London Burning

I'm torn about the riots in the UK, on one hand I wholeheartedly believe that they have a lot to be mad as hell about (and so do we in the UK). With the rates of unemployment and high cost of living, I'm honestly surprised that there wasn't rioting during the ridiculous spectacle/waste of taxpayer money that was the royal wedding. And much like the Sean Bell case in New York (which there surprisingly wasn't massive riots over), police shootings or possible police misconduct can be a tipping point especially if there's a larger unrest.

And while it's hard to know what's really going on from 3,000 miles away, it seems that the looting and protests aren't necessarily about government or police mismanagement or crimes, or even bread necessarily from the hopelessness of prolonged unemployment and poverty. While the may have been the catalyst, it seems more like it just about destruction which gets the entire lot labeled as thugs and discredits the real reasons for uprising in the first place.

Two opposing views that both have validity:

A Decade of Kate

Oh year-end recaps! Oh decade rehashes! Oh listicles! Yes it’s that time of year and as lazy and self-serving as it is, I can’t resist the urge to look back on my own little life in the ‘00s. Unlike the two other decades of my life, this one seems like a decade without definition, I can’t really point to many cultural trends that tied 2000-2009 together except maybe the Internet and Reality TV. I graduated from high school in 1999, which means my entire adult life to this point has taken place in this odd ambiguous decade. So if you care to indulge me, here’s a snapshot of a 20-something in the 00s. (also stay tuned for a look at a decade of great taste, aka. my favorites in media and pop culture in the 00s, posting soon)

2000

I started the year and the decade off watching fireworks, police in riot gear, and the world not come to an end in Chicago’s Grant Park with my first love. It was really cold and kind of exciting. The year was all downhill from there. Chicago was thrilling to the 18 year old version of me who had barely been outside of her tiny home town, but several circumstances conspired to make me miserable there, and by March I dropped out of college and moved back home in what was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

That spring I had an extremely difficult break up, and that fall I swallowed my pride and started classes at the local community college. By the end of the year I was settled into life back at home: working at the mall, hanging out with my old friends, and going out flirting with dudes. I was moving towards being less depressed, but still felt like I was a million miles away from everything I had wanted for my life.

2001

The first few months of this year were an echo of the last few of 2000, I briefly dated someone a few years older, breezed though my classes, worked, and started to plan my next move. Shortly after my 20th birthday I went to work on Michigan’s Mackinac Island for the summer, even though the pay was low, and the conditions less than stellar, it was a fun escape that helped me to feel adventurous and less complacent again.

In the fall I moved to Ann Arbor and into what my family deemed a “hippie commune” (actually a co-op house of mostly privileged liberal University of Michigan students). Although I was nervous after my previous failed attempt, I dove head first into college life and quickly found a niche, joining several groups, writing for the college paper, going to parties, participating in poetry slams, and met a close friend, who eight years later I share an apartment with in Brooklyn.

Since you can’t mention the fall of 2001 without it, here’s where I was on September 11th: I was running late for my morning class, circling the parking lot looking for a spot when I heard what I first assumed was an odd morning radio show gag. I arrived to find classes cancelled and everyone gathered around TVs. It was an odd day that I felt pretty removed from.

2002
Again much like the last few months of 2001, I found myself enjoying college life and thriving in my classes and activities. Where I was a small fish in Chicago, I felt like a big fish at Eastern Michigan University. My passion for writing was renewed and I took comfortably to the role of overachiever. I also become dedicated to traveling more and went to work at a nature preserve in Florida during Spring Break. I followed that up with my 21st birthday, my brother’s wedding, and a cross country bus trip to work in Yellowstone National Park for the summer.

I long referred to that summer as life changing and while I’ve lived though a lot since then, it’s certainly still up there. The isolation and beauty of living in the wildness magnified the dramas of life: The over-the-phone break-up with my college boyfriend, the friendships formed and lost, the attack and rape of my roommate, the death of my father.

I came back to my college life in a much different place than I had left it three months prior. Still uber-involved, I began my school year as Editor in Chief of the campus magazine and capped it off with an honor from the Michigan Press Association, while being submerged in one of the darkest moods of my life.

