Lightbulb Over Head Blog

Sooner or later you will face a brutal reality:

Your high school reunion.

The fear will climb you like a maypole and you will think your are thirty pounds fatter than you actually are. You will check the guest list for your high school crushes or old boyfriends and be warmed by those old flames, followed by an endless panic attack concerning seeing them again. You’ll destroy your closet looking for the perfect ensemble and plan hair and makeup for a week ahead of time. Moreover, you’ll plan how to describe your job so that you don’t sound like a glorified receptionist.

You say to yourself + 30 imaginary pounds in the mirror, “Oh college, how have you failed me so completely?”

Then the day arrives. It’s the moment of truth.

Results may vary after this point. I can only speak for myself.

A certain amount of anticipation and dread accompanied my decision to attend my high school reunion, but I never struggled with whether or not to go. I knew from the moment I got that letter inviting me to “The School by the Sea” for my 5th year reunion that I would be there.

Let me explain. My high school education wasn’t what you would call normal. I went to boarding school one thousand miles away from home. When I tell new acquaintances this, they usually react in the following way.

Wide-eyed with wonderment and a mischievous gleam in their eye they ask, “What did you do?”

This reaction makes me laugh because so many people can’t imagine sending their son or daughter of to school across the country at the tender age of fourteen. They figure you must have done something so horrible that you had be sent away to “learn to respect your limits or your elders” or both.

Let’s set the record straight. I wasn’t packed off and sent to boarding school because I’m some sort of juvenile delinquent. I chose to leave home.

See, I always loved summer camp. I went to Camp Seafarer in North Carolina for 8 years and worked there as a counselor for two. I wouldn’t be who I am today without my experiences there. The first year I went, I was ten. I was a shy girl who barely spoke up except to say incredibly awkward things. I was the kind of child who could play on a playground for hours and not bother to learn the names of the other children I was playing with because I was too terrified to ask. Facing a month away from home was frightening and exciting, but when I got there, I slowly came out of my shell. I blossomed, some might say. I went out to activities every day and set goals for myself, striving every day to achieve them. I learned how to sail, how to tie a bowline knot, and how to jump a hurdle on horseback. It was at Camp Seafarer that I was asked to dance by a boy for the first time. There were a lot of firsts at camp, and the best part of it all was that I was in control of my own destiny.

I’m an only child, you see. Every step of the way up until that point, my parents had been there guiding, supporting, micromanaging, and frogmarching me towards some undisclosed success. There are advantages and disadvantages to being the sole object of your mother and father’s love. I was given every possible opportunity; piano lessons, ice skating lessons, vacations, tutors, and educational trips. Anything I asked for, I got and usually more. Every time I soared I was rewarded and every time I fell, I was supported, analyzed, and talked through how to improve upon or avoid this mistake again. I never had that integral sink or swim moment.

However, at Camp Seafarer, I was in control. I scheduled my activities and I auditioned for plays. When I failed, it was up to me to fix it. When I succeeded, I simply basked in the glow of a job well done. It was enough because it was all mine.

Back in Chicago, I went to a middle school that ended in eighth grade and when I reached that point, I had to apply to high schools. I applied to every private school in the city, including my own personal Jesuit nightmare, St. Ignatius College Preperatory School. When I visited, I hated it. The students seemed dispassionate as they marched to classes in their uniforms. They answered questions when they had to and not because they wanted to. They were smart, make no mistake, but I couldn’t see myself fitting in. As the year forged on, I became restless. I wasn’t particularly happy about any of the choices of schools I had applied to thus far.

One day, I saw a friend of mine looking through a boarding school brochure. Inside its laminated story book pages there were kids on bicycles, grassy quads, blue skies, pine trees, and red track fields. It showed kids making clay bowls on spinning wheels and singing in a capella groups. I knew that I could probably find some of those things at the private schools in Chicago, but an idea had formed in my head. Judging by my success at camp, perhaps I could achieve more away from the loving arms of my parents then I could within their reach.

With my parent’s permission, I applied to boarding schools all over the east coast. The next fall, I found myself at Tabor Academy in a dorm with twenty other girls, most from the area around school, whereas I was 1,000 miles away from home, and completely out of my element.

I had the unique opportunity to decide who I was. No one knew me. I could make first impressions on an entire community. Even knowing this, I was terribly afraid I would make some awful blunder.

