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Enough with the Gender Essentialism

Gender essentialism is a pet peeve of mine. You know, when one woman will confide in another a secret about how “men think”? How Psychology Today and Cosmopolitan are constantly headlining the essential differences between men and women, and how to make relationships between the two function (and lead more often to sex)? How even the scientific literature is strewn with studies that try to assign any disparity between the genders directly to simple hormone fluctuations and our apparently simple-minded hunter-gatherer ancestors? *

An article in Scientific American Mind, May/June 2010, caught my attention with its title, “The Truth About Boys and Girls”. They introduce the topic thusly: “Brain differences are indisputably bioloical, but they are not necessarily hardwired. The crucial, often overlooked fact is that experience itself changes brian structure and function… Most sex differences start out small — as mere biases in temperment and play style — but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture.” There follows much useful information, despite the rest of the magazine being about as bad as Psychology Today, and despite the fact that they kept referring to “sex difference” when they mean “gender difference”.

This begs the question, though: When does “sex difference” become “gender difference”? If gender is in the mind, then it comes into play as soon as an infant engages the gendered world outside the womb. Even though very young children are not aware of their assigned gender, most other people in their lives are. Do baby girls make more eye contact, or do we engage their eyes more?

Research into the ability to mentally rotate objects, a measure of spatial reasoning, shows that while the average man can outperform 80 percent of women, the average four-year-old boy outperforms only 60 percent of four-year-old girls. The article suggests that “sporting gear, vehicles, and building toys tend to exercise physical and spatial skills, whereas dolls, coloring books, and dress-up clothes tend to stimulate verbal, social, and fine-motor circuits”, leading to a greater gender dichotomy later in life.

When psychologists Karin Frey and Diane Ruble studied peer influence, they found that “elementary school-age boys and girls both opted for a less desirable toy (a kaleidoscope) over a slick Fisher-Price movie viewer after watching a commercial of a same-sex child choosing the kaleidoscope and an opposite-sex child choosing the movie viewer”. As children form their identities, their cultural personas, they define themselves in socially understandable ways and glom onto activities that those “like them” care about. We all try to simplify the complex world through generalizations and categories (sound like my thesis yet?), including ideas about ourselves. If my identity is Girl, and the category Girl is constantly lumped together with Pink and Plastic Baby Dolls, then those become part of my identity, too.

Physical fitness is something we think of as definitively testosterone-driven, but a meta-analysis by Warren Eaton and his colleagues showed that “the average boy is more active than about 69 percent of girls”, leaving “31 percent of girls who are more active than the average boy”. That’s not a statistic I would go betting on. “The sex [sic] difference in physical activity continues to widen during childhood, despite the fact that sex hormone levels do not differ between boys and girls from six months of age to puberty.” The article blames parenting for this growing disparity, but there are many other, more subtle cues that kids pick up on, such as the aforementioned gender-specific advertising.

This widening of the gender divide through socialization can also be seen in the oft-overstated case of empathy:

The sex [sic] difference in empathy is smaller than most people realize and also strongly dependent on how it is measured. When men and women are asked to self-report their empathic tendencies, women are much likelier to endorse statements such as ‘I am good at knowing how others feel’… When tested using more objective measures, however, such as recognizing the emotions in a series of photographed faces, the difference between men and women is much smaller… [and] the average woman is more accurate than just 66 percent of men. In children, the difference is tinier still, less than half that found in adults, reported psychologist Erin McClure.

The real difference is not in our hormones, but in how we think of ourselves and how we shape others through our expectations. What little sex difference there is at birth is amplified and suppressed and endlessly molded by society. Gender difference, a product of history, is the more accurate subject of psychological and sociological study.

The distinction between “sex” and “gender” is an important one to make because we view culture as mutable and biology as unchangeable. For us, genes are fate, allowing us to all-too-easily stereotype and give up on thinking critically about why the world is as it is and how we want it to be. Genetic fate and gendered statistics feed the pop psychology that ships men off to Mars and women to Venus and leaves the two halves of humanity puzzling over each other instead of acting like fellow human beings.

  • The evo-psych explanations of gendered behavior are also problematic because they assume in advance that these behaviors are genetically coded, and that they increased our ancestor’s fitness in an environment we really know little about. One theory of human evolution, that we evolved to run long distances, suggests that gender differences diminished our species as men and women, young and old, traveled together. Modern ultrarunning put women and the elderly, even nursing mothers, on equal footing with the usual athletic young men (McDougall, Born to Run). Contemporary hunter-gatherers, too, show less gender dichotomy than agricultural and industrial societies. Once again, gender is more informed sociohistorical movements than biological differences.

Summer Approacheth

Flying PaperStrawberry Jewel Thumbprint Cookies
Candied Rose Petals and Chocolate Sorbet IPlaying with Timilty

Winter is dithering into summer over here, with the early spring being punctuated by horrendous rains and bustling thunder storms. The past week has been all blue skies and humidity, and a cool breeze promising change yet again. I’ve been alternating busy days, going to goings-on with Rachael — who can now hobble with the best of them, after the set-back of her second surgery — and setting up my imaginary apartment in Providence. Imaginary until yesterday, that is, when it magically appeared on my first scouting mission. It’s got hardwood floors, thick walls, a view on the lovely little neighborhood on a big, steep hill. It’s walking distance from RISD and Whole Foods and a Portland-style shopping street replete with cafes and consignment shops. Thomas and I are jumping with joy from coast to coast!

Since I last wrote, after getting back to Cambridge, I’ve gone to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Amy, seen mechanical wonders at the MIT Museum, willingly suffered through an art history lecture at the Harvard Art Museum, failed to get hired for several jobs, had a picnic tea party with Judith, attended a home harpsichord concert for Reed alumni, met a bunch of Amy and Thomas’s friends at a graduation party, taken the kitties to their cat-doctor appointments, gotten creamed in Scrabble by Rachael’s friend Hank, and watched a batch of baby spiders launch themselves one by one into what for them is a much wider world.

It’s true, I’ve been shy. Much too shy. It’s difficult to make friends and easy to wander around by myself in my own head, or get overtaken by errands and cooking and the miscellany of everyday life. I forget after a while that I need to socialize, for I am easily overwhelmed by too much of it, and then I am too cocooned to want to see people. Rachael is a great help, now that she’s up to going places, but I’ve also taken the initiative by signing up for a one-shot at the local game place, Pandemonium, and organizing get-togethers with Kyle and other of the Gordaniers’ friends and Rachael’s adopted children. This is something that Thomas is much better at, that and going with the flow — it’s one of the many reasons I miss having him around. But not for much longer! Summer approacheth.

Sarah in the YardAvocado, Tempeh, Tomato Sandwich with Cilantro
Kamut Berry Bread IITalk to the Bear

Renn Fayre: The Final Frontier

Gavin Kenobi, You Are My Only HopeThesis Parade Dancers I
Reed is a Wretched Hive of Skum and VillanyBug-Eyed Space Man

What else would I spend $300 on besides… Renn Fayre: The Final Frontier? It was calling to me. Amy would be in Cambridge to take care of her mom, JetBlue was having a sale, and the theme was Star Trek. The hullabaloo about the Portland police going undercover in the hopes of busting open the drug scene ended up reddening their cheeks when Reedies were found not to be tripping so much as geeking the heck out. When Fox News ‘coptered themselves over campus Saturday morning, the Picters flipped them the bird and arranged their naked, blue butts to spell out messages. Meanwhile the local public television folks were having a blast, tagging along for an impromptu fake campus tour (“And then the Kerr Marmot pushed the Doyle Owl off the roof and fed him his children on a platter. And if you come to Reed, you’ll get the reference!”) and filming our cut-throat game of Swedish lawn bowling (in which I mercilessly threw my baton as Thomas, on the opposing team, taunted me with dove eyes, and it hit him instead of the kube I was trying to knock over).