2003
Thankfully this year worked the opposite of 2002; it came in on a low note and steadily improved. The first several months were spent again much like the ones before them; working hard and feeling low. But with the melting snow my mood and life started to change. I successfully completed my tenure as Editor in Chief, and decided to slightly delay my summer internship at Metro Times in Detroit to take a month-long solo road trip down south and then up the east coast.

It was just the freedom and head-clearing I needed, and the rest of the summer was among some of the best times in my life. While I interned and worked two jobs, I found my feet more as a journalist and found a powerful infatuation (that would end over a year later in another country). Reality set in that fall when that beau moved back to England, I moved into a not so collegiate apartment complex, started working full time, and in December, graduated from college. Still having never been on an airplane, let alone out of the country (except for Canada which used to not count), I got a passport, just in case.

2004
Now officially a college graduate, and not living the glamorous life I thought a 22 year old should be, quarter-life ennui started to set in. I was working a job straight out of Office Space. I started searching for anything and blindly and unwisely sent out over 100 cover letters and resumes to newspapers all over the country. I took my first trip on an airplane and visited San Francisco. I started working part time at night as a copy editor; I applied to a year long program in London.

Then just after my 23rd birthday I found out I had an interview in New York City for the London program and flew there the same week, I was told I might not hear for a month or more, but by the time I returned to Michigan I was accepted. That summer I prepared to make the biggest move of my life. Many in my life were sure it had something to do with a boy. It did not. Just before I left I revisited Yellowstone with a good friend, it was the same and very different at the same time.

That fall I moved to London. It was lonely and difficult and exciting and I loved every second of it, even when at its most thorny. I disliked my job (training and development at a large investment bank) but my devotion to the city never wavered. I traveled to Wales, Spain, and spent my first and only Christmas away from home in Hungry. My sister in law told me over the phone that she was pregnant. The British boy from the summer before broke my heart, a boy I had met very briefly came to visit me for new years and we foolishly decided to get involved across the ocean.

2005
I continued to hate my job and love London more and more, I traveled to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, and Scotland. I broke up with the boy back in American, I turned 24. My mom got engaged. I had an exciting romance with a co-worker. I met and became friends with a man whom understood me more than anyone I had ever met before; I made myself keep a distance because there were parts of him that scared me. I missed a train that exploded only minutes later on the morning for the July 7th bombings. I held on to every aspect of the city even as it slipped away and my visa expired. My mom put my childhood home up for sale, sold it and moved in with her soon to be husband, my brother became a father and I became an aunt.
In the fall I moved back to the US and into the house of my mom’s fiancé, a man I had met twice before. I met my awesome baby nephew, and saw all the people I had missed for a year. I started looking for jobs in New York City and ways to get back to London. I was miserable. I came to New York and slept on couches of friends for several weeks, turned down a high paying job I doing something I didn’t understand at an investment bank in Connecticut, I turned down a very low paying job as a copy editor at an Energy Trade publication, I took a job writing about things I didn’t understand for the communications department of a French Investment Bank. I found an apartment and roommate in Brooklyn and just before Christmas moved to New York.

2006
New York put me through the ringer. My drink was drugged at a party and I woke up the next morning in the hospital with cuts and bruises (and later a $1,000 hospital bill). I hated my job and started to look for a new one. I traveled back to Michigan for my mom’s wedding. The 3rd British boy in my life (the one I felt close to but tried to keep a distance from) visited me and I realized I loved him. I was hit by a car while riding my bike.

I turned 25. New York started to grow on me, but at the end of the summer I traveled back to London and (unwisely) decided to start a relationship (across the ocean) with the British man I loved who already treated me poorly (although I couldn’t see that at the time). I continued to hate my job, and looked for a new one. The boy and I made frequent trips across the ocean, I planned to move back to London in a year to go to grad school and be with him. A week before Christmas I was laid off from the job I hated, a few days later I was offered an Assistant Editor position at Popular Photography magazine, it was the type of job I had been waiting for since graduation. The boy came to visit for Christmas and it was clear I was going to delay moving to London, our problems increased.

2007
I started working at Popular Photography and loved it. My roommate moved out and my good friend whom I lived with in college in Michigan moved in. I continued to make frequent trips to London, the boy and I continued to have problems, we made plans for him to move to New York, but it became increasingly clear he wasn’t going to. I turned 26. The verbal and emotional abuse increased, I was miserable but in love in an intense way I never had been before. At the end of a horrible summer I traveled to London for the last time and we broke up.

