any port in a storm

I've been thinking too much. Because I'm trying my best to logically interpret and understand my thoughts and surroundings, I feel like I've been at a disconnect. All this introspection might be getting in the way of just plain living.

I've been giving myself a little too much credit. Imagining that I have some sort of grasp on what's going on now....perspective....but I realized that verbalizing confusion doesn't mean clarity.

Naturally I'm an observational person, but maybe it's time I take an active approach and start taking some risks.

Easier said than done, but I want to give it more of a shot.

(here)

women in work

In elementary school it was pretty much understood that girls were smarter than boys. Boys were stronger, though, and better at sports. There were exceptions, sure, the boy who could recite the times table back and forth or the tomboy that owned the dodge ball court, but for the most part these were widely accepted facts. Of course, by middle school there was grey area, and in high school the lines had disappeared.

Growing up in a conservative Westchester suburb, the average family was governed by an investment banker father and home-making mother. I'm certain a few moms had jobs, but thinking back I can't remember any of my friends with working mothers or even a female neighbor with a full time job. These dynamics shifted as I got older, yet even still I'm not sure if the change was caused by ever-shifting societal/gender roles or just my family's move to Los Angeles. My own mom didn't pursue a career until later in life, post-divorce and after two of her three kids had left for college.

In school, we're almost aggressively taught that women are as capable as men, but we've also had enough women's history months to know that equal rights have never been a breeze. I'm well aware of the glass ceiling and gross injustices/sexism in even the US workplace; logically, none of that should surprise me.

But, here I am, in "the working world" and, now that it's right in front of my face, it's jarring. I live and work in LA. It doesn't get much more liberal than that. And, while I'm in publishing, we're more tied to the entertainment industry than anything. You would think that if there's a place that inequality in the work place is least pronounced, it'd be here.

Still, my company, which is around 30 people, employs nearly all men. The CEO is a man. The CFO. The VP Sales. The Executive VP. All the creative guys. Everyone with any authority is a man.

My boss is very well connected in entertainment. As his assistant, I hear all the calls he makes and have come to recognize the names of the various high powered lawyers, executives, etcs with which he interacts. They're all men. Save maybe one or two. The only woman that comes immediately to mind has a very high powered husband.

As a young woman, you're always somewhat aware that it's "a man's world." But I assumed as a well-educated, capable, and motivated person, that it wouldn't actually matter. They say that, sure, but, I can do anything, right? Well, I've become abruptly aware that "they" were right. I don't think I'm meek, but I'm not all that forceful or combative either. How do you balance being a respectful, thoughtful girl in an abrasive, innately chauvinistic environment? I'm still working on figuring that out.

clearly I like poetry

Facing west from California's shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,

Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

Walt Whitman, Facing West from California's Shores

(via Anna)

questions persist no matter where you go

Maybe I should have been brave enough to go abroad like I had planned/imagined/hoped. Or maybe not.

Questions of Travel

By Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams

hurry too rapidly down to the sea,

and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops

makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,

--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,

aren't waterfalls yet,

in a quick age or so, as ages go here,

they probably will be.

But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,

the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,

slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Where should we be today?

Is is right to be watching strangers in a play

in this strangest of theatres?

What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life

in our bodies, we are determined to rush

to see the sun the other way around?

The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?

To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,

inexplicable and impenetrable,

at any view,

instantly seen and always, always delightful?

Oh, must we dream or dreams

and have them, too?

And have we room

for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity

not to have seen the trees along this road,

really exaggerated in their beauty,

not to have seen them gesturing

like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.

--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard

the sad, two-noted, wooden tune

of disparate wooden clogs

carelessly clacking over

a grease-stained filling-station floor.

(In another country the clogs would all be tested.

Each pair there would have identical pitch.)

--A pity not to have heard

the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird

who sings above the broken gasoline pump

in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:

three towers, five silver crosses.

