Tabula Rasa

So I was thinking about it the other day and I think that no matter who you are... somebody probably assumes the worst about you. And its not because they think you're an idiot or because you stabbed them in the back at work.

In fact, I would say it's a Southern thing, but its not. Its a universal way that people identify each other. Its about culture and color and accents and comfort levels and how all of that dictates the way you think about everyone you meet in America.

First, History: The United States is possibly the only country that doesn't have its own cultural history beyond four or five generations. That means that the lines we draw between us and the groups that we form are quite different from those in other countries.

I postulate that part of the reason we are this way has to do with the fact that most of us came here under those exact circumstances. We "tired, poor, huddled masses" all shipped ourselves over and forced the only existing culture (native americans) into extinction. We formed huddled masses of our own. We segregated ourselves around what we knew. Pilgrims and Indians and Irish and German and Polish and Puerto Rican and Egyptian and Somalian and Kurdish. The passage of time allows for generational shifts and ethnic mixing, but we all have communities. Some communities are just older than others.

Personally, I've been noticing discrimination a lot more than I used to. Even my own discriminiations. Partially I think the reason I've never noticed it before has to do with the fact that I'm white. White Americans don't notice discrepancies in race relations as much as people from other backgrounds. Possibly, deep down, white people think they are SUPPOSED to be the majority because that's the way things have always been. And when a large group of "Other" comes in, they think somethings wrong. And things that are really more related to socioeconomics get labeled racial issues. Gangs, drugs, and public housing to name a few. These kinds of labels separate people. They form barriers that become sharpened and intensified by dialectical differences, differences of popular culture, and the perpetuation of unrealistic yet commonly accepted stereotypes.

"Recitatif" was Toni Morrison's only published short story, and it blew my mind in college.
The whole story is a series of five events in the lives of two women who are identified within the first paragraph as being of different races, black and white. The reader is the left, unbeknownst to him or her in most cases, to draw their own conclusions about who is black and who is white. While reading the story it is impossible not to picture the girls and intone your own opinion based on the events in the story.

Read it. It's amazing.
One student in my college class remarked that he thought one of the girls was black because the story mentioned that her hair smelled strange. Another remarked that it must have been a story about how a young black girl, obviously Roberta, they said, defied the odds and became wealthy and successful. Still another mentioned that Twyla must have been white because she couldn't remember what race a friend of theirs from school was. "White people don't notice people's color as much as black people," she had said.

Holy cow, Toni Morrison was a GENIUS for writing that story. The stereotypes in our heads were all going mad trying to tell us who was who and what was what, and none of it was even correct. She stripped right and wrong answers and let us see that the tools we use to identify people were often made of stereotypes.

People are a product of their experiences.

First generation Latin guys might call me a "bad girl" because they think white girls are "crazy." They see MTV, and they listen to pop music, and they see all the "freedom" and "equality" and they call us "bad" because we're just as capable of doing stereotypically male things as they are. And its all commonly accepted here. Sushiboy might have asked me for casual sex because I casually slid him my number underneath my plate at the sushi place while I was there with one of my guy friends. That guy in class might have said Roberta's hair meant she was black because one time he sat next to a fellow student on the bus who happened to be both black and overdoing it on the hair product.

Empiricism is the rule.

Its just not fair that we can't start with clean slates. Tabula rasa. I mean, I want to SO BADLY. And the older I get the more I realize that life is like a huge snowball of experiences. You keep going further and further down this big hill picking up all sorts of baggage and its like... Where does this end??? What's at the bottom of the hill? Why is it that when someone meets you they throw all their baggage on you and dress you up based on their experiences until you don't even look like yourself at all. You look like whatever they think you do.

Don't let your baggage determine who somebody else is. Everything you assume about anything and anyone is often a product of your mind alone. Though you may take credit for any truth you find, the link between your assumption and the truth is usually one big fat myth.

So anyway. What I'm trying to say is we should give each other more credit. Somebody I was talking to the other day said he travels to Latin America on a regular basis and he loves it there.
"It makes me feel like a Christian," he said. "And everything here is like... if you ask to stay with someone's family they're not sure. They're not hospitable. They get suspicious. And everything just..."
"--has to be a certain way," I finished.
"Yes!" he said.

Its true. Sure. People are the sum of their experiences. But don't let your experiences keep you from change. There is a big world out there. And you do NOT know everything.

Challenge yourself. Let go of your baggage and allow people to prove themselves beyond their own. Suspend your disbelief. Believe in something. Believe in the goodness of people and treat them well.

It will make you feel better.

The End for Sushiboy

"So you don't have a boyfriend? At all?" Sushiboy's voice sounded much more confident through the phone than I remembered it. I remembered the shy kid who couldn't have been more than 5'3," and who kept looking at the ground.
"No," I said, rolling onto my back in the bed. "I don't have a boyfriend at all." I kept the phone close to my ear and wondered if anyone could hear me down the hall.
"Why not? Its not because they don't want, you know."
I laughed. "I know that. They want. Of course, they always want. But I don't want."
"That's good for you?"
"Yeah. Its good for me." I paused, playing with the fringe on a throw pillow near my head. "I'm sick of hearing about how people don't trust me. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I'm bad."
"But I trust you."
"No," I said. "You don't. Its the same like I told you before. You don't even know who I am. You don't trust me and you never will. And you know why? Because I won't let you. I don't want a boyfriend. And I especially don't want one who doesn't speak English."
He chuckled. "But I'm speaking English now."
"Yes, you are. How is that, exactly? Becuase I still don't believe you are who you say you are."
"I ordered a cd for you."
I sighed in frustration. "You shouldn't have done that."
"It's Carlos Baute. Something new for you. I know you like Carlos Baute."
"Yeah... I do." I considered that. A boy who prepared sushi for a living, said he trusted me, and who special ordered me Latin Pop cd's from Spain. He was unique enough.
"We shoud see each other again, so I can give you the cd."
"Well..." But I knew where it would lead. I would just lead him on and I would have to break it down to him again about how I was in a different place in my life than him and how it was hard to communicate and blah blah blah the usual blah. One thing ALWAYS leads to another and that's where I would be. I knew it like I knew the sun would rise.
"I just can't, okay. I can't. I don't want a boyfriend."
For a few seconds I could hear what sounded like a tv in the background on the line. It was blaring some Spanish announcer. It sounded like an infomercial.
"I don't have to be your boyfriend."
I considered this. "But you don't want to be my friend. So... surely you're not..."
"--Why you so mean?" he asked.
"I'm not mean. I'm being smart. I know what I want now."
"Okay," he said. "Then let me ask you one question."
"...All right."
"--No, never mind."
"What is it?"
He sighed. "Never mind. Forget it."
"Just tell me!"
"I just want to know something," he said.
"Which is?" I stared at my ceiling, waiting.
"If you have no boyfriend, what do you do for sex?"
"Excuse me?!"
He was laughing. "See... never mind."
"For sex?" We were treading dangerous waters here. "I don't need that. Do you? Obviously we are very different." Still staring at the ceiling, something occurred to me. "Is that what you really want from me? I mean, just be honest. Is that what this is about?"
"...yeah."
I dropped my gaze. "Oh..."
And then I started to feel angry.
"If you just want some American girl to have sex with go to a bar, go to a club, go... any of those places and take your pick. But I'm not like that. Don't you know that? Don't you know ANYTHING?"
"I just thought--"
"You thought wrong. I have standards. You understand? I have higher standards. Do you understand standards?"
"...No. Not really."
"Ugh. Okay. I don't have sex with people because of God. I don't have sex because I go to church. I don't have sex because one day I want to get married and I don't want to have to explain to my husband how I had sex with some random idiot like YOU."
And I hung up.

I didn't really know why I was crying all of a sudden. Sushiboy was just one of any number of douchebags in the world who all want the same thing. But I think it was one of those first times when I started to doubt the good in people. For whatever weird reason I have always believed in the good in people, and yet this was one of the first times when I had hung back just long enough (five months!) to hear the truth of things. Sushiboy didn't care whether I was his novia or not. He just wanted to cop a feel. I had really believed that with all his shyness, he was better than that. I didn't want to date him, so it's not that I was sad about that. It just shocked me to believe one thing and then find out that the exact opposite was true.

Maybe Latinos have it right. Maybe Trust is a total crock.

