Moving On

It's a new year. 

I hesitate to write a New Year entry, since I tend to reflect at the end of the school year (having known no other calendar since I was five). Also, who reads blogs anymore? It's basically just you (whoever you are) and my sister (there is a 98% chance you are my sister). And yet.

2011 was a surprisingly significant year for me, and December 31 this time around was particularly heavy, so here I am. But I'll try to keep it brief. 

Flying over the great big Colorado mountains in May on my way home from Alexis' graduation, I felt a strange urgency I hadn't felt since I was nine. Death felt very real to me. Danger felt imminent. For the first time in my life, I was afraid to be on an airplane. I had a panic attack.

It'd been years since I'd had a panic attack, but this one came on in full force. Here is what this is like for me: a thousand very small knife-yielding phantom men (picture the death-eaters as interpreted by the Harry Potter movie franchise) attacking on all sides, including the side that has my lungs in it. I cry in that very dry, gaspy, red-faced way I must have learned from watching a bunch of grunge movies in the nineties. It really does feel like the world is going to end, for a seemingly endless half hour.

Is this embarrassing to experience on an airplane? Yes. Not only do you start feeling deeply intimate about the waxy puke bags in the seat back in front of you, but the flight attendants all start giving you hawk-eye glares, like you're a mid-level terrorist and they are excited to nab you.

I'm telling you this because it didn't go away. I started to get these panic attacks a lot. The insomnia I had when I was in fourth grade and our teacher taught us about AIDS returned (by the way: why are they teaching fourth graders about AIDS? There's no turning back once you know about AIDS. Childhood ends after that. The Portland Public School System hates childhood.) I started to be kind of a pain to be around: I was that person who goes to bars and says, "But what is the POINT of life anyway if you're just going to DIE?" What's that? You don't have a friend like that? That's because people like that don't usually have friends.

And that's probably why my relationship ended. I'm sure there were a lot of other reasons for it, too, but I'm guessing that the primary one was that no one really wants to be with someone who makes Conor Oberst look like a peppy fantasy clown at a child's birthday party by comparison.

I want to say this and get it out of the way: it was a great relationship. Everything about it was completely worth it and wonderful, and I'm sure that's why it hurts so much; why I want to be so mad. But I can't really be mad. This guy was never anything but kind to me and honest with me, and the world is better because he is in it.

Please don't ever make me repeat that.

We met on New Year's Eve. I was drunk. Know that I am not a drinker: it took me years to have anything but wine -- I didn't even let that pass my lips until I was 21 and officially legal. That was 2008, the year of my other significant break-up, so I was kind of a huge mess (hence the being drunk). We played board games, and I held grocery store fireworks in my fists and lit them. I remember almost none of this. I only remember feeling a little bit better for the first time in a long time. 

I've spent the greater part of the last three years feeling better. Learning to garden, developing theories about child psychology, building houses and chicken coops and cutting boards. There was a deep calm to all of it; I felt like I had somehow found myself perched right inside the life I wanted to live. 

But then there was that plane ride. I don't know why that was the moment of self-destruction. I'm one of those people who cries at any movie I see on an airplane (this is a phenomenon that has been widely documented but ill-explained), so maybe that was part of it. Maybe it was watching Alexis graduate and knowing that a gigantic chapter in my life and the lives of all my family members was totally and completely closed and sealed forever. Maybe it was just some kind of biological clock that waited until I was 25 to remind me that life is short and full of failures. I can't explain it at all (where's Clarissa when you need her, right?). 

There was the plane ride, and the decline, and then the break-up. For a week I did nothing but watch every single episode of Community and cry. Literally nothing else. I didn't even pee very often.

But at some point, one has to move on.

That point may have been, for all its shit-show glory, New Years' Eve, 2011. I was drunk. Somehow I ended up on Mississippi Avenue, wearing a beautiful dress that no one could see because I was married to my wool coat and too wasted to care, stumbling around a crowded bar full of people who struck me as looking very stringy-haired and sad (I may have been projecting. Remember: I am not a drinker). I climbed out the front door and onto the street, where there were more stringy-sad people gobbling up cigarettes and discussing the merits of bike racks, and clomped down to a part of the street where I could be alone, because I wanted to think.

