run on a rainy river day.

The feeling of a bag packed on my way to a new kind of adventure is akin to no other. It's an anticipation of the unknown, and the excitement of exploring new terrain, but the joy is also linked to the familiar. I know that what awaits me will open my eyes a little wider, and provide an even broader perspective to view the familiar from. When I return to the life I am escaping, it will not be the exact same, and that part of the process is invigorating.

Another lovely aspect of travel is taking the familiar and immersing it in the foreign. For me, this is most accessibly done through running. Queries happen all the time about why I actually love to run, and the answers could fill a book. But one that takes the cake is its simplicity, which is my life's preference. All you need is a pair of shoes, and now-a-days there are camps, swarms even, of people that argue you don't actually need those. Not only is it simple either way, but it's also such a perfect way to expose oneself to extended miles of a city in a short amount of time. I can cover six miles of culture while my feet and my thoughts and the landscape do a sort of discovery dance in less than an hour.

I spent four days of last week in a place they call NOLA. I say "they" because I don't call it that. I also didn't know anyone did. I saw those four letters capitalized and typed next to each other and wondered whereinthehell that was. And then I learned that's where I was going, where I booked a flight to, and home from, and I still don't call it that because abbreviations make me uncomfortable. Upon my return, I was asked all those questions, you know, like, "Did you have craw fish?" "gumbo?" "go to Bourban Street?" And then I got grief because my answer to all of those questions was a no, and my most memorable experience (aside from all of the lovely time I get to spend in the presence of the friend I was visiting) was a six mile run I did on Sunday along "The Fly". I love that they call it the fly because when I first hear that word I think of the bug, and then I think about the action, and then I think about fishing, and there's good in some of those connotations and a dirtiness, and weirdness and a fantastical element and I think those descriptions are applicable to the city I was in.

There was also the issue of temperature ahead of me. I should have done this run the previous day, but our hours were filled with things like the beach, coffee, antique shops, and rural Mississippi, so I delayed until Sunday. I should have done it early in the morning, but we spent our time packing things up to return in time for church, and instead of doing it just after, ice cream had to be consumed. It would have been great to fit in in then, post ice cream, but of course a nap was necessary, so there I was at five, about to interact with the hottest part of the day. Lindsay expressed her sympathy, and I was grateful but also, I was very much looking forward to what was ahead of me. My strategy against the heat is based in revenge. Last summer was caustic, painful, and I barely ran at all. I was having a hard time transitioning which served to zap my motivation as well, and the pair - heart pain and heat - pretty much flushed the potential of an enjoyable summer strait into DC's sewage system. And so now, I am taking revenge. My existence will someday be lived out in the tree house of my dreams in a dry climate, but I must conquer the humidity before I let that happen. I must. And this is what I told Lindsay. Do not be sorry my friend. I asked for it. The Sunday New Orleans outing would usher me into a summer of hot humid sticky drenched in sweat barely breathing runs.

Fifteen steps in and I felt rain drops on my skin. This was a most welcome feeling in the midst of the mug, and added an extra sense of confidence to my steps. I left on the familiar route I had formed a few days earlier, but eased into the unknown, unsure if my diverted course was correct, and if I was directionally headed for "The Fly", or somewhere else all together. About a mile in the landscape became familiar again, and a memorable "do not enter sign" confirmed that river I was seeking was just ahead. Across the railroad tracks, up an incline and then to my right, the river. Water draws people out of their every day, their caves, themselves, and it reminds them to enjoy, and this universal truth is what beckoned my run to the river that day.

