Another year arrives

In Boston last week, or rather the suburb where I grew up, I found my old travel journals. As I get ready for New Year's Eve, I've been picking them up occasionally and reading bits and pieces. And I am reminded just how amazing time is, with every passing year turning us into new people. Our personalities are really just the filter that we stream our experiences through. Reading my old writing, I can hear my voice and recognize myself. But, of course, that voice is saying things I would never say today because of all of the experiences that separate me now from me then.

One thing that I was glad to be reminded of was just how terrified I was to study abroad, and how much of a challenge I found it. It's easy to look at the world now and find it so simple to hop on a plane. I forget so easily that this is something I had to work at.

It's good to look back and look for the achievements that we don't give ourselves credit for. What used to frighten you? I think you deserve to take a few minutes to remember, and to reward yourself for the work you did to overcome it.

Below is the real-time preserved record of a terrified 21-year-old Meredith leaving to study abroad. Read on if you feel like jogging your memory about what it feels like to be young and scared, but determined. A happy new year to you! I hope you do many things that frighten you this year, and succeed.

8/29/04

After a two hour delay, our plane takes off under a yellow moon. Boston moves away slowly, glowing like golden brocade against the cool, dark Atlantic. As we move up the coast, dark clouds are silhouetted against the blue and yellow gradient of the nearly-night sky. I see a flash of pink light, then another; yellow and pink exploding amongst the charcoal clouds. The passenger seated beside me confirms that it is a thunder storm. I am leaving home; I am taking on the biggest-yet challenge to my strength, my independence, my ability to be the person that I want to be. The sky seems to indulge my sense of weight.

Last night I was a nervous wreck. The anxiety was electric up through my sternum and into my throat. I am very rarely scared to go out on my own, but all week that burning feeling of tension has erupted at random. For so long, a year abroad has been a vague plan, something to fantasize about and talk about but no more concrete than my vague aspirations towards PhD's and published books. Then it became something real, but distant: not even when I enrolled in the programs, when my French visa cleared, when I received my housing assignment; not even when my plane ticket arrived in the mail did the plans turn into impending action in my mind. This week, as I packed up my new clothes into new suitcases, as I said good-bye to this summer and all that happened within that space of time, and all the spaces before it, as I turned to look at the mission I have given myself, this week I became afraid. Again and again I have said, I must be afraid. If I am not afraid, then I am not doing what I need to, I am not breaking down the fences that I feel safe behind. I am not growing. To become bigger, and better, one must leave safety and comfort and become afraid. I have said this again and again. I say it still, and I still believe it. But this week has been the sharp edge of that philosophy, and it has been exhausting, even heart breaking at times.

Now, though, I feel strangely calm. The inside of an airplane is tranquil, inevitable. All the good-byes are over. I know that I will begin to miss the people that I care about. I know in particular that I will miss [redacted]. But, for now, there is that vital sense of pause that we spoke of in Greece. The fluorescent lights on the white plastic interior of the cabin are strangely calming, although it is the same combination of elements that makes me hate malls. The white noise of the engine joins the white light and the white walls and I am afloat alone in my thoughts, interrupted only by the flight attendant coming by with carts full of cokes and pretzels and ambiguous chicken, and by the loud laughter of the man sitting beside me as he watches "Friends" on the tiny TV screens attached to the ceiling.

The sun is coming up as we fly closer to Dublin for our transfer. The horizon line is liquid fire, orange and red. As the light spreads up and across my tiny plastic portal, I discover that what I took to be land or perhaps ocean is in fact clouds; the city skyline on the horizon is illusion. For some reason I feel like crying. I look at my watch and see that I will almost certainly be missing my flight to Paris. I begin to worry about finding my luggage. Then I consciously put the brakes on my thoughts. I take a deep breath.

And I feel that terrible freedom of uncertainty. And I don't want a career track, I don't want a husband, or children, or a home. Fuck grad school. Fuck Cezanne. Fuck Hemmingway. And instead I watch the sunrise and the way it separates into lines, and I try to figure out if the effect is real or a trick of the eye.

I am trying to 'be here now.' I am trying to let go of the past and the future, and allow myself to float the way I always try to tell myself I do. I will not allow myself to be crushed under the weight of a year. I focus only on the thin backlit clouds as they pull apart like taffy. Then the first sliver of sun breaks over the expansive field of clouds and we begin our descent into Dublin.

I notice that the Aer Lingus seat fabric is covered with stitched scrawling handwriting. On the back of the seat in front of me, I make out: "Americans, she would say, are lost people where're they see the fairest... .... they live between two worlds. Their heads are in the clouds."

Urban Dystopia

On Sunday afternoon, I waited at the main San Francisco public library to meet two of my friends. I was hungry, so I bought a crepe, knowing I'd probably only be able to eat about half of it before our meeting time.

I sat on the wall abutting the side-entrance plaza, with at least 20 people around me. Within about 5 minutes, a man came lurching (I wouldn't say this word if it wasn't appropriate) towards me.

He grabbed my arm. "I like your dress," he said, deeply, scratchily. "Myself, I don't like purple though. What are you wearing purple for? Are you a Sagittarius or something like that?" His tone was serious, menacing.

I backed away slightly, but he grabbed my arm again, strongly. I know that the thing to do in situations like this is to tell the person to Not Fucking Touch Me! but I never feel comfortable telling people off unless they are aware that what they're doing is inappropriate. This man clearly was not. So I told him,

"I'm sorry to be rude, but I need to go. I'm meeting a friend."

He grabbed my wrapped crepe and said, "Good, then, I'll take this! I'm just around the corner so it's easy."

Having gotten myself free of his hand for a second, I jumped at the chance to exit. I said, "Perfect! That's easy then!" and walked towards the next group of people along the wall.

"POIFECT!" he shouted, with an intentional affect, and began mimicking, at shouting volume, the other things I'd said in the conversation as he walked away carrying my food. The other people on the plaza stared at me, curious but without sympathy for my nervousness.

I didn't mind giving the man my food, other than the way that it happened, since I'd mostly finished what I could eat of it. But I mind that he's on the streets. I mind that he, and the countless people like him in this city, are receiving no help. And I mind that I feel either depressed or unsafe most places I go here because the streets in the less posh neighborhoods (like my own, even though it's already pretty much gentrified) are full of people who have been abandoned to their mental illness.

Tonight I rode my bike home from Downtown to the Mission along Market Street. The people along the sidewalk had no connection to reality. They were waving their arms, shouting, gurgling, slumping over. And alongside them, the middle-class workers of downtown switched through their playlists, rearranged the things in their bags. It was as if the two groups of people could not even see one another.

I had been to an amazing event about transit alternatives, where I met many people who told me their ideas for how we could improve our community here by fixing the urban planning. This is an area of thought that I deeply believe can have impact. The transition from the excitement of those conversations to the bike ride home was like a bucket of cold water over my head.

A city cannot function like this. The sane ignore the insane, the insane notice and develop an angry, defiant attitude. It's two cities, one on top of the other, the one for the stable and the other for the unstable.

I am aware that the terrible winters in Boston, where I grew up, and New York, where I most recently lived, are the reason that more people are in shelters there rather than some brilliant policy decision. I don't claim to know everything about this overall situation. I don't know how you help these people, and seeing how many of them there are here makes me realize how much I need to learn.

