To the end of another year

I found this in a doc while cleaning out my files today, titled simply, Me Talk Pretty One Day – presumably it’s from the David Sedaris book, but regardless, it’s lovely.

“This is simply my password out onto the street, where I can embrace life with a renewed sense of liberty. The girl standing in front of the delicatessen stoops to tie her shoe. I watch as further down the block a white-haired man tosses a business card into the trash. I turn for a moment at the sound of a car alarm and then continue along my way, unencumbered. No one expects me to applaud or consider the relationship between the shoelace and the white-haired man. The car alarm is not a metaphor, but just an unrehearsed annoyance. This is a new and brighter world, in which I am free to hurry along, celebrating my remarkable ability to walk, to run.”

Week 2: I’m not who I thought I was

Things one might’ve assumed about me from my Facebook profile that are not, in fact, true:

- I absolutely love Las Vegas
- I care very much about what happens next on Scandal 
- I’ve tried lots of exotic drinks in foreign countries
- I divide my time roughly between watching football, dress shopping, and sharing talking-animal YouTube videos

Things that are very important to me but appear nowhere on my Facebook profile:

- Reading, discussing, and thinking deeply
- Participating in productive conversation about news and politics
- Internet freedom and privacy (no, the irony is not lost on me)
- A healthy sleep schedule

This I’ve learned about myself during the last ten days:

- Somehow I’ve created this outline for myself of who I, a 20-year-old woman at USC, ought to be, the way I outlined my body on a piece of butcher paper in third grade and created “flat Rosie” to send to cousins nationwide, and the 2010-2013 models have been based on what I see in my peers here. My school is very much about imagery — carrying your letters, flipping your hair when you turn your head, Instagramming, studying in a swimsuit on the quad, changing your profile picture — and so I drew that picture sometime freshman year, and then I filled it in. I grew in the way I thought I should grow, but it wasn’t necessarily in the way I needed to, and I wish I’d known that sooner.

- In the same vein, I’ve derived a huge percentage of my self-worth from coloring inside those lines — I want my profile to look the way all these other girls’ profiles look, and decidedly different from the way it would have looked had I remained in my hometown. I know how enormously petty that is, but I’m worth much more than the affirmation of people I used to know, and I want to rely on things I really treasure and support for my warm-fuzzies.

- I care very little about what 95% of my Facebook friends do with their weekends, and I’m glad I no longer know.

- During my last few months, I installed a Chrome app called “Facebook Counter,” which told me how many hours, minutes and seconds I spent on Facebook per week. I averaged 6.5 hours, sometimes significantly more, occasionally a little less. Now I’m dedicating that time to reading. I’m smarter already.

Ten days offline, and I’m smarter already. I’m becoming a raving deactivation evangelist, but seriously, give it a shot. Ten days. And let me know how it goes.

Day 4: On people your grandma calls “small”

I’m continuing to undergo this long, progressive realization that I have wasted so much time on concerns that are so small. I’ve been phenomenally absorbed in myself, my hometown, my fraternity, my school, my tiny social group, and I frequently forgot about a) how enormous, b) how needy, and c) how incredibly fascinating so much of the world is. I feel foolish. I feel like I invested a stupid number of hours in things like Halloween costumes and  ”the good of the organization,” rather than cutting my losses, moving on, and realizing that I don’t owe anyone anything.

I apologize if I’ve written that before, but let me reiterate–I don’t owe anyone anything. That a group or a person was present at a transformative moment in my life does not mean I’m obliged to lead that group or stay in touch with that person. Receiving an invitation does not require me to attend; receiving a nomination does not require that I accept. I can say no, I’d like to stay inside with a book. I’d like to turn my phone off on dates and spend weekends far from WiFi. I can be present in an positive, energetic way without being physically present at every meeting and party and basketball game.

My grandma never called anyone “small,” but it seems like a grandmotherly thing to say–”you’re bigger than that.” I am. Say it with me: I don’t owe anyone anything. Friends who shame, beguile, or tempt me into situations either uncomfortable or unnecessary aren’t friends. My universe is far bigger than my 1,200 virtual friends, and I’m ashamed that I let them dominate my life so completely. That world is so small. My last status got 40 likes, sure, but who on earth cares?  These organizations, this campus, even this nation’s politics are so small.

I want to be bigger than I’ve been. Here’s to growth.

Day 1: On brotherhood and personal transformation

I deactivated my Facebook about 13 hours ago, and I’m already restless. I’ve

a) watched four episodes of TV shows via Hulu

b) made finals treat bags and affirmation cards for my residents

c) proceeded to delete my Tumblr and, six years too late, my Myspace

d) Sent emails, done research, and actually gone to bed at a reasonable hour

And e), most importantly: My psyche has already changed. I absolutely put on a front on Facebook. I want people to look at me and see a kind, funny, active woman who has one foot in work, one in faith, one in Greek life, one in Ohio, one in cool music — but that’s five feet, and for the first time in about six years, I’ve undergone the profound realization that I am myself, and that is not bound up in what anyone else sees, hears, or thinks.