I was immediately greeted with blanket loungers and bathing suits, and repetitively dodged pop up grills taking up space on the sidewalks. There was music of every tradition, and at one point I broke my stride to dance to a little hip hop blaring from the speakers of an open doored car; The player of the tune cheered me on, as random rain drops continued to fall from the sunny sky. Up ahead, where the water was at its highest and splashing up the embankment at my ankles, the little boys to my left were making their way through a craw fish feast. One of the craw fish had made its way to the sidewalk and I jumped to avoid smashing the hard shell beneath my feet. There was a soccer game going on to my right, a basketball being bounced in the middle of the street, and then, once I had returned to the railroad tracks, the slowest paced train crossing the very spot that I needed to cross myself. I took a picture for a group of handsome men waiting alongside me, and then gave up on the wait and followed a bicyclist past the gate to my right which led to a trail that didn't promise anything but the chance for me to keep moving. I ran along until I saw the caboose, and then chose Broadway, the most familiar street I could find. I stopped a lovely couple making a u-turn in their fancy red convertible and asked if I was headed the correct way to reach St. Charles. They assured me I was, and so I made my way home while taking in all of the glorious old trees and glorious old epic homes that lined the rest of my run.

I didn't eat craw fish while I was in the place they call NOLA, but I did dodge it, as well as about twenty bar-b-qs from the city's locals. Of all my experiences, my run along "The Fly" felt the most natural, and all-New-Orleans-encompassing. Those six miles were nearly as epic and grandiose to me as the homes lining the streets. That distance, as well as the colorful nature of New Orleans itself, etched the beauty and personality of that place into my mind in the most memorable way.

portable.

February 28th, 2010: move from cozy garage apartment to cozy mango basement room in big house.

May 31st, 2010: move from cozy basement room into small carry-on suitcase headed from seattle>boston>DC, final destination.

June 10th, 2010: move from tiny suitcase into bedroom in very large house next door to Lebanese Ambassador.

November 25th, 2010: move from bedroom with tiny suitcase into tiny bedroom in house of parents.

January 14th, 2011: move from tiny bedroom in house of parents into bedroom in apartment of Kyla.

I'm visual. I think I see the source of desire I have to just stay where I am for a minute or two.

market ease.

The better part of my weeks in DC happened on Saturday mornings. I headed east, from the red line to the orange and blue line to the Market, where color in the district was displayed in abundance. I looked forward to it all week long; The americano I would sip with a scone alongside a slow ease through people and dogs and strollers and goods being peddled to the masses. There were laid back smiles on the faces that were changing the world, seriously, the other days of the week. It's as if the entire District of Columbia, wound tight with deadlines, pressures, extra hours and the like, let out one big Saturday morning sigh of relief, and that relaxed sigh filled the air we all breathed in.

There's a market here in the place I am living now. Tents pop up every Saturday and have for quite some time. I lament the fact that I resided blocks away for a year without ever visiting. Markets didn't have a place in my life as eating was done out. My refrigerator saw the light of my kitchen a few times a week, and its only inhabitants were ketchup, sometimes some form of milk, and a to-go container of left-overs.

As this year's spring began to tease us with its presence, this market began to be a topic of conversation among many that I know. I started to anticipate its arrival, mostly because I cook again and the purchasing of perishables has become part of my norm. I was also told grandiose tales of legendary goat cheese, along with the admonition that to get it one has to get it early, as the faithful snatch it up fast.

True statement: I would get up before dawn for goat cheese. Early arrival would not be a barrier. I was there at open, seven-o'clock am, with the anticipation of attaining the cloud like unpasteurized substance that had gotten me out of bed so early. I wasn't anticipating the sense of calm and joy that came from simply being in the midst of all a market has to offer.

I went to where I had been told to go and I was met with rejection. They didn't bring extra to sell that week, but only had enough for their members. Also, in the future, I was to ask for fish bait. I walked away practically weightless with a big goofy smile plastered across my face. I couldn't have the very thing I had gone for and I was barely bothered. While perusing the other booths of breads, flowers, cheeses, leafy greens, green garlic, rosemary and every other spring vegetable and herb one could think of, as well as having contact with those that have nurtured these edibles on display, I was struck again with the ease that met me on those market streets in DC.

My weekly ritual was a ritual for a reason. I took the train trip all those mornings because of a need for familiarity, but also because the environment was comforting and beautiful in the ways I needed my familiarity to be. Walking through the little market here brought up those familiar feelings, the way a song can take you back to a place completely forgotten.

