transitioning.

i've been thinking about transitions a lot lately, and it seems like the past 3 years, possibly more, has been a continual transition, trying to stretch more flexibility from myself to be able to slide and wiggle and squeeze into one place after another. i remember the day my mom left me at college, and it was only a half hour away, but she was trying so hard not to cry like she wanted to, and i think i might've ended up crying a little because sometimes that seems like the only thing i can do in a situation where i want so desperately to be able to not only say, but convince, the person i love standing in front of me, how deep my love is for them. even if it involves some walking away on my part. even if it involves both of us letting go a little. my mom and i, we still have this moment before i leave to go back to wherever, though more subtle than it once was, even given our rockiness and disappointments in each other and ourselves, because her little girl has grown up so fast. her headstrong, stubborn girl, who never really knew what she wanted, just what she didn't want. these days, i think her more recent tears come from the realization that her little girl is finally starting to figure out what it is she wants, the realization that her little girl has changed into this young woman that maybe she has a hard time recognizing sometimes. that she sometimes doesn't want to recognize. and i love her so much, but no matter how many times i say it, i still wonder if she knows how much i love her. how i would do everything for her. except that one thing.

and god, isn't it just like that? there's always that one thing. and maybe that's what remains so unconvincing to the people you love who just don't seem to ever believe you when you tell them how much you love them, how much you care about them. and wouldn't it be so much easier if we could just be what that other person wants us so desperately to be? just, i don't want to have to prove anything. and, i want you to know how much you mean to me. there are so many things that i'm not good at, that i'm not graceful about. grace is not a word that would ever be used to describe me, really. with every transition, i am well aware that someone in my life i love is taking it as a judgement. that me changing, means that i don't love them as much as i say i do, because we all know words matter, but really, it's what you do that matters more. just, i've made some big choices on what i think is best for me any given time, and i think sometimes, these people i love so much, well, they don't get why they're not best for me at any given time, and really, i have no answers for that. i'm not sure that anyone could really be best for me. i have so many people who are good for me, but i don't think i can make a decision on what's good. so, these transitions, i mean, it seems like they should get easier or something. but they don't. i'm selfish, i guess, if you want to call it that. other people have. frequently. as have i. among other things. i guess it's a lot to expect people to be happy for my happiness, for my choices to move in that direction, when it leaves them unhappy. when you move a lot, it's best to travel light, as hard as that may be sometimes. it doesn't mean that i don't love. it just means that i'm not strong enough to carry it all with me and be who i think i want to be, to try to become a woman who knows what she wants, not just what she doesn't.

nostalgia.

i just got an email from the woman who subsidized much of my time in cleveland announcing that she was returning to cleveland after two years in mozambique. actually, there was a wonderful group of women there who held me close, even if they let me think that i was doing stuff on my own. and i was struggling a lot when i lived there, but they were all there, mostly not judging, sharing their homes and their beautiful lives with this improbable young woman who somehow managed to enter into this circle of women who made my jaw drop, who made me believe for the first time in my life that i could be doing work that inspired me, that it was possible to build a life based on this thing called community and that lovers and partners came and went, but at the end of the day, it was something loud and funky on the stereo that we all could sing to and dance to if we wanted, late night cooking, cloves on the porch, popeyes and fresh lemonade on the homemade patio in the back, and just love, sometimes contentious love, but love. and i tried very hard to hold my own, but am okay with the realization that sometimes, a woman in her early twenties has nothin' on women in their mid-thirties who have lived lives that are just breathtaking, these women who represent all different shades and definitions of success, and i loved them all. and was just a little bit in awe of them. still am, mostly, if only because i have yet to meet comparable matches anywhere else. more than once, i found myself thinking, yes, this is the life i want. this is the life i want to create. and it still is, really. it still is.

