In The Heights (I’m Home)

This past Monday evening, I had the pleasure to attend the Broadway musical In The Heights (winner of the 2008 Tony for Best Musical) in New York City.  It has some great music, but the story itself got me thinking again about home, a topic I discussed in the fall of 2007 on another blog post: home IS where the heart is.  In that post, I discussed how as I travel around, I take people with me in my heart, always bringing “home” along for the ride.

In The Heights got me thinking a bit more about how much that fact is or isn’t true.  I may get the love from many places, but what location feels like home?  In In The Heights, the main character’s parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic, which he feels to be his homeland and wishes to return, but really he, along with many of the characters, are in a struggle to reconcile the lands they or their predecessors came from with their attachment and feeling of “home” in the Washington Heights community of NYC they have become a part of.

Jumping around from place to place the last 2 1/2 years, never staying for more than about six months in one place (often less), it’s been a long time since I’ve felt any location or community as a true “home,” at least in the ways In The Heights creates such a feeling.  Thus, I am taken back to the place I grew up, NW Ohio, and the place I went to school and spent two years following, Chicago(land).  When you’re in a place that long, you develop a lot of connections not only to people but to the location and livelihood involved.  Thus, attending this musical got me thinking deeply about returning to my “homeland,” one of those two places.

However, it also reaffirmed another commitment within myself in this job search, and that is making a commitment to whatever community it is I find myself in next.  It’s been too long since I’ve really been able to commit to a location, but that’s one thing I’m thirsting for as I seek my next job.  At one interview, I was asked where I saw myself in 3 years, and I said I saw myself doing whatever it was I ended up doing next (in that case, that specific job). I see my next step as a longer term commitment than I’ve made for a quite a while.  I want to connect with a place again, something I’ve only tangentially done the past 2 or 3 years.

So while I have two settings that, deep down, feel like “home” to me (along now with multiple houses/residences), I think there is room for more.  While I think there would be some comfort to returning to Ohio or Chicago, I also believe that embarking on a new adventure in a new city/location has the ability to create a new “home” for me, wherever that might be.

I’ll just be waiting expectantly (the topic of my next blog) to find out exactly where that might be!

i love urban biking!

(Part of a writing sample I wrote for a recent job application.  I decided it could be used here, too — hopefully I caught all the typos, as it’s too late now if I didn’t!)

I must confess: I have an intense passion for urban biking.

I have always enjoyed biking, especially as a form of transportation, but it wasn’t until a recent trip to Philadelphia after a significant break from urban biking that I realized just how much I miss biking in a city and discovered my growing need to return.

I grew up in a small town and then spent some time in suburbia before embarking upon urban living and urban biking. As a child, I used my bike to visit friends, deliver newspapers, and get to the local swimming pool during the summer. Any time I could use my bike to get somewhere, even after I had my license, I would do it. I enjoyed biking during college, both for transportation and leisure, and when I graduated, a new, reliable bike was my requested reward.

Living and working in suburban Chicago for two years, I subscribed to public transportation for work and entertainment opportunities and slowly built up my biking prowess before moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where biking would take on a significant role in my life. Living in Milwaukee, my bike was my transportation. I biked 7 miles round trip to work each day, even braving freezing temperatures when snow and ice didn’t make the ride more hazardous than was prudent. In addition to the daily commute, I could be found biking to buy groceries, go curling, see a movie, watch a baseball game, attend church, or explore the city. I even biked to the DMV to renew my driver’s license! In Milwaukee, I discovered how rewarding and invigorating it is to depend on a bicycle to get you where you want to go – no petroleum necessary.

When I subsequently moved to Washington, DC, I knew that biking would be an important part of my time there. I spent my first month, however, without a bike and rediscovered just how many opportunities open up to one with a bicycle. Once I obtained a bike, I was able to see my friends with greater ease and regularity, schedule activities without having to worry about fighting automobile traffic or dealing with public transportation schedules, and explore the city faster than I could on foot and in a more intimate way than when stuck behind the glass of a car or bus. A bicycle allowed me to take true ownership of the city, transforming it from a tourist attraction to a city I called my home.

