Sitting between Two Redheaded People

I received some major news a few weeks ago. You know how it feels when everything around you unexpectedly goes in slow motion and you're almost capable of doing a play-by-play analysis of what's getting shown to you? Yeah, kind of, sort of like that.

Afterwards, I go to my car, sit, and put my hands around the steering wheel as if I’m driving somewhere. Only, the key is not in ignition and I have no music or a podcast episode from WTF with Marc Maron coming out of the iPod. Fifteen minutes into it - even though I'm told it's fifteen minutes. It felt more like 15 seconds to me - I hear, “uhm, so, are we going somewhere or should we see if we can get pizza delivered in the parking lot?”

Funny. I know.

For some odd reason, my mind took me to my first semester as a freshman in college. I haven't really thought about that time since going through it. As a general rule, I tend to experience, file, and move on to the next thing. Anyway. I had a brutal schedule then. One that I had hand-picked myself. Naturally. The thing is, I have a knack for picking difficult scenarios and subsequently sticking with them and bringing them to fruition. It's a chronic condition, I guess. Some people spend their lives averting challenges, others welcome them with an unexplained and unrequired bravado. Color me the latter. Whoopty doo!

So, when most students would take between 12 to 15 credits, I would alternate between 18 to 22 credits. Most unnecessarily, by the way. I just wanted to see if I could push myself to a new limit and if I could still hold on to my full-ride scholarship while castigating myself with an impossible schedule. I know. Let it go. It’s my thing.

To illustrate my point, here’s my schedule as a first semester freshman.
English Writing: 8:00AM-8:50AM (apropos, I am categorically not a morning person.)
Basketball: 9:00AM-9:50AM
Religion: 10:00AM-10:50AM
Biology: 11:00AM-11:50AM
And, after a six-hour break:
Math: 6PM.

Chances are, if I would go at it again, I’d most likely pick some hard scenario like this again. And since I didn't do all that shabbily the first time around, I'd dare make it even more challenging. I wish I were joking. At times, I wished I was one of those people who were happy being a 12-credit type of person. I could never pull that off, however. A certain gene pool and predisposition coupled with certain acquired behaviors proves to be incurable more often than not. Bottom line, some people take the easy or easier way out while others like detours or harder trails. It doesn’t mean that one camp is better and/or smarter than the other. It’s just diversity. I used to think, foolishly proudly, that the harder way was somehow more respectable. Turns out that's not true at all. Being happy with ease and a general lack of ambition is something I wish I could do. I bet life would be a total breeze. I doubt I'd lose track of time, holding on to my steering wheel while the ignition key is still on my lap if I were into 'easy.' Alas, I'm not.

But back to the schedule. I know I'll make the point eventually. The hardest thing about it (i.e., the schedule) was going from Basketball to Religion. I played basketball like I was a 6.2’ dude. And I’m a foot shorter than that. I played so hard all I wanted to do afterwards was take a long shower and do the unthinkable: take a nap. Instead, I’d gather my stuff and try to clean up as I ran even harder from the gym to the Humanities building where the Religion course took place. I was always panic-stricken when going to Religion. Ok, the real reason had to do with the seating chart, yes there was a seating chart for that class. The professor thought he could remember our faces better if we sat in the same place every day. Oh, there were close to 100 students in that auditorium, by the way. Insane man, I know.

In Religion, I was sitting in the middle of one of the back rows. That's the seat you get for being one of the last ones to walk in as you pull a Carl Lewis from gym class. I was smack dab in the middle. I tend to remember few details from people and events if I’m not too struck by either aesthetics and/or intelligence. Nothing much struck me in that class other than the fact that there were two redheads in there, a boy and a girl, and for some reason they were sitting respectively to my left and right. Yup, I was sitting between two bona fide redheads, a boy and a girl. I couldn’t get over the fact how enthralling I found their hair and their galaxy of freckles. They could have been related. They weren’t.

What occupied my mind then was the fear that I would continue to perspire as the professor taught about the historical context behind Leviticus. I couldn’t wait to go home and shower. Hard. Few things make me freak out. Not showering twice a day is one of them. I know. It’s my thing. Let it go. In Religion, I somehow felt some version of piety as I “suffered” in my tight but cushy seat while pursuing my education in the private university where people were more polite than those in Pleasantville and perfect strangers would say “hello” and “how are you?” to you. Ad nauseam.