I spent that fall angry, bitter, and busy. I did a 35 mile bike tour, I put myself on a strict regime to lose weight mostly to have something to do, and I signed up to become a Big Sister. I traveled to Michigan for my first Thanksgiving at home in years. My uncle was found dead in my grandparent’s basement a few days after I returned to New York. At Christmas my best friend announced that she was getting married to her long time boyfriend, I started helping her plan.

2008
I became a Big Sister to a 13 year old girl, my bitterness towards men softened a little, and I started dating. I traveled alone to Costa Rica and had an amazing time. I turned 27, and went on a date with a man whom I figured would be a summer fling. I had a fantastic summer and by the fall realized I wanted more than a fling with the man, and thankfully he did too. I did another 35-mile bike tour. My circle of friends in New York grew and I became for the first time happy and settled in the city, which made me fear that I was becoming complacent. My sister-in-law announced she was pregnant again.


2009
My sister in law lost the baby. My boyfriend lost a family member, my best friend lost her grandmother, and I lost my grandmother. I started having insomnia. I continued being a Big Sister. My boyfriend and I traveled to San Francisco together and I remembered how much I love everything about that city. I found out the magazine I worked for was being sold; our pay was cut 6%. I still liked my job, but felt like I was never going to advance in my career and was barely making any money. I turned 28. The man who I thought would be a fling turned out to be the most loving, caring and stable man I’d ever met. We fell in love. I traveled back to Michigan for my best friend’s wedding. My 10-year high school reunion happened and I didn’t attend.

My magazine was sold and our Editor in Chief left, lay offs began, we moved to new offices, we were told our jobs were safe. I was laid off two weeks later. I spent two months unemployed. I did a 55-mile bike tour. I started freelancing a lot, and took a full time freelance position at WomansDay.com (back at my old publisher). I had a wisdom tooth removed. I applied for Grad School for Journalism in both New York and San Francisco. I wrote a blog post about my decade.

2010-2019: TBD

Looking back.

I'm currently applying to two masters programs in journalism for Fall 2010.

A girl has to keep her options open afterall.

While starting work on my "Personal History" essays, I came across an essay I wrote several years ago when I first moved to New York from London. I usually have mixed feelings when I read things I wrote years ago. The edit

or in me is embarassed for my old self and wants to rip my former final drafts apart and totally re-write them. Once in a while however, they serve as a perfect time capusle for the feelings or views of that moment.

There's some things I would change about this, but f

or the most part, it's a rare piece I'm still happy with some four years later. It's served in part as insperation for me, so I thought I'd share this little never before published bit of my past.

You're Welcome.

The grass is greener where it rains

“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.” - Toni Morrison

When I moved to London at 23-years-old it was my first time out of the country. I did my best to hide it, but for the first month or so I felt like a country bumpkin. I was sure something I did or said would give away my small town roots. The truth was that I was no different than the people that I met who had traveled all over the world; I just thought that I was. Although I treated moving like an art form, up until that point I had always defined myself by the town I had spent my life trying to leave behind.

I never felt like I belonged in my hometown; Plainwell, Michigan. It was one those small towns that seem to exist only for the purpose of leaving, a place that you can’t imagine people actually living, a place met just for passing through. Like a lot of people I was convinced that I was destined for more. As an adolescent I felt like my home was a prison and I dreamed of escape daily. Life, it seemed, was happening somewhere else, everywhere else, anywhere else.

So when I turned 18, I left. And I have been leaving ever since. I transferred colleges three times, took summer road trips and jobs in other states, and when I was done with college I jumped at the opportunity to move to London. For the past seven years and counting I have distanced myself further and further from the place I grew up.

Of all of my adventures, my time in London ended up changing my life the most. There are the obvious reasons why, while I was there I traveled and saw places that I had always dreamed of, I met amazing people and explored one of the most diverse cities in the world. But it was more than that, living in London, I felt like I had finally found the place that suited me- the city that I was met to live in. The world though, seemed to have other plans for me. My visa expired and after a little more than a year after I first stepped foot on foreign soil, I was back in the states. The only problem was in the time since I had left, home had disappeared too.