But it is disturbing to me that the city here goes about its business without even acknowledging the countless people around them who have fallen off of the edge. Most cities do this. But in all of the cities that I've lived in, I've never seen so many people who clearly needed help walking around unaided, invisible. There are enough here that it's almost a parallel city. I waited to meet someone at a subway stop the other day and after about 10 minutes I had to start riding my bicycle in circles around the block, because the 20 - 40 people who were hanging out there started noticing me and heckling me. I was invading their city, it felt like.

People tell me that they would never raise children in New York, because it's too busy. I would never raise children here. It seems that to function properly in this city, you need to ignore the sea of ill people who are constantly around you, in need, in danger. That is not a trait that I would like to develop in any child that I might have. Cities should inspire your curiosity about other people, not blunt you against empathy.

I am afraid of the people around me who are unhinged. And I am even more afraid of the fact that the majority of people do not seem to be concerned about any of it. What's next on the playlist? Oh, I hate that song. Look for something else. Ignore the woman screaming behind me.

The other day I was on the bus and a man sat down a couple of seats next to me. He had a deep, rasping voice. He began to describe the process of murdering a woman.

"Sluts," he said. "Fucking sluts. You get near them, don't matter, get near them, you get behind them, you take your arm and you put it around their neck. And you squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Don't matter. Whatever they fucking say you squeeze and they push at you but you squeeze until they stop."

I sat there, rigid, with my headphones in, acting like I couldn't hear. Everyone else on the bus did the exact same thing. We didn't try to find out if the man was talking about a fantasy or about something he'd done. That will haunt me. He hissed away, unstoppable, and we did nothing. We waited until we could go back to our Victorian apartments and our alternative social events.

I love the people in San Francisco. I love the culture. But I think about Saramago's "Blindness" every day, here. There is something uniquely dystopian about this crowd of the invisible unwell. I can't ignore the person several paces away from me making strange sounds and leaning to the side. It seems in a way that to live here, I will have to be able to do that -- the ignoring. I don't think that that is the person I want to be.

Midnight Bike Ride

Say good-bye to your friend at Grand Army Plaza; the grand piano is gone from the stone gazebo. You've been to see the neuroscientist speak and there are things to think about that can't be properly considered indoors.

"Imagine a football field, filled with a rainforest. Each branch is the width of a hair. That is something like the complexity of your mind," said the neuroscientist to the crowd.

Later he said, "the data we will compile will be more than the project to map the skies."

"Your inner starscape is quite complicated," he said.

A word like "starscape" can't be brought indoors, so you say good-bye to your friend by the absent piano and bike off around the plaza.

Cruise out down Vanderbilt and gain momentum; rolling stops at the lights. Then ratchet up the gears and push your way back up to speed as you descend past the shuttered shops.

It takes 10 minutes or so to gain the ascent to the Manhattan Bridge. The slope begins blocks away, by the apartment houses that always have a group of people howling around a set of speakers. Once, someone threw a basketball in front of your tires, but tonight they laugh and no one pays you any mind.

The men in the fancy biking gear pass you from time to time, calf muscles sliding up and down beneath their skin along tight tendons. Let them pass.

The bridge begins to lift you gently out of the city. The Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower goes by, glaring. Parking lots slide beneath you.

Slip the gears down and settle in to the pulse of moving up the bridge. The air cools and the East River opens up beneath you. Every pedal gains you a broader view of the city skyline, measured and complex. Lights on and lights off. Signifiers, some whose significations you know -- this building, that building -- some which are mysteries. Some which may not signify anything except to the people within, with their hands on the light switches.

Up this high over the water, this late, it is possible to feel both alone and together, each in the most satisfying way. The lights blaze out from the rooms filled with thoughts. Every small spot of light reaches out to you and repeats, "I am here, I am here."

The cars rumble on the raised roadway above you. If you stopped for a moment, you could feel the bridge shake. But you don't.

The D train clatters along beside the bike track. Returning to Brooklyn, you can race it to the land. Once, you kept pace for nearly three quarters of the bridge. There was an old man in a fedora leaning against the window, and you kept your eyes on that hat as the speed brought you closer and closer to giddiness.

In this direction though, towards Manhattan, you meet the trains head on and they pass quickly, screaming vessels filled with ruminations, and newspaper articles, and shopping lists, and conversations whispered and yelled.

And as the bridge lifts you up, you are lifted by this tide: the lights on and off, the heavy cars, the minds on rails.

On the bike path, though, you are alone with the air, and your starscape mind. The East River moves beneath you. From this height, in this darkness, it seems stately and silver.

As you pass the apex, you move up through the gears and push the bike faster. Soon you catch the descent and your momentum grows.

The overhead lights are spaced a few meters apart. As you pass under and beyond each one, you see your shadow appear before you, poised as if jumping, delicate, one leg raised. And you move faster, and the shadow self lengthens, and fades. You, dancing larger, leaping further, until suddenly you disappear; mirror self pulled back to substance, only to appear again, as if drawn back like Peter Pan's needle-pointed shadow, to begin growing and pulling away again under the glare of the next light.

Coast down. Gain speed. Ignore the bumps, take them bravely. Square your shoulders and curve your back, and feel the wind filling your torso like a sail. Keep your eyes on the skyline.

If a single mind is like a rainforest, what is a city like this? If a mind is a starscape, then how many universes exist here, where the lights go on and off, and each one is unique?

Swing down off the bridge and up into the East Village. Catch the snippets of conversation on the street. Sit down at a cafe, order a beer, and pull out your notebook. Write down what you can of the feelings you've had -- keep what you can. Time looks slow and stately, even silver, from afar. But when you're in it, it's far too fast and far too murky. So catch what you can, there in the middle of the night.

Sardines

I was at the Monterey Aquarium a few weeks back and decided I really, truly love sardines (the live kind):




Schools of fish are fascinating and beautiful to watch. Certain kinds of fish have an instinct to school, but it's not entirely effortless. Changes of light affect their ability to school, so vision is involved. But the most interesting aspect, to me, is something called the lateral line -- a sensitive area on the sides of the fish that allow them to detect heat and pressure changes from their neighbors, giving them a constant read on their position in the group. This is how the movements of a school can be so quick, with all of the fish reacting instantaneously.

The individuals within the school have two competing needs: to be on the inside of the school, where they are the most protected from predators; and to be on the outside, where there is more oxygen available. And so they weave in and out as they swim, pursuing their own goals, but with an overarching awareness of the group they are a part of and their role within it.

I always wanted to be a fish like that: getting air, getting comfort, never straying too far. But I'm usually halfway across the ocean before I notice I've gotten out of synch. By that time it's generally best to just swim on. And I've found that if you go for long enough, you always find your way back into one school or another.

I love you, New York

There are few things as intimate as a subway ride.

In the veins of the city, we as strangers share our most quiet moments. We relax into ourselves. As Virginia Woolf described the relief of solitude in "To the Lighthouse,"

For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of–to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.

The incredible beauty of a subway ride is that we all, as strangers, share a silent agreement to allow each other to be visible and invisible at once. It is an aloneness that is different from withdrawing and shutting oneself away. Instead, sitting comfortably in our own cores of darkness, we keep the world in our gaze. And from that vantage point, a deeper kind of compassion is possible.

In this shared solitude, there is little to judge in others because their being requires nothing from you. You can let them all wash around and past you: the loud, flirting teenagers; the little girl swinging from the bars like a gymnast; the little boy watching her quietly and intelligently; the nearly-sleeping woman; the man checking his phone repeatedly even though there is no signal here. All that is required of you is to be there with them, and let them be.

