shoes 2.0

On a whim, I decided to upgrade my sneakers today. I found the pair on the right at a thrift store. I am not one to buy shoes used, but these were barely worn and there's a recession on. Jon asked if I sprayed them with Lysol before I put them on. I did not, because I didn't get a germy vibe from them. If I had I would not have bought them. When I got them home I realized the resemblance they bore to the old shoes. They look like shoe cousins, and I like that. Hope your weekend has been as exciting as mine.

while we're in a crisis

I've been doing some pretty mediocre research for work today, that is after I got home from work. At actual work today I called someone in Argentina and we conversed on the regulations of importing wine into the US. (Did you know you can't ship alcohol to a home in Maryland?!?) I was supposed to "work from home" on Friday and instead of putting a dedicated four hours into it, I spent a good hour and a half working on one article about Argentine wine imports and spent the rest of the day doing the homewife things I really wanted to check off my list. One more reason I wouldn't do well working from home. That and the long list of instant watch movies I've queued on Netflix. I'm moving farther from the point. So, tonight I was researching bands coming to Portland with the motivation of "please, please just get this over with and don't worry about leaving evidence of solid research." After finishing a handful and then finishing off The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I did some personal research on David Bazan, who just happens to be playing in Portland in a few days. I've been milling over the idea that in these times of economic crisis when a well meaning girl can't find a part time job and has an overflowing handful of laid off friends, David Bazan should be played on the bus and at the bars and softly during the nightly news to give us some perspective or proper footing. You would listen for quite a while and start to despair over our collective condition as you sang along, but then you would get to a quiet song toward the end of a Pedro the Lion album when Bazan sounds more like your mother calmly shhh-ing into your ear as she brushed back your hair. It will be okay. We will doubt and rail and be an American version poor for a little bit, but we will be okay. But you don't believe, when I say that it will be alright. Alright.

I know I'm voicing my opinion a bit late (we've known about this recession things for a while now), but instead of headlines with exclamation marks for words and more reports on stocks and unemployment, I think we should quietly sit and listen as David Bazan sings.

historic

Jon is working away preparing his lesson for tomorrow. Yesterday, he was doing much of the same, putting together videos and information to teach the kids about Martin Luther King Jr. My thought was: If they get a day off to remember someone, they better know why we remember them. Jon asked his kids, "Who is Martin Luther King Jr. and why is he important to American history?" One reply, according to Jon, was that MLK freed the slaves. Not quite, Jimmy. Tomorrow, Jon is showing video from today's historic inauguration. I don't know if the kids will really grasp the depth and significance of the event, and admit that being only 25 I can't imagine all that it means to some Americans, but I don't think Jon can deny at least presenting it to them.

I got into the Portland Monthly office just before 9am today and saw people hovering around computer screens watching a live stream of the inauguration. I wanted so badly to watch, but was too timid to join the editors, intern as I am. Instead I listened as a nearby abandoned computer showed Joe Biden taking the oath of office. During Obama's speech another intern asked where everyone was at and we (bravely) joined most everyone else. Strange that we were huddled around a computer, and there were no tv's in the office. I felt a tension those first few minutes at work, knowing a monumental event was taking place and yet feeling I couldn't enter into it. I was moved as I heard the choppy stream of video playing President Obama's swearing in. An excitement jumped in my stomach, the same feeling I had the night we watched the election results in November.

It is interesting to sense my furthering entrance into adulthood as historic events take place and I feel grounded in their importance. I must watch and listen. I must sit and be still, taking it in. When the planes and panic struck on Sept. 11, 2001, I remember exactly where I was and how I felt the days following. I prayed that it would go away, but knew that the world had changed with that day. Still, I was only 18 and wasn't sure what to do with the information and emotions that came with those events. Now Jon and I are seeking to participate in and share the historic nature of the election of President Obama. I am becoming more adult in my mind, because I am becoming more aware. And I can hear, like an echo, my words to my children recalling these events years from now, though I do not think they will know enough to really listen.

routine

When I lived in London (and I wish it had been longer than four months and not four years ago) I took the same trains at about the same time three days a week to work at a magazine office in North London. Three days. Same lines. Same time. And it was a couple months in that I realized I never ran into the same people. I was amazed I never saw at least one familiar face in all that travel. And then the same week I realized this, I was boarding the train when someone from my office (was his name Graham? it is English enough) tapped me on the shoulder and offered the "Hiya, Lynette" I'd been waiting for. And the next day I ran into my friend Antony rounding the corner a block away from where I lived. It felt magical to run into someone. In my mind, that is the definition of a big city.

When I was driving back into Des Moines, heading west on I-80 the summer after I lived in London, I was almost to Ankeny when I saw the one skyscraper Des Moines can truly offer the skyline. I almost cried I was so excited to be back to my church, my ministry, my home. That one tall building among the fields is how I define a small city.

The past few weeks I've been taking the no. 20 bus west into downtown, Monday through Friday, usually boarding at 8.28am. I get back on the bus heading east at approximately 1:03pm. Though the routine is new, there are already a handful of faces I recognize. We ride the bus together, cross the same street after getting off at the same stop. She is blind. He is always wearing jeans and adidas soccer shoes. There are handfuls of others who still register as strangers, but peering out the bus window on two separate occasions I saw people I actually knew, first from work then from school, and Portland began to feel much smaller than I anticipated.

In college I kept being tricked into thinking I saw people from high school or church back home on campus. I thought it came from a desire to bring the disparate parts of my life into one social circle. But now, surprised by the familiarity my routine is offering three weeks in, I seem to want more anonymity, especially when traveling about. I want to find the little pockets of the city where I am known rather than feeling recognized along the way.