Gimo.

Introducing Gimo, given name Generalissimo Harpoon.

Gimo is my first pet. He lives in a blender currently, but will be moving into a more spacious (though admittedly, less unique) fishbowl soon.

sunset

I went to see Twilight on Sunday -- you might even say I saw it at twilight. I was there one-quarter out of interest to see what had been done with the book, one-quarter out of a desire to experience the newest fad to hit the pre-teens, and one-half out of amusement for the whole thing. I met a friend, just as amused as I, at the $3 theater, and we giggled and crunched on popcorn through the entire movie.

But not everyone noticed my proud detachment from the experience. When I went to buy my ticket, the man in the ticket booth asked me, "How many times have you seen it?" A little taken aback, I stumbled, "Um. Once. I mean, this is my first time." I smiled guiltily. He, surprised, said "Really?" and smiled hesitantly. I walked quickly to meet my friend (who had seen it more than once). Do I look like a pre-teen? Maybe. Will I see the sequel? Probably. (If not only to see Edward again. Actually -- I was more taken with Dr. Cullen. His appearance on screen for the first time caused me to gasp, my friend to look at me with embarrassment, and both of us to break into a fresh round of giggles.)


I am not a film critic, nor am I a book critic. Not to belittle Stephanie Meyer's attempt at the Great American Novel; the world she created was quite original, but her execution was less impressive than, say, J.K. Rowling's. I wholeheartedly embraced the Harry Potter phenomenon. And, where Harry Potter was charming and well-written, Twilight is awkward and choppy. Where Harry Potter's plot was intricate and interwoven, Twilight's is little more than a complicated love story (though I found the book sexually charged, the lovers appropriately don't have sex until after they're married). There are worse things for kids to read -- or watch. In fact, I thought the plot lent itself quite nicely to a Hollywood movie, and the special effects weren't half bad. Maybe it's unfair of me to compare it, or anything else, to Harry Potter, but that still doesn't change the laughingly awkward first half of the movie.

P.S.

Today, the high is 10. And my tire is flat again.

bicycle built for two

Today, the high was 35 degrees. And when the high is so deliciously, so sunnily, so ice-meltingly warm, I make up adverbs, get out my light coat, put on shoes that aren't snow boots, and smile up at the blue sky and the sun. On days like this, days when the ice has melted, when the snow is slushy and dirty but out of the way, when the wind feels like cold water instead of dry ice, my bicycle (see above, except now, with a big orange milk crate basket on the back) starts calling me from its dry indoor winter home.

lindsey, take me outside, take me to the grocery store, take me to the craft store, use my large, luxurious baskets. please, just take me outside. My bike apparently speaks with lowercase letters only.

So I take it out. Lug its sturdy steel frame up the stairs. Curse the whole way up. Wrap my scarf around my face (cold water is still cold). Shove my helmet over my hat and ponytail. And ride. Except today, the back tire was flat. I took my helmet off and clipped it to my purse, exposed my face, and set off via sidewalk to my friend's house. I was going to learn how to patch my own tire, dammit. (After all, I do have a secret desire to be a bike mechanic.)

Even at 35, the sidewalks are hardly as luxurious as the streets. Some stretches are shoveled. Some aren't. Some shiny pools of water between the street and the sidewalk are actually water. Some are dirty, snowy, icy water. Some are ice. I pulled (not rolled) my bike through the mess, brakes clogged with snow, cursing the whole way. A six pack of beer bouncing and clanging around in the basket.

A rusty staple was clearly the culprit, so I, in a rustic-feeling plaid button-down shirt, and my friend, in a T-shirt and a sweatshirt, set about getting our hands dirty. We pulled the staple out. We marked where it was. We found the wrenches and loosened some bolts. We wedged the tire out of the rims, we removed the tube. We found the hole, escaping air tickling my cheek. We applied the glue. We let it dry. We applied the patch. We pressed it down. We put the tube back in the tire, put the tire back in the rims, put the wheel back in its place, screwed the bolts back in. Pumped up the tire. Pumped up the other tire. My hands were black at the finger tips and I wanted to do more. There was nothing more to do. (Or, really, nothing more that I had the tools and parts for at that particular time. With a 1974ish bike, there's plenty to do always.)

I washed my hands. Wrapped my scarf around my face. Shoved my helmet over my hat and ponytail. Attached and illuminated my lights. And rode. Tomorrow, the high is 36.

hail to the chief

Tuesday, in between taking sips of milky English breakfast tea, wedging out bites of a Florida grapefruit, and typing out comments to friends in Gmail Chat, I watched the Inauguration with my spotty digital receiver. And I cried.

I didn't cry on Election Night when Barack Obama won Pennsylvania. I didn't cry when he won Ohio. I didn't cry when CNN called the election for Obama, and from the crowd of over one million gathered in Grant Park erupted a cheer that could be heard for miles (see above photo). I didn't cry when the future first family stepped onto the stage, and I didn't cry when he spoke. Maybe I was too sleep deprived from the weeks leading up to the election to really process what was happening, or maybe I wasn't really all that surprised. Part of me wondered if January 20, 2009 would ever come. And, thanks to overly intrusive but strangely, guiltily alluring sites like Politico 44, it did.

So, I found myself on Tuesday, marveling at my own ability to get emotional over something that was, of course, historic, but also for something that was two months and two weeks -- or, really, two years -- in the making. In the evening, when my tears had been sufficiently shed and dried, between bites of Chicago-style hot dogs in honor of the occasion (poppyseed bun, vegetarian hot dog, yellow mustard, relish, diced onion, two sport peppers, two tomato wedges, a wedge of dill pickle, celery salt), I asked a friend if she had a similar experience. She hadn't. "Now the real work starts," she said grimly. "The inauguration is just a ceremony. Now he's got to deal with the economy, the war; the fun part is over, the waiting and planning is over." (I may be putting some words in her mouth) I considered that for a moment, before responding, "But I trust him now more than ever. I trust him to be able to handle all these things."

As we later admitted to a party attendee who *gasp* wasn't an Obama supporter (he was opposed to government and mainstream party candidates in general), we both "drank the Kool-Aid" long ago, but I think it wasn't until recently that I could see, through his various appointments and plans, how he would actually accomplish this daunting task that lay before him. Well, and us.

Before it was about winning the election. Now, it's about change.

We ask you to help us work for that day when Black will not be asked to get back, when Brown can stick around, when Yellow will be mellow, when the Red man can get ahead, man, and when White will embrace what is right. -- Reverend Joseph Lowery, adapted from the song "Get Back (Black, Brown, and White)" by Big Bill Broonzy.

Vignettes

Professor W.'s pronunciation is at once lavish and sharp, a gravel-thick purr of deep, full-mouthed sounds ("shunamite traditions") and clacking consonants ("cross-cultural aesthetics"). She backtracks infrequently and she does it only to peel back the given layer of description and enrich it with another, adding appositives that build and never disturb. She speaks with an extraordinary aural momentum -- words move at a pace so steady that a pause becomes devastating, the listener rapt at attention in the lacuna between her full-mouthed sh and the next clatter of thought.

---

Professor E.W. delights in art. Someone once told me, "joy delights in joy," and this is what he does--he finds the joy in the brushstroke, the joy in the wonder held in the physical and temporal and emotional distance between artist and object and beholder, and he shares it, unabashedly, with a slight, toothy smile, his right eye wandering behind his glasses, boyish, his hair mussed and his brown velour sportcoat and brown corduroy pants just on the other side of matching.

