East Coast Time

I don't even think I was home for more than 30 hours. But I got to see my family on Christmas morning and hang out with some friends from high school that night. We went out to a bar expecting to see lots of people but my friend let me know that Christmas Eve is the new night to go out in Leesburg. Oh how things have changed.

Now that I'm back in Las Vegas for a couple of days before heading to Charlotte to spend New Year's with my college friends, I'm really wondering what's keeping me here. I can work back in Virginia or North Carolina for the same company I work for now, only in a community that I care about. I keep trying to remind myself of the idea that a place is only what you make it, but Vegas made itself up a long time ago and no one stays here long because of it. And I'm just one of those people waiting to leave at this point.

I'm hoping that when I get back to North Carolina I'll actually stay still for a little while. I'll figure out how to be in the present and know what I'm looking for. On the vision board at work I've got mountains in the backround and my goals are to open a store in Asheville and settle in there. To eventually become a yoga instructor and own my own studio. It's a peaceful life where I'm walking down the street with my children to get breakfast on a cold Saturday morning. And then I look at what I want to do before all that and think: I'm right where I need to be.

Virginia Bound

I'm having one of those mornings where I have too much time to think. I've packed my bags to go home for Christmas for two days...I am closing the store tonight, parking my car at the Las Vegas airport and arriving in Virginia to surprise my parents on Christmas morning. My sister's helping me as her gift to me...the flight prices kept going up and down and I was happy to see it finally went down enough to make it worth it. At this point, I was ready to pay anything for 36 hours at home.

It's interesting how we figure out what we value and need. I love the idea of being free and open...I'm listening to the Jackson Browne record he left me hiding behind our old dresser for Christmas. It's bringing up those feelings of why I moved out here in the first place. Of why I hate being stuck out here now.

I love my new job. I lost my keys the other night and I just stayed over at my manager's house. Her family was in town and they kept trying to cheer me up. When I found them in the back room under the fridge the next day I felt such a relief. All I could think about when I lost my keys was how alone I feel in this city. But that got me nowhere. It just made me feel bad about myself.

I think the process of letting go is a long one. Especially when you can't explain why you are drawn to certain people in your life. Even when they don't make sense to you, it's just this feeling of being open and calm and excited.

I'm going home tonight. And my apartment will stay here and when I get back I'll clean up the dishes in the sink and finally start to dust off the banjo that's been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for months.

My New Home

A New Routine...

My apartment is naturally colder without him. I'm watching the Appalachian State football game alone in my apartment on a Friday night, after working all day. And that's the mistake people make. They think they need lots of alone time and decide to throw themselves into working all the time.

He's on east coast time now in Charlotte, NC where many of our friends live. I'm picturing him at a bar right now, happily settling in to his new home. Or at a car dealership negociating for a new car to drive around in his new city. It's hard when you wonder about something and build things up to be something great, only to have them not work out. What I didn't expect was how hard it was going to be to say good-bye to him.

So many things remind me of him. I live right near the movie theatre we used to go to all the time and there's an empty whiskey bottle on the kitchen counter. He told me I was playing sad music and making things harder than they have to be. I guess I was finally figuring out how much I cared about him. I never really realized that before then, which is normally how it works anyway.

I realize that this is just a stage and that feeling sorry for myself and jealous that he's around great people in NC will pass. I'll figure out how to go to the movies by myself and know that I moved to Vegas for myself, not for him. At least that's what I'm telling myself for now. Part of me half expects him to walk through the doors with groceries in his hand, and things would be different. Then again, I half expected everything with him and all it caused was problems. I have no idea why I've held on to this idea of him for so long, or if I'll ever let it go, but I know it's much better as an idea and not a reality. He made no sense in reality.

It's hard to feel so disconnected and alone. It's hard to think of how my life will be without him. But I know that there were unfixable problems with us and that being without him is better now. And in a couple of weeks I'll look back on this blog and think how ridiculous I am for posting this crap. But I just don't care about it at this point.

How We Remember

It's funny how we remember or how we want to remember people. There's this idea that we make stories about the people in our lives and from that, we react the way we expert things to happen. I've been trying to be more positive lately, shoving aside my usual self. And I think it's working.

I started the master cleanse yesterday as a way to transition into eating healthier and having more energy. I'm trying not to have negative expectations but not eating for ten days to clear out my system seems a little daunting. I'm trying hard to imagine the positive effects it's going to have on my life.

And in the end, it's all in the way you remember it. My sister, hiding her fruit rollup on the roof of her mouth so that I thought I took longer to eat mine because I wanted to have something that was mine. Or the note my brother left me when I cried all night and slept on my parents floor when he left for college early the next morning. Or my friend, sitting in the office in Boston during her first day, tea being wrapped around by bright colored gloves. Or in trading shoes over a first, exciting conversation in a black button-up shirt. My cousin, showing us how to do yoga in the living room that we never lived in (except on Christmas morning). My grandma and her hands, showing us how to make paper dolls before she forgot how to do it altogether.

And my mom, in her bathrobe on Christmas morning making coffee, my dad still asleep (it's the only day of the year he sleeps in). Conversations at the top of the hill in the hot summer Virginia nights, fall coming in on us. Or you and her sitting at the lunch table, clear and empty of what used to be your friends when you decided being popular was overrated and she agreed. A drunken dive into an overhead light when the Boss comes on and the rest of it on the porch surrounded by mountains and cigarette smoke. My grandma, hanging out in her white underwear when we came to visit, reminding us that she didn't give a shit what people thought about her. Those hot summer nights in D.C. where you were displaced and going to the movies and having a couple of drinks was enough to electrify the air between us.

It's all about the context. Whether you are surrounded by beautiful mountains, green and lush, or out in the desert of Las Vegas, some kind of peace can be found. That's the way I like to remember it.

I'm Officially Worried...

Politics weren't really discussed in my house growing up. With a Democratic mother who wanted everything to be equal for everyone (this included the love she shared equally for my brother, sister, and me), and a self-proclaimed Libertarian (glorified Republican) for a dad, nothing ruined Easter late lunches better than a good ol' discussion about who was doing what in the office just one hour away from our home in the suburbs of Virginia.

It wasn't any surprise that my brother grew up to be a lawyer and my sister works in marketing. It wasn't any surprise to me that I would feel uneasy or discontented the second something felt wrong to me. A lot of people in my life have called me difficult for questioning things, and I know if I weren't constantly doing so I'd still be working in the same office in Charlottesville just hoping things would change on their own. What are we all searching for anyway?

Ever since Bush, Jr. was elected I haven't felt easy living in this country. Mark my word: if Rudy, Jr. gets elected in 2008, I am leaving this country. It's not that I don't feel safe or that the price of gas is outrageous in Las Vegas (although, it is pretty darn high), it's that things haven't felt right for a very long time and everyone knows it, but no one is doing anything about it.

Last night we went to see bell hooks read at UNLV. She spoke about community and feeling connected, the way that people speak about something they are really passionate about, in a joking, down-to-earth kind of way so that people would warm up to her and actually listen. I kept thinking about ways I could be connected to the ever-changing community in Las Vegas, or how I hope to one day feel connected to somewhere. She also spoke about the idea of local politics and action on a local level, since that's where things begin. When we were walking back to the car, I turned to him and said, "I don't think it's enough to be a good person anymore." I think I finally believe that.

I was hoping that this job would help me spread yoga and peace in what seems to be a corrupt country and world. I was hoping that it would help people feel good about themselves so that when the little things happened they felt comfortable in being a good person. Not that I'm a saint or anything, but I do fully believe in the idea of spreading goodness. Seriously.

Today has been one of those days where everything seems to be too much. Where my own selfishness has gotten in the way of any kind of real change. In her talk, bell hooks also spoke of the idea of going back to where you were born, back to your roots to help contribute to that community. Even if it's one that doesn't agree with you. Even though my dad is from Vermont and my mom is from Missouri, my brother, sister, and I were all three born in Washington, D.C. It's where I lived until I was four.

When I was a child I had this bathing suit with a goldfish on it, and in one picture I'm eating a goldfish cracker as I wear this bathing suit in my backyard. Of the memories I have of that place, one that sticks out in my mind is me, holding a goldfish, in the back of our van as we drive to the suburbs of Virginia. I don't even know if this actually happened, but for some reason I'm four and I'm hoping no water spills out. I'm hoping that this goldfish makes it through the car ride with enough water to live to move into our nice, new house.

Halloween at the DMV

So my plates officially say Nevada. I waited at the DMV between a meeting for work and yoga class with other staff. I took a nap in between, right before yoga, on the floor of my apartment. I woke up all groggy, reminded of my allergies in Charlottesville and how I felt in that valley, trapped. I kept one of my Virginia plates and it now sits on the floor in the front seat of my car. I am still not used to it.

With the traffic being so unpredictable I was late to yoga, almost too late to go in and join the rest of the group. At the end of class while relaxing into my breath, that familiar comfort feeling washed from the tip of my heart to the edge of my hands and feet. It filled me, that warm blood rushing around inside.

When I got home I made my mom's halloween cupcakes. He had to remake the icing because we used butter instead of margarine and it came out all light brown and soupy. The icing is supposed to be bright white and thick so that it can stick to the cupcakes and hold the candy pumpkin that goes on top. But after forgetting sugar, then the margarine, another trip to the grocery store to get the candy pumpkins would be a little too much. It's getting late and I'm going to a yoga class at 8 am tomorrow morning followed by a day of work, and then we are going to see Bell Hooks read at UNLV.

