It's Only Stuff (The Big Move, Prep Day #2)

Well, today was my final day of bittersweet preparations for the move to St. Louis, MO. The movers came and took away (almost) all of my personal belongings, to be held in a secure space in San Jose until I give them a permanent delivery address in the Central Time Zone. When a dear friend of mine moved several months ago, he put his stuff into storage and told me he got sad seeing it all locked up like that. And I admit that as the movers secured the last box into place on the truck, I actually said, "Bye, bye, stuff" and waved goodbye. But then the foreman said, "No, it's not goodbye. We'll take good care of your stuff and you'll see it all soon."

So as much as this has been an emotional and joyride of a transition period in my life, and as much as I may not wholeheartedly embrace the consumerism culture that I acknowledge I am a part of, it took that moment for me to make a new shift in perspective: all of my stuff is only stuff. Here I was spending my day running final errands and making sure my stuff would be kept safe, that some of my stuff would ship out ahead of me (into the receiving care of another friend in St. Louis), and then I carefully packed the car so that there will be as little as possible visible in the car along the way (and I will only need to grab a backpack with the precious technology stuff in it when I stop along the way). And now here I am on the eve of my move, realizing that all that fuss was just over stuff. Yes, some of the data might be painful to lose in the hardware. Yes, I would hate to arrive in St. Louis and not have appropriate work clothes with me. Yes, it will be comfortable to make this roadtrip with snacks in the front seat and music playing in the car.

But more important than any of that will be the sights I see along the way, the people I may meet in this strangely rushed travel, the memories I will always have in my heart, the incredibly significant friends and acquaintances that have gathered in my life along this journey and all others. There's no way to pack, box, or ship that kind of stuff. And that's the stuff that really matters. So yes, I said goodbye to the material stuff. And I'll be happy to have it all back some day (soon). It's all of that other "stuff" that I am so happy I do not have to depart with and bid "auf wiedersehen" to that is charging my heart and mind and soul right now.

My now vacated and closed storage unit.

So thank you, Storage Unit #3053 for being the safe repository of my stuff these last four months. But to an entire universe of happiness, of possibilities, of lessons, of established histories, of wild identities, of imagined futures, of genuine possibilities, I am even more thankful for the stuff that lies in the repository of my soul: all the good stuff that is coming along with me on this life journey.

Hitting the road in the morning...good night!

Everything Is Everything (The Big Move, Prep Day #1)

As the end of November 2010 draws to its end, so does my time in San Francisco, CA, my home of the last 10+ years. I'm moving to St. Louis, MO in just under two days for a great job, following a hard-to-believe timeline. Friends, relatives, colleagues, and even mere acquaintances have been so kind to wish me well and congratulate me and hope the best for me in this new part of my life.

No escape from Alcatraz: just moving away from San Francisco (for now).

Golden Gate Bridge (from Marina Green).

Golden Gate Bridge (from Crissy Field)

Today I did a lot of pre-packing, laundry, errands, shopping, and tried to smile through a mix of emotions. I even took a lunch break at the Nieman Marcus Rotunda, with a straight-lone view of the top of that store's Christmas tree.

Lunch break at Nieman Marcus.

 
It's hard for me not to get emotional about this move, especially in the midst of holiday activity, and I know that it's normal to feel so much so deeply if one is leaving one's home of so many years. I regret that I have not had time for so many personal goodbyes, but I have been overwhelmed by every act of kindness I have witnessed in this time of transition. I would like to share some of these affirmations here:

"Happiness is inevitable. Enjoy the life you create for yourself." - NB

"I wish you unending success and fulfillment with your new adventure! ...May the wind be at your back, and the road rise to meet you." - ML

 "I'm very proud of you - from one of your biggest fans!" - RR

 "Wow. That is how we do it!" MGA

I often wondered how everyone could be so happy for me when I myself was alternately excited and sad about the move. You've probably heard as often as I have the saying, "Everything happens for a reason." Well, usually I hear that sentence spoken in sad times, as a way of acknowledging the negative emotion and trying to spin it on its head with an acceptance of some other omniscient inevitability. But this afternoon in between Task #17 and Task #18 on my preparation list, it hit me: if everything happens for a reason, then that includes "everything." So my entire life has prepared me for this move, just like it had prepared me for my unemployment before that; and my Ed.D. graduation before that; and every other professional challenge, educational success, friendly joy, broken heart, sorrowful tear, and genuine smile before that. So in the midst of all these emotions and thoughts that come with change, I felt myself starting to embrace not just this move, but all of my life. Because this move isn't just a new job in a new place at a new part of my life: it's just (quite simply and quite naturally) the very latest addition of everything to everything.

