tunes.

My friend Isaiah, a music snob who has introduced me to life changing music and once in a lifetime musical experiences, said that Alexi Murdoch bores him. Or maybe it was Jose Gonzalez. I can't remember now. So don't quote him on that. Said music snob will be tearing up the drums with savage young in Tulsa Town in a few hours. Tomorrow morning he'll be tearing them up at church, like he does every Sunday. And most of the people I know in previously mentioned city will be attending the music festival, which sprung up in reaction to a different music festival being cancelled.

This music thing, it's a big deal.

My last few days have been some of my least favorite since being here. When I would tell people where I was going and what I was doing, back in the time when I was living in the city of the music festival, I would follow the details with how excited I was. And then I would say something like, "It will be difficult too, you know? Uprooting myself from this lovely cocoon I've created for myself. But I am ready for the difficult." I was speaking on the telephone to the dear Tonia, who introduced me to Joze Gonzales, and told her that yesterday was that day I described back in Tulsa. It was that, "It will be hard, too" day.

And that's been the theme here lately, though it's not the place. What happens has everything to do with the way I am seeing things, and for whatever combination of reasons (I could name many), I've been looking through a bleak lens, instead of one that's clean, and clear, and most evident of the good.

So the antidote most often is a run, which happened today. And then, it's music.

The voice of Alexi Murdoch was the clincher today. Wikepedia said that critics have said, "Murdoch has an earnest, comforting voice and conversational, emotional delivery." In Lieu of the cocoon of close friends nearby, comforting me with their presence, conversation, and emotional understanding, the voice of a stranger captured in a recording studio some years ago is a really helpful substitute, and today, has cleared the lens to bring the goodness of this season to the forefront of my mind.

motivation.

So I woke up really late and then there was this big storm and I tried to get my new nike sensor to work with the old receiver and it wouldn't. It's about to rain, and though I love running in a drizzle, I don't like ruined ipods that come from running in a storm. And the technology not working is wearing down my motivation. So I want to give up. But I decide to concede instead, and go down to the basement to get on the stationary bike. I take the magazine with Jennifer Hudson's new size six body on the cover to read while I peddle. Not only does it tell the tale of how her trainer and weight watchers helped her achieve her figure, but it also gives me tips on how to improve my skin, including not eating sugar.

Here's the catch. Sugar is the source of all things sweet. It's also something Jennifer mostly avoided, except for once in a while. She can have ice cream. She can! Just now and then, instead of always now.

I finish peddling, still motivation-less, and I get ready for work. I get my hummus and tabouli and rice chips and carrots out of the refrigerator, and I eat them. I love that stuff, and it was delicious...but not the most filling of meals. I leave for work still a little hungry, wanting to go anywhere but there, feeling the need to crawl out of my skin. I get to the coffee spot across the street from the restaurant and staring at me, through the classic clear domed lid, is a sweet potato spice cake with chocolate frosting.

One day further from clear skin and a size six frame, this cake was delicious, and paired most perfectly with my americano.

just a bit.

This is going to be short and possibly only one long sentence but I have failed to post anything in quite a while despite the fact that I have been writing things that I haven't finished so here's something to wet the appetite of my readers to say that life has been really hot here in DC and it's affirmed to me that I am one of those people that maybe should choose to live in a more mild climate as opposed to one that oppressively hot. And also, one that cares a little less about politics and a little more about, er, other stuff, where bikers aren't the "enemy" but rather the norm, and the question where did you go to college isn't asked with an expectant ivy-league answer.

Also, on a positive note, it's 86 degrees today, and this was preceded by a most glorious Sunday rainstorm that I watched shake violently the trees from my second story window. These two things I am most thankful for.

my pizza.

My pizza would have an

accent and be topped with

a really funny man.

My pizza would

have laughter.

and lemonade from

a lemonade stand,

and more days off

than not,

and cupcakes, with

a sprinkling of good

friends. There wouldn't

be any mushrooms on

my pizza, but there would

be cheese, and cheesy jokes,

and goats, so that I'd have

unlimited goat cheese. And

I would eat it with a bottle of

wine, shared with someone cool.

on a seventy degree day.

server | waitress | can't wait | waiter.

