Revisiting Solitude

When I wrote about finding peace in being alone last summer, I thought I was writing from the heart. I thought I meant it. But looking back now, I realize that post was all talk. Okay, I am being a bit hard on myself. I was doing good things for myself, but at the same time, I was consciously and subconsciously relying on the knowledge and comfort that I was not alone.

Of course that wasn't my fault, and maybe I did recognize the fact that I was not being completely self-reliant and my peace did not have to do with my independence. But now that I am, in some ways, more alone, I realize that the process of coming to terms with being alone and being happy about it is just beginning.

Every major experience I have had in my life shouts: "Don't depend on anyone other than yourself for your happiness!" But it's just so damn hard when the happiness you've felt because of another surpasses anything you've ever experienced. It looks like I have a lot to learn ahead of me, but I can proudly say that the beginning to learning every lesson is acknowledging the fact that it exists and must be learned.

So that is where I am now. I am on the way to learning the truth of happiness. Learning to cultivate it within myself, to not be dependent on anyone or anything other than my very own existence. I am learning to be more compassionate towards myself, to give myself more time, to stop setting arbitrary deadlines for myself. I read the following anonymous quote somewhere and it is helping me to be patient and kind with myself on days like today. I hope that, if you are going through something difficult and trying, and beating yourself up about not getting over it, you can read this, take it in, and give yourself a break:

"The process of healing is not a smooth transgression. It's more like a lightening bolt, full of ups and downs, progressions and regressions, dramatic leaps and depressing backslides. Realize this and know that whether you are "better" or "worse" than yesterday-or five minutes ago-the healing process is underway."

Reviving Woody

I have a confession: I am a Jew who loathes a self-loathing Jew. Rather, I used to be. Hence the title of this post. When one is forced to spend long, languid hours at home due to the icy roads that keep one from getting out into the real world, this one tends to turn to film.

I don't know about you, but I get really into phases of directors/content/genre. Like, I'll watch everything Hitchcock ever made in a week, then I'll move on to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, then spend two weeks exclusively watching Seinfeld (or something campier like 30 Rock), and on and on. These past two weeks, I have decided to revisit a man from my past, a man whom I gave more than several chances to show me he could be different, to make me believe in him. But it never happened. Woody Allen never ceased to piss me off. His voice gives me the same feeling as watching someone file their nails (worst. thing. ever.). The scenarios are all the same. People fall in love, they fall out of love, they cheat on their spouses, they divorce, they date... dear god, we know, Woody, we know. Life is hard.

And now, the Universe prompted me to give him one more chance. Who knows?--Several years had passed, I had matured, perhaps even shifted some worldviews of my own. Perhaps I had never been ready for Woody. I had been writing him off as dull, whiny, and unoriginal, telling him with a shrug: "It's not me... it's you." But perhaps it really was me who had the problem all along. Or you know what? Maybe neither of us had anything the matter with us and had just grown and were finally ready for one another.

So I'll leave you with a little gem from Manhattan, which is now playing in another window (yeah, I have yet to learn to resist the will to multitask on a laptop simply because I can): "I finally had an orgasm and my doctor told me it was the wrong kind."

If you're fed up with someone or something, don't be certain you'll feel the same way a few years from now. Sure, you may, but you may also find the perfect companion for all those sub-zero winter days when the only other living creatures in the vicinity are your cat and the exotic plant in the living room that's never once bloomed.

Visa Ventures

As my loyal followers--all three of you--know, I plan to spend my spring semester abroad in Paris. One of the main reasons I started a blog was to document my trip (so stay tuned), but then it was summer and I decided that to start one a few months early would not be a crime. Anyway, one of the many, often tedious, steps one has to take to go about studying abroad is acquiring a visa.

Now, acquiring a visa to Paris is a wearisome process within itself. Some visas you can apply for by mail, and having done just that for my trip to Vietnam last winter, I expected nothing different for France. Alas, I soon found that this was not so, and that a trip in person to the Consulate of France was in order. As a Washington state resident, "my" appointed consulate is the one on Bush Street in San Francisco.