It is impossible to ignore the mystery of other people's lives when you live in this city. You talk to five strangers a day at the least; five more who verge somewhere between acquaintance and stranger. At every moment, you are surrounded by people with names that you will never know. It puts the wonder in you. If you start imagining ideas as clouds of words, you realize that you would never be able to move in a city this thick with human thought. If you visualize love as threads tying one person to another, you realize that you are moving improbably through the most layered cloth.

Every time you walk down the street or board a bus, you feel how deserving people are of your effort to understand them. Their faces tell you that their lives are as thick as yours, because they are, for the moment, not caught up in the effort of mirroring your ideas back at you. The way they hold themselves and the things that they hold show you how complex their worlds are, as complex as yours and probably more so.

Even the places and the objects are full of human meaning. There is nowhere that you can find that is not significant to someone, living or dead. If you start to imagine the layers of attachment, it can become unfathomable. The very same building is the spot where one person fell in love, where another lost someone, where another tripped and broke the grocery bag. In a landscape so full of meaning, you don't even need to have your own connection to a thing to feel its importance. It can be important to you just because of the surety that is has been important to so many others.

And how many others! People different in so many ways that it's like looking through a prism. Even the insecure can hide their weakness here, because you can't look at a person and tell what race they're running.

I know there are dark sides to it. There are the materialistic, and the vain, and the shallow. The man I met who I asked why he decided to pursue his particular line of work, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "So I could make money." The people who can't explain satisfactorily what the company they work for does, exactly. The women with the purses that cost as much as a semester's tuition at a private university. The club kids who think that social networking is a worthy way to spend all of one's time. But I love that there's room for that too, here, that there's room for everyone. I don't understand these people, but New York challenges me to try. It doesn't allow me to hide from things I find foreign. It doesn't allow anyone to hide from anything without paying a huge premium for it.

And if I had the time, I would ride the subway for hours for that crazy combination of the strange and the intimate. I would ride it in loops, just watching the people come on and get off, have their private thoughts and look out at the public world. Recently I saw a woman cry, as silently as she could, with a hand lightly over her eyes, across from me on the subway. Just seeing the way that the people around her tensed up with compassion, glancing towards her now and then to see whether they should say something or let her be, reaffirmed to me how good people truly are. It was not indifference. I watched it, and I saw that it was not. It was respect. It was a group of people present as a woman hit a sharp point in her life, and respecting her right to either visibility or invisibility. I know you won't believe me, but that is what I saw in people's faces.

Maybe I'll make the time for that endless subway ride. Because I'm going to have to leave, and I need to take my leave well. A person's life isn't just one story, it's many stories, and sometimes those stories don't fit together the way they should. Leaving here is going to break my heart, because I've never loved a city as much or as long as I've loved New York. But there's another plot line and it says I'm out of here in August. New York, I love you. I'll see you again.

A note on sad blog posts

Emotions take up space in your life, and if you let them, they'll do it without compensating you in any way. They can be loafers who hang around, paying no rent, taking up your mental energy.

I'm an emotional person, and as such I believe strongly in making my emotions work in exchange for the space they use.

For instance, take anger. Anger is an excellent worker -- you can use it to get a good workout, or to give your apartment a good cleaning.

And sadness, I find, is a good writer. I like the imagery that sad thoughts create. And I like to share them, because often I'll hear from people who had some recognition and felt companionship with my words.

So don't worry about me and my sad blog posts. If it were something truly awful, I'd be protecting it and hiding it away. If it's up in the blog, it's because I've been thinking and thought I had something to say that might make sense to others.

Hugs to you! I'm very happy these days, and I'm sure happiness will do some writing for me, too.....it's just that melancholy seeks visual expression, and sometimes I like the ideas that I find there.

Adult children of divorce

This is the way that I think of families, after a great deal of thought: I think of individuals, standing near one another, tied together with string. Great amounts of string, all different colors. From my arm, to your leg, to his ear, to her wrist, back again around my waist and curling around your ankle. One line of purple yarn; one of turquoise sewing thread; yellow macrame floss from her nose to the tips of his hair.

Each of these pieces of string and thread and rope are the stories that everyone knows but repeats anyway, for the joy of it, without someone saying "Oh yes, you've told this one before." They are the rituals and repeated behaviors that comfort everyone. They are even the teasing and sometimes the bickering, the things that can be said safely. Every little bit of shared, recognized behavior, goes into the knotted mess of associations that is a family.

There are two major losses that can occur in this arrangement. One is the worst: the loss of a person. The other is lesser: the loss of the unit. I've experienced both in the last few years, but I want to talk about the second right now.

I suppose I want to talk about it because, as an adult, one does not seem to be expected to feel very much about it. There's quite a lot of information out there about what a child of divorce may experience. There is not very much, or at least not very much that rings true, about what an adult child of divorce thinks and feels. There's even less about what all of us adults experience again and again when we lose the assumed families we create for ourselves. The fact of the matter is that the loss, though different for an adult than for a child, is there.

When a family is taken apart, the people remain intact. It's those strings that take the damage. Imagine great hands pulling the people, like dolls, away from one another. The strings snap, tear, unravel. The remnants will remain attached to whichever person was tied most strongly to them, but there's no longer anything at the other end.

When a child loses their family, we all recognize that they are experiencing something that will remake them. They have no independent agency in the adult world. They will have to change habits, routines, likely even homes. Beyond this, they have to try to apply a child's understanding of the world to adult problems.

As an adult, we have our own lives and our own agency to return to. The dissolution of a family can't force an adult to live in a city they don't want to live in, or spend half of their week in one home and half in another. It's a better deal, I'm fairly certain, and clearly a different one. But it doesn't mean that an adult doesn't feel the ripping of those threads. And an adult is acutely aware of all of those remnants tied to their limbs, the ones that were once a source of reassurance but have become annoyances, reminders of loss.

I am, of course, only speaking for myself. Blogs are not known for their sociological research. But I feel somewhat authoritative on the matter because I have had the experience of losing two families in as many years.

When my family, the real one, came apart, I happened to be volunteering with an organization in an arrangement that caused me to live with my coworkers in order to share expenses. I had already become fairly attached to the people around me, but the situation thrust me into it further. When I got the phone call from my parents, I was days away from leaving the country for work. I returned as fast as I could, but not soon enough to say good-bye to my childhood home. By the time I was able to get back, it was sold, all the family's things sorted through, divided, perhaps donated in my absence.

I suppose if I'd been thinking clearly, I would have cancelled the trip and gone back. Things are just things, but also, they're more than that. A space is just a space, but it is also a home. When I allow myself to think of that house, it's only to imagine what the floorboards felt like on my bare feet -- first, little feet, later larger. I think about what the bathroom counters felt like when I was almost the same height as them, and then later when they only came to my waist. I think about the little change in level between the different floorings. I allow myself to see the furniture, the way it was laid out, but I stop there. I don't open drawers. I don't ever think about the small, incidental things that were important to me but probably didn't make it into any storage units. And just like I don't think about those things, I try not to think about the rituals that I will no longer take part in. I try not to think about the photos that are suddenly dated. I try not to think about the stories that used to be the surest way to a shared laugh and are now somewhat awkward, melancholy.

