Connecting Cross Country

This post is one of the main reasons that I have been delayed in blogging (in addition to the aforementioned issue of time).  I didn’t know how to write about this visit, mostly because I screwed up.  A wonderfully lovely visit was tarnished by a slip of my tongue and a dent in my character.  So I’ve been putting it off because that’s what I do sometimes–avoid uncomfortable circumstances.

I left Chicago on Monday, July 11th, and headed west to Des Moines, Iowa to spend time with Julia.  I met Julia in Los Angeles when she and I were both interns in different programs at the same organization.  She was recently coming out of an intensive urban immersion program and moved to Los Angeles ready to get her hands dirty in the life of the city.  She and I connected quickly and easily over creativity and social justice and what ways the two could be combined to transform people’s lives.  Her particular passion involved building a fashion line and starting a boutique in a neighborhood where the economic development would benefit the community, hopefully spawning other small businesses.

After several years in Los Angeles, Julia moved back to Iowa to pursue building her fashion business there, where it also happens to be a lot greener in the middle of the summer.  My grandma, who grew up on a farm, and you’ll meet via blog after I visit St. Louis, always used to say that corn should be “knee high by the 4th of July,” and you can see that this corn is almost as big as we are!  So much for knee high!

Julia and me in Des Moines' international garden at dusk.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about time and what I do with mine since I’ve gotten back to Los Angeles because somehow, it’s the 8th of September, and I think someone stole my August. If you find a lost and wandering August, please return it to its grateful owner. Living life takes a lot of time. Basic survival and maintenance of a life could take the better part of, well, a person’s life!

On the road, I was focused, which is not usually a strength of mine.  I had a mission: to connect with friends.  And I went after it wholeheartedly whether I was exhausted or excited.  Back home, I have a lot of different duties and delights that tug at my attention.  And I’ve found that my mission has become subservient to my survival, but it is also that very mission that pulls me beyond survival into a life where I can thrive and pursue happiness.  So I’m wrestling with the ways I’ve been spending my time and trying to refocus for the month ahead.

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I’ve been back in the City of Angels for over two weeks now, and readjusting has been a lot harder than I thought.  Some of it has just been coming down from the glory of life adventure, and some of it has been the reality of LA life hitting me right in the face and knocking me over.

One of the reasons I came back to LA when I did was to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  As we were looking through pictures from my trip, she commented: “You look really happy.”  I tend to think happy is over-rated.  Happy is fleeting.  I scoff at people who say, “I just want to be happy,” or “Well, don’t you want so-and-so to be happy?” In my pursuing-deep-and-authentic-life perspective, happiness is easily trumped by fulfillment and wholeness, which often come at a painful cost.  Happiness seems flimsy compared its sturdier companion joy.  But when my friend said I looked happy, I realized that I did look happy.  Because I was happy on the trip.  And happiness is pretty freakin’ awesome.

And I haven’t been happy in my life in LA for awhile.  The financial struggles of living in an expensive city, purchasing expensive gas to drive everywhere, greeted me with their all-too-unwelcome familiarity.  I’ve often felt isolated and lonely during my 6 years here, and after 8 weeks of socializing with several people a day, I returned to a veritable social silence.  Life is constantly in motion and in flux in Los Angeles, and it’s hard to find someone or something to be rooted in.  And it seems that just when I’ve gotten bearably settled, something changes.  My roommate of a year and a half will be moving out in a week to save money on rent.  I’ve gotten consistently more stable over and settled over the past couple of years, but facing all these things simultaneously upon my return has had me saying, “That’s right. I HATE this.  Why am I living here again?”

And I didn’t anticipate these issues.  In fact, I didn’t think about or plan for my re-entry into life in LA at all.  So now I begin the process of bringing the things that made me happy on the road into my daily routine in Los Angeles and bringing back the things I love about living here.  I’m continuing to visit my Facebook friends locally, and though my capacity to initiate social interaction seemed to have dried up upon my return (I was initiating like crazy for 8 weeks straight), I’ve realized that to pursue happiness, I need to continue asking people to get together, just like I did on the road.  I’m becoming reacquainted with vegetables thanks to the Culver City Farmer’s Market.  I’ve gotten reintegrated into the pieces of consistent community I have.  I’m having some local adventures, like seeing a Shakespeare play outdoors in Griffith Park.

And so, here I go, trying to cultivate these little nuggets of happy.