But of course, I found a storefront from my memory instead. One of those storefronts that is so vivid you can remember the exact conversation you were having the last time you were in front of it:

"Which one is your favorite lightbulb?"

"The one that looks like a lobster brain exploded and got covered in slug guts."

"I like the one that is yellow."

"I like you."

"I like you, too."

So I called him. I had deleted his number right after the break-up, but even while desperately inebriated I could remember the number (such is the case with anything you really want to forget). And it rang, rang, rang. What would I say?

I felt like I should apologize for something; tell him that everything was my fault; that I hoped we could be friends. I wanted to be the good guy. Maybe not. I don't know what I wanted.

And then came the familiar voicemail recording I'd heard a thousand times before, and a beep. I hung up, and he never called back. Which is for the best.

I say that it's for the best because I really did everything right in this relationship. I don't say this to brag; I have done almost everything wrong in basically every relationship prior to this one. But this time I'd been honest with him. This time I'd called just the right amount of times; I'd learned how to listen without always needing to talk; I never told him I needed him (a rookie's mistake). OK, OK. Maybe I told him I needed him once, at the very end, way past the point of me being sane or rational anymore. But that doesn't count. We are never the best versions of ourselves when we desperate. In the past, I have smothered exes with attempts at friendship relatively soon after break-ups. This is a little like trying to squash a smouldering bonfire with your bare thumbtips. It gets messy fast. Emergency rooms must be called.

The right thing to do -- the adult thing to do -- is to let everything go cold in its long, sweet time. This, by the way, is a summary of pretty much all we've learned in all our years of reading Seventeen magazine: Don't pick at your scabs; you will end up with uncomely scars that will deter all the cute boys from ever finding you even nominally attractive ever again.

You might be thinking, "Is it really the adult thing to do to be scrawling all your personal business all over the Internet?" And to you I say, I don't know. But at work today I sat to talk with a very important student of mine in the garden and it struck me how hesitant she was to talk about her pain. She'd hint at it but then immediately drop a conspicuous joke to change the subject. "My dad kicked my sister and that was scary." And then, "But I kicked OSTRICH DROPPINGS and that WASN'T scary AT ALL!" I think we are all scared to admit that the world has hurt us; that we have been let down. We want to be strong and brave and thick-skinned. But I think the really grown up thing is to look the failings of our lives in the face, and then to survive. 

Just as I was amazed three years ago at how I felt better after a New Year's Eve party, I am amazed now at the same thing. Only this time I have not needed anything extraordinary to happen. Nothing had to come knocking at my door to pull me out of it. Everything is just OK on its own. I am moving on.

I flew back to New Orleans from a wonderful visit to Portland three days ago, and I slept for the entire plane ride.

Episode Eight: The Year In Review

SPECIAL, END OF THE YEAR EPISODE. You will probably need Kleenex for this because it gets pretty nostalgic up in herrrre.

Episode Eight: The year In Review

List: Top 10 Best Albums of 2011

This was a good year for me to go through a break-up (What? You're sick of hearing about that? TOO BAD!) because of the sheer volume of wonderful soul-crushing music and awesome life-affirming music and so-emo-even-I-can't-fathom-wearing-that-much-black music.

This list is probably not correct. I'm sure I'm leaving off some really great slam poetry compilation or Afro-influenced bop grunge releases. But I'm just a kid in New Orleans who likes pop music and cries easily at references to the simpler nineties. If that is what you are interested in reading about, keep reading.

10. Thao & Mirah: "Know Better Learn Faster."

I am among the legions that were disappointed with this collaboration. It's obvious that for some of the songs Mirah had to compromise her musical ideas, and for others Thao had to compromise. That's not really what you want in a collaboration. You want the two musicians to work together and to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. This is not that. However. The two parts that come together to make Thao & Mirah were already awesome, so the result is something consistently listenable, often nauseatingly adorable, and ultimately triumphant. The Thao-driven tracks are better (Thao Ngyuen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down is the better of the two musicians), but Mirah gets some sweet moments, too, singing with that syrupy voice that made me want to be a lesbian in high school. Thao convinced me I WAS a lesbian in my early twenties because her music gave me such a boner. What we have here, essentially, is an album that will make Sophie make out with girls. Nothing bad about that.