He is something of a black sheep in the society crowd of the department. The monolithic, German-bellied creator of Modernism and the dapper young American ex-lawyer photography scholar engage students with their awesome stature, with the impression that they are the fundamental pillars of their disciplines, imbued with wit and armed with wardrobes of equal consequence. Meanwhile E.W. finds his way by meandering through the English language, taking his time to weave through the customary trans-linguistic snags, stumbling over idioms and holding fast to familiar expressions, furrowing his brow in deep search of the next words. But with his patience and sensitivity, he often finds himself in the clear, and in those airy moments he talks joyfully, articulating with a rich scholarly vocabulary made richer by the delight in his voice, and the smile that graces the end of each sentence.

frostbitten

I keep promising not to write about the weather and I keep breaking that promise. But leeann gave me the exclusive authority to write about the weather for arrival gate since Chicago's is slightly more extreme than Boston's and today, the coldest day Chicago has felt in over a decade, I am well within my rights to write about it. It's -8 F as I write, according to the Weather Channel.

The news is full of advice. A woman from Maine quoted in the New York Times recommends just going to work and going home; not making any unnecessary stops and spending as much time during the commute as possible in one's car. The Chicago Tribune gets advice from Fargo, North Dakota, whose residents say simply to dress warmly and in layers (even though by their standards, Chicago isn't really that cold). Another article, that focuses on why the hell Chicagoans choose to live in this (as some say) "frozen, inhospitable, arctic hellhole of a city," says Santa Barbara is probably the best place in the country to live because "they have beautiful weather all year round." Maybe i'm being a little too specific here, but I think actually coastal San Diego has better weather than Santa Barbara. I have, after all, lived in both places. And my family always insisted that it was cold up north in Santa Barbara. The Chicago Sun-Times apparently has better things to write about than the weather (I do not)--they reprinted the NYT article--but they focused on Chicago not actually being cold, but Pollock, South Dakota taking the cake at -47 F. A technicality, really. Not that you've seen me leave my house today. But as they all say, I don't really have a reason to, so I've chosen not to go anywhere til later.

That was really all a setup for me to give my two cents. My tip for the cold? Besides long johns and wool socks and all that jazz? Three letters: TEA. Tea is the most wonderful and the most complete form of warmth available in the winter, and even though it's transitory, cup after cup after cup will do the job quite nicely. And it won't over-caffeinate, though a little bit of caffeine may be a good way to combat the dead-of-winter blues.

The picture, by the way, is the view of -8 F from my window (in the words of Andrew Sullivan). Doesn't look like much besides snow. I live in a garden apartment. But just to be extra ironic and spiteful, it was of course sunny and cloudless today even as it was causing frostbite.

Post- Post

More often than not, my "new" posts are always backdated, since I finish them months after I begin. And now that Lindsey is on house arrest and posting like a fiend, my posts are going to be sneaking in the back door, under the layers of snow and fake ID. I like it this way.

I realized post-posting for the first time how terribly sentimental a writer I was raised to be. I've certainly adapted a bit to the blogging way-- my paragraphs are short, I try to include photos, for a while, I was really into lists--but I still have more of a penchant for the short story than the tabloid column, or the news brief and a jump.

When a friend caught Blogger tab open in my Firefox yesterday, and tried to peek at the blog-in-process (or worse! the URL for the posted blogs!), I panicked and told him it wasn't mine... okay, it's mine... but it's just... not... for viewing... your eyeballs will fall out if you read it.

I must make the confession that I've told very few people at Harvard about my blogs, and perhaps one of my biggest fears (made real when I posted something about my brother, thus putting my first and last names close enough together in a post to be picked up by Google as a result for entering my name) is imagining most of the people I actually interact with reading my writing. Save for those I email most, and my TFs, no one at Harvard reads or has read my writing--with the exception of a few alums on the team who picked up Halfwhat when I left the URL on my facebook account for a day. It's not because I write nasty things about people (though I would really prefer that none of the professors in the last post ever was told about their profiles here), but wearing my heart on my sleeve is not my style--that's why I prefer to wear it in my blogs.