I didn't fly home to say good-bye to those things. I don't think I realized it as a possibility. Instead I laid low and tried to do what adults do: get on with my life. In my case, that life included a large group of friends and roommates. It was like a new family to replace the one I'd lost. To help me forget those remnants of strings around my ankles, I had new ones tying me to a brand new set of people.

I won't create false suspense; of course the new strings were pulled apart, too, about a year later. It is surprising to me how the two events feel somewhat similar, despite their completely different levels of importance. I imagine that, if you are able to anticipate the change, it's possible that at least some of these threads you are able to untie, freeing yourself from them deliberately. If you don't see it coming, though, they stay knotted to you with dangling ends. In several years I know the ones that will still be attached to me are the ones from my real family, but in the aftermath of the ripping apart, I can still feel the sting from the second set.

But what? The options are to resist every tying strings again, for the ultimate protection against damage....or, of course the only real option, to go on offering up my wrists and ankles to knots. It's life, and there are no pat morals. We keep doing the things that we do, because to stop would be to die while living. And by the time we reach old age we may be entirely obscured by the knotted ends of strings that tie to nothing, but at least then we know that we lived, that we loved, that we tried.

Online Dating Part 1: Just when I thought I'd developed all my social skills

Talking to people one on one. Talking to large groups of people. Talking to people on the phone. Sending email. Chatting. Mingling. Talking to people in other languages. Talking to strangers. Hanging out with strangers.

These are all things I do pretty well, now (OK, except the mingling). Not consistently well, but let's not get into that. Just suffice it to say that I am a relatively competent socializer. This was not always the case, though. I was a shy kid, and I remember in excruciating detail all the stress and mishap I went through trying to add each of these forms of communication to my skill set. My current job in communications is undoubtedly related to this. I've been thinking about how people contact one another for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is telling a lie, and weighing out the benefit I gained versus the anxiety I felt. I was still in diapers.

So, after 25 years + of studying the subject, I'd finally begun to feel that I could handle just about any format. Social media? Ha! I work in social media. Just try me.

Then I moved back to the States and found out that online dating isn't just OK now, it's absolutely mainstream.

For the first month or so, I held out. My roommate went through a brief fling with a guy she met online, and so the topic was often on the table. My roommate, though, is the kind of unflappable person who not only never becomes embarrassed herself, she actively puts people around her at ease. If I needed someone to negotiate a hostage situation, this is who I'd call. So seeing her, if not finding a lasting relationship at least having fun, really didn't do much to convince me that I should give it a try myself.

It was everyone else's reactions that made me start to feel like a technophobe. Whenever the topic came up around new people, they'd all tried it. People even thought my reticence was a bit strange. The consensus was pretty simple: once you're out of school, meeting people is a pretty random game. If you'd be OK with meeting someone in the produce aisle, why not meet them online?

The issue is that I wouldn't meet someone in a produce aisle. Not that I'd be afraid for my safety. I would just freeze and have no idea what to say. I once sat next to a guy I found extremely attractive for 12 hours on a plane. He actually made me blush, I thought he was that cute. I exchanged only 2 or 3 sentences with him the entire time. 12 hours and less than a half page of dialogue.

Once, my friend from Brazil asked me to clarify the word "flustered." When I started explaining, she said, "Oh, I know! It's like how you feel when someone is attracted to you."

Yep. She was dead on. For some of us, that is exactly what flustered is.

So, the topic of online dating has made abundantly clear something that I had been able to ignore about myself: my social skill set is not at all complete. I haven't the slightest idea how to date.

The one time that I ended up really falling in love, I had a crush on the guy for three years before I was able to make a(n incredibly sloppy and impulsive) move. It then took another six months of a casual relationship before I felt confident that yes, I really did want him to be my boyfriend.

The other side of my passivity is that over the years I've had more than one Accidental Boyfriend, situations that spun out of control before I really knew what was going on. About a year and a half ago I swore those off and have been trying to be more careful ever since.

So, whichever way you slice it, dating sounds terrifying to me. I'm extremely defensive about who I'll consider an emotional attachment to these days. And even when I like a person, it may take me, oh, three and a half years to be sure.

Not only do I not know how to date, it seems like my personality is at odds with it. It's terrifying and I seem destined to fail. So I signed up for OKCupid and started talking to people.

Someday I'll be able to look at my shiny, pretty box of intact social skills and say to my kids, "It was a long campaign, but eventually I took 'em all."

In the interest of balance

Following yesterday's downer post, I present to you:

10 details to love

The big things are obvious, so here's a list of the small things that make my time in New York wonderful. Not organized by weight or value.

1. It is impossible to leave the house without hearing at least 2 spoken languages aside from English.

2. The dry cleaner's by my house uses an antique sewing machine to do repairs, without pretension.

3. If I happen to be lying still in my room with my ear to the mattress when the subway passes nearby, I can hear and feel a faint rhythm like a bass line.

4. There is a spirit house in the back room at the laundromat.

5. When the train is about to arrive at the platform by my house, it causes a gentle wind tunnel. It always feels dramatic and special.

6. In Prospect Park, you can bird-watch.

7. Brooklyn has enough of a city vibe to get me to put on mascara and earrings when I go out for the day, but not enough that I feel guilty if I don't feel like putting an outfit together. A happy balance.

8. Manhattan has such a different vibe that it feels like a completely different place -- and it's only half an hour away.

9. Good music in cafes. On the whole, this is true.

10. Sometimes, you just need to see the water. It's never too far away, here.

The One-Month Blues

It's been a difficult couple of days, though nothing in particular is wrong.

I didn't want to hang out with the new CouchSurfers today. I hid in my room while my roommate greeted them. I worked in my bed, propped up against pillows.

I hate working from bed.

The calendar on my wall has nothing penciled in for this week until Saturday. Saturday! Big empty square spaces of no plans. The New Yorker would come today, though; I'd look up some new things to do and the calendar would be lively and full again. Maybe I should use colored markers this time. Brighten the thing up a bit.

The New Yorker didn't come.

I decided to go for a walk after work. Get some fresh air, enjoy the park, people watch. It was raining, so instead I went to the bagel store.

Standing in line, the cheapest, dirtiest way to my heart came on the radio. You have one of these songs, too. The one that was getting airplay when your heart was being broken. Some stupid pop thing with a line that guts you, usually insulting in its simplicity. But you couldn't get away from it -- it was in the grocery store, at the bar, coming out of car windows. And years later you still can't hear the thing without being pulled right back to the hollow feeling you felt then.

Bagel store, I really don't need this right now.

I went home and made tea and stared at the dark feeling in my rib cage. Not the rain. Not the song. Not the failures of Conde Nast's subscription services. Not even the potential friend who had said she'd get in touch on Friday but didn't, or the fact that last night I couldn't think of a thing to do and ended up watching a movie that made me cry.

It's called transition, I know that all too well. Turns out it comes a little bit faster when you're on your home turf.

As a traveler I didn't backpack, I moved from place to place. As such, I became a bit obsessed with the nuances of transition, how it hits you and when. The two month mark, the six month mark, the nine month mark, and the year mark. Those were the dots on my map.

It's only been one month! I'm thinking now. It's not time for this yet!

But so it is. There's not as much to adjust to here, so the work of getting settled in a superficial way is proving to be somewhat faster going than anticipated. And it's on to the next stage: the craving for a life.

The highs don't go away now, which is a relief. I can still expect to be honeymooning off and on for a while. And I also know that the best part is a few months down the road. But the initial bliss is over (so soon!).

Making a commitment, whether to a place, a job, or a person, puts you on the sharp emotional edge of life. When something good happens, you are exhilarated, beside yourself with love. Things have never been this good before. Then, when there's even the slightest aberration from that thrilling feeling -- a dull evening, a plan that doesn't work out right -- it hits you far harder than it should. It brings on doubt. This is what it's always going to be like. Maybe this is a mistake.

I have said many times before, publicly and privately, that I was going to stick it out somewhere and really get through all of the tough times. And I failed every time. I'm committed to making it, this time. I want it more than I ever have before. The alternative has ceased to be a viable way for me to live. At the base of it, I know that I need this.

But commitment is scary, folks. It's time to stop telling myself that this is going to be a breeze, and time to face up to what's going to be a lot of adjustment.

Mint tea, make me calm. Take me to sleep.

On making things

One thing that is very difficult to do, while traveling, is to create crafts. Anything that you make is another thing that you need to carry to the next place, for one. And it's also an unreasonably expensive past time if you need to buy a completely new set of tools and materials each time in order to avoid carrying a bag of craft supplies around with you.

Of course, if I cared enough, I could have figured out a way to make it happen despite the difficulties. I've been living in locations for months at a time, after all. It's not as if I've been backpacking all this time.

Somehow, though, I've forgotten how much happier I am when I'm creating things. It's odd, because I have spent many, many hours in my life creating bad art. It sometimes happens when I run into someone whom I haven't seen since my teen years that they'll ask, "So, I assume you went to art school?" (For the record, I think there's lots of relief mixed in with the reply when I say no, because I never had anything approaching professional level talent). For most of my childhood, I was taking 2 to 3 art classes at any given time. As a teenager I spent a lot of my free time -- and nearly all of my time in class, which pleased my teachers greatly -- drawing comic strips and sketches. I have manufactured enough macrame and hemp jewelry to decorate the wrists and necks of a marching band. My father built me a darkroom in our basement. My first time traveling without my parents was motivated more by art than by travel -- a friend and I spent a month studying drawing and painting in Paris.

I don't really understand how I was able to drop such a huge portion of my identity without really noticing or caring. I'm not sure when it happened, exactly. But changing locations at ever increasing rates was the nail in the coffin for my artistic life.

Which is why I am very happy to introduce you to This Thing I Just Made.

Ahem. Kitchen Mobile. Meredith Hutcheson, 1983 - . Mexican tin ornaments, embroidery floss, balsa wood, metal beads, thread, glue. Private Collection.

Crafting, for me, is a way to be artistic without reminding myself that I'm not really an artist. I'm not sure when I last created something. My favorite thing, of mine, is a table that I painted in 2006 while I was living in San Diego.

Since then, I've made some jewelry, but mostly I've just thought mildy about projects and then forgotten them. Suddenly, since I've arrived in New York, I've been thinking about it more often. There is some psychological shift that goes along with making a commitment to a place. It's affecting me in ways I didn't expect. For instance, beyond crafting, I've actually found myself thinking of paintings I'd like to make. I haven't wanted to paint in years. I can't even remember the last time I tried.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put on a podcast and paint a flower pot.

"I live in New York City"

A week or two ago I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of taking the train to Manhattan. It was a beautiful, beautiful Sunday and the people were out and about.

Come, people-watch with me!

(The music for this video, by Sxip Shirey, is probably the most compelling reason to watch this. It's from his excellent album Sonic New York, which samples street sounds from the city and weaves them into the beats and tunes. As discussed on Radiolab!)

"I'm going to be just like you"

Two and a half months ago, I was riding in the back of a truck from Vientiane, Laos, to the train station. It was a large pick up truck that had been converted by adding a bench running down each side of the bed. I was in the last seat at the back, holding onto the pole that supported the shade structure above me. The sun was hot and slanting in against my face. The sky was a brilliant blue, and we passed farms, trees, and domestic elephants as we drove.

All that I could think about was how bored I was.

Hemingway, who, amongst other things, portrayed a louche and drifting expat existence in his books, has a famous story called "Hills like White Elephants." It's a stunningly concise piece that places a pregnancy as the catalyst that sheds light on the different desires of two people.

"It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.

"That's the way with everything."

"Yes," said the girl. "Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe."

"Oh, cut it out."

"You started it," the girl said. "I was being amused. I was having a fine time."

"Well, let's try and have a fine time."

"All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?"

"That was bright."

"I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it--look at things and try new drinks?"

"I guess so."

In the story, the male character is pressuring his girlfriend to get an abortion so they can go on traveling and leading their lives. She is unsure.

I'd begun to feel like that woman. There are people who can travel their whole lives. I know and love many such people. For a while I thought I was like that, too. And then some changes in my circumstance, set in motion early in this calendar year, began to work on me. At first I just thought I was going through a transition, irritable but soon to recover and carry on as before. It took me nearly six months to realize what was really going on.

"Everything tastes of licorice."

Exploring felt like a chore. I was tired, introverted. I'd stopped cultivating new connections --what was the point? soon I'll be gone -- and had lost my energy to pick up new skills. At some point I realized that airports and airplanes felt more like home than anywhere in the world, and I don't mean that as hyperbole: the second I got on line to check in, something in me would unclench and I would relax into the joy of knowing exactly how to navigate every situation that would present itself to me in the next 10 to 20 hours.

I'd begun to thrill on the rush of leaving, only to feel cold and depressed on arrival.

It took a long time for me to understand all of this. Travel, or more specifically, living in new places, has been motivating me since I was a teen-ager. It's been my guiding principle, the one thing in my life that all other things were arranged around. I grew up in a bedroom suburb; both of my parents had moved there from other places. They worked in the city. It was a good childhood, and a pleasant one, but one that felt like waiting. Waiting for my turn to go out and find a place for myself.

When it did come time to leave, it felt impossible to simply go and pick a place to live. How could I make that sort of decision without knowing what my options were? Thinking about all the places I didn't know made me itchy, aggravated so I couldn't sleep. Like Conrad's narrator in Heart of Darkness, I couldn't take my mind off of the blank places on the map. Seeing the shape of a country and not being able to add the colors and smells and sounds to those bare lines gave me a deep anxiety. I was missing something, I was always missing something, and every second I wasn't off somewhere was a second wasted.

And so I left for a series of places that it never occurred to me to consider home. First, northwest Pennsylvania, where I attended school and gaped (to the sometimes amusement, sometimes annoyance of my friends) at the rural world. Then, France, a country I loved but where I could never find a real emotional foothold. San Diego, a city of compromise, where I and a boyfriend slowly learned that meeting halfway means no one is happy. New Zealand, a dreamland of landscapes, where I met multiple transplanted North Americans who had been tearfully airborne over the Pacific while members of their family passed away. Chile, a culture I loved more as an ongoing intellectual dilemma than as a sustainable life choice. And then, at a hyperactive pace, San Francisco (where I failed to create a base of local friends), Costa Rica (where I learned that small towns by the beach make me dull and lethargic), China (where I watched with fascination a culture I had no interest in entering), Istanbul (where I was defeated by the Turkish language), and Thailand (where I had to relearn the lesson about small towns by the beach).

And all of a sudden I was 27, I hadn't been in love in three years, I rarely saw most of my good friends, I spent many hours cultivating acquaintanceships that I knew would shortly be ending, and the things that had driven me up to that point -- curiosity, adrenaline, and the careful cultivation of my own mental landscapes -- were just not enough anymore.