In examining my motivations, I’m realizing that I stayed active in the fraternity I joined freshman year in large part because I liked the way it looked: pictures with diverse, brilliant friends in business dress, at cool restaurants, at concerts. My one-on-one friendships from that group are stellar. But without Facebook, I think I would have left organized events a long time ago, because now that I don’t see those folks in my “who’s online” feed, I can see that the person in those business skirts isn’t really me – it’s who I want people to think I am. And it happened because I was so easily accessible, so plugged in, so quick to pull up my calendar, because I didn’t want to disappoint people who see me every day. 

Facebook means you can’t cut ties. In some ways, that’s good — I don’t want to lose touch entirely with anyone I’ve met, because truly, everyone I’ve met has touched me somehow. But my hometown friends knew me one way and expect to see me that way, as do my fraternity brothers, as does everyone else I and each of us know. But I’m a human in flux. I change every day. I want to try new things and leave others. I want to think deeply about things and have long conversations and move on when I need to, and somehow, Facebook encourages me to remain all these past selves simultaneously.

Now that I’m offline, I can progress privately, supported by the people I text and call — many of whom are in that fraternity, many of whom aren’t — and invisible to those I don’t. It’s entirely freeing. See you on day two.

“You have deactivated your Facebook account.”

“You have deactivated your Facebook account. You can reactivate your account at any time by logging into Facebook using your old login email and password. You will be able to use the site like you used to.”

That’s foremost in my inbox right now, and it’s kind of freeing. I’m not sure how long it’ll last, but in the meantime, reach me via Twitter – or, you know, a good, old-fashioned phone call. I’ll be sure to post updates based on my successes, failures and points of growth, which will undoubtedly be many. Cheers to finals.

Punk rock and public mourning

I’ve never really thought about looking at a friend’s Facebook page after he dies.

Matt and I were friends de facto: we’d known one another since grade school and spent many Sunday School lessons and school newspaper meetings together. I don’t remember the last time I saw him. It must’ve been around my hometown about three years ago, when I saw him every few weeks, wearing a different jacket covered in safety-pinned patches and grinning like it was the best day he’d lived yet. I hope it was. God, I hope it was. I hope every single day made him as happy as that grin suggested.

My clearest memory of Matt is the semester he spent on the school newspaper — fall 2008 — and the opinion piece he penned after President Obama’s election. I don’t remember what it said, but I remember the raptness, the total delight with which he pictured the future — our future. I believed him. I believed every comment he made in our English class, even the borderline nonsensical ones about gender and social theory that still carried kernels of truth. I believed in his optimism, his non sequiturs, the way he always touched, physically, the people with whom he spoke. I really, really liked the guy I knew.

I wish I’d spent more energy getting to know him. I wish I’d even spent a second imagining that, a few years later, he might be gone for good. I didn’t even have time to absorb the news the day it broke, which either makes me a really good employee or a really shitty human being, and probably the latter.

We lost touch the moment we graduated, if not before. But from his Facebook timeline, it looks like Matt spent a few months in county corrections about a year and a half ago, and when he finished, he moved from Ohio to St. Petersburg, Florida. He was always in punk bands and, true to form, he joined a few there. There’s a final picture of him in dark eye shadow, rocking a leather vest over a bare chest and tattooed shoulders and standing before a microphone as confidently as ever, posted the morning of the day he died.

And then there are the comments. Forgive me, but fuck, the comments — old photos and videos, new poems and songs, private journal entries and  public declarations of love, friendship, solidarity, thankfulness. God, it’s sad. It’s fucking sad.

There’s a memorial service tomorrow — one of those poignant, heartbreaking ones that requires a venue change because the family expects so many visitors. There’s a jam session at an Akron bar afterward in Matt’s honor, and a parallel one among his Florida friends. To say he deserves it is a understatement. I barely knew the man, but the evidence is public and deafening: He was overwhelmingly loved.

I love you, Matt — not the way I should have, but I hope it’ll do. May God go with you in whatever way you’ll have him. Rest in peace.

Much ado about horsemeat

What upset me most about Europe’s “horsemeat scandal” the first time I read about it was that “horsemeat” is one word, not two. I never looked up the style convention. I didn’t know there was one–because who in the English-speaking world writes about horsemeat?

The first time I tried horse was on one of my first nights in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Some new friends from my host university directed our cab driver to a restaurant somewhere in Almaty’s version of Silver Lake–a little seedy, very young and with what our friends affectionately termed “Kazakh toilets” (that is, outhouses).  They led me to a corner table and told the waiter what I wanted before I could grab a menu. He brought me a platter of incredible, rich, lean shashlik. I didn’t think to ask what it was until I’d finished a stick.

You know where this is going, of course–I’ve only used the word “horsemeat” because it was horse. At subsequent dinner, I tried horse jerky, horse salami and horse samplers. It’s really, really good, especially with cognac and lemon. If you come across a platter, I recommend it.

Of course I don’t want horse masquerading as my all-beef burger. Labels should be accurate. I get that (and, generally, reporting on this story has focused on that). It’s just that I don’t think it would’ve been a story if it was about other parts of the cow, or about pork, or about any other animal we eat regularly. The story wouldn’t have an audience beyond the folks on either side of food labeling if, broadly, we acknowledged that the act of eating horse is not inherently bad.