Tomorrow seems to be my first real full day since moving to Las Vegas. And I even have to start writing a novel tomorrow because my best friend in LA and I are participating in the write a novel in november club. I guess it's a club, since it's an organization of people who expect you to keep writing, just get it out, no matter how good or bad it is. I am hoping that I actually do this and that it's not just an idea. We shall see. I am going to LA for Thanksgiving so between the writing and eating I am hoping that I don't miss Virginia too much.

After remaking the icing it still doesn't look right. It's not that bright, white color I remember so well from when my mom made them. But it tastes the same as I remember, which I guess is all that matters. But I know that no matter how many years I make these cupcakes, they will never compare to the way she makes them.


Cooking Pumpkin Seeds

Salt clinging to the
bottom of the pan
crispy-crewy, hands sticky

Kitchen smells move in and out
nails turned soft from the sweet mess
tangled strings orange and discolored

I wipe a grain of salt
from the corner
of your mouth

that moisture-filled sculpture
with its small eyes
an unseen voyeur

Heat from the oven against my back
that thick smell wearing us
following us all the way upstairs.

Halloween, 2003

Between Past and Present Tense

About a week ago we drove to LA for the night to see The Weakerthans. They played in this really small club in Hollywood and we ate and hung out at my best friend's restaurant for a couple of hours before the show. Once we got there we kept pointing out people in the crowd who are our versions of our own friends. I tried to find one of my best friends who introduced me to The Weakerthans in college. Because they always remind me of him and getting take-out and eating it on a hill with three crosses. And just driving around Boone where everything was right there.

We got up early the next morning so I could be back in Las Vegas to help conduct a group interview for my new job. I was tired, and attended my last Bikram yoga class for awhile. I've decided to explore other types of yoga because of this new job. Because doing that is actually part of my new job.

I can see why, aside from the many excuses that I seem to come up with, people don't want to go to yoga. It's basically like striping you naked and saying, "see? this is how you've been treating yourself". With all these changes I would have thought I made some healthy ones, especially with this new job, but that hasn't been the case. A lot of my energy has gone towards adjusting. Getting used to everything being a 20 minute drive away. Getting used to football on Sunday and Monday nights. And just two chairs that will eventually go out on the porch once we get a couch.

We found a local bar in a strip mall (Vegas is the land of strip malls) with $1.50 beers and 50 cent pool tables. And it's in walking distance. It's open 24 hours (like everything in Vegas) and seems like somewhere we could frequent for cheap pool and the baseball playoffs.

It's incredible what we get used to. I've used up almost all of my savings to move out here, and these next few months should be interesting. He says we can eat really cheaply and just wait to get more furniture. I still want to take trips to Whole Foods and shop around so that we can be more comfortable. Our books are lined up against the walls, waiting for him to make bookshelves. There's something so nice about living like this, but I can't contain it in any sort of way. It's like even when it comes to giving myself time for all of this, I've set some kind of expectation. My life in Charlottesville wasn't what I wanted, but there are things about it that I guess I'm not ready to let go of. Because there was something simple about it, too. Going to yoga after work and just being by myself, thinking about the next day and sometimes how to survive it without yelling at someone awful I worked with. Because some days were just awful at my old job.

At my new job there's a manifesto that lives and breathes the company culture. Do one thing a day that scares you. Friends are more important than money. And the people who work here live by this manifesto. They take it to heart, and in what would seemingly be a set of opinions that just influenced or had no affect on people's lives, does. It's authentic.

Cha-cha-CHANGES!

I'm moving into my new place on Friday or Saturday. It's got an open kitchen and garden tub. I'll finally have my own space here in Las Vegas. I start my new job on Monday and part of the training includes going to yoga classes together. Finally, things won't be organized in boxes on the floor but scattered around until I get furniture and places to put things.

He's staying here for a little while so we can try and work things out. After you break things down all there is left to do is build it back up. And that's what we are doing. We ate at the Sizziler for his birthday. I got the fillet mignon and he got steak and endless shrimp. We drank beer and talked about how much we missed each other. How things had been different since I flew out to Vegas. How much pressure we had both been under to see if things were going to work. Now, without pressure, we were back to having fun with each other. That energy was back but out here, on a playground across from the apartment complex we've been living in for the past two months. It was on the yellow tube slide and the sprinklers we ran around in.

The problem with telling people about your struggles is they get protective, and don't always understand the choices you make. The difference now is I know I can pick myself up after a fall this time. I made the choice to stay in Vegas thinking he was going back to North Carolina. I can make those hard decisions now. And with everything settling down, I won't feel like I'm relying on my friends so much for support. I've felt like I haven't been a good friend these past couple of months, and I can finally start to really be there for the people who have helped me recently.

I'm glad he's staying. We can explore this crazy city together.

It Rained Last Night in Las Vegas, Nevada

My friend from Charlottesville sent me an email today talking about how things aren't as haphazard as they seem, that something stronger is keeping me here in Vegas instead of having me move on to LA or Portland or Chicago. I'm looking at an apartment later tonight to see how far away it is from the Strip, which is where I'll be working soon. I accepted a job with the yoga clothing company, and even though I'm excited about the job, the idea of living out here alone scares the crap out of me.

Once things settle down, you realize people are just people. There's no way around it. And there's no way to explain why we treat each other like we are expendable or that there's something better on the way. But when timing isn't right, there's nothing that can be done about that. There's a chance he'll stay here for a little while. He's looking at cars in both Vegas and the coast of North Carolina. Either way, I'm looking at the whole transition alone. Which is why I started all of these life changes in the first place.

Some days I feel excited and others I feel suffocated by the heat. I really don't know what I want out of this, but I do know that I couldn't move to Portland or Chicago just yet. Because doing the comfortable thing would make things easy at this point. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Set Out Running...

Before I moved out here to Las Vegas I would listen to this Neko Case song Set Out Running because it reminded me of him. Of driving around D.C. and going on movie dates. How the air seemed electrified with energy between us and I couldn't help but think that this was something real and good. Neko Case sings: if I knew heartbreak was coming, I would have set out running... Her voice is thick with those lyrics.

Sometimes you push and push and push up against something until it breaks. And when you live in an apartment complex surrounded by boxes and looking at the parking spot where his car used to be before it was stolen, unemployed and trying to find a new place together, you think: this is the hard part. Because one minute you are cooking dinner and watching Deadwood, and the next you are threatening to pack up and move to Portland, and that you can't take it anymore. And he calls your bluff.

Part of me wishes I hadn't come out here at all. That I had kept him in this place, in late nights in D.C. and playing pool in Boone. But without exploring things you are just stuck. You can't figure anything out that way.

I slept on an air mattress at my sister's friends place last night. He had towels and clean sheets ready for me. He just took me in and helped me realize that this was the worst of it and it will soon be over. Things had gotten too hard, and after crying all day and trying to explain how alone I felt and how much this hurt, he just looked me in the eye and couldn't give me anything. We are dealing with things differently, he says, whatever I knew of him gone from his voice. It is cold and distant, because he says he has shut down and will deal with things later. And every time I saw him yesterday I would try to act the same way, but in a minute I'd be crying, because suddenly everything was misplaced.

I should be thinking I have all the options in the world. I could go to Portland for real this time or Chicago to be near good friends. LA seems to be out of the question now that I am running out of money. Once I hear back from the job here in Vegas I think I will really know how I feel. Right now I feel alone here, but that's because I have nothing connecting me to this place. When we were talking yesterday he mentioned going back to North Carolina to stay on a friends couch. And I thought: you'd give up? Just like that? But I would be doing the same thing in Chicago or Portland or LA. It seems I can't make a decision for myself, either.

I really don't want to do anything today. I feel like leaving to go to yoga is even going to be a struggle. My sister has told me to not make any decisions yet, but I feel like I've become transient in Las Vegas and I'm itching to get out of here. Would it just be stubborn to stay? Like all big changes, I made this move for myself. And now all I have to worry about is me. It is the first time in a long time that I've had that option. It's like I don't know what to do with it.

I wish I had that Neko Case song on my computer. The CD itself is in a bag at the apartment, waiting for me to come pick it up. I want to go pick it up and replace the stereo in my car and blast it as I drive around Las Vegas. Because I think that now is the time to be dramatic. To just swim in it. To really think about things in the moment, now, so that in time, I will be able to completely move on. Because that's what I'm going to do.

One Word

I'm reading a book right now that my sister-in-law handed to me before I left for the West. It's about a writer who travels for one year after a painful divorce to discover those parts of her that were missing in her seemingly perfect marriage and career suburban life. It couldn't have been a better gift at a better time.

There are days that all I have done while here has been to hide out in an internet cafe and obsessively look for the right job that's out there for me. Even though I have more time I haven't been writing as much as I could, and there are some days where time just slips away and I find myself missing my yoga studio in Charlottesville rather than going to the new one here.

I haven't really made any friends while in Las Vegas, but stayed contented with relationships over the phone and internet while discovering this new, changing intimacy with my new boyfriend. There are mountains that stick up into the hot, beautiful, puffy-white, blue sky. It serves as a backdrop to my Honda, Virginia plates, a new, vibrating muffler barely attached by a wire to the back of the car that I can clearly hear over the empty box that used to be my car stereo. Two boxes sit in my trunk over a pile of clothes and the quilt that my grandmother made for me. There's no room in the bedroom my boyfriend (yikes!) and I share with the two still-strangers we call roommates.