So began the search for a time to fly to out to the Bay, and for tickets as cheap as humanly possible, and for the twenty-odd documents the monsieur at the desk in San Fran would demand from me. I was dreading the trip for the Bay from the start. First off, I hate flying. Can't stand it--even the smell of airports halts my digestive process and activates my sympathetic nervous system. So not only did I have to deal with something that frightens me (I've recognized it's the whole everything's-out-of-my-control deal), but I had to give up one and a half precious days of Thanksgiving break for this damn visa. Add several other reasons and being sick... I was not anticipating the trip of my life.

My flight was scheduled for 5:35 pm on Monday, November 22, and my appointment at the consulate, which was scheduled in an impersonal manner weeks in advance, was for the following morning at 9:30 am. I didn't know what I would do with that time. Anyway, while I was worrying how I would spend 9 waking hours in San Francisco, dear Seattle experienced a bit of its own crisis. Several hours of snow later and winds that, according to my news-following brother, reached 74 miles per hour, Seattle shut down.

Meanwhile, my dad and I planned accordingly and left the house early, accounting for the slowness and danger of the traffic and roads, respectively. Everything started out normally until, 7 minutes into the drive, we merged onto 99-South towards SeaTac. Eight and a half hours later we were just two miles from where we had merged onto 99. I am not shitting you. Oh, this was just the beginning of a fun-filled night.

The seven hours we spent on I-5 South were alright. No, really--it was me and my dad, and we had eaten before we left the house, so we were in good company and not hungry or anything. We had snacks and two bottles of water, and half a tank of gas. The whole situation was funny. I kept breaking into giggles every time I looked around and thought of the thousands of frustrated drivers trying to decide whether it was worth it to turn off their engines every fifteen minutes. The "driving" went like this: stand still for 15-20 minutes, turn on your engine, roll forward a quarter of a block, stop, turn off your engine. And it went on. FOR SEVEN HOURS. And the most hilarious thing was, I kept thinking I'd make the flight until 30 minutes before it departed. Then I decided I'd make the next flight. But seven hours later, I kind of learned to stop "deciding" I'd make the next flight, because at this point, just getting to the airport, not running out of gas, or getting stuck in the ice was an unknown.

People all around were abandoning their cars and bundling up to walk. I have no idea where they were going, because at any given point we were at least 1/2 a mile from an exit, and it was below freezing. I actually saw a dude in Crocs braving the storm. CROCS. Without socks. Which would normally be the way to do it if you were to wear the atrocity in the first place, but not on that day.

Anyway, my dad intimated at some point in this long wait that we may be better off just turning around and going home, and trying to reschedule my meeting with the Consulate. Too bad that was not an option, I told him. If I missed my appointment, I was in deep shit. So instead of worrying about being bored and anxious in San Francisco, flying, smelling like an airport, and sitting next to a flirtatious overweight businessman on each side (all things that happened, actually), I was worrying about not being allowed to live in Paris. Except then I would realize that worrying only fueled more worrying, and so I would shake it off and crack a joke to my pops about the guy next to us trying to take a piss without thirty people seeing his junk.

I'll spare you the details of how we finally arrived at the airport, at 12:25 am. Obviously I had missed all the flights into the Bay for the evening and night, so I went to inquire about the earliest flight for the next morning. Of course that only happened after standing in line after dozens of other impatient citizens who had also missed their flights, battling with the poor women of Alaska Air, staring them down with their crazy no-sleep eyes and railing on about the inefficiency of the System.

It was my turn and I willed myself into consciousness to carry on a conversation. All flights to San Francisco for the morning were booked and had lengthy stand-bys. BUT there was ONE spot left on a 6:10 am flight to Oakland! Oh God, YES! I would have to be upgraded to first-class for free, was that okay?

My dad left the airport in the vicinity of 4 am and I almost cried because I was so out of it. I think I actually whined "I want to go hooooome" with tears in my eyes like the four-year-old brat I am.

