friend standing in front of a giant display of different colored bell peppers when I noticed a little basket of tiny orange bell peppers.  Yes!! I freaked out. They were so cute and I’ve never seen mini bell peppers before. I was so excited. 

Then my friend turns to me and says, “I think those are habanera peppers.”  I deflated like a punctured tire. I stuck out my lip in a pout.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.” 

“Okay I’ll taste one.”  My friend thought this was a bad idea. I ignored him. I picked up the questionable vegetable and pinched off a corner and ate it. 

“Nothing.” I shrugged, “Tastes like a bell pepper.”

“Huh. I guess it’s a bell pepper.”  I got eight. 

I should’ve known something was up when I couldn’t find their picture or price at the self-check out.  I rang them up as normal bell peppers so it came out to like $.24 for the whole lot. That I was stealing from Stop and Shop occurred to neither of us.  Oops.

So I took my little peppers home and admired them for several days before I decided to use them in an omelet.  I got out my mushrooms, onions, cheese and tiny bell peppers and started chopping away.  I saved my little peppers for last to prolong the amount of time I could grin about how adorable they were.  Then finally I had to chop them up and I did—with no gloves of course.  Who needs gloves to chop bell peppers?  I chopped and seeded all eight peppers, diligently scrapping the seeds out with my thumbnails. Yes.  That happened. 

Anyway, as I neared the end of my chopping session a small paper cut on the top of one of my fingers started to burn. Humph. Weird, bell peppers don’t usually . . . I barely touch my tongue to a slice of pepper. Oh shit.

Cut to: I have just vigorously washed my hands eight times when I feel a twitch near my eye and instinctively tug at it with the side of my pinky finger.  Chaos ensues.  I almost drown myself rinsing my eyes because it’s not like I can use my PEPPER SOAKED HANDS to wash them out! I believe that I actually went blind and that God miraculously healed me at some point during the commotion.  And this just proves that God is gracious because yelling “GODDAMNIT!” isn’t exactly the same as praying, “Merciful Savior, heal me please.”  Anyway, that’s most likely what happened.  I can’t actually remember; that’s just my best guess. 

As soon as I was able to see again I googled how to get habanera out of your skin.  Listen.  I took every piece of advice I could find.  It took half a bottle of dish soap, a bowl of lemon juice, a bowl of oatmeal, three bowls of milk, half a can of coffee grounds and twenty-four hours before my hands finally quit burning.  I thought I would really have to take my poor thumbs to the hospital. I scraped. the seeds. out of eight. habanera peppers. with. my. THUMBNAILS! And after hours of washing my hands in ever more desperately inventive ways, I gave up and sat in my bed with my thumbs resting in two little bowls of milk and cried as I tried to think of a time in my life that was even a little bit more pathetic than that moment.  I came up with nothing.  I have never felt so betrayed by a vegetable. 

I can only praise Jesus, God and Allah that I found out those little sacks of hell-fire were not bell peppers before I bit into an omelet full of them.  I don’t think my insurance covers tracheal replacement surgery. 

Since I was having guests the next day, I decided to use the peppers in a pot of Courtbullion but I didn’t cut back on the cayenne either. Luckily, my guests were all Southern or Korean and perfectly happy about the level of spiciness.  That Courtbullion would’ve blown a Bostonian’s head off.

All that to say, I think there is an important lesson here to be learned—LABLE YOUR FRACKING PRODUCE STOP AND SHOP!!

Do Not Fear the Breaking

This story is about the biggest idol of all time. 

Not Billy. God.  I’m talking about God. God is the biggest idol of all time and I don’t mean “celebrity.” It’s ironic really.  C.S. Lewis called God “the great iconoclast.”  For those of you who are not seminarians or Church historians or word nerds, iconoclast means “image breaking.”  Icon—“image.”  Clast—“break.”  There have been many iconoclastic movements throughout Church history usually focused on breaking/removing religious icons/images from worship and the spiritual life of the Church.  Protestants are especially sympathetic to these movements—the Reformation being perhaps the most sweeping iconoclastic movement of all. What Lewis means by calling God the great iconoclast, is that God constantly breaks all of our images of God. Lewis explains: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence?” The irony is that Lewis never understood fully the truth of what he was saying. For there was one image, one idea of God, that for Lewis could never be broken—the image of “He.”  For the iconoclasts of Church history, an image that we refuse to break is no less than an idol because we have ceased to worship God and have begun to worship an image of God.  And yet we have, by and large, as a religion maintained an idolatrous adherence to the image of God as a man.  And that makes God, ironically, the biggest idol of all time. 

