Odd coincidence

Last night I finally watched The Darjeeling Limited. The DVD begins with a short "part 1" film that's set in a French hotel, although the movie itself takes place in India, with a brief flashback to New York. Perhaps that's why, near the end of the movie, I remembered that I'd been meaning to look online for an audio file of a certain song about a famous French street, so that M. Defarge could finally hear what I'd been talking about as we walked down it during our trip. A minute or two later, the movie ended, the credits rolled, and this song began to play. It was a little surreal, but it made my night. M. Defarge, unfortunately, didn't seem as impressed.

Two reactions to the movie, which I absolutely loved:

1. Wes Anderson is a genius
2. It feels much more socially acceptable to lust after Adrien Brody when he's not playing a Holocaust survivor. I felt very guilty during The Pianist.
   

Quote for the day

In Chicago, I had found myself longing for the Sarajevo way of doing it--Sarajevans told stories ever aware that the listeners' attention might flag, so they exaggerated and embellished and sometimes downright lied to keep it up. You listened, rapt, ready to laugh, indifferent to doubt or implausibility. There was a storytelling code of solidarity--you did not sabotage someone else's narration if it was satisfying to the audience, or you could expect one of your stories to be sabotaged one day, too. Disbelief was permanently suspended, for nobody expected truth or information, just the pleasure of being in the story and, maybe, passing it off as their own. It was different in America: the incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth--reality is the fastest American commodity.

--From The Lazarus Project by Alexander Hemon

Story of my life

Two weeks from yesterday is my one-year anniversary at work. Which means, of course, that I'm starting to get restless. Not that I'm planning to go anywhere soon--at the very least, this job is supposed to be the "two years of professional experience" listed in the requirements section of most of the job ads I've encountered. But let's face it: "longevity" is not the word that springs to mind when you look at my resume. I've had six jobs in the eight years since graduation (although two of those were at the same time); my longest tenure anywhere was the two and a half years I spent in St. Louis. So for me, a year seems like both a milestone and an eternity.

But this anniversary isn't the only reason I've been thinking about my convoluted career path. At the college where I work, with its rigid schedule and campus-wide lunch period, some of the most anticipated and best attended events are the "faculty lunch talks." At our school, as I think it is with most art schools, the majority of the faculty teach to pay the bills; their real work is outside of class, in their studios or design firms or art galleries. So every few weeks one of them will give a talk about some aspect of their life outside of school.

They must be running out of faculty members.

Earlier this week the student activities coordinator, an instructor on the academic side who also has an affinity for books and European travel, stopped by the library to ask if he could schedule me for one of the fall slots. I must have let slip my checkered past, because he said he thinks it'd be interesting for the students to hear how I got where I am today; in effect, that it's good for them to find out that people don't always end up where they intended to. I guess you could say I'm living proof of that.

I told him I'd do it, although I'm not sure how many students will turn out to hear about how I became the school librarian. Especially the ones who have had me in class and had to endure my monotone. Now I just have to figure out what to say. I may be a cautionary tale about the importance of academic advising, avoiding procrastination, and not marrying the first person you meet in college, but it's not like I started out a phys. ed. major and became a physicist. None of my hats--aspiring writer, editor, librarian--have been all that different.

So I guess this will be my summer project--how to spin the short attention span that is the hallmark of my professional life into a story about serendipity and being open to life's possibilities. Good thing I've been wanting to get back into creative writing.

Does this make me an adult?

Last weekend I did some serious housecleaning--mopping floors, dusting, endless loads of laundry, the whole bit. When I was just about ready to collapse, I decided to tackle the giant pile of mail and other assorted papers that had piled up on our desk. About three quarters of the way down the pile I unearthed the recipe card on which I'd written the phone number and email address of the long-lost friend I'd encountered at Williams Sonoma, pre-London.

At the time, I gave her my phone number and then wished I had left it at that and put the burden of future contact all on her. For the first week or two, I walked on eggshells, wondering if I'd hear from her, trying to decide whether to send an innocuous email. Then we were getting ready for our trip and I put it aside to focus on more interesting (and more British) things.