Of course, I pause here to assure you that it was all worth it. Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien. This decade-long (perhaps life-long) obsession of mine has shaped everything about the way I now relate to myself, to others, and to the world.

But it's time to confront a new identity for myself. I always felt it, that there was something odd about me for a traveler: while my truly nomadic friends were purging themselves of possessions at every chance, I was buying posters and putting them in storage. In some corner of my mind, there has always been an apartment, filled with my books and large plants. When I was eight I was walking down a street in Boston with my family one night, and at a lit window there was a young woman in sweats painting her walls. I don't know why I decided this, but I thought to myself, "It's her first apartment. Someday that will be me."

It's time to move somewhere and mean it. Again, with feeling....

Riding in the back of the truck, my eyes were barely focused on the scenery flying by. As I sweat in the Laotian sun, my pulse was quickening as I thought of all the things I was going to do, the things I was going to have. Hobbies. Friends. Lovers. A gym membership. A subway pass. A telephone. A steady address. Magazine subscriptions. Bookshelves. Plants. Everything was going to change.

Trainspotting Final Scene

João | Myspace Video

For anyone who's ever followed someone down

It's been years and years and years since I felt this way, but somehow watching this video ignites the deepest nostalgia in me. I've been watching it on repeat for over half an hour now, chasing that feeling. It hits somewhere behind the sternum. There's something so beautiful, from the vantage point of topical connections, to know that there is the capability in me to feel so deeply. I think about this sometimes, when dramatic songs come on my music list. How strange to know that once these songs hit me so hard, without a touch of irony. How strange that I would miss those times on some deeply felt level.

Watching this video, with a lot of concentration, I can bring back the reverberations against my ribs of what abject emotional destruction feels like. I hope I never feel that way again, but somehow, this exercise leaves me feeling good.

The Beauty of Speed

What's your recurring nightmare?

My theme is zombies, and it has been, as far as I can remember, for about ten years. I don't remember when the dreams started, but they seemed to have emerged in tandem with my entry into an adult mindset. I grew, and the dreams grew, and these days I have scarcely any nightmares that don't contain at least a couple of zombies. I'm a troubled sleeper and I tend to have a lot of nightmares, so this adds up.

It's not a recurring dream in the sense of exact repetition. It's thematic. Last night, for example, I had a relatively straightforward genre dream. I was in a large house in a pine-forested suburb somewhere. I had two companions. The zombies were outside; we were in the house; there was much running and shutting of windows. This is how the dreams tend to go: the zombies never get close enough to attack. They're always just a hair away, clawing at the door I forgot to lock, or approaching as I nail the last board over a hole in the wall.

Other times, the dreams are far less typical of the zombie trope. Say an average little yuppie nightmare: I've forgotten some major project. Or I discover an unpaid bill that I can never afford to pay off. Or something bad happens with a boy. In the middle of one of these pedestrian disasters, oops, here come the zombies. I'll be standing in a cafe arguing with a love interest, and then we look out the plate glass window and -- time to run! There will be an interlude of escaping, then eventually the dream will wander back on course.

Sometimes they look like movie zombies, all lurching and blood-spattered.

Sometimes, they look like normal people.

I've even seen robot zombies, and zombies that were essentially swaths of color.

It doesn't really matter what they look like. Just as in a dream you can see someone, and know in the instant that you're seeing them that although they look like a stranger this person is actually your close friend, all that matters is the understanding that they are zombies.

So what's a zombie? In the form I'm talking about, a zombie is relentless, dangerous, and singularly fixated on destruction. A zombie is also not alone: it's part of a sea of danger that surrounds the vulnerable. But most essentially, it's an inhuman human. From philosophical zombies to my own B-movie variety, the fascinating (for me) aspect is that the creature appears to us as one thing when in reality it is another. It appears to be a person like ourselves. Our impulse tells us that we can say or do something that will create an echo inside the chambers of the creature's experience and consciousness. But we can't. There is nothing there.

It's not surprising, then, that this would be the stuff of my recurring nightmares. In fact, I'd be interested to know whether writers and communications people have a greater tendency to dream about zombies than the general population. A world of zombies is a world in which I am deprived of my main skill. It's a world where I am helpless.

My life is a series of drastic changes, when viewed from the right angle. It can be absolutely chaotic, and I thrive off of the madness. I've reflected on this a lot this year, because several incidents have proven to me that I really don't like change -- when it's something external that happens to me. I remember having terrible depressions each time I had to change schools as a child, and that tendency to take transitions badly continues today.

And so it seems to me that helplessness in the face of change seems to be my personal zombie army. From the moment I was old enough to do it, I responded to the threat of change by upping the ante. When it was time for college, there was a long relationship that I wanted desperately to be out of but couldn't figure out how to end. I went rural and out of state, and that solved that. Two years later, a large number of the friends I'd made were graduating and I felt abandoned. I went to France. When I graduated -- perhaps the biggest change -- I moved to California. When a serious relationship ended, I got on a plane to New Zealand. When it ended for a second time, I went to Chile.

So it seems to me that the majority of travel in my life has revolved around this theme. By throwing myself into change instead of allowing it to happen to me, I've turned it into my favorite drug. Externally inflicted change is always coming, but I can always get that board in place just in time. Sometimes it nearly catches me, grabs my leg, tries to pull me down, but I always get away. As long as I can do it on my own terms, I'm not helpless: I'm the most powerful creature in the universe.

This is why I will stay in Istanbul until May. There are changes happening right now that will affect me but are not orchestrated by me, and every single cell in my body is screaming "plane ticket!" But looking back on the last few years, seeing the frenzy underneath the illusion of my own power, is sobering. I do not want to spend my life running away from imaginary monsters. Or rather, what's imaginary is the thought that I can run. Time is a zombie. It looks rich and colorful, like it has feeling. It holds my experiences and so I think that it can feel them. But time is empty, sweeping, relentless. And running doesn't change anything. I want to travel because I want to, because I've decided to, not because I'm afraid of my own ability to weather a transition. So I'll wait this one out in Istanbul, at least til May. Right now, I don't know how I'll do it, but I know it's what I have to do. Step one.

Happy Holidays!

This post is to my wonderful family (and friends). Thank you so much for your presence in my life! I love you all very much. It's been an amazing year. To make up for faulty keeping-in-touch, here's my retrospective in photos.

I started in Chile last New Years, which also happened to be the night I received my new job offer.

Then it was off for a quick visit to Buenos Aires.

From there I made a visit back to New England, just in time to be caught in a blizzard in New Hampshire.

Then I moved to Berkeley, CA, where I spent 3 months learning my job and getting to know my eclectic bunch of housemates / coworkers.

In May we made the (BIG) move to San Francisco. I always complain about packing and moving but carting a house / office of 20 people with no labor except our own (and those die hard amazing friends & volunteers who turned out) was... near traumatizing.

Almost immediately after that I visited the Bahamas. Cruises are not for me, but hey, at least now I know (not that I doubted much prior...).

And then I spent 3 months living in Costa Rica. This was the view from our house. It was quiet, beachy, sometimes blissful sometimes dull. But we had a pack of howler monkeys pass through our backyard every day, twice -- 6am and 3pm, roughly -- and that will forever be one of the best daily routines I've ever had.

I quickly visited home for a couple of weeks, but was camera-less at the time.