MP3: Thao & Mirah/ "Know Better Learn Faster"

9. St. Vincent: "Strange Mercy"

"Strange Mercy" is one of those rare, staggeringly mind-blowing albums that makes you feel like you're falling, and you don't hit the ground until the final moment of the final track. Annie Clark (the everything behind St. Vincent) has a gift for melodic surprises, and she capitalizes on that here in a way she never has before. I was personally unimpressed with 2009's "Actor." On that album, Clark sacrificed her great gift for song-writing in the interest of intriguing production. While that has its place, it's a great waste of a terrific musician who doesn't need all the bells and whistles to convince us of her uniqueness. This record, though, is stirring to the very last drop, and never shows its hand. The result is something so compelling that I dare you not to listen to it twenty times in a row.

MP3: St. Vincent/ "Surgeon"

8. M83: "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming"

In 2009, I went to an M83 concert in Philadelphia with a blindingly hip friend. Everyone at the concert wore those hoodies with white zippers from American Apparel, zipped all the way up with the hoods on and their hands jammed in the front pockets. All the concert-goers closed their eyes and moved back and forth while the band sort of frowned and moodily moved between different synthesizer-type instruments. It was the closest I think I have ever been to understanding what it would be like to be in a cult. It did not make me any more interested in being in a cult. I thought it was silly and weird and I decided I'd never understand M83. I'm not going to say that "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" attempts to do anything different than they did with 2008's "Saturdays = Youth." What I'm going to say is that this record's breadth is so deep and the care with which its twenty-some tracks are arranged and produced makes a meal of what had previously been just a weird snack at your cool friend's sparse upper-East-side apartment-warming party. Finally, shoegazing is something the rest of us can enjoy. And we will. Just let me do it in the safe, non-cult confines of my local coffeehouse.

MP3: M83/ "Wait"

7. Jay-Z and Kanye West: "Watch The Throne"

John Parales of the New York Times calls this collaboration a "driven, sometimes experimental, often wacky and decidedly serious examination of what stratospheric success means to African-Americans who find themselves with more options than they ever imagined, but also lonely at the top." An anonymous friend of mine says, "They only rap about how rich and awesome they are and how they are even more awesome because they are so incredibly rich." (That's not 100% off -- Kanye himself calls this "luxury rap," and likens it to a musical version of a Hermes bag.) My impression of this album falls somewhere in the middle. I understand why fans were disappointed in general: when you get two powerhouses of hip-hop who basically want to suck each others' dicks really bad in a room together, you expect for the whole thing to be a giant orgasm of awesome. It's not. It's a fairly self-congratulatory compilation of assorted musical experiments that feel sometimes incomplete and often unrealized. That said, this is a risky album. It's not a rap album. Kanye and Jay-Z are trying to do something different here, and while they do it in a somewhat veiled way, they are trying to make a few fairly radical points: on "New Day," for example, Jay-Z raps, "Only spot a few blacks the higher I go/What's up to Will/Shout-out to O/That ain't enough/We gon' need a million more/Kick in the door." These moments are heavy and huge, and it's refreshing to hear them sprinkled throughout something mainstream. I hope this is only a starting effort for this pair. I like the thought of what they can do together.

MP3: Jay-Z and Kanye West/ "New Day"

6. Yuck: "Yuck"

Listening to "Yuck" is like reliving all the best parts of 1993. The hazy overdrive and fuzzy production makes you feel like you're in the front row at a Pavement concert, in the best way possible. This is a pretty straightforward record; everything here gives the impression of being done in a single take. You can almost see the rips in the wide-legged jeans of frontman Daniel Blumberg when you listen to it. But there's sentiment at the heart of it; the songs are about screwed-up relationships, lost love, and longing. It's a hidden gem in this year's releases. Put on a plaid shirt, put Big-Orange-Couch-era Nickelodeon shows on the TV on mute, and enjoy.