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I’ve realized that I should put dates on when these visits happened because people are getting confused.  I’m still blogging about Sunday, July 10th, when I saw Carly, Melissa, Marshall, and (this post) Eunjae.  I have been back in Los Angeles for a week now (more on that in an upcoming post).

As my time in Chicago came to a close, I visited with my 50th friend!  It definitely seems like a milestone.  What a treat for that 50th visit to be with Eunjae.  She is the first former tutoring student I’ve seen on the trip.  I’ve tutored for two different companies.  One company involved almost entirely Korean students, of which Eunjae was one.  She’d been in the states for 4 years living with her sister, while her folks were back in Korea.  I sat with Eunjae a couple times a week to work on test prep, for the SATs and ACTs.  Eunjae was still learning English, so she struggled with reading, but excelled at math and science.  But her true passion was in art and fashion.  She tried to integrate it into everything she did.  I helped her with an extensive research project for English class on Marc Jacobs.

I often say with my tutoring gigs that I’m in the business of bright and shiny futures.  Just yesterday (August 16th in LA), I was tutoring a student whose older brother I also tutored.  The older brother heads off on Saturday to his #1 choice school.  Eunjae wound up at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is a perfect spot for her.  Unfortunately, it’s also very expensive, and she may not be able to continue next year.  I’ve heard of this dilemma from several students.  And I’ve seen the ramifications of massive student loans among my friends once schooling is finished.  And I don’t know what the solution is.  But I do know that Eunjae is bright and talented and I want every possible opportunity for her.

Here’s just a glimpse at some of Eunjae’s aspiring talent:

Eunjae's Self Portrait

I thought it was so apt for my trip that she also had done a portrait of Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg

Eunjae has such a sweet and hospitable spirit.  She made dinner for us–she even made a Korean dish that she remembered was my favorite.  I don’t always connect with my students, but from the beginning, Eunjae and I had a special bond.  One Saturday, she and another friend (the administrative assistant at the tutoring company) and I went to the Fashion District in LA, a neighborhood in the south part of downtown with block after block of fabric and knock-off designer hand bags.  Eunjae wore a jumper that she’d made out of an old blouse.  I ended up getting a funky silver ring that I wear often.  And as we walked, she shared some of her creative ideas with me.  And it’s great to see some of those ideas becoming reality now.  Whether or not she continues at the Art Institute, she will definitely have a bright and shiny future.

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I left Melissa as she decided on a pair of goggles and hopped on the “L” to meet up with high school friend Marshall.  Planning what we were going to do together was quite the process.  Marshall wanted me to experience something of Chicago that I hadn’t yet.  And he was endearingly adamant about it.  It made me feel special, like I was his big sister coming to visit and he wanted to show off the glories of a city he was proud to live in.  So we settled on walking through the Gold Coast–a neighborhood of older, elaborate brownstone homes–that I had never been to in all my many visits to Chicago.  It was a lovely backdrop for our visit.

Marshall was a freshman in high school in band when I was a senior, the same year as Omar in Berkeley.  He played one of the big bass drums.  I remember him as a punk kid who didn’t like authority much, and as one of the main student leaders in the band, I was the authority.  I have an image in my mind of him grimacing with a sweaty, red face under the weight of the bass drum.  The band was a place of pretty intense discipline, and Marshall struggled against that.  He complained a lot.  He got in trouble a fair bit.  But he was one of those kids that you couldn’t ever get really mad at because he was so likeable.

Now, Marshall is all grown up.  And our visit was so enjoyable.  He still has a smirk and a twinkle in his eye that makes me wonder what trouble he still might get into.  He came to college in Chicago and took to exploring the city.  He would venture to a new neighborhood, walking for hours, just because he wanted to really know the city where he lived.  That’s when he discovered the Gold Coast, and any number of other neighborhoods.  It wasn’t enough for him to live in Chicago.  He wanted to know Chicago.

Marshall ended up dropping out of band later in high school, but continued to pursue music in undergrad and now is an acoustic engineer.  He works on making diesel engines quieter.  And he’s an avid foodie.  He came to southern California for a work trip and drove the 50 miles into Los Angeles each night to go to many of the city’s great restaurants, most of which I haven’t even been to.  If you want to talk about authority, Marshall is definitely an authority on good food.