My train trip has shifted to a bicycle ride, but I happily and intentionally find myself on a blocked off concrete street every Saturday morning breathing in sighs of relief, the aroma of fresh vegetables, and meeting the smiles of the people that get it with a smile of my own.

True statement: The goat cheese was worth the wait.

truth love.

At coffee on Saturday, my roommate and I spent a good portion of the conversation delving into various online horoscopes. Believe them or not, horoscopes entertain. They speak to the vanity of human nature and a constant desire to understand the un-understandable. There's a writer that puts a weekly version on his site, and it's always off the wall interesting, especially for aquarians. His writing and thought processes are worth reading, even if you're entirely opposed to exposing yourself to such nonsense. Saturday's did not disappoint, and not only did it offer thought, but I was given an assignment as well. Toward the end, there were explanations of some of the various types of love defined in culture: agape, eros, etc. The aquarians assignment was to thoughtfully come up with three other types of love that play out in your life.

I love projects.

The only definition I've come up with thus far is rooted in raw honesty.

I've never been one of those people that does a good job gushing about feelings aloud. That involves way too much exposure. Voicing this stuff inevitably means that delusional hopes will be scoffed at by the people in my life that are rooted in reality. "Him? Riiiight, Meredith. There's not chance...He's way out of your realm of possibility". That's the fear, anyway. So the trend that began early was to keep it in. The tall funny friend I had a crush on my senior year believed that's all I wanted to be. This all blew up when a friend told him that I LIKED him. Oh my goodness. I hadn't ever told her that I liked him, but women know, I guess. And she liked him too, and this is beginning to sound a lot like a chapter from The Baby Sitter's Club. I considered this person that spilled my secret like a full glass of milk (we'll call her Stacy as she was the Baby Sitter's Club flirt) a friend. I actually considered her a good friend, and had it not been for my real friend, I wouldn't have ever known about the spilled milk. The real friend (we'll call her Dawn as she was principled) knew because the Logan of the whole scenario came to her and asked if I liked him; My real friend refuted this, and then she came to me, knowing all of this would be difficult for me to hear, and she told me anyway. This was my first lesson in this kind of love.

The above all sounded silly as I was typing it, but in high school it wasn't really silly at all. It was weighty and hurtful, and the lesson, though mostly in my subconscious, was to look for that character trait as it's something valuable and worth investing in.

I remember sitting outside in a plastic chair last year on a Monday, across from another Dawn I'm ever thankful for. Ten years later, and actual adulthood can still resemble the same childhood read. She sat across from me and told me information that was incredibly difficult to hear relating to a friend I couldn't help but have feelings for, and moments later, I felt like someone had thrown a jug of milk into my gut. The honesty of this friend is the thing, the very thing, I appreciate about her the most.

Last Friday over margaritas and mexican food, I gushed over our handsome server, someone I had engaged with flirtatiously a week or so prior. I had been told he may work there, and I didn't fully believe, so there we went, marching like girly troops scouting out the territory. It turns out the information I had been given was correct, our assignment was not followed out in vain, and I my innate sense of direction plopped us unknowingly at one of his tables. My dinner date observed, and because this honesty makes up her character, said somewhere toward the end of the meal, "can I make an observation?" Oh, how that sentence makes me nervous. "Yes," I cowered and said. "Well, you know how you told me the thing you didn't really like about the last one, how he flirted with everyone? Well, I just feel inclined to bring light to this one's innate flirtatiousness." Though I was aware of this, I preferred the idyllic bubble I'd been able to place around most of my logic throughout the course of our dinner, which was just fine, a harmlessly fun place to reside for an hour or so. Her shared raw and honest observation brought me back down to the ground, to the gutters, where I prefer to spend the rest of my time. She wasn't saying not to flirt, but to be careful when investing myself in his behavior, as it's likely bestowed upon the masses. Flirt, yes. Just be aware of what it is you're flirting with.