While I was gone, life wasn’t just changing for me. The people that I left behind went on living their lives; relationships formed, babies were born and a distance of more than just miles grew between me and some of the people I had know for years.

My mother, who had lived alone since I left home at 18, sold the house and moved to a different city with her boyfriend, whom I had only met twice. She told me one summer afternoon on the phone from across the ocean, a few weeks before the move. I was devastated; it felt like I had lost a member of my family.

The thing about leaving is that you assume there is always the option of coming back, after all that’s why it’s called “going home.” What happens though when life decides not to play by your rules, when you move and the life you left moves on?

I would have never imagined that I could miss that home that I once hated so much. That I would find myself mourning it and having dreams about it. I didn’t think I needed to say goodbye until I didn’t get the chance.

I got the wish that had as a teenager- I got out- what I didn’t count on was that once I left I couldn’t go back again. I assumed that life in that town never changed- for the 18 years I lived in that house, it seemed as if it never would. Even though I didn’t want the place anymore I wanted it to exist just in case I ever needed it again. It is an arrogance that only the selfishness of youth can afford.

Which is exactly what I was, exactly what I am: selfish. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Traveling all over the world, moving to London, these are very selfish things. Things that changed my life, things that I will never regret, but they are selfish. And wanting things to stay unchanged for my benefit was perhaps to most selfish of all of them.

My mother has always been the strongest, bravest, most independent woman I have known. Hers was the strength of sacrifice, the strength to sacrifice every part of her life to give her two children a home, a life, love and the courage to be their own people. She gave the majority of her life to us, working and going to college for second degree to provide us with enough to get by. Sacrificing nearly two decades of a social life so we would have as much consistency and stability as she could provide. She taught me pride, she taught me hard work, and she taught me courage to do the things that the other women in my family never got the chance to do.

Ours are different kinds of strength however, mine has always been more selfish. My strength has been the strength to build and endure change, as much as I have feared change my whole life I have embraced it and built my life around it.

My mother made me strong enough to leave the home that she built for us and once I had moved on she finally took her chance to leave it too. Something I didn’t consider was that all those years that I dreamed of getting out, she was too. That home held my childhood; it held memories from most of the years of my life. But it also held a lot of pain and struggle, things that I was all too eager to escape when I first left at 18. The same things that several years later my mother finally got the chance to leave, when her son had a home and family of his own and her daughter was in London figuring out who she was.

I have been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to forgive my mother for selling my childhood home, for getting married, for thinking of herself first. But when I look at it objectively the things that I am mad at her for are the exact things that she gave me the courage to do myself.

I have spent most of my life dreaming of other horizons and most of my adulthood chasing those horizons trying to make myself happy. I shouldn’t begrudge my mother because she got there before me. After all, she had a head start.

Some people believe that who you are is constantly changing- that the person you are at 12 is not the person you are at 24 or 48. It is the one undeniable law of nature- change- everything, everyone all the time is constantly in flux. I, however, have always been a firm believer that some things last- no matter what you do. Beyond mere stubbornness, I think that some things get defined by the change that they endure and that after it- the new them that emerges, is the one that persists. If for no other reason than that the change was so great that no other change in life can alter it.

Growing up in Plainwell may have defined how I thought of myself and given me the eyes that I looked at the world with. But leaving it, and years later losing it, has made me into the person that I am, the person that I will always be, no matter where I go.

Sometimes though you have to travel a very long way to see where you come from, and sometimes you realize that the journey “back home” isn’t as simple as you thought.

Plainwell, Michigan is still on the map, still an easily overlooked speck. The simple two-story house on Florence Street where I spent the first 18 years of my life is still there too. The siding has changed and I think they might have carpet, but I have feeling the name of my grade school crush is still carved in the banister, and there are still water stains on the ceiling from my squirt gun. However small or however meaningful my family, that build most of that house, and spent almost 30 years in it, has left it’s mark. Now, its home to a new family now, and will be home to many new memories; crying, fighting, longing and hopefully, laughter, hope, love and courage.