I have been an idolater.  I still am and probably will be when I die.  Isn’t the point of spiritual growth to be constantly casting down our idols?  Unless we can really reach perfection in this life, that is a job that will never be done.  And it becomes quite difficult when your most cherished idol is God.  A long time passed before I understood that I saw God poorly. I only knew the Father, Abba, the divine husband-lover. That's who God was to me, end of story.  And I thought he was God, that silly idol.  I thought he was God. But God is so much more and so much less than that piece of shit.  Ezekiel’s words not mine.  That’s what the infamous prophet likes to call idols.  People never translate it into English that way.  They translate the phrase only as ‘idol.’  But there is a Hebrew word for idol and Ezekiel doesn’t use it.  He calls them pieces of shit—“dung pellets” for the less profane.  But Ezekiel had guts.  I think he’d say SHIT and say it loud.  He had no patience with idols—at least the ones he recognized.  So I learned that from him at least: have no patience with idols.  There will always be idols that elude us but when we see one—tear the damn thing down! 

The Father idol has not been an easy one to break--personally.  As a faith community it has been near impossible.  We love it so much.  We fear it or we fear losing it.  Images and symbol systems form us in our bones; they lead us into a way of being not just knowing.  The Father idol isn’t just an abstract idea; it is something we know and believe down to our toes.  And rooting it out and breaking it up takes a long time and a lot of effort.  But God helps us if we let Her.

For one thing, She speaks. Sometimes I wish I heard an audible voice, speaking clearly and directly, answering me in speeches or simple yeses and noes.  But God does not speak that way. You know the story about Moses on the mountaintop looking for God in the fire and the earthquake and the whirlwind?  And God is nowhere to be found, but after the whirlwind, there comes a still, small voice.  And that still, small voice was God. Hearing God is hearing a voice that cuts through the whirlwind in your spirit with its profound stillness. Sometimes there are no words but there is a voice nonetheless. Sometimes there are images, feelings, and movements even, which speak profound meaning without really speaking.  God isn’t flashy like a fire. God isn’t violent like an earthquake.  God is so much more deeply present than that.  God is as close as our skin. So, She communicates in the intimacy of a whisper. Shouting would be absurd.

One day I told God to fuck off.  She stuck around anyway.  Typical.  She just acted like I wasn’t speaking to Her but to someone else.  When I looked into Her face She seemed so proud of me and I realized She was right—I was speaking to someone else.  I was speaking to Piece-of-Shit God. And there was a moment of breaking.  This is how God helps us chip away at our idols—by being Present.

Several years ago I was reading one of the Twilight books and thinking how horrible the dialogue was when God said to me—“I love you kind of like that.” 

God, this dialogue is absurd so if you’re trying to insult me—kudos. I felt God smile.

“You know what I mean.” I did. She meant—“My heart aches that way sometimes because I love you so much.” I groaned.

Edward Cullen is a control freak! Are you gonna put me under house arrest if I start hanging out with someone you don’t like?

“No, no.” She replied, “I said “kind of.” I will never try to control you. As if I could.” She smiled and winked. “My power is not a controlling kind of power.  It’s a freeing power.”

Ah. That’s the part I can’t believe.

“I know.” 

Here was another part of the idol that needed chipping away.  Edward Cullen is not exactly an original character—aside from the sparkling vampire thing.  You can find traces of him everywhere—even the Hebrew Bible.  He’s not so dissimilar from the way the prophets often describe God.  The divine husband so passionately in love with his “bride” that her “infidelity” drives him, reasonably, say the prophets, into fits of madness.  God was very clearly telling me--I do love you passionately but I’m not the least bit interested in controlling you. I am not a jealous God. I’m just not.