The restaurant where I work isn't a bad place. Nonetheless, I just don't really want to be a server.

There are sometimes in life when you think you know what you want, and then after a while, you realize it would have been all wrong, and what you did want you now don't really want at all. And you're happy that what you thought you wanted to happen didn't actually happen because what you thought you wanted was based on a belief you had that was actually rooted in falsity, and though your belief was pure, it was also wrong.

Every once in a while I think to myself, maybe if I wasn't serving, I would miss it. Maybe I just want to spend time focusing on something negative to distract me from whatever I am not wanting to focus on. This is not the case. The example above is not what's going on here at all.

Nope. I really and truly don't want to be serving. Food. To people. At night.

My coworkers have different agendas. My friend from the Czech republic has a mortgage to pay. Another has a daughter, another a new apartment to move into, and my El Salvadorian buddy a house payment in Maryland. I have, er, none of those things.

My mom teases me that I am tight...I will see a dress I like, stew over it, try it on, like it, carry it around the store, and then return it to its place on the rack. "Just buy it, Meredith," she will tell me. But I don't just do things. I think about the decision, a lot, first. And I think it's this same hesitancy to just buy things that has kept me out of adopting for myself responsibilities that will keep me places I don't want to be.

What I have realized through my serving, waitressing, {whatever label you want to give them experiences} is this: most people are doing it for the money. They are enduring because, at the end of the night, you walk away with cash in your pocket, and it's more per hour than the wage most college graduates sitting in an office will see on the paycheck they get bi-weekly.

That's not the case for me. It's the way I purchase dresses and organize unattachables that led me into a restaurant. Simply put, freedom. No one says I can't have a day off. I am not chained to a desk, and if it's slow, it's the custom for someone to leave early, not a fireable offense. It's the flexible culture of the service industry that landed me there, not the promise of pay.

So when I am at work, and not wanting to be, it's like an itch underneath the most sensitive part of my skin. I look around, and want to escape the walls with the force of a lioness about to attack, after starving in the midst of a famine. I look at my co-workers, who are looking up and down and all around the walls, and I think, how are they still here? And then I think about their mortgages, their children, their car payments, rent, and the like. In their moments of escape, their mind must wander back to responsibility, which grounds a person, and brings them back to reality. They will walk away with the needed cash in their pocket at the night's end.

I walk away, headed for the bus, with my head and feet still in the clouds not visible at night, thankful for change and challenge, new experiences, and life's never ending possibilities.

spice.

It was a blistering day. As in, you'll get blisters from the sun if you stay outside too long. She had to work, serving others. She was glad to get out of the house, but she would have rather been getting out of the house to see a movie, say, or to fetch ice cream. Lovely suggestions that weren't the case.

Tables are labeled with names and given the term 'section'. Hers lay mostly outside. There were few tables in. Her inner few had been placed near the door, within reach of the suns rays; the people turned away. "Here?" the hostess would motion. The guests shook their head, squinted their eyes, and asked for something away from the sun. The consequences of this scene made her fidget. She threatened to poke her eyes with the baked rosemary that had fallen from the bread. While waiting she wrote,

Rosemary in my Eye.

The sun shone brightly

upon the tables.

To the birds, it was beautiful.

And to the flies, too.

To Meredith, it was a horrid sight.

She stood and stared

at the brightness,

embracing the boredom

surrounding her.

She ate more bread.

the people. they were

afraid that the sun

would melt their

skin, like the wax

of a burning candle.

And then the sun went down. More came, and requested to sit outside. She was full of busy. Her fidgets were replaced with flusters, and she paid no more attention to the rosemary.

promised land.

My youth pastor would have called this a crisis of belief. It’s the unexpected fork in the road that wasn’t indicated on your map. It knocks violently upon the door of your comfortable home of thoughtful truths, truths that have been yours, unapologetically, for sometime.

I have found myself in the midst of the unfamiliar. I am in the care of caring people, but the environment is foreign. And an interesting thing has happened.

Because I came to a place where I am not known, there’s no solid reflection of who I am. My family is genuinely good, but I had been exposed to them for a mere four days two years ago before deciding to move here. We’re still getting to know each other.