A couple weeks after our visit, Marshall was going to teach music at a summer camp.  He mentioned it in such an offhand way that it was clear that giving back is part of his DNA.  Marshall told me how much band had kept him out of trouble, and how when he dropped out of band, he got into more trouble.  I think part of him sees these camp kids as miniature versions of himself, and he wants to help keep them on the right track.  It’s hard to imagine now that he was ever not on the right track–he’s responsible and established in his work and in his 6-year relationship with his girlfriend.  He has a childlike curiosity that fuels his pursuit of knowing everything he can about a subject.  He has a confidence that seems to help him navigate smoothly through life.  But it’s not arrogant swagger.  It’s just ease.

It’s hard to describe my reaction to my visit with Marshall, and it isn’t a unique reaction.  Surprise isn’t the right word.  Walking and talking with him, sitting down for a drink with him, it makes sense.  My memories of who Marshall was and getting to know who he is now fits together in my mind.  What I was left with was joy.  I so enjoyed being with Marshall and visiting with Marshall, but more than that, I enjoyed Marshall.  Whatever internal characteristic made it impossible to get mad at him as a punk freshman is still there.  And it made for an incredible afternoon.  So, Marshall, next time you come to Los Angeles, I’ll take you to a place you’ve never been.

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From Feed with Carly I took the bus past Humboldt Park to Old Town near Lincoln Park.  Seriously, I love public transportation in Chicago.  I met up with college friend Melissa for coffee.  Melissa and I had a lot of mutual friends in college.  One spring break, a group of us went on a work trip down to Jackson, Mississippi to work with a community development organization (a trip I mentioned in my post about Nathan).  On the drive from Michigan to Mississippi, Melissa and I were in a car with a group of girls.  We got into some pretty intense and emotional conversations where we shared a lot.  At one point, the caravan stopped at a rest stop and all of us got out of our car wiping tears out of our eyes.  A few hours later at another stop, there were more remnants of tears.  The leader looked at me and said, “What are you doing to them, Ann?!”  I do have a tendency to take things to a deeper place, which is why I appreciate Melissa.  Her tendency is to be much more light-hearted, fun-loving, and easy-going.  So the tears were definitely interspersed with guffaws and belly laughs courtesy of Melissa.

The two things I know about Melissa’s life as of late, courtesy of Facebook, is that she’s recently started a new job, and that she’s taken up triathlons.  Now, I’ve seen many a cartoon or joke about what the phenomenon of Facebook has done to conversation.  “Oh, I saw that you did a triathlon.”  “Yup.”  “And you started a new job?”  “Yeah, last week.”  Conversation over.  And I have myself had conversations like that.  But what I love about this trip is that I get to hear the stories behind the publicly posted highlights, the anecdotal snippets of life that add a richness to the basic information–a juxtaposition of the knowing of knowledge and facts against the knowing of familiarity.  So Melissa, being Melissa, told me a hilarious story about a fiasco during a recent training session for her upcoming triathlon, which I never would have heard unless we were sitting face to face.  Oh wait, no, she did actually post about it on Facebook, because she’s like that.  But rather than chuckling at my computer back in Los Angeles, we were laughing out loud together.  It makes a difference.

As for the new job, Melissa actually works from home, which presents its own set of challenges.  I don’t know if I could handle the isolation (says the girl who is visiting hundreds of friends), but I would love the independence.  Or working in my pajamas.  In which case, the term “work” in work from home might be used more loosely.  Melissa is newly navigating all of this, as she does online promotion for a conglomerate of hotels.  It’s a field that she fell into pretty much accidentally, but it’s something that she’s grown into making a career out of…with her degree in Russian (and psychology, but seriously, people–Russian!  So cool).  She uses social media a lot in her current position, to promote different hotels.  Apparently, the realm of social media marketing is where outlets like Facebook and Twitter are growing the most, and positions like Melissa’s are popping up everywhere.  The perks with this kind of position in the hotel industry are also pretty stellar.  She generously offered any assistance should I need a hotel along the way for my trip.

Before I took off, we headed next door so Melissa could get some goggles for her next race.  There are quite a lot of factors to consider when selecting a pair of goggles.  I had no idea!  I had to leave before she’d decided on a pair, so I guess I’ll have to wait for her to post pictures of the race to find out the verdict.  In the meantime, Melissa and her twin brother will be celebrating their birthdays tomorrow.  Happy Birthday, Melissa!

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One of the people I was most excited to reconnect with on this trip is Carly. She and I were friends through the majority of elementary school, and she moved away during junior high.  Haven’t seen her for the past 20 years.  I don’t remember who found whom on Facebook, but I remember being so excited, probably because the idea to visit my friends was in the back of my mind at that point.  And if you can sense someone’s coolness on Facebook after not seeing them for 20 years, I had the sense that Carly was super cool.