The first few nights there, I sat on one of the granite benches on the water front. Even though I had worked so hard to get away from home, I missed it. I knew my mother and father would have had some useful knowledge to impart. All they way to school, my parents had pelted me with so much advice that I couldn’t see straight when we arrived. I couldn’t wait for them to leave me the hell alone. As we hugged goodbye till Thanksgiving, my mother wagged her finger. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” she said with great reverence. Afterward, that piece of Polonius’ advice from Hamlet has served as their final words to me whenever they drop me off at my current place of residence.

The seabreeze tossed my thick bush of brown hair across my face as I looked out over Buzzards Bay. All of their advice was slipping through my fingers. I was here to make my way without them.

Sometimes, I thought, you should be careful what you wish for.

I stayed at Tabor for four years. The first two were hellish and I was unhappy. I wanted to be wonderful at science and sports, but that just wasn’t in the cards. Nothing seemed to come naturally to me, least of all social aptitude. No one enjoyed being friends with a stuck up city girl who loved Star Wars and sang the Moulin Rouge version of  “Lady Marmalade” at least fifty times a day in her dorm room while everyone else was trying to study. It wasn’t until I laid anchor in the theater and music community that I found a foothold for myself at Tabor. Teachers and students started looking at me differently. They knew my name and they didn’t call me out on dress code infractions as much. I did the musical every year and toured with my a capella group every spring. It was a damn fine gig if I do say so myself. My last two years at Tabor were some of the happiest in my life. My friends were like family and theater was a dream. I felt so lucky to be there every day.

And so it was that I entered highschool wanting to be an astronaut and left with a passion for the stage, headed to New  York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, no less. I graduated with awards for contribution to theater and choral music and I left thinking I knew a lot more about myself than I would have if I had gone to school back at home in Chicago. My parents were still extremely proud, and supportive, but I had done this for myself.

I had no idea what awaited me in New York. I knew I would get through it as I had gotten through life at Tabor, but I was in no way prepared for my first year there, let alone the other three. It was filled with art, non-sexual nakedness, dance, shock, and student rush tickets to Broadway shows. I was back in an urban environment, pulsing with energy, buzzing with life. I was filled with passion for what I was doing every single day. Imagine: No more math classes. It was heavenly. I thank my lucky stars every day that my parents let me go and paid for my education at Tisch.

Now, it’s a year after my graduation from NYU and I’m living the life of a starving artist. Like everyone else in America, I have felt the pain of our declining economy, losing my job and not being able to get a new one for four months at a time. In December, I broke up with the man I can’t stop loving. In January, I saved a suicidal room mate’s life when I found her bleeding out in the bathtub. In February, I lost a dear friend and collaborator to a successful suicide attempt. By March, I was still jobless and was feeling the desperate strain of my independent reality weigh on me heavily every second of every single day. This is my life, I thought. I can’t stand my life right now.

It had been almost a year since I had performed in a full scale production. I could feel my life blood and passion begging for attention like a poorly tended hearth living in the pit of my stomach. My skin was going numb.

That’s when I got the letter inviting me back to Tabor Academy for my high school reunion.

How can I face all of these wonderfully smart and successful people? I thought. I’ll be a laughing stock again… or worse, they won’t recognize me at all.

I’m not fearless, but I like to think I have a bit more backbone than to let a few momentary insecurities stop me from going through such an important right of passage.

The truth is, as the day approached, I realized how much I had missed that community. I had spent so much of my life pushing forward and away from anything or anyone that had nurtured me along the way, but now I dearly missed the cradle of support that I got from my parents, teachers, and friends at Tabor. I had been a ship my whole life, struggling to break free from my mooring, but now I was ready to return to port, more ready than I ever thought I would be.

As I arrived back on campus, my heart pounded in my chest. My body felt weak, almost euphoric. Many of my classmates had remained in the same area and saw each other more often, but true to form I had left the nest and sailed into uncharted waters.

The whole weekend was like a glorious out of body experience. People I knew well and people I hadn’t all asked how I’d been and seemed to care about my response. I realized that I cared about theirs and I was proud of their numerous accomplishments. I remembered more first and last names than I thought I would. Seeing my teachers struck such a resonant chord with me. They had spent four years as my surrogate parents, setting me up for success, talking me through rough patches, and inviting me for Sunday afternoon tea. The whole reunion was like a warm celebratory ritual with dancing, drinking, and storytelling.