I had a second round job interview this morning with a yoga clothing store opening up in the mall on the strip here in Las Vegas. It was more of a conversation than an interview, and to my amazement an organization that values, trusts, and expects from its employees actually exists. When I walked into the interview from the mall, Hootie and the Blowfish playing in the background, I began to imagine the mall during the holidays, a Hootie Holiday Special CD playing, people everywhere buying gifts, and thought to myself: what am I doing here? But when I met with the woman who is going to be my new manager if I get the job, all of those concerns disappeared. I knew this organization was different and that it lived by the principles that governed it. We even discussed a goal of mine: to open up a store in Asheville. I felt this goal come alive as we talked.

I'm not sure I can call Las Vegas a home or that this is the city I will discover myself in. But I do know that I've found something big and life-changing. For the first time in awhile, I'm starting to feel like this risk paid off.

So I'm going back to LA to wait and hear the news about this job. I'm going to relax by the beach and celebrate a friend's birthday. What I didn't realize about quitting my job and moving is the time I would be given for my thoughts. This can be both a blessing and a curse. I've used my time to find job opportunities and even though it has paid off I plan on relaxing, writing, and traveling during these next few weeks.

In the book that I'm reading she writes about a conversation she had in Italy about cities. And that there is one word that can describe each city. I tried to apply this to the cities I know, then to myself, as she begins to in the book. My word for Las Vegas: TRANSIENT. (I thought about HOT and GREEDY but decided to go with a friendlier word.) My word for Washington, D.C.: STIFF. My word for Charlottesville: PASSAGE. (This is for two reasons: there are many back ways of getting around traffic in Cville and it takes a little while to find these passages and Cville is a liberal city right in the middle of rural Virginia which I see as a passageway to other towns and cities as well as a haven from abstinence-only sex education programs and Virgil Goode (yes, that is his name).

Like the book, I haven't thought of the word I think describes me. Some that immediately come to mind are DIFFICULT, RESTLESS, and FELINE (my best friend always says I'm like a cat: I like to be touched when I want to be touched and left alone when I want to be left alone). I once asked my mom to describe how I was as a child; walking around in the handmade Easter outfits my grandmother would make for us. Without hesitation she answered: determined. You've always been so determined.

Football! Yes, I said football.

My junior year of college I did a report in my Business Writing class on how the current students and alumni at Appalachian State would benefit from a fifty million dollar football proposal. The chancellor said that intramural sports would benefit, which in turn benefits most of the student population. Turns out, all that money was just going to one thing: football. Walking to my English classes in Sanford Hall, where budgets were being cut and money was tight; I couldn't help but feel resentful. Does anyone even give a shit about football around here? I had gone to two football games in Kidd Brewer Stadium while at App State.

When I woke up late yesterday morning and heard one of my friends from App State who is in town say that we were leading against Michigan in the third quarter, we decided to go out and find a bar. The night before we had been out in old Vegas playing the penny slot machines and black jack. Nearby were the huge sporting screens where people can bet on upcoming games. I think we were all wishing we had put at least five bucks on Appalachian to win that football game. But then again, who knew what was going to happen.

It was humid and hot in Vegas when we all three got into the car in search of a bar that was playing the game. He remembered seeing a sign about playing all Michigan football games, and on the way to finding another sports bar we saw the sign. The Inn Zone: a smoke-friendly dive bar in a commercial space. We walked in to a dark, smoky bar full of Michigan fans, nervously watching a football game that they were about to take over at the beginning of the fourth quarter. We sat in the front row with no real identifying colors, but when App State intercepted a pass in the fourth quarter, we all sat up and clapped in excitement. We just couldn't help ourselves.

Here we were, in Las Vegas, walking into a dive bar during the middle of the third quarter, surrounded by Michigan fans who don't even know where Appalachian is, much less expecting alumni to show up to watch the game so far away from North Carolina, and we were sitting in the front row cheering during their disappointment. Then tension at the end of the game was so cold it was almost laughable. We stayed as Michigan fans quickly and quietly filed out of the bar. We stayed to watch the coach talk about the player's hard work and dedication. We stayed long enough to see the bartender turn off the recap of the game from the big screen.

When I tell people where I went to college they do a couple of things. First mispronounce it, then they ask where it is (Boone? , they say) then ask if it's a private school (to which I reply Appalachian State University), then they ask how big it is and are always surprised that 15,000 students attend the school. Even though the state wants it to grow, those mountains keep it enclosed and protected.

I don't generally watch football. In fact, aside from tennis, it is my favorite sport to fall asleep to on the couch. But yesterday was great. It was a little piece of them mountains in a smoky dive bar in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hallelujah's Are Optional

The road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles is long and open. You can see the few casino stops in between from miles away and there aren't any gas stations with the exception of a few. Last Thursday night before we went to LA to celebrate my best friend's twenty fifth birthday, my car was broken into. Instead of my radio was a hole with wires hanging out, and instead of four hours of music and dancing around in the car, we are settled into conversation.

When we get to Hollywood, California, we are of course greeted by traffic, then my best friend outside her small apartment. We eat at a cafe nearby, and he orders the best friend chicken I've ever begged for bites of in my entire life. Things are defined in palm trees and red, marble stars. We have some drinks and prepare for a day on the beach in Santa Monica, California.

We are visiting the LA area for my cousin's wedding as well, which is in Riverside on Saturday night. I start thinking about seeing my parents, who aren't too happy about my recent move out west. At first I didn't tell them about my plans to stay in Las Vegas for a little while and the last time we talked things were pretty tense. Moving across the country at the risk of your heart doesn't make any sense when having a job and making things practical are all that seem to matter. Decisions aren't supposed to be made like this and things are supposed to be back in an apartment in Charlottesville, getting ready for my job to pick back up again. But I'm not there.

The water in Santa Monica is a perfect chilly-cold, like swimming in a lake up in the mountains. I look over at him while we are all swimming, thinking back to those mountains where we first met and became friends. And how we barely knew each other before I moved up to Boston, but how over the next couple of years we would see each other over holidays and graduations and vacations. And now, from those mountains, we are diving into the waves in the Pacific Ocean. We go out that night to celebrate, and the back of my legs are on fire from the sun. I can't sit anywhere without feeling their sting, but after a couple of drinks I don't feel them anymore.

Riverside, California is a small college-town-city sixty miles east of LA. When we get to the hotel my parents and sister are staying in, things seem hot and out of place. Too much time in the car without a radio to listen to and I'm not even looking forward to going to my cousin's wedding anymore.

But when we get there my mind changes. I talk with some of my family, and there's talk of what I'm planning on doing while out west. Most still think I'm going out to LA and for the first time I really don't know. I don't have an answer to what's going on and it feels great. The ceremony is warm and full: my cousin and her new husband standing across from each other and her belly six months swollen. People read poems, someone plays the accordion, someone sings and plays the guitar, and we all sing a song together.

During the dancing and music, we sneak off upstairs in the open art gallery and make out. I taste like white wine and my dress is starting to stick to me from the sweat of dancing. I know my parents are looking for me and getting ready to go, and I know that I've already upset them enough lately, so we walk back down and continue dancing until we leave. My cousin looks happy as she dances with her new husband, and I feel good knowing we will be close.

On the drive home there's a thunderstorm up ahead, and unlike in Virginia where they creep up on you and come over the mountains, we can see the gray clouds and lightening from miles away. It moves along with us almost, and the rain begins and ends over a stretch of desert. There are cars lining back from Las Vegas to California, and once it starts to rain everyone slams on their breaks. Since it never rains here, people go from confidently speeding along to hesitant and awkward. I'm just hoping the rain cools things off a bit. At least, for a little while.



Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Las Vegas, Nevada

When you are unemployed and in Las Vegas, Nevada, you could assume that days would be filled with penny slots and poker. You could assume that while getting quarters for laundry at a gas station, an Elvis in a t-shirt would drive by in the nearby Wendy's parking lot. You could assume that it's hot here, even at night and early in the morning. But early mornings aren't really awake in my day-to-day tasks of sitting at Panera for the free wireless internet, going to yoga, and hanging out with the one person I know in this city.

You could assume that there are big businesses and gated apartment complexes past the strip. And that people are born here and stay. And while filling out your application for a VONS grocery discount card, one of the baggers tells you not to write your address or the cashier will bring a pie right to your door. "Cherry rhubarb!" your friend yells as you walk out to the car.

I don't know if I'm stopping by Vegas on the way to L.A. or if I'll eventually make my way up to Portland, Oregon. My health insurance runs out in a couple of days and my money won't last too much longer, and aside from the occasional freak out in crowded Panera, things just seem to be moving along.

I came out to Las Vegas to hang out with my friend from college who just moved from Washington, D.C. for graduate school at UNLV. Things, it seems, always happen when you least expect it. I wake up next to him knowing that this week I'm here, and I may be here for awhile, but next week could be completely different. I wake up thinking that no matter how much you try to make things less complicated, everything eventually catches up, whether it's in a heated conversation or a half-filled out lease application. When all I want to think about is filling time with goofing off at the grocery store and watching movies on his laptop in bed, the heat of Las Vegas creeps into my thoughts and I realize I'm across the country from what I used to know and nothing is familiar except for him. I think about how cool it is in Portland, and that now that my car is here, I can just drive away at any time.