I believe that now.  There have been many of these moments, too many for one blog; I imagine there will be many more.  I have learned that I am truly created in the image of God.  She knows my body the way a woman would.  She walks in my shoes, she knows my burdens.  I have learned that God is a different kind of angry.  I have learned that God is in and around not just out and about.  Often when this topic is raised people get defensive and freak out.  I understand.  I remember feeling that way.  God can still be our Father but only after the Father idol has been shattered. into. bits.  The Father idol needs to be broken so that God can speak to us prophetically about fatherhood rather than having fatherhood speak restrictively about God. An image that is broken can be remade and can, like a humble friend, offer us new life, new love, new beauty.  An image that is never broken becomes a tyrant.  It will offer us slavery in the guise of freedom, guilt in the guise of grace and control in the guise of love.  We have a deep-seated attachment to our Father idol. But God is indeed the great iconoclast, whose presence is marked by shattering.  Do not fear the breaking.  The breaking and remaking, not the image, is where we find God most truly.  

Death Cruise

This story is about vomit.

Four years ago, during my BU orientation, I received a pamphlet of 101 things to do while in Boston. I love that list. Whenever people come to visit me I try to check a few more things off.  Of the 101 things I have done thirty-nine so far.  So I’m moving through the list at a speedy one new activity every five months. There are three things I just crossed off the list because I will not do them under any circumstance.  I do not, nor does anyone I know, care about seeing the Season Six MTV Real World house.  Also, I cannot imagine why the Big Dig Visitors’ Center even exists—if it still does.  How someone could turn a giant, annoying, slow as molasses, city construction project into a tourist attraction is beyond me. And I don’t need to take a tour of the BU Experience, a guide to life as a BU student, because I am a BU student and that would be redundant. In all, I have fifty-nine things left to do.  If I continue at my current rate it will take me a little less than six more years to complete the list.  I realize that’s ambitious but I’ve always been a dreamer. 

Anyway, this summer my mother and grandmother came to visit me in Boston and I once again had the opportunity to whittle down my list.  You would think, of the fifty-nine things left on the list, we could find a lot of things we’d all enjoy doing. However, eliminating things from the list that were out of season, cost too much, or have anything to do with alcohol or sports takes a big chunk out of our fifty-nine options. I like alcohol and sports. But Mom and Mimi are teetotalers who couldn’t care less about any team besides LSU or the Saints. They’ve been here a few times before so our mutually acceptable tourist activities list is getting shorter and shorter. So this trip we repeated some list items and did a few things off the official grid. But we did manage to check one new thing off the list:

Number 37: Cruise Boston Harbor.

Sounds so innocent doesn’t it?  We should’ve known something was up when we learned it was a “three hour tour.”  I seem to remember a long running television show all about that not going so well.  Sadly we ignored this omen. 

Of the many tours available, we chose the whale-watching cruise, which goes further out to sea than your run-of-the-mill historic tour. And because I wanted to go to my friends’ graduation on Sunday afternoon, we chose to go on Sunday morning even though it meant missing church—a fact that later lead my grandmother to shout over the ensuing chaos, “This is what we get for missing church!” 

On Sunday morning we got up at what I consider to be an ungodly hour.  As far as I’m concerned 7am is a mythical concept. But we were down to the docks by 8:15.  We looked in vain for a free spot to park until 8:35 when we gave up and decided to just use the parking garage that had a big sign advertising $15 parking. As we pulled in and the small print came into view we realized that deal was only good until 8:30am. We paid $35 for the most expensive five minutes ever. We were an hour early so we sat around in the cold, watched the seals at the aquarium and then made our way over to the appointed dock. On the way over we learned that New England Aquariums, which also offers whale-watching cruises, had cancelled their trip for the day because of rough seas.  Our company, Boston Harbor Cruises, (Oh, yes, I’m naming names.) did not cancel our trip. 

That would be omen number two, which we also ignored.  By 10am we were settled in on the upper deck of a small cruise ship enjoying a brisk sea breeze and I was thinking to myself—You know this would make a good date.  Since it was quite chilly once the boat began to move we decided to go down and make the trip in the closed room on the second deck.  It was crowded but we found a few open seats between a Chinese family and a group of middle-aged Pakistani men.  Within half an hour it became apparent that what we had taken to be an idyllic boat trip into peaceful whale country was in fact a death cruise through the seventh circle of hell.  I’m not sure I can accurately describe what it is like to be on a ship with a hundred and seventy-five vomiting people.  When the trip was over, all of the toilets and sinks on the boat were completely stopped up with vomit.  There were a few people who somehow managed not to throw up.  Ironically, one of them was my grandmother who normally gets seasick wading across a mud puddle.  She barely got nauseous.  Jerk.