Near the end of the evening I was laughing with a friend who had gone with me to the Caribbean aboard the school’s tall ship to do an on-site marine studies class. We were resting our feet as the rest of our classmates danced the night away. He asked me what I was up to and I told him about the play I was writing, my novel, my new apartment, and how much i enjoyed the process of developing new musicals.

“You’re living the dream.” He laughed and smiled at me.

Until he said that, I had completely forgotten that I was.

At the end of the weekend, I felt my ship had been thoroughly resuplied. I had collected information and maps, and made plans for new adventures, confident that I could sail across the fated sea with a warm wind at my back.

I have decided that once Odysseus returned to Ithaca, he must have longed for another voyage.

I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in this:

Sooner or later, everyone will drop anchor in New York City.

Be it a year, a semester abroad, or a long weekend, people from all around the world will pay a visit to the place my father reverently calls “The Center of the Universe.”

I’ve said a few disparaging or disheartening things about this urban labyrinth, but I wouldn’t be living here if I didn’t love it. However, I’m not so in love with this city that I can’t recognized the misplaced overconfidence in this statement.

There is an undeniable dream-like quality that accompanies the uttering of the words “New York.” I want to be a part of it. My little home is on the 100th floor. The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. It’s the city that never sleeps. Lets face it, if Amy Adams endorses New York City as the perfect place to unfold a fairy tale in her movie Enchanted, I’m inclined to believe her. She’s just so darn cute!

In my five years living here, I’ve ventured to tourist hot-spots like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve also discovered my own treasures, like the gorgeous story-book fountain by City Hall that is lit with gas lamps, their flames flickering like smoldering ballerina feet in the night. I’ve enjoyed a disparate array of cuisines from street food to five star restaurants. No matter how long I’m here, the infinite well of the city provides me with more scope for the imagination and my taste buds. Where else can you get pad thai delivered to your door at 3 AM?

I love the ability to disappear amongst the metal spires of skyscrapers and at the same time, I stand by the fact that even in this massive city, I still run into friends on the street. They vary from close friends to long lost coworkers. While this may not be everyone’s last stop, it certainly makes everyone’s “must see” list. I’ve crossed paths with almost every important person in my life while treading the metropolitan asphalt.

People always want to visit me here to get a proper tour from a “real New Yorker.” I love having them and it’s incredibly convenient and cost effective for me. Like Hermes, the Greek god of hospitality, I accept all visitors and newcomers with dutiful open arms, suggesting interesting off-the-beaten-path attractions and helping foreigners find the best subway routes- and I’m not the only one! Once, when my mom was on business here for her law firm, it was raining heavily and a man saw her without an umbrella and promptly walked her all the way back to her hotel, not taking no for an answer. When they arrived, he said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you New Yorkers aren’t nice.” Then he promptly disappeared into the sea of passing umbrellas leaving no name and no trace.

However, I find I’m leaving the city less and less. It makes me ponder how this affects my mental health and most importantly my sense of perspective. New York might be a centrifuge for culture and commerce, but I’m not sure that it really is the center of the universe and without question, it isn’t the only place that matters inside of it.

New York sometimes feels like an inescapable womb in the process of breeding and evolving a new strain of subhuman. I shall call them:

Turtle People.

Just kidding.

But not really. Let’s take a ride, shall we?

When you decide to live in New York City, you run the risk of becoming a Turtle Person. I once stumbled up on this phenomena, and by stumbled upon I mean coined this term myself, while discussing what a battle it is to navigate the NYC subway system, pick up your morning coffee, and arrive at work unscathed and on time. I was commiserating with my friend, Pam, about how alone you can feel even in a packed subway car and how everyone moves through their day with their head inside their shell until they require food or some other service, and then they pop their heads out, blazing with this incredibly unattractive, blinding sense of entitlement. If two Turtle People pop their heads out of their shells at the same time…

The results could be disasterous.

This is the danger of letting New York trap you. which I don’t necessarily mean in a physical sense. It’s very easy to get sucked into a grueling routine. Every weekday, when I plunge down into the subway at rush hour, I begin to feel my turtle shell forming and hardening. I bend my elbows, clench my fists, and forge ahead through the flow of people towards the turn-styles. I used my shoulders defensively, protecting my iPhone like a linebacker driving the ball through a veritable phalanx of opposition. I brace myself as I weed through people rushing at me, trying just as fervently to go in the opposite direction, all of our shells thickening as we advance deeper into the underbelly of the city. I arrive at the doors of my train as they are closing. In my way: A tiny old woman who is unsure of whether or not to enter.

“MOVE!” I bellow at her, head emerging from my shell as I try desperately to make my train. I completely ignore the fact that the woman could be a tourist who doesn’t understand English and I disregard that old platitude about “respecting your elders.”

You get the picture? Turtle People. Tell your friends.

That’s the risk you run when you live here. Of course, there’s a degree of expectation that you will get used to all of the people packed into small spaces. At first its just a matter of putting on your headphones and getting to a state of Zen, but eventually, this develops into a defensiveness and a willingness to be combative. It’s a jungle out there and you have to eat or be eaten from time to time.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have also felt the immense power of communal love in New York City. Last summer, my parents and I were in a car accident on the Upper West Side. We were in a cab on our way home from my graduation from NYU. I was in a gentle slumber, leaning on my mother’s shoulder. I was full of good food and celebratory dreams when I was shaken from my sleep by the perpendicular impact of our taxi with a woman’s car that was speeding across town. I woke, crumpled against the divider. Stupidly none of us were wearing seat belts and I was completely disoriented. My mother was gasping for breath, repeating the words, “My chest is crushed.” The combined weight of me and my father had slammed into her and sharply knocked the wind out of her. As I got my bearings, I realized my father was clutching his head. I could see his head had a huge gash across his forehead. He was talking quickly and saying “I’m ok,” not to mention trying to tell a few jokes as he stumbled out onto the street. I knew he couldn’t be too badly hurt because his jokes were at the same degree of “corny” that they always are, but the blood made it look worse than it was.

I followed him, trying to help him settle on the curb when I noticed how many people were rushing out of their stores onto the street. Apparently the crash had been rather loud. People gathered around us, trying to help my dad and steadying me as I dropped my diploma and my program. They carefully began checking my face and arms for scrapes and blood.

“I have to get my mom,” I said to the woman who was leading me to the sidewalk, but when we turned towards the cab, a gentleman was already helping her, supporting her weight on his arm. As an EMT student who happened to be passing helped my dad into the neck brace he was carrying with him, a shop-owner brought out plastic chairs and bottled water for me and my mother.

The traffic on Broadway had been brought to a halt and as my senses reawakened and the pounding in my head subsided, I realized that for every person that was helping us on our side of the street, just as many were helping the female driver who had hit us on the other side.

When I looked at my dad lying on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from his forehead, I started to lose it and began to cry. I didn’t see her approaching, but a homeless woman put her hand on my shoulder. Normally I would have glared and pulled away in disgust, but that day I didn’t. She squeezed my shoulder with her warm leathery hand and said. “He’s going to be OK, Mama.” She smiled reassuringly. I stopped crying as we locked eyes and she calmed me down with her steady, concerned gaze.

I kept dropping the papers I was holding. The woman who was looking after my mother picked them up for me. She noted the purple NYU insignia on them and smiled. “I went there. What a great school!”

“I g-graduated today.” I stammered. It was all I could think to say.

She giggled good naturedly and looked between my mom and me, taking both of our hands. “You’ll remember this day for the rest of your lives!” We all laughed.

That day was such a testament to the spirit of New York- the spirit that got this amazing city through immense tragedy and hardship during 9/11/2001, the spirit that made that Wesley Autrey Sr. leap onto the slippery tracks of the New York Subway in order to hold down 19 year old epileptic, Cameron Hellopeter, saving his life by keeping his shaking body still as the train passed over them.

So yes, we run the risk of becoming Turtle People, but being here isn’t always a battle. Sometimes it’s the greatest opportunity of your lifetime and an absolute honor to be a New Yorker.

In my last post, I made mention of my support of the Obama Administration. The author of Acre of Independence (http://acreofindependence.com/), regarded as one of the top 100 Libertarian websites and blogs, questioned my assertion of Obama’s progress. When I praised Obama’s work abroad and his success in improving our international reputation, Acre of Independence responded with the following:

What policy area has America’s newly gained prestige you referenced helped us out in? In terms of our major foreign policy challenges (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al), there has been little shift either way. Much of our activity in Pakistan such as the Drone Attacks on suspected insurgents (as well as in Africa), which have increased in tempo since Obama took office, are likely to push many people into Al Quaeda or affiliated groups, too.

