The Things I'll Carry

In high school, my senior English teacher, the same one who had us look up f*** in the dictionary on the first day of class, taught us tai chi on the football field, and took us to see a play in Berkeley in which all the main characters turn into rhinoceroses, had us read an excerpt from Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried. The idea was that each man's possessions revealed his psyche. If you're willing to drag something through waist-deep mud and Viet Kong bullets, your choice must not be a haphazard one.

Beginning Friday, I'll be keeping three weeks of blog silence as I trek from Mt Whitney to the Yosemite Valley. On my back, I'll be carrying enough to sustain life (albeit a a dirty, footsore life at high altitude) for three weeks. I'm breathlessly happy about it. I have all my super-cool equipment weighed down to the gram, perfectly distributed in my trusty Crestone internal frame pack. (I am more like my father everyday) I have a day pack, full of the most essential equipment, that I can detach at a moment's notice in case of emergency. I have a large water bladder with a spout that feeds through a hole in the side of the pack directly to my mouth. I have a bear-proof canister for food and scented toiletries. Essentially, it's a giant aspirin bottle with a child-proof cap, on the theory that toddlers and black bears are alike in curiosity, temperment, and dexterity. Black bears do, it must be granted, have more hair, but this is immaterial to the design of the canister. It should also keep out marmots and chipmunks, which are apparently rather aggressive. I have pounds and pounds of home-dehydrated, high-calorie food, all of which tastes excellent but looks discouragingly like cow pies or owl pellets. I have hiking boots and water shoes, trekking poles and a bivy sack, a one-man tent, a utility knife, and a shovel. I have a topographical map, a compass, Vaseline, sunscreen, and baking soda to serve as toothpaste. I have aspirin, gauze bandages, and the generic for Diamox, an altitude sickness medication. I have a water filtration system, iodine tablets, a satellite phone, electrolyte energy mix, a miner's headlamp, and toilet paper. I have the smallest Bible you've ever seen and a locket with a picture of my dad. I have a trail journey and a throwaway camera with nineteen pictures on it (that's less that one per day), but one word is worth a thousand pictures. I have Long Johns, biodegradeable soap, waterless shampoo, and a towel the size of a table napkin. I have pepper spray, a wristwatch, prescription sunglasses, a wilderness first aid guide, and a needle and thread. I have a poncho, Hefty bags, a cold-weather jacket, and . . . lots of other stuff, weighing in nicely at 40 pounds. I'm not sure whether I'm entiring the wilderness, or only passing through with travel-size civilization behind me.

And don't worry, as soon as I come back, I'll tell you about every stinkin' tree for 220 miles.

Confessions of a Jaywalker

Since Rosie passed away in March, I've gotten everywhere on foot. While it's occasionally inconvenient, I think I actually prefer it. I never have to look for a parking spot. I never have to wait in line at the DMV or try to decide how dangerous that ping-ping-whirr-whir-galump noise is. Gas prices can shoot up to the moon if they please, and I never pay them any mind. My favorite thing, though, is the way it grows the world back to its huge, wonderful size.

Five miles is a long, long way again. There are no blurs in my life. Instead I have wide streets, webby-leaved trees, quiet homes, mothers pushing strollers at a jog in 95 degree heat. Walking is an invitation to see. Just today, I saw a midget, with long, delicate arms and almost no torso, who was trying to find her way to the Pentagon. I met a tourist from Savannah, Georgia, who marvelled that I would cross the street against a light (as though the lights in Arlington bore any correspondence to safe crossing, which they do not), and summoned all her courage to follow me. By the time she parted, I think she was about to propose to me on behalf of her oldest son. I saw a woman in the grocery store who wanted me to tell her which home pregnancy test would tell her which days were best for conception. I'm afraid I couldn't get her to understand that it was for after - not before.

It's much harder to meet people, to see things, from inside the deadening confines of steel and glass.

Confessions of the Absent-Minded

It bothers me that I am always late, that I am forever sweeping breathless into meeting of coolly composed co-workers, showing up at the wrong airport at the wrong day, harried and unkempt, and realizing with a start that I am ten miles past my freeway exit and never even noticed. I know, far too well, the optimal elixir of contrition, pleading, urgency, and self-deprecating gratitude to coerce an unwitting ticket agent into getting me to the series of holidays, weddings, and business functions I am in constant mortal danger of missing.

Unable to account for these worrisome tendencies, I despair of ever conquering them. I am, in other repsects, a conscientious, responsible adult. I pay my bills on time. I remember to feed the cat and water my plants, I brush my teeth and stock the bathroom closet preemptorily with toilet paper and Kleenex. I return rented movies (though never library books). Why is it, then, that I never know the location of my wallet, my keys, or my glasses, that I sleep daily though four separate alarms, that I woke up yesterday morning one hour after my scheduled departure for Jacksonville?

