my life has been in transition for the last few months. i guess i could argue that my life has been in transition for as long as i’ve been alive. short spurts of one thing before it is traded in for another. and i love it. i get the chance to start new things…to start anew. i have the opportunity to shake things up before they really get to settle down in the first place.
of course, that makes habit hard for me. the notion of having a place that i always go to or a thing that i always do escapes me. it used to be a family trait. but recently they have succumbed. now christmas eve is at my aunt’s house and a certain day is marked for making holiday pies.
i can’t tell you what day because i’m rarely in town long enough to participated. in fact, i didn’t know it was a tradition until last year…i’d already missed its inception and transition into something repeatable.
and now, four weeks in san diego and i seem to have found some form of habit. not any one activity that i do – just a feeling of settled that i haven’t felt in quite a few weeks. knowing that every other night is a guacamole night. that sunday is football day. that beautiful days mean the beach or the park. those things have become as close to habit as i typically have. and it feels strange to be away from them.
but here i am. in texas again. preparing myself for my next big transition when i will once again shake up my life and watch as it attempts to settle itself before my next big shake.
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Sydney, 15 Dec. (AKI) – An emergency session of the state parliament in Sydney, Australia, has approved greater powers for the police, after the city has been struck by racial and mob violence. The New South Wales assembly decision means police will have more power to lock down trouble spots, confiscate vehicles and impose alcohol bans on risk areas. The maximum sentence for rioting has been increased from 10 years to 15 years.
State Premier Morris Iemma said the new laws were designed to protect the silent majority of law-abiding Australians from hoodlums.
Eleven people were arrested on Wednesday night, in posession of metal instruments, baseball bats and a knuckleduster, as more than 450 officers again patrolled Sydney’s streets to counter the threat of more “smash and bash” attacks.
The violence which has scarred Sydney and tarnished its reputation erupted last weekend. A mob of 5,000 white youths, many of them drunk, descended on Sydney’s southern Cronulla Beach , fought a series of skirmishes with police and attacked people of Arab appearance.
The racial violence continued for three nights, escalating into retaliatory attacks and vandalism on churches.
Police are calling for calm following reports of text messages calling for retaliatory strikes this weekend. According to local media, more than 1,000 extra officers will be deployed in the suburbs of Sydney.
Tags: soapbox
I’ve been in a panic this last week. Trying to pull my New Zealand stuff together has proved more daunting than I expected. I’ve done visa applications before, but this one was crucial. All of a sudden I had to provide my work history, my medical history. All of a sudden my gypsy lifestyle has come to haunt me.
New Zealand has strict immigration rules…and despite my visit plans of only a single year I still had to account for time, anytime in excess of three months, in countries that are TB risks. Only those in the last five years. Easy. Right?
Let me see…in the last five years I’ve been in roughly 12 African countries, China, Sri Lanka and Guatemala. Needless to say, those countries forced me to have the required chest x-ray to prove I don’t have a TB history.
Here’s where it gets painful. Insurance-less, I had to find a doctor and have an appointment to get a referral so that I could go to an imaging center to have the x-rays done.
My loquacious nature paid off. I didn’t realize that my doctor was a travel doctor. We compared stories of countries and shared thoughts of which countries were interesting to visit. What would have been five minutes turned into 20 or 30 which in turn became a $65 discount. I like that part a lot.
All together I pulled off the application…I think. Now it is a hurry up and wait game, as I should have done this around august. Any prayers you have to speed this along are greatly appreciated.
Tags: transition, travel
don’t panic, your favorite crash test dummy has not had another run…knock on wood…but i did watch crash.
more than crash i’ve lived crash for the last few days.
if you haven’t seen it, it is a movie about people in their everyday lives and how race crashes up against those lives in expected and unexpected ways.
kris and i drove to mexico to eat lobster. on the way back, lingering in the traffic that piles up on that side of the border we were flagged down by a police officer. we all knew he wasn’t telling the truth when he said we’d crossed three lanes of traffic. he also made it quite clear that we would “have to go down town right then to possibly see a judge to clear it all up”. we read, “give me money and be on your way”. only kris was trying to reason in a situation that had less to do with reason and much more to do with power dynamics. we had none.
so i sat with my hand on his leg trying to discreetly remind him that you can’t reason with the abuse of power and he continued to try and find reason in a situation that had none.
cars zipped past us. we sat and our officer talked and talked, holding his pen up as if to write when he was called away by his superior. apparently we weren’t an easy enough shake down…as we didn’t offer any money, or his boss was truly ready to move traffic. either way, we were waved on.
but there we were, visibly foreign. visibly in a position of otherness. easily taken advantage of, easily intimidated.
a few nights later, head shaven close and dressed like the student he is, kris found himself in a conversation with someone who assumed his politics were much scarier than they are.
and there he was – assumed to be something he wasn’t. assumed to have something in common with someone he had little in common with despite similarities in appearance. assumed ideologies and appreciations. assumptions…assumptions…
and we crash and we bang along.
Tags: movies
it is the only tulane shirt i own. a gift from someone even before i enrolled in school…a gentle nudging in the public health direction. that’s neither here nor there…
the point is that i was wearing jeans and a tulane school of public health t-shirt. green. simple. unrelated to sports.
as i walked toward my gate to board the plane a man comes running up next to me to ask me what team i play for at tulane. taken aback from the unexpected mention of my school i tell him i don’t. then, absently, i ask him if he goes to tulane.
no. he’s a coach.
but in my head, as my mind clears i realize i’m disturbed by his question.
why would he assume it had to be sports? it wasn’t a jersey. i wasn’t wearing full warm ups or anything that resembles a uniform. but still i got the question.
and my mind argues that because he is a coach he associates all tulane shirts with athletic shirts…but i don’t really buy it. it isn’t a convincing argument. the truth is there aren’t a ton of black folks at tulane…and no matter what i try to convince myself, i believe that he assumed that i had to have gotten there from my physical ability.
even so – my mind comttited to that thought- i’m torn and tortured by the thought that maybe he read my shirt wrong…public health could have looked like…what could it have looked like?
when i was in high school i won a mcdonald’s black history makers of tomorrow scholarship. it was an essay contes. two of the other winners were guys at a neighboring school. when they went looking for suits for the banquet they were chatted up by one of the salepeople.
basic small talk.
she says, “what’s the occasion? ” they answer, “scholarship banquet.”
“really, what sport do you play?”
i am tired these days. given the option, sleep is a beautiful thing for me…something that signals the end of a long day of doing and thinking. signals a chance to recharge for whatever the next day has to throw at me.
but in the last few months sleep has been less about recharging and more about bizarre stories playing out in my head. sometimes nightmarish and sometimes just strange combinations of people and events.
last night…or rather this morning…i awoke to the story of some woman – i don’t know who – at my sister’s house – it kind of looked like it but it wasn’t exact -and babysitting a grown me. the woman was a bully and was taking my money from me and other things out of my purse.
i finally started to reason with her by talking about her own family – her mother and holidays at home and i a managed to hide my purse from her. but then her brother appeared and began to torment me and searched for the hidden objects to take with him.
at the end two people got dropped off at the door and the woman half of my tormentors got in a truck. then i woke up.
the strange thing is that i didn’t recognize any of these people and i felt uneasy while sleeping and when i awoke. and even now, as i write this. i know nightmare doesn’t explain the feelings of dis-ease that haunt me this morning but i promise you…sweet dreams these are not.
home is getting more and more ambiguous for me. not because i’m currently displaced, but because what or where i consider home has shifted over the years and not true replacement has taken hold.
when i was in college home was easily my folk’s house. houston. that was where my stuff was…where i went for holidays. houston was home up until i returned from south africa. that was when i noticed the subtle changes of not only “my house” but how i felt about the house. my folks had rearranged stuff…boxed up things and stored them in closets and the attic. stuff was taken off the walls and they were painted.
and even though the house still stores a good bit of my stuff (more so after katrina) i feel more guest than i ever have now. proof that it is time for me to put down roots of my own…make my own home for others to visit.
only i’m not ready yet.
i don’t know where i’d like to live for more than two or three years. i can’t picture dropping $1000 on a solid piece of furniture that only i have owned in life. i’m about to turn 30 and everything i own fits into my childhood bedroom. evrything i need fits in the backseat of my car.
i have to admit the feeling is a bit uneasy. homeless for lack of finding of home.
and i’m lucky…my sister and my brother in law share theirs with me with nothing but welcoming arms – my parents continue to do so just as they have over the last 29 years. but my own…my own place or respite…a place to hang photos, store memories, invite others to take refuge…i don’t have that yet.
it is my choice. i realize that. it is a choice i make every time i pack a bag and a passport and jump on a plane…a choice i enjoy…but a choice that makes my time in the states feel much different than it ever has.