Thesis Parade was a parade of science fiction. A sea of sparkly aliens, Red Shirts, a complete cast of Star Wars characters (including an AT-AT!), Star Fleet officers from every star date, and a handful of Doctor Who’s. Thomas and I didn’t get into full costumes until Saturday, when we went as Simon and Kaylee from Firefly — sadly, we had no Mal, only a chamagne-disheveled Wash, someone who accidently looked like River, and half of a Two-by-Two-Hands-of-Blue. But my, did my handsome-one look super-dashing in his vest and nose-perched shades!

When Thesis Parade lost its momentum and flooded the front lawn, and the Chunk Tower fell — my first time observing its fall! –, and it was getting chilly for the masses who were soaked with alcohol inside and out, my friends gathered in the hallowed halls of Tir na nOg to watch the new Star Trek movie. What could be more festive?

Unfortunately, being on East Coast time, I woke up bright and early the next morning and dragged Thomas out of bed with me. There had been hearty approval of my plan to meet at the food carts for brunch when I proposed it the night before! But no one was up — no even the food cart folks. Instead we wandered around a quiet campus, and settled in White Lodge for a nap in its twinkle-light-lit, pillow-filled womb.

And then we met everyone for brunch. And then, because the Tesla Coil was broken, we got in line for lunch. The Feast is always a stupendous event, and even the line is exciting as you talk with gathering friends and munch on the strawberries and ganache they bring by. My only objection is that a huge feature is Meat Smoke, a group of well-meaing folks who set up (what would otherwise be awesome) Pirate Camp on the far side of campus, and cook god-knows how many animals for the ravenous hordes. They bring out a whole pig, its body tied to its spit, and then cut it and serve slabs of flesh on a platter adorned with the poor thing’s head. It’s gross to see people slobbering over the stuff and shoving platefuls in their faces. (Very Lord of the Flies.) Yet I was not the only one veering away from the tables of carnage, and the vegetarian line got ahold of such delicacies as homemade bagels and hummus, roasted pear salad, too much berry cobbler, and those viral kale chips.

The event of the evening was quite possibly the best fireworks show yet. They did a whole scene of my favorite purple fireworks with white sparklers, and a whole act was performed to Carl Sagan remix music. Afterwards we hung out in Black Lodge for their Classical Hour, featuring such wonders as The Planets and Night on Bald Mountain. Unfortunately I didn’t get myself dancing until Sunday, but I then filled my quota to overflowing by moving continuously to March Fourth’s entire set. Their trumpets don’t let up, their clowns-on-stilts don’t let up, their energy just keeps electrifying the air and compelling me to dance!

Actually, that wasn’t the first time I danced on Sunday. My friends surprised me by meeting me for my 5 AM shift at the Peanut Butter and Sorry-We’re-Out-Of-Jelly Station, and the next four hours sailed by along a happy breeze, including such highlights as chatting with one senior about his studies in Egypt, and swing-dancing with Kellyn. I was so happy to smile as “customers” filed in, mostly people who stayed up all night and were ready for freshly brewed coffee, warm popcorn, oreos, and the eponymous peanut butter. Maybe I would enjoy running a cafe someday!

In the end, even my early-bird bones can’t deal with this mad schedule without faltering. I ended my shift and went for a nap in the MLLL, comic book by my side. It was enough sleep to get me jumping up and down for the end of the Math vs. Chem softball game, though! Poor Math kept winning, despite my enjoyment of it, causing them to miss the Feast and then to wake up early. Their streak ran out when Max tore his tendon in the next game, sliding into home base and immediately requesting a beer. Suffice to say they didn’t play well after that.

The day ended with a massive number of people eating dinner at the Delta, and a small number proceeding on to Gavin’s for a showing of The Last Star Fighter. I vaguely remember it from my childhood, yet its campiness charmed us all — and nothing quite as much as dear Beta. As with Renn Fayre, as Thomas said, any of its shortcomings can be forgiven in light of its geekiness. I tried to figure out if it was going to be worth the money to fly across the country for a long weekend, but they say money makes us happiest when it’s spent on experiences. And no purchased object would be as precious as the time I just spent with friends and family. And no means but flying can take me where NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE!

