friends & relations

“Gather all around the things that you love, I thought, and prepare to lose them.”

~ brixton ~ 2 Comments

My horoscope for this week suggests that I take maximum advantage of the big opportunity that’s ahead for you, Capricorn: an enhancement of your senses. That’s right. For the foreseeable future, you not only have the potential to experience extra vivid and memorable perceptions. You could also wangle an upgrade in the acuity and profundity of your senses, so that your sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch will forevermore gather in richer data. For best results, set aside what you believe about the world, and just drink in the pure impressions. In other words, focus less on the thoughts rumbling around inside your mind and simply notice what’s going on around you.

And maybe that’s what this broken arm is for: finally getting me to slow down and notice, appreciate, invest, and give back in ways that I’ve been too busy and distracted and heartsore to do these last few months.

Last night a new friend came by after work – I’d stayed home after a painful casting appointment and a couple of nights of bad sleep – and we took a long walk around my neighborhood. We stopped to look at statues in a park I’d never noticed. We were roped into a game of tag by a bunch of kids playing on the sidewalk. We walked by a new bike repair place and peered through the windows of a soon-to-be coffee shop. We kept an eye out for “my” ice cream truck after hearing a snippet of its signature music. I wouldn’t have taken that walk had I been able to ride, and we wouldn’t have had that visit if I hadn’t had my accident.

On Friday, a friend cut through my stubbornness and kidnapped me for the day. She and her 5 year old made me a futon nest, plied me with margaritas and The Muppet Show, and generally forced me to be still and engaged and present. It was a great day, pain and cast notwithstanding, and it wouldn’t have happened without my accident.

This has been a physically and emotionally difficult week, and will likely be a physically and emotionally difficult summer. There have been and will likely continue to be nights where I’ve cried myself to sleep out of anxiety, frustration, pain, and loneliness. I also know that my physical and emotional pain are so minimal in the grand scheme of things.

But that doesn’t diminish what I’m feeling right now: profoundly grateful for everyone who has reached out, expressed their concern, offered a shoulder to cry on, sent flowers or funny mail, gotten me out of my house or back in it, and generally reminded me that love isn’t binary, that family isn’t defined by blood, that community isn’t bounded by physical space, and that what you put out into the world will be repaid tenfold if only you’re brave enough to let it.

Friend Feature: Karina L.

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Do you see the gorgeous girl on my left?

That’s my girl, Karina, and my gorgeous date to New Wave Prom at Neo last week.

Karina’s also a force of nature, and one of the most amazing women I’ve had the privilege to know. I met her six years ago, when we were more likely to wear gowns like these:

Ms Karina

I know Karina from gyne instruction, and it’s safe to say that there’s no part of me that Karina hasn’t seen – and vice versa. Aside from the challenges and closeness inherent in this work, we also shared some beautifully intimate experiences during gyne instruction, and I’m so thankful to have had her having my back throughout my work with the program.

We parted ways when she moved to Vermont and I moved to DC, but remained correspondents and online friends, and have reconnected since my move to Chicago started to happen earlier this year. Karina is a tremendously wise, thoughtful, and intelligent woman – and she’s also a total knockout ball of energy on the dance floor. Every time I spend time with her, I come away with my spirits recharged and my heart and mind challenged.

Here’s looking at you, amazing girl. Thank you for being in my life.

Friend Feature: Carl L.

~ brixton

A lot of aspects of my life changed or began to change in early 2005. I left my clinic job, where I shared an office the size of my current office’s closet, to start grad school and a job I loved from the first day. I was beginning to come to terms with the end of a relationship that destroyed me, and to understand that being alone might be the state of things for a long time. I was working too much and sleeping too little – but that had been the case for a while. I felt – then as now – that my life was unfolding with possibility.

I met Carl sometime in late 2004 – I don’t know exactly when, and you’ll forgive me for that, as that was a time when I was working for up to six weeks with no time off, when I was sleeping little and eating less, when – as now – life was moving at a dizzying pace, and all I wanted was time to sit down and be still, just for a bit. I remember seeing him at the laundromat and crushing a little on him for his big book and long hair and stack of black t-shirts. We talked about The Dark Tower across the counter at the coffeeshop where I worked, or on the back patio while he smoked and I swept.