We are driving over to Los Angeles this weekend for my best friend's birthday and my cousin's wedding. There will be relaxing on the beach and dancing like ass holes in the Riverside Art Museum. And I'll think about how, this is it; this is what we are meant to do. This is where I am meant to be.

The Big Move...

Indications that you are going through a quarter-life crisis (in no particular order):

1. You quit your job.
2. You quit your job without finding another one first.
3. You break up with your boyfriend of two years.
4. You plan to move to Los Angeles, California to live with your best friend since first grade.
5. You pay to ship your 1994 Honda for the price of the car.
6. You plan a trip to Vegas to make twenty dollars into five hundred.
7. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore, so you decided to move somewhere where nothing will continue to make sense.
8. You trade in Route 29 traffic for smog and real traffic.
9. You hope the west suites you.
10. You finally feel like you are getting somewhere.

My apartment is half-packed, ready to get up and leave Charlottesville and move out to Los Angeles. There's a debate on what to take: my favorite red bookshelf doesn't fit in my car or but the banjo will fit just fine in the backseat. I'm realizing how much stuff I actually have. How many clothes I don't wear. And what I've worked for in the last year seems to grow blurry. Because even though LA may not have the answers I'm looking for, just continuing to seek them out makes me feel good about things again. There's only so much complaining and feeling stuck that I can deal with before I decide for a change again.

In less than two weeks, things will be different. I'm flying out to the west, and trying not to think of all the practical things but of the experience. Things will fall into place and I'm hoping for an adventure. I go through different stages of anxiety where I think that I am crazy for doing this, and that I'm not actually moving out to LA but just talking about it. Then I know I will get on a plane and just be there.

Off to the Windy City

I'm off to Chicago tonight for friends and relaxing...

And new destinations await as soon as I figure something out...

Sometimes, you have to make things happen yourself and get out of situations that are just not right or good for you in the end. Even if it's not practical. With risk comes reward...

In Limbo

So I generally don't enjoy touristy things. Hip-packs and maps are not my thing. If I am lost in a city that I am visiting I will stubbornly wander around before getting out a map just so that I don't look like a tourist. And if I do break down and get a map I try to act like I just moved to the city or town. When I first moved to Boston and gave someone directions, it made my day. It made me a part of that city.

When my friend and I were in Nashville we went out on Broadway Street, which is one of the touristy areas. The bars were full of musicians doing covers of real country music. We tapped our cowboy boots and drank beer all night long. The band's we saw kept asking everyone where they were from. My friend would shout out "Louisville!" to which I gladly complied. Even though we were in one of the touristy areas, things still felt genuine.

Like any vacation, it left me feeling restless. Should I invest more of myself in Charlottesville? Is this somewhere I really want to spend my mid-twenties in? Should I move closer to friends who have their own lives elsewhere or move to somewhere completely new while I still can?

I spent the week of the fourth hanging out with different friends up in Boone and Beech Mountain. The view from my friends house is amazing and we watched all the fireworks; tiny up against the broad mountains. Each morning was coffee and hanging out on the porch...

When I was in middle school my two best friends and I used to walk down to the candy store and buy jelly beans. We used to take the flavors we hated, throw them into the street and say, "if a red car hits my jelly bean then I will get a boyfriend in the next two weeks." Every so often a red car would run over my butter popcorn jelly bean and I would think for a couple of minutes that my wish would actually come true. As if my fate was held in these jelly beans and the color of each car that passed over it. Because we wanted those things to determine what happened in our lives instead of actually making it happen. It was easier that way.

I am beginning to think that everything in life is about timing. And that we are all just shuffling around and waiting for things to begin to settle down. At least, that's how I feel. And when I was leaving yoga class yesterday and a woman asked me for directions, I initially didn't know the street she was asking for. But when she described it to me, I knew exactly where she should go. I even knew a short cut.

In a Backyard Somewhere in Charlottesville, Virginia

The fresh breeze detergent at your apartment doesn’t
even smell like a fresh breeze
I know because my friend once tried to put up
a clothes line in her backyard
One of those circular ones that spin in the wind
but she didn’t dig the hole deep enough
and it just collapsed under the weight
of her wet clothes
And they fell all over the ground
scattered like popped balloons
deflated and flat,
those little helicopter things stuck in the sleeves
Disappointed that even now the real thing
can’t exist
or never really existed to begin with.

I have a friend who when he travels makes lists of what he sees to remember for later...

Staying where you grow up. Kentucky vs. Virginia. Nashville trip. Ew Mf. NASHVILLE! Buying cowboy boots buy one get two free. Touristy yet welcoming. Where are you from? Upright base player and stomping our boots at two in the morning. Churchill Downs and betting on two horses. Missing routine. Reading. Too late at night phone conversations. Drive to Boone through Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee. Missing at the airport. Green and trees. No real traffic. Counting state license plates. Alaska and California and Iowa. Feeling more like myself. Florida tourist drivers. Friends in a cabin off of 194. No open pool tables at Murphy's on a Monday afternoon. Neko Case and Dwight Yoakam. Black Cat burritos and PBR pitchers. Hanging out with my old college roommate and her husband. Cafe Portofino. More traffic. Feeling disconnected. Sleeping on a couch in Villas. Cool breeze through the window at night with trucks passing by. Waking up to a rescued kitten crying. Mel's Diner. A move to Charlotte. Upcoming plans. July 4th on Beech Mountain. Espresso News surrounded by the internet surrounded by mountains.

I Love Skunks.

There's nothing I like more than trucks on Route 81 South through rural Virginia. Especially when, as you are trying to pass a truck going 70 in the left-hand lane, you hear a big pop in the back of your car. At first I thought it was my tire, which went flat about a year ago on my way up to Boone. But right outside of Staunton, Virginia, I'm not too excited to think of changing a tire while trucks blow past me. I pulled over, called my mom, insisting that I had a flat tire and that I would need to call AAA. I climb out the passenger side seat, get out and realize that my tire is fine. But next to my car is a large ball of hair. And as I bend over to see the damage, I notice an even larger ball of hair extending out of my exploded muffler. Exciting.

I do what any self-respecting feminist does. I call my dad. I pull over at the next exit. I find a mechanic shop and they replace my muffler in an hour. The clerk at the front tells me that the skunk felt no pain. I watch the soap opera Passions while I wait. Hours later I arrive at my friend's apartment in Louisville, Kentucky.

We go to bed early. The next day we hang out, watch some Felicity, make plans to go to Nashville, go get coffee and tea, and go out to Waterfront Wednesdays on the Ohio River. We can see Indiana in front of us. Like Charlottesville, Louisville is a pocket of liberal-minded folks surrounded by a red state. Kentucky's also trees and hills and green surrounded by buildings and roads. There are local businesses as well as Target's and Wal-Mart's.

My friend is about to move back up to Northern Kentucky to become a 5th grade math teacher. In Boston, we both worked for non-profit education organizations, helping students have equal access to resources. The Supreme Court decided today that the Jefferson County schools can't assign students to certain schools according to race. There's the idea that every student deserves the same education. There's the idea that a woman who wants the best for her child, no matter how it affects society, should be entitled to do so. It's reassuring to know that my friend is going to be a teacher and really stand up for the kind of education that every child deserves. At the end of the day, at least there's that.

There's a point where you realize that some friendships make you understand why you don't allow crappy people in your life. When you realize that all friendships should be as meaningful and supportive as those that make you feel completely comfortable and relaxed. Where all the bull shit things that happen in life tend to fade.

Tonight we are going to one dollar beers and minor league baseball. We head up into the mountains next week to celebrate our nation's independence. I'm hoping to miss the fireworks for the fourth year in a row. But there will be sparklers involved.

Our Nation's Capital

Like Boston, trips to D.C. now have to include specific things: baseball, hanging out, relaxing, beer, good food and greasy, cheap food. I feel like whenever vacation hits, some people want lots of plans, things to do, etc. I find myself wasting away mornings while my friends are at work, taking long showers, and thinking a lot. There's no real purpose to my days, and each would blend together if I didn't have my friends schedules to dictate time. Today I plan on taking the metro in and wandering around D.C. Maybe I will go by the townhouse I grew up in until I was four on E Street.

On Friday, my friend and I walked around and ate lunch on a park bench. We saw a movie that's a bunch of different little movies about Paris. We ate at a small restaurant on U Street and went out for drinks at a bar where we felt less than hip. We talked about the Wilco show the night before. Jeff Tweedy's hands in the air as he had the audience sing and clap along. And how weird it all was. We made fun of the people next to us and decided that we are both cursed with having crappy people sit next to us in public. Then again, we could have easily just ignored them.

We didn't talk about his upcoming move to Las Vegas, or how it only rains 4 inches per year. We didn't talk about how hard it can be to find people we connect with without some kind of investment or how the city you live in can change overnight the second you meet someone you can really relate to. We didn't talk about our jobs or how hot the weather is in D.C. I didn't talk about how much I'm going to miss him.