It cannot be that I do not care enough. My overwhelming anxiety on each and every occasion is sufficient evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it is a congenital disorder, and the brain synapses necessary to recall such basic details have sworn their cellular allegiance towards other, higher functions. There is undeniable appeal in the narcissistic notion that my absent-mindedness is a fault of genius, a charming artistic waywardness. I have a hazy recollection that Einstein hard a time recognizing his own front door. But I cannot really believe I am a similar case. Nuclear physics makes me want to cry.

My mother is wont to say to me incredulously, "But you're so smart about some things . . ." Even in her perplexity, she is too generous to add the obvious succeeding clause: "but you're as perceptive as a stump about others!" Why I should sometimes have the mental presence of a mollusk, why my faculties should periodically abdicate their rightful place to go blow on dandelions, is not less baffling or irritating to me than to anyone else in my life that is inconvenienced by it. Seeing the obvious virtue and benefit in such things, I aspire to be always punctual (perhaps even early!), alert, organized, with sharp seams and crisp collars, but no sooner do I make iron-clad resolutions than I end up like I did yesterday morning.

I set three separate alarms well in advance of when I would need to leave, but after a splendidly bizarre dream that climaxed in someone shouting "Rumplestiltskin!" (that alone do I remember) I bolted upright in bed to squint at the clock hands with disbelief. My flight had taken off an hour before, with total disregard for my absence (abominable gaucherie). I spent several minutes on the phone with an agent who explained that if I arrived at the airport by 10:35 am, I could take advantage of the two-hour rule, and I would be put on the next Florida-bound flight in time for Charlotte's wedding. All I had to do what get myself bedecked in wedding finery, brush my teeth, and hail a cab. And all that I needed to get started were my glasses, wherever they might be - and here I met the morning's second obstacle. Not at the head of my bed, not on my desk, not in the bathroom closet. I investigated these usual suspects more by touch than by sight. From there, it was more or less a game of fumbling around on the floor. Alas, it is one of life's great ironies that, beyond a certain threshold of visual impairment, you cannot find your glasses without your glasses. Losing time and passing quickly to despair, I finally found them underneath the bed. They must have landed there right about the time that my traitorous synapses were orchestrating that Technicolor fairy tale variety show.

At 10:18 the cab arrived, and we squealed off to the airport. I came huffing and puffing up to the ticket agents at 10:34 am. 60 seconds to spare. I arrived in Jacksonville just in time to help make the centerpieces at the reception hall.

If you've known me for any length of time, you've heard a dozen of these stories, and they all tend to have equally felicitous endings. And while I still deplore the mental aberrations that land me there, I've grown to tolerate them, and feel a measured optimism that all will be well. It seems to be God's pet method of reminding me that I need grace, and that I ought to laugh loud and long in this pleasant chaos called life.

(Wo)manning the Ship

Connie is off to St. Thomas tomorrow. She has promised, in accordance with her generous nature, to think of us working in the office every time that she orders a pina colada on the beach. Lana is on a minutely planned automobile tour of the Southwest - Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Trinidad Beach, the Redwood Forest, Crater Lake, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National Park, Four Corners, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Zion National Park - and I, for the moment, constitute the entire events team of International Justice Mission. I'm flexing my muscles like Popeye, or at least like Olive Oil.Today I had my very first meeting at which I got to plan the agenda (with lots of help). I stood in front of the room and made things pop up on a projector screen. Oh, the power.

T-shirt Nation

Reading an article on the BBC website recently, I was struck by a British journalist's observation of the American T-shirt obsession. I got to thinking, so prepare for a rant, which I hope will be amusing if not edifying.

There is something exquisitely distinctive, and perhaps emblematic, in this humble pillar of our national culture, this unofficial uniform. The T-shirt is, first and foremost, egalitarian. Graciously accomodating all waistlines and pocketbooks, it denies no aspirants to its cottony embrace. It is no less significant that its accessible price tag owes great thanks to subsidized American cotton growers and sweatshop workers in Malaysia; and perhaps one in a hundred will care enough about that contradiction to leave the T-shirt on the rack.

But aside from their price or their provenance, I am fascinated by what the T-shirt is expected and allowed to do. We give it such unmitigated sway in defining our self-image and affiliations, our deepest hurts and gripes, our stupidity and immortality.

Take the following cases in point:

The 4th-grade girl, with the decolletage of a pair of seedless grapes, whose pink, torso-hugging T-shirt pronounces her "Juicy;" the man in the Giant Supermarket that, while standing in front of his clothesrack this morning, made the conscious decision to don the brown T-shirt that proclaims in bold capitals "I'M PROBABLY LYING;" the group of high school kids on a summer missions trip - I was one of those kids - that clump together like raisins, rendered hopelessly cultish and inaccessible by the blistering Bible verses emblazoned on their chests, to say nothing of their blinding royal purple color; the politico who doesn't bother to articulate an argument, but whose T-shirt vehemently shouts "Impeach Bush" as the answer to all questions; the grieving family at the 5th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, whose matching T-shirts declare their love and remembrance that past ages might have set down in a ballad.