In an all-too-fast month back in San Francisco, I attended the strange and beautiful Burning Man Festival. For the record I'm not a total convert and I will never, ever tell anyone that they "totally need to go, it'll change your life." I hope not to meet people whose lives are so undeveloped that they can change in a week long art-and-mayhem festival. But I will certainly say that it's an otherworldly blast and I hope to find myself out there in goggles amidst the dust storms next year as well. (photo via friend Casey A's facebook, as I was still without camera).

I also spent good times with my friends and coworkers at our house. At this time there were 30 of us living there. This may sound like living hell but I loved it. Normally, the backyard doesn't look quite so similar to Burning Man, but it does happen. (photo via friend Erin's facebook)


And then...China! The Great Wall....

The Forbidden City...

Tiger Leaping Gorge (the deepest gorge in the world), featuring the intrepid Caroline...

Shanghai...

And other adventures (seen: Hangzhou).

And now the lovely Istanbul, my new city-love.

Tomorrow I head to Andorra for a week of skiing and time with an old traveling friend I know from New Zealand. So that puts the grand count of 2009 at 8 countries visited.

Next year.....?

I love you all and wish you a very happy New Year!

How I Almost Ruined the National Holiday for 60 Strangers, or, Against Pollution

When the quarantine officials entered the plane, covered head to foot in white bio-suits, I turned to Caroline and said, “They’ve called the people from ET to come and get me!” Thank god Caroline’s good on a bicycle, but I’m not so sure that I’d fit into the front basket. It was around this time that the Chinese passengers, clustered around the bulkhead and back towards the bathrooms, began pulling out their cell phones and taking pictures of me.

It had been an interesting day.

Shanghai is extreme. This is certainly something that my subjective experience seems to corroborate. The visibility and thickness of the ground level ozone is overwhelming. On top of this, everything everywhere seems to be under construction, so pure dust is a contributor, along with smoke and all the usual suspects.

My sore throat began last Wednesday, when I’d been in town about 3 days. By Friday, I had developed a dry cough and was downing herbal couch syrup at regular intervals. After taking it easy over the weekend and avoiding spending too much time walking around in the pollution, the cough was a bit calmer.

So, of course, I stayed in on Sunday night to ensure that my planned trip to Kunming, in the western province of Yunnan, would go smoothly.

Just kidding! I went dancing.

On Monday I woke up and the cough was back in full force. Caroline and her roomie, Emily, and I, were due to head to the airport around 12. It’s National Holiday on October 1^st, so the girls have some time off (them, and everyone else in the country). Due to a work miscommunication, my 11am meeting didn’t get started until 12. At 1:15 I was just getting off of Skype, Emily was wrestling with a ginormous suitcase, and Caroline couldn’t find her keys. All well and good. We flagged a cab to the metro and, after some cartoon-worthy antics with Emily’s suitcase, got on the train at 1:30. We figured we’d just make it in time for Caroline and my flight.

Until we took the metro in the wrong direction for half an hour. When we reached the end of the line, the girls looked up and said, “we missed it.”

“By how far?” I wanted to know. I thought maybe we’d just talked too much and overshot.

Thankfully, there was another western woman on the train to witness our embarrassment. (what’s the point of being dumb if no one gets to appreciate it? I bet this woman went home feeling like the most competent expat in town) “You should have gotten on going in the other direction,” she helpfully pointed out to me, as the girls avoided eye contact.

We started back in the other direction. “We missed our flight,” I observed. This is when I discovered just what it means when your friends work with 5-year-olds all day.

“Not at all! I’m certain we can make it!” Caroline beamed.

“Absolutely! It’s not so far at all!” chirped Emily.

Silence.

“The Maglev only takes 8 minutes, you know.” [the Maglev is a bullet train that peaks at 430kph, suspended magnetically over a curving track]

“You won’t have to wait in the airport!”

“We can absolutely make it.”

Silence.

“You know, I bet we’ll get there with just enough time!”

“Emily, Caroline…..no. Just no.”

We got to the Maglev station at 2:40. Our flight was set to leave at 3:10. We’d already missed boarding by a long shot, but nonetheless Caroline and I gave it a go by ditching Emily with her bags on the platform (so chivalrous!) and running up stairs and across platforms. Where we waited, me coughing and wheezing, until Emily wheeled up behind us as a sign of the futility of it all and we all boarded the train together. It left the station at 2:45, bringing us to the airport at 2:53.

Where Caroline and I ran, again.

Needless to say, at 3:10 we were not on our plane. We were drinking a beer and having lunch at a restaurant in the airport, new tickets for 7:15 in hand. I was pleased. But the cough hadn’t been helped by all of the sprinting, so I was running through tissues at an alarming rate.

When our new, better, more conveniently timed plane began taking off a few hours later, the recycled air hit me in a bad way. No sooner had the vent turned on than I was doubled over, coughing so hard I thought I might throw up. This continued for a good 20 minutes. Once we’d leveled off at cruising altitude, I was red and sweating, and my scarf had become an incredibly sparkly handkerchief, but the worst of it seemed to be over. The flight attendant came over with a cup of warm water and offered me a face mask, which I took. Breathing through it kept the air around my face a bit less dry, so actually did help considerably. I have a photo of me enjoying my face mask, but can’t upload it at the moment.

The flight attendant asked if I’d like to take my temperature. Taking it as a nice offer rooted in a cultural difference, I declined. She seemed uncertain but left.

It wasn’t until this video was screened that I understood what she had been getting at. (You MUST watch this video, it is priceless).

The flight went on. My cough had subsided once I got used to the altitude and the air. Caroline and I worked through the guidebook, planning our ten day trip to Yunnan.

About 45 minutes before landing, the flight attendant came back and politely insisted that I have my temperature taken. I gave in sullenly, but what could be the harm? I’m not sick, let them take my temperature, whatever they want. The flight attendant, who for the record was absolutely sweet, chatted with us while we waited – or rather with Caroline, since I was sitting there with a glass thermometer stuck in my mouth. After 5 minutes, she took a look. And another look.

“37.3,” she said. Caroline and I were just beginning to figure out what that meant in Fahrenheit when the flight attendant said “I’ll be right back” and disappeared for 10 minutes.

By the time she came back, Caroline had scribbled through some longhand, memory-based calculations and determined that I was at more or less 99 Fahrenheit. Caroline was being sunny – “That’s nothing!” I was being pessimistic – “Then why’d she leave?! We’re being quarantined.”

"Well, this reminds me of a story...." said Caroline, and launched into a long history of someone she'd met somewhere.

After a while I turned my head and said "Caroline, I'm not listening."

She looked back at me, equally calm, and said, "This helps me."

So, with more respect on both sides, on went the one-sided chatter.

“I’m sorry,” the flight attendant said, when she returned, “but the regulations of China say that it cannot be more than 37.” Another flight attendant, a bit less sympathetic, stood glaring over her shoulder. “Some passengers heard you coughing, and we must have your temperature. If it is too high, you must speak to quarantine officials when we arrive.” She asked me to take a new reading, this time by armpit.

A few months ago, my mother called me to tell me that her friend’s son had been quarantined in Beijing. Someone on his flight had been declared a swine flu risk, so Chinese officials had required all of the passengers of the flight to check into hotel rooms for 4 days. My mother had urged me to get traveler’s insurance in case some such thing happened, since the friend’s son had been required to pay his own hotel expenses.