Simon TamSolar Sail
The Space GangHello, AT-AT!

Sarah Gets a Super Hero Cape

Here’s an entry into the bright-side-of-life journal: Rachael broke her leg in a skiing accident last weekend — a bad break that required full-anaesthesia surgery and twelve weeks’ recovery. Yet it broke below the knee, at the end of the skiing season, and at precisely the time I happen to be around! I don’t believe in fate, but it’s darned lucky that I can play nurse. Lucky for both of us, really: the showering of gratitude from friends and family members, the feelings of responsibility and adulthood, the perfect excuse to play in the kitchen, and having a Buffy-watching companion, are all great balms for twenty-something-itis.

Before Rachael got home, we celebrated Joan’s birthday with sesame snap cookies — perfect for the woman who sees the ravaging effects of bad lifestyle choices every day as a nurse, and chooses to avoid processed and refined foods like the plague they are — and a rather Italian-seasoned tempeh stir-fry that I didn’t know I was making until I showed up. Joan reminds me of a hummingbird, beautiful and poised and high-energy. Her sister-in-law, Carol, is equally a ball of happy energy, but with a silly ease that cares not what others think. Their husbands, Rachael’s brothers Allyn and Gib, are mellow counterpoints to their partners, grounded and chill. Though, as I’m fast learning, all the Dorr siblings will talk your ears off if you give them half a chance, long and strolling ballads of life.

I woke up Wednesday morning, the day of Rachael’s homecoming, ready to organize the moving of her bed downstairs, and the resulting cascade of furniture finagling. I thought there would be brothers, band members, someone with half an iota of upper-body strength. Shows what I know: Scott woke up and admitted it was just us two. Could we do it…? After an hour of pondering, scootching, pushing, and wishing Rachael didn’t have a mechanical frickin’ bed, the answer was: Heck YES!

Now I have a captive audience for my delicious concoctions: fluffy warm slices of whole-wheat no-knead bread topped with scallion-sunflower pesto or lentil-walnut pate, rosemary beet and red lentil soup, lemon-tahini kale chips, and a fantastic seat-of-my-pants salad with massaged kale, apple, celery, scallions, almonds, dried cranberries, and umi plum vinaigrette. Not only that, but Rachael has coached me to making a top-notch espresso. My culinary skills know no bounds! (Except, of course, for animal products — Gavin and his girlfriend Amy are staying the week, and the meat they left marinating in the fridge this morning caught me off-guard and left me nauseated. I could barely bring myself to pick up eggs for Rachael last week. Oy, I’m getting worse, aren’t I?)

The glass is half full. Or perhaps the espresso mug. Because otherwise it would be too strong, right?

Folding Up Spring

The Dead Dorr Plot Blushing Daffodils Sunburst II Washi Tetrahedron II

I am practicing at being a crazy cat lady. Except that in my case, the cats are driving me crazy: Molly, the old matriarch, yowls loudly outside my door at all hours of the night and wee morning — and when I let her in, she yowls loudly into my face. Anyone know Feline for “I’m now have perpetual circles under my eyes and I don’t want to pet you right now?” Then there are the carpenter ants that are doing a survey of the kitchen and making forays up my legs. I suppose the good thing is that I’m not alone, even though Rachael is skiing in Montana and Scott, a member of Morgan’s band, is away at work all day.

So I spend my time reading, walking to the library, running down the red brick sidewalks of Harvard Street, checking off recipes from my ever-lengthening list, eating the delicious products of that task, practicing the ocarina like a mad songbird, and constructing polyhedrons out of origami. Also writing limericks for job applications. Seriously! Not only was my mind blown by finding actual “Help Wanted” signs posted here and there around town, there was one posted outside of Berry Line — god of the frozen yogurt and, since I’m vegan, the “can I just have the toppings?” cups. They wanted me to email them a resume and an autobiographical paragraph, and knowing them to be a hip bunch, I figured they’d appreciate a little something to set myself apart from the crowd. Clearly cleverness and originality are key skills in the food service industry!