Perhaps all these cases (with the exception of the "probably lying" man, who is indefensible, and the "Juicy" pre-pubescent, whose parents have clearly not been parenting) stem from the American notion that our essential values can, and should, be boiled down to a memorable slogan that we can plaster on our car bumpers or on our physical persons. Who, after all, can a remember a single line of the Declaration of Independence except that "inalienable" part about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If you can't say what's important to you in a few words, you might not get to say it at all, and a snappy slogan (preferably alliterative) is less refutable than a reasoned argument.

One of Those Days

6:30 pm - Realized that my last paycheck was never credited to my bank account. Am overdrawn. Also, am out of catfood, have not done laundry in five weeks (what have I been wearing?!), have lost metro pass, and the sum total of my pantry is lemon juice, molasses, seaweed, and dried mung beans.

8:30 pm - Lost last pair of contact lenses. Realized I no longer have a valid prescription. Also realized that I have no idea where my glasses are (I'm as blind as a bat, without the ultrasonic radar feature.) Unable to find them because I can't see past my own elbows.

7:30 am - Slept through my alarm by one hour.

8:30 am - Got on the wrong bus, the one that takes me to Pentagon instead of Pentagon City.

8:40 am - Get on train going in the wrong direction. Get off at Arlington Cemetery (nothing as depressing as being surrounded by 50,000 people who died unnatural deaths).

8:55 am - Get on train going in the right direction. Get off at next stop, and have already paid my exit fare by the time I realize that this is Pentagon City, and I want Crystal City.

9:20 am - Have now arrived 50 minutes late for work.

12:45 pm - Cell phone rings really loudly and embarassingly. My ring tone is "Allison Road," so I can't pretend it's not me. After I dig through my purse for fifteen minutes to find it, it's an automated message from an auto shop inviting me to schedule an appointment. I don't have a car.

12:56 pm - I'm going to lunch. If a concert piano doesn't fall on my head from several stories up while I'm gone, I'll be surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed.

You Know You're in DC When . . .

There is something biologically and inexplicably potent in the body of an infant. Which of the current presidential hopefuls would not love that abilityto hold a roomful of adults in reverent, attentive silence, to catch the glimmer of a smile, the breath of a cry? Watching a baby is like watching the ocean. One can do it forever, and it no longer matter what else happens in the world, so long as that bird-sized ribcage goes on falling and rising, like the ocean breakers of a sea inlet.

Stepping on the red-eye flight on Tuesday night, I had an unexpected sense of pushing against a magnetic field, of confused physical rending. And it was for Isaac, who for a few hours I held and laughed at and admired.

I was happy to jump straight back into work, and into this city which can be so artlessly beguiling.

IJM moved into its new office space a few weeks ago. Our building has 16 floors, but the 13th, instead of being labeled as such, is supersitiuosly called "M" for mezzanine. It might also stand for McCain (or "Mavw=erick"), whose campaign is headquarted there, and whose staffers all ride up and down the elevator with an aura of flustered importance, dressed as if they were going to watch a polo match.

To get home from the office, I walk down Army Navy Drive. I pass the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Air Force Memorial in my mile-long stroll, sites that move me with a blend of dread, pride, confusion, and intertia. I have never been able to quite sort out the honor of that tradition and the contested injustices of current foreign policy, so I leave it alone.

On Friday night, passing the Air Force Memorial on the far side of the street, I heard the living strains of violin music from up the hill. I crossed to the memorial grounds, where the three talons of blistering bright metal, lit from underneath, arch into the sky. The missing man formation. It has always reminded me of claws, or of the arch of the human spine when the head is thrown back in a cry of joy and triumph. An exultant addition to the landscape. When newcomers arrive in the city, I don't tell them I live on Columbia Pike. I tell them I live next to the Claw, about which I feel a sort of neighborhood pride.

As I crossed onto the grounds, where signs bade me not to walk on the closely manicured strips of grass, I saw twenty violinits in Air Force uniform, instruments in hand, playing out song after song to a delighted crowd. I sat on a block of marble to hear them move from tango to strathspey to jig. The Capitol dome and the Washington monument lay in the distance. The first fireflies of summer winked like lazy green eyes against the deepening sky. A traffic policeman, in a bright orange reflector vest, abandoned the crosswalk where he was on duty to move closer to the music. First he tapped his foot, then he began to move his whole body, wielding his orange baton to play an imaginary fiddle. Then, as if regaining control of his limbs, he forced his arms to fold and contented himself with the most enthusiastic foot-tapping. When the music ended, the band took a profound obeisance, and I wandered the last block homeward in the darkness, now complete.