Had I come to a blank canvas, I think the need for a reflection may not have been as necessary. I didn’t come into an empty space, but rather a full space that’s been lived in and created from the sort of life I cannot relate to, and as much as they want me to be comfortable in their home, it’s still their home.

So follows the interesting part...That a fairly self assure woman of twenty seven with thoughts and ideas and beliefs, and a life of soul defining experiences can somehow, after leaving her reflecting pool, start to forget what it is she looks like.

Four months prior to my exit, I had begun training for a marathon. I ran ten miles in the snow, fifteen in eccentric heat, twenty with a continuous bee sting sort of cramp in the back of my knee, and nearly every day in between. I was working toward a goal and an accomplishment that meant something to the fairly self assure woman I mentioned earlier. And a few days before I made it to where I am, I accomplished this goal, valiantly. This was defining, and extremely lonely.

I accomplished the goal by myself, with none of those reflectors I mentioned before to share it with. Not only was the accomplishment lonely, but what followed. I was done. I had finished. This thing, this running animal inside of me, no longer held a necessary place in my day to day.

I am writing this on my way out. Realizing the need for reflectors reminds me that they don't have to come in human form, though a conversation with someone who knows me is exceptionally helpful, as is making someone at work who doesn't know me very well laugh. Yesterday Angela laughed at something I did, and seeing her demeanor reminded me of my own humor.

My work is more than a walking distance from my house, and so I have been walking some blocks to the metro, and taking it the rest of the way. I have been aware of a more effeceint route to work, a bus called the circulator, for some time, but haven't had the wherewithal to actually figure it out. Yesterday was the day, and around two-thirty, I took a seat and hoped it would take me where I wanted to go. I arrived at work on time, feeling like I had accomplished something, and strolled into the restaurant with a little more confidence than the day before. After a frustrating shift, with a mess-up on my part and a computer glitch on the restaurants, I left work worn down, it was hot, and I wasn't sure where to catch my bus back. It was also later on in the evening, and I felt less safe walking the necessary blocks to the metro, which had been my previous habit. After working myself out of my head long enough to see a bus up the road, I said goodnight to Angela, and made off in a run to catch it. After a few moments in the blue plastic chair, I realized I had gotten on the wrong bus.

Shit.

I jumped off at the next stop, walked back the direction I had came, and then noticed the bus I had been looking for...about to drive through the intersection. I ran once again, saw the driver stop for me, and jumped on just in time.

And then, I met my Moses. Well, he wasn't mine. But his name was Moses, and he was one of the kindest that I've encountered, not just in DC, but anywhere. He could interpret the forelorn look on my face. I asked him if this bus was headed for Woodley Park, and he pointed across the street, letting me that's where I catch the bus that's going my direction, "unless I just wanted to take a seat and ride the route through with him." I said I did. The bus was cool, Moses was kind, and that bus taking the long way around was exactly where I wanted to be.

I pulled out my book on Napa, and, at moments, chuckled aloud. Moses looked for me a map, stopping at one point to ask another driver if he had any on his bus. He let me know where we were when we stopped, the details of bus etiquette and procedure, asked me if I was from California (I told him the story of getting on the wrong bus and he thought the way I said "shit" sounded like someone from The Golden State), and he commented that my book must be good, as he could hear me laughing.

A couple of well-to-dos from San Fransisco in the sixties sold their stuff and bought a dilapidated vineyard and winery that was, at that point in time, out in the middle of no-where Napa. They did because of their ideals, with a belief that there was more to life thing than what they had were they were. People scoffed, the parents worried, and their employers pleaded, "don't do it".

I was explaining the book to Moses, the part that made me laugh, and told him how I appreciate the idea that life circumstances are something we can change, and that it's possible to make life look different than it does right now. He shook his head in an exaggerated motion, and let me know he liked that perspective.

Saying it aloud to someone else, someone like Moses, was another of those reflectors I was needing. I was really really thankful to have chosen the long way home.

easy, like a sunday morning.

I woke yesterday with vigor, determined and hopeful about the day's possibilities.