Maybe the travel gave me a sense of perspective I'd been lacking. When I fished the card out of the pile last weekend, the whole incident no longer seemed so monumental. I had pictured us getting together for an emotionally fraught (on my part) meeting where we tiptoed around the events of the last five years. Now, frankly, I don't have the energy. Or the interest. Although it didn't seem like it at the time, I think I got the closure I was looking for.

Of course, I didn't throw the card away. But I'm content to let it be reburied in the pile of papers. It seems like a step in the right direction, at least.

Poised for flight

When I was a kid, it sometimes seemed like the only place my brother and I really got along was O'Hare Airport. This makes it sound like we were the jet-setting children of a long-distance divorce or something; rather, we were fortunate enough to take quite a few vacations growing up that involved air travel.

Once we had arrived at the gate and checked in (remember how you used to be able to do it in that order?), we would find some pretense to ditch our parents--bathroom, snacks, something to read on the plane--and head off. We hit the "people movers" at a half-walk, half-jog and hopped off at the "moving walkway is ending" message. We browsed in gift shops and strolled through food courts. We felt very important and adult.

When my brother was in high school (again, pre-9/11), he and his friends used to drive to O'Hare, just to hang out. Let's face it, a group of suburban teenagers was pretty much destined to end up at a fast-food restaurant anyway; might as well make it one with good people-watching and a little glamour.

He and I get along much better now that we're adults, and we haven't traveled together in years. We had lunch on Monday, the day before he set off on the first of the three-day-a-week trips he'll be taking to Atlanta every week between now and the big move in mid-July. He's going to be spending a lot of time at O'Hare.

With air travel being what it is now, I haven't enjoyed my time at an airport in as long as I can remember. But knowing that our time together is going to be so much more limited, I find myself wishing I could drive out there with him some Tuesday morning for a ride on the people movers and a McDonald's apple pie.

On writing and (not) working

I just finished reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which is subtitled "Instructions on Writing and Life." I picked it up because I needed something to read and I like the essays of hers that I've read on Salon.com. It was fun to read just because she's witty and funny and eminently quotable, but as a side effect it also made me want to write more. Hence yesterday's post about fruit (I had a Pink Lady as an after-work snack again today). I honestly don't know if I have a short story in me anymore, but after reading the book I'm sufficiently inspired to attempt to bang out 300 words a day of creative nonfiction or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

If nothing else, maybe it'll give my brain something to focus on other than what fun European thing I was doing three weeks ago at this time (traveling home from Paris on the Eurostar, in case you were wondering). My vacation seems to have ruined me for my real life. At least my job. At home I'm mostly diverted by the new gym and the slowly improving weather (60s and sunny today, hurrah!) and the fact that the local farmers markets are opening this week. But when I sit down at my desk, I lose all focus. This morning I attempted and abandoned at least three projects requiring varying levels of thought and attention, only to find myself on back on the Tribune website, or NPR, or Gaper's Block or Chicagoist or Goodreads.

The fact that the library is almost completely deserted because of the sparsely attended summer session doesn't help. It's like that tree-falling-in-a-forest conundrum--if I'm screwing around on the Internet and no one sees me, does it really mean I'm not working?

Thus far the only thing I can think of to do is keep starting new projects and hope something captures my attention. Sometimes it even works. After lunch today I started tinkering with the new website I'm "building" for the library* and managed to do almost two hours of actual work. Probably not the workday my boss had in mind for me, but compared to some recent afternoons, it felt like an accomplishment.

*This sounds way more impressive than it is. I had planned to completely overhaul the library website this summer, but my idea of having one of our web design students do the redesign was met with a resounding "no." Go figure. Along came a representative from our regional library system touting what I've taken to referring to as a "website in a box." Basically, a template designed for small (public) libraries. It's got some nice features, and it's pretty much the same interface as your average blog or wiki program (no more FTP sites or monkeying with FrontPage). So that's what I'm doing. It's pretty generic, and I'm a little afraid of what the students and faculty are going to think of the design, but there's only one of me. (Defensive, anyone?)

Kindred spirits

If this librarian thing doesn't pan out, I may have to leave it all behind and join these guys...