Fortunately I have not been devoid of human companionship, either. While Thomas was here during his spring break I got to hang out with his friends, and now I get to hang out with his family. His cousin Rebecca and her partner Larry and their new puppy Wally invited myself and Ethan, Rebecca’s brother, to their awesome artist’s loft for dinner and a movie. Rebecca is a fanatic for fresh, whole foods — a kindred spirit — and she made a fantastic tempeh and squash chili. Then Larry showed me around their apartment, complete with a staircase made of salvaged dorm furniture, and his studio down the hall — a hall lined with other artists’ sculptures and paintings and projects — where he makes films for fun and profit. He is a great lover of Lovecraft, and has plenty of eldritch props lying around. When their friends Alison and Mike showed up, we rolled down the huge projector screen and watched my first Wes Anderson film, The Fantastic Mr Fox. It was a good time all around!

On Easter, I was adopted by Joan — Rachael’s sister-in-law — and her husband Allyn and their daughter Ashley (their son Morgan was off in Maryland with the band). We walked to Harvard Square in the effusive sunshine, dined outside at Grendel’s, and then made an excursion to Mt Auburn Cemetery. Appropriate for Easter Sunday, no? Well, more appropriate than reading ST’s God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong, anyway. Being the first landscaped cemetery — a park turned to less frivolous activities, really — and populated by the most upstanding New England surnames, we spent more time reading the names attached to the trees than engraved on the stones. Ashley loved the Weeping Beech — as in, “stop crying, you weeping beech!” — and Joan was rocking the Flaximus americana. We also saw a little tortoise and a big blue heron and the fancy-pants mausoleum of the founder of the Christian Scientists. Later I tried not to lie to Angela, the angry Brazilian cleaning lady, about not having gone to church, but perhaps a graveyard counts for something.

Now excuse me while I take a cat-free nap.

Weird Poetry to Read Aloud

Modern poetry just doesn’t have that read-aloud musical quality to it. It covers the page like a sketch, with rhythm and rhyme replaced by whitespace and unsettling juxtapositions. Needless to say, not my cup of joe — I’m more of an old-fashioned tea person. In fact, after I graduated from Shel Silverstein and my still-memorized third-grade poem, “Peanut Butter Shampoo,” I thought I just didn’t like poetry. But, just as my lovely Thomas introduced me to cooked vegetables, his love of Robert Service has infected me too.

Robert Service wrote a lot of war poetry, which is off-topic for me expect for the brilliant and undecipherably-Scottish “Haggis of Private McPhee,” and also cowboy poetry that my Uncle Mike tried to get me excited about way back when. But he also has Weird poetry — as in the genre somewhere between Horror, Fantasy, and Magical Realism, and mostly known only by fans of Lovecraft — set in the Alaskan wilderness. There is “The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin,” about a demonic fox who torments a hunter and then sparks a jealous rage in all who seek its glossy pelt; and the tale of the geas brought about by a friend’s dying wish in “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” These are wild adventures that are wicked fun to read aloud.

We traded poets with S T, actually, when he was looking for examples of Weird poetry. We pointed him to Robert Service, and he pointed us to Clark Ashton Smith. Smith writes like Extract of Lovecraft, combining the most fantastical imagery with the most obscure verbosity imaginable. The glossary in The Last Oblivion — yes, they had to include a glossary in a book of poetry — doesn’t even capture it all. But because this is poetry, the sounds of the words does as much justice as their meaning. The rhyming schemes are not at all cloying, and instead lull you into the imagery to build up to a cosmic awe that recalls the dizzying vastness of staring into a cloudless night sky and feeling at once infinite and infinitely insignificant.