Tags: me-ness, transition
i’d like to blame the feeling i have on anyone but myself. my sense of otherness…my sense that i need to decide what i want with my life this very instant. i’d like to blame the sincerely curious questions and those that ask them ,for the feeling of dis-ease that overtakes me when i try to decide the forever angle of my life.
but i can’t. i could answer that “i don’t know” “i’m not sure” “for the moment it is this…”. but instead i try to craft answers that sound right.something to aspire to.
that is, in part, why i went to guatemala. my carefully crafted plans took a direction toward disaster…namely katrina…and all of a sudden my world was in chaos again. all the worse because i had a plan to keep it at bay and in an instant it was gone. and all of a sudden i was forced to decide…or rather…redecide my future.
should i have taken classes this semester so i could graduate when i had originally planned? should i have stayed on with fema and made money to pay for the remainder of the schooling i have? should i move to california? should i give second chances? should i be given second chances?
i have these questions, some more pressing than others, because forever is forever. sounds stupid…but the choices i make now affect my life to come. some more than others.
and while some changes of my inclination may lead to intersting times and people – like my spontaneous decision to go to guatemala…others leave more lasting impressions than a bruise that dissolves over time…something more visible more substantial – like scar tissue and the dark coloring that encases it.
Tags: me-ness, transition
Strange Behavior at the F.D.A.
- New York Times Published: November 15, 2005
Congressional investigators have documented some highly suspect maneuvering behind the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last year to reject over-the-counter sales of the controversial morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B. The investigation, by the Government Accountability Office, stopped short of asserting that political considerations had led agency officials to overrule their own experts and outside advisers. But the most plausible inference one can draw is that politics or ideology was allowed to trump science as higher-ups at the agency searched for rationales to keep access to the contraceptive restricted.
The investigators looked only within the F.D.A. and did not consider any communications between agency officials and other parts of the executive branch, so they had no way to determine whether political pressure was exerted from elsewhere. But they did find four unusual aspects of the decision-making process that look hard to justify.
First, directors of the offices that would normally handle the issue disagreed with the decision and did not sign the rejection letter. Second, high-level managers intervened more in this case than in any other case involving a switch from prescription to nonprescription status.
Third, and most shocking, the heads of several key offices said they had been told by high-level management that the switch would be denied months before their reviews of the application were even completed, a contention that high officials deny. Fourth, the rationale used to justify the rejection was a novel one: the agency expressed concern that younger adolescents might engage in unsafe sexual behavior with Plan B available, an age-based criterion never before raised for an over-the-counter contraceptive.
It seems pretty clear that those running the agency were looking desperately for a reason – any reason – to prevent easy access to a contraceptive that is a red flag to the administration’s conservative base. In doing so, they tarnished the reputation of an agency whose decisions are supposed to be based on science.
Tags: soapbox
i like cats. more than dogs. a lot more than dogs. cats are independent. some see this as moody, because a dangling piece of fish doesn´t sway their affections. but i see it as sincerity. if they don´t like you no amount of kibbles and bits or meow mix will change their mind. determined. yeah…i like cats.
only, they are a little sneaky. in that free way they have of roaming that i model pieces of my own life after, i see the downside too. if you don´t want them on your bed…too bad. don´t want them on the counter breathing on your food…better put it in a drawer or cabinet so they don´t wander over when they feel like.
and if you DON´T want them pissing on your backpack…well you should know better than to put it anywhere short of a bank vault!
alas, i think the hostle (not hostile…although maybe that too) cat peed on my backpack.
some would argue that if it did i would know, no questions asked. i have a friend who had a shirt peed on and spent the morning in church thinking some other poor schlep stunk to high heaven when really it was her, but i´m not as certain.
what i know is that my pack seemed damp in a spot…not unusual in the recent bout of humidity up here in peten…and that i smelled somethign not quite april fresh…not unusual given that i´ve been traveling for a month and only have 3 1/2 sets of clothes (yes i do wash them)…even so, i can´t get the image of my family´s dog sniffing me over and over again because my stuff smelled like puppies from wednesday, and now this…i can see the cat sniffing my other dog and deciding she like her scent better.
regardless…i´m headed home. the end of my trip less triumphant than the rest as i have been felled by bad food. not the food my family prepared for me all this time, or the food on the side of the road that i can´t help myself from buying for cheap and eating in the quickness…but the $10 meal i bought on my last night here (it may not seem like much but by guatemalan standards that is a pricey meal!).
so pray to the bathroom gods please…and get me home soon…
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