--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,

blurr'dly and inconclusively,

on what connection can exist for centuries

between the crudest wooden footwear

and, careful and finicky,

the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.

--And never to have had to listen to rain

so much like politicians' speeches:

two hours of unrelenting oratory

and then a sudden golden silence

in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come

to imagined places, not just stay at home?

Or could Pascal have been not entirely right

about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:

the choice is never wide and never free.

And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at home,

wherever that may be?"

people surprise me

"To be a part, that is fulfillment for us: to be integrated with our solitude into a state that can be shared." Rainer Maria Rilke

This confounding dislocation has some pretty pleasant side effects. It's incredibly uniting.

Because we're all in such a funny state of flux and uncertainty, it seems people are uncharacteristically open...to knew things, places, people, ideas. It's refreshing.

I ran into a kid from my high school at a club this weekend. I'm not sure I ever had a conversation with him in high school, but I was thrilled to see a familiar face. We spoke briefly but with ease and enthusiasm, and I left super excited. It's a little peculiar that such a slight interaction made me so happy, but lately I've been animated by a lot of similarly insignificant exchanges.

It's the same with new friends. There's a nice little group of kids from Wash U in LA right now, and everyone continues to sort of come together and meld friends and acquaintances from all over. Maybe it's because we're all on loose ground right now, so judgement falls by the wayside. We're all candid with our insecurities and empathetic to each other's states. That makes this is a pretty unique spot in life, and I'm not sure when or if it'll ever happen again.

We're all at the bottom really, trying to figure out where we're going, why, and with whom. But it's not a competitive latter climb. In a few years egos will set in again and divisions will form or reform. It's probably impossible to prevent, so I guess I can try to just take it for what it is and be happy for now.

ny vs. la

Pretty much all of my friends from college are from New York. New York City. Manhattan.

Yeah, that's an exaggeration, but it sure felt like that. After freshman year there was even a pretty popular facebook group entitled "No, you effing ignoramous, Washington University is in New York"....a play on the pain that it is to endlessly have to explain that our college, despite its name and apparently common logic, is in St. Louis, yeah, Missouri.

And, whatever, I'm all for "The City", I've never had any steadfast LA pride. To be fair, I was born in New York. I didn't move to the west coast until I was 11. Nevertheless, the memory-laden, identity-forming, experience-heavy, adult(?)-half of my life has been in Los Angeles. There are remnants of my roots, sure - my Dad and brother ingrained a sort of default loyalty to the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Rangers.....but I'm pretty sure that's the height of it.

I've never been one to argue the virtues of LA though, either. I was pretty bummed as a kid to move here. With some time I got used to it, learned to love it even. But I was sure I wasn't going to be here for any sort of long haul. I needed to go to college far enough away that I'd be guaranteed a little snow and a reprieve from the saturating superficial. After college? I had no answers to any what/where/when, only that come May '09, I didn't want to be back in LA. I needed a change. I didn't think this city would stimulate me any more. Alas, here I am.

And it only continues to grow on me.

But I'm not about to fight you over it.

New Yorkers, though, their hometown pride borders on aggressive. Two of my buddies visited me one summer and spent half the time they were here making comparisons. Enlightening me as to why NY is that much better than LA. Where's the city? We have to get in the car again? Everything moves so slowly. In New York we'd never have to wait this long. Why can't anyone here make a decision?

I can understand that for those who've lived in a typical city all their lives, LA is a hard thing to wrap your mind around. The concept of a city that stretches as far as you can see, composed of various isolated commercial city centers, however many suburban areas, and who

knows what else in between, is pretty wild for someone used to a 22 mile condensed urban island.

Maybe that's where my problem is. In my experience, Los Angelenos are pretty relaxed. Perhaps to a fault, I don't really know. I listened to those guys complain for two days without much in the way of defense. I spoke my mind, but I'm not going to stress about showing them better or worse. In the end, their intense, antagonistic need to convince me of my err in judgement only proved my suspicions. It's an attitude that's hard for me to wrap my mind around.

My theory is: it's such a crowded, bustling, fast-paced city where people are constantly on top of one another that people are fiercely defensive of that little personal space they have. That leaves people more guarded than polite and more abrasive then friendly. In LA, we are all about spreading out. We spend hours alone in our cars, our individual little space bubbles. Maybe we're starved for personal interaction, resulting in fake warmth and forced sociability.

I'm sure that's too extreme, but it makes a little sense to me. I don't know which is right or wrong, and why does it matter? Probably doesn't.

I guess I'm trying to justify still being in LA 9 months after graduation. I have to rationalize it every now and then, because why should I be confident about any decision I've made since college?

photos by Alwyn Loh

The Departure of the Prodigal Son

Rainer Maria Rilke

Now to go away from all this tangledness

that is part of us and yet not ours,

that like the water in old wells

reflects us trembling and ruins the image;

from all this, which as if with thorns

still clings to us--to go away,

and on this and this, so near at hand,

which almost from the first you ceased to see

(they were so common, so undemanding),

suddenly to gaze: tenderly, full of amends,

as if in a beginning and from up close:

and to see at last how without least malice,

how over everyone indifferently the hurt descends

that filled childhood to the brim--:

and then still to go, hand leaving hand,

as if you were tearing open a new-healed wound,

and to go away: where? Into certainty,

far into some unrelated warm land

that behind all action keeps its distance

like a backdrop--garden or wall;

and to go away: why? From urge, from instinct,

from impatience, from dark expectation,

from not understanding and not being understood:

To take all this upon yourself and in vain

perhaps let fall things firmly held,

in order to die alone, not knowing why--

Is this how new life begins?

how did we get here?

As I left for work this morning, I called to my brother Mike, back in LA for winter break, "I'm off to schoo-- ugh, if only I were still in school." He scoffed and barked something along the lines of "school sucks" or "yeah, right."

After who knows how many years of formal education, here I am...in limbo. Back in LA. Back at home. Waiting for....what? Life after college is the great unknown.

As a kid, teen, young adult...whatever label at whatever point, you imagine that understanding just hits you once you begin your "real life." Life is a progression of stages, vaguely defined by where you are in school....grade school, middle school, high school, college, then ??....and more specifically, you (or I do at least) categorize memory by year...6th grade was all fun and games, 10th grade there was self-discovery and junior year of college were all of those adventures abroad. Now that I've lost the parameters by which I measure my life, am I just floating somewhere in space? That void between events? What happens now? I guess I move out of my mom's house. Do I start to measure my life by decades, or those big obscure milestones - work? marriage? children? retirement?

I'm confused, nostalgic (on the road to that old loopy bag lady living in the dreams of long passed youth?), excited (I'm on the precipice of something big, right?), impatient, anxious, underwhelmed and overwhelmed....but there's one thing that's become abundantly clear?

I'm definitely not alone.

All of my friends feel like they're swimming in circles, my brother, a couple years ahead of me, struggles to get his bearings, even those who appear on a linear path towards their dream of success have untold cracks in those straight-laced seams.

So, I figured, might as well chronicle whatever diluted road I'm taking and perhaps some sort of clarity will follow. It's worth a shot.

Oh, and some apt wisdom from a friend:

Sitting here in limbo

But I know it won't be long

Sitting here in limbo

Like a bird without a song

Well, they're

Putting up resistance

But i know that my faith

Will lead me on

Sitting here in limbo

Waiting for the dice to roll

Sitting here in limbo

Got some time to search my soul

Well, they're

putting up resistance

But I know that my faith

Will lead me on

I don't know where life will lead me

But I know where I've been

I can't say what life will show me

But I know what I've seen

Tried my hand

At love and friendship

But all that is passed and gone

This little boy is moving on

Sitting here in limbo

Waiting for the tide to flow

Sitting here in limbo

knowing that I have to go

Sitting in Limbo

Jimmy Cliff