MP3: Yuck/ "Get Away"

5. Drake: "Take Care"

I might be one of those white girls for a soft spot for Drake because he used to be on "Degrassi," and when he was on "Degrassi" he was in a wheelchair, so I'll always sort of assume he's a survivor of a school shooting. I might also be the kind of person who likes rap music that is annoyingly honest and sad (I listened to a lot of Immortal Technique in the early ots). Still, I don't think you can deny that Drake is a really talented musician, and it's fun to watch him to get better and better at what he's doing. It's obvious he loves what he does, and he's writing songs that reflect his own experiences. You never wonder if Drake is putting up a front; he's not. His brilliant use of samples adds production value to the stuff Drake already has going for him: a smooth singing voice and killer rap skills (you'd think this latter one goes without saying in the hip-hop world, but it doesn't; Kanye can't hold a candle to what Drake can do).

MP3: Drake/ "Marvin's Room"

4. Beyonce: "4"

I read a lot of kind of mediocre reviews about this album, so it took me a long time to listen to it. This is a decidedly more mature sound for Beyonce. She's not the girl in Destiny's Child anymore with her mom managing her wardrobe; she's a WOMAN, and she's having a BABY, and you can tell. Let's start with the obvious: Beyonce gets classier and classier with each passing moment. It's possible Beyonce has had the best year ever out of everyone in the world for the last ten years. That's not really fair to the rest of us, but we have to forgive her, because she gave the world the music video for "Countdown," and for that we are forever in her debt. Beyond that, this album really has all you could want in a pop record. Half of these tracks are undeniably danceable, and the other half are songs you can listen to while you're crying into your Ben and Jerry's. There's nothing on here to skip; it's all good.

MP3: Beyonce/ "Countdown"

3. tUnE-yArDs: "WHOKILL"

You have got to try to forgive Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) for being so damn hip. It makes the concertgoing experience of a tUnE-yArDs show a lot like being stuck in the "edgy" photospread of an Urban Outfitters catalogue. But it's not her fault. You get the distinct impression she's not faking it. The only way to describe this album is to call it purely delightful. There is never a moment of even remote boredom in listening to "WHOKILL." You are still pondering whether that weird high-pitched noise you just heard could have possibly been a glockenspiel when all of a sudden she hits you over the head with a sunny tribal drum beat that gets your attention. Maybe this is the soundtrack for the ADHD generation of pop lovers. Maybe it's just something so unique and its own that it becomes perfect for all its loopiness (pun intended). She's hit a high note, and I predict she will only go up from here.

MP3: tUnE-yArDs: "Bizness"

2. Atlas Sound: "Parallax"

This is a warm record. It's the soundtrack to one of those French films that's not about anything at all. It's keeping you awake while you finish your Spanish essay. It's what you're listening to on a summer day while you build a bookshelf in the basement. This is music you fall in love to; and at the same time, it's music you fall out of love to. It's easy to say "Parallax" fades into the background, but that's not giving it nearly enough credit. Bradford Cox has found a sound that outdoes his work as a member of "Deerhunter;" he's paved a path for himself by creating a very cohesive portrait of humanity that works as a unit in a way that few records do these days. Less psychedelic and perhaps a bit more ambient, this is a shy album that packs a punch in its meticulous details: freckly popping sounds and fuzzy overtures that propel this project to truly great heights.

MP3: Atlas Sound/ "The Shakes"

1. Youth Lagoon: "The Year of Hibernation"

In the video for "July," nothing really happens. It's a video of a girl sitting on a rooftop, holding herself and crying, and then a boy comes and puts his arm around her, like he's comforting her, and it's sunny outside. That's what this record is like for me. Like a long stretch of someone putting their arms around me and being a presence that will tell me that everything will be alright. It's clear that this is a coming-of-age album for Trevor Powers, who whipped up the perfect, unassuming ten tracks of "The Year of Hibernation" obsessively, in his own time and his own studio. To me, it's every season at once; it's a treasure. I can't get enough of it. It's exactly what it means to be 25, which is what I am this year. I'll listen to it when I'm 50, and I know for a fact I will still taste what it is to be me right now.