It seems strange that I felt so completely at home in a place so foreign, yet at the same time could feel such a gaping whole for a place that I spent so long trying to leave. I had fallen head over heels in love with London, and for a location commitment-phobe that was a new feeling. Although I couldn’t stay there as long as I would have wanted, I now realize that just because you leave a place, that doesn’t mean it leaves you.

Wherever I go, there I am. Me, the little girl from the small Midwestern town, but at the same time the brave, well traveled woman that she grew into. I may never fully know who I am, but perhaps we aren’t met to.

Leaving home, losing home and forging to make a new home, I have learned that I am don’t have to be defined by the place I grew up. Maybe you can never go home again, but maybe that’s for the best. Perhaps life is met to be about finding a place that you can make into a home. When that day comes for me- when I master the art of staying in one place- be it London or somewhere else, I know just the type of home I will build for my daughter. The type of home that I grew up in, the type of home built to give her enough courage to leave.

An Open Book

I had written an exhaustive post the other week about my six-plus weeks (and counting) of unemployment. I wanted it to be a kind of an inside look at what being unemployed is like (i.e. it’s a lot of work) but it didn’t make for a very interesting read, and was probably more than anyone would really care to know. So instead I’ve decided to re-visit another post I started and abandoned:

My Top Five Books (in no particular order)*

1) 1) 1984 by George Orwell: To know me is to know my obsession with all things Orwell. I’ve read all of his books, several essays, and a biography or two. He is the kind of writer I want to be, both in style and content. 1984 is of course his most famous work, but it wasn’t one of the first I read by him, and it’s one of the classics that’s a classic for a reason. It’s a book that stays with you forever. I’ve seen the (US-banned!) film version and a stage production, and both were mostly well done, but nothing has ever compared to the way the book draws you in and changes the way you look at the world.

2) 2) Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg: Sure, she’s an Oprah Book Club alumni (but sometimes Oprah has really good taste) and maybe her books aren’t high literature and the target audience may be middle-aged ladies, but Elizabeth Berg knows how to write characters and dialog like few authors. She writes honestly and without pretension, and creates people that you actually care about living in a world that seems familiar even if it’s one you don’t live in. Her main characters are always women and in this book it’s a woman in her 60s alone on the road trying to find herself writing journals and letters to her confused husband she abandoned at home. I read it as a 19-year-old and knew just how she felt. That’s good writing. Plus I met Elizabeth Berg in Chicago once; she’s a wonderfully nice lady.

3) 3)The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath: This one goes out to my angsty 14-year-old self. I’m sure I’d feel differently about it now, but at the time it just all seemed so…deep. I remember sitting on the porch and in my bedroom reading Silvia Plath and all J.D. Salinger that spring and feeling so misunderstood.

4) 4) Without a Net edited by Michelle Tea: The only non-fiction book on my list. While some parts are more well-written than others, the message in this collection of essays by women who grew up Working Class articulates parts of my own experience growing up as well as issues such as racism, sexual identity and feminism, and the co-opting of downtrodden cultures in a straightforward and honest way that few books I’ve read have.

5) 5) Caucasia by Danzy Senna: Reading this book was the best thing to come out of my short lived time in a Book Club, and one of the most interesting multi-layered discussions about a book I’ve ever had with a group of people. On the surface it’s a book about race (in fact Borders seems to think it’s only for Black People http://fullofwit.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-borders-racist.html), but aside from racial identity, it was a beautiful and artfully woven story of a girl’s relationship with her father, politics, growing up.

Honorable Mentions:

· Down and Out in London and Paris by George Orwell : His best book about class and that’s saying a lot), I read it while I was living in London and it gave me a new perspective on the city’s history, plus this is actually the first Orwell book I ever read and your first is always special.

· A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: I was reading this book when I was in the process of moving to New York and several random people approached me while I was reading it to tell me how much they loved it. It was a memorable story and an interesting history lesson about the city I was moving to.

· Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: An epic story that covers the gamut from sexual and national identity, and a lot of history of my home state.

· Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss: Along with the Lorax, the best Seuss books, plus this one makes a perfect graduation speech.

· Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach: The best travel book I’ve read, it was particularly meaningful because I was reading it as I was moving abroad.

*Anyone who loves books or music or movies always has a hard time picking their favorites, and so there are tons of books I love that I didn’t think to include.