A few days before my 25th birthday, I was at the Monkey with friends, having closed the coffeeshop with Bailey’s in our coffee, followed by drinks at Jupiter. Carl was there with a friend, and we got to talking, and I mentioned my 25×25 list. He asked first about a pencilled-in item related to the devastating break-up, then asked about #12: have a memorable first kiss (or just a memorable kiss, period).

“Have you had a memorable first kiss?”

“No.”

“Could I be your memorable first kiss?”

“Yes.”

Two days later, he took me out on the eve of my birthday. We had dinner at Crane Alley, went back to my house, and sat in the Papasan chair and talked and laughed until we were both motion sick. My best first date ever.

There were other dates after that, but we quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be a thing, and instead settled into a close and intimate friendship that has remained close and intimate for years, even though we’ve gone long periods without speaking or seeing each other. He’s been a non-negotiable in my life through a lot of stuff, and I’m tremendously thankful for that. I’ve never been able to really explain our friendship, nor who we are or have been to each other, except that when we’re together, it is as he wrote years ago, that “We have a world that runs parallel to the regular existence, one we have to jump just a little to the side to inhabit.  I can always tell that that’s true because no one ever quite shares laughter with us.”

Happy birthday, love. One of these years maybe there will be a better picture of us than these.

hands

e + carl

Elizabeth and Carl at Merry Ann's Diner

Essential friend data:
Met: Aroma? Probably?
Years known: 7-8

Friend Feature: Chris M.

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So hey, it’s his birthday, so let’s all celebrate Chris! Happy birthday, Chris!

Here’s Chris being awesome!

Also here!

Are you getting the idea? Chris is awesome. And the world knows it. But even better? His wife and kid know it. Colin might not know it, though.

Untitled

I met Chris through his wife Angie, a classmate and friend at GSLIS. I can’t remember who invited whom to a thing first, but I know that they were at a party that I threw in the spring of 2005, and that by that fall, we were moving in the same tightly-knit social circles. Over the years, I’ve been consistently impressed by the ways that Chris and Angie work together so that they can, in many ways, have it all. Which isn’t to say that they’re perfect people or have a perfect relationship – but that over the years, they have done a pretty damned good job of figuring out how to love and support each other in being the (very different kinds of) rockstars that they are.

Chris and I had a conversation about Champaign last summer – how good it was, how it was good fit for both of us, how we both miss it. My nostalgia for that time in my life is wrapped up in so many things, and I felt that he put the same feeling very well – that it’s helpful to remember that those were good years, and would have been good years wherever we were – that very little of it is particular to the place, which to some extent alleviates the feelings of homesickness for a home that no longer exists.

Essential friend data:
Met: at a party at my house through his wife and my friend Angie
Years known: ~7

The Return of the Friend Feature: Loretta G.

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This NPR piece on Facebook and the ephemeral nature of online “friendships” has me motivated to resuscitate a project I started in early 2011. Inspired by my friend Loretta, and in an attempt to validate the friendships I was trying to foster online, I wrote a series of posts detailing my relationships with each of my Facebook friends. Or, rather, with two dozen of them.

Since the introduction of Timeline, the Notes app seems to be at least somewhat deprecated (can something be somewhat deprecated?). At best, previous notes are hard to find. At worst, they’re basically invisible. So instead of further shackling my content and my relationships to Facebook, I’ll be resuming the series here.

And, since she was the inspiration, I will start with Loretta.

Loretta is awesome. In fact, here is a video of Loretta being awesome:

I met Loretta when we were both PhD students at GSLIS and both ended up in Leigh Estabrook’s Preparing Future Faculty class. While I didn’t go on to become a faculty member, I took a tremendous about away from the course, especially the importance of keeping your personal stuff personal, and your professional stuff professional. I mention this because I think it’s a lesson more people could learn – and also because it is, in a roundabout way, something I really admire about Loretta.

I know she doesn’t always feel like it, but Loretta is a tremendous role model for those of us who aspire to have it all. She’s fiercely intelligent and passionate about her work. She’s articulate and funny, and along with her similarly intelligent and passionate husband is raising two daughters are also intelligent, articulate and funny. Oh, and she also used to be in a band.

I regret that I didn’t have more time with Loretta at GSLIS – that I didn’t meet her earlier, and that I left before we had much time to hang out. She and her family came to a party at my house once, and her girls – who couldn’t have been much more than three – were especially vigilant at keeping Basil inside despite his best attempts to escape. Loretta, if you’re reading this, I still have your Tupperware. From 2007. I promise I’ve washed it.