Our new website counter will now tell me when others from Harvard are reading the blog--or from anywhere else for that matter--I'm beginning to wonder if I really want to know. Well, I suppose that's what I get for spilling my sentimental guts on the interwebs. Whoever you folks are, I hope you enjoy the read.

identity crisis

I don't even think about showing my ID at bars or concerts anymore. It's just something that's done when one enters an establishment, along with, in the winter at least, taking off one's mittens and untying one's scarf. I stand there patiently while the man at the door holds up the flashlight, looks at my picture, and then at my face, and then hands the card back to me. A couple weeks ago, the man at the door looked at my picture and my face a couple more times than usual before handing the ID to his colleague and remarking to me, "When did you get this picture taken?" I tried not to sound guilty--because I wasn't. "Umm, I mean, when I was 15 or something." He turns to his friend and says, "Is this her?" They compare my cold, red cheeks and bangs with my childish mug a couple more times before sighing, shaking their heads, and letting me pass.

And again yesterday, when the creative recruiter was completing my tax forms she asks, "When did you get this picture taken?" Shocked, again, this time in my interview best with my hair all done and even a little makeup on, I said as maturely as possible, "That's been happening a lot lately. Maybe it's time to get a new picture taken."

My friends agree; my braces, thick, long wavy hair, and swimmer's tan from back then don't quite mesh with the bright white teeth, short, straight hair with bangs, and pasty white complexion I usually wear today. And I've gotten a bit taller and a bit heavier and my hair perhaps isn't quite as sun kissed. "But it's still me," I insist, as proud of my California ID as I was the day it arrived in the mail, "I haven't changed that much. I don't feel that different."

Unfortunately, the part of me that knows the picture on the ID is of me, the part of me that doesn't feel so different from the person I was at 15, the part of me that remembers the day I had it taken, the day I took my permit test and received that haphazard, stapled stack of papers that signified my learners permit; that part of me doesn't exist in anyone else. It is unequivocally my license and my picture, but who's to say i'm not lying? Who's word reigns? My picture's? Or mine?

So maybe it's time to get a new license. But I don't drive anymore, nor do I feel I've put my roots down far enough in Illinois to warrant getting a license here, and looking like i'm from here next to all my out-of-state friends. But I don't live in California anymore either. Which leads me to the conclusion I've come to many times in the past: continue to assert the picture is mine and deal with it again in 10 months when the license expires anyway. Or, grow out my hair, wear it curly, get braces again, start fake-tanning, and forget all that's happened to me in the past 8 years to make me look like I do now. Or is just that I've aged?

never too old to have a little fun

There are no hills in the city of Chicago. Nevertheless, on Sunday at noon, my friend and I set off into the fresh powdery snow to find a hill and a sled, like so many 8 year olds before us. We had to be a little resourceful when our search for a plastic saucer proved fruitless. We snatched up the very last blow-up plastic inner tube at K Mart -- the one with the picture of a woman in a bathing suit floating on blue water on the box -- for $2.50 and plunged once again onto the mostly unshoveled sidewalks. I was slightly dubious that we'd find a suitable hill in Chicago at all, besides the few lame ones I'd scoped out in the summer, but we headed to Humboldt Park anyway, because the Internet said it had a hill good for sledding. We scanned the horizon of the park: nothing but white ground and scraggly brown trees. But as we made our way through the park and the snow halfway up our calves, a slight grade started to appear in the distance. As we got closer, we could see it was indeed a hill, and quite suitable for sledding purposes judging by the crowd at the top. We trudged on, hearts pounding in excitement, stopping once or twice to make a snow angel or to disrupt an untouched patch of smooth, brilliant white.


I had never been sledding before. This statement received many a "Huh? What? Really?" from my Midwestern friends and acquaintances, but it was true. I played in some puddles as a child, even got to throw a few snowballs on various occasions, but I never got to go sledding. Not in the hill behind my house, not in the golf course, not in the park across the street. Of course, in California, we didn't have any of that. So my friend briefed me on the sledding-hill etiquette that every 8 year old just knows.