Carly and I had planned to meet in the evening, but she ended up meeting the lead singer of the Flaming Lips and scoring free tickets to their concert that evening.  Yeah.  Carly got a LOT cooler than me after junior high.  So we ended up meeting for breakfast at Feed, not far from Kindra’s neighborhood on the near west side of Chicago.  It was a great reunion from the moment she sat down.

What is it about elementary school friends that resonates so deeply?  When I went to my 10-year class reunion from high school, the people I was most excited to talk to were the people who I went to elementary school with.  Is it the sheer length of memory?  The nostalgia of early childhood innocence?  What we can offer each other from our memories of our mini-selves?

Our conversation flowed so easily as we did the brief rundown of life since the age of 12.  I remember that Carly was smart, and she played piano very well.  And now she’s a musician, creatively conspiring with two other artists to form a women’s collective that puts on quarterly events.  She’s also a nanny.  Previously, she worked on just about every college campus in Chicagoland.  We talked about how the hard things in our lives shaped the choices that we made, and being content with the way our lives looked, even if it was different than what we expected.

At some point, the conversation was interrupted by the ketchup bottle exploding into Carly’s lap.  She was a good sport about it.  Literally.  It was like she took a bath in ketchup.  But the conversation didn’t skip a beat.

We talked about our families. “I remember being scared of your mom,” Carly told me.  “I always wanted to do everything right around her.”  I just remember that Carly practiced piano a lot more than I did, so I assumed her mom was strict, too.  Carly got to skip school the day after attending rock concerts.  I guess my 20-year-old interpretation of my memories from age 12 were a little bit off.

And we talked about the many, many things we remembered from the old days.  We reminisced about elementary school crushes (Andrew for her, Aaron for me) and jealousies (Melissa).  We talked about the awful things we thought and did as kids–or I recalled some awful things I did (accusing aforementioned Melissa of cheating on a test) and she recalled awful things that were done to her (she was bullied in junior high before she moved away).  But here’s the courage of junior-high Carly: she actually confronted the girls who were bullying her and asked them why they were doing it.  They said they didn’t know why, and they stopped.

I could see tenacity like that all over Carly’s life in the stories she told.  She was going make it through and be authentic in the journey.  Oh, and make really good music as a result.  Keep on rockin’ it, Carly!  Whether with the Flaming Lips or to your own tune.

Carly and me at Feed. Her dress shows no traces of the ketchup that exploded from the bottle into her lap.

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I have reached a turning point in the trip.  In fact, I’m turning back to Los Angeles.  I have commitments to students to keep to get them through the fall SATs and ACTs, a big birthday bash of a dear friend to celebrate, and a housing situation to finagle.  At this point, I will return to Los Angeles for a couple months, continue my visits with my southern California friends much like I have with my friends on the road (as opposed to my initial idea of throwing a gigantic party upon my return), catch up on my blogging (finally!), and eventually resume the trip in Michigan where I left off and continue to the east coast and the south.  But, as with everything with this journey….subject to change!  Thanks for continuing to journey with me!

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I spent the Saturday I was in Chicago retrieving my car from Kenosha.  Took the Metra train to Kenosha.  Took a cab to the shop where I’d had my car towed.  Had them jump the car so I could drive it to Sears, where my battery (the problem) was still under warranty.  Instead of the $272 the shop wanted to replace the battery, Sears did it for free.  Love it.

On my drive back to the city, I stopped in Evanston (Big Ten college town #3) for a quick visit with Mark and family.  Mark was a year behind me in grad school, and he is definitely using our training in Entrepreneurial Leadership.  In fact, as his wife Deb pointed out, he always has.  They have never lived off of a regular 9 to 5 income.  Deb working at Starbucks while Mark was in grad school was the closest they ever came.

Right now, Mark does personal training and personal coaching in basketball.  Basically, he tutors high school guys in basketball the way I tutor them in SAT or ACT.  He also does nutrition counseling and health coaching using AdvoCare.  It’s actually a pretty killer entrepreneurial combination.  They have a great apartment smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood of beautiful older homes and have gotten to know some of their neighbors, some of whom are Mark’s clients.  We talked about what it was like to be working with certain families who embody the upper of upper middle class.

I wondered, too, if they had found community in Chicago.  Mark’s cohort in grad school excelled at going through the process with a real sense of unity.  The spouses of the cohortians would also regularly get together, so I can imagine it was difficult for both of them to uproot and move to a new city.  They have found a niche in Chicago.  Deb, especially has a network of other moms she has connected with.  Much like with Joy all the way back in Berkeley, kids can often be a conduit to their parents becoming friends.