MP3: Youth Lagoon/ "17"

Top Six Podcast Episodes of 2011

The only thing I like better than reading Skymall in the bath and doing aerobics to old episodes of The Daily Show is listening to podcasts while jogging very slowly. I listen to a lot of podcasts that stretch across the vast reaches of my varying interests. In other words, I subscribe to the approximately ten podcasts that everyone else who went to a liberal arts college and "buys local" subscribes to. Nevertheless, I know how easy it is to get behind on these kinds of things, so you might have missed some auditory gems of the past year, no matter how often you may masturbate to Ira Glass's voice. So I thought to kick off the season of lists, I'd start with a list of the top six episodes of podcasts that ruled my world this year. 

6. On The Media: Google - I don't like Bob Garfield or Brooke Gladstone. I find their voices irritating and their reporting extremely slanted and argumentative. However, they have spent over 10 years doing a show on something that ignites me more than anything else -- the new media landscape. This episode is particularly good and thorough, with a lot of new information on Google. It's like a Festivus treasure trove for nerdy atheists.

5. Radiolab: Sleepless in South Sudan - This is one of two episodes of Radiolab that came out within two weeks of each other that completely changed my life. It's just one story, achingly sad and beautiful, about life and death and the way love impacts us in invisible ways. I listened to this one week out of a break-up, and it meant a lot to me.

4. This American Life: Thugs, Act II - This act in particular reminds me so much of what we do as teachers, particularly in low-income communities. It's the kind of story that really upsets you... you don't leave it feeling satisfied or pleased with the outcome. But that's the honesty that makes this act something truly unique and special, and helps us to think more realistically and urgently about the work we all do in this world. 

3. How To Do Everything: How to Read CAPTCHAs - This is my favorite podcast of 2011. It's probably a lot of people's favorite. It's smart and funny and delightfully short, and it breaks a lot of rules, but not so many that it's crass or unlistenable. This particular episode is not only very funny, but it's also useful. I learned a lot about CAPTCHAs. My brain swelled with joy when I listened to this.

2. This American Life: Middle School - The most engrossing episode of the year (actually, you know, this is almost of tied with the Kid Politics episode... but this one is just a little more joyful and less calculated). This episode is very anecdotal, so if you're more of the statistical, historical TAL listener, skip this one... however, if you want a lovely little casserole that delightfully explores the richness of being a middle schooler, play this RIGHT NOW. How easy it is to forget... and to remember again.

1. Radiolab: Loops - There are not enough positive adjectives in the world to apply to the "Loops" episode of Radiolab. To start, it's gorgeously edited (as a title like "loops" necessarily lends itself to in this digital auditory age). Beyond that, the pieces here are deeply thought-provoking and brilliantly executed. This should be treated like a terribly expensive 10-course meal at a restaurant you can barely afford: slowly, carefully, and single-mindedly digested. The latter parts of this are the best -- the section about a whale's decomposing body may be the most striking thing I've heard in my life. You just have to... listen.

For the record, I subscribe to the following podcasts. Some of them (like The Moth) are great shows that didn't have any particularly life-changing episodes this season. So I offer them up (with five-word descriptions) to be subscribed to, if you are in want of something new to eat up your time.

1. The Moth: Sometimes interesting stories from humans.

2. This American Life: If you don't know already...

3. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: Cocky weekly NPR news quiz.

4. For The Birds: Unintentionally hilarious avian news items.

5. The New York Times Popcast: Beautifully reported mainstream music reviews.

6. Radiolab: Science for hipsters and loners.

7. Stuff You Should Know: Comical Wikipedia histories of miscellany.

8. Lifehacker: Video DIY bits and tips.

9. On The Media: Old people discuss new journalism.

10. Thrilling Adventure Hour: New old-timey adventure stories.

There are others, too. But we all have to start somewhere.