Golden Gate Bridge, in all its art deco grandeur.

So thank you, San Francisco, for the last 10 years of everything. It will be hard to leave you, but that will make future returns and reunions all the more special. Back to that task list...awaiting more of everything.

My So-Called Temporary Life of Adventure

This is a long overdue post, so I hope I can make up for all the lost time. With the exception of a movie review, I haven't posted any real "life lessons" since August. When my job was cut at the end of July, I entered a new phase of my life: my full-time job became job searching. I moved into a sublet. I boxed up my belongings and left them in storage. And I have to admit that the first two weeks of that life had me emotionally wrecked: I was in a bad way. Really bad ups and downs and a lot of tears and even more anxiety. But I allowed myself to grieve what was once familiar and moved on, and I have to say that I have grown to love and embrace this time of transition.

If you know my admittedly nerdy fascination with epidemiology, then it should not surprise you that one of the books I salvaged from the bedside reading pile before everything went into storage was a non-fiction collection of stories by Richard Preston (perhaps best known for the brilliant book "The Hot Zone"), titled "Panic In Level 4." In this collection, Preston capably displays science reportage at its best: telling tales of virus hunters, super-computers and the number pi, threats to forest ecology, and even a rare genetic disorder that causes the most horrific and bizarre form of self-mutilation. (Fans of critical hermeneutics may even appreciate his notes in the introduction chapter about his way and method of nonfiction writing - he is a master at using details of a story to humanize science.) In one of his stories, he defines the concept of an "ecotones:" the biological environment that is the transition area between two other environments. Ecotones are the boundary points between two ecosystems like the boundaries between forests and grasslands or between rocky cliffs and ocean seashores. It turns out that life thrives in ecotones: they are where species and climates and feeding zones bump up against each other and allow for tremendous biological activity.

"Panic In Level 4," by Richard Preston

So I began to think of my new life of temporary unemployment as my own ecotone: I was living my life on the edge between 10 years of the familiar working life in San Francisco and some other new chapter that was yet to unfold. I filled my days with job search tasks: online searches, online applications, even some cold calls and classified ad responses. I applied to education, non-profit, and for-profit jobs. And I tried to stay patient though the "hurry up...and wait" application/screening processes. Sometimes I would reward myself with a movie or a short road trip or a theater outing. I made finding cheap eats in San Francisco a game to fit into my budget. When I changed my perspective and took comfort in the security of my careful advance planning and found confidence in my own skills, abilities, personality, and personhood, I was able to appreciate brand new lessons in life all around me. Lessons like:

• It's perfectly OK to voluntarily disconnect from all technology even though it is still frustrating when technology is turned off inconveniently for you, without warning.
• Living with roommates (something I have not done since 1989) can be great if you are lucky enough to not only have people who share a home space with you, but who really form a community. (Thank you, Guys of 105 Noe!)
• When everyone else is rushing around, routine tasks like grocery shopping and commuting on public transportation become full of the tiniest surprises: finding a perfect bunch of bananas that everyone else has overlooked under the unripe ones, or seeing human and animal faces in the details of building architecture that nobody else sees because not only are they not looking up and around, but they are burying their gazes into cell phones or refusing to look around at their world.
• Silencing the world with a wall of sound wile working on a task is still not as much fun as hearing one person laughing without restraint.
• Living without TV forces one to be a more discerning consumer about which half-hours and hours are actually worth the streaming time the next day. (Yes, my list would include "Glee.")
• Cooking and eating meals is a privilege to really appreciate how much you have and how much the world can provide.
• Having a good spirit makes a person truly attractive.
• There is no end to exploring the city you live in, when you are free from the limits of your home and work neighborhoods only.
• There is a variety of true friendships: some are more helpful than others, some more funny than others, some are more work than others, but all are pretty life-affirming.

And through it all, whenever anyone asked me (with all the best intentions) how I was doing, I was able to say I was happy. I tried to eat well, live lean, stay healthy, go for walks and practice yoga, stay informed about current events and popular culture, and I have been lucky to be surrounded by and supported by new and old friends from near and far. After that rough patch of emotions that I had to face as I entered this ecotone in my life, I really thrived in my own boundary zone, knowing that this is all a horizon to something else that will happen in my life. One of the shows I got to see during this temporary time was "West Side Story" and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics took on a whole new meaning for me:

Could be!
Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away,
Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!

Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due,
Gonna come true,
Coming to me!

Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be great!

With a click, with a shock,
Phone'll jingle, door'll knock,
Open the latch!
Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon;
Catch the moon,
One-handed catch!

Around the corner,
Or whistling down the river,
Come on, deliver
To me!
Will it be? Yes, it will.
Maybe just by holding still,
It'll be there!

Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy,
Meet a guy,
Pull up a chair!
The air is humming,
And something great is coming!
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Maybe tonight . . .

It's been a good ecotone life for me: temporarily living on the boundary between a good past and a good future. So I can't complain about that at all. ...But I guess I should have been blogging about it more!

Movie Review: "Monsters" (2010)

For some time now, I have been intrigued by the trailer to this movie and some of the advance press that included this plot synopsis: "Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border." It seemed more mysterious than outright scary (despite the title that a 'fraidy cat like me usually shies away from), and I was also fascinated to see how a science fiction alien invasion story could be told by what I assumed would be a small cast (and the end credits bore this out: two virtual unknowns with a lot of TV credits, directed by the man who also wrote it, did the the visual effects, did the production design, and did the cinematography).

Last year's "District 9" wowed a lot of people (to the point that it nabbed some Academy Award accolades) because it had dazzling special effects that were highly convincing and it felt like a familiar big budget Hollywood movie with weapons, explosions, and a surprisingly unknown cast. But it also did what any great science fiction story does: it uses the metaphors allowed within the imagined parameters of science fiction to explore truths about our own real humanity. In the case of "District 9" those themes included immigration, isolationism, xenophobia, home, family, and identity. (Much like successful vampire stories typically explore the question of what good can come from someone's (eternal) life, and successful zombie stories explore the question of what really defines the human (versus the non-human) experience.)

Well, "Monsters" is no "District 9," but I did enjoy it, maybe even more because it caught me off-guard (several times). The intimacy of the small cast allowed the metaphoric sci-fi explorations to unfold in the context of a "ships passing in the night" romance. Except that these ships were also passing through a Mexico/U.S. borderland of extraterrestrial invasion as well. (Expect Internet searches for Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able (the actors) and Gareth Edwards (the director and other production credits) to markedly increase with this movie and what might be its greater DVD release success). There are very few scary jolts or bombastic explosive scenes, but there are some very nice visuals and visual effects (makes sense if the movie is directed by the man also calling the shots for the camera work and special effects). The intentionality of situating this story as passage (escape?) from Mexico into the United States (home?) carries an intelligent subtlety that holds the subcontext questions: what is alien to us and how do we deal with what is foreign? Of course the movie shows the reality of a highly militarized reaction but it also offers glimpses of hope for wistful diplomacy or trans-species understanding. The straining love story adds a layer of emotion to this movie that makes it much more atmospheric and evocative than your usual sci-fi shoot-em-up. Visual choices like the location shots in Galveston, TX make the "disaster/evacuation zone" feeling quite real. In its pacing, the movie feels more like an independent romance than a sci-fi movie: there are quite a few smart gems of dialogue and single lines that surprise throughout the journey.

This movie ultimately makes a statement that turns the tables on how we might define "extraterrestrial" and "intelligence" in our solar system. Maybe it has to do with what all star-crossed lovers struggle with: a search for genuine connection in a lonely universe. For me, a matinee well spent.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/