At any rate, somewhere in the ten seconds between my mother projectile vomiting all over her shoes and losing my own Cheerios breakfast into a barf bag, I came to the conclusion that this would in fact be the worst date ever.  I’m still not sure if it was actually the waves or the sound and smell of fifty people vomiting in an enclosed space that finally got to me but either way I was grateful that I’d eaten a light breakfast. 

The Chinese family to our left was constantly dabbing some kind of oil on their faces and huddling quietly together.  They even vomited quietly which I thought was impressive.  The Pakistanis to our right were freaking. out.  I have never seen a group of grown men in such a panic over such a non-crisis.  Miserable as I was at least I knew I wasn’t going to die.  This truth seemed to escape the Pakistanis.  They spent the entire trip out to sea harassing the boat staff to bring them a doctor and sneaking into the bridge to harass the Captain into turning the ship around.  Occasionally, one of them would take a break from the loudest vomiting ever to shout things like, “These people are sick, can’t you see that?!” “Tell him to turn the boat around! We need a doctor!” and “SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE!” One of these men was running around like the sky was falling when he suddenly face-planted. The Chinese woman on the other side of the room buried her head in her arms to hide the fact that she was laughing so hard, which was also funny.  I felt no such compunction.  I laughed out loud and then I threw up.  Maybe you’ve never thought about it but laughing is not something you should do when you are nauseous.  Now you know. You’re welcome. It was shortly after this that my grandmother loudly declared our misery to be divine punishment for missing church.  Luckily, she chose not to take the Jonah route and throw one of us over board to calm the sea.  

The sad thing, I realized, as I observed the stoic efficiency of the boat staff, is that this kind of insanity must occur with some measure of regularity.  Surrounded by misery and puke these men and women went about distributing vomit bags, collecting old bags that were full and cleaning the carpet and walls, as if this was all in a days work and couldn’t be more normal. How in god’s name do these people stay in business?!  The Pakistani man sitting next to my grandmother stopped one woman to implore her once again to turn the boat around before someone died.  She replied calmly, “Sir, we’re fifteen minutes away from where the whales are.”  And he replied in a desperation bordering on terror, “WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE WHALES!  WE JUST WANT TO SAVE OUR LIVES!”

I laughed so hard I threw up twice.  The woman simply walked away without responding.  But that’s only because she was passive aggressive.  A few minutes later the same woman got on the loud speaker and said, “If everyone could please calm down the seas really aren’t that bad today.”  Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up I guess I was just vomiting because I was misinformed. She might as well have said, “Suck it up, pansies.”  I imagined myself throwing up on her and apologizing, “Oh, my god I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m so sick, the seas really aren’t that bad.”  This thought made me laugh . . . which made me throw up.  Again. 

Finally, we got to where the “whales” were. Unless whales are small white birds that occasionally dive into the ocean for fish, we saw no whales.  Mimi and I went outside to get some fresh air.  Then it started to rain and we were forced back into the barf box.  Thankfully, the trip back was less vomit inducing since we were not moving against the waves.  Since we didn’t see any whales, we were all given new tickets as we stumbled, white-faced, back onto the dock.  Of course we were all excited about the prospect of taking this trip again.  My mom wrote them later and complained so they sent her a full refund.  But I still have three tickets for whale watching stuck in a book somewhere in my room just incase I ever decide I need to throw up half my body weight again. Someday I’ll be ready to risk it again for the chance to see the whales; I doubt the same could be said for the poor Pakistanis.  

Your Friendly Neighborhood Snail

This story is about being a good neighbor.

Allow me to explain something about myself. I have a personality quirk that some people find endearing and refreshing and other people find bizarre and mildly annoying.  I anthropomorphize everything—especially, plants and animals but even inanimate objects.  I talk to things as if they might in some way be human. I had to apologize to my body the other day for thinking disparaging thoughts about it.  Yesterday I thanked my feet for being so awesome. I passed by a bush this morning with thorns and little white flowers and exclaimed excitedly, “Are you a blackberry bush?!” I didn’t see little budding berries anywhere. But before I went on my way, I reassured the bush, “That’s okay I love you just as well.”  Often, as I walk down the sidewalk, a little bird or a squirrel pops up near by.  I always greet them with a friendly “Hello!” A few weeks ago I was in Newport sitting by the sea watching a little bunny hop around and eat grass. I was quiet so as not to disturb her dinner.  As I watched her all I could think was, “I wish you knew how much I love you.” I have always felt a deep tenderness toward the world and all of its creatures.