"You sled down the middle and walk up the sides. Watch out for people going down in front of you or walking up the middle; they should move out of the way. Use your feet to steer if you need to. I'll give you a big push to start, or you can run and jump head first."

We jumped up the hill, smiles broad, ears full of the screams and laughs of kids and their parents, eyes full of families, and fun, and joy, plastic sleds, wooden ones, and trash bags, ones that went far and ones that pooped out in the middle. Kids in puffy coats and snow pants and snow shoes and hats and puffy mittens attached to their coats, rolling and sliding and running and smiling. We took all this in as we blew up our snow tube, which turned out to have $2.50 worth of holes.

I got the idea, anyway. After my first trip down the hill, even though my tube refused to move past the middle, I picked myself up, tube in hand, and ran the rest of the way up the hill, laughing and smiling ear to ear. There was something infectious about the fun in the air, and something absolutely liberating and magical about sailing down a hill of white with the Chicago skyline in the background. We made it down halfway a couple of times before a man overheard our sledding laments and said, "You want to try my toboggan? I've been coming here since I was 8 with this toboggan, and now I bring my kids and grandkids here and I'm sure they'll let you have a turn." We looked in awe at the old flat wooden toboggan with a rope running down the side and a curled up front and were soon being loaded onto it and pushed down the hill by a couple of the grown-up kids.


The hill wasn't really long enough for me to have time to experience many emotions while I was on the way down, but I did scream at the beginning, because we were going significantly faster than I had on the tube. And then slight fear, because there was a little kid in a lavender snow suit in the way, and then elation and laughter and we left the bottom of the hill and all the other sledders behind and slid out onto the flat ground beneath the hill. The grandkid who sat behind us picked himself up with a sigh when the sled came to a stop and said breathlessly, "That was awesome." I just laughed and laughed as the cold wind sprung tears to my eyes and I tried to walk on cold shaky legs and feel my hands beneath the gloves soaked with icy snow.

"I will remember this day forever," I announced before I went to bed that night. And I think I will. When i'm old, i'll group even this slightly-old-to-be-sledding memory in with my childhood-playing-in-the-rain memories and think back fondly on all the fun there is to be had with a little bit of precipitation and a lot of energy. I think i'll try to find a plastic saucer sled too, take all my friends to relive a bit of their childhoods next time there's a storm.

And, next stop, when the snow is wetter: a snow fort.

new beginnings

When I think about blogging, I get so bogged down by the fact that arrival gate is a new blog and new blogs need nice, solid intro posts, that I never write. I think it's time to forget that arrival gate is new -- actually, according to the two posts, it's almost two months old -- and just write. It's surprising, actually, how hard that is, "just writing," after several months of not posting or writing regularly. Well, that's about to change -- I hope. And with my newfound interest in publishing my writings for the world to see, I'll try to get my partner in crime posting as well... or, at least, publishing all her unfinished posts.

I guess now is as good a time as any to confess that i'm unemployed.

Unemployed but strangely tranquil about it. Strangely lulled by my newfound freedom into picking up things I've had to drop, like playing violin, like blogging, like biking when it's warm and dry enough (not often). Strangely excited by the prospect of the job I will hopefully soon obtain, encouraged by all the prospects i'm juggling.

I had a meeting with a creative recruiter this morning who was asking me about how i'm finding the job search ("Slow... there doesn't seem to be much out there") and telling me about her dealings with clients who are ashamed to admit they can't hire even temporarily and other lookers like me who beg and plead and call her three times a day in the hopes that persistence (bordering on annoying) will help their chances at being placed in some sort of job. It doesn't.

So, I might as well be relaxed.

I left feeling encouraged and motivated and awake (the meeting was about the time I've been waking up recently). Let's hope my positive outlook increases my attractiveness to future employers. And let's hope this unemployment doesn't last too long.

The recruiter hoped things would get better after the new year. They haven't. Now she hopes things will get better after Obama's inauguration next week. I'm inclined to hope for the same.