Did I listen? Enough to know that I was screwed should I be quarantined....not enough to purchase said insurance.

So we waited. I argued with the flight attendant, who was indulgent of my concerns and demands and clearly of the opinion that I was not sick. I tried to mentally control my temperature, but the thought of 4 days trapped in a closed room was not exactly calming. The flight attendants left for a minute and when I looked down I saw that I was at 37.5. The thermometer was retrieved. 5 minutes later, flight attendants reseated the row in front of us.

Over the half hour before we landed, the entire aircraft was rearranged. It wasn’t a very full flight, so by the time we landed, Caroline and I were isolated from the rest of the plane by a good 12 rows ahead and 2 behind. Caroline tried to cheer me up. I resisted and started yelling at the plane at large about my allergies, the horrific pollution of Shanghai, and other related topics. No one spoke English, and I was muffled by my face mask, so everyone just ignored me.

Enter the ET bio-hazard team. The Chinese passengers edged closer to watch the drama. I sat there with a thermometer under my arm, trying to look as healthily exasperated as possible. Caroline, now fitted with her very own face mask, giggled. The flight attendant translated back and forth. As the flashes were snapping all around me, I couldn’t stop thinking --

What does it do to your karma if, due to not caring properly for your cough, you cause 60 plane passengers to be quarantined and miss their holiday home with family?!?!?!

Luckily for me, after the temperature was read and the flight attendant translated my explanations about allergies, pollution and air conditioning, Lead Bio Hazard Lady took off her hood and raised her goggles. Things were said in Chinese. The hazmat folk left. The other passengers began leaving with their things. I took this as a good sign, but when the flight attendant came by and definitively told me I was not in lock down, that’s when I did the Rocky air punch.

Then coughed all the way to the terminal, while avoiding the gaze of the other passengers as well as Caroline’s attempts to ‘lighten the mood.’

“Well! Two first experiences in one day! A missed flight, and a near detention!”

“Caroline, let’s just get the hell out of here.” And we did.

Your Nomad Toolkit

There are many types of modern nomadism. Most people associate the word with what I'll call "river nomads": people who constantly move from place to place in a steady onward flow, never putting down roots anywhere, living out of their backpack or an RV. Dynamic, and watch out - if you fall in you might end up miles from where you expected to be (and your life will be a much better story for it). In contrast, I'd say that I'm more often a "waterfall nomad," to stick with the water theme (because nomads all have something aquatic about them, don't they?). Deep pools catch the water until the miniscus breaks and the movement cascades into the next swirling calm. Waterfall nomads move from place to place but tend to live in each of these places for a time, getting into the daily routine, putting down roots. Fall into my life and you can swim around for awhile, no problem. For months at a time, I look like anybody else.

I've been at this type of pattern for awhile now. Not a great long while, years-wise, but out of the span of my life, a pretty significant chunk. The whole adult bit, about a third of my earthly time. I'm 26 now. When I was just newly 18, I left Boston to attend college in rural western Pennsylvania. I'd taken solo trips before, and gotten the bug from them, but this was the beginning of my waterfall cascade.

What followed (with a few 1-2 month money saving stints back in Boston omitted):

2 years: Pennsylvania

1 month: Greece

9 months: France

9 months: Pennsylvania

6 months: San Diego

6 months: New Zealand

6 months: Boston

1 year: Chile

3 months: Berkeley, CA

3 months: Costa Rica

1 month: San Francisco

2 months: Shanghai (beginning last week)

next: a trip to Nepal; 6 months in Istanbul

In the years between 2002 and 2010, in other words, I will have lived in 11 places and moved even more times than that. And of course all of the travel in between (every waterfall is part of a river, after all).

Shallow? I don't think so, but it could be argued. Flighty? Very possibly. Sustainable? Now, yes, thank you. Common? Way more than you might think.

Here are my personal recommendations for resources to help you in the fluid life. All are free unless noted.

Your Nomad Toolbox - nuts, bolts, reads, networks, and more.

Beginning.

Why you can do this, too: The good folks at Technomadia (who run Camp Nomadia at Burning Man) shoot down common "I can't travel" excuses.

Work Your Way Around the World: If you don't have any idea of how you're going to tackle it, this book may get the wheels rolling. I found it useful when plotting out New Zealand.

Stay connected / practical.

Skype: Free computer-to-computer phone calls; very reasonably priced computer-to-phone calls.

XE: Currency converter.

World Clock Meeting Planner: Coordinate meetings for up to four different time zones at a time.

Google Docs or Zoho: Keep your projects going from any computer; give people worldwide the ability to work with you on comments and editing.

Blogger or WordPress: Making your writing public saves you from opening up the travel journal only to find incoherent, emotional babbling (rather, you will find coherent emotional babbling with comments from others -- a world of difference). A good way to share ideas with other travelers, and the best souvenir you can give yourself.

Yuuguu: Screen-sharing made easy. Teach someone in another hemisphere how to use a web tool.

A photo storage / sharing service: I use Kodak Gallery, which is hopelessly un-hip, but I've been using it for too long to bother switching. Flickr's the one I'd choose now, but that may just be because I like their content & design. Also check out Snapfish and PhotoBucket before making a choice.

Recipezaar: Why is this relevant? Because you can search by ingredients. This is very, very helpful when you find that your fall-back ingredients just aren't sold here, but all these other strange things are.....

Freecycle and Craigslist: If you move every few months, you don't want expensive furniture - but you do need something more than cardboard boxes (trust me, I've tried....cardboard tables collapse after a month or two and cardboard chairs just don't work). Get free stuff. And then when you leave, give it back. (note: in my experience, these really only work in the US).

World Newspapers: An index of international papers in English.

International Herald Tribune: Lackluster but worth skimming.

Telegraph's Expat Section: A weekly set of features of interest.

Meet people, make friends.

Word Reference: Simply the best language dictionary / translation discussion forum out there for the 6 languages it covers.

Facebook: Yes, we're all addicted. But also, you'd be amazed what can happen when you post, "I've just moved to XYZ city." Someone you went to preschool will say, "Hey I've been here for years! Want to come meet my friends this weekend?" Networking made easy.

CouchSurfing: "I'm also a client." I would like to point out that I've been in Shanghai for less than a week and have already made friends. Even if you don't need a place to stay, and don't want to host, you can still meet interesting people from all over the world.

WWOOF: Although it stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms, you can now find a variety of barter work-for-lodging exchanges close to, but in expansion from, the original theme.

Meetup: Another way that I've met friends in cities around the world.

Hostel World: Another way that I've found cheap accommodations around the world.

The Thorn Tree: Lonely Planet's online travel forum. I find LP guides hit or miss (like all guides) but these discussion boards have the answer to almost any destination-related question you may have.

Learn from your community.

Expat Exchange: Takes some skimming and parsing, but there's good information to be had here on all kinds of relevant topics.

Transitions Abroad: Ditto.

Escape Artist: Ditto.

Idealist: Ditto, but for non-profit jobs and volunteerism only.

Location Independent Club: Ditto, but in the form of a community network.

Digital Nomads: Group blog focusing on the new internet-based way of the road.

Expat Women: I never found this to be personally useful, but it is an active international network.

WorldTeach: A volunteer teaching placement agency that I used to get my Chilean visa / one of my Chilean jobs.

All this information! I'm sure you've got more of it. If you do, please contact me or leave a comment.