I feel like I've either got to stop believing I have this rare connection with a few people in my life or start trying to let more people in. I tend to hang on to those who I find very dear to my heart without giving others a chance to know what I really think. It's a lonely way of doing things and it often seems to disappoint me. Then again, I feel fully invested in those relationships that I've slowly built over a couple of years or those that happen instantly. There are just some people who make you feel completely content with who you are, yet completely wake you up. And I have a really hard time finding that in everyday life.

I head out to Louisville early tomorrow morning to visit my friends from Boston. I'm hoping it includes watching Felicity, a water park, a trip to Nashville, and great, long conversations over coffee and tea.

Beware of the Red Jellyfish

Growing up, my family and I used to take yearly trips down to the beach in North Carolina. We would all pack into the car, boogie boards strapped to the top, and make the six or seven hour drive down to the shore. One year, there was a huge storm the week before we got there and all these jellyfish had been washed to edge of the ocean. The waves were literally speckled with white. But my sister and I were determined to go swimming since we had traveled all this way. So we blew up two rafts and set out into the jellyfish-infested waters. At first it seemed like a good idea. We both kept our feet in the water and our rafts tied firmly together. Then we started drifting out. A huge, red jellyfish swam up to our rafts. My sister abruptly told me she was leaving, untied our rafts, and quickly stepped out of the waters. I remember drifting there, thinking: I can't follow her. I've got to stay out here on my own. But I was terrified and had lost sight of the red jellyfish. Not even a minute later I grabbed my raft and ran back to the shore to join her.

This past weekend, I traveled up to Philadelphia with my mom and dad to see my sister and my brother and his family. We spent the weekend hanging out with my new nephew while my dad replaced a floorboard in my brother's house and helped my sister in remodeling her back patio and kitchen. He got right to work when we got there and was up early on Sunday morning to start fixing things before we had a casual Father's Day brunch. After my parents left on Sunday my sister thoughtfully went to a Bikram Yoga class with me for the first time to see what I liked so much about that hot room. In the downtown Philadelphia studio there are hardwood floors and a huge painted brick wall at the back.

My sister took off of work on Monday and we drove out to the Jersey Shore to hang out on the beach. On the way out we talked about my recent break-up and how hard it can be. How you never really know why something fits and something else doesn't, but that if you don't listen to your instincts you could end up in the wrong situation. My sister and I are very different people, and growing up we both struggled to get to know one another. As adults we can talk about almost anything and I know that whatever decision I make she will support it. We talked about how even though I know my mom meant well, when she asked if I would ever get back together with him it really hurt. I abruptly told her: no.

We got some food at the local Wawa and set off for the beach mid-morning. My sister had to go find our permit tags so that we could stay on the beach while I sat and watched our stuff. Really, it was her taking care of me. It was one of those cool days where if you sit in the shade you almost feel like it might be fall. The water was too cold to swim in, but we just relaxed and read and napped on the beach. It was exactly what I needed...

I took the bus from Philadelphia to D.C. It was crowded for a noon on Wednesday bus ride and even though I selfishly tried hard to sit alone, someone sat next to me at the last minute. There was a baby crying the whole time and I was reminded of why I hate to be around lots of people. Things felt congested and closing in on me. All I wanted was to get off of that bus and out into the hot streets of D.C.

I'm here in D.C. until early Tuesday morning when I head off to Louisville, Kentucky to visit my friends from Boston. Hopefully we'll make a trip to Nashville and then it's off to the mountains of North Carolina to visit my college roommate and her husband. I hope it includes burritos at Black Cat and pool at Murphy's. I hope it rains and then clears up into a cool, open night where the mountains open up and wrap their arms around you. I hope that it feels the same way it did when I lived there: like home.

There's a Jesus Billboard off of I-81 Going South

There's a system for everything. And the process for this system works the same in any context. When dealing with people you care about, the process can be sticky. It can take time. And sometimes all you need is timing.

We had been planning this road trip for a year. Now it's just me, 3 weeks off of work, and some visits to friends and family that I haven't seen in awhile. Maybe it'll still include a trip to Nashville or up to the mountains. It'll definitely include a trip to Louisville and Chicago. There are plans to go up to Philadelphia and I'd like to see the ocean at some point. Now all I have is time.

My drive from Leesburg to Boone during college was six hours. Sometimes I would dread the traffic and trucks along 81. And the more southwest Virginia I would get, the more churches and hell and damnation warnings I would see. Funny that I thought I was heading in the exact opposite direction: from a supposed hell to what I saw as heaven. Then one fall break my roommate came home with me. She talked about how beautiful the drive was up through the Tennessee mountains and then onto the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I was so busy complaining that I hadn't really stopped to realize how much I loved that drive. How much thinking can be done while alone in the car. I'm looking forward to it.

Buried Lists

bottled water
granola bars
string cheese
shampoo
razors
wheat pasta
trash bags

When I was growing up there would always be a weekly grocery list sitting on our white tile kitchen counter. These lists normally consisted of things my mom would be buying at Giant, and in the corner there would be a smaller list: pick up dry-cleaning, make dinner reservations, soccer game. I imagined keeping all of these lists in a scrapbook to keep track of time and day-to-day tasks. But my mom always made sure to throw them away once the tasks were completed.

At the same time there were always flat soda liter bottles in the pantry. Whenever I searched the kitchen cabinets for an afternoon snack I was disappointed when there weren't any fruit snacks or she had gotten the Giant brand granola bars this week. It's only 20 or 30 cents more. I used to think. She knows I hate that kind. Talking to my parents now, I sometimes feel the same way. I'm thinking about becoming a yoga instructor, I say. Can you make a living doing that? They say. What about health insurance?

Growing up, I assumed my relationship with my parents would get better. That we would begin to understand each other and the different choices we make. And every so often I'm reminded of how differently we value things, and how easy it is to feel bitter about all the negative things. Then I remember how much my friends hated the flat soda I had to offer them when they came over, and how I had gotten used to it. Sometimes all I wanted was a lukewarm, flat glass of Dr. Pepper.

e-mail for addresses
clean apartment
pack
yoga
try not to fall asleep to Munich
prepare

Yoga class yesterday was one of those packed, great classes. Where everyone felt like they needed to be there to sweat something out. The humidity clouded the room, and each time I felt like I couldn't get my breath I remembered that this room was my sanctuary. It is where I go to think and relax. And when I talked to one of the instructors after class about becoming a teacher, thoughts and hesitation filled my mind. It's easy when you can think of ten negative reasons not to do something. Sometimes those thoughts can be hard to ignore, especially when practical matters are all that seem to matter.

Getting ready for the cross-country road trip has felt the same way. I've made lists. To pack: tent, maps, bathing suit, coolers, food, water. All things needed for survival. We start out on the road on Friday heading from Charlottesville to Nashville. Straight across the country and up California One, then back around. Part of me wants to get lost in it all and end up in a small farming town in Montana. I never throw away my lists like my mom did; instead I find them months later in my purse or tucked into a book. It always reminds me what I forgot.

Reasons Why I Should Quit My Job and Become a Banjo Street Player

1. I hear Sufjan is in need of a back-up banjo player and this is my ticket to fame.

2. All those crazy-Charlottesville-is-not-really-part-of-the-South-Bluegrass-lovin' hippies will gladly share a beat with me.

3. I hope to stand close to the five-year-old violin player to catch some sympathy dollars.

4. I will never have to read a four page e-mail about parking stamps or cleaning out the office refrigerator.

5. Yankie-Freakin-Doodle-Dandy.

6. Hanging out on the streets with the dregs of the Charlottesville community will, in the end, make me a better person.

7. Sad stories of "failure" are so much more motivating than success.

8. The TV show The Office will seem foreign and weird, not creepily familiar.

9. I can feel confident that after playing on the streets for a couple of weeks, I can get to a level above sucking.

10. Moonlighting as a hooker has always been my dream.

11. I won't feel my soul slowly sucking out of my body every time I sit at a desk.

12. I plan on taking Kentucky's bluegrass title one string at a time.

13. I hear there's a new market for street banjo players, and they are finally edging on street steel drum performers.

14. Money tips are way better than life tips. Especially when given by random, self-righteous strangers.

15. I’ve always wanted to be someone’s project.

Two Poems

What Love Is

Nah nah nah nah nah
I don't know how to spell that out
like a little kid with his hands behind his ears and his tongue out
I’ve got you
tickled and thinking
backing you into the corner of the playground
where all the teenagers smoke their cigarettes during gym class
so the teacher’s can’t see them
or at least they used to
before gym class was cancelled altogether and sitting became learning
then there’s you
and I tagged you but you just stand there
looking at a dead bird on the ground
he must have flown into the window
you tell me
eyes wide open, jaw slightly cracked
there’s nothing to bury him with
you say, arms at your side,
belly lose and charging out of your OshKosh overall jeans
you give me your lunch money
$2.50 to keep the other boys away
to keep them from noticing your blushed face
I charge away from you
keeping my secret crumbled in two one dollar bills
dropping the change as I walk.



What Love Is

We could have been on a dance floor together,
those ones that light up from below
in Tennessee we would have
drank whiskey and talked about how long the state was.
We would have played pool in a darkly
lit corner, with random sweaty stink and smoke.
We could have been in the back of your Chevrolet
if it wasn’t a big truck with only
two front seats and the smell of wet dog.
No Jesus air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.
Then there was the coffee shop
you turned into a pancake house
at three in the morning.
And I think: this is it.
This is when we ride off into the sunset
your mullet catching the wind
my hands clinging tightly to your chest
summer sweat underneath our helmets.
Do we even need helmets where we are going?
But you just pay the waitress after shoveling down
three pancakes with strawberry syrup
and I never get to see how you bend a girl over.
I bet you ask if she likes it rough.
Do you even take her shirt off?
Let her nipples hang underneath you?
We could have been a post-prom fantasy,
the kinds that don’t require flowers or a fancy limo
or a tissue to clean things up.

