missed connection

If you are bored and haven’t heard of the Missed Connections section of craigslist, then the former problem will find cure in the discovery of the latter.

Believe it or not, I, Jessica Howen, was recently a missed connection. Someone missed connecting with me. It was a very bizarre experience. Here’s the story:

Last week, at our first weekly Sunday Brunch of Roommates, I was telling Erin and Meg how I had a terrible time going to Ikea recently. As I was recounting the episode, Meg silently reached for her computer and typed a few lines. After my rantings, she read a posting that described a girl waiting for the Ikea shuttle. The same day and time. The same clothes. SO WEIRD to hear yourself anonymously described on the internet. And what’s more, he described himself (32-yr-old Asian with black t-shirt), and I remember him. Not for any particular reason, but because only four of us got on the shuttle. He was such an insignificant part of my experience that day, a sketch in the backdrop. It was strange to know that I caught someone’s eye to the point that he would go home and post it on an online forum. He didn’t necessarily express a desire to meet up, but just that he admired me, and “wished [he] had the guts to ask me to have some coffee and one of those Ikea chocolate desserts.” So cute.

Well anyway, that was my missed connection. Who knows what sort of romantic saga would have ensued if he “had the guts” to actually connect with me over coffee and chocolate confection? But in reality, I probably just missed out a real awkward interaction.

Other News: I was hired to be hostess at a really charming place called Watty & Meg (you can google it). This was my second week, and I have already started training as a server. Today was my first day of such training, actually, and it was super busy. Well, let me rephrase: training, or “trailing” as they say in the biz, at Watty & Meg means telling you that you will be shadowing another seasoned employee, observing what they do, but in actuality, the seasoned employee simply gives you things to do in which you have not received any instruction, and so there is nothing to do but to bumble through and ask questions/receive criticism after you make mistakes. But really, I love it there. The staff is great, the place is beautiful, and the food is something you can believe in. Plus I have met some very interesting customers. I like the strategy, problem-solving, and multi-tasking that serving requires. It’s hard on the feet, certainly, but not on the mind.

 

a late night

I was trying to think of ways to put off going to bed: putting a coat of primer over the brown paint samples on the wall, eating yogurt with honey which gives me the vague feeling that it will improve my digestion, looking for directions to the Bronx Zoo that I will visit tomorrow if the weather is fine.

So…writing a post on my rusty blog sounded like it would do the trick. I just about teared up from reading my last post. I’m so sentimental sometimes.

And I am actually in New York City, as that former post foretold. I am sitting on a couch in my Brooklyn apartment. It’s 1 a.m. My two roommates and fellow adventurers are asleep. The primer is drying on the wall in a very blotchy and dissatisfying way. The street sounds are so that I can just hear them if I am paying attention to the outside. New York. I feel like I’m not ready to talk about it yet. It’s like becoming friends with a celebrity. Everyone has some basic feeling or idea about what New York is, but its different to live here. Yes, it’s expensive. It can be “fast-paced.” It’s definitely big. But there is a personality to New York that can’t be captured in a handful of words. Each neighborhood is different. Each part of each neighborhood is different. There are people on all points of the economic spectrum. There are people from every country of the world (I wonder if that is true; if it isn’t it feels like it). There are very old buildings and very new buildings. There are ugly things and beautiful things. There is everything.

See, I told you I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

I am pleased with our apartment in how imperfect it is. It’s so quirky and unlikely; nothing that a sitcom set designer would ever think of. We are on the basement floor of a neighborhood brownstone, snugly tucked below a set of narrow stairs. Two windows in the back of the living space look out onto an antique, rusted bar-b-que-ish-looking appliance set into a mossy stone wall. I know, right? That is probably not conjuring up any familiar images. The apartment is nicely furnished, but in a very sporadic and inexpensive manner, as if it is a collection of items garnered from dumpsters, thrift stores, and stoop-sales. And that is because those really are the origins of most of our furnishings. Erin, Meg, and I are all very proud and handy scrappers. But never you fear, our scrapping is done with the most charming of tastes. We love our Raggedy-Ann decor. Pottery Barn just doesn’t do the job; too easy, no back-stories. Favorite items: 1. the light fixture above our kitchen table – a pallet-top painted white and wrapped with twinkle lights (by Erin Hennessy); 2. a dark wood china hutch that came with the apartment – has brass cross-hatching in the two side windows and nice detailing on the wooden cabinets below; 3. a brass chandelier that we found on the street, having no hope of electrical connection, but with the happy potential of holding tea lights. We are also in the midst of painting, which is exciting. We have chosen some good colors. I just finished painting the bathroom a nice turquoise-bluish hue entitled “Swim,” which is appropriate, because I felt like I was painting up an ocean around me that I became inundