I spend a lot of time on benches. Sitting on benches, reading on benches, people watching on benches, twiddling my thumbs on benches. I'm good at benches. And the reason I'm good at benches is simple, persistent, and unavoidable. I'm always early. Always. I'm early in spite of myself. Last night, I deliberately left my apartment late, so that I would arrive at a dinner party about 5 minutes late. It's fashionable, right? I missed a tram on purpose, took the less direct bus route, and walked really really slowly. Not only did I get there at 7:58, it turned out the dinner was actually at 8:30 and not 8. Benches.
Today is a horrible day for travel. A strike and a snowstorm have been scheduled to ruin everything. Which is why I woke up at 5:15am, hopped in the taxi at 6am, arrived at the airport at 6:25am (in a light, warmish sort of drizzle), checked in for my flight at 6:35am, and began waiting at 6:42am. My flight is at 10:30am. Benches. Well, more accurately, a rickety table in one of those weirdly corporate airport "cafés" that smell kind of like polyester and slightly stale croissants. They have Wifi here (pronounced "weefee" à la français"), which is probably cheating. There's something much less impressive about waiting for three hours when you're plugged into the infamous time-suck of the web.
Remember when you were little, buckled in on long car rides to your grandparents or Florida or wherever families take 8 year olds? Remember all the stuff you'd bring? Books and notebooks and pens and pencils and, as the early 90s gave way to the (over)stimulation of the present day, gameboys and mini DVD players and those TV screens in cars. You needed to be prepared for everything and anything. The preparation approached a mathematical equation: the length of the car trip divided by the attention span of the child equals the amount of different things you needed to stuff into those little pouches on the back of the seats of the minivan. Having a sister helped sometimes. Card games are easier to play with two people, unless solitaire is your thing. It isn't mine.
But something happened a couple years ago. The need for stimulation dissipated. The number of things I shoved in my backpack or purse decreased to such a point where the backpack became unnecessary. Because all I bring is a book. Sometimes a journal. And, most of the time, I don't even pull it out. Plane rides and train rides and car rides have become an enforced period of nothingness. A time when I don't actually have to DO anything. I can just sit. And I welcome that. It's the perfect excuse. Sometimes I wonder if maybe my entrenched penchant for earliness is some sort of subconscious mechanism at work. Maybe I'm forcing myself to just sit. Do to nothing. To read nothing. To think nothing. Meditation by bench.
I have a solid 24 hours of travel ahead of me before I arrive at one of my favorite places in the world to be with some of my favorite people in the world. In 24 hours, I will be home. In the meantime, I will be nothing. And it's gonna be awesome.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Creature of Habit
Habit is a funny, sneaky little creature. He often catches me by surprise. For a while there, I was in the habit of writing on this blog at least once a week. It was just something I did. Often on Wednesdays. And now, it's been well over a month since I've written. Habit is fickle and he has been otherwise preoccupied. School-work for the most part. An unexpected amount of it. Also with choir on Monday nights, a play that I'm assistant-directing on Fridays and Wednesdays, the runs that I take on Monday mornings or Sunday afternoons, and the more than occasional episode of some brainless TV show online. But habit has kept me happy. I appreciate the structure he brings to my life. And his fickleness keeps me on my toes. Everyone in a while, I have to intervene. So this is me intervening. It's time to write again. But habit requires a little coaxing. We need to ease back into things. So I'm going to kick things off with a list. Lists are a habit of mine, as well.
Here are a list of things from the past month.
Things the repairman found in my blocked train this morning:
-1 necklace. Not mine.
-1 cap of a contact lens fluid bottle. Mine.
-At least 7 bobby pins. Mostly mine.
-Lots and lots of hair. Definitely mine.
Things I like sharing with complete strangers:
-A quick snort of laughter at the man across the street who walks into the plate glass. Maybe it's a bit cruel, but that kind of thing is almost always funny.
-Rain-soaked, "I forgot my umbrella", mutual discomfort groans.
-The first snowfall in Bordeaux.
Things on the walls in my room right now:
-A drawing of what I think it probably me (one yellow head, three green-ish limbs, no torso to speak of) and my house (which appears to have an orangey-green moss growing out of the bottom of it) as drawn by the granddaughter of Lizzie's host mom in Strasbourg.
-Several notes/postcards from my friends and family.
-A leaf.
-A scrap piece of paper on which I copied a sentence from an email my mother sent me: "The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing."
-A large cluster of pictures of all the people in my life who make me happy (thank you Evan).
-2 large sheets of paper with the entire history (both thematic, historical, and literary) of the Bible scrawled in barely legible short-hand. Preparation for the 2-hour exam that I learned, on the day, that I wasn't actually supposed to take.
-The semester calendar for Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3. Last day of classes: 17 décembre.
Things I find hard to believe:
-That my semester is over in three days.
-That it's even colder in the Berkshires than it is here. It's cold here.
-That I'm going to be in the US in four days.
-The utter clarity of the stars in the winter sky.
Things written on the other lists scattered about my room:
-The train schedule from Grand Central to Wassaic. I almost miss how complicated it is to get home from JFK. Almost.
-Classes for Spring Semester.
-The names of the cast of the play I'm assistant directing. Written on napkin complete with grease stains from a pizzeria in which I sang the entirety of the American National Anthem because they wanted to hear it.
Sometimes it feels like my life is made up of lists. And in writing this, I've realized that this is true in more ways than one. Yes, no matter where I live, there are inevitably scrap pieces of paper or post-it notes scattered about with bus schedules, gym hours, shopping lists, to-do lists, things to remember lists, etc. But there are also the less obvious lists. The faces of my friends. The words of my family. My own words. I am kind of list myself. Maybe it's a little reductionist or a little boring, but I like it. Because I like lists. They never stay the same. You cross things off, you add things, you add things just so that you can cross things off. I've added quite a bit to my list this semester. I think I've probably added more than I realize. And I like that, too.
Here are a list of things from the past month.
Things the repairman found in my blocked train this morning:
-1 necklace. Not mine.
-1 cap of a contact lens fluid bottle. Mine.
-At least 7 bobby pins. Mostly mine.
-Lots and lots of hair. Definitely mine.
Things I like sharing with complete strangers:
-A quick snort of laughter at the man across the street who walks into the plate glass. Maybe it's a bit cruel, but that kind of thing is almost always funny.
-Rain-soaked, "I forgot my umbrella", mutual discomfort groans.
-The first snowfall in Bordeaux.
Things on the walls in my room right now:
-A drawing of what I think it probably me (one yellow head, three green-ish limbs, no torso to speak of) and my house (which appears to have an orangey-green moss growing out of the bottom of it) as drawn by the granddaughter of Lizzie's host mom in Strasbourg.
-Several notes/postcards from my friends and family.
-A leaf.
-A scrap piece of paper on which I copied a sentence from an email my mother sent me: "The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing."
-A large cluster of pictures of all the people in my life who make me happy (thank you Evan).
-2 large sheets of paper with the entire history (both thematic, historical, and literary) of the Bible scrawled in barely legible short-hand. Preparation for the 2-hour exam that I learned, on the day, that I wasn't actually supposed to take.
-The semester calendar for Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3. Last day of classes: 17 décembre.
Things I find hard to believe:
-That my semester is over in three days.
-That it's even colder in the Berkshires than it is here. It's cold here.
-That I'm going to be in the US in four days.
-The utter clarity of the stars in the winter sky.
Things written on the other lists scattered about my room:
-The train schedule from Grand Central to Wassaic. I almost miss how complicated it is to get home from JFK. Almost.
-Classes for Spring Semester.
-The names of the cast of the play I'm assistant directing. Written on napkin complete with grease stains from a pizzeria in which I sang the entirety of the American National Anthem because they wanted to hear it.
Sometimes it feels like my life is made up of lists. And in writing this, I've realized that this is true in more ways than one. Yes, no matter where I live, there are inevitably scrap pieces of paper or post-it notes scattered about with bus schedules, gym hours, shopping lists, to-do lists, things to remember lists, etc. But there are also the less obvious lists. The faces of my friends. The words of my family. My own words. I am kind of list myself. Maybe it's a little reductionist or a little boring, but I like it. Because I like lists. They never stay the same. You cross things off, you add things, you add things just so that you can cross things off. I've added quite a bit to my list this semester. I think I've probably added more than I realize. And I like that, too.
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