Of course, I was also a little wounded by the fact that he thought I would be okay with it all. Why would he think that? Is it because I'm a white girl?

I quickly logged into my phone account and blocked his cell phone number. Thank God I'm done with all this dating crap, I thought to myself. I don't have to listen to that shizz or wonder about intentions for at least another 4 months.

My "reset" is obviously still in progress..........

The Corporate Weird

What IS the corporate world? Why is it so weird? Why are some people just born to be here? Is corporate the "popular kids" of high school? Is it some elite club where entry is only gained by sucking up to current members and having lots of moneyed things in common to talk about?

It seems like I can't say a word to anybody here without feeling like a complete hillbilly fool.

"Stop texting," I say to Mazatlan as I walk out of the caf.
"Why you say stop if I'm texting to you!?" He laughs.
"You're not texting me."
"Yes I yam!"
"Oh, well, I don't get any," I say. "Maybe its becuase I blocked your number! Hah!"

Talking to Mazatlan is like slipping into my old self. I fit like a glove into that side of myself, and its fun. Edgy. Cozy, even. But I get into the elevator and step back into the Corporate Weird. I guess if I had to choose a me, I'd choose the one on the elevator. She's more grounded. More likely to own a house some day. And have a husband. And two kids. And a dog.

"Do you have any weekend plans?"
"How are you today?"
"It's really cold, today, huh?!"

Its all relative, though. And the Corporate Weird is not the only thing that makes me a different person these days. I guess I've grown up a bit. I must say, I do appreciate the boring things in life a lot more than I used to.

Press the Reset Button

Through straight up diet and exercise I have now officially lost 10 lbs.
I go to church 3 times a week.
I write to you about random things during down time at work.
I drink two liters of water every day.
I weigh myself every morning.
I chart my weight on my calendar, and on a BMI + Weight Chart on my phone.
I teach ESL classes to Spanish speaking adults on Sunday afternoons.
I am starting an initiative to, on rainy days, give umbrellas to people on the streets who don't have them.
I spend forty to sixty minutes every night, without fail, dancing to Bachata music in my bedroom.
I have sworn off dating for a period of 6 months. As for this never-ending quest, I may resume in June 2011.


When I was in high school and my early days at Lavery I was dating Russ Walker. I can remember wishing I could hurry up and be old enough so that Russ and I could get married and he could be my engineer husband and we could just be so cute and happy together. My mother had only been 21 when she married my father. I remember wishing I could get married before that. And when my mother said we should wait longer, I remember thinking in the back of my mind that I knew it was a stupid idea, too. It wouldn't make me happy to get married knowing that everyone thought I was doing the wrong thing. I needed my mother's approval at the least. Looking back, 21 is a stupid age to get married. In the four years since then, I feel like I've climbed some mountain of adulthood or something. I have reached the peak where I can see out in front of me and know where to go on my way down. People who get married at 21 are only climbing up together, having no idea what is on the other side. And you never DO really know what's in store for you in life, but you should probably know a bit more about where you're trying to go and how you want to get there before you do something as permanent as marriage.

That's why I'm pressing the reset button. My weight has expanded slowly over the past four years. So now at 10lbs down and 20 to go for my dream weight, I'm working on it. I'm focusing on what's best for me and the people I care about.

Yesterday I stopped at Kroger and bought twenty five dollars worth of products to use in the shower. Body scrub that smells like "tahitian velvet," shaving gel that smells like kiwis, fancy hair conditioner with tea tree extracts and mint, and a razor that has three blades and is a beautiful shade of lime green. It was fun. I had a blast smelling things and googling them on my phone trying to find the best product for the price. But it was nice to splurge on something that is just for me and has nothing to do with snagging guys.

I'm trying to make better choices here, people. Don't knock the technique. Turning your attention to the important things in life, while re-evaluating what you want out of it all is a really important step in growth. I've spent a lot of my time saying I'll change this and I'll change that, but never setting aside the TIME to do it. So. Here I am. I've got time.


Russ Walker IS married now. To some girl I don't know in Washington, D.C. They met a couple years after he moved up there. I helped him move. We loaded up his tiny blue Saturn and drove the whole way, weighed down, almost scraping the pavement when we pulled out of the driveway. I stayed two nights in D.C. and flew back, crying my eyes out like the world was ending. And in a way it was. A chapter of my life had ended. But I don't miss it.

Russ really did become an engineer. A top secret one. He works for the government. And I sorta did become a writer like I said I would. I'm writing to you, aren't I? But I don't think Russ and I would have worked out in the long run. People change a lot between 20 and 25. The heartbreak, the disillusionment, the pain, the nature of life, all start to become apparent. And in the back of my mind at 19, the whole time my mother would say "Wait," I thought to myself that 26 was a good age to get married. At 26, no one accuses you of being too young. At 26 you are fully yourself.

And I think I am. Or in six months, once this reset is complete, I will be.

JLE: Dog Rescuer!

I rescued a dog today!
Not like adoption, like a rescue!

She was limping around the Mapco parking lot with a big gash in her back right leg. She looked pittiful, with this sad pleading look and a low, steady wag of her tail. I petted her when I came out, thinking she belonged to somebody. But no one said anything, and people kept coming in and out like normal. I looked around, and then back at the dog, who was looking at me.

So I asked the clerk at the gas station if he knew whose dog it was. He said he didn't but he wished he did. It had been sitting in front of the double entrance doors and somebody had hit it real hard with the door by accident making it scream. The clerk said it had been there since 5:30 that morning. So I went back out and met the dog who seemed to be waiting for me, and when I opened my car door to get out my phone the little dog jumped right in my floor board!

"Well, okay," I said. The dog stared up at me like, "I'm sorry to be so pushy, but I need some help."

It was a really nice dog. It looked so sad. So I sat down in my car with the dog, and tried to call the Animal Hospital next door to the Mapco. Coincidence? I think not. But they still wouldn't take her. They said I'd have to pay for her to get treated. I explained the situation, but they didn't care. They told me to taker her to the shelter on Harding.

The shelter is a nice way of saying THE POUND. I've been there only a few times and every time I go I can't help but cry because the poor things look so pitiful. They get euthanized if they stay there too long. Still, it was 7:30, I was supposed to be at work, and I had no other place to drop off a dog without taking him to my house and possibly infecting my own dog with who-knows-what.

We drove to the pound. I called my boss. The whole way there, the dog lay curled up on my backseat. She had jumped back there while I was talking to the lady at the animal hospital. She looked up at me with such sad eyes.

"You're having a rough time, huh?" She blinked. "You'll be all right soon. I'm gonna take you somewhere you'll have a place to sleep and someone will fix your leg back there. You'll be just fine." The dog put her head down and breathed out.

I can't imagine what it would be like to ride up to some unfamiliar place, be let out, and then watch the car that got you there drive away into the distance. Did they even say goodbye? Were there kids somewhere missing their little black and brown dog? It looked like she'd been well cared for. She was a little bit chunky. She wasn't afraid of people. She had jumped straight into my car. That made me think she'd been in somebody's car plenty of times.

When we pulled up at the pound, I turned around in my seat. She was still laying down, but her eyes and ears were alert. She knew we had reached our destination.
"Well. Somebody will adopt you. You'll get a new Mommy. One that's nice, like me. Somebody will definitely want you. You're so cute and little. And you're so good with people. You're a little lovebug. Like Boo. You even look a little like Boo."

Boo was my mom's dog. He could pull the same innocent expressions that this little dog was pulling then. The only difference was that Boo was really a hyperactive monster-dog with extremely bad breath.

"Okay, now. I'm gonna go inside and see if I can find somebody to help us, okay? I'll be right back."

I got out of the car, reassuring the little dog that I'd be right back. I do that same thing when I leave my dog alone in my room at home to go to the bathroom, or when I leave on my way to work.

And that was pretty much it. A big guy wearing a police uniform with an Animal Control patches came out to get the dog out of my back seat. She cried a little bit when he picked her up, but it was because of her back leg. The guy took my name, phone number, and address. I told him where I found the dog, and he put her into a big kennel cage. I waved to the dog shaped shadow inside on my way out the door.

.................
Now I can't stop thinking about the dog. She'll be up for adoption come Saturday. That'll be four days from when she was brought to the shelter. They'll test her temperment, and she'll be all set for viewing on Saturday from 10 to 4pm.

