Thursday, April 22, 2004
Why I'm marching:
Short, sweet and to the point. This has gone far enough. I am woman, watch me march... and vote! Both Girl and Mo have more to say on this...
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Promises to keep...
I have just returned from seeing Julia Alvarez at the Harvard Book Store with Girl and now it is time to blog... I have been meaning to for quite sometime but I have promised both Girl and Mo that I will get back to blogging and so here I am. The long hiatus was due to the fact that my husband and I have just bought a condo. As a friend recently put it, we have now joined the class of landed gentry. I wouldn't go that far but we do have 937 square feet to call our own... plus a parking space (and the parking space alone is prime real estate in this neck of the woods!) So at last I am re connected to the internet and can shout from the rooftops yet again (except of course that our condo is on the ground floor).
It was a wonderful night out. I had never heard Julia Alvarez read before though I have read most of her books, poetry and fiction. There was something tonight, though, that made brain come alive. Sometimes I feel that parts of it, all the non-lawyer parts are slowly atrophying. But being in a bookstore, surrounded by so many words, so many stores, and listening to the voice of a poet, makes me wake up. One thing in particular has been rattling around in my head. Alvarez spent much of her childhood in the Dominican Republic before immigrating to the United States with her family. Tonight she talked about learning to speak English. Not the same English she had been taught in school in the Dominican Republic, not classroom English, but American English. And she spoke about how she would practice her facial expressions in the mirror, so that her face would match this new language in which she would have to express herself. Partly this was, she implied, because those of us here in the north are not as expressive as our latino neighbors. We are a bit more quiet and our faces and tones don't always match the words that come out of our mouths. This resonated with me because lately I seem to be having a problem keeping my face shut. As one of the partners explained to me some additional research he wanted me to do, I thought about it, and as I did he said, "why are you frowning?" "I'm not frowning, I'm thinking," I said. The funny thing is, this has happened more than once in the year or so I have been working there, and with more than one partner. What troubles me is not only that my expression is often so misread, it's that each partner thinks it's worth commenting on. And the fact that it's commented on, is it that they are more astute, more aware of people than previous bosses I've had, or is it that they are more troubled by my expressions than others have been. What do they see in my face?
Faces, tonight it was Girl's I searched for in the crowd. She beat me to the bookstore and saved seats for us both. Having met only once, a week or two ago, while Mo was in from the other side of the country, I had a moment of fear that I wouldn't quite recognize her. But, of course, I did. And it is good to have another friendly face in town. What is amazing to me is the loops and circles that the friends in our lives create. It was a year ago that Mo discovered my e-mail address and dropped me a note. We have been e-mailing since then though we had not seen each other in 12 years. And Mo introduced me to the world of the blog...which led me to Girl who is one of Mo's dearest friends... who lives in Cambridge where, until recently, I lived too. Okay, it's late and I'm tired and that does not seem like much of a circle yet, but I'm sure that more connections will emerge, more will be made and the design only grows larger, more intertwined.
The other thing I gained tonight was a reminder of what I love about this city and what I miss from other cities. I was reminded, tonight, about one of the first readings I attended when I moved to Boston the first time, post-college and jobless. I opened the paper and saw that Sandra Cisneros was doing a reading at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum. I grabbed my keys and left the apartment that I shared with a college friend. I hopped on a bus to Harvard Square, took the Red Line to Park Street, managed to get on the right Green Line (the "E") and was on my way. As the T headed out towards the museum, I overheard to women behind me talking about Cisneros. (Eavesdropping on public transportation is still one of my favorite passtimes). So, I turned around and asked if they were going to hear her read. They were, but, they informed me, I needed a ticket and they were sold out. I was crestfallen, but only for a moment, it turned out that they had an extra ticket and gave it to me. The reading was wonderful. I cannot remember the specifics, nor do I remember which book she was reading (though it was the fall of '95 so I'm sure I could figure it out). But afterwards, I waited in line to speak to her. I explained that I had read her book in my anthropology class (I happened to know that she was a friend of my professor) and that I had just moved to Boston and was so excited to get the chance to meet her. She gave me a hug and thanked me, genuinely, for coming out to see her. I felt warmed and welcomed. And connected. Meeting a writer whose words I'd loved. Making the connection to the old world of college I'd so recently left behind, and yet, at the same time, taking it a step forward... so that I would know that the words, the books, the stories were still there to discover outside the university... And that was brought back to me full circle when Alvarez mentioned seeing Cisneros recently... because they, of course, are friends too.
