Tuesday, December 30, 2008

This Time Last Year...

...I was getting ready to head off to Peru for ten days with my scholars group. In honor of that, here's a story I've written that's going to be featured in an upcoming Chicken Soup book, entitled, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Campus Chronicles about college life. Enjoy.

More Mud, Please


The landscape  view from the back of the pick-up truck in the story.

The stench in the suffocating room was almost unbearable, made worse by the skittish guinea pigs circling my feet and squealing like they knew they would be dinner that evening. I tried to wipe the mud off my face, forgetting my hands were completely caked in the stuff. Giving up on cleanliness, I threw a big hunk of mud, full of hay, hair, and what looked an awful lot like feces, onto a brick. I glanced down - we had run out of mud.

"Mas barro, por favor," I said to the family. More mud, please.

Only a week ago I was on winter break in Connecticut, where my idea of filth had been the dust collecting on the top of my dresser. Now I was in the Andes mountains with my college scholars group, building a clean burning stove for a Peruvian family who owned a lamb that was allowed to saunter through the kitchen whenever it pleased. The family (and the lamb) watched me as I worked, standing by the door with shovels, ready to bring me more mud the minute I ran out of the vile substance.

I tried to slap away a persistent fly buzzing in my ear and started hacking away at the wall of the kitchen with a pickaxe. The soot from the old stove caked on the adobe had made the wall crooked and not conducive to chimney building. Every time the pickaxe struck the hardened soot, the guinea pigs squealed along in time, creating a strange cacophony of hand tool and rodent noises. I turned around to my stove-building partner and asked, for what felt like the hundredth time that week, “Are we really here right now?”

The minute we landed in Cuzco after almost twenty-four hours of traveling, I felt my heart race from the thin Andean air and knew that my coddled existence was about to change. For a week and a half, I stayed with the Chihuantitos, my middle class host family of four. Marulyn, the mother, spoke only Spanish and I spoke only English, so our communication was based around my affinity for her food and her pitying looks as I walked in through the front door covered head to toe in barro.

“Oh, Madeline,” she’d sigh, with the look of a concerned mother that transcended any language barrier, and she’d gesture to the laundry basket, offering to wash my muddy clothes.

My outfit certainly wasn’t the only dirty thing in Peru. A thin layer of grime seemed to cover everything in the city of Cuzco, from the tables in the restaurants to the lukewarm shower in the Chihuantito’s apartment. Up in the mountains in the town of Ancahuasi, the people we built stoves for often went barefoot down the dirt paths to their houses, leading the way to the stove-building site. The matriarch would walk ahead of me, her white top hat bobbing up and down with each step, her baby staring blankly from underneath folds of cloth on her back.

One of the last families I built a stove for lived very far from the meeting site we went to every morning. We trekked through hills and pastures and cornfields, holding out our arms to keep the corn stalks from whacking our sunburned faces. A cow looked menacingly at me as I passed it, standing by a stream of water, and I wondered briefly whether the hulking creature could shed the flimsy looking rope tied around its front hoof.

We came to a river with half a skinny tree trunk for a bridge. The Peruvian woman leading us charged fearlessly ahead, her gnarled feet stepping in a perfect line, one in front of the other. I stumbled across, breathing in sharp gasps as I looked at the rushing water below me. Thinking I was almost done, we came to another, smaller river.

We stopped. I looked for a bridge. The woman, whose name I can’t remember now but whose wrinkled, leathery face is etched in my memory, looked back at us, turned around, and threw herself across the river, grabbing the other side with her dirt-stained hands, grunting as she struggled up. She stood and looked at us, as if to say “Okay, your turn.”

My partner jumped. I hesitated. Was I really being asked to jump across a river? The answer was absolutely yes. I made sure my backpack was secure, rolled up the sleeves of my dirty black shirt I’d been wearing for three days in a row, and launched myself across the river.

Needless to say, I made it.

When we returned to the United States, setting foot on American soil in the form of JFK airport, it felt like much more than ten days had passed. In my mud-stained backpack was a journal I’d written in to remember my time in Peru. The other day, I opened up the journal for the first time in months as a ticket to Machupicchu, a postcard, and a map of Cuzco tumbled out. I thumbed through the pages and found an entry about riding in the back of a pick-up truck, standing and breathing the Andean air while watching the mountains pass. It struck me in its simplicity and its ability to sum up my entire Peruvian experience. It read:

It was completely unsafe, terrifying, cold, hard, rough, dirty… and one of the most indescribably beautiful moments of my life.