Check this out (from “The Hashish Eater”):

[...] Things
Whose lightless length would mete the gyre of moons–
Born from the caverns of a dying sun
Uncoil to the very zenith, half-disclosed
From gulfs below the horizon; octopi
Like blazing moons with countless arms of fire,
Climb from the seas of ever-surging flame
That roll and roar through planets unconsumed,
Beating on coasts of unknown metals; beasts
That range the mighty worlds of Alioth rise,
Afforesting the heavens with mulitudinous horns
Amid whose maze the winds are lost; and borne
On cliff-like brows of plunging scolopendras,
The shell-wrought towers of ocean-witches loom [...]

Some of his work reminds me of the Lotus Sutra, being a less horrific and more resplendent view of the universe. For example, “The Motes:”

I saw a universe today:
Through a disclosing bar of light
The motes were whirled in gleaming flight
That briefly dawned and sank away.

Each had its swift and tiny noon;
In orbit-streams I marked them flit,
Successively revealed and flit.
The sunlight paled and shifted soon.

It’s the swirling dust in the shafts of afternoon sunlight, the million specks each home to a billion Who’s. This is good stuff, I’m telling you! Best of all, his work is available online, so there’s no excuse not to start liking poetry and embracing the ancient art of the oral epic. These are stories with metre, not just paintings with words.

Life in Limbo

Thomas received me in Portland as I stepped off the train, and we bussed home just in time to enjoy homemade Chinese food with Amy and Tom. I managed to pull myself down the street to hang out with Max and Melissa at a pub, but once again I had to turn down an opportunity to see the Blues Brothers movie due to extreme sleepiness.

We slept in a little too late the next day, and so rushed around the kitchen making tea sandwiches in fellowship with Tom, in preparation for our High Tea and Scrumpets party. But we made it just in time for the Promenade! Showing off our fancy duds to everyone in the neighborhood worked up quite an appetite for chai, scones, and other delectables, all served on the finest china, and we chatted about Star Trek and Batman and other such incongruous topics until well into the evening. If only we had ended there… but somehow we ended up watching a terrible not-enough-kung-fu movie called Kiss the Dragon.

The only solution to a bad movie is a good one, and fortunately enough, Cindy Joe came over the next morning for Deep Space Nine with myself and Thomas. I think we’ve finally made a Trekkie out of him! Only yesterday, while my parents picked up Max from Reed, I regaled Thomas with the history of Data and Lore over sandwiches. He may never love The Next Generation as much as I do — he enjoys hearing the story arcs over slogging through them himself, much like me and comic books — but DS9 may be more his cup of tea.

Cindy and I managed a second get-together a few days later, pursuing the most enjoyable activity of thrift-shopping. We walked to Goodwill and spent a good few hours debating over one item or another, in between catching up and swapping gossip and science news. She might be heading to Chicago soon if she gets a job at Fermilab, so I feel a little less bad leaving Portland — I’ll just have to visit her and her particle-collider instead!

Backing up to Sunday, Thomas ran the stunning conclusion to his Ein Arris game. Max, Melissa, Josh, and I love griping about GURPS, but we also love Thomas’s over-the-top characters and silly voices. We got attacked by magicked lions, petty thieves, and the angry wife of a desert warlord whose daughter ran off with a band of raiders instead of marrying the chief of a rival tribe like she was supposed to. She stormed a church with her hired troops while we fought them off, protecting the warlord’s other (illegitimate) daughter, who had until recently been hidden in a convent and was now ready to take over the marriage duties. Needless to say, our little band of mercenaries got paid handsomely for the success!

Monday I spent painting cherry tree branches and blossoms for Kellyn, in gold outline on the back of glass shower doors. She plans on finishing it with color and hanging them on her wall as beautiful works of art — and as staging while she sells the house. We proceeded to take advantage of the sudden outbreak of sunlight to peruse the Rhody Gardens, where hundreds of colorful flowers were greeting the Spring. Spring! The only fitting end to such a joyful and pleasant day was a viewing of Emperor’s New Groove with Tom and Amy, Jose, a friend of Jose’s, and a brief sighting of Alex.