I happened to have lunch today with a friend who just returned from a trip to Egypt with his father. I believe they were abroad for three full weeks. As we ate our Thai food and he showed me pictures of adorable stray cats in a market place and camel rides around the pyramids, he mentioned how positive his reception was in the country. He also shared with me a letter from Alexandra Bonds, a professor of Lighting Design from the University of Oregon who is currently living Cairo. I asked him if I could share the letter here as it is well written and very interesting, as well as giving us here in the United States a sense of how effective our President’s work in foreign policy has been. The letter was prompted by a question about how Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 had been received.

Yes, Obama scored big in Cairo. The city is basking in an afterglow and aftershock of disbelief. Could an American president really have said all those things? The  Egyptian media is uniformly positive, rapturous at times. I watched commentary on Nile TV after the speech. The three women, a professor, politician and journalist were positively moon-eyed. Made me want to hand them a cigarette. Then I turned to Al Jazeera where they were interviewing a senior member of Hamas. With deep reverence, he called it an “I have a dream” speech. Then a former Israeli government official waxed on about it. Today, I read an op-ed in the Al Ahram with the line, “..I wasn’t the only one  in the audience with tears in my eyes.” It seems the only really negative reaction is coming from American conservatives, Israeli settlers and the Taliban. You can come to your own conclusions on that one.

The brilliance in the speech was how well it addressed its audience. The tenor, cadence and rhetoric were Arab. He used the word “Palestine”, which no other  American president has done. Arabs notice these things. Obama is brilliant at hitting his audience beneath the cortex. He goes for the heart and lymbic system. Arabs, suckers for eloquence, emotion and grandiose praise, wilted like lettuce in the desert sun. Many have criticized the speech on a few strategic or policy issues, but the criticisms are transparently tepid. “But, he understands us and honors our culture,” is the subtext. Saeb Arakat, a Palestinian spokesperson who has frequently shows up on  American news programs over the last decade, said “Since 1698 (then referenced some incident between the Ottomans and some European power) this is the first time a western leader has (then something about respecting the culture)” 1689. These guys keep track.

And, on the street it’s the same. My landlord, clutching his chest, said, “This man Obama has a great heart!”  My doctor (whom I saw on Thur PM for a vaccination), having just returned from Cairo University where he watched the speech, was so excited he couldn’t contain himself. He rattled on from English to French, brandishing a needled syringe about with expressive but scary flare. “This man is a genius!” And, these two guys are Christians. You should hear the Muslims, may peace be upon them (like my Obama technique?)

My response has been strange. For the first time, I welcome taxi drivers asking me where I’m from (in the past I cringed and often replied “Canada”). AMERICA I say, knowing I’m going to get the same response: “OBAMA, meya meya (100%) good man”.  Thank you, I utter humbly, taking credit for it all. Yes, it’s nice not to be ashamed.

Alexandra Bonds
Professor of Costume Design
Department of Theatre Arts
University of Oregon

In the mid 1990’s, I asked my parents if we could take a trip to Egypt. I had dreams of being an Egyptologist and an Archeologist and I was crazed with what could only be described as “Egyptomania.” I had hieroglyphic kits and my attic was packed with relics and treasures that I had used to build my ancient Egyptian clubhouse/palace where I dined with Rameses II (imagined as Yul Brynner from The Ten Commandments) on a regular basis. My mother and father looked at me sadly and said that Egypt wasn’t a safe place for Americans to visit. Judging by this letter and by the things my friend told me about his journey, we may be a little bit safer as public opinion regarding America and Americans is changing there. Perhaps we will be able to journey to the Middle East to learn more about Muslim culture and engage in a dialogue of learning rather than cave to fear of  religious radicals.

I have included youtube videos of the President’s speach in Cairo for your consideration and enjoyment.

It has been a long time since I last felt patriotic. The sound of “Proud to be an American” makes my skin crawl and decidedly ashamed to be an American.