i miss these women. i miss knowing that they were watching out for me. i miss their physical presence, their hugs. i miss looking into their eyes and knowing that they were looking out for me. i miss their looks of incredulity when i wondered out loud if i would ever get there. i miss how safe they made me feel, because nothing i've ever experienced is as strong as the bond of women who choose to love each other. not that they were lovers, although everyone had their doubts and fantasies. i might've had one or the other, but after living with them, i'm pretty sure nothing much happened besides a lot of talk and the occassional baths together in the winter time. the rainbow colored flag outside didn't really help the rumours, but i think it was more obstinance rather than anything else that kept that there. just, i was lucky to have had these women take me under their wing and i was wide-eyed for most of the time. incredibly lucky. and i know it. and i miss them. as desperate as i felt during most of the time i spent there in a job that wasn't exactly right for me, with hours that were not at all good for me, in a relationship that covered too many miles for me to ever really feel home in that physical space, i want to pluck some moments and keep them safe from all of that. cleveland wasn't right for me. but i love that city. and i know i love it because of these women. i think they'd make just about anyone love that place.

and has it really been two years? i guess it has. i stayed a bit longer than the doctor did, but two years is pretty accurate for when the community had to change into something else other than what it was for most of the time i lived in cleveland. i never thought i'd miss cleveland so much when i was living there. but these women. god. these women. who are still doing their thing, still searching, still defining, still living and loving so hard. it's spring in dc, which feels more or less like summer in cleveland, and more than anything, what i want right now is to be able to go home to that big sprawling house with its wonderful shades of color and wonderful stove and huge bathtub and wooden floors and smelly dog and crazy cat and lovely lovely women and just sit there and take it all in. just one more time. and my mouth would be open just a little bit, and i'd probably be smoking a cigarette, and the doctor wouldn't judge at all - she'd just say, "i think everything's fine in moderation". and they would just keep passing me food, laughing at how much i can eat, and their hands would be outstretched, holding out love, knowing how much love i needed to sustain me. and they never ran out. these are the women who taught me about grace, who taught me about good food, really really good food, who taught me about standing up, about fighting hard for what you want, about asking for what you need. these beautiful, sexy, brilliant women. of course i miss them. of course. they're the women you see and think to yourself that they just keep getting more and more beautiful. they're the women who make your jaw drop sometimes. and they were my women. my lovely women in cleveland. and i was just this person balancing between girl and woman, tripping along behind them taking notes in my steno pad i had shoved in my hip pocket. and they are still talking about what kind of trouble they can get themselves into, and that makes me smile more than anything.

adventures slash fantasies in wireless communication (a guest entry by that girl)

so yesterday we went to the cingular store, my lovely girlfriend whose blog this is and i, because we knew that on a saturday in bougieville things would be all sunshine and roses and there wouldn't be a wait at all, and, in fact, we would happen to stumble through the big glass doors on "national free phone day," or maybe they were going to give a free phone to the one millionth customer and we happened to walk in and there would be confetti and balloons and streamers and noisemakers and the like, and she'd get her new phone and then music would start up, something with a good beat, deep base, something you can jump and grind to, and the camera would pan back on revelry and free electronics and an orgy of cellular goodness.

well. not so much. but what matters is she's got a hot new phone, hotter than your phone and hotter than that one, too, and i only had to restrain her from throwing rocks at a few people. that one chick, though, the one who said, "everyone else in the family has a razr, what about meeee"? she totally deserved it.

so hit my girl up. she'd like to hear from you. even you, maybe.

disconnected.

i lost my phone this morning, but am holding out hope that it will be returned to wmata's lost and found. we'll see. nobody's been making any sort of calls from it yet, so there's that. i feel naked without it. but. i like naked. in any case, it might be a good minute before i get it back or finally break down and buy a new one. so. look at me with a good excuse to not answer my phone! or return phone calls! until then, there's email. as always. so, i'm not as unavailable and unreachable as it may seem, phone or no...i've got nothing but love for you. really.

glass.

i've been obsessed with neko case. she moves her voice with the ease and artfulness of a glass blower, constantly shifting, moving, adjusting, creating. it hits the air and hangs there, and i marvel at the malleability of her voice, but when i sit with her songs, the echo of her voice becomes brittle, and all i see is glass. i feel like a neko case song today. hanging. brittle. fragile. transparent. obtuse. heavy. airy. cool and smooth after walking through fire. and the air bubbles the only evidence that i was not always like this. i can't stop listening to her goddamn music. but i think i should. maybe i'd feel a little less glasslike and a little more humanlike. the heat of my emotions will break me soon, i'm sure. sometimes i think that you think that i can contain more than i can. than i do. i wish i could expand just a little bit more for you. then we might both be a little less not happy.

commitment.

last week, i bought a bed. for the first time in three years, i have something other than a futon to come home to. and now that i have this amazing wonderful bed, i wonder what the hell took me so long. what i have spent my money on since graduating college: food. of course. a car. sold the car to pay taxes and to finance an lsat class. lsat class. intended to land me into a new york city law school. bus rides. to new york. plane tickets. to people i love. this has meant no savings. but. it's a small price to pay for indulging my wandering feet and my heart that's so willing to empty my bank account and my head that tells me that home is just a city away.

when i was in kalamazoo, i thought it was a stopping point on the way to a life abroad. when i was in chiang mai, even though i felt alive and full for perhaps the first time in my life, i knew it was a stopping point on the way to discovering the importance of a cultural and linguistic home, as contentious as my relationship with home might be. when i was in cleveland, it was a stopping point on the way to the east coast. when i moved to dc, it was intended as a stopping point on the way to new york - the final and only destination.

a year and a half later, i find myself still here, making decisions unimaginable to me only a few months ago, let alone the me i was who made the decision to go to law school while sitting outside with two of the women i love most fiercely, drinking coffee, eating pastries on a sunny spring day, and i looked up into the face of the woman who has seen me through so much, who i have seen through so much, the woman who has never wavered in her love for me, as ridiculous as i might be sometimes, and i knew then that this was love worth committing to, worth moving for. so law school it was. and i got back to dc and signed up for a course, hoping desperately to get into my dream school, and it would be a fairy tale ending of sisters building critical mass, creating movement, but mainly just loving each other in a way that women are always discouraged from loving each other.

yet here i am. i finally discarded my two-inch futon (no, no frame) on saturday and in its place is a beautiful queen size bed that is so luxurious that i have to force myselt to get up, as if that wasn't already hard enough. this is the bed i was supposed to buy in new york, of course. i had told myself since finding that $20 mat on craigslist, folded it up and carried it out of the apartment building with molly, and transporting it to my room the weekend i moved into dc, that i would buy myself a bed when i was ready to commit to living in a city, when a city convinced me that it was more than just a gas station on a road that ended, i hoped, somewhere near contentment.

tuesday night, i was asked by one of my students how to make a decision about whether or not she should take the lsat in june. while the training for becoming an instructor was an exhaustive process of learning how to teach various approaches to what seems like an impossibly large number of methods when you're taking the course, the hardest part about teaching hasn't been teaching the techniques. the hardest part has been how to look into the faces of students and see the fear of not being good enough, and still teach what i am paid to teach. to not stop in the middle of the lesson and tell them, "never let your life be contained within a score. never let a number determine your self worth." and of course, i say that anyway, or something similar. and the fear is mixed with a hope they aren't sure they should have, and i know, and maybe they know, that this is really not much of a choice, that this is really not up to them. that the rules have already been determined, long before them, and we all know how ridiculously important this test is to them. so i tell them that they need to decide right now whether they're going to law school to get into a particular law school, or whether they're going to law school because they have decided that this is their vocation. who knew how much i'd sound like max weber? and no, the lsat is not at all content-based - it's about how well you can learn to think a certain way that does seem a bit preposterous to me, but really, what do i know? so it's that. but it's also about confidence. and i teach these classes, and they're mostly women. and mostly women of color right now. and it is not at all surprising to me that this is the biggest struggle. believing that they are good enough, believing that they have the capacity to take this test and chew it up and spit it back in the faces of the lsat writers and the institutions of privilege we are expected to beg to get into. i tell them that i know they can do better than what they're doing, and they all seem surprised.