For some odd reason, after my news, I felt exactly how I felt when sitting in Religion as I freaked out at the prospect of more sweat coming out of me as I had played with a kind of vigor I generally reserve for the airport as I'm always running to my gates trying to make my connections. I recognized the feeling immediately. I scratched my head metaphorically and literally. I wondered why I had to scratch my head and made a quick mental note re: changing shampoos. Then, metaphorically, I scratched my head again and wondered why, of all the thoughts my brain would have strung together, it decided to pick one that took me back to my freshman year.

In sum, I often wonder why I have such loyal tolerance for quotidianity and all its menial routines and overall uninterestingness. And every time I wonder about its strong presence, I am reminded of the function it plays. It's a bringer of stability and overall sanity. I like control. Control, for odd reasons, gets a bad rap. However, control is nothing to sneer at. It comes too naturally to some and very challengingly to others. While I have a naturally hyper nature which at times makes concentration difficult, thanks to learned control and discipline, much can get accomplished.

It's hard to get stuff done well when you are pulled in so many directions all of which beg for your attention. So, amid the frustration of nature, desire for focus needs to kick in. And it does. It says, I want to do a task at a time and I want to do them well. So, controlling one's nature is indispensable when it comes to accomplishment and productivity.
It turns out, it's also indispensable when it comes to dealing with a kind of novelty that puts well-tested quotidianity on its head and tells it to go spin.

And there you are, metaphorically sitting between two redheaded people, hoping your sweat won't get noticed.

And Then It Was about Change

"Let's talk about change," says the friend I went to grad school with.
The question came out of the blue which was not necessarily a big surprise to me. I'm told I'm rather decent at dealing with 'out-of-the-blue' statements/questions as I do dish them out quite easily, so reacting to them does not usually require much effort.

We started talking about new music, the Beastie Boys' new release, how some bands have to be seen live to be truly appreciated, ah, and why the creative class tends to cluster in certain areas as opposed to others. Then, all of a sudden, the conversation turned all change-y and philosophical.

I don't usually know what to make of 'change' questions. I seem to participate in a whole lot of discussions that deal with change, though. The answer I provide tends to follow the same tune for the most part i.e., change happens, so you do it. There's no way around it. Sometimes, when I feel jovial and generally at ease, I even get grammatical on one. The example I bring up is the German auxiliary verb 'sein' i.e., 'to be.' I didn't do so on my friend today as, well, he's fully privy to all sorts of verbal behavior. He's seen and done 'em all. In a nutshell, we're trained in the same thing so I'd be preaching to the choir. But, to complete a point, and for the sake of elucidating the idea in this platform, the verb 'to be' in German is happily married to change, and more specifically, change of state. One cannot form the perfect tense of change-signifying verbs were it not for this verb. It's that important a player. So, in German, one says 'I am fallen asleep' instead of 'I have fallen asleep', or 'I am gone' as opposed to 'I have gone' and, most greatly, 'they are died' i.e., 'they have died' and so forth. Right, you get the gist.

'Now' is all we have and if now is pregnant with change then you friggin' handle it. Idealizing the past and projecting too optimistically onto the future does not help anyone. Well, not if having a good grasp on reality is a priority and I tend to see it as one. I don't know, it seems to work out better this way for me and mine. But, I guess, that's how I happen to roll.

Clichéd, I know, but all we have is the present and living hard in it is the only way to do justice to it. I find, I'm keen on adverbs. They modify so well. See, 'well' - adverb. They're ubiquitous. "You're keen on adverbs" says my friend to me as well. Ha, funny, coming from one adverb lover to another. But I digress. I don't know why I'm keen on adverbs, though. I reckon it has something to do with my literary conditioning. We can't necessarily escape our respective upbringing fully. Especially if it's literarily fecund. This, I do believe. I actually know it to be thus. We are what we read or what our parents read when they had us, even. Ah, hold on. Let me backtrack. If the latter part of that statement were true, I'd be in trouble. I'd rather believe in the former, I think. We are what we read. Ok, that I can do. That I know how to deal with. But back to the adverb. The main function of 'now' is to attract one's attention to what truly matters, i.e. the moment at hand or - as I'm told I say often - contemporaneity. And therein lies my enamorment with it.

I'm often rendered wordless however, not philosophically necessarily but rather experientially as I don't share many of my interlocutors' belief that change is hard. I have a moderately good relationship with change. It wasn't always like that, however. It truly is an acquired reaction. One thing I find useful when dealing with utter novelty is to fuse it with already familiar and comfort-informed things. This is why I always bring familiar playlists, Curb, Wonder Boys, and workout outfits. Armed with familiarity and comfort, no change is too hard to conquer.