That feeling of my stomach turning is so far from the joy I got from marching in the Memorial Day Parade in Chicago as a child. I would innocently dress up my pink, purple, and white tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers. I remember my mom and dad twisting the small silver wires to make a white dove with real feathers bought from some arts and craft store roost beneath my seat. It was truly a glorious vehicle to behold.

We would march, ride, rollerblade, and walk through the city with drums rat-a-tat-tatting all the way the way to the park. They thundered so loudly in your heart and when you closed your mouth, you could feel the sonic vibrations in your teeth. Additionally, I remember these colorful packs of jelly candies that they gave out every year when we got to our final destination in the park. They did acrobatics and someone important gave a speech. That was always the boring bit as a child, but I was way too busy eating my jelly candy and giggling with my friends from the neighborhood to care much.

I also have fond memories of going to Connecticut in the summertime to celebrate 4th of July with my father’s side of the family. Our current patriarch, my dad’s oldest brother Jack, invited every member of our clan to his house for the weekend and we would set up a volley ball net and I would swing on the swing that hung from the massive branch of the  giant oak tree out front. There was also a fish pond in the backyard and a big log that I would climb across and pretend that it was the gateway to another world. We would cook burgers and laugh and when the evening settled down, we would all watch a classic movie like Sunset Boulevard or Psycho. It was a time to feel the love of family and reunite and refresh. It almost felt like New Year’s Eve in the sense that I sort of measured my childhood years by the arrival of the 4th of July.

As I grew older, these small acts of patriotism faded. I grew out of my tricycle. The Connecticut house burned down. I began going to summer camp in North Carolina and I simply began to loath family dinner parties and the baggage of having that one evening to give people information and updates on my life by which they could measure my progress from the previous Thanksgiving or whenever we had spoken last. I enjoyed seeing people of course, but I always felt tremendous pressure. As an actress, I wanted to make my parents proud of what I was doing or I wanted to be seen as successful in an industry that is “hard” if not impossible.

My innocent idolatry of the red, white, and blue became like some distant memory.

The closest I came to patriotism was watching Independence Day when Bill Pullman gave the big speech before the epic battle with the Alien race that wants to take over Earth.

In that movie as a whole and especially during that speech, there is a collective sense of community and duty in the face of death. It connects American independence with the rest of the globe. I think I was attracted to it because as I was growing up, I really felt like America was an island. I was very blessed to be able to travel around the world to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Turkey, and Greece. I was exposed to other views of America from outside of our borders. I remember that I was roaming the streets of Paris as a child and looking into the glass window of a Patisserie. The owner of the shop rushed out and ushered me away to my American parents who were just down the block finishing their French morning coffee and croissants. The shopowner was not happy to have some American child poking around his window and pushed me towards my father before stomping back up the street and into his store.

When I was doing a theater exchange with some students from England, they were very welcoming but wouldn’t stop pestering us about how in God’s green earth President George Bush had been re-elected. I had to remind them that none of us, who were in our junior and senior years of high school, were old enough to vote. However, nothing I said could assail them. They wanted to know how our country could have been so dumb.

As a liberally minded young American, I became increasingly upset at many of the topics brought into the spotlight during the Bush Administration. In my mind, so many of them were connected to religion. Many of the protests against gay marriage focused on the fact that the Bible “tells us” that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why should the Christian God dictate what our citizens of varying religions should do? So many Bible Thumpers were in arms over A Woman’s Right to choose. I agree that this is a sensative subject, but I just don’t think that anyone should be able to dictate what I can and can’t do with my body. The rate of teen pregnancy is increasing in our country and more and more and our young men and women are starting families before they are ready. On top of this, the administration wanted to stop stem cell research, research that could help to find a cure any number of diseases that our world faces. In a way, stem cell research gives new life to these “pre” humans by using them to advance our knowledge and understanding of the human body and the development of new medicines and treatments to help us thrive and save lives.

After 9/11, I was devastated just like everyone else. It was just such a horrible tragedy. I could try to quantify my emotions and the events that followed it, but that is not really the subject of this article. However I will say that somewhere inside of myself, there was a tug on the string of my patriotism. I think it would have blossomed if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the mass marketing of everything blindly patriotic that poured from middle America. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked down on it all, but honestly, as I said at the outset of this peice, the song “Proud to be An American” makes my stomach turn because it is so mind-numbingly broad. Words like freedom and liberty are so much a part of our collective conciousness that they begin to loose meaning with every use. I think we take them for granted as does that song. It employs almost every one and manages to fill up verses and choruses while actually not saying much of anything at all. America as a whole became so inarticulate after 9/11 that I became desensitized to the American flag. It was on bookbags, pins, T-shirts, miniflags, keychains- EVERYWHERE. The flag itself became a pop sensation. No wonder no one took us seriously. No one takes Britney Spears seriously.