Essential friend data:
Met: LIS490TP at GSLIS
Years known: ~5

Say you’d follow me anywhere.

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Say you'd follow me anywhere.

Photo by merlinmann, all rights reserved.

I was looking through my bookmarks just now to find something for work, and instead came across this post, which also reminded me of the above photo. I barely knew her but agree with the post author when he said that Leslie “made everyone who knew her better“. I’m so thankful to have people in my life like that – both past and present. So thank you, friends, for you.

“And besides, feelings are totally full of shit.”

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I woke up last Sunday adorned with the previous night’s glow sticks and feeling like someone had dropped a load of bricks on my chest. Such is the weight and effect of running into one’s own unhappiness.

The last two months have been endlessly stressful: holidays, moving to Chicago, moving out of our apartment, moving into my Unnamed Hippie House (which I’ve decided is its name, by the way), my uncle’s death, drunk people drama, sickness, job hunting, job interviews, the beginning of the semester, winding down a job, and living apart. It’s all fucking hard! Hard, hard, hard.

I’m a person who thrives in chaos, so times like these usually see me rising to the occasion. Five years ago, we launched Moodle at the beginning of the semester while I was also a full time doctoral student and a new gyne instructor – so I was essentially working two very demanding full-time jobs while taking on an emotionally and physically challenging part-time job while also maintaining a relationship and starting to focus on losing weight after four months away from the gym (and my bike) with a broken arm. Literally the day before Shane moved to DC, I had unexpected minor surgery after receiving scary lab results from an abnormal Pap and also got an estimate of $2400 to make the necessary repairs to my car so that I could move to join him – while also gearing up for the beginning of the semester and actively job-hunting. I’m not alone in my experience of shit stacking up in impossible ways, or of being able to put my head down and knock through it all to come out on the other side smarter and stronger.

But in and around the stress and stressors of the last two months, I’ve had a lot of time to think. The time and space and distance have allowed issues to rise to the surface that I’ve been ignoring or just haven’t been brave enough to face. And one of those is my unhappiness, a thread of pain through so many aspects of my life.

It’s no secret that I’ve been profoundly unhappy in my career in the last few years. In job interviews, I’ve spun it as “a series of right turns” – from instructional technology support at Illinois to reference librarianship at GW to web development at UM. From a position of authority and trust to the bottom rung of a soul-deadening bureaucracy to manual labor, working in a call center, finding ways of stretching 5-8 hours of work to fill 40, and then ending up in a position where I’m challenged and respected, but which is still tangential to any of the goals I can loosely define for myself.

I’ve been tremendously lonely in my relationships. I’ve focused my energies on my marriage to the detriment of my relationships with others – perhaps appropriately so, but still a stark thing to realize. I’ve been trying to change this in the last few months, but I know I have a long way to go.

I’ve tried to direct this loneliness and frustration into positive channels: running, the garden, cooking, blogging, teaching, and connecting with friends online. What I haven’t realized until recently is the extent to which my loneliness and frustration has been self-reinforcing. I’m lonely, so I go running alone. I like running alone, so I opt to continue with this solitary activity, even though it could be a great opportunity to meet other people and build relationships around running. Shane is often busy with hobbies or friends, and I respond by soaking up the much-desired solo time, which then leads me to support (rather than complain about) more time dedicated to hobbies, which then leads to more time alone.

Which leads me to this place: waking up on a Sunday morning feeling crippled by sadness. Grinding away on the track to meet a training goal but also to focus my mind on something other than the intractability of my feelings. Struggling to remember happiness, or to picture what happiness might look like. Knowing that the easy answer is more meds, or changing the meds, but being unwilling to accept that as an answer YET AGAIN.

I want to be happy.
I don’t know how to be happy.
I don’t know what has to change in my life for me to be happy.
I’m afraid of my own unhappiness.

Charles Richard Fesenmeyer Jr, 1948-2012

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

On Thursday, I drove to Iowa to bury my uncle. He passed away at home last week.

Unlike my grandpa, I don’t have photos of my uncle to post here. I don’t have affectionate stories about him from my childhood. I’m not traveling through the stages of mourning, as we didn’t really have a relationship to mourn. When I got the news last Thursday, I was – and remain – honestly more upset by my lack of reaction than by any feelings of loss.

I had the unpleasant task of contacting Rich’s Facebook friends to spread the news of his passing. I can think of few less appropriate ways to notify someone of this sort of thing, but we had no other way to reach these people, and no indication of others that he would have wanted us to contact. The responses I received described a man I never knew.