This love that continues to play itself out in my life is what I will call sincere. It can line itself up along the agapes and eros and the others too. It's raw honesty is rooted in a sincere desire for the best to come from truth shared, not withstanding difficulty, for the recipient. It has nothing to do with immediacy, or ease, and this is part of what makes it beautiful, and ever welcome.

backwards.

Last June on its third day, my mom was driving me to the airport to fly to Seattle. I was planning to run a marathon, which would be followed up by some life lived out in the other Washington. Before the both of us was an abundance of unknown. I didn't know if I would finish twenty-six miles, or even what my cousin that was picking me up from the airport looked like. My mom wasn't sure the next time she would see me, and with her crazy worrying tendencies, if I would even live through the marathon; I had been cautioned on multiple occasions of the possibility of death from such distances. If there's even a minute possibility of disaster, I have been warned by my mother. Driving over a bridge, for example, means I could end up in the water with no way to roll my electric windows down. Naturally, she purchased for me a pressurized window breaker so I don't really have to worry about this disaster scenario any longer.

About ten minutes into the drive, she gets kind of serious and begins the sentence, "No matter where you are next year, there's just one thing I am going to ask you to do."

Based on the kinds of things she worries about, I really had no idea where the rest of the request would lead.

Then she started to cry. I was at a loss.

"Please just promise me that you will come back to go to your high school reunion."

Whaaa?

I had to hold back the childlike giggles.

Like so many mothers and daughters, we're almost always not on the same page. It has taken us a loooong time to learn how to actually communicate without getting angry at each other. Most of my early twenties, no matter what she said to me or how she said it, I heard, "hey there not good enough daughter. I wish you were completely different and more like me." My reaction to what I was hearing from her was enveloped in all things harsh and hateful, and though we've broken the cycle and do a much better job of not misinterpreting what the other is trying to say nowadays, I don't foresee us ever getting to the same page. This is one of the reasons there was so much weight and emotion within her request. In moments like that, when my definitively selfless mother who carried me in her womb and birthed me without any drugs and paid too much for my barely used college education and still calls to see if I need anything from the store...It's best of me to respond with compassion, and try try try to see her request through her eyes instead of mine.

Almost a year has passed since that conversation, which means it is the year of the reunion. I had managed to put the possibility out of my mind until the patriot act-esque wonders of Facebook brought reunion inquiries to the forefront of my computer screen. And so the thread began...

"Does anyone know if there's a plan for our reunion?"

"I think it's the job of the class officers."

"It's a little late to begin planning an event of that caliber. You better get in contact with your class officers soon."

"I think our class officers were Meredith, Shaya and Julie."

I waited it out as long as I could. I read what was being said, and in true procrastinator fashion, I didn't engage until I was called by name. I was the class president but I truly had no knowledge that reunion planning responsibility was part of the deal. I just wanted a little more recognition and accolades by my name. I officially relinquished responsibility to an eager classmate, and am left to not plan, which I excel at, and also, to sit with my mother's request.

If it were up to me and my soap box, I wouldn't go. I would tout Facebook's way of keeping us all up to date, and the fact that I already know more about former classmates than I would prefer. I would stand tall and exclaim that I have done a decent job of keeping in touch with those I wanted to, and that the rest aren't of much concern. I would refer to Romy and Michelle's high school reunion and think of disaster scenarios and depressing possibilities that would bring me down. These are all the things I would do if I didn't have a selfless mother, requesting a very simple thing from me.

This, I think, is why we have mothers and why were aren't just grown in laboratories and thrown into the mess to fend for ourselves. I was the class president, and whether or not that meant much to me, I represented something. My class was small, my school was small, and my town was in proportion to both of those things. Many of my classmates were the same through all thirteen years. My absence wouldn't be easily overlooked, and I would be viewed in the very light my mother wants me to avoid. This small world I speak of is a very big deal to her; She has invested much of herself in it over the years. Her request is saturated with a pride for the community she doesn't want me to be ashamed of.

