Indecisive Peach

I spoke earlier to someone who defined her role as a women as a direct reaction to the existence of men. I went on to query her about this and then reflected that for me, the role of female only is played out in the contrast and complimentary ways I see women around me. Femininity and the archetype of woman becomes this model and how I recognize the reflections on that model, in my innate actions and ways to strive to stretch and enjoy myself as a woman, defines my notion of it.

I’ve commented on this before, but I do have a lot of testosterone in my life. And while I do think that several of the men I have interactions with are not necessarily loading their representations of masculinity with things that media might value – beer-swilling, roof-fixing, sport-watching – they do decidedly inhabit a different gender model. [This is starting to sound very grad school theory here.]

The point: when a female friend of mine, K, was scheduled to arrive from Colorado to spend a couple days around the end of the year, not only was I happy in the idea of catching up, I was crazy excited to do things that established me firmly in the role of woman. Moving away from high falutin’ language, I wanted to do damn girly things.

“Oh my God. You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

I sneak through the racks behind her as she says this to the boy behind the counter.

“Please, please tell me you’re dating someone,” she breathes.

He gives a bit of an abashed chuckle. “Yeah. And his name is Jesus.”

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For some reason, all my education has been focused around the idea of being intently focused on your audience. In journalism, you had to be highly aware of almost speaking down to your audience in an effort to bring the most concise information to the widest reach of your core readers. In rhetoric, there was the idea that knowing your audience to the highest degree gave you a higher measure of power in persuasion.

I think, however, that the demand toward knowing your audience came when I was in my first incarnation of college education. I hesitate to mention it, but I never really aimed high when it came to my college education. I had the pick of full-rides to any schools in the state when I left high school and I simply decided to continue on with my high school educational career. I was into computers, enjoyed the tinkering, was hoping to get a bit more provoked into that sort of study *insert waving of hands* at a higher institution. [This is why letting an 18-year-old mold your career path can be a very bad thing.]

I went to the state’s premier research institution and was wildly excited by two things: they gave me money back at registration and that male to female ratio was about 4:1. I was rebuffed by the type of people I encountered – nope, I did not find numbers interesting, nor lines on graphs, or hacking into my graphing calculator. Interestingly, I enjoyed my writing classes the most.

These were embarrassingly small classes. A technical writing class of three people and a teacher was one I took one of the two semesters I was there. The teacher liked the idea of bringing in people from “the field” who would tell harrowing tales of working with engineers who didn’t like to shower or comb themselves and who would write worse notes than a doctor on LSD. As one such professional started off her thirty minute presentation, she ultimately gave my entire initial common sense reasoning behind why one should know their audience.

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I’ve been thinking on this theme of motivation for a while. I’ve been wanting to write on it and I thought of a story earlier this morning. It reminds me that I can be very motivated when I, amusingly enough, want to be and when I have that firm spark of will, I do well in fanning the flames.

Two summers ago I had the chance to go to Washington, DC for a job funded trip to take a class at the National Archives. I don’t think I actually blogged much about the trip (even though I did stumble upon the handwritten notes that I took during that time) because…somehow I wasn’t doing much blogging then. [I just opened up my flickr set of the trip if you're curious. Few pictures are of me because the ones I did take where I wasn't on a Segway left me looking like a wilted flower. I am very unused to this thing called humidity.]

The National Archives, the main building down the street from Congress, lends itself much natural grandeur, with tan marble floors and eight foot wooden doors. During my two weeks there, we used the back entrance, the researcher’s entrance, that had us taking our bags through metal detectors guarded by surly workers. We’d march past the office of the Archivist of the United States; those in the biz being properly awed.

One of the highlights and honors expressed to us from day one was a special viewing of the rotunda where they kept the key founding documents of the United States – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Our class of about thirty was to be allowed in the hall by ourselves in a morning before they opened the rotunda to the public. Much oohhhing and awwwing came from all in attendance.

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It sounded like we were at the ocean. The horns from the trucks called out in unison with the shifting of the traffic, as the flow of traffic did not let the trucks in line move past the lights. GS exhaled sharply and decided to jump ahead the line of the cars.

Of all the cutting differences between GS and I, the one I find the most amusing is his style of driving. It’s a very boyfriend modified version and I dare not speculate how he drives on his own, but I’ve told him that to an observer it’s very much a “25 percent pleasant smiles and 75 percent fuck you” surgical style of driving. It’s like being on a roller coaster and I rather love it, yelling “Weeeeeee” and clutching the door; because if I don’t stand out for other things in Mexico, the word “Weeeee” culminates the process to a shorthand.

In theory, I’m really blessed in the offering of a new language recently. If I have been speaking to my Mom about my relationship, the end does tend to tie up nicely with, “How’s that Spanish coming along?”

It’s… not, to be honest. I have to conjure up a lot more discipline for myself than what I have currently. [And I was so damn gung-ho.] What has stopped me lately is the metaphor “taking it to the next level.”

This is exemplified with the janitor in our department that is completely enthused about my learning Spanish and my autentico novio who she likes to ask about. We ask each other every day how we are, and by god, I can say, “Muy bien” with astounding certainty. I even can play nice and give apt descriptions for my state – tired (cansada), there is lots of work (mucho trabajo), look! – snow! (mire!…snow!) – the thing is, I want to have other conversations with her and then realize I need to focus on the asking words. I think I asked her how much her children were the other day when I meant to ask how old they are. *hides*

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Chinese tends to pierce my brain like sunlight into fog and perhaps this is a substantive reason why I liked the sound so much. But this back and forth seemed familiar to me…

I was third in line at the bank, rocking ever so slightly back and forth on my legs and had been debating the sexual lives of the men in front of me, an obese older gentleman with a Seattle Seahawks hat – when was the last time he had a come hither moment of raw virility – and a short man in a red, plastic jumpsuit whose coloring, complexion, and sneaking tendrils on his neck and on his knuckles spoke to a hidden blanket of man hair.

Rapid-fire is a tired way to describe listening to a language you don’t know, because it’s natural that this is going to be the speed that a native would speak it. But the back and forth by the two Chinese girls was robotic in their vocalizations, one girl in glasses seeming to cut off the slightly smaller next to her in barking orders.

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In January, still enamored with having steady health insurance, I decided to go and see what an orthodontist would say to my teeth. Now in a family of Germans and Scottish, I came out with a hint of Austin Powers teeth. Both my parents had neatly aligned teeth, so, they never thought to open my jaw like a horse to divine the quality of mine. The German efficiency was tossed aside when it should have been, “Dear child, you have some nice acne and are sufficiently awkward now, why not amp it up with some braces and when you’re in your mid twenties, you’ll be able to just remember all that, with vengeance, as just building character?”

No.

So, I wiggle around as I sit for a mold of my teeth and smile wider than I do naturally for my Before Shot. The consult with both the doctor, a laid back Texan, and his business end, his polished early-fifties ex-cheerleader wife, went well. He told me that I had a whole slew of problems, crossbite, overbite, orthoitis of this and orthoitis of that with a bout of snaggle. A little of this and bit of that and in 20-24 months, you’ll be set. Holy moses, two years, I thought and sunk into my chair. Oh, and before we start, get your wisdom teeth removed, missy. He gets up to shake my hand.

Right.

With the business end, I nodded blankly to the figures, still mulling the time in my head. Now in January, I was still thinking Japan! and Sushi! and Hot Japanese Guys! so I told them I needed to wait, but that I’d take them up on the wisdom teeth idea and after that I’d get back to them. I set up for the wisdom teeth removal, blessedly only the top because the miracle of evolution made me not have any on the bottom, and this is another story not to be told here except that you know that someone loves you when they take wads of your blood-soaked bandages and only wrinkle their face.

[Thanks J. ^_^]

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It seems that there is a mythic type of parent-child relation, the time when the child realizes that the parent is very much human and fallible. That it can be a bit of a disappointment in what you’ve built as a small frame for the world. Not that I particularly think it’s a good thing (and nor do I blame my parents for it), but the fact that I was able to experience it very early allowed me to integrate that into who I was even as a teenager. Somehow, I felt that it gave me equal amounts of exasperation and compassion toward my parents.

I would wager to say that what I’ve been grappling with lately is also something very potent in terms of recognizing yourself inside or outside the models of life that your parents created for you – specifically, how well do their values align to what you feel is right for how you want to approach your life? There is a lot of nagging in my mind on the naivete that is espoused in value creation. If I am firm and resolute about something now because of the experiences I’ve had, will I be a sell out if I change my mind when I’m older and these things do not apply? Or I realize that they didn’t mean the same compared to what I thought they did right now?

My Dad’s favorite saying that he liked to impart to me was, “Live to work or work to live?” He was very, very anti-establishment, as much as one could be being in the military. He refused to play nice for a lot of things sometimes, in the theoretical vein of, ‘Why play nice, when one has ethics to stand up for?’

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For me, it never fails that the reflection of a past year tends to be a matter of thinking about how random life actually can be and that the best laid plans really can be even better than what you thought they might be from the onset.

I’m approaching this in a positive light because this year has been pretty damn swell. Granted, there are still roughly sixty days left and sure, there are nuggets of discontent, but when viewed in the glow of the environment, everything is peachy.

A year ago everything was incredibly stable, but also with this strange malaise of looming change. My Mom would be making the change to Germany, yet we had no idea how quickly this would happen at the time. I was in a terrifically horrible relationship that equated to a complete waste in time and effort. I was applying to the JET program, trying to take a blind leap of faith out of the system.

2009.

It turned out that my Mom’s call to the universe helped clear her mind for the better. It turned out that there was a cheerful young man I needed to meet and fall in love with. It turned out that with the first application I got at least runner up placement and as non-Japanese speaking, non-certified teacher I felt that was a very pleasant outcome to my waffling query of the universe.

What I did realize is that being severely pointed in discussions with the universe (and yes, this unfortunately meant in the completely New Age tint) is probably the best way to go about things. Waffling has been my m.o. for a very long time, but somehow…things need to change and I need to change them. Step one: more writing.

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Her face lifted and brightened as I approached the counter and I gave my best wary smile.
“I’d, um, like the – “
“WOW. It has been a long time.”
I focused on the woman.

She was a small woman with blonde hair pulled starkly back into a short ponytail. She was woman that as a child probably already had a hard, angular look and when the tint of age began to seep in, her face welded into a mask of worn porportions. It was a look of rough life, but to me it somehow was a look that spoke more to a life that is being made more hard than it needs to be. I had never seen her before.

“It has been a really long time since I’ve seen you,” she said excitedly. “How have you been? Wow, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen you. It’s been months since you’ve been here, right?”

I bit taken aback as I quickly calculated, “It’s been a while…sure.” I nod slowly at her.

“I knew it!” She gave me a large grin. “How are you?”

She asks if I’ve graduated and what I’m currently doing, a constant hum of genuine pleasure from every question. I start to feel a little umcomfortable. As she takes my order, she takes my name and nods authoritatively with recognition as I give it.

She leans back to put the order to the sandwich makers behind her and I had a thought. Leaning a hand on the counter I asked, “And…I’m sorry…your name is?” She spun back forward, brightening even more. We banter on a bit more and then she curls over the cash machine, “You know what?” She pulls out a extra large cup, “The least I can do for a long lost customer.”

First, an extra-sized drink – next, the world.