and of course, i have many luxuries. i am teaching the course, not taking it. i got into my dream school and told it no. because, in the end, i refuse to kiss their ass and tell them i'll do whatever it takes to go there. i walked away from them because they didn't want me nearly as much as i wanted them to. and it's a sea change that i never ever even thought about. it was never a possibility in my mind a year ago that i would be walking away from them. i have the luxuries that come from knowing and loving my sisters who look at me, and i know what love is. i keep thinking to myself that the trajectory of my life was never supposed to place me here. i remember taking my first class with my favorite professor my freshman year of college wherein she said before handing back our first exams, grades don't matter in the end. obviously, you all are here, and the fact of the matter is, this is a middle management school. it will train you to become middle management. or something like that. it was the first time it occurred to me that there was a world that i had no understanding of. it was crushing. but kind of freeing. i got a 64, by the way. my worst grade ever, but then i just told myself, eh, middle management. what do i care? she is, i think, irritated by my decision to stay in dc in the end, but.

so, i bought myself a bed. i bought myself a bed because i figured that it was about time to consummate my commitment to myself. to this city i never really gave a fair chance to. to me, this woman i've always had a hard time loving and being fair to. and to the idea that sometimes, you think you want something so bad, you don't see anything else, and you think if you don't get this one thing, then you'll regret it forever, and maybe one day you realize that decisions based on fear of loss, fear of regret, make you miss out on some pretty big things. like seeing yourself. and your life. and how you could be. that it's not about one person or one place. it's about you. it's about you and how you allow yourself to be loved, how you relate to these places and these people. and you've always prided yourself in being able to look at people in the eye and make them feel like they were the only ones worth talking to, but you realize your hypocrisy because everyone in the room knows that what you really wanted was to be somewhere else. and then, oh. oh.

and in the end, i know what i've always wanted is to be someplace and be at home. to not be thinking constantly to myself, what next? where next? because as much as i love spending time by myself, maybe, just maybe, i have been running away for as long as i can remember. it's much easier to maintain my sour disposition and snarkiness that way. i have always been waiting for an auspicious alignment of stars, when really, i look around, and wonder when i got this lucky. i joke a lot about my lack of willingness to commit. and i've been hard on myself, really hard on myself, for this very reason. and this past week, i was having this conversation with a woman i love dearly, who knows a little something about what it's like being so hard on yourself, and she tells me, "i don't think that's true at all. i think you're scared of being vulnerable, but we all are." and yeah. that's exactly it. but i mean, the commitment thing has always been at least partly true. that's why it works as a joke. because i've never really been able or willing to commit to myself. to other people, to the work i happened to be doing...yes. but to me? that's the struggle.

so, i don't know. i don't know if i'll be at home in dc. but i'm starting to be at home in my own skin. and it feels kind of nice. and i bought this bed, and i think, there's not much more that i need. i am the type of woman who wants it all. i want all the people i love with me, but you know, sometimes, they have to do their own thing too, i guess. and i know, i know our lives are so imperfect. but god, sometimes, doesn't it overwhelm you by how beauty emanates in such unexpected ways? because really, when i hear one of my students say, god, yeah, i really needed to hear that right now, in an off-handed way, it makes my heart stop. i teach for moments like that. because sometimes, it's not just about technique. because sometimes, you realize that you've been training for a life in a textbook fashion, and what you really need, you've never been told. it's content, not form. and i've been bending over backwards for way too long trying to get the form just right. but fuck it. my new bed pulls me in close, and i lay on it however i want, dreaming about beauty.

marching for human rights, against the war

so, yes, i do know a couple of people who do not have their own blogs, and sometimes i get sent things that i think should be accessed by more people than just an email list. and this is one of those times. this is the hottest piece of writing about current events that you're not going to see in the news. word up. see you at the protest, yo.