Important caveat: I hate spiders and I wish they would all die. Same goes for cockroaches and every bug with way too many legs and no counteracting cuteness factor. I don’t talk to them.  I scream, run away and campaign among the other humans present for their immediate eradication. If I’m alone, I suck it up and kill them myself—not without a lot of swearing punctuated with a fair amount of squealing and yelping. 

Everything else in the world I love and adore and talk with like a friend. Generally, these sentiments remain unvoiced thoughts but I sometimes speak out loud to non-humans. This kind of conversational, relational way of being in the world is such an intrinsic part of my internal life that I often do it off handedly and I forget that it is a little uncommon and unfortunately strange to many people. Every now and then I become particularly self-aware regarding this aspect of my character. In those moments, I really crack myself up. I had one of those moments last night. 

The rain started yesterday morning but didn’t really come full force until the late afternoon. The rain had finally let up a little and a friend and I were walking to the T. I was going to my small group; he was going to look at an apartment. We’ve both now forgotten exactly what we were talking about because our friendly conversation was abruptly interrupted by a very serious crisis. As we neared the end of our street I spotted three snails that had crawled out of the hedge and onto the sidewalk. 

“Oh, my god!” I blurted out. “Help me get them to safety!” I reached down and picked up two of them.

“Get that one.” I told my friend.

With a raised eye brow and a bemused grin, he reached down and picked up the third snail. We found a patch of leaves beside the hedge to set them on.  As we carried out our rescue mission I explained to him that, being small, gray and incredibly slow, these poor creatures, which were attempting to get away from their now flooded hiding places, had only succeeded in making themselves vulnerable to death by squishing.  I have been painfully aware of their plight since, months ago, after a light rain, I was on my way to the airport and accidentally squished one with my suitcase right in front of my apartment.  I felt so terrible. So when I saw three more snails stranded on the wrong side of the hedge I knew what I had to do. 

“I feel so bad for them,” I told my friend. “It’s really a shame they don’t have the capacity for cognitive thinking.”

My friend laughed and agreed that it was indeed tragic that they keep making the same mistake over and over.  If only they could reason it out—“Remember the last time it rained and Joe crawled out on the concrete to get away from the water and that big thing came out of the sky and squished him . . . I guess we should just crawl up on a leaf this time . . .”  

My friend and I parted ways leaving the snails to fend for themselves. I went to my small group and after met a good friend for drinks, all the while the weather getting worse and worse.  There was even flooding in some areas of the city.  By the time I got off the last bus home it was almost one in the morning and the heavy rain had given way to a cool humid wind. I’d been wearing my sandals all day and they were starting to rub in certain places so as soon as I stepped onto my street I took them off and carried them in my hands.  I wasn’t five paces down the street when I realized that every snail on my block had crawled out onto the sidewalk. I bent down and picked up the first one I saw so that I could get it to safety only to realize that he had already been crushed.  No! I felt my face wrinkle up in agony. I searched the ground and found a baby snail near by unharmed.  I rescued him—and another one and another. I trotted barefoot down my sidewalk rescuing snails from their imminent doom. 

“What are you doing out here?” I asked them, like a mother scolding a four-year-old she’d repeatedly warned.  Tisk, tisk.  I set them gingerly out of harms way feeling a deep sense of affection for them and a profound sense of satisfaction in protecting them from a terrible squish-death.

The sidewalk was lit by street lamps but was still dark in places where trash cans or trees interrupted the light.  As I stepped into one of these dark patches I felt a crunch under my bare heel only a nanosecond before a short ear-piercing scream ruptured the silence of my neighborhood. I had squished a snail.  I almost dropped my purse as I jumped and flailed my arms. I would have been calmer if I’d seen a ghost.

It took a second to regulate my breathing again.  Then moving more carefully and watching the ground even closer I proceeded on my way though not without a lingering sense of grief and sadness.  Soon I found another group of snails. I picked up the first one, turned him to face me and lectured—

“What are you doing out here?! I just squished one of your friends!! You do not belong on the concrete.  You. are. a. SNAIL.  It is not safe for you out here.”

I set him down on some leaves and moved his friends over with him scolding them under my breath.  They all just sat there looking stupid.  Poor things. They can’t help it.  All in all I probably saved twelve or fifteen snails on my way home. God knows what I must have looked like to anyone peeking out their window just then. I must've looked like a Whitfield patient, walking crouched low to the ground barefoot  at one in the morning, talking to no one in particular, screaming and jumping for no apparent reason. 

My roommate and friend were still up when I came in so I told them about my walk home. My friend made a joke about building a tiny fence around the yard to keep the snails safe—which I actually think is a brilliant idea. And since it’s clearly hard for them to climb up on leaves and rocks to get dry you could also put in some big flat stones so they would have a safe place to congregate when it rains. My friend insisted that even liberal save-the-snails environmentalists would care less about snails than I do.  Maybe.  But only because they care about snails in a more broad global sense and I care about the practical well-being of the snails right outside my door. I don’t know much about snails in general. I just know the ones in my neighborhood often get squished on the sidewalk when it rains. I’ve never signed a petition to save them and I don’t know which species are endangered but I should. My moving the neighborhood snails to safety and Green Peace (or whoever)’s campaign to protect habitats and limit toxic waste in the environment are in principle the same kinds of actions.  We have a responsibility to care for and protect life in our literal neighborhood as well as the worldwide neighborhood of creation. We were meant to live together in harmony rather than opposition.  I will have to apologize to the snails on my street for not doing more to make sure the world is a hospitable place for them and their endangered cousins. I’m not yet sure how else I can help them.  For now it will have to be enough for me to offer as much squish-death protection as I can. 

International Stupid

This story is about a versatile turn of phrase.

I was having coffee the other day with two of my friends who are Korean.  They are both international students—one is my classmate, the other I met because she needed help with English.  As we spoke my classmate expressed her increasing frustration at not being able to communicate complex ideas in English.

“I’m really smart in Korean!” She said emphatically.  Pointing to our mutual friend she added, “So is she!  She’s really smart in Korean.” 

“You’re smart in English.” I insisted.  I wasn’t just being nice.  Their intelligence is quite obvious to me.  

“No!” she insisted petulantly, “I am not international student. I am international stupid.” 

Her inventive eggcorn brought a round of laughter. 

“At least you’re funny in English,” I offered, “that’s really not easy. Humor doesn’t usually translate well.” 

“No!” She banged her fist on the table as we laughed again, “I am international stupid!”

No matter what I said, no matter what evidence I laid out to the contrary, my friend insisted that she was in fact an international stupid.  I couldn’t for the life of me convince her that she was, say, an international smart. Our friend agreed with my classmate—she also felt like an international stupid.  I insisted their intelligence was obvious and they insisted that I was an oddball and that most Americans found them incomprehensible and frustrating.

I wasn’t surprised by my friends’ remarks.  My roommate (the one who wants my cup of suffering for an ashtray) is an international student from Turkey.  Her experience here has been of the same sort as my Korean friends’.  People have trouble understanding her.   A couple of months ago she came home in a huff because she had been trying to buy her favorite tea at a tea shop and the clerk couldn’t understand her for a really long time. After a round of charades and word association she finally got the right tea but not before her blood pressure was through the roof.  When she finished telling me the story she demanded—“Tell me what I’m saying: Rose. Tea.”

I shrugged as I got up to go make some tea myself and repeated back, “Rose tea. Obvious.” I saw her eyes widen with outrage as I stepped out of her room. 

“Ah!!” She yelled, “This is all your fault!”

“What?!” I bolted.

She ran down the hallway after me with her fists raised, yelling in not-totally-mock anger—“You understand everything I say! This is all your fault, why my English won’t improving!!” 

My laughter crippled me before I got to the kitchen. “How is this my fault? What do you want me to do?”

“Be like normal American! Nobody can understand me. What’s your problem?!” 

“I don’t know, Sev. You’re not that hard to understand.” 

“Stop it.”

“You want me to pretend like I don’t understand you?”

“Okay.”

“No!”

“You’re the reason my English won’t improving!”

“Isn’t.”  I corrected her.  She stared at me blankly.

“Isn’t improving.” I clarified. She swore under her breath in Turkish and, to my great amusement, sporadically accused me of undermining her progress in English for the rest of the evening. 

Around the same time as this interaction I was told second hand that another Korean classmate of mine had been saying how great I was with international students. 

“You can say one word and she understands what you mean,” he had said.  I was surprised and encouraged by his comment.

The truth is until recently all of my closest friends here have been American.  I chose to attend grad school in Boston because I wanted to get to know people from different cultures but it proved to be harder than I expected.  My relationships with foreign students remained in the category of casual acquaintance. I found that my awareness of how little I knew of their culture and how easy it would be for me to say something offensive kept me at a polite distance.  Their English was difficult for me to understand.  I felt bad asking them to repeat themselves multiple times so mostly I just smiled and nodded and didn’t ask too many questions.  I had a hard time remembering their names or putting the right names with the right faces.  I felt really embarrassed that I couldn’t remember who they were and I was always afraid of hurting their feelings.  So we remained distant from one another. I didn’t know how to bridge the gap.  Then about a year and a half ago my Sevde moved in.  I felt the same toward her—unsure how to behave, anxious about accidentally offending her.  But I did get to know her and we became close.  As she told me about her experience in America, I realized that my behavior toward foreign students had been more hurtful than helpful. Here I was trying to save them from insult and actually I ended up making them feel that I didn’t have time for them and that they were not important to me or worth the effort it would take to work through the language and culture barriers that separated us.  They all felt like international stupids and I wasn’t helping.

So I stopped worrying so much about making people feel bad or showing my own cultural ignorance.  Now I try to let people know just how interested I am in their lives, how willing I am to do the hard work of communicating across barriers and even risk making a total fool of myself.  It’s not that complicated actually.  I shamelessly ask people to repeat themselves. I repeat back what I think I hear and give people a chance to correct me if I have misunderstood. And the closer I get to my international friends the better I am able to listen and understand, not only these particular persons but other foreign people as well. So I was deeply encouraged to hear my classmate’s comment.  I have learned to listen a little better this year. :)

And I’ve learned something else—I too am an international stupid. One night, when I was having dinner with my Korean friends, I said:

“There’s this awesome wisteria tree in Korea. I can’t remember where but it’s really famous. Do you know it?” 

They didn’t. I then remembered it is actually in Japan. I proceeded to offer up a series of Asian people/places that I thought were Korean that turned out to be, respectively, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese.  We all laughed at me for committing the absurdly cliché faux paux of implying that all things Asian are the same. All I could think was—Frack. I’m an international stupid.

I think this every time my roommate mentions a country I couldn’t begin to locate on a globe. Or a political leader of whom I’ve never heard. Or when I realize I’ve been speaking in a culturally insensitive way. So yeah, realizing once again that I am an international stupid is a recurring event.  But I confess my ignorance and allow myself to be taught by others. Hopefully, with the help of my lovely friends, I’m on my way to becoming an international smart.  

That Thing Is An Ashtray

This story is about an unexpected conversation partner.

A couple of weeks ago I threw a pot for the first time.  Not across the room, just on one of those spinning things.  Wheels, I believe they’re called. If you’ve never thrown a pot, the idea is to get the clay exactly centered on the wheel.  So you build it into a column and then push it down into a lump over and over again, keeping it steady until there’s no hint of a wobble as it spins.  We watched a pro with Madonna arms do a demonstration.  I’m a little doughier than that so I was smart enough not to expect it to be as easy as it looked.  Our assignment was to make a “tear cup.”  We were asked to think either of our own suffering or the suffering of others and craft a representative “cup of suffering.”  So I sat down at my wheel and slapped my little lump of clay down as close to the center as I could and I began to build it up and push it down, build it up and push it down. I never got to the no-wobble zone. I learned quickly that the clay was not simply going to yield to whatever creative brilliance I attempted to force upon it.  This clay was not merely an extension of myself but an-other with which I had to work in tandem rather than work on.  Throwing pots turns out to be a dialogical process. I had tons of ideas for a tear cup and my clay rejected every single one.  The question I entered the process with was: How can I make this clay express my sense of suffering?  But that question got lost as I pushed the clay and the clay pushed back.  I put my whole body into steadying the clay.  The clay burned my hands.  I used more water.  The clay slipped through my hands and dissolved into mush.  I scrapped off my wheel and tried again.  As we worked on each other, the clay and I realized there were a limited number of options as far as tear cups were concerned.  We did not know each other well enough to do something complicated.  God knows I tried! But the clay kept breaking off in my hands. As the shape of my tear cup changed, so changed the metaphors with which I framed my suffering. I ended up with a little shallow bowl.  I cut it off the wheel.  As I sat at the table with my classmates I continued to work on my pot scrapping away sections and giving it a lip.  The end result was the pot you see at the top of this blog. 

            I loved my little pot, my little cup of suffering.  I thought it expressed exactly how I felt.  When my turn came, I explained to my classmates that I felt like a shallow pot, like a pot that couldn’t hold much.  I felt I hadn’t been shaped right but that perhaps I was growing deeper.  The grooves inside represented varying levels of depth and the possibility of growth.  Perhaps I had been misshapen but that shape was not permanent. The lip represented both the inability to hold much (if you tried to fill this with water it would quickly spill out) and also my hope that I will become a person who is always spilling over with love and joy.  Barb said she knew that pot was me as soon as I turned the lip out.  For her it represented hospitality and, a true Mississippian, I am known for that here.  Courtney said that me saying I was shallow was like Barb saying she wasn’t creative—a comment she made on the first day of class for which I promptly and repeatedly corrected her.  But that’s how I often feel these days. Shallow.  Unrooted.  Improperly formed.  Most of my classmates threw their little tear cups back into the bathtub of recycled clay at the end of class.  I took mine home in hopes I could find someone to fire it for me.  I wanted to save my little pot that I felt said so much about me. 

            As usual God had to argue about it.  I was walking down Harvard Avenue, staring at my little pot, and God plainly said to me, “I did not make you shallow.” She meant both that I was not shallow and that She had made me and no one else.  Her tone made that clear.  “I did not make you shallow.  And I certainly made you.”  Okay but I feel shallow. “You are deep.”  Right . . . note the sarcasm, God. “You are filled up with things you were not meant to hold.” I fell quiet inside.  God was right.  I am full of things I am not meant to hold.  “Your shape is perfect.”  Whoa. Okay, God, I have a mirror, let’s not get carried away. I felt God smile. “Your shape is perfect.”  My shape is perfect . . . I am deep . . . The words felt true and also really, really far away.  My eyes were wet and my heart was aching.  You always fracking do this! 

            I still loved my little pot even though its meaning was now a little confused.  A few days after I brought it home I was showing it to my roommate.  I held it out to her with pride, “Look what I made in class.”  And the happy little smoker that she is replied, “Oh, is it an ashtray?”  “No! It’s my cup of suffering!” “Oh . . . it looks like an ashtray.”  “It’s a tear cup!” “I could rest my cigarette right here.”  She made a motion to rest an imaginary cigarette in the lip of the little bowl.  I snatched it away dramatically and held it to my chest.  My poor little pot! I was horrified at the thought of it being used for so crass a thing.  I teased my roommate for being so unflinching in her insensitivity. We laughed.  I told her I was going to find someone to fire it so that I could glaze it at The Clay Room.  “Can I have it for an ashtray?!”  “No!” 

            The next week I laughed with my classmates about this story and I reflected on it again when I blogged about it for our class experience blog.  Half way through my blog God said, “Yes, that thing is an ashtray.  You are not.” I fell quiet inside again as I realized that I had in fact made myself into an ashtray.  My life had gone something like this: “You are an ashtray.” I’m an ashtray? “You’re an ashtray.”  I’m an ashtray. “That’s right you’re an ashtray. Hold this.” Yes, I am an ashtray. Snuff out your anger in my palms. Pile the butts of your burnt out hopes in my hands. I’m built for ashes.  Not for water.  Not for earth.  Only for ashes. “You’re an ashtray.” I’m an ashtray.

           But God says—“No. You are not.” And I say—“No. I am not. That thing. That clay thing. That is an ashtray. I am not.  You may place your ashes there. I do not hold ashes. I do not hold fears. I am not an ashtray.” 

           Maybe I’ll let my roommate use my little pot as an ashtray . . . for a while anyway.  I have a feeling it has more to say to me and I’m always hesitant to dispense with a good conversation partner.