Only in Europe

I got the day off for Memorial Day, so I did what every self-respecting American does on this day: I hung out by my apartment complex's pool and read a book on presidential assassinations. It’s called Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and it’s excellent. She starts out explaining how she relates her world to all the presidential assassinations, out of habit or intrigue. There were a lot of get-togethers with friends where I didn’t hear half of what was being said because I was sitting there, silently chiding myself, Don’t bring up McKinley. Don’t bring up McKinley. I thought about what I relate to my day-to-day experiences on a constant basis.

This weekend, three day weekends sometimes do this, has felt like a month. Maybe it’s because of the upcoming changes that could take place in my life, or the actual time I’ve had to sit and relax and read. My dad just called to arrange travel to LA in August. I feel like I can’t say anything because I don’t know anything yet.

A month after I graduated from college, I met my college friend and boyfriend to go backpacking through Europe for two weeks. They had both been studying abroad for the semester in England, so we met in London and headed to Paris right away. Looking back I had known all along, like most people know when things are too good to be true.

My boyfriend and I broke up in Venice. After the semester abroad things had changed. We still had a majority of the trip left so it was almost impossible to recover immediately. In fact, it would take months of not talking to each other in Boston, then our two best friends from college (one was on this trip) wedding, before we really found a place in each other’s lives again.

After a couple of tense days in Italy, finding some quiet in a couple playing the violin and cello on the streets of Florence, we headed towards Marseille on our way to Barcelona. We arrived in Marseille at the beginning of dusk, and using my newly ex-boyfriends broken French, made it to the right bus on our way to the hotel. We had made this our only hotel reservation, thinking it would be a nice break from all the people and hostels. He asked the bus driver where exactly the hotel was located and the driver kept pointing and speaking in French.

When we got off the bus he revealed that he didn’t really understand the bus driver but that maybe we should just start walking. In the tired, dusk heat we lugged our packs up the countryside hill for about an hour, back and forth. When we walked too far we doubted ourselves and turned onto another street. We hadn’t eaten anything in hours. Cars passed by us; the sun was setting and we were lost in the outskirts of the unfriendly city of Marseille. Then we finally found it.

When we got to the front steps a middle-aged Frenchman greeted us with a warm smile. He helped us into the hotel (which turned out to be more like a bed and breakfast. There were only about five rooms). He offered to drive my ex-boyfriend to a local pizza place, and they had to hurry because it was about to close. I showered while we waited, in what felt like a shower that was created just for me to use at this exact moment. It felt good to finally wash the day off.

We sat in their kitchen eating warm pizza with olives in the middle. The Frenchman’s partner, an American, was watching an Italian movie with French subtitles. He laughed and said: only in Europe. We told him about our upcoming moves to Boston and Chicago, and he told us a story about freezing on the T in mid-March. His partner cooked dinner while we talked. It was around 10 p.m. by the time we excused ourselves so they could eat their dinner alone.

Even then I knew. I knew there would be years to come before I found the peace they had found in the mountains of southern France. Before I could even begin to recapture what I felt in the mountains in Boone. What I hadn’t thought about before then was how much it would be worth it to go through everything to get there.

In the morning we swam in the pool and relaxed before our train ride down the coast of France. The Frenchman checked us out of the hotel, saying good-bye for his partner as well; he had been up late writing and was still asleep when we left. He wished us luck on our journeys, and we left: walked up the path to the road to catch the bus back into Marseille.

some sort of noise

Sometimes, before you even know it, things just change. And you sit wondering how you got somewhere; how if years before now someone had told you this is the life you would be leading you would have laughed in their face. You still wonder.

It’s become that sticky-hot summer weather here in Charlottesville. It’s the kind of weather where you can feel the pollen crowding into your nose and face; the kind where things seem out of focus by mid-afternoon. It’s where you sometimes feel exhausted, like you are constantly moving and walking underwater. Like your body is holding its breath and all you can do is think about the moment you will come to the surface and breathe. It’s haze and soft breezes blowing through my long, white blinds. They clap together.

The fan above my bed is creepily quiet. Almost like it isn’t moving at all, just hanging in the air and pushing it so that it absorbs into the walls. I want to hear it, sputtering around above me doing its job to cool me off, but it continues its silence. Maybe I just want some sort of noise to cover up my thoughts.

I hope to never have regrets for the choices I make, but when they hurt people I care dearly about, I can feel it. Though to say we got much hope, if I am lost it's only for a little while. It’s harder when you are thinking that it’s just the beginning of the end. That you have to give back the record player you just got him for his birthday, and that even when you think caring about someone is enough, it’s a hard truth to find out it’s not. People live like this for longer, accepting graciously what has been given to them, without question. I was not born with this ability. Only with the ability to try and change, which I have been unsuccessful at doing.

I don’t understand how these things work. I only know that when my fan isn’t loud enough I will put on the record player, for the time that it is mine, stare at the empty shelves that will never carry his books, and think about what might have been, but more importantly, what is to come.

A Graveyard on a Hill in Vermont

As a child, I made a list of all the names I knew
and had ever known.

Lois and John and Howard, Gage and Maude
There were two Margaret’s and one Mildred.

After each name I paused, guilting the ink from
my half-melted black pen, hand clammy-wet,

then shaking it hard onto the bright, white page,
ink splattering like leaves, dropping slowly,

all old and brown, from having stayed on the
tree for far too long.

And then I remember Vermont, on a hill, black
metal fence caging us in the day we scrubbed

Names from charcoal and thin, chewy paper
rain falling whenever we pressed and later

hot summer sun rising and breaking through
thick clouds whenever we stopped to break.

Wondering if they wanted to be remembered
or simply left alone.

Re-freakin-union 2007

There’s something about being up at 5 am on a Saturday night, drinking High Life and listening to birds waking up behind Tom Waits’ Closing Time. There’s something about hanging out with a group of college friends until the sky begins to get that black-blue-gray shade. There’s something about knowing that staying up and hanging out will make you tired the whole week but you stay up anyway, waiting for a real reason to go to sleep. Waiting for something to give.

When I feel like I’ve explored a place for long enough, I know immediately that it’s time to move on. And I’ll do anything to make that possible, because change is inevitable, so why not make things happen. What I’ve realized is that the older one gets, the harder it is to make these sudden changes. You can’t just move to Prague and start a whole new life because in this scenario Prague doesn’t even exist. Things become planted where you are and roots begin to grow without you even noticing. It takes something, like a weekend with good friends, to realize how firmly these roots are planted in. And if you even put them there.

On Saturday it was one of those crisp sunny days you would expect in September. We went to the bating cages and then the four of us hit some baseballs on a field out in Maryland. The last time I played baseball was with these guys and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

One of my friends is moving to Las Vegas at the beginning of August, another to Nashville maybe, and another is still deciding. Plans change every week and don’t even require solid plans in the end. There’s something about following your instincts that is inevitable in these situations, but sometimes it seems impossible. Because it costs too much money or there isn’t a job set up. Sometimes I wonder how anyone makes any decisions at all because we create so many barriers.

Is it something about me? Or is it everything? Would you change a few pieces? Or forget the whole thing? ‘Cause there’s something about you, keeps me coming back. I know things will be fine. Fall into line. You’ll still be mine. -Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell

I always feel like no matter where you go, you keep circling back. That things never really change, only recycle. But something was different about this weekend in a way that I can’t explain. There was an uncomfortable change that had occurred, while we were all living in our separate cities. I only really felt it as I got ready to leave to drive back to Charlottesville. Where you are sitting around wanting to talk about something important, but you are too tired to really start that conversation. And time just passes by until it’s getting to be dusk. The sun was a huge, orange circle that settled over the Virginia mountains as I drove out of D.C. I was not really feeling like I’d left anything behind. My toothbrush and face lotion were packed in a bag in the trunk of my car. I just listened to Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell as I drove back to Charlottesville, my mind filled with disappointment and exhaustion.

Sick Day

The day before my ninth birthday I had my appendix taken out. I don’t really remember the pain or the flowers, just little things like my best friend visiting and sitting on my hospital bed and lifting it up way off the ground and then back down. And my brother walking our dog below my high-up window, me waiving down to it as she just jumped and looked around at the ground for a treat. And my mom, staying by my side and sleeping uncomfortably next to me so that I wouldn’t get scared. As a sick child, you don’t really remember the urgency of those around you, just the thoughts of wishing things would get better and knowing that at some point you will be able to go home.

There were many occasions when I tried to fake a sickness so that I didn’t have to go to school that day. When really all I needed was a break from it all, my mom saw it as one more day that I would be behind in school. That I had to keep up with things in order to be successful later on in life. So each time I take a sick day I always feel this pang of guilt that I really could go in to work and get something done. That life doesn’t stop moving even if your body forces you to.