Near the end of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s musical, 1776, John Addams wonders on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence if anyone sees America the way he does. I am including the lyrics here for anyone who has not seen the show. I am including the sequence here for your viewing pleasure.

I began to feel a bit like Addams in this number. “Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care? Does Anyboy See What I See?” I saw the lifeblood of true America dying a little each day.  I saw our liberties being questioned and taken from us one by one.

This year, everything changed for me. Barack Obama was elected our 44th President of the United States of America. As a Chicagoan, I knew he was the man for the job almost immediately after I heard he was running. I knew it would be a hard road, but for the first time in a long time, I hung on to a hope for this country. I invested in current events and our national progress. Instead of writing off this war as an egregious nightmare created by the Bush Administration, I saw a man capable of ending our part in the turmoil and I what’s more, I listened and I felt connected to those lost, and those still fighting.

I know that in recent articles I have been disparaging about the spirit I sometimes feel while living in New York City. However, I haven’t mentioned that the true strength of our community sometimes shines so brightly that I am left gaping in awe. I have felt it several times, but I will tell you that on Election Night 2008, New York City came alive. Cars zipped through Bushwick in Brooklyn with loudspeakers chanting Obama’s name. People smiled at each other in the East Village and waved American flags not because thats what they were obligated to do to support our country but because they were moved to raise our country’s iconic colors. In Time’s Square, the lights shown with hope and triumph, and not with amusement park neon.

In his iconic speech from Election night 2008, Barck Obama reminded me that we are not a collection of red and blue states, but that we are forevermore the United States. I realize that I am capable of prejudice, that in this post I have called middle America uncultured, and called recent national patriotism into question. I have pointed many fingers. I know have a lot to learn and I am not saying that I don’t believe it can come from being exposed to opinions from other parts of our great Nation. But today.

Today we stand United. Today, I am proud to be an American. Today somebody is there. Today is our Independence Day.

I really am filled with hate right now. I tried to update my iPhone with 3.0 software and AGAIN it went into recovery mode and is in this odd loop hole where the computer tells me to restore it and then says there is an error and it can’t be restored. This happened once before and I took it into the store. They managed to restore the phone so that I could use it, but I’ve never updated it to the new software again for fear of having this very thing happen. I wanted to try to download it today so that I could download the Wordpress App, but it seems I have entered this annoying “You-need-to-restore-but-we-are-unable-to-restore” vortex again.

I made an appointment with the Apple Store, but there’s not an available time until Saturday, two days from now, at 5:50 PM. Even though that’s an inconvenience and it may ruin my plans for the 4th of July weekend, I HAVE to go on that day because my phone has to work. I can’t live without it.

I had forgotten what this is like. I actually feel naked. I’ve grown so accustomed to all of the tools on my phone, not to mention its run of the mill ability to, you know, make phone calls. I have plans to hang out with two people this weekend and without my phone, that may not happen. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a sad panda.

Ugh, who am I kidding? I’m already a sad panda.

I’m also pretty disgusted with how reliant I am on my iPhone. A few posts ago I wrote about how I was addicted to my iPhone and its different bells and whistles. Now I’ve progressed to going through actual withdrawal. I’m not kidding folks. I’m restless and I keep pacing around the apartment and trying to sleep this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach off. I keep wondering how people will contact me.

Would it kill me to be incomunicato for a few days?

Maybe I should just… move to the jungle and live off of fish I catch with my bare hands and water tempered with iodine tablets. I could even fashion a spear out of a branch and hunt boar. Maybe I’ll meet John Locke from ABC’s Lost. Ah, let’s face it. I’d never make it.

I used to be way more outdoorsy. I have taken several “adventure” trips in the course my blessed life. I went horseback riding with my parents in Arizona for two weeks. I’ve camped and rafted in Alaska for three weeks and gone on glacier hikes near Valdez. I went into the Montana mountains for three weeks and stayed out in the woods on solo for one of those weeks. I visited the Galapagos Islands and took naturalist tours. I worked with the National Park Service tagging sea-turtles and living on a boat in the Caribbean. I went white water rafting in the Colorado River and hiked out of the Grand Canyon.

So now I live in New York City. Rewind. What? How did that happen?

When did I become so tirelessly urban? Where has my inner cowgirl gone?

I think she’s still somewhere inside of me. I feel her stir in me whenever I can see a large expanse of sky, even if its only over Washington Square Park. I actually felt her today, of all days, while I was sitting in Grand Central Station.

I was trying to get a few moments of escape and serenity from my boss, who was making me do all sorts of annoying little tasks like canceling her Visa card and changing her legal address, both of which are real headaches for the actual person, let alone an assistant who is trying to remember all of her boss’ personal information.

As I sat on a bench, I noticed that there was a bird twittering and tweeting away. I knew immediately that it wasn’t a pigeon because pigeon’s coo.

Actually, if you ever get a chance to hear pigeon sex, its coo-rific. It makes me die laughing. I’m not a pervert, for the record, but they used to roost right outside of my window as a child. I often convulsed in giggles when I heard them going at it in a rousing “coorus.” Get it? Coorus, Chorus? Come on people! I digress.

As I looked for the source of the sound I noticed something tiny and dark running across the floor. I almost shrieked because I thought it was a nasty New York rat. Upon further observation I realized it was a red breasted robin. Phew.

My father is obsessed with birds and he taught me long ago how to identify one. Actually, we used have a huge one that lived in our backyard in Chicago. This type of bird is also significant to me because I loved The Secret Garden as a child and Mary Lennox, the heroin of the story, was guided by a “Robin Red Breast” to the gate of her Aunt Lily’s garden and he flew around the ivy covered, overgrown  walls and kept the girl company while she planted seeds. That story was so gorgeous, both in text and on stage as a musical.

So there I was, overworked, underpaid, and sitting on a bench looking at my very own Robin Red Breast. This one was singing beautifully but upon closer inspection, I realized his wing was broken. He must have flown into the building and banged into a window or other reflective surface while trying to get out. It was so tragic because you never see anything but pigeons (AKA the rats of the air) in the city. Atleast I don’t. Then again I’m not specifically looking to identify birds.

It is a fact: This poor creature that reminded me of my childhood and a beautiful story will die. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Perhaps he was singing for his supper. Perhaps it was his “Swan Song.” He must have been in so much pain. Maybe it’s stupid, but it made me tear up a little bit as I watched him waddle about. He even hopped over to me and just looked at me for a while, completely unafraid and uninhibited. It reminded me of how the animals had acted during my visit to the Galapagos Islands. The sea lions and marine iguanas would just sit and sun themselves on the beach. They hadn’t been introduced to fear of humans because they’ve never been hunted there. That whole trip made me feel like I was living in the Garden of Eden. The guide warned us not to touch the sea lion pups even if they approached us because the mothers would stop recognizing the scent of their young and disown them. They were so adorable. You just wanted to pick one up and squeeze it so badly. I don’t mean like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I mean a comfortable cuddle rather than a life threatening clamp of doom.

As I watched my doomed bird-friend, I felt a similar conflict. I wanted to pick him up and mend him, but as we all know, birds are ridden with disease, germs, and God knows what else. Also, who am I to think I could “mend” a broken bird wing. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. I’m not a veterinarian.

That thought reminded me of how when I was on my Outward Bound “solo” in Montana, I had decided to make a woven basket and failed miserably. I don’t know what made me think I would just naturally have the ability to do something like that. Did I expect it to be written into my homo sapien DNA? However, it was undeniably fun and it gave me something to do during the lonely days. I sort of remembered singing through the entire score of every musical i could remember and even the ones I was less clear on as I worked.

Somewhere along the way I traded simple pleasures and child-like curiosity for iPhone apps and rent checks. Some of that is just a part of growing up, but sometimes I think it wouldn’t be such a travesty if we all tried to retrace our developmental steps a bit and follow our silly impulses. Mind you, I’m not telling you to expose yourself to disease ridden urban creatures on the verge of demise, but a walk in the park to lie on the bedrock outcroppings and read clouds wouldn’t do you any harm.