In nuce, it's not change that's hard but rather constancy. It's difficult (actually, I mean to write impossible but I'm in too sunny a disposition, I guess) to keep pace with constancy. Its gruesome at times and it requires constant work to keep. Change provides a bit of a breather, a chance to view things from another perspective and point of view. If it weren't for change, the processing of ideas and any life experience would be hard to accomplish.

Try the Opposite of Your Natural Pace: You Might Like What You See

What I truly like about travel and being in different time zones is how naturally and organically introspection seems to come by. I usually live by giving in to my natural pace as I've come to discover that it is most likely the best one to stick to. Mother Nature knows best and all, right? Well, at least I hope she does.
A while back a dear friend of mine from Germany came to visit and one of the books she brought with her was Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit (The Discovery of Slowness). My friend's an avid reader and I've always made it a point to read all she recommends.

I remember being taken by the title of the book so much so that instead of breaking it open and reading it during the time she was staying over, I just kept staring at the title and the author's name over and over again. To me, that was an exercise in slowness. I'm the type who's been known to devour a new book during the time frame between lunch and dinner. In jest, I refer to this high-frequency reading activity of mine as a 'condition'. I need to read new titles as a way of feeling up to date. Since this is the kind of reading behavior I tend to espouse, staring at a book title for two weeks and having no interest in reading it at that point in time does beg for some attention, nay? Not with Nadolny's title. I went out of my way not to read it, actually. Somehow, it made more sense to me to just stare at the cover at the end of the day and that was quite a soothing and relaxing activity.

For some odd reason I've been been thinking about this experience quite a bit lately as it's always struck me as unlike me, hence worthy of some investigation. And I think I sort of know why I've revisited this title-reading experience. The title, i.e., the 'Discovery of Slowness', was, in and of itself, an exercise in slowness for me. And I've struggled with slowness enough to know that I ought to pay attention to it every time it's mentioned. By nature, I tend to espouse the opposite of slowness in life. I move quickly, speak fast, tend to absorb information and experiences quickly, and move on to the next task with a sense of urgency and past-paced purposed. All I've known is fast pace and quick movements. What tends to vex me in life has, more often than not, something to do with slowness and one of the things I try to gain some experiential knowledge of is exactly that: slowness.

Slowness and I don't run in the same circles. However, some of the experiences that I find the most enjoyable and substantial have been in the company of people who seem to be native speakers of slowness. To this day, my best travel buddy is the same German pal who brought the 'Discovery of Slowness' with her. We have a pace that's somehow congruent and I don't have a need to go at the speed of light. Slowness is hard to learn if the notion and practice is foreign to one. However, I am discovering that it is not impossible. All one needs is the right teachers to guide one along. And I'm lucky enough to have a few of them. Today alone I was in the company of three of them which made it easier to do one of my new meditation activities: stare at my feet against the dewy grass for 5 minutes or 35. I sort out a few things while doing so one of the being that my toes need a new, fresh coat of OPI.

 Subscribe to HetPer

 Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast

Being Sensitive, Gender, iPhones, and Gadget-mania

I had an interesting exchange with the Apple representative today. I called to report a problem with my iPhone and that I needed to get a replacement through my Apple Care plan. The rep asked me to describe the problem and the following ensued:

Rep: What's the issue with it?

I: Well, the wheel is not cooperating and instead of responding when I press it, as it should, it responds without my actual pressing down on it. I could be in the middle of a text message and then I get sent back to the main screen. So, the screen is hyper sensitive.

Rep: So, the wheel is not operating as it should and the screen is
being hyper sensitive, right?

I: Right.

Rep: Sorry, it's taking me a while to spell 'sensitive' in my notes here. I'm a guy, you know, I don't do well with 'sensitive.' Ha, ha ....

I: No worries. Take your time. I'm a girl and I don't do well with 'sensitive' either, you know? So, it's all good.

And then he proceeded to laugh for a bundle of seconds. The rep was most helpful and I suppose a bit of self-effacing humor expedites the fastest of solutions. And that would be the moral of the story.

 Subscribe to HetPer

 Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast

How to Remember Where You Parked?

Well, if you're at all like me and at times find yourselves running at full speed, then you're bound to forget some of the little details in quotidianity such as where you left your keys (for the millionth time) or where you parked. I have come upon a remedy for the latter. I take a picture of the place where I parked so that I don't repeat what I repeated the other day, i.e., run on every level of a behemoth of a parking place till I found where the vehicle was.
At least I got my workout, so I suppose not all is lost.

 Subscribe to HetPer

 Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast