So I was 21 and a little bit drunk and very barefoot, wearing a dress and lying on the turf of the football field holding hands with a friend- with our backs on the ground attempting to trace the constellations with our eyes. It was in that time after midnight when all the hours seem to blend together, and in the middle of a month that is much too cold for girls to be lying outside barefoot and in dresses. I looked up at the sky so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes, and so she couldn’t see that I was crying. I knew she knew, as I felt her squeeze my hand just a little bit tighter.

So I was 16 and in the middle of probably my 8^th existential crisis that week. I was sitting in a rock in the middle of the dessert, and I couldn’t see a single other human being. It was humid and hot, but the breeze still made me shiver. I had done so much that day- climbed Masada, swam in the Dead Sea, sang around a campfire at a Bedouin tent, and drank so much tea that I was sure I’d never be thirsty again. I’d sat around the fire and quietly whispered secrets to my friends as we stared at the flames dancing in front of us instead of each other. The words always seem to come easier as the hour gets later and our eyes are set somewhere besides on each other’s faces.

So I was 18 and pretty sure I was about to die, and the idea didn’t really upset me. I held my keys between my fingers, like some kind of pathetic and meek Wolverine, unsure if I was more afraid of the world around me or the world in my head. I walked deliberately down 10 Chicago blocks, just trying to make it home so I could curl up under the pile of blankets that I had been using as sheets as I couldn’t bring myself to do laundry, and while I was entirely apathetic to the dirt and the smell, I couldn’t deal with the water I had spilled on them that morning. I was in a bad place, and I sat alone crying, curled up with my back on the heater trying to feel anything at all.

So I was 17 and I felt like I owned the world. I was standing on the top of a car, parked in lot somewhere between Annapolis and Severna Park. It was late at night on a Wednesday, and I had school in the morning, but that didn’t really matter. I felt invincible. My friend sat in the car and giggled, blasting a cd that was the kind of mix of angsty indie, shameless pop and beautiful show-tunes that seems so indicative of girls growing up in the suburbs. We didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything we didn’t want to do. We were free and fearless, and full of hope for our lives that felt like they were just on the brink of really beginning.

So I was 20 and walking much farther away from campus then the amount of clouds suggested that I should feel comfortable doing. My friend and I were talking in a way that movie writers with their pens that spit wit and cliché and aim for truth would envy.   We were a half a mile from campus when the sky turned from mildly worrying to downright scary. A mile out when the rain started to fall hard enough that we decided that we should head back. We were surrounded by empty fields and abandoned houses and silos full of things I didn’t want to know. It was wet and windy and we were stuck in a state of emotional in between. We walked back slowly- me in flats, her barefoot- discussing the future and boys and politics, the times our parents made us cry, and the times we felt we had disappointed them. We felt brash and alive- scared but optimistic.

So I was 19 and snuggled under the covers in my dorm room watching my roommate dance around yelling the words to Christmas songs with the kind of aggression normally reserved for things much scarier than Jingle Bells. Another friend sat perched on the edge of my bed, eyes darting back and forth between me- confused and tired- and my roommate- singing and dancing. Soon the two of them were dancing together. And soon I was dancing with them as well. Our RA probably should have come and asked us to keep it down, but since no one knocked on the door we kept shouting words to songs that were more meant to be crooned. We did dumb dance moves solely to make each other giggle, and ended up in a pile on the floor, laughing to the point where it almost hurt to breathe.

So right now I’m 21 and sitting in the comfiest chair in the family room, listening to the world move around me. My fingers are moving rapidly over the keys, trying to get the words out with the same speed I am thinking them, and almost succeeding. Football is on the tv, and my mother is cooking chicken wings while my dad does the dishes. My brother and his friends are making football jokes that go over my head and the dog is sitting at my feet. The fireplace is crackling and the house feels warm and full of life.

I have a pretty good memory, but it’s not infallible. I’m made up of memories and people, and emotions that I felt in times that I don’t remember. But I want to remember all of it. I want to live my life like a scrapbook; collecting the things that make up the whole, allowing myself to look back at them once and a while.

I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do here. Create a memory book for myself and for anyone else that is along for my very strange ride. What better way to remember then to share outward- with the people who make me want to remember so much?

So I guess this is thank you. Thanks for creating moments with me, and letting me revel in the times I’ve left behind and the times that are on their way. Thanks for laughing and thanks for caring, and thanks for not laughing when I care so much.

This is my ending to Blog Every Day November, but the start of whatever comes next. I’m not sure what that will be. But I know I’ll be here, writing all about it, so I can make sure that I remember it all. 

I saw something out of my nightmares today. It was a giant pink poodle, about the height of a building and as wide as a school bus. It was fluffy and vaguely the color of Pepto-Bismol, and had eyes the size of dinner plates. It was a kinetic sculpture, and inside there were bicycle seats enough for 4 people to paddle it around the inner harbor. Which is awesome. But terrifying.

Today my father and grandmother and I took a trip to the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. There is no other way to describe the museum then insane. It’s stuffed to the brim with oddities and strangeness. Some beautiful, some deeply disturbing, all of it making up a collection you couldn’t imagine anywhere else.

People talk all the time about the beauty of art. About how art is the beauty we find in the world, or how art allows beauty in our lives—but art isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes art is strange and painful and nonsensical and the things you wouldn’t expect to work. Sometimes art is hurtful and angry and a release of the emotion that the artist needs to release. Art can be weird.

The Visionary Arts museum is a place that feels a little bit like an art museum met a junkyard, had a torrid affair and had a baby who met a kindergarten classroom’s craft area, and their baby threw up all over a building in the inner harbor. It’s chaotic and organized in a way that probably makes sense to someone, but I am definitely not that person. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it- I most definitely did.

My elementary school took field trips to the art museums in DC four times a year. We’d go over and over again, until seeing works by Matisse or Chagall seemed as commonplace as seeing as seeing certain relatives. Art was just a part of our lives, if we wanted it to be or not. My mom hated those field trips- they made her remember her own trips from school, when she was forced to carry her coat all over for long days in hot museums. I liked them. I liked getting to see interesting things, and an interesting city that had so many things I didn’t even know that I didn’t know about.

I’ve been to the National Gallery in DC dozens and dozens of times by now… and the Hirshorn, and the Corcoran and the Phillips, and lots of other little places in between.  Every visit shows me new and interesting things, and paintings and sculptures and photographs that fill me with awe and inspire me to learn more and create more.

Blog Every Day November is almost over. I’ve written a lot this month, about a lot of different things. It’s given me a chance to get my creative juices flowing in ways that I wouldn’t have expected. I’ve written lots and lots of blog posts- but it’s inspired me in other ways; I’ve written 60 pages of a story I’ve been trying to get out since high school, I’ve painted a little, I’ve collaged and doodled and written more poetry then I have since I was 17.

I’m grateful that this was something I was able to do. I’m grateful for all the things that I’ve gotten to experience that have inspired me so much. The art; beautiful and strange that makes the world a better place. The playlists of songs that friends have sent that help me write until I feel like my fingers are about to fall off. 

I’m grateful for the things that I don’t understand, but mean so much to the people that created them.

The things I’ve been making mean a lot to me, and even if they seem strange and weird to anyone else, I hope people can appreciate the fact that I’m doing and trying and putting myself out there in a way that feels scary.

So I guess I’m saying I’m glad for the art museums filled with giant scary dogs and the cds full of songs I don’t like and even the books and movies that give me nightmares. I’m glad people can make things that they are proud of. 

I’m glad I can make things I’m proud of too. 

I feel like there isn’t anything I can write today that won’t slowly dissolve in to cliché. Thanksgiving is a sentimental holiday, and I am a sentimental person- as is probably evidently clear in this point in my Blog Every Day November posting.

Thanksgiving over the years mostly blurs together in my mind. There are a few stand outs—the year I spent it in a hostel in Jerusalem, the year after my first cousin was born, or the first time we had our meal at my aunt and uncle’s first house- but most of it seems to settle in to my mind in a sense of sameness that’s comforting and familiar.

I’m in a good place right now. I’m cuddled up in the corner of a couch surrounded by my family as we prepare to go meet everyone else later on. The parade is on tv and I, like always, have my laptop out writing away. Dad is at the sink, peeling potatoes to make latkes and shouting dumb dad jokes at the parade that he’s pretending not to watch. Mom is in the kitchen as well, cooking something that I can’t identify, but will undoubtedly be my favorite part of the meal later, because my mother’s cooking is still the best in the world. My little brother and grandma are on the other side of the couch, half watching the parade, half watching something on their phones. The dog is attempting to convince anyone to pet her, and idly attempting to get some potato scraps from my dad.  The house feels warm and comfortable and full of life in a way that I’ve missed. 

This year Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlap- which is strange but wonderful, especially for a religion that thrives so much on food, family, and tradition. It means we all get to be together to light the candles of the menorah, which I haven’t had a chance to do in years. It means latkes with the turkey, and mixing prayers in English and Latin and Hebrew and mixing family and friends from lots of different places. It means pumpkin pie and rugalach and opening presents while watching football.

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I’ve got the family surrounding me right now, and the family we’re going to see later. The cousins I’ve watched grow up, and the aunts and uncles who still can’t believe I’m this old. The dinner cooked by the family I love, which seems to supply enough leftovers to last until I can’t conceive eating another bite of turkey ever again. The friends who have been sending me silly text messages and puns about the combination of Hannukah and Thanksgiving, and the families who are busy asking them about their future plan. For the silly crafts my cousins have made to decorate the tables, and the football games I won’t watch but will listen to other family members yell at.  I’m thankful for all the people who have read the things I’ve written this month, and have supported my emotional ramblings, even when they veer in to the realm of rants.

I’m (mostly) ok with the cliché happening here, because the cliché exists for a reason. The cliché exists because it makes people happy and comfortable. The cliché exists because families like mine are sitting down together all over, enjoying each other and enjoying their days. I’m thankful to be part of something that celebrates people being together.

I’ll see you tomorrow, when I have a stomach much more full of turkey with a head full of ridiculous family stories.  So happy Thanksgiving ya’ll.

Not everything always fits together the way you would imagine it should.

Early this summer my dad came to pick me up from staff orientation at the summer camp I work at, to drive me down to college orientation at the school I was transferring to. The drive between the camp and the college was about 4 hours, and I was already somewhere in the state of perpetual exhaustion that just seems to settle over your body the minute you step through the camp gates.  Dad was trying to talk, but I was tired and surly and not in the mood for idle chatter about Rabbis he knew would be visiting over the summer or the pathetic excuse for a tan that my pale skin was already taking on.

Dad has an app on his phone for the internet radio site Pandora. If you’ve never heard of it before, Pandora lets you plug in music you like, and creates a station centered around that. It works really remarkably well. You can thumb up or thumb down songs, based on if you like them or not, and the station will slowly evolve to fit exactly your tastes.

So stuck in that car, with a few hours left in front of us, dad and I decided we would create a Pandora station, each plugging in a few artists we liked, so we could find some music that both of us would enjoy. I put in some of my favorites- Jukebox the Ghost, Vampire Weekend, Mountain Goats, Regina Spektor; dad added some people he liked whose names I couldn’t pick off a list- lots of angsty dudes with blues guitars and raspy voices.

I think maybe we broke the app.

As the playlist started it played a few songs that were totally in my wheelhouse that dad didn’t really enjoy. Lots of upbeat indie pop. Lots of paino and dulcet female voices and catchy smart lyrics. Soon it switched completely. We were firmly in the category of men who’s cowboy hats and boots I could hear through the speakers. There was definite back and forth, but there wasn’t any blend. The songs just rotated between things he enjoyed and things that I did.

I was annoyed. I wanted to sit quietly and listen to some music that even if it wasn’t my favorite, was at least agreeable, and we couldn’t even manage to pull that off. I think somewhere around an hour and a half in I gave up and fell asleep.

My father is endlessly patient with me, which speaks a lot to how wonderful he is and an unfortunate amount to the bad situations I create for myself in which his patience really shines. I wasn’t exactly the best driving companion on that trip, but he sat there with me, kindly, anyway.

We’ve tried using that Pandora station a few more times, and it still can’t quite figure out what to do with us. Mostly, at this point, dad and I just alternate typing the names of songs we like in to youtube.

I guess it kind of makes sense. Dad’s music and my music are fairly fundamentally different sounds. I want more piano, he wants more twang, and the middle ground doesn’t really seem to exist.

But we keep trying. We keep attempting to find a way to make it work and play something that both of us want to hear. And when we realize that isn’t working, we both manage to take a hit on our pride, and even if it’s grudgingly, let the other get what they want for a little while. That’s what family does. They compromise, and love each other, even if they think the other person has really weird music tastes.

I’m not saying I’m happy when I’m stuck in the car listening to Lyle Lovett for the millionth time, but I am saying it’s good to see my dad happy. And if I can help create a little bit of that happiness, why wouldn’t I?

I mean, as long as I still get to play “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” at least once.

The first time I really heard anything about Presidential turkey pardoning I was in 9^th grade and watching The West Wing. There is a fabulous episode somewhere in season two where CJ- who is the white house press secretary- has to choose which of two turkeys will be receiving a presidential pardon. The episode is hysterical and surprisingly- or I suppose not surprisingly to us West Wing devotees- emotional. The idea of a president pardoning a turkey seemed so ludicrous I assumed that someone had made it up for television.

But it wasn’t. It’s a real thing that our presidents really do.

The first president to officially pardon a turkey was George H.W. Bush in 1989. He sent a turkey to a park that was ironically and amusingly named “Frying Pan Park” over in Virginia, which is a thing I read about a week ago and have been laughing at since.

Though GW was the first president to officially pardon a turkey, in 1963 President Kennedy sent the yearly gift from the National Turkey Federation (which is a real thing that exists in real life!) back to the farm where it came from, saying “We’ll just let this one grow.”

Sometime around Nixon’s presidency is when this become a thing. The turkeys were received by the president, in an often very funny photo opportunity and then sent off to a petting zoo near DC.

Originally, the best turkey was the one the president would eat. Since 1947 the National Turkey Federation has been supplying the official bird, often one incredibly large, that the president would enjoy with his family.

Nowadays the turkeys are granted an official government pardon. And if you don’t think that’s hysterical, you are simply wrong.  In 2009 when Obama was pardoning the official White House turkey, aptly named Courage, he said “Thanks to the intervention of Malia and Sasha – because I was ready to eat this sucker – Courage will also be spared this terrible and delicious fate."

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get the tradition of turkey pardoning. I think it’s silly, and I don’t quite understand why we do it. But I do find it really, really funny. All it takes is a quick google search to find a beavy of Presidents looking vaguely uncomfortable while standing near turkeys. Which is a category of images that I never knew I wanted, but am now so happy is in my life.

It seems silly, but sometimes we need a little silly, right? We need something a little weird and fun, that exists just to be weird and fun. The turkey pardon might not make much sense, but it makes me happy- and sometimes that’s more than I could hope for.  

My family has about 8 menorahs. There is the large silver one that we all light together, the baseball bat one that belongs to my brother, the set of chairs in a row that belongs to me, and the Winnie the Pooh one that broke in the fire my sophomore year of high-school. Tigger’s tail is held on by superglue, and other bits and bobs are halfway gone and chipped and held together by mostly wishful thinking. We hold on to it anyway.

Using the Shamash to light all the other candles means it looks kind of ridiculously short.

Hanukah isn’t an important holiday. It’s fairly minor in a liturgical sense, and the history behind it isn’t really as big of a deal as many of the other days we celebrate in Jewish tradition. But somehow, Hannukah has become a Big. Deal. worthy of the capital letters. Mostly, I believe, because it’s so close to Christmas and we Jews felt a little left out.

Tonight we had the Salisbury Hillel Hannukah party. It was cute and fun, and made me feel a little more home at a place that I’ve been thinking feels kind of foreign. Since Hannukah starts over break, we decided to go with the early party route instead of the late one. We lit all the candles on the menorah, but didn’t say the blessing, so we could enjoy the light and warmth.

If there is one thing Jews are known for, it’s our insistence on overcooking. Any gathering of three or more Jews always seems to have enough leftovers to feed a small family. Tonight was no exception. We had latkes and jelly doughnuts to keep some tradition, and cupcakes and cheese and crackers and candies and all sorts of other goodies just because. The easiest way to turn strangers in to friends is to offer them something delicious, and I happen to really enjoy baking.

We traded gifts and cards. We listened to cheesy Hannukah songs and, like at any good Jewish gathering, discussed Adam Sandler movies. It just felt nice.

Hillel!

I’m living more and more for these little moments. For the look of quiet confusion that sweeps every face at the table when the Pandora Hannukah station switches from something fun and upbeat to an eerie song sung by what sounds to be a hunted children’s choir. For attempting to fit candlesticks in menorahs and giggling over the difficulty. For cupcakes that crumble when you try to eat them, and when there never seem to be enough napkins in the world for the crumbs you just got everywhere.

The moments are small, but the impact is big. I feel safer today. Safer and more sure and more comfortable. I know it’s not Hannukkah quite yet, but I’m starting to feel the holiday spirit. Hannukah might not be a big deal, but I love any excuse to spend time with the crazy people I call my family. And maybe- slowly but surely- I’m starting to find what could be a family here. 

After the last time I posted a poem on this blog my dad called me and said he had no idea that i wrote poetry. Which seemed crazy to me, but it did make it crystal clear that my parents never tried to sneak a look at any of my 100's of notebooks when I was in high school. Which was comforting, honestly, because most of what I wrote in high school is not anything I'd want to share with anyone.

I still feel more then a little nervous when I share a poem. They feel more personal then normal blog posts, somehow, which I understand is ridiculous, since I've blogged about some weighty topics. 

Today felt like an emotional day, so I decided to share some more emotional writing. These are three poems. One and a half I wrote almost a year ago. One and half i wrote today. Maybe you'll be able to tell which are which. 

I used to think that putting people down on paper would get them out of my head. I thought that if I could dissolve people into metaphors and memories I wouldn’t have to deal with their actualities.

I was wrong. Turning people in to poems doesn’t make them disappear; it grants them an artistic kind of immortality.

Which is why I’ve said a hundred times that I was done writing poems about people who didn’t make me happy, and in doing so told myself a hundred lies.

I keep making myself promises that I’ll focus on the happy moments and the people who make the days seem too short, instead of the days that feel too dark and the people who when I’m with them make me feel more alone.

Putting my hope in people is the surest way for my hope to break. I trust too easy and fall too fast and let myself get wrapped up in moments that don’t deserve to be thought about in the ways that I think of them.

But this is it. This is saying no and starting over with blank notebooks waiting to be filled with looping cursive that no one else can read and word documents with the blinking line waiting for me to fill the white with words about the things I want to say and the people I want to hold on to.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember, it’s just that i want to forget. I want to live in the middle of the contradiction and be ok with the way things end up and to allow the things I create to reflect the highs and the lows, but mostly the highs because I want to remember them most all. 

When I think back on our time together now, it plays out behind my eyes like a movie on a silver screen, with a cast of seasoned pros who are so good at playing 17 and scared.

When I think back on the night we sat on top the picnic table and you sang me a song you wrote about the color of my eyes, I think I’m supposed to feel nostalgic, but mostly I don’t feel anything at all.

Seventeen feels like forever ago. It feels like bad decisions and good memories and staying up too late whispering on the phone so my parents wouldn’t hear. It feels like sitting in the passenger seat ignoring your dumb radio stations and watching the way your sunglasses slipped just to the edge of your nose. It feels like another person felt all of those things about you, and about myself. It feels like a life I barely remember, even though it’s one I lived.

 I think I like not having to feel our memories so deeply. It’s freeing and forceful, and twists my mind to conjure happier times and uglier times and things that didn’t seem so commonplace. Letting go means opening my hands to new things to carry and my heart to new experiences to come. Moving past means open highways and chances for road-trips full of detours to places I can’t even imagine yet, and songs that will remind me of someone that I haven’t yet met.

I love you because I don’t know how not to. It’s not a choice, it’s not a decision, it’s me existing and you existing and that being enough. I love you because your smile makes me smile, and the way you wink makes me laugh, and the sound of your voice reminds me of luxuriating in days like we would never run out of them.

I used to think that love was for stories. For princess and princes, girls whose hair shone bright and boys who’s eyes glinted with mystery. Love was for people who lived exciting lives and did exciting things, and inspired tales and legends and myths and dreams. Love is more simple than that.

Love is an everyday kind of magic. It’s a spell without an incantation, a trick that must be seen to be believed.

I’m not silly, I exist more in practicality, but love can make anyone dissolve to the bits of who they claim to be. Love can show every piece of you if you let it. And you should. Opening myself up to you taught me a lot about who I am. It allowed me to see myself through someone else’s eyes. You seeing me as beautiful helped me believe that I was beautiful. You seeing me as kind helped me believe that I was kind.

I love you because I don’t know how not to. It’s not a decision, it’s not a choice, it’s you existing and me existing, and that being more than enough.

My high school was located right down the road from the Maryland Renascence Festival. This means that dudes in suits of amour, jousting, and very drunk middle aged women in corsets leaving fairly little to the imagination play a much more prominent role in my memories of senior year then anyone would reasonably expect.

Every year our school held a fundraiser there. Some parents would work one of the (many, many) beer stands and the money they received in tips would be enough to buy a new scoreboard for the gym, or something equally as ridiculous. Apparently crazy people in Renascence clothes really like beer, which I can’t decide if surprises me a lot or not at all.

Senior year my father was one of the parents roped in to working the booth, and he dragged me along for some company on the drive over, and so I could walk around and eat every food on a stake that the faire had to offer. I convinced some friends to come meet me there, and we had a really lovely day.

I do like the Renn fest, obviously, but some people like it a lot. Like the kind of a lot where they show up every day in full outfits, talking in accents, and dragging unsuspecting children and spouses and very confused friends. The kind of love that I respect, but am ultimately a little afraid of. The Renn fest on any given day will have a good handful of hardcore fans, a lot of families, high school kids running around unsupervised, and lots of couples thinking that this might be a nice spot for a date.

And they aren’t wrong, the Renn Fest is fun, and probably could be romantic, if that’s what you’re looking for. But that day senior year, my friends and I witnessed what might have been the most awkward start to a first date in history.

I would like to point out that we weren’t spying. We were at some stand trying on goofy hats and taking pictures when we noticed a man awkwardly pacing around the entrance to the grounds holding a flower. And how could that not pique your curiosity?

We’re pretty sure it was a blind date, since the couple acted like they hadn’t met each other before. The man walked up to her, handed her a flower, and said hello. We couldn’t hear most of their conversation, but as they walked past us we heard the man say, very excitedly, “I don’t have many friends, but I do have a cat!”

We thought this was one of the funnier things we had ever heard. We laughed about it all afternoon.

Lately I’ve been feeling a lot like that dude on his blind date. I don’t have a cat, but I do have a laptop. 

Which, depending on your point of view might be better or worse. At the time, the guy sounded sad and desperate, and from my point of view- happy, surrounded by friends, I just couldn’t comprehend.

But I get it now. I get feeling desperate, and alone. I get feeling like you’re trying to find someone to cling to. I get that embarrassment and wounded pride, and the kind of nerves that make you do things like pace up and down in front of the Renn fest clinging to a single flower like it’s a life preserver.

I don’t think I miss high school, but I do miss the way I felt in high school. Safe. Understood. Surrounded by people who truly cared about me, and who I cared about right back. I know I’ve written a few times already about my struggles fitting in at Salisbury, but if I’m supposed to write what I know then it’s possible the topic is going to keep popping up until I feel like I have some sort of place here.

Or, at least, until I get a cat and lose my sense of pride. 

My parents are very bad at naming children. This isn’t to say that I don’t like my name, or that I don’t like my brother’s name, but it is to say that my parent’s contributions towards either of us ending up with the name that is on our birth certificate are more minimal then one might expect.

My little brother was named by a nurse. I was named by my mom’s friend Cari. In both cases mom and dad couldn’t quite agree on what the name should be, and it got to the point where any decision was better than the empty spot on the hospital paperwork.

Mom liked unisex names. She wanted to name me Max or Frankie or something else that sounds like it would fit in fairly well at Rydell High. Dad was more in to Biblical names; Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah- reading a list of his options was basically just reciting the Avot V’Imahot.  They wanted to name my little brother Micah, but thought it would get confusing with our grandfather Michael. They had learned after they failed to consider the implications of naming me Jordan, with an Uncle Gordon.

Jordan is a Hebrew name (surprise, surprise!) that means to descend or flow downward. This flowing meaning (get it? PUNS!) obviously has to do with the Jordan River, which is a hugely important geological landmark in cultural and religious history.  It’s the water that sustains and also divides the region that we call the Middle East. It’s solved conflicts and caused them. It nourishes lands, and nourishes people. It’s not a half bad namesake.

I like the idea of names conveying meaning. That Latin roots and Hebrew lineage and family tradition can add up to some strange amalgamation of a being. Of course, naming is more of a hope and a guess then a science. Parents don’t know what their kid is going to grow up to be from day one, but they can hope and guide, and drop subtle hints in the form of the thing that child is going to be forced to write on top of every school paper for the rest of their lives.

I know names aren’t everything, but it’s interesting to think how they fit the people we become. I was never one of those girls who had a full name of possible future baby lists picked out by age 10 (or by age 21) but it’s fun to think about in the abstract sense. Also, I can use all those names for characters in stories, which feels like way less pressure.

True, my name isn’t as metaphorically symbolic as say, Remus Lupin, I think it fits fairly well. I’m no river, but I attempt to nourish in the ways that I can. 

My parents might be bad at naming, but I think we ended up all right. 

We all have to start somewhere.

Every adventure, every journey, every book, every job, every meal, every movie, every walk, has to begin with something.

My college experience began in the basement of a science building. I mean, some things happened before the basement of the science building. I had already moved in, met a few people, learned a little bit about the campus... but the basement of the science building is where everything really started.

Every freshman at Hiram College is required to take a freshman colloquium. These classes are a meld of reading and writing and orientation and learning basic research skills and getting acclimated to college life. They are about a wide variety of topics; I had friends who took classes about cooking, and about mobsters in the 50’s. About the 2012 election, and about the idea of happiness. My class was called ‘Misfits, Freaks and Derelicts.’

The classes are designed to be small. Mine was about 15 people, and to say that we bonded is an understatement. The thing about a class called ‘Misfits, Freaks and Derelicts’ is that it’s gonna draw a certain kind of weirdo. So there we were. 15 strange strangers, in an oddly shaped classroom, at the end of a dark hallway in the basement of the science building.

The class was supposed to be about the people who didn’t quite fit the molds society attempted to set for them. We learned about The Venus Hottentot and how sexuality can shape in harmful and helpful ways. We learned about imperialism and feminism and mysticism and everything in between. We read The Elephant Man and discussed ability and disability and appearance and prejudice. We read Oscar Wilde and discussed what it meant to be obscene. We read plays and studied paintings and wrote paper after paper after paper.

And yes, the academics were important, but that’s not where my real Misfit memories lie.

When I think about Misfits I think about the group study session on the top floor of the library where we laughed so hard that a group of football players came over to ask us to be quiet. I think about our idea to start a crime family, and burn down the house where our exam was being kept, so none of us would have to take it. I think about the retort, after that idea was thrown on the table, that the organized crime was best left to the baking class and the football players.

I think about the time we made a poster for a professor that had the word “fuck” on it no less then 20 times. We wrote it in paint and in marker, and even using sponges. The poster had all kinds of stupid and funny quotes from class all over it, and our handprints. It looked like a happy and fucked up hurricane, which really described us as a group fairly perfectly. Last I heard, the poster is still hanging on his wall.

We made shirts, and on the back we put an aspect of our identity that other’s shamed but we wanted to find the pride in. We spent a lot of time building each other up. We spent a lot of time being a support system. We spent a lot of time making fun of each other in the way that only people who know each other really well and already have a foundation of love and respect can.

I’m so grateful that I ended up in ‘Misfits, Freaks and Derelicts.’ That group of weirdos made me feel at home, the way that nothing else could. That support system meant so much to me—and to all of us—that we couldn’t really let it go. Even after the semester ended we all met up for movie nights.

It’s a special thing to find people who are at the same place in life as you are. Who are looking for the same things. Need the same love, the same support. Something clicked in that classroom, and I’m so glad it did. 

I’m not what you would call an animal person. Cats and dogs kinda freak me out, and Petsmart sounds more like a haunted house then a place where I want to spend any time. But my mild dislike. Of most animals pales in comparison to the two I am most afraid of: birds and squirrels.

I know this sounds slightly insane, but most fears aren’t entirely rational.

Squirrels are really the thing that freak me out like no other. My friend Alys likes to tell the story of the time she watched me stand paralyzed in the middle of the road, as a car honked at me and I refused to move. My reason for refusal was simple: there was a squirrel standing on the path on the opposite side, and I couldn’t go near it because squirrels are evil. So I stood. Stuck in the middle of the street, till the car honking at me got loud enough that the squirrel ran away.

My freshman year of college I took a class called Misfits, Freaks and Derelicts. The class was filled with the kind of strange and wonderful people you would expect to take a class with a title like that. I loved it. But the story about how that class made my Hiram experience what it was is a story for another day.

One day, about a week after school had started, I was sitting in Misfits waiting for class to start. Our TA came in and explained that she would be leading class that day, and doing some fun exercises to help us get more comfortable at being at school and with being around each other.

I appreciated this idea. I knew no one, and had come to a school 8 hours away from home in a state where everyone seemed to get very angry if I dared to say the word ‘soda’. I felt a little in over my head.  

The idea of the first activity is that we were going to do a fishbowl type thing. For those that didn’t grow up at summer camp, a fishbowl is when everyone gets the opportunity to write down a question anonymously. All those scraps of paper are thrown together in a bowl, and the person who is leading the exercise pulls them out and gets a chance to answer the questions. This gives people a chance to ask the questions they want to ask without having to ask them face to face. It’s low pressure, and allows people to get answers to the questions that are really on their minds.

So the first thing our TA asked us to do is take one of our pieces of paper and write down something we were really nervous for at college. I, in all earnestness, wrote down that I was nervous about the amount of squirrels on campus.

Here is the thing about the squirrels on Hiram’s campus: they are a) mean and b) unafraid of people. Either of those things alone would be bad enough, but the combination had me trembling every time I left my dorm room.

So I wrote down that my fear was too many squirrels.

Our TA collected all the slips and started reading them off. She gave some good advice about a couple of topics: early morning classes, parties, being intimidated by teachers and bad dining hall food. Then she pulled another slip out of the bowl.

“Guys. If you aren’t going to take this seriously, we don’t have to do it. I just wanted to do something fun and helpful. If you don’t want to, then we don’t have to.” She said.

The class was confused. “What did it say?” someone asked from the back of the room.

“It was about squirrels. If you aren’t going to take this seriously guys, I’m not going to do it.”

I started sinking in to my seat. I couldn’t say anything at this point, right? I was done. It was over, I was officially too embarrassed, and to top it all off I could feel myself starting to blush.

The girl sitting next to me, who I had spoken a grand total of 10 words to so far, saw the embarrassment flashing over my face. “Uh, I think that one is legit” she said.

Our TA’s face changed instantly. She felt horrible, and honestly, I did too. I was embarrassed, she was embarrassed. No one in the class knew what to say.

“So I guess, uh… my advice, um… would be that the squirrels are more afraid of you then you are of them!” the TA said.

I appreciated the attempt. I appreciated her (and the class in general) being supportive, even when my fear was weird, and even when they didn’t understand it.

I’m still not a fan of squirrels. I think they’re evil and mean, and probably the spawn of hell, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to interact with them.  

But now, every time I see a squirrel, I think of that day in class. The day I learned that fears, even if they are silly, are much better faced when your friends believe in you. 

I’m no stranger to romanticizing places. Those who know me- even just a little bit- know that the summer camp I attended and now work at holds a place in my heart reserved generally for family, and NBC sitcoms. I know I’m not alone in my romanticism. People love the places they are from, and the places they wish to go. They love places that hold memories, and places where they wish to create them. Go on to Amazon and type in ‘Paris.” You get more than 300,000 items. Books, movies, photographs- each a love letter to the city itself. Type in ‘New York’ and you get almost a million and a half.

There is no doubt that the city of New York holds a broad appeal. Art, culture, food, people...you can find just about anything you are looking for in the city that never sleeps. But can a city that does so much really do all of it well? Some people think so. I’m not so sure. I feel like a lot of the aspects of New York that so many people love, are done in other places—and done even better.

It won’t surprise anyone that has spoken to me for even the briefest bit of time that I love Washington DC. There is something about the nation’s capital that is so special to me, in a way that is really quite hard to describe. It could be the incredible history- you can hardly walk down a street without passing a building where an important treaty was signed, or where some great protest was held. It could be the politics- there is a real sense of importance about DC. It feels like the work that is going on there matters. It could be my own personal bias. I grew up in the suburbs, and my father’s office was right off DuPont. So many memories from my childhood are contained within the district. It could be something else entirely, that I—in my fit of romanticism—haven’t even been able to put my finger on.  

Chicago also has a place in my heart- though in a very different way.  While DC reminds me of childhood, Chicago reminds me of growing up. When I moved to Chicago, at 18 years old, it was a real step of independence. I had an apartment, a job, a brand new life bursting with opportunity and optimism. I’m not going to sugarcoat my time in Chicago. It was hard. Very hard. In ways I didn’t foresee, and couldn’t have expected. But the city itself was wonderful. Full of museums, and art, and bookstores, and libraries.  And I could go to all of them, just about whenever I wanted. One of my favorite things about Chicago was the fact that I could get around by myself. There was no need for a car, when with a simple swipe of my El pass, I could get just about anywhere I wanted to go. So I went. I went to science museums, and art galleries, and plays, and parks. I wen t to the places that I loved, and I learned about the things that interested me. Chicago was hard—true—but it was also a place where I learned how to nourish myself in a very real and very important way.

Cleveland is the city where I learned how strongly people care about the places they are from. My immediate distrust of Cleveland honestly built mostly on my attitude about being so far away from home, allowed my friends to sweep in and show me the city through their eyes. It meant I got to go to little restaurants hidden away in places I never would have found on my own, and see concerts in clubs I probably would have been afraid of if it weren’t for a gentle nudge and a helping hand from someone I trusted and cared about. Cleveland taught me to put my trust in others, and that sharing love and happiness can be it’s own reward.

Jerusalem taught me independence. It taught me history and culture and taught me fierce loyalty. It taught me that loving a place means protecting it, and loving people means protecting them too. Jerusalem is a city that’s modern and historic in equal measure, and the people there don’t find this a contradiction. In Jerusalem I can be every part of myself and still add up to a whole.

New York has a few memories for me. Disastrous trips to my uncle’s house in Brooklyn at age 10. A trip with my Hebrew school class to Ellis Island in 10^th grade. Broadway shows, Jewish Delis, and taxi cab rides where I felt certain that death was imminent. But when I think of New York, I’m not filled with any real, quantifiable emotion.  The memories are there, but the heart behind them is not. This apathy towards what seems to be the world’s favorite city confuses me. If I can feel emotions for places I’ve never been—even fictional places!—then why am I unable to feel a connection to the city that so many hold so dear.

Maybe part of my problem is how badly I want to feel something—anything—for New York. Apathy makes me uncomfortable. The lack of feelings I have for a place that so many feel so much about seems unlike my norm, and in that I’m forced to confront my own indifferences. I’ve always been the kind of person who cares a lot about having convections, and believing in them strongly, and wholly. I have Opinions, and Ideals, and Ideologies, all of which—in my mind—seem deserving of capital letters. All of these things have become so much of who I am. I am a person who has feelings on issues, small and big. I am a person who has feelings about ideas. Except of course, when I don’t.

That feeling of not knowing what to feel frightens me. It goes against so much of who I am—what I stand for. Confronted by it, I feel confused, and more than a little lost.  Staring into this metaphorical abyss of nothingness, I feel small-insignificant, and completely unprepared. How do you confront something that doesn’t exist? How can you even comprehend it?

Maybe I’m getting carried away.

Cities are romantic to me. They hold memories made and memories yet to come. They’re waiting to be explored, and reward the innate curiosity I feel when faced with a new place. I’m sure a lot of people think it’s strange that I get so philosophical and carried away when confronted by subway map, but I honestly can’t help myself. I want to learn new things and go new places. I want to get lost on back streets and learn history by walking in footsteps and eating in restaurants that are older than my grandmother. I want to see and hear and experience everything I can. So maybe a subway map isn’t a bad place to start.

My friends and I used to joke that there should be a room on campus where you can just go and yell until you can't yell anymore or until you've forgotten why you had to yell in the first place. I definitely still wish that room could exist, though I do understand that the idea is a little impractical.

Sometimes you find yourself filled with all this aggression and no good way to release it. Punching pillows gets old, writing passive aggressive notes you're never going to send isn't helping anyone, and ACTUALLY sending those notes would manage to be an even worse then just writing them.

Last year my friend Trich and I spent a solid hour and a half ripping up styrofoam egg cartons. While I understand that this might not be the most environmentally conscious move, it sure felt great. We sat in the co-op, which is the campus home of all the hippies and health freaks and people who can cook way better then I know how, and ripped and ripped and tore and vented our frustration in a way that probably looked a little bit terrifying to anyone who saw us.

It was cathartic. It offered a release of all of the emotions and feelings we had no way to let out. It was dumb and it was reckless in way that was safe and unassuming. It let us feel a little violent and a little angry. It let us feel the kinds of things that normal life never gave us a safe space to feel.

That night was in the middle of a very rough week. Things were going weirdly for all of my good friends for a wide variety of reasons. We spent a lot of time sitting very close together and yelling song lyrics with abandon and cooking much too much food as a coping mechanism and then forcing it on anyone we could find. We talked much too late in to the night and went to class droopy eyed and only semi-aware of the world around us.

Coping skills can be hard to come by, and sometimes the world seems overwhelming. And while my cries for a campus screaming room have still gone unanswered, there are a few things I can always do. I can scream and dance angrily to ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’, I can blog about my feelings or take walks when it is, technically, much too cold and much too dark for me to be outside. I can vent to a friend or write bad poems or punch pillows or cook disgusting amounts of banana bread.

Or I can tear egg cartons. I can tear and rip and split and hack away until the pieces are much smaller than all the emotions I’m feeling. I can take the frustration and manifest it in a physical way. I can get the anger out and I can freak out anyone who sees the ever growing mountain of styrofoam pieces on the table in front of me.

I can tear egg cartons. 

“There are some people in the world who say that writing stories, or composing music or dancing sparkly dances is easy for them. Nothing interferes with their ability to create. While I celebrate their creative freedom, a little part of me just wants to punch those motherfuckers in the teeth.”

One of my favorite musicals is the aptly though confusingly named [title of show]. It’s a show written by two guys about two guys writing a show about two guys writing a show. It’s meta and self-referential and very funny and weird in all the ways that I love.

One of the songs from the show, Die Vampire Die, is about trusting yourself creatively and making things even when plagued with self-doubt. And also punching vampires. For the metaphors, and also the wonderful mental images.

Part of writing every day this month has been attempting to come up with something that I feel good about sending out in to the world. Something I’m ok with putting my name on, and letting live on the internet forever.

That’s scary. It’s terrifying.

The vampires in my brain are always telling me that the things I’m making aren’t good enough, and that I’m not working hard enough, or doing enough, or that I’m not enough.

But I am. And I can be. And I can go all Buffy Summers and stake those vampires before they can get me down.

So that’s what this is. This is writing, even when I’m scared. This is putting things out there and letting my voice be heard.

This is punching those motherfuckers in the teeth.