For the past nine months, I have lived away from urban biking opportunities. I make it a point to bike weekly on local trails, and I even traveled with my bike to Syracuse in June, biking with a friend around the city. However, it wasn’t until I packed up by bike for a recent trip to Philadelphia that I was reminded of all the glories of urban biking and just how much I was itching to return to city biking on a regular basis.

The friends I was visiting were located just outside the city and busy during the day, so I decided to bring along my bike and use it to explore the city. Wednesday morning, I drove my car into the city, found some free parking a mile or more from downtown, and unpacked my bike to begin my day. A few days earlier, I had investigated the city’s bike map online and prepared my route as to make the best use of bike lanes and other bike-friendly routes.

When I biked to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it was easy (and free) to park my bike and quickly take pictures and ascend its famous front steps, a la Rocky Balboa. Then it was off to a movie theater across town, mainly in bike lanes, where I again found parking only steps from my destination. With my movie viewing complete, I hopped on my bike to cycle amidst the evening rush hour, sharing my lane with buses and traveling just as fast, if not faster, than the cars beside me. On that day in Philadelphia, I was transported back to the times when I would bike every day and the opportunities for exploration and transportation seemed unlimited.

It is now obvious to me just how much urban biking is beckoning for my return, and I can hardly wait for that day to come.

Pigeon on the El

In lieu of any new writings (there is one, but I’m trying to get in into a newspaper first, so you’ll have to wait a little longer for that one), I went back to the archives for a short little piece I wrote about 3 and a half years ago.  It’s not as powerful as it could be, but I’m not in the revising/editing mood today (and it’s a Sunday, so I’m not going to do more than I feel like).  Enjoy!

I rode with a pigeon on the El today.  I don’t mean “pigeon” as some slang that may be out there – I mean the kind of pigeon my mom finds so cute.  The kind of pigeon you find in big cities, strutting around, eating food scraps, and disregarding all the “NO LOITERING” signs.  ((But let me start again.))

Now, because I live in Evanston, a little bit north of the Chicago city limits, I have to catch a train, the Purple Line, so I can go about 8 blocks to catch another train, the Red Line, that will take me the remainder of my journey.  On this particular Sunday, I was about 8 seconds from making the train I need to get to assure myself that I’ll arrive at church on time.  But as it was, I saw the train pulling away as I ran up the stairs.  I had to wait, reading some Anne Lamott for the 10 minutes until the next train came.  Usually this meant I would get to my final El destination at 10:00, just the time church was starting, but as it worked out, I arrived to the front of the door of the church about 8 seconds before the service began.  So in the end, it all worked out.

But let’s not forget about the pigeon.  I missed my normal train, so thus I had to take the second, arriving at the Howard El platform and changing to the Red Line, looking at my clock and hoping I would be able to make it on time.

Now, you might find it weird when I say this, but it happens to be an integral part of what occurred this Sunday morning: Whenever I ride the El and will be stopping at a familiar location, I try to position myself on the train so that I might be as close to the stairs or escalators as possible as to limit my time of walking up and down the platform after arriving at my location.  In this case, it meant walking a little bit back before boarding an empty car on the Red Line train.  I decided to sit facing backward in the middle of the train, but I soon moved a few seats away so that I could have some more legroom.  And as I sat there, doors of the train still wide open, waiting for departure, the pigeon walked in.

Now, I have heard of a few instances where a bird had somehow flown into the open window of a train or bus and then struggled to get out, but this was nothing like that.  The pigeon simply walked onto the train and looked around, as if making sure this was the right train to get it where it needed to go.  And when the train’s voice bellowed, “Doors closing,” the pigeon didn’t even take notice, instead strolling over to investigate some interesting bits of nothing on the floor across the way.

All I could do was sit and smile, not able to decide what I wanted to do more: laugh or cry.  This was one of those moments where you realize, as it is happening, that you’re experiencing something that will probably never happen again.  The pigeon was so nonchalant about it all, too.  It had pretty much taken over the back half of the train car, the portion I was facing, pecking away at whatever caught its attention.  I glanced behind me to see if anyone else was enjoying this once in a lifetime event, but the only passengers behind me, two men, were busy reading, something I couldn’t yet bring myself to do with the excitement of the pigeon.