Looking back, that’s all there is to say about my trip to Peru. The only thing missing is this: I’ll never forget it.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Don't Be Fooled By the Fa-La-La

The holidays get me down. And I know I'm not alone in that sentiment.

The other day, I was driving along in my little red Jeep (which, by the way, is more broken than it is functional at this point -- both turning signals switch the lights off, there's no rearview mirror, and the radio no longer lights up. Go ahead, steal it, you're in for a surprise!) when I heard a story on AM radio. It was about a church somewhere in the area that was offering a "Blue Christmas" service for people who are sad on this supposedly "joyous" holiday. I can just imagine -- carols that lean towards somber instead of cheery, no one in red and green, and a whole line of mopey people waiting for a cracker. Sounds delightful.

But you know what? It kind of does sound great. I want to go to the Blue Christmas mass. Somber carols? I'm down. Those are prettier than the happy ones anyway. No red and green? Fine by me. Everything lining my closet is black and grey. And mopey people? I think I'd fit right in at this point.

See, here's the thing. Holidays are a whole lot of pressure. Since Thanksgiving we've been bombarded by ads to buy The Greatest Christmas Present Ever! and make The Greatest Christmas Food Ever! But seriously, nothing on Christmas is going to be The Greatest anything. It's never as good as you want it to be. Christmas just can't live up to its own hype.

Christmas also makes me feel old. It's been years since I learned Santa was just a big, fraudulent scheme wrought by my parents to sneak me some loot. And I was OK with that, as long as the presents were still involved. But once the presents started to dwindle, I tried to convince myself that Christmas was about family. And free food (What? I'm in college. I appreciate a home cooked meal now more than ever.) "Oh," I would think, "I'm so EXCITED to get in the minivan with the little kids and go to New Jersey in Christmas Eve traffic! I'm ECSTATIC to spend Christmas in a house overrun by relatives and step-relatives and over-cooked meat! Because I'm with my family! And that's what matters!"

It didn't work.

But I'm a perpetual optimist. Last Friday I watched the snow fall on our yard full of accidental lawn ornaments (a destroyed swing set, lines of baking racks from my mom's last failed business attempt) and I turned on Elvis' "Blue Christmas" album while I made gingerbread cookies. The house was silent, the snow was beautiful, and I could listen to Elvis warble Christmas carols forever. But for a second, I thought that maybe I understood what the holiday season is supposed to be about when you start to grow up a little bit. It's about being thankful for what you have -- namely, a few days off to spend time doing completely useless things like eating too much and making cookies and playing in the snow.

So to the approximately 3.5 people who read my blog: Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year, whatever. But if you're feeling a little blue, like me, it's OK. Because, answer me this: Does ANYONE actually have a Merry Christmas? Ever? I say no. 

There! The pressure's off. Now go eat some cookies.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Mommie Dearest Meets the 'Netz

No more wire hangers, EVER!


Well, my mother finally discovered The Internet. *Golf Claps*

Honestly, I give her a lot of credit. Two weeks ago, I'm pretty sure she didn't even know how to double click. Her desktop closely resembles the remnants of a shock-and-awe air strike. And yet here she is, on Facebook, on Blogger... I'm 100% sure she'll read this. Potentially the second after I publish it.

It's not so bad, really. I'm a good kid (adult?). There's nothing incriminating on any website about me, mostly because I avoid incriminating things and if I were to participate in them, I'd sure as hell avoid putting them all over Facebook. The worst thing you're going to find is a picture of me doing my near-infamous (in my mind, anyway) velociraptor face/pose or perhaps discover, from my information section, that I like books by David Sedaris and folk music (horror!)

That said, having Mom on Facebook has been... well... interesting. Here's a taste.

First of all, she discovered "poking."

Phone Rings
Mom: "I poked you!"
Me: "Um, what Mom?"
Mom: "I poked you on Facebook! You didn't poke me back! Why didn't you poke me back?"
Me: "Um, Mom, I haven't been on Facebook in the hour since you poked me."
Mom: "Biotch! [Editors Note: My mom's vocabulary is a blog entry unto itself] Poke me!"
Me: "Mom, I'm walking down the street. I can't poke you right now."
Mom: "I'm writing on your wall. Poke!" [Editors Note #2: In this moment, she writes "Poke!" on my wall.
Me: "Ok Mom, don't worry, I'll poke you when I get back."
Mom: "What's a snowball? Someone threw a snowball? How do I throw a snowball?"
Me: "Snowballs are stupid applications, don't respond."
Mom: "I tried to poke you again but it won't let me."
Me: "That's because..."
Mom: "I'm a poker!"
Me: "Mom, I'll poke you back, I promise. I have to go, I'll see you Monday."
Mom: "Poke!!"

She's gone Facebook crazy. Even her friends think so. She updates her status, she even made herself an Avatar on Yahoo to be her profile picture. She's a chef so of course, "It's me in my apron with a steak, but skinnier!"

And now she's made herself a blog. You might as well check it out: KitchnBitch'n. It's actually pretty good, for a fledgling effort from a technologically-impaired restauranteur with little to no free time.

But Mom, I know you're reading this, so consider yourself warned. Now that you've discovered the World Wide Web and all its vast possibilities, you will never be the same. When you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, cruising through the Facebook pages of people you never talk to, you'll regret it. When you realize that half the time something interesting happens to you, you think "Huh, could I blog about this?" you'll regret it.

I'm telling you, things are happier in the Dark Ages. But there's no turning back now.
Happy surfing, Mommy. 

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Thanksgiving: A Review

Gobble Gobble.


Just look at that turkey, with his wonky eyes. Heh, what a stupid turkey.

Thanksgiving is an excellent holiday that only gets better and better. I give mine 4 stars, two thumbs up, and an A+. Here's why.

1. Spending Thanksgiving Day with my favorite people in the world. 

I piled into the car with my mom, who took a day off from cooking for other people, my brother, who now has long locks and a generally surly attitude to match, and the Boyfriend, who dressed up all nice and pretty but who was afraid that his brown Converse with a hole in them would make a bad impression. I assured him no one would notice, and considering we were lucky my brother was even wearing clean clothes, he would look perfectly fine.

Once there, the conversation and wine flowed. We were a total of sixteen for dinner: Grandma, Grandpa, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Dogs. Food was excellent. My 9-year-old cousin created an elaborate "Deal or No Deal" game and marched around yelling "Attention Please! We need complete silence!" Adorably obnoxious, mostly adorable because he's not my kid. Drunken debauchery ensued when we decided to play Cahoots after dessert, a sort of mind-reading game that involves Hungarian Gypsy Magic. I'm pretty sure I baffled the Boyfriend with my Hungarian Gypsy Mind Reading. At least the little kids were impressed.

2. Reconnecting. 

Saw a friend who I have not seen in FOREVER, or at least it feels that way. We ate lunch, sat on her bed, giggled, did astrology charts, and acted as though we had a combined age of 11. So great.

3. Dinner with the Boyfriend's family. 

Now it was my turn to dress up all pretty and behave myself. The night quickly progressed from steak and potatoes and candlelight to sitting on the couch watching Youtube videos of kitties and hamsters and pandas with the Boyfriend's mom. Then he told me why my face is pretty. (Insert contented sigh.)

4. Played Ultimate Frisbee. 

It was cold, I played poorly, but I did 2 and a half hours of cardio and my whole body hurts in the best possible way.

5. Dogs.

As Charles Schultz once said (and I know this because EVERY Chicken Soup for the Soul book has this quote in it) "Happiness is a warm puppy." Actually, happiness is a warm, scruffy little mutt curled up under the covers keeping your feet warm.

I'm taking the 7:51 train in and then it's back to the grind. But Thanksgiving, you treated me well. See you next year.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Wanna Fight?

Today's thought:

I could so kick another girl's ass.



I've never had a desire to fight anyone, really. But the other day, I was standing on the always-oppressive morning NYU bus with my roommate Alex when we oddly got on the topic of fighting. I think it started out with men fighting, as in "I don't find it attractive when a guy wants to beat someone up, especially if they're slurring their words and doused in Keystone." And then I surprised myself when I said something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, I could totally win a fight. No question."

Now I wonder: why was I so sure?

Well first of all, I'm scrappy. I haven't played sports in a while but when I do, I will get in your face. I don't care if you're a six-foot man. I'm coming at you full-force and I'm not afraid of your massive body weight. I am taking you DOWN. I'm 140 pounds of muscle, baby. (But yet, I'm girly enough to balk at the fact that I just put my weight on the Internet. Eek!)

Secondly, I'm clumsy. I often find bruises from run-ins I don't remember, and not ALWAYS because I was drunk when I got them (if ever a sentence made me sound like an alcoholic, that one was it.) When you're always tripping over yourself and walking into various inanimate objects on a daily basis, you stop screaming the F-word every time and learn to control yourself. And suddenly, a tolerance to pain is formed. Amazing!

Third reason: Rage. Ok, so I'm not a foaming-at-the-mouth screamer, and VERY few things make me really angry, but the few times in my life that I've felt PISSED, I've felt very, very pissed. There is RAGE inside me, I tell you, RAGE! I'm serious!

So there you have it. This is not my e-version of standing in a Karate-stance and waving my hand like "Oh yeah, come here and just TRY to kick my ass!" But it is a warning: I may be sweet, but I'm DEADLY.*


*This theory is completely untested.

That's all.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Why Jeopardy Soothes the Soul



Today at 7 P.M., the glorious cultural phenomenon that is Jeopardy was on TV, just like it so reliably is every weekday on ABC. It always comes on right before Wheel of Fortune, which I think of as Jeopardy's semi-retarded, state-school attending cousin who wears Hawaiian shirts. And just like a steaming hot mug of soup on a blustery winter day, the always classy Alex Trebek and the good ol' Jeopardy theme song soothe my soul. Ahhh, trivia.

But why is this so? Am I jealous of the contestants and their vast knowledge? Sure, they can immediately figure out that KMQT is KUMQUAT without vowels ("What is KUMQUAT!???" Good. For. You.), but sometimes, I can too. And whenever I scream out the answer a little too loudly in my roommate's ear just to find I was wrong, I can shrink back in my seat and think "Whatever, at least I don't wear 2-inch-thick glasses and arrange my insect collection on a Friday night." No, it's not jealousy that lures me to Mr. Trebek and his glittering blue boxes. Jeopardy gives me a chance to get on my high horse. When I'm right, I feel like a super genius. When I'm wrong, I just get a chance to look down my nose at the Nerd Brigade. Ha ha ha.

And that is why, on any given weeknight, regardless of what kind of day I've had, I'm happy to settle down in front of our postage-stamp-sized television and judge people. And that is truly Mmm Mmm good.

Friday, November 14, 2008

On The Day When I Don't Leave My Bed

It's Friday.



This semester, that means sitting in a bed (sometimes my bed, sometimes the boyfriend's bed) and reading story submissions for my employer, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Sometimes I do really fun things like "tag" manuscripts, which means inserting little symbols like [T] and [I] into 200-page Word documents. I'm telling you, the life I lead is almost too exciting.

I've probably had like ten bowls of cereal this morning and I have only left my bed to pour said cereal into bowls along with skim milk. But still, Fridays leave a lot of time for thought and contemplation.

Tonight I'm performing in a show called King David, written by Alan Menken and Tim Rice, as a part of the on-stage choir that stands (yes, stands for the whole show) in the dark behind the orchestra. Let me translate: We sing, no one can hear us, and we don't even get to wear costumes.

But here's the thing -- as much as KD is currently making me miserable (and will cease to do so after tonight's closing performance, hooray!) it has reaffirmed something for me. I watch the people doing the roles that I covet and I'm reminded of the fierce desire I have to "make it." I know it's a cliche, and I'm well aware that every Idina Menzel-obsessed fourteen-year-old in Minnesota also wants to "make it" on Broadway, but I REALLY REALLY want to make it. No, really. I'm pretty sure if you put me in a Silence of the Lambs-esque dirt pit and told me I could originate a role on Broadway if I escaped, I would claw my way out somehow.

Ambitious, I know. But while I stand in the dark in my J. Crew sweater dress tonight, wishing I was wearing false eyelashes and that someone could actually hear me sing in the audience, I'll just be happy that there's something in this world that makes me feel that way.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

I'm Feeling Good About This One

Well, here it is. A blog. An empty text box and a world of possibilities.

Welcome to my personal page, something that will hopefully be filled with articles and stories I've written, occasional thoughts on things that strike me as interesting, and anything else I think is worth posting for the entire world to see. I'm going to be honest here -- I'm a little bit terror-stricken at the idea that I'm throwing myself out into the Internet. I'd like to pretend I'm thinking very hard about what interesting things to say, but what I'm really doing right now is making this awkward face where my sad, straight little eyebrows go up in the middle and make me look very forlorn. It's not my best look, I'm glad you can't see it.

About Me: I go to school in New York City. I sing, I act, I write. When I was four, I talked so loudly my parents had my ears tested to make sure my hearing was okay. Turns out I'm just a loud talker. I'm an eternal optimist and realist -- and yes, I believe the two can coexist. I want to be a professional singer and actress, I want to write multiple novels, I want to see more of the world, and I never want to stop learning about people. 

I can also crack my nose. For real, no nails and teeth necessary. Now will you read my blog?