After the brief service on Thursday, the lot of us went out to lunch: my parents and grandma, my mom’s siblings, a cousin, and a few friends. My grandparents’ angel neighbor asked my mom and her siblings about their favorite memories of Rich, and it’s telling that most of them involved conflict, but that they could be told with affection and laughter.

So this is what I know of my uncle: he was wildly intelligent, and applied this intelligence to the things he was passionate about: astronomy, model trains, cameras, motorcycles, computers. He He hated the military, and gained weight to avoid having to serve in Vietnam. He had a friend who was poet laureate of some South American country, and when his friend received this award, they drank a station wagon full of beer. Until this fall, he held the family record for the half marathon – when I beat his time by several minutes, he reminded me that he had run the race in a storm with an injured plantar fascia. He was difficult and argumentative – as wildly intelligent people often are – resulting in polarized relationships with his family, but deep respect from his friends. He loved cats, and is buried with the ashes of some of his late feline friends. He smoked enough pot in the 70s that he developed an allergy to it. He was proud of me and my siblings, and told his friends that my sister and I were beautiful, though we never heard it from him.

He didn’t believe in God, and would have turned in his grave – or walked out – at the words of compassion and grace meted out by the pastor at the service. Regardless, I hope he’s at peace tonight, wherever he may be.

Things I Miss About Champaign

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I’ve been meaning to make this list for a long time, but Gemma’s recent photos have pushed me to actually writing it up.  My feelings for Champaign are all wrapped up in my grad school experience, my first really fulfilling (and challenging) professional job, and a prolonged period of personal growth and experimentation between the end of my marriage and the beginning of my relationship with Shane – so lots of complicated, complicating things factor into my relationship with that little city in the corn.