It started with the sunrise. The window in my bedroom, that’s three times the size of my last, faces the sky where the sun marks the day’s beginning. The light woke me before six, the slightest look of ambition slid across my face, quickly disappeared, and I went back to sleep, waking four hours later. I wiped some make-up across my face, put on the only clean tank-top amidst my belongings, and prepared a delightful bowl of cereal to accompany the news paper, back patio, and the sound of my relative’s water fountain.

I let this moment of comfort ease me into my mid-day adventure into the unknown, also known as the “Adams Morgan” part of town. DC isn’t unlike the others. It’s sectioned, and this trendy section happens to be about a twenty minute walk from my house. At night the street lights up with bars and happy hours, hookah, wine, and the like. On a Sunday mid-morning, there are places to get coffee and decent cheap-ish diner breakfast. This was part of my plan.

The other part was to make a friend. This seems easier than it is, especially for someone like me, meaning, someone willing to strike up conversation with a stranger. But it’s quite difficult, actually. The first one especially. Once you’ve met that person you sort of click with that knows other people you could meet too, a world of friend possibilities is way open. My ill conceived plan today was to go public places where I may be in the midst of like minded people, and, at the very least, talk to someone I don’t know.

One of the trendy I-look-cool-but-don’t-have-very-good-coffee-so-I-serve-animal-crackers-with-your-americano-so-you-get-distracted-by-your-mediocre-product establishments I visited first was crowded, but mostly just that. There was a guy sitting next to me for a bit, but I decided his body language wasn’t very inviting. It may have been the insecurity biting at my heels that decided that, but regardless, I failed to say anything other than a sentence that resembled something very close to the following: “sure, I will slap their wrists if they attempt to take away your coffee while you use the restroom.” A pregnant woman and her very attentive husband replaced young-reading-I-PAD guy, and they simply managed to crowd my space, and hence forth, annoy me enough to exit, and try again somewhere new.

Establishment number two was down a few doors, and a place I had read reviews of before entering. It’s called “The Diner” and it doesn’t attempt to be anything other than that. I took my place at the bar, ordered a mimosa and salmon eggs benedict, opened my book, and looked at the empty seat to my left. I don’t understand why, on a day when I am sincerely attempting awkward conversation with perfect strangers, that crazy must take a seat next to me.

My psychologist friend may have qualms with my description, but folks, that’s the only word I know to explain my bar-mate. Socially inept? Not just. Rude? Yes, but also, so much more. “Excuse me,” she says, as she takes her seat, glaring at my belongings as if they were in her way when really, I promise, they weren’t in her way. I nudge them over nonetheless, and hope for the best. The kind man behind the bar that must have to put up with drunken adolescent twenty-somethings all of the time, as this place is open twenty-four hours, hands her a menu and asks if he can get her a drink. “Water,” she says coldly. He comes back a few minutes later to get her order, and she lets him know she isn’t ready. When he returns again, she orders the veggie burger, and then, literally, orders him to bring her jalapenos as well. After she orders she leaves with her purse, I assume, to wash her hands. It’s an assumption because, a few minutes after she returns, she informs me with vigor that she is, “a clean freak. I mean, I am freaky clean. I am the biggest clean freak you’ll ever meet.” She tells me this after she yells at the bar tender to clean up the space to her left, where the previous guests had eaten, “before you bring out my food. I mean it. That counter better be clean before you expect me to eat my meal.”

“That’s bull shit,” she says, turning to me.

Oh geeze.

“I mean it. That pisses me off. I mean, it makes me really angry that I have to tell them to clean off the counter, you know what I mean? That’s just ridiculous...I shouldn't have to teeeell them to clean the counter,” as she throws her arms up in the air, and I begin to get red and hot-like with anger. “I didn’t mean to put that on yo-”...I interrupt her.

“That’s good,” I say, “because I work in the service industry and I know what it’s like to deal with difficult people all day, while scrambling for moments to get everything clea-”...she interrupts up me...”Well then, I will just draw a line on that,” as she motions an imaginary line between the two of us. “I would appreciate that,” I said, putting an end to further interaction. A buss boy delivers her food, gets her the mayonnaise she demands, and a few minutes later, the bar tender swings by to see how everything is. “I don’t know because I haven’t tried it yet,” crazy snaps back.

And that was the culmination of my make-a-friend-today goal.