So happy together..

It's been a week since I packed my bags and said goodbye to my summer home, the co-op on G street in Southeast DC. I miss the house and the housemates something awful. Here's a not-so-little brainstorm/torrent about what I loved about it.

My first success in sharing a bedroom.
Always finding someone around to chat with.
More politics than a Georgetown library.
Being a stone's throw away from Eastern Market, where I managed to consistently get a week's worth of groceries for about $20.
A well-equipped kitchen and a free shelf to scrounge when I was too lazy to cook.
Cute little mice to keep us guessing in the kitchen.
A garden to toil in, to harvest tomatoes, squash, basil, peppers, and sunflowers from, and to compost in.
Housemates who understood, respected, and catered to my peculiar diet.
Folks interested in good books, good music, far-flung travel, serious documentaries and lectures, patriotic parades, afternoons in the Library of Congress or Ebenezer's Cafe, a good game of scrabble, or a night of karaoke.
A lax policy on drinking in a quaker-owned rowhouse.
A cute, safe neighborhood with kind neighbors and tidy front yards.
A five minute walk to the metro stop.
Amazing rent prices for volunteers and interns.
Nightly games of "tennis" and "soccer" at the nearby park.
Walking everywhere.
Magnolia trees and lavender after the rains.
Sharing resources like laundry detergent, cooking oil, sugar, and toilet paper.
Ceiling fans with half the lightbulbs unplugged to save on electricity.
A great supply of tea and a water heater at the ready.
Room for my yoga mat.
A shower and chore schedule.
House meetings with hilarious, half-hour long icebreakers.
Connecting with friends of friends who share the same level of awareness and compassion.
Nightowls coexisting with morning glories.
A lending library almost bigger than my personal library.
Walks after dinner.
Staying around for an hour talking at dinnertime.
Housemates with lives as busy as mine.
Meeting housemates' friends and being comfortable with them very quickly.
Christians with high levels of tolerance and respect.
A guest policy welcoming people to eat and stay with us for free.
Fit and healthy girls to keep me inspired.
Two daily newspaper subscriptions.
Hanging out at the pool for the first time.
Complete dependence on public transportation.
Picnics on the mall or in the sculpture garden.
Nearby eco-bike tours and a neighborhood bike shop.
Concerts on the capitol lawn for fourth of july and memorial day.
Good listeners.
Cutting down internet use outside of work to the library or slow house computer only.
The house whiteboard for sharing messages.
A paid blockbuster account.
Togetherness and respect of each others' space.
My broadened worldview.

Only child becomes a Big Sis

I fully took on the role of Big Sis for the first time this summer - and really enjoyed it. It's a funny feeling to accept being looked up to: initially, I failed to spot it, but after a while, I realized that what I learned from my experiences in college, in romance, and in the working world have given me a unique ability offer guidance to other people my age or younger. This came in handy with a huge crop of interns arriving at CHEJ in June and departing in early August. Until this summer, I didn't know what a difference there can be between 20 and 23!

Part of the sudden realization is that I can almost feel how much I've grown in the past 6 months or so -- like mental stretch marks. Working in the non-profit sector and gearing up for Peace Corps has separated me from a deep-seated selfishness I've had lurking for a long time. I finally found something to give myself to. In college, I selfishly pursued a degree so I could someday make money (losing lots of my zest in the process); in college, I selfishly pursued a relationship so I could feel good about myself and have an outlet for my energies. Now, although I have learned the value of money in being able to provide for future endeavors from talking to those with 30, 40 years on me, I have learned the value of giving and loving first-hand. Striking a balance is going to be hard, because vilifying money comes to me almost as a reflex to abundance, but walking that line is essential.

I've also matured as a result of a very protracted break-up of my most meaningful tryst to date. I've had tons of time to reflect and re-reflect on my actions, his actions, and everything else, such that I can understand now the objective reasons that we were not right together, quite apart from any feelings involved. I accept that with no feelings of regret or desire for revenge. It makes me sad sometimes, to finally be able to see his flaws. Love was blinding - it took a sudden sharpening of focus to know that.

As a counselor for my friends' relationships, romantic and otherwise, I find I can easily detect patterns of emotionally charged action-reaction so I try to help them to see the big picture. If only someone had done that for me! But it's a little strange to feel like a Big Sis to my friends; won't they realize how they could be thinking their way to being happier? I wouldn't deny them any support they need, though -- someday, I know they will be offering sisterly words of wisdom in my time of need.

Weekend Update: Life on the Hill

At the beginning of this month, I finally got over my fear of spending money on living expenses and moved out of MD and into a really excellent community house in the Capitol Hill/Eastern Market area of DC. Yes, it's Southeast -- but around here that means shaded streets and whiffs of lavender from miniscule front yards, an arts workshop and a public library, and fresh produce from the farmers on the weekends (which can be supplemented by Yes! Market natural food store when needed).

I live in a house with 9 other people, most of whom are working on the policy-related nonprofit end of social justice and poverty campaigns. Some are faith-based, but not all; many share international interest and I've learned a lot about some topics I only knew a little about before -- NAFTA in Latin America, U.S. pesticide companies' conflicts of interest in the War on Drugs, debt forgiveness in Africa, and all about German customs, including all-night wedding bashes.