Whenever I get sick I always try to deny it, then I get really angry like something is getting in the way of me. And I assume that things will settle down and if I drink enough water it will go away. After being sick for a week I finally gave in and went to the doctor for help. I had a cold which turned into a sinus infection. I stayed at home and watched movies and slept all day. Just like any other sick day it forced me to really sit back and take a look at my life. I was unable to relax and try to get better because growing up I never really thought that was necessary. Because if you wait long enough, anything will fix itself.

One summer, two of my best friends and I were shopping in a consignment store in downtown Leesburg. Everything was going fine; we were typical middle schoolers trying to waste away the summer time in a growing but small town. I remember feeling this surge of energy, and instead of turning to my friends to talk about it, I just left. Without telling them anything. And I walked back to my house. I really don’t know why I didn’t want to be standing there anymore, in that thrift store, with my two best friends. I just couldn’t shake this feeling that nothing made sense anymore. That without school and other obligations that tied me down I would just drift away.

Recently, my dad also had his appendix out. He called me the day after his surgery to apologize for not being more empathetic of my pain when I was sick in third grade. How he wished he had been more understanding and that he loved me. The funny part is I don’t really remember not feeling supported during my trip to the hospital. I just remember how he carried me into the emergency room after fainting in the bathroom.

All day I’ve been looking up cities like Asheville and Missoula thinking I could just pack my bags and leave Charlottesville. That there are more exciting and peaceful places in the world that I’m missing out on by staying in a commitment. That there’s no use in dreaming anymore because people never really make decisions based on what they really want. They just wait things out until the next thing comes up, hoping to find some sort of peace with where they are at the present moment. This has never been good enough for me and it eats at me each day. I feel like I’m waiting for the moment when I will get up and walk out, without telling anyone.

For Mother's Day

We are on our way back from a weekend in Leesburg, babysitting my mostly new nephew and celebrating Mother’s Day, when we stop at a drive-thru Starbucks outside of Culpepper. A drive-thru Starbucks. I get a Mocha Light Frappaccino (no whip cream) and he gets an iced Mocha. We talk about how family dynamics never really change and how when you are younger, you make the assumption that things will get better the older you get. That at some point, your family will realize you are an adult and that you exist without them. But this never really happens.

My mom and dad admit that my sister is the only one of the three of us that was planned. My brother and I were surprises, as they liked to call us, because when my parents first eloped in Korea they didn’t want to have kids. Four years later my brother was born, and there are only baby pictures to prove it. There exists only one picture of my mom while pregnant, and she’s hiding her round belly under a large overcoat. You can’t even tell she’s really pregnant unless you look really closely.

Last night was prom night outside of Culpepper, Virginia. I know this because the drive-thru barista at Starbucks sleepily tells us this as he hands us our drinks. He apologizes for not being ridiculously customer-friendly, blaming it on prom. I drive away and turn to my boyfriend: we should’ve asked if he lost his virginity. A little down the road we pass a truck and he points out a bumper sticker that says: Pro No Sex with Pro-Lifers. We both agree that that’s a good plan.

Mother’s Day is the biggest holiday of the year for flowers and cards. It’s marketed for weeks, months even, before the day arrives. For Mother’s Day, give an engraved iPod. I think I’ll give an engraved card. One year, I remember getting up really early to make my mom pancakes. The smell filled the entire house, and hoping to get her while she was still in bed, by the time I got them upstairs she was already out of the shower and drying her hair in the bathroom. She yelled from beneath the hairdryer: you know I don’t really eat breakfast, but thank you. I put the pancakes on the ironing board and left to get ready for church.

Once I made a mini-scrapbook out of a magazine about mothers and daughters with Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner on the cover. I pasted pictures of my mom and me, and then wrote notes about how much I appreciated having her as a mom. She told me that she told her best friend that it was one of the nicest Mother’s Day gifts she’d ever gotten.

I’ve only ever really seen my mom get angry twice. Once, I was directly responsible for that anger, when I accidentally backed my dad’s car into a tree in our driveway while learning how to drive stick shift. Do you know how much this is going to cost? I can’t believe you let this happen! The other I was only present for through the ceilings, when I could hear my mom yelling at my dad in the attic. She was crying, and her voice shook and creaked. My mom emerged from the attic, a shoebox in hand. The air conditioning installers had thrown a nativity scene I had made inside a shoebox while in preschool, across the attic thinking it was just a box. She had managed to find all the pieces except for the baby Jesus. The Virgin Mary was decapitated, and nothing seemed to fit inside that shoebox anymore. Now you know what those things mean to me, she said.

Chinese-Japanese Food in Boston’s Chinatown

You are a spicy tuna roll and I am your chopsticks.
We are downtown, in the surrounds of snow and
extra wasabi. You are rolled in sticky white rice-
all soft and raw and pink in the middle. We are
the dog and rat bleeding onto the hard, brown
table. Two sugar packets shoved under one leg.
My arms and hands are large, clunky boots, still
wet dripping cold. There’s soy sauce up to our
ankles now-we are being dipped in it: salty, warm.
Hot water tilts and becomes soft. You are breath-
white on the glass and invisible to the outside…
and it stretches-engulfs you-all dark and damp.
We order bubble tea-leave too good of a tip and
walk out onto the chilly, concrete, narrow streets.

Betting on a Storm in May: Cinco de Derby

I wanted him to write: Y'all have a good marriage, now. And then sign our names. I said it loudly-almost demanded it. But he only wrote the y'all part with something about from below the M-D and best wishes. Up until late Saturday night I had returned to Boston for the weekend feeling at home. Having lived there for a year working with after-school programs and traveling all over the city to parts where the T does not go, knowing I had a grandmother from Arlington, Mass., and an uncle from Melrose, Mass., and after spending Friday night with two friends from Tennessee, I didn't feel the sting of being an outsider until right then: watching him sign his friend's wedding picture boarder at the South Shore Country Club in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Growing up in Leesburg, VA wasn't too different from growing up in Weymouth, MA. One just had a stronger accent than the other. Both served sugar packets on restaurant tables to put into iced tea rather than serving sweet tea and both were the suburbs outside of major cities. I had Waxie Maxie's (which eventually became Coconuts Music) and he had Newberry Comics. Both of our friends from high school and college have begun to get married in distinct rows and seasons. While staying at his parents’ house the whole weekend he made me egg sandwiches and coffee in the morning-mine over-hard while his were over-easy. We talked about how as children the only way we would possibly eat eggs was if they were scrambled, their colors of white and yellow blending into pepper.

The wedding was full of loud south shore Boston accents, a DJ who couldn't even maintain drunken middle-aged dancers on the makeshift wooden floor, and crazy, male-on-male dancing. Which is what happens when a bunch of friends from the same town get together to celebrate the beginning of something and the end of what is known to be true. There was a camera awkwardly recording the whole thing, a bright headlight shining down on everyone, reminding us that the bride and groom will actually be present during the viewing of this recording, alone and on a couch in their new life as husband and wife.

I called my Americorps friend who returned to Kentucky after her year in Boston. I told her that Boston wasn't the same without her, and that she needed to blow off the Kentucky Derby and come hang out with me. Even though I knew this wasn't possible, I still hoped she would call me and say she was waiting at the T stop for me to come pick her up. But she stayed at the Derby and instead, I bet on a horse. Storm in May. It lost. I lost two whole dollars.

All trips up to Boston must include seeing my friend from college who I used to date. Seeing him and thinking of peanut butter and jelly and potato chip sandwiches, The Shins and Ben Folds Five in his dorm room, and sitting in those mountains at the top of the hill with three crosses. It must include drinking in Cambridge or Brookline, then heading back out to Weymouth. Never the same way since there is always construction and will always be construction in the city of Boston. It is its constant. It must include visiting my old boss who now has two children with her partner. Looking at the two new bedrooms with butterflies and airplanes hanging from each ceiling and thinking about how we used to do work at a desk in one of those rooms and how now it is filled with imagination and clouds. It involves realizing how much has changed since I lived there.

Now when I talk to his family and friends I say I'm from the D.C. area. Then I don't have to deal with why I don't have any real accent, and I don't have to explain that my dad is originally from Vermont and my mom from Missouri. I don't have to explain that the one thing Leesburg is now known for is an outlet mall, and how if I had to pick a place to call home it wouldn't even be those mountains in North Carolina anymore. I want to ask them why they stay in the Boston area. Why no one really seems to leave. Why they want him to move back and how I can become a part of things even though I say my o's much differently. But the small talk always ends too soon, and we are onto the next subject, without hesitation.

An Atypical Anti-Feminist Feminist

I am beginning the month of May with Feist, a mixed CD made by a friend called More Than Boobies, and Marie Howe. I plan on continuing through the month with Cat Power, Mates of State, Yo La Tengo, Sleater-Kinney, Smoosh, Tori Amos, Billie Holiday, and poetry by Kim Addonizio and Jesusland by Julia Scheeres. I’ll have to wait to listen to the new Bright Eyes and I can’t start reading Lolita like I’ve been planning to for years.

There’s a place for everything. When I was growing up, I kept all of my Barbie dolls in a pile on the floor, sometimes they were shuffled under my bed or kept in the closet. I only had two Ken dolls, both of which were hideously ugly and misshapen, so when my friends and I coupled off the dolls we had two women together most of the time. Even with their weirdly small waists and pointy feet, they just looked better together. The Ken dolls just threw everything off and most of the time we didn’t even bother to get them out to play with. Things just seemed better that way.