I’m trying to wax poetic about this and failing, probably because that’s the (insert your own meat pun here, or use) crux of the conflict: That which the West calls wrong is not wrong on every continent, and that which we endorse is not necessarily right. Comfortable does not mean correct, familiar does not mean true, and discomfort and skepticism do not imply that an action is wrong. Sometimes discomfort and skepticism are exactly what they seem to be. And — I remind myself as I print the last pages on my study abroad application — I hope neither weighs more than curiosity.

Meditations on editing, vol. 1

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

“The Elements of Style,” William Strunk Jr.

“Saints do not make interesting heroes.”

A disclaimer: I’m the opposite of a film buff. I do not read The New Yorker. I think I saw five movies in 2012. I’m that Angeleno who smirks when friends visit and want to see the Walk of Fame. Etc.

But I did see Les Miserables tonight, and I responded to it (read: cried). I cheered aloud for the songs of angry men. My fists clenched when Jean Valjean stormed into that trial and claimed “24601″ for his own. I’m streaming the soundtrack now. I really don’t care that New Yorker film critic David Denby and I reacted differently–we’re not interested in the same things. But I reject his claim that “saints do not make interesting heroes.”

Here’s an excerpt from that piece (and the full one):

Is it sacrilege to point out that the Victor Hugo novel, stripped of its social detail and reduced to its melodramatic elements, no longer makes much sense? That the story doesn’t connect to our world (which may well be the reason for the show’s popularity)? Jean Valjean becomes a convict slave for nineteen years after stealing some bread for his sister’s child. He has done nothing wrong, yet he spends the rest of his life redeeming himself by committing one noble act after another, while Javert pursues him all over France… Are we to infer that he wouldn’t be worth our tears if—like the rest of us—he were even slightly culpable? Saints do not make interesting heroes.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a film featuring a “saint.” Let’s not equivocate: Jean Valjean is a zealot. He became one after a monsignor offered him a meal (spoiler: then Valjean tried to steal his silver, and then the priest saved Valjean from arrest. Then, not only did the priest forgive his guest, but gave him these two ornate candlesticks that Valjean carried for 25 years. Finally, he knelt before the tabernacle and shouted at God, like Pres. Bartlett in that fabulous episode of The West Wing, and that was that.) Valjean embodies self-sacrifice, mercy and patience–of course he’s unrealistic. I didn’t know Les Mis when I bought my ticket, and for most of the movie, I was waiting for Valjean to do something, anything, imperfect. In any other story, surely he’d have tried to accost Cosette or hurt Helena Bonham Carter, right? Was anyone else waiting for that?

But he didn’t. I think that’s the point. We’re still in a romantic era: Usually our heroes fall onscreen, and we see slight redemption and continued personal struggle, not outright commitments to mercy. We see poverty and prison becoming masters of their victims, who are saved by benevolence or not at all. Valjean is a History Channel model prisoner, for goodness’ sake–he reintegrates into society marvelously–so why did I want to make him an antagonist? I determined that he could not be a saint. No man could forgive such a wholly unjust social structure. Poverty and violence are vicious cycles; that’s what I’ve been taught since elementary school. He had to stumble. Surely he’d become brooding and introspective and jealous, at least. No such luck, though. Valjean didn’t even surrender to vanity, the most forgivable heroic vice.

Les Mis is important because it features such devotion so centrally. The romantic plotline is one of the story’s weakest–frankly, compared to surrounding events, it’s frivolous. Valjean’s France was an undeniable site of class warfare, and the banner-waving rebels are fighting profound disenfranchisement, not killing time before college. This isn’t Shawshank Redemption, either; the opening scene’s prisoners are guilty but deeply sympathetic. Valjean himself is a convert, a deeply committed Christian practicing gritty social justice.

I think we’re far more used to Christian hypocrites than Christian saints, though. We expect hypocrisy from fundamentalists–the Westboro Baptist Church, for one, and Javert. But because social justice groups are so much more accessible (think building houses and feeding the homeless), it’s easy to ignore individual religiosity. We rarely discuss social justice in the context of devotion. We lose Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day and Gregory Boyle to Javert; we lose conversations about poverty, prejudice and revolution to politicization and legalism. Maybe I can’t name films about saints because I forget that “zealot” is not inherently pejorative.

This point was hardly Mr. Denby’s critique, I know. But I think the reason Hugo’s story “no longer makes much sense” is that we’ve stopped believing in Jean Valjean. Naively, maybe, I reject Mr. Denby’s suggestion that “the rest of us” couldn’t respond the way the hero did. Les Mis believes that sincerity, devotion and the pursuit of justice aren’t mutually exclusive. That line that’s all over Facebook–”to love another person is to see the face of God”–is about sacrifice, not romance. This is one film where the self-denying love story trumps its self-effacing one. (Twice.) I found that fascinating.

And instead of romantic, “interesting,” self-absorbed heroes, Mr. Denby, I for one am interested in saints.

Perspective: It’s already 2013 in Almaty.

One of the transformative experiences of the year, and of life thus far. Peace, 2012. My passport thanks you!