Life in the city hasn't been all gloom and circumstance, though! Here are some fun things I did in the past few weeks that make my days in MD look pretty tame:

• Visiting Dumbarton Oaks in upper Georgetown: a lovely estate turned into a Harvard-run botanic conservatory and center for archaic arts (Byzantine, ancient Greek?). There's an awesome mosaic garden of stones all precisely oriented in swirling patterns and vibrant earthy colors.. and some nice flowers too.
  
• Hitting up one of my favorites in Dupont circle with an old friend (and fellow Merckie) -- Teaism. There are several locations around the city, but their tea-house atmosphere, hot and cold beverage variety, and veg-friendly asian food can't be beat.
• A wandering, though brief, visit to The National Art Gallery. There are so many great things to do on the mall, though I regret that much of the huge, two-building facility seems to be poorly explained by even sparser text. They have nice large-space art installations, and some cutout pieces by Matisse were a good feature, though the Afghanistan exhibit was way too crowded to enjoy properly.
  
• The American Film Institute's SilverDOCS festival in Silver Spring screening of Kassim the Dream. The main character and his coach cum adopted uncle and guiding force stood up during the questions to the director session at the end! Kassim was taken into the army in Uganda as a child and used Boxing as a way to deal with the day-time images of horror that continued to dog him after escaping to the U.S. His story of redemption was funny and packed a punch. The film from the Displaced Person camps in Uganda were particularly powerful.

I'm still working on doing the whole biking to work thing, and I'm looking forward to the Corcoran's exhibit on AIDS photography in Africa called Access to Life and a National's game this Friday. Did I mention I also started up the compost heap here? I'm the resident enviro-nut.. and loving it.

So, consider this your open invite, my readers, to come and do fun things in DC with me -- there is no shortage of them to be had.

Making it New

I find that a greater sense of gratitude has helped me become a happier, friendly, more engaging person in the past year. Practicing gratefulness is a conscious decision, not unlike the Buddhist's eschewing desire, that leads to a greater fullness (gratefulness = "great fullness") and sense of being at peace with the world.

The practice is at home in many contexts that we find ourselves in, and I want to share one such anecdote that links gratitude and relationships.

I once went to a conference on relationships. Most of the presenters were therapists who had all kinds of elaborate theories about what made good relationships. Then a Buddhist lama got up and said, "I know the secret to keeping love alive. It's simple. All you have to do it act as if you have just met this person and are falling in love. When you meet someone you are interested in, everything they do is wonderful. You love looking at them, hearing what they have to say. Even when they play you country western music, which you might dislike, you think, 'Well, maybe Tammy Wynette isn't so bad after all.' As time goes on, however, you take the person for granted and fight over Tammy Wynette. So the solution is to see your loved one new again."

The therapists were up in arms, prolaiming that such a task was too hard. "Oh," said the lama, "I said it was simple. I didn't say it was easy."

The lama is right. The secret to love -- and a sense of joy and gratitude toward all things living -- is to see, feel, and hear as if for the First Time. Before the scales of the habitual clouded the brilliant blue sky outside your office window, the tangy juiciness of an orange, or the smooth softness of your loved one's hands. Before you got used to her kind words, or his musical laughter, that they became invisible to you.

Recently, my husband Don had vividly brought home to us the truth of how easy it is to get blinded to the miracles around us. When we first adopted Ana, we couldn't sleep -- we were too busy looking into her peaceful face and crying tears of gratitude. Now, a mere four months later, Don, who is home all day with her, finds himself taking her presence for granted, already losing that overwhelming sense of appreciation that she was sent to us.

"I get bored, he says, "because it is so much the same, day after day. But her spirit, her presence, is no less a miracle today than it was four months ago, or than it will be four or forty years from now. And when I can remember that, I catch myself 'falling asleep' to the miracle, and the awareness wakes me again and my heart once again fills with joy."

When we can live our lives as if it is always the first time -- the first time we made love, the first time we gazed upon the face of our beloved, the first time we tasted ice cream, the first time we saw a bird-- we won't have to try to experience a sense of gratitude. It will be there automatically, as a natural response to the beauty and the bounty around us.

Luck strikes at the Ottobar; Friends I knew

You're at a smoky bar, seated on a simple bench by a wall, facing a band on a stage. Most of the patrons have already left for the night -- the second band obviously had the biggest following, and though the twenty-somethings had stuck around for the stunt, they weren't there for the music, really. You're bobbing your head to the beat and smiling to yourself about some clever lyrics when a girl walks by, turns to face you, and shows you a compact disc. By reflex, you put out your hand, experiencing an anachronistic moment like being sold something by a street hawker in China, maybe Spain. She again proffers it toward your hand and you hesitate, then accept, watching her walk out to the street, maybe to get a smoke, maybe on her way out. You wonder if you've just agreed to hold it for her or even to buy it, without really being able to hear over the poppy guitars, but she doesn't return. On second glance, the CD itself is something of a miracle - it's the new one, by that band you heard on the radio that you've been meaning to check out, just hadn't gotten around to yet.


That was my Friday night; and many of those patrons were kids from my high school home on break and in need of something to do. It's been absolutely awesome to be able to catch up with so many people after returning to the area and trying to re-establish some kind of network. Many of them have been people I only vaguely knew, but some of them are old friends cast aside that have been renewed under more mature, reciprocating circumstances. I'll just call it an unexpected benefit of having graduated and returned to living at home.