She has cried mom wolf on so many occasions that I hesitate to listen. Most recently it was at the possibility of a stranger jumping in my car through its open window. Twenty-eight, and I am humbled by the fact that sometimes she still does know best, and in this case, she's round-about reminding me that it's best to avoid brat behavior.

tulip bloom.

There's this character that lives in my apartment building. He's a strange combination of Martha Stewart and Mell Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory. His tulips are treated as if each bud coming out of the ground possesses a personality and a soul, while every human personality he comes in contact with is suspect. I have been cautioned to not visit any Al Qaeda sights on the internet, and also, to choose sidewalk over grass so as to not squash an overlooked bud.

I marvel at human personalities that follow anticipated life patterns, those that purchase shampoo before the bottle is actually empty, and homeowners in general. I met an engineer this week and congratulated him. "Thanks, I think," was his response. His life's asset, from this wanderers perspective, is stability in all kinds of forms. This wanderers is freedom.

Sometimes I wonder if I will wake up someday so completely aware of the level to which I have been ruining my life all these commitment free years that I will only be able to breath at the level of a heavy smoker. Engineers make me wonder this, and attorneys too.

Heavy smoking neighbors like Mr. Tulip reassure me, unbeknownst to them, that in fact I won't ever wake up barely breathing; There's value in my asset, he subconsciously says to me while telling me audibly and exhaustively about the bamboo fence he's putting up to keep the neighbor dogs from barking.

As I breathe in and out in my lease-free apartment, homemade granola cooling on the stove, I think about those bulbs that have been under the muck and frost with the worms and grub, making bloom progress in ways we haven't been able to see. And though most have seen the first tulips of spring, when they finally break through again after winter's end, it's as if we're seeing them for the first time all over. This kind of bloom is forever worth waiting for.

inspiring misdirection.

I've referenced this go tactic I tend to live by. It involves, well, going. Places.

This activity brings me to life. And it doesn't have to be elaborate. Last year, a friend had to take a cup of coffee to his girlfriend at work. It was a few miles away. I was excited to go. Genuinely excited.

I have an uncanny ability to walk away from the familiar for something foreign without much fear. There's usually a lot of unexpected to deal with once I arrive, but the getting there is emotionally quite easy.

Last night I went to a synagogue. I hadn't ever been to a synagogue before. Yann Martel, the author of a brilliant book, was speaking there. Going somewhere I've never been before to hear an author I admire speak does something real for me. It quenches a thirst rooted in dehydration.

It turns out he was brilliant, not surprisingly. And before stumbling upon writing, he was pretty aimless. He came from education, a travel-filled childhood, and academic parents. After finishing an undergraduate in philosophy and being "unsatisfied" with academia, he both washed dishes and worked as a security guard. He found writing to be that thing that consistently satisfied. And he wrote a lot of bad stuff before Life of Pi. Eventually he embraced it, lived on little, and wrote.

My years seem to be inching me closer and closer to this reality. I find the professional realm of reality to be quite unsatisfying. I have no interest in selling anything to anyone else. I have interests and hobbies, but when I place my interests up against the pressure of using using them to make a living, they lose their allure. Writing my own commentary on life is a natural reaction I have to living, and it never lacks satisfaction. I write a lot of bad stuff with no intention to stop. I already live on very little. That's another natural reaction I have to life.

Today I went somewhere else. I got away. And I am sitting in front of a new window typing this out with the knowledge that the people I run into are all strangers; Their daily landscape is completely different than mine, and they have no choice but to share theirs' with a stranger today. Later I will have lunch with an old friend, the woman who coincidently told me I should read Life of Pi, the book that took me to me the synagogue last night, a night that will help solidify the idea that occupational misdirection isn't a flaw for someone that finds more satisfaction in writing life commentary than anything else.

It's also a plus that occupational misdirection lends itself to the going, the other thing that brings me upmost satisfaction. Keep going, and keep writing, and keep being inspired by thoughtful well spoken writers that have themselves kept going, and kept writing.