Both then, in the moment, and now looking back, I have to liken my experience to the scene in the movie American Beauty where we get to see a video of an ordinary plastic bag doing its little dance.  Ricky, the character who recorded the incident, proclaims, “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”  Ricky is actually showing another character this video because it is so special to him and he wants to share that with this other character.  And as the bird pranced around, taking ownership of the train as if it were its new home, I wished I had brought my video camera with me that morning.  But as I think about it now, I’m actually glad I didn’t.

One of the things that made that experience so special was knowing that, no matter what, it was a finite experience that would not last forever.  Even if the pigeon held its ground and refused to leave as more and more people entered the train, eventually I would arrive at my destination and leave the pigeon behind.  Or if I decided I would continue to ride with my new friend, the train would sometime reach the end of the line and I’d have to get off then.  There was no way to make this experience last forever, though I was enjoying it so much, I probably wouldn’t have minded if it did.

And if you think about it, isn’t life full of those types of moments?  While not every moment may be exciting and delightful, many are.  But we usually don’t care to realize just how amazing our experiences are, not when we’re in the moment and not even when the moment has passed.  We’re so concerned about what’s coming next, we choose not to live in those moments of joy and bliss.  But that doesn’t stop us from living in those moments of sorrow and agony.

My pigeon experience didn’t last forever.  In fact, it couldn’t have lasted more than about three minutes.  As we approached the next stop, the pigeon started to mosey over to the doors of the train.  The doors opened, and the pigeon slowly crept toward the cold air that was rushing into our car, into an area of the train where my view was obstructed.  I didn’t think the pigeon was walking fast enough to get out in time, but as the doors closed, I looked out my window just in time to see this bird dart from the train and fly away in the direction from which we had just come.  The pigeon had had its fun, and it didn’t even have to wait until the next train to get back to the Howard stop.  For all I know, that pigeon does this kind of thing a few times a day, taking a little joy ride to keep life interesting.

I stared in awe at the floor where the pigeon had been wandering, enjoying my thoughts as I pondered why that crazy bird had wandered onto the train with me.  Once again, I almost wanted to cry.

missing the snow

I miss the snow.  Lots.

This is my first winter out of the Midwest, and I totally miss it.  After 25 winters in the states of Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin, the District of Columbia and the East Coast just doesn’t cut it.  I miss the snow.  When I heard about the recent weather in Chicago and Milwaukee that brought upwards of a foot of snow, I got jealous.  I want to be able to make a snow ball and have a snow ball fight or spend an hour or two building a snowman.  I did get to experience a little snow on two occasions here in DC so far — once I threw a snowball at someone as they answered the doorbell I had just rang, and the other moment I turned my head to the sky and caught these giant flakes in my mouth!

I don’t really miss the cold.  In fact, it makes it much easier to bike to work every day when it’s 40 or so degrees out and the roads are immaculate.  But it’s hard to feel like it’s winter with no snow and late fall (for the Midwest, at least) temperatures.  Today I opened the door and knew it was cold, but that didn’t keep me from biking to work.  I arrived and found out it was about 22 out on my ride (last year I would sometimes ride to work when it was about zero).  I thought, “Finally, some winter temperatures.”  And then I look at a 10-day forecast to realize that the high is predicted to be above freezing every one of those ten days which doesn’t bode well for precipitation arriving as snow.

Maybe it’s one of those “nature vs. nurture” things.  I hear people out here talk about being so frozen when it gets below 32, but I’m used to it, so it doesn’t bother me too much.  I hear about people who won’t venture outside when it rains and the temperature is hovering around freezing because of the ice — and there probably will be ice, but it’s not necessarily anything to be fearful of.  Other Midwestern transplants like myself comment how the driver’s here in DC “go crazy” when there is even only a trace of snow.  And I remember a day last month when it was predicted to”flurry,” and they had already spread salt on the road as I biked to work.

This winter is teaching me a few things.  One of them is that I definitely miss snow and don’t know if I could live too many years out here where it is considerable lacking.  But another is something more important, I think, and it has to deal with perception.  Who has the better Winter weather?  After this experience, I’ve learned it’s all in the eye of the beholder.  And, of course, I’ve also learned that’s true about more than just the temperature and amount of snowfall.