After another Zeno-like meeting with Joy-Marie, in which we got even closer to getting her website up and running without actually getting there; and after realizing that Gavin’s several-day guest was John Buck the American Sociocracy expert and getting him to sign my copy of his book; I said my goodbyes and hopped on a train to Gig Harbor. Except for an entire Saturday on Bainbridge that went by too quickly talking with Anna, I’m just hanging out with my folks, sorting through my things, and getting ready to travel Back East with Thomas. This liminal state is also filled with fresh-baked bread, relatively successful attempts to get along with my brother, and the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Hey, it’ll be a while before I’m back here again, I should spend my time wisely!

An End to a Worthy Quest

My last day in California. Not forever, I’ll be back! I got a late start today, but the sun was shining through the windows beckoning me onwards. I walked to Bernal Heights, enjoying leisurely window-shopping along Cortland Avenue. It reminded me of downtown Winslow, actually, complete with cute gift shops, casual dining spots, a friendly, quirky bookshop, and an old-fashioned library. Book tourism is surprisingly satisfying, given that one can see books anywhere — but the variety of venues I’ve seen throughout this voyage makes it clear that the juxtaposition and selection of books, as well as the environment in which they are browsed through and discovered, makes physical books irreplaceable. They create an asynchronous community of voices and perspectives, connecting authors and readers throughout time and space. I can pick up a book because it is placed next to one I know, find a used copy signed by a writer I hadn’t heard of before, flip the pages flipped by dozens or hundreds of others in the book-lovers’ unending search for compelling words.

As the afternoon drew long, I took the long road back, through the Bernal Heights Park, with a clear-skied view of the city spilling out over the hills. I walked along 24th, with its Mexican bakeries and taquerias, and the evening crowd beginning to take to the streets. Iggy was not able to make it back from work in time, so I gathered my things and said my goodbyes to Lucy. I hiked to the nearest BART stop and enjoyed the subway ride to Berkeley, where I plopped down in Half Price Books until Ben got back from Parkour class. Then I waited for him to scrape himself off the pavement — yeah, you’d better believe it’s not as easy as they make it look, but what an awesome way to get injured! — and we caught up over Thai food with his friend, who turned out to be a speedy driver. Suffice to say I made it to the train on time, and prepared for a night of cat-naps and a day of return.

Knowing that Santa Cruz is there, waiting for me, I feel some part of my soul-searching is at peace. I thought I desperately needed to find my place and go there immediately, but having found it, I can move forward — go to grad school, pursue an awesome career as a landscape architect, explore other places, and find a way to get back there. I also learned how much my friends appreciate me, one of the few times I’ve felt truly valid as a human being and not just a hanger-on. In the limited time frames formed by rushing from place to place, I’m actually making time for other people, and it’s so worth it. It’s too easy for me to be a lazy homebody, but with a bit of forethought, I can say that I’ve done things at the end of the day, and I have people to say them to — people who care! It’s true in California, it’s true in Oregon, it’s true in Washington, and it’s true in Massachusetts. As I move forward with my life, I vow to remember to make time for friendships, and create days worth sharing with them.

I may not have my half-acre, but the quest remains worthy!

Rain at Last

With all the unseasonably good weather I’ve been having, it was only a matter of time before I got rained on. On my way to Civic Center, I had the good fortune to hit upon the Farmer’s Market — free samples galore from the friendly farmers under their white or blue tents! But I lingered too long, and as I tried to beat the darkening clouds overhead, they insisted on sending down sprinkles while I walked through the lush hidden gardens of Macondry. Then I got a reprieve to walk along Columbia, people-watching along the trolly route, enjoying the European feel of a street lined with classy restaurants and cafes with outdoor seating. I even stopped by XOX Truffles to spend some spare change on a tiny treasure of hazelnut chocolate. I was less impressed by City Lights Bookstore, though, whose entire poetry floor failed to turn up anything by Robert Service, Clark Ashton Smith, or any other Weird or even metred rhyme. Bah, I say, bah!