Long story short (okay, it isn't short at all and I don't even know why you would be reading this..honestly writing this has been a personal catharsis), I boarded the morning flight, made it to Oakland exactly one hour before my appointment, was picked up by a family friend and driven to the consulate, entered the doors sweaty, full-bladdered and foul-breathed two minutes before my appointment time, and GOT DAT VISA. Then I was taken back to the person's home, whereupon I took a hot shower and tried to pass out to no avail because--irony of all ironies--I was too exhausted. Got on a 5 pm flight back to Seattle. I hardly noticed the fact that I was flying and, naturally, should be nervous. Several minutes after takeoff I looked out the window to my left and watched the gentle folds of the Pacific Ocean. I actually cried. I was looking at all the water and crying, and I know it is normal to be emotionally moved by a beautiful sight, but I can't say I would not have cried if the person next to me had dropped one of their salted pretzels, or if the hostess had reprimanded me for not yet having turned off my cellphone. Let's just say I was in a fragile state.

So I made it home and am living proof that even a person who is a wreck when she doesn't get nine hours of sleep a night can survive 39 hours without sleep. Granted, I was probably drooling in public after 15.

I am happy to say that I am safe and somewhat warm at home now, but still experiencing the effects of sleep deprivation which means I become emotional easier than normal. So here I sit, tearing up at Katy Perry's "Fireworks" video and talking to my cat (fine, I do that on any given day).

The Maid

This Chilean gem is a tough one to describe and evaluate... the main character is so radically unlikeable that you find yourself questioning your reasons for still watching the damn thing. A brief synopsis: Raquel, a middle aged woman who has been working as a maid in the same household for 20 years is threatened by a replacement. Over the years, the viewer sees how Raquel's role as maid in the upperclass Latin household has become so much more than a role. Raquel has fused with this social role and taken it on as her only identity. It is no wonder that when this identity is threatened, Raquel's whole sense of self is overturned. A vast part of the film focuses on Raquel's painfully childish, often sickening, but laughter-inducing ploys to rid herself of her new aides. When the antagonism becomes too much to bear, the film switches its focus to Raquel's transformation, thanks to an aide who is hardly phased by her cruel attempts.

A warning to potential viewers (and yes, you should watch it): The Maid is advertised as a comedy. Much too often this mistake is made by the categories on Netflix. Yes, this film has aspects of comedy, but it is in no way A Comedy. Seeing Raquel in action is one of the most tragic, disturbing film experiences I have had. The directer, Sebastian Silva, approaches Raquel's character with a total deadpan quality, and this renders the film both funnier and more tragic. All I can say is thank god for Lucy.

Some critics have stated that this film goes nowhere. I am pretty sure they would feel the same way about their lives, because this film reflects what it is to be human (though I pray most of us are more stable than Raquel). The Maid's unpredictability allows it to flourish, and maybe it's just the social psychologist within me, but I believe that Silva has created a remarkable study of mental servitude, the extent to which we take our society-given roles, and simple human compassion, without which The Maid would be categorically unwatchable.

You Are the Everliving Ghost of What Once Was

It's a miracle. This cover by Cee Lo Green actually moves me as much as, though in a different manner than, the Band of Horses original.

Walk home

Two beautiful and curious things I saw on my walk back from campus to my apartment:

1.

It is wet out, and the flattened leaves are pressed to the sidewalks by feet, bike tires, and more rain. When they are forced away from the ground, disturbed either by feet again or a gust of wind, they leave behind a dark grey imprint. They seem to be holding on, in such a human-like manner, to their previous mode of existence. They seek to leave something behind of themselves before they imminently deteriorate. But leaves cannot write a book, nor sculpt out of matter, so they try to hold on in the only manner they know. I always thought that only human beings felt a constant hunger for the past, but today I saw a hungry leaf.

2.

The leaves accumulate in piles on the interest house block, whether by the wind or grounds maintenance (or both), I don't know. The piles stretch from the curb to nearly the houses themselves, creating fat horizontal golden stripes, if one was observing this phenomenon from a bird's point of view. I was walking, approaching these piles, noting how vibrant the yellows, so bright they seemed painted with dyes and chemicals, and a funny thing happened when I found myself in the middle of the piles. The colors, already devilishly burning, flared up into a golden sea of light, and I was beside myself, and it was so beautiful I actually felt choked up. The individual leaves were no longer distinguishable; instead, they melted together into a mound of energy, in the middle of which I stood.