Deafening Silence

I recently purchased the newest in communication technology. This fabulous device is basically a brilliant little computer, waiting breathlessly to offer up answers to any query and alert me instantly of any message waiting to be received or voice to be heard. I also have three e-mail accounts, text messaging and the all important cellphone feature.

The one dreary fact I did not realize accompanied this new friend was the way it makes the silence even more deafening when it sits idle.

It's not his fault, my little Droid, it is me. (Yes, I still have a shred of sanity left. I have not started picking fights with inanimate objects!) I am waiting for one message in particular, one ghostly voice to answer from the void of silence it has been shrouded in. I have questions, I want answers. At this point any answer would do, I just can't stand the roar of silence anymore!

Yes, the addition of my favorite new toy has turned-up the volume on this distinctly loud version of quiet. Ah, the waiting game, I know this one! I should be quite deft at it by now. Funny how the games we know the best are the ones that continue to confound us. Here's to this round: may the best side of me win!

Holding Pattern

I'm ready, poised for action, strong and determined! But like a racehorse with his mussel to the gate, all I am really doing at this moment is waiting. It is not idle or relaxed waiting, my heart is pumping and adrenaline courses through my veins. The difference between me and that horse is that he knows what he is bracing for, I do not.

All I know is that something big is coming, my life is changing before my eyes and the horizon is blocked out by a dust storm, kicked up by the pounding hooves of all that is approaching me.

I am not idle, I am filling my nights with EWI events and drinks with friends and spending my weekend days doing research and writing. Working, working, working away at my new post and old haunt through the week. But my appetite is gone, my kitchen is growing cold from lack of use, I wake early and feel a constant state of restlessness.

What is it that my body knows that I am of yet still unaware? As usual, only tomorrow holds the answer. For now I will keep my eyes on the horizon and my heart in the present and thank God for both.

The Gray Waiting Room

Waiting rooms can be places of anticipation, of fear, of boredom, of detachment.
The gray waiting room, with mere sadows pacing back and forth offers little joy. Looking out the window for a glimmer of beauty I see only gray clouds, no sunlight or signs of life to distract me. Distraction, that is the order of the day.

I move to another waiting room some days, this one is beige. There are a few distractions here; a joke, a smile, meaningless banter. Between these rooms, I search for signs of life beyond the walls,but those here with me seem to have found their home here. Even their dress reflects the monotone palate of the space. They are here and they aren't going anywhere.

I come to this place in the shadow of darkness and leave after the sparse rays of light have gone. My hours are good, much more limited than I have ever had before, but the weariness I feel seems to lengthen my days and steal my time away from this place.

I have been working here for a month now. I paint on a smile like a warrior puts on camouflage; just part of the uniform. I am good at my job, but I always am. My heart is not here though, it is too busy doing somersaults inside my chest. Watching the parade of sick old men come through my office affects me in ways I never expected.

I have never been squeamish before. I spent time in the hospital in Mosul, Iraq. Never was I taken aback or nauseated. The young wounded and ill, my brothers and sisters, they did not frighten me. The deteriorating lives I see on the wards and the infectous disease warnings that flash across my computer screen make my stomach jump. My compassion is stronger than my reservations, I touch the patients- a reassuring hug or pat on the shoulder, but this is always followed by a large dose of hand sanitizer when I am back in the confines of my little office.

I help them as best I can, but in a large bureaucratic organization, I am just one tiny piece of the machine. Reading the files I am filled with sorrow and rage as I read about men who destroyed themselves and who were destroyed by others. My job is not hard but it is heavy. I am just so tired.

I built my new life this year on the knowledge that your job does not define you, that life can be lived around your 9-5. I am struggling though. I need the life, the beauty, the hope that springs from my pretty past-times, but the gray exhaustion has consumed some of that. I find it hard to come home sometimes. I work a second job, make plans and go out, the gray exhaustion waits for me when I enter my apartment, throwing me into bed and pinning me down for anxious sleep.

My glimmer, my shining star on the horizon is starting school at NYU in January. Yesterday, as the impatient admissions aid told me that I had been wait listed, I felt my heart drop into my stomach and I felt my hands begin to shake slightly. For some reason, through all the little sorrows of the last few months, tears have not come for me, and yesterday was no different. How I long for tears, but my eyes are like deserts, instead re-routing all the anxieties in my life to the pit of my stomach.

Wait listed is not a no, I know that. I need this so badly though, I want to cling to it like a life raft when the gray walls begin to close in on me! I need a place in my life where intellect, creativity and passion can take me out of this waiting room, help me soar above it and see it as merely a tiny piece of my world, not the hulking megalith that stands before me now. But it is not a no. I will move forward as though it WILL happen. There is always a sweetness to painful longing, it is the knowledge that you have found something to desperately desire, kind of like being in love.

Perhaps it is not the room but the season. Winter is a gray bitch indeed. For now I will cling to my sweet distractions, continue to paint-on a smile and pray for the warm sun of springs yet to come.

Catching-up part 2: Pulled Pork and Purpose

After the Wedding I was able to relax and I turned my attention to a passion of mine: Pulled-Pork. I am not a big meat-eater, but my life was changed when I first tasted real pit BBQ. Armed with my mother's smoker and instructions from Alton Brown, I embarked on the ultimate challenge: recreating that amazing flavor and texture. The details of this adventure will be chronicled in The Pork Saga.

I flew home utterly exhausted from the back-to-back trips to TN and CO, unready for the demands I knew waited for me at home. When I stepped off the subway, into my city, onto my block, all the anxiety melted away. I was home and it felt so good! This city is overwhelming in theory, in thought, in idea. But face to face, it is the most peaceful place I have ever been, the safest I have ever felt, the least lonely.

The four day week I came into was brutal! There was a huge proposal to go out, the girl whose job it is to deal with marketing called out sick the entire week prior, it was long hours and thankless work. As far as my goals of the week: I was too exhausted and behind to write, I did work-out like a mad-woman, I had drinks with G., went to Chinatown again and to Brooklyn, made Vietnamese Bun Bowl, created a googlegroup page for the food club, finished my law school applications and began my NYU food studies application. Oh, and the VA offered me a job.

It may sound like a wild week, but really I stayed in the house 90% of the time. I felt sad, like I was retreating back into myself, but I was really busy and looking back, really tired! The east village was beautiful, the shop owners helpful and the Bun bowl very very good! I felt so peaceful and content while exploring for new foods and finding familiar ones in a beautiful Whole Foods north of Chinatown. If it is actually ok for me to be happy, if it is not some sign of laziness that I love my job, then maybe I should go study food and history and spend my life learning about the things I love. Maybe. I plan on having all my applications mailed within a month, I will have taken my Foreign Service Officer's Exam and I suppose I will just have to wait. It will be interesting to see what my actual options are, rather than my theoretical ones! At least I have learned to enjoy the waiting, savor it. In fact, I think the greatest joy lies in the hope and excitement we feel while waiting.