In China Town the deluge hit. Watching hipsters, fashionistas, and businessmen slurp down cheap food in run-down restaurants next to “oriental massage” parlors, I thrust my umbrella ahead of me to battle the wind-propelled rain-bullets. My feet and spirits soaked to the bone, I huddled in the library pondering my next move. The vegan folks at Maggie Mudd had recommended Rainbow Grocery, so as soon as the rain moved on, I started my trek anew. It was totally worth the walk, though, because the co-op sported a cosy warehouse feel, packed with people and lined with fresh and bulk food. I couldn’t resist a loaf of cranberry walnut bread baked that morning, and I picked up some bulk sauerkraut and some mixed frozen vegetables to cook up a late lunch.

Now, Iggy lives near the Projects, which strikes a twinge of fear into the heart of a girl who grew up in a sheltered, monocultural environment. Try as I might, and all my world-travels aside, it was hard to shake the discomfort I felt around young black men in baggy clothing — a racist sentiment, I know, bred by television and my limited real-life exposure to cities. Mugging came to mind as I stared determinedly ahead and tried act casual and confident. Two guys in hoodies… walking towards me… stopping… staring… smiling? “Hey, nice shoes,” they said. “They look comfortable!”

“Yeah, they are!” That’s right racist stereotypes, I kick you in the seat of your pants with my toe-shoes.

That evening Iggy and I went to his friends’ house to play Settlers of Catan. The power stayed on this time, thankfully enough, but Iggy and Jenny bickered the whole time… Andy swooped in at the end for a very unexpected win, and he assured me that their games are not normally this bitter. But I was happy to meet new friends, especially geeky vegetarian friends who make me delicious stir-fry and carry on intelligent, witty Reedie dinner conversation!

Mochi Machine

I am a mochi machine! I woke up, took the bus up to Japantown, and went to the mochi shop Ron Chun recommended so highly: Benkyodo. The man who runs it is well-aged and a bit thin, with glasses and a kind, articulate way of speaking. “I hear you have the best mochi around. Which would you recommend?” I got two whole-bean-filled mochi, both pastel green, one dusted with soybean powder. They were like just-sweet pillows, melting in my mouth but with a satisfying chewiness. Pure heaven! I munched on them as I walked to Golden Gate Park for free day at de Young Art Museum.

De Young Museum is pretty ugly from the outside, like a rusty ship, but if you go to the top of the observation tower, you can see for miles — the emerald canopy of the park, the pastel adobe-like neighborhoods of the city, and the sky as it clears up from its morning bout of rain. King Tut was actually there, but the admission was exorbitant — furnishing his afterlife yet more lavishly — so I stuck with the colorful abstractions of Dale Chihuly’s glass and equally colorful abstractions of the much older (and perhaps less pretentious) Amish quilts.

From there I bussed to the Public Library to rest my feet and look up a ice cream shop that I’d heard had vegan waffle cones. It turned out to be all the way down Valencia and then some, a good hour-long hike, but with a lot of great stores along the way — FLAX art shop and Little Otsu stationary especially drew me in. Unexpectedly good weather, too, which has followed me around like Iggy’s over-eager pup, Lucy. At last, powered only by those two little mochi, I made it halfway across the city to Maggie Mudd’s ice creamery to enjoy a well-deserved late-afternoon cone filled with lemon-poppyseed and chocolate-cardamom goodness. Heaven again!

I hung out and read the Economist until Ron Chun and Iggy got off work, and Ron treated us to dinner at the South Indian restaurant, Dosa. We ordered the namesake rice-and-lentil pancakes with various fillings and various spicy dipping sauces, and ate our delicious fill. A welcome reprieve from the relatively heavy curries of the standard Punjabi fare. But the evening moved on, and Ron and I said our goodbyes and goodnights. Good night!