hey friends,

just a note to encourage everyone to take to the streets in these coming days, weeks, months, in support of immigrants' humanity and rights, and against this vile war in iraq. we live right here in the belly of the beast, and we have no ethical option but to agitate and create discomfort, we must make our voices known, we must make clear that we will not be quiet as this country's white male elite continues to destroy the women and the people of color around the world. i know at times it feels like demonstrating won't accomplish much -- but we
are up against a huge monster and we have to take up every tool at our disposal to fight it. seriously. demonstrating has always been an important tool of people's resistance to occupation, injustice, inhumanity. so take to the streets, and then come home with the new inspiration that comes with marching and yelling, and come up with new creative ideas for resistance. demonstrating *is* a way to show where you stand, to educate others (passerbys for example), to create community around resistance, etc. and although it can be frustrating to see how the media downplays turnouts at rallies, it's also an indication that we are doing something right, that the those in power are scared of, and want to discourage, the mass resistance we have the power to create.

we have to make the connections that exist between the rising anti-immigrant measures in america and europe, and then the war in iraq and the looming war against iran, 9/11, corporate global power, etc. and we have to protest, and we have to be vocal, and we have to talk, and we have to support each other and each other's struggles. let's build a movement for equality and justice together.

the media coverage of the marches around the country for immigrants' human rights has been pathetic. it's a sad day when supporting human rights of immigrants is such a radical idea that the mainstream media
downplays support for it. i've included below a compilation of numbers are the various marches across the country, so as to give you a sense of how many of us are out there, who want to see this country, and this world, as a more humane place.

stay in touch,
amna

p.s. april 10 is a national day of action for immigrants' rights--actions are happening nationwide. for details on what is happening locally see the listing compiled by the national immigrant solidarity network:

http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/cgi-bin/datacgi/database.cgi?file
=Issues&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0513

do it.

A favor to ask, it only takes a minute.... * Y * * * Y Please tell ten
friends to tell ten today! The Breast Cancer site is having trouble
getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota
of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged
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"donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use
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Here's the web site! Pass it along to people you know.
<http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/>

no, please...

don't pray for me. this study is ridiculous. what's it prove about anything? people are crazier than anybody. really.

Study fails to show healing power of prayer Fri Mar 31, 2006 09:49 AM ET By Michael Conlon CHICAGO (Reuters) - A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact, researchers said Thursday. In fact, the study found some of the patients who knew they were being prayed for did worse than others who were only told they might be prayed for -- though those who did the study said they could not explain why. The patients in the study at six U.S. hospitals included 604 who were actually prayed for after being told they might or might not be; another 597 patients who were not prayed for after being told they might or might not be; and a group of 601 who were prayed for and told they would be the subject of such prayer. The praying was done by members of three Christian groups in monasteries and elsewhere -- two Catholic and one Protestant -- who were given written prayers and the first name and initial of the last name of the prayer subjects. The prayers started on the eve of or day of surgery and lasted for two weeks. Among the first group -- who were prayed for but only told they might be -- 52 percent had post-surgical complications compared to 51 percent in the second group, the ones who were not prayed for though told they might be. In the third group, who knew they were being prayed for, 59 percent had complications. After 30 days, however, the death rates and incidence of major complications was about the same across all three groups, said the study published in the American Heart Journal. COMPLICATIONS AFTER SURGERY "Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on whether complications occurred (and) patients who were certain that intercessors would pray for them had a higher rate of complications than patients who were uncertain but did receive intercessory prayer," the study said. There is "no clear explanation" for the latter finding, it added. The study -- called the largest of its kind -- was designed only to try to measure the impact of intercessory prayer on heart surgery patients, an intervention that some earlier reports had showed seemed to be beneficial. "Our study was never intended to address the existence of God or the presence or absence of intelligent design in the universe" or to compare the efficacy of one prayer form over another, said the Rev. Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic, one of the authors. The patients in the study had similar religious profiles with most believing in spiritual healing and almost all also thinking that friends or relatives would be praying for them as well, he said. "One caveat is that with so many individuals receiving prayer from friends and family, as well as personal prayer, it may be impossible to disentangle the effects of study prayer from background prayer," Manoj Jain of Baptist Memorial Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, another author of the report. The authors said one possible limitation to their study was that those doing the special praying had no connection or acquaintance with the subjects of their prayer, which would not usually be the norm. "Private or family prayer is widely believed to influence recovery from illness, and the results of this study do not challenge this belief," the report concluded.

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