  1. Riding my bike down University towards GSLIS early in the morning in the summer – empty roads and the sun coming up through the trees.  A 7 minute commute on a good day.  And then the long months when I couldn’t ride because my arm was in a cast.
  2. West Side Park.  Living across from West Side Park.  Walking home through West Side Park after a long shift at Aroma or a movie at the Art or a too-late night at Mike & Molly’s.
  3. Coffee and sandwiches at Paradiso.  Consistently good music on the stereo.  The smoking section at Paradiso, barely partitioned off by a row of ficus trees.  Books or homework on the “patio”.  Paradiso’s perfect imperfectness.
  4. Living near downtown Champaign, where I never paid more than $500 for a one bedroom apartment, and even that included utilities.  My first solo apartment directly across from the park.  My studio apartment that never really got above 50 degrees in the winter, but that in the summer offered the most fabulous porch for parties.  The apartment with the Wild Things on the wall and the yellow kitchen.  Our last place on Clark, where we rented the entire ground floor for around $750, planted our first garden, spent $300+ on heat in the winter, and enjoyed the mixed blessing of a screened-in entryway – great for cats in the sun, not great for cats escaping.
  5. Saturday mornings at the Urbana farmers’ market, bringing home things I didn’t recognize and that would eventually go bad in the fridge. Splurging on fancy cheese, meat, and a croissant from Art Mart.  Riding our bikes to the market and bringing a dedicated backpack for watermelon or canteloupe.
  6. Friday afternoon Revolution Lunch at Jerusalem Restaurant with my favorite nutters.  The food was fine, but the company was effing crazy.  I’m glad to hear that it hasn’t changed.
  7. French toast at Sam’s, where Shane and I went for breakfast one of the first times he spent the night.  We drew maps of our hometowns on the rectangular napkins.  In case you ever forget, the special is at the top.
  8. Late nights studying at Merry Ann’s with Sarah and Nicole, drinking TERRIBLE coffee and eating fries and goofing around with the servers.  Going to Merry Ann’s at bar time, ordering a grilled cheese sandwich, and being in and out in under 10 minutes.  Greg and I standing on the booth and singing happy birthday to Mark, who brought us screwdrivers mixed in the back.  Hanging out with Shane for the first time after Carl and I had gone to see 2046, all three of us wasted but on totally different things (exhaustion, alcohol, an emotionally weighty movie).  Many many plates of fries before Subversion.
  9. Boltini bingo.  We went almost every week the last summer we lived there, but I didn’t win ANYTHING until my very last card on my very last bingo.  Marv gave me his oversized clapper, which I kept until we moved to Michigan.
  10. Aroma.  Working at Aroma.  Drinking mojitos outside Aroma in the spring of 2003.  Working 20 hour days (Aroma + Carle) in the fall of 2004 when it was easier to not sleep than to deal with my heartbreak.  10 hour kitchen shifts with all New Order all the time, getting fake engaged to Sam, smoking out front with Carl and Erich and Leah in the summer.  Ryan’s shark mug and Dave catching flies out the air.  Flirting with customers who became friends.  Coffee grounds permanently under my fingernails.  A good place and a good time, though definitely not the best coffee in the world.
  11. Symposium at the Esquire, and the Esquire in general.  For at least the first year after we left Champaign, I would often sigh and say that I just wanted to go the Esquire for dinner – cheap beer, cheap bar food, endless bowls of peanuts.  Always the same, never disappointing – just a solid townie bar.
  12. The Blind Pig in the winter of 2004-2005.  Holding hands with Carl on my 25th birthday.  A snowball fight in the middle of the night in the middle of Walnut Street.  It’s still a great bar, and I know Shane misses it greatly, but (oh this is so hipster) I stopped truly loving it when the sign went up.
  13. Swimming laps in the outside pool at IMPE in the summer of 2005.  I had started exercising that spring, but realized after my first botched length that Curves had nothing on laps in the 50 meter pool.  Sunshine, chlorine, hard work, bliss.
  14. Sunday nights at Bentley’s – our Local Neighborhood Bar – with the GSLIS crew.  Beth’s Bloody Marys and Blue Moons adorned with loads of snacks.  So many games of Bohnanza that we bought a second copy – one for the bar, another for occasions when we were less likely to spill drinks.  Planning our first Bonnaroo, celebrating our first NYE, eating a whole lot of miniature pizzas.
  15. Gyne instruction totally changed my understanding of my own body, and of the range of what constitutes ‘normal’.  I am so thankful for having the opportunity to work with such a remarkable group of women and to become empowered to advocate for my own health.  In the years since, a number of friends have felt comfortable asking me about gyne health stuff because they knew I had this experience and was willing to talk about it openly.  What a remarkable gift.
  16. Porch parties at my place on Springfield.  There weren’t many of them, but oh, they were wonderful.
  17. So much enduring love for Cafe Kopi.  I can’t believe I lived in Champaign almost a year before I found it, and can’t believe I haven’t found a comparable spot since.  Actually, I can believe it.  Kopi has something really special going on.  The coffee and food aren’t remarkable, but they’re solidly good, as are the staff and the ambiance.  I spent way too many nights doing my grad school reading over their cafe miels and tuna salad salads – and swatting away the ever-present flies on the patio.  Those things will survive the apocalypse, I swear.
  18. Mike & Molly’s may be my most favorite bar ever.  Shane preferred the Blind Pig, but my heart belongs to M&M.  Lots of nights reading with a beer, hanging out with townie friends, dancing to music played in the loft by friends.  Someone – Tim? Steve? – trying to explain darts to me.  The chalkboard in the bathroom.  Knowing that I was a regular when I forgot my ID and the bartender vouched for me to the doorman.  The bar’s vignette in Tell Me Do You Miss Me.  Carl arranging for my induction into Pi Omega Omega on my next-to-last night in town.
  19. Nox/Subversion and the year that saw me on the dance floor almost every week.  I told Shane recently that I missed out on being a raver girl because I didn’t live in a big city in my early 20s.  Instead, I had Tuesday nights at the High Dive with Emily and Jim playing the music I always wanted to listen to but didn’t know how to discover on my own.  Saturday nights with Tim in the booth and reciprocal pants protection with Shane and Karin.  Meeting Brian and Ben and Kristina and so many others.  Dancing when I was sick, dancing when my heart was breaking, dancing when I’d had too much to drink, dancing on the patio in the pouring rain.
  20. And then there’s everything about GSLIS: getting my job, making my friends, meeting Shane, finding a career path, getting a real job, discovering and falling in love with and then hating and then loving research.  All the wonderful, remarkable, challenging, and exceptional people who over the years became friends, colleagues, trusted associates, and family.  I can’t even begin to articulate the ways that this school changed my life.

Ultimately, though, what I miss is being able to walk everywhere – and the fact that wherever I went, I would run into someone I knew.  Hell, it’s been four years and that is still often the case.  And it goes without saying that the people and relationships made Champaign my home, but there are far too many of them to list here.