When I was in law school I made an extra effort to go to concerts, see movies, attend readings, go to plays etc. so that my world would not be so cloistered. Out in the "real world" it is sometimes hard to remember to keep doing that. It is easy to get dragged into the routine of work and home, to forget to go beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood, of the usual circle. But venturing out every so often is a good thing. It reminds me of who I am, who I want to be, what makes me happy, what makes me think, what new things I want to try, what old things I want to remember. Also, when I was in law school, two friends and I had a weekly writing group. It was informal. We would go to a coffee shop for an afternoon and do short writing exercises and read them to each other. It stretched our brains, reminded us to think creatively, that statue is not statute misspelled. Even now, I still forget that sometimes.
It was a wonderful night out. I had never heard Julia Alvarez read before though I have read most of her books, poetry and fiction. There was something tonight, though, that made brain come alive. Sometimes I feel that parts of it, all the non-lawyer parts are slowly atrophying. But being in a bookstore, surrounded by so many words, so many stores, and listening to the voice of a poet, makes me wake up. One thing in particular has been rattling around in my head. Alvarez spent much of her childhood in the Dominican Republic before immigrating to the United States with her family. Tonight she talked about learning to speak English. Not the same English she had been taught in school in the Dominican Republic, not classroom English, but American English. And she spoke about how she would practice her facial expressions in the mirror, so that her face would match this new language in which she would have to express herself. Partly this was, she implied, because those of us here in the north are not as expressive as our latino neighbors. We are a bit more quiet and our faces and tones don't always match the words that come out of our mouths. This resonated with me because lately I seem to be having a problem keeping my face shut. As one of the partners explained to me some additional research he wanted me to do, I thought about it, and as I did he said, "why are you frowning?" "I'm not frowning, I'm thinking," I said. The funny thing is, this has happened more than once in the year or so I have been working there, and with more than one partner. What troubles me is not only that my expression is often so misread, it's that each partner thinks it's worth commenting on. And the fact that it's commented on, is it that they are more astute, more aware of people than previous bosses I've had, or is it that they are more troubled by my expressions than others have been. What do they see in my face?
Faces, tonight it was Girl's I searched for in the crowd. She beat me to the bookstore and saved seats for us both. Having met only once, a week or two ago, while Mo was in from the other side of the country, I had a moment of fear that I wouldn't quite recognize her. But, of course, I did. And it is good to have another friendly face in town. What is amazing to me is the loops and circles that the friends in our lives create. It was a year ago that Mo discovered my e-mail address and dropped me a note. We have been e-mailing since then though we had not seen each other in 12 years. And Mo introduced me to the world of the blog...which led me to Girl who is one of Mo's dearest friends... who lives in Cambridge where, until recently, I lived too. Okay, it's late and I'm tired and that does not seem like much of a circle yet, but I'm sure that more connections will emerge, more will be made and the design only grows larger, more intertwined.
The other thing I gained tonight was a reminder of what I love about this city and what I miss from other cities. I was reminded, tonight, about one of the first readings I attended when I moved to Boston the first time, post-college and jobless. I opened the paper and saw that Sandra Cisneros was doing a reading at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum. I grabbed my keys and left the apartment that I shared with a college friend. I hopped on a bus to Harvard Square, took the Red Line to Park Street, managed to get on the right Green Line (the "E") and was on my way. As the T headed out towards the museum, I overheard to women behind me talking about Cisneros. (Eavesdropping on public transportation is still one of my favorite passtimes). So, I turned around and asked if they were going to hear her read. They were, but, they informed me, I needed a ticket and they were sold out. I was crestfallen, but only for a moment, it turned out that they had an extra ticket and gave it to me. The reading was wonderful. I cannot remember the specifics, nor do I remember which book she was reading (though it was the fall of '95 so I'm sure I could figure it out). But afterwards, I waited in line to speak to her. I explained that I had read her book in my anthropology class (I happened to know that she was a friend of my professor) and that I had just moved to Boston and was so excited to get the chance to meet her. She gave me a hug and thanked me, genuinely, for coming out to see her. I felt warmed and welcomed. And connected. Meeting a writer whose words I'd loved. Making the connection to the old world of college I'd so recently left behind, and yet, at the same time, taking it a step forward... so that I would know that the words, the books, the stories were still there to discover outside the university... And that was brought back to me full circle when Alvarez mentioned seeing Cisneros recently... because they, of course, are friends too.
When I was in law school I made an extra effort to go to concerts, see movies, attend readings, go to plays etc. so that my world would not be so cloistered. Out in the "real world" it is sometimes hard to remember to keep doing that. It is easy to get dragged into the routine of work and home, to forget to go beyond the boundaries of the neighborhood, of the usual circle. But venturing out every so often is a good thing. It reminds me of who I am, who I want to be, what makes me happy, what makes me think, what new things I want to try, what old things I want to remember. Also, when I was in law school, two friends and I had a weekly writing group. It was informal. We would go to a coffee shop for an afternoon and do short writing exercises and read them to each other. It stretched our brains, reminded us to think creatively, that statue is not statute misspelled. Even now, I still forget that sometimes.
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