I'm going to see her. I want to make sure they're treating her leg. You know, because... she was so sweet. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. If she gets close to euthanasia I'll just have to find a real rescue group that can place her out, or adopt her myself. We could foster her until someone adopted her, most definitely. Right? I mean... I'm not crazy for thinking about her this much, am I?

Do YOU need a dog? If so, her ad is already up on the Animal Control Shelter's website. Below is her link.

http://www.petharbor.com/pet.asp?uaid=NASH.A077399

To India and Back Again

I am officially a grump.

I got transfered to Corporate Escalations through Virgin Mobile Customer Care today. They cannot provide me with proof of my phone insurance, and are being about as helpful as a peg leg at the running of the bulls.

Still, I refuse to ditch them and go with a different company. My bill is EXTREMELY low and for the amount of data I use, switching carriers to a company that makes me PAY for data would not be in my best interest.

Therefore, I forgive you, Virgin Mobile.
I forgive you for taking away my phone insurance when I had clearly paid my bill. I forgive you for telling me you could not help me because I was inelligible for insurance afterwards. I forgive you for filling out the Technical Support ticket incorrectly. I forgive you for having to fill it out again at my request. I forgive you for never notifying me that the ticket was resolved, and I forgive you for never being able to prove to me in writing my phone insurance had been reinstated. I forgive you for NOT SPEAKING ENGLISH because your call center is located in INDIA. And finally, I forgive you for trying to bribe me with 50 minutes of bonus airtime when I called to complain.

I do hope you, in turn, forgive me for calling your Corporate Headquarters in Warren, New Jersey.

Despite the fact that my phone service costs less than a water and sewage bill, I can see where you have cut corners in order to provide the lowest rates possible.

But I swear, if I have any more problems with you, the first thing I will say when you can't understand me (ME! Who LOVES foreigners) is "Transfer me to escalations immediately, or I will hang up and call Corporate in New Jersey." Fortunately the only people who handle escalations are in the US of A. I appreciate that. It is unfortunate, however, that I have to approach insult of your Indian CSRs before I get rerouted back to my own country.

Ah, well.

3 Bachata Videos for You!

Since I have been talking about Bachata music so much, I thought I would expose you to it.

1) "Mi Corazoncito" by Aventura. This was the first Bachata song I ever fell in love with. I learned all the words and could sing it. I still can. It helped that I was student teaching at a school that was an ESL hub for South Nashville at the time. To this day I think about poor Guadalupe Cardozo, a trouble making boy with a father and brother still in Cuba, who happened to have a girl's name. Also, the 5 MILLION hits that this video has, is not indicative of the success of this song. It is INCREDIBLY popular, and to this day (the song is 5-ish years old) you will still hear it played at Latin dance clubs, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpfshN1wJKU

2) "Tu y Yo" by Prince Royce. My first Bachata love is of course Aventura, Kings of Bachata, but Royce has this song with elements of electronica. And I am a SUCKER for that stuff. Did I mention MGMT is now a fixture in my car's CD changer? K, well, this song is my current fav along with the below.

UPDATE 2/1/11: Previously I had posted a Toby Love video and picture. Come to find out, Toby Love sings an AWFUL and in no way comparable Bachata song also titled "Tu y Yo." I hadn't even checked to see if the video was the song I wanted, but was like, 'video oficial? Tu y Yo? OKAY!' Thus my error. Apparently, there are no videos or even sreaming versions of Prince Royce's "Tu y Yo" with electronica. All the versions I find are acoustic, or sans electonica. Thus I actually have no video for you on this one. SAD! IF YOU KNOW OF A VIDEO OR STREAMING LINK for Prince Royce's "Tu y Yo," electronica included, then post it. And I will mail you ten dollars. :)

UPDATE 2/7/11: Congratulations to ME for finding the correct link to a youtube video playing Royce's electronica version of "Tu y Yo." Click and Listen!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823N33W5OGs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

3) "No Es Una Novella" by Monchy y Alexandra. I wait for this song during my workout to Pandora radio, and can identify it by the first second of the song. By the way, if you're wondering what it looks like to dance bachata, there is some low-key bachata dancing in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN1lwFrDiBE