It was also really fun to interact with the kids.  Jackson was pretty little when they got to California.  And, since Mark is from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, this little toddler was a Canadian (which I always thought was pretty cool).  Harlow was born right before they left LA, so this was my first time meeting her.  If Mark and Deb and I were talking, Jackson would raise his hand to let us know he had something to say (cute!).  He gave me a very thorough tour of the apartment.  The plan after I left was that they were going to eat dinner and then go swimming, and Harlow already had her swimsuit on.  She was so excited!  We played a couple rounds of hide and seek with Harlow’s stuffed bunny, with hiding places as cryptic as the middle of the kitchen floor.  I was reminded of the beauty and fun of lazy summer evenings of childhood when it seemed to stay light so late that it was hard to ever fall asleep.  And when the fun of hide and seek was the moment of discovery followed by a flow of giggles.

Mark and Deb embody hospitality, which is already being passed down to tour guide Jackson.  It was such a relaxing respite to spend time in their home to detox from the weight of my car fiasco.

(Insert invisible picture here) (sad face)

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After neighborhood basketball adventures, I took the train back downtown and met up with my pseudo-little sister Jen for dinner at Haymarket Pub in the West Randolph area of Chicago.  In a place like Chicago, I can easily get overwhelmed with the plethora of incredible food options, but Jen helped me navigate the neighborhood and it’s culinary choices, leading us to Haymarket.

Jen is the younger sister of my dear friend Catherine.  In recent years, the two of us have developed our own friendship, which I so thoroughly enjoy.  We had to reschedule our initial plans because she was being recognized for a women’s leadership award through work.  Awesome.  She is also a junior member on the board of an arts organization; she volunteers as a tutor; and she just (since our visit) got a puppy!

Jen and I are able to connect on a lot of levels with a depth and a length of knowing and friendship.  There is a closeness that we share that I so dearly treasure.  I met Jen when she was 12 (and Catherine was 14).  I walked with Cat through a lot during our teen years, but I more or less watched Jen from afar.  Jen had a lot to walk through herself, and she has emerged as such a delightful and beautiful woman.  Our time together flowed so effortlessly and had such a undercurrent of authenticity, a flavor of the things of walking through life with your eyes opened.

After our dinner, Jen and I hopped on the bus; she went to run an errand, and I continued south to the Pilsen area of Chicago.  As I continued on the bus, she and I continued to text back and forth: “That was too short!”  “I know, right?!”  It certainly was.

Jen and me on the bus

The Pilsen area is known for its numerous art galleries, and that night, I met up with college friend Dawn and a few of her friends.  This particular evening was a once-a-month artwalk event where the galleries all stay open later for people to peruse.  It was very appropriate for Dawn and I to catch up while looking at some good art, which I’ll explain in a moment.  But first, a few of the night’s special pieces.  This first one was lengthily and humorously titled “The Daring Young Man on the Rickety-ass Old Ladder”:

My favorite pieces of the night were a series of maps that were covered with ink drawings that related to the area depicted in the map.  This is Indonesia–the island of Sumatra is inside the hand drawn on the left side of the map. There was also a map of the Persian Gulf.

Map of Indonesia

The reason that it was so appropriate for Dawn and me to connect over art is that I have always admired her pursuit of creativity.  She is a multi-talented individual, most notably a singer-songwriter.  I have recently been struggling the juxtaposition of creativity and achievement.  I have a desire to pursue creative things, but I also have a desire to achieve, and most often, those desires tend to conflict more than they coincide.  Dawn has found a way to pursue the creative parts of her life and be successful at it.  And she has landed in a great community of creative people, who explore the links between artistry and spirituality.

I think there can be something fairly isolating about being an artist, whether a writer, a painter, or a musician.  The craft must be perfected in the isolation of a practice room or a studio, which is why it’s so critical for artists to be in some kind of community, to give and receive feedback and to gain inspiration from a connected human experience.

So Dawn and I caught up, and I got to know her friends, as we wandered the streets and the galleries, some of which were shared space with the artists’ or gallery owners’ homes.  There was such a vibrancy to this part of town as people were out and about on the streets and the galleries were teeming with new works.  After the galleries closed down, we headed to get boba in Chinatown, where we posed in a pagoda.

Dawn and friends in a pagoda in Chinatown

It was a great Friday night exploring Chicago!

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