For the last three months, they have circled the nation in search of awkward grammar construction. They have ferreted out bad subject-verb agreements, and they have faced stone-faced opposition everywhere. They have shone a light on typos in public places, and they have traveled by a GPS-guided '97 Nissan Sentra, sleeping on the couches of college friends and sticking around just long enough to do right by the English language. Then it's on the road again, off to a new town with new typos.

Globalization

In London we decided to eat as locally as possible. Not that we stuck to stereotypical British food like shepherd's pie and bangers and mash for every meal, but we tried to stay away from American chain restaurants and foods we could just as easily eat at home. We ate in pubs, we ate in church crypts, we ate at street markets, we bought sandwiches from EAT. (several times) or Pret a Manger (at the airport). We bought Cadbury's chocolate even though we didn't taste much of a difference and tried in vain to find a Magnum Mayan Mystica bar at the corner grocery store after being bombarded by ads all week.

Since most of our days began and/or ended at King's Cross/St. Pancras, where we caught the Circle Line, the National Rail Service, and the Eurostar, we also discovered Marks and Spencer's Simply Food stores, and a decent portion of our meals came from there--sandwiches with the "No Mayo" sticker, sea salt and cracked black pepper crisps, chocolate-covered shortbread biscuits, and lemonades with raspberry puree.

Our first full day in London, browsing the St. Pancras M&S, we picked up a package of Pink Lady apples and were immediately hooked. They were huge, juicy, pink-skinned, and sweet and came in little shrink-wrapped packages of four. What wasn't to like? We ate them in our hotel room and on the boat cruise from Tower Pier to Westminster. We bought them at a Borough Market fruit stand. Toward the end of our trip we spoke fondly of hoping to somehow find them back home.

Our last day in London, sitting in the Great Court of the British Museum and swamped by a wave of nostalgia for a city we hadn't even left yet, I took out the last Pink Lady, shined it on my shirt, and prepared to eat it. Then I noticed the little sticker on one side.

Washington, USA.

The day after we arrived home, I trudged to the grocery store to restock the kitchen. On special in the produce aisle--Pink Ladies. Later that week I ran to Super Target for paper products. On special in the produce aisle there--Pink Ladies again. Both times I bought a bagful. This weekend, I bought more. Despite the little Washington labels, they taste like London to me.

Soul-crushing jet lag

I cannot yet form coherent sentences (just ask my coworkers), but I hope to be able to in the next couple of days.

In preparation, here is your outline:

Day 1:

• Delayed flight
• Soul-crushing jet lag
• Shopping in Piccadilly/St. James areas
• St. James Park

Day 2:

• Globe theater tour
• Tate Modern
• Fruitless attempt to visit Borough Market (closed on Sundays)
• Imperial War Museum

Day 3:

• Tower of London
• Westminster Abbey
• Churchill Museum/Cabinet War Rooms
• Belgian beer-hall restaurant

Day 4:

• British Museum
• Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields
• National Gallery
• Evensong at Westminster Abbey

Day 5:

• Eurostar to Paris
• Terrifying taxi ride
• Notre Dame
• Turned away from Sainte-Chappelle (closed for lunch, the bastards)
• Arc de Triomphe
• Walk down Champs Elysees
• Coffee in Tuileries Gardens
• Louvre
• Dinner at cute cafe with very helpful waiter
• Eiffel Tower (sort of)
• Eurostar back to London

Day 6:

• British Library
• St. Paul's Cathedral
• Tea in refectory at St. Paul's
• Double-billing of extremely long Rick Steves walking tours
• Pub no. 1
  
• King Lear at Globe Theater

Day 7:

• Walking tour of Cambridge
• More walking, also in Cambridge

Day 8:

• Buckingham Palace (changing of guard only)
• Borough Market, take 2
• Hyde Park
• Harrods
• Pub no. 2
  

Day 9:

• British Museum, again
• Flight home
• Soul-crushing sadness

Miscellaneous talking points:

• Mayonnaise--the national condiment? (Also, ham as health food.)
  
• French people--lovely in France, annoying outside France
• Public displays of affection
• Crappy microchip-less American credit cards

Expect a phone call soon.

Also, photos. I believe there are somewhere around 300. Many of tanks. Don't say I didn't warn you.