Yesterday after I bought the new Feist CD, my friend and I went to lunch together. It was one of those cool-in-the-shade types of days, and we sat outside, eating rare tuna and French fries. The fact that I had to be somewhere at a certain time drove me crazy. And that’s when I told her this idea, an idea I’ve had for years, was finally coming to fruition. I was going to only listen to or read or watch TV or movies with women as main characters or authors or the driving creative force behind the material. Last time I told her this she asked me why I didn’t just incorporate more women into my life. Why make a deal out of it. She admitted to being an atypical anti-feminist feminist.

After I graduated from college I moved to Boston for a boy. In the locker room at yoga I have to kick myself every time I say I’m sorry when I need to get by someone or I feel like I’m in the way. On the back of the bus in first grade I told a boy that I had a crush on that my best friend (who also had a crush on him) liked him. I’ve allowed a friend to be in an abusive relationship because I thought she was strong enough to take care of herself and it turned out she was strong enough not to ask for help. I resented my mom when she went back to work after our first couple of years in Virginia because it meant I had to stay at the babysitter’s house who only gave me one cookie as a snack. When people told me that I reminded them of my grandma Lois I resented it, thinking that she was difficult and self-absorbed. I slowly allowed my back to peel over, not wearing a bra even after I really needed to. After spending hours and hours in the library of plays in high school, I realized that the world shared my limited view that women had no real voice when I couldn’t find any monologues for class. So instead I wrote my own.

I always say the day I became a true feminist was at the beginning of middle school when I threw all my old Barbie dolls on the roof over and over again until they became scratched and worn; their eyes no longer recognizable and their tan thighs became torn and ugly. Then I left those dolls in the attic to melt in the hot, summer sun. I had the idea that I couldn’t just be a woman, because just women are weak. Feminists are strong.

Maybe it’s the thinking that when you are with a group of women there’s a high chance that at least two or three of them have been sexually assaulted or abused. Maybe it’s the vulnerability I feel when walking even in the safest places alone, or the way my heart beats when a man accidentally walks too close behind me and I gladly let them pass. Maybe it’s the condescension in older male voices when they offer to help you carry something heavy or the naïve tone in my dad’s voice as he tries to tell me that I wasn’t built to carry a window air conditioner down the attic stairs. I don’t plan on changing the world or making myself feel safer by holding my keys between my knuckles, and I don’t plan on carrying a window air conditioner up and down stairs so that I can be strong enough to help my dad. After all, we got central AC a couple of years ago, so those clunky, awkward window units can sit in the attic and collect dust, waiting for someone to come and take them to Goodwill or throw them out.

ridiculous seersucker preppy outfits

I rarely have the courage to do things alone. As much as I love being alone in my apartment, I always get so anxious when I have to do something outside in the world by myself. I always admired people who can go to the movies by themselves (although I think this is more of a city thing) and feel completely comfortable. Not only are these people comfortable but also they really enjoy it. I mean, unless you are one of those people who talks throughout movies, then going alone is probably a great experience. I really hope to do this someday. For now, I'm going to settle with walking downtown to get dumplings and sweet and sour cold noodles.

Last night during this walk I was listening to the new Andrew Bird on my iPod, and it was one of those perfect spring-summer nights where it's cool enough to wear a jacket or just a t-shirt. And like usual, the downtown mall was full of people hanging out and eating outside. Some of the restaurants open up European-style in the warmer seasons, and everything seemed so round. I didn't get annoyed at the couple in front of me walking with their arms around each other and I even smiled when they stopped for a long, romantic kiss.

On Friday night I had been convinced to go to Foxfields by an old high school friend who was in town, but only if our other high school friend who also lives in Charlottesville went as well. Foxfields is basically a huge field party in the middle of horse races. Everyone dresses up in ridiculous seersucker preppy outfits and sundresses and gets wasted in the middle of the day. Not exactly my idea of fun, but the fact that I was hanging out with these two friends really made the difference. That always makes the difference.

I struggled to get up early on Saturday morning since we spent all Friday night drinking and catching up, explaining how much our lives had changed without really talking about it, and drinking cold, white wine. My friend's boyfriend drove us to Foxfields, with me sitting in the back, sunglasses and emergen-C on hand. I had thrown on a cotton dress and flip-flops, my make-up from the night before still sagging on my face. About an hour into the five-mile-an-hour/standstill traffic, my friend and I got out of the car and started to walk. On any other day I would have been complaining, but at this point I was invested in finding our other friend, enjoying the overcast cool breeze day, and just plain being in the company of these two people.

The road to Foxfields is full and green, right outside of Charlottesville and into the country. There are large houses that line the road, and when we finally got to the ridiculousness that is Foxfields, I was almost disappointed that the walk was over. We finally found our friend, and he was at a plot near the horse tracks. At one point we began to talk about figuring stuff out, and it made me think of how we all three used to hang out in high school, how they lingered around together after I had gone home.

I have never really understood the reason why people are drawn to certain people, they just are. Whether it’s on the wooden bleachers in a worn-down gym or in the middle of a field in central Virginia, there’s no real way of knowing why each group connects together and then, broken apart, swarms around each other.

My friend and I left early and took a cab home because she had to work, and we shared it with a couple. I felt like I lived in an actual city again. The girl sat in the back with us and her boyfriend sat in the front, drunkenly putting his hand up in the air for her to hold it. They were making plans to go get some pizza and then take a nap. In the middle of the silence of the cab ride he blurted out "love you" as if that was the one thought that made it through his foggy mind. It sounded like it came from somewhere deep in his thoughts, like he had dwelled on it and then couldn’t help but let it surface. She laughed and told him she loved him, too.

Bright Red Stick Shift Aerostar Minivan

There are things that only slightly upset me, like BMW's and Dancing with the Stars. Then, there are things that really upset me: tweed, crowded grocery stores with old women who tell you you have too many items in your basket and that you should get a cart, that psychic guy John Edward who preys on families who have lost loved ones and tells them that they are "in a better place," and hot, humid, middle-of-July type of weather. There's also a long list of things that creep me out as well.

I've decided that minivans creep me out. Not in a soccer mom entitlement kind of way, but in an intense, I just watched an actual scary movie kind of way. Today I was behind this silver minivan, New Jersey plates, a black turtle compartment on the top, visible passengers throughout the van which I had to strain to see through the tinted windows. I'm guessing it was in case they wanted to watch a DVD while on their five minute trip downtown. I know this because I drove behind them all the way from my apartment complex to the parking garage. The driver was doing the type of driving where he was either talking on his cell phone or having some sort of important can't pay attention to the fact that I'm driving kind of conversation. And something about the whole thing creeped me out.

Growing up, my family had a bright red stick shift Aerostar minivan. My brother eventually took it with him to college, and we promptly replaced it with a black stick shift Explorer. We are a stick shift only family. I eventually learned how to drive a stick shift car in the parking lot of my old elementary school with my dad yelling, "Clutch! Clutch! Now gas! Gas! Goddamnit!" It is one of my most pleasant memories of growing up. By then I was used to my dad yelling things like goddamnit, but usually it was from the backyard while he was working in his garden or from upstairs when he was installing the window air conditioners in mid-June. The best part of that whole experience was our neighbors letting us know how great it was to hear him yell goddamnit son of a bitch every Saturday afternoon when the lawnmower broke or the rabbits ate all of the lettuce. He once killed a possum with a pitchfork. We didn't hear any cussing when that happened and I didn't learn about this story until I was a teenager. At the time I was embarrassed by all of this, thinking that everyone thought my dad was hard to deal with or a disturbance, but it was something that I learned to love and appreciate about my dad. Most of the time he would trap the animals that disturbed his precious garden in a silver cage and take them out to the woods and set them free to disturb somewhere else.

Other things that creep me out: that weird guy with the round-faced body, unibrow and that weird girl he's with in the yellow dress on that e-harmony commercial. They stand together and talk about communication and how hard it is to talk about themselves to each other and how e-harmony helped them find each other. And I think to myself, that's exactly what happened you sad fucks. They are very, very creepy both alone and together. I'm actually glad they found each other because all I can think about is his round unibrow face sitting at a bar asking the bartender what time she gets off work after she's watched him unsuccessfully present himself to a variety of unattractive, lonely women all night. And when she promptly says no as well, he decides that e-harmony is his online lonely bar ticket to love.

While I was doing my year as an Americorps*VISTA working in Boston, I had a friend who lived out in Holyoke, Mass. (FYI: It's the birthplace of volleyball, right next to Springfield, the birthplace of basketball). We used to drive up to the "mountains" (after living in Boone, North Carolina for four years, nothing's ever really mountains anymore), and then over to Northampton, Mass. He had this tape of Jeff Mangum playing live at Jitter Joe's and throughout the whole thing there is a baby talking and crying in the background. And it always creeped me out because on top of his music and his voice there's this baby crying and then the sounds of clanking of plates in the restaurant. Part of me doesn’t want to listen, but part of me wishes I had been there at Jitter Joe’s.

For some reason when I was behind that minivan today I really wanted to see what it was like inside. Get a closer look at this family that who stored extra DVD's of A Night at the Museum and Shrek II in their black storage turtle. Because while I was growing up we sat in the back of that bright red Aerostar, air conditioning never really reaching us, half cracked windows that slid to the side, and gray, soggy seats. And from the outside, without tinted windows, everyone could look in and see us.