Bisected

So, it's like noon on Sunday, and I'm at the University of Chicago gym on an elliptical trainer with a tv attached. I'm watching a football game and listening to my ipod which is spinning a mix that goes something like Townes Van Zandt, Spoon, Girl Talk, Erykah Badu, and Bread (sometimes my ipod shuffle makes me feel so cool with my eclectic and oh so good musical selections bumping together). I'm thinking about how I'm going to go home and make last night's spinach-artichoke-sans-artichoke dip into a faux chicken, real rice, cheesey spinach casserole for lunch. AND, I've already finished my reading for Monday on the evolution of welfare policy in America. Basically, I'm feeling like The Best Sarah.

I walk home and it's a little cloudy. I talk to Marcus on the phone and he tells me about how they hung out on the Bessemer Court porches til the breaka-breaka. And then I talk to Eryn on the phone about a three-mimosa brunch after a night of hanging out til the breaka-break and I get real sad.

Another Best Sarah lives on porches in the summer-turned-fall. Drinking and smoking and contributing to conversation that gets more ridiculous as the night goes on while she grows more fervently attached to the musical selections that pump. I love the morning-after recovery, the haphazard yet delicate selection of brunchery or lunchery, and fondling the hair of the dog.

So it goes. I have no tidy wrap-up. My moods are somewhat sinusoidal.

--sarah

The passing on of wisdom

I have now seen two fathers teaching their sons how to urinate in the street. Once was in Harlem, once in my own beloved Bronx. Overheard in the Bronx: "OK son, now you've gotta shake it."
-Caroline

Stoned in Vegas

I love how my job requires me to jump down the maw of Las Vegas. But sometimes that can be a little dangerous, like last Tuesday, when I approached a woman deep in the ghetto for a story. Turns out she was crazy. She flipped, started screaming every epithet in the book at me, then followed me around the corner and grabbed a handful of rocks from her yard, making as if to throw them at me.

I scurried away. The whole episode has become a running joke between my editor and me. I don't think we've had an exchange since that didn't include the mention of pith helmets. Oh well. Got the story anyway.

Norwood! Norwood! Rah! Rah! Rah!

The NY Times recently profiled my new neighborhood: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/31livi.html
-Caroline

Where Me and Barack Walk

Caroline was totally right when she told me that the shoes I thought were comfortable would prove to be vicious ankle biters when doing my city walking commute. I've got big old blisters from walking 'round & 'round my new neighborhood.

- sarah

I heart NY

After days of feeling beaten down by the helplessness of seeing amazing kids left to rot (one day, ask me about David, who works 2 jobs to support himself because his family's out of the picture, who spent much of last year in jail, and who still manages to be one of the sweetest and hardest working kids I've ever met), by the sheer assholishness that some people revel in, and by the cold indifference of parents and communities who would rather implode than think that maybe some of this is their fault, I come back to one thing. I fucking love this city.
-Caroline

To Answer Your Burning Question. . .

In a few months I am moving to Portland, OR. The delay addresses some financial goals that need tending too and I have a job that I need to quit. This past summer was the summer of goodbye parties. I have never ever in my life been to more parties that end with has ta la vista. It was good and bad, good to see people running after a new normal and bad to be left in their wake.


I've moved to Portland before. The summer I turned 23 I rented a Buick Rendezvous (a car no longer in production) and all of my possessions fit tightly in the back while my dog Sweet Pea had room to spare sitting shotgun. I drove North out of San Francisco and merged with Highway 1. I stopped somewhere around the California/Oregon boarder and fed Sweet Pea some fried chicken. I pulled up to a house in a South East neighborhood where I was going to rent a room in a basement. A few days later I fell in love with a boy named Aaron.


Fast forward 6 years; Sweet Pea still rides shotgun but I no longer feed him fried chicken. I'm still in love with Aaron and sometimes when he and I discuss our upcoming move he will say something like, "I just really want to know why YOU want to move to Portland. I mean, I know why I want to move but why do YOU want to move to Portland?" Yes, the cadence of his inquiry is a little obnoxious but it's a valid question. I'm sure someone asked me the same question when I was moving to Portland the first time. I probably laughed it off, or mumbled something about Teflon and hot air balloons. . . I was a little crazy back then. But now, presently, at this very moment I have solid, valid, REASONS.


1.) Portland makes me feel like writing. After wandering the massive neighborhoods and breathing in the crisp air I always feel like collapsing down with pen and paper. This is one of the best feelings ever and it's been too long since I felt it on a regular basis. I want to take the memoir and poetry workshops here. Another writer also makes me want to move there, she's kind of famous. There are statues of her infamous characters in Grant Park.

2.) New forests to camp in, to mud to get stuck in, new birds to watch. Do you know about Vaux Swifts? They used to nest in the hollow stumps of Redwoods but now they settle for old chimneys. If I ever teach myself to draw, they will be my first subject.

3.) I want to live on the West Coast again, but not in San Francisco - not yet.

4.) I want to take cooking classes and learn about plant life that is in indigenous to the Pacific Northwest. Also, herbs.

5.) Oh my god, food, duh.

I realize that the focus of this list (and most of my other reasons) is on what I want to DO there and not WHY I want to go but the difference between those two ideas is minuscule and infuriating. I guess I find it puzzling to be asked why I want to move back to a place I've already moved.

-Emily-

Stick Figure Sisyphus

As I was screwing together all of my Ikea furniture in my new apartment, I had this underlying feeling that once it was all done, I would have to deconstruct, pack it all up, schlep it down the three flights of winding stairs, re-rent a U-Haul trailer, and drive back across the country to Greensboro in my hatchback. Once there, I would refurnish the ol’ Paisley Street apartment with frequent trips to big box stores to outfit the space just to my liking. Once the last book was placed on the oak-veneered-pressed-wood bookcase in that apartment, I would immediately revisit the ABC store for boxes, resort, repack, and rehaul.

If it ends up this way, I guess I’ll get better at reversing with a trailer attached to my car. Oooh! And I’ll be super svelte from moving lots and lots of boxes up and down stairs every few days. Nice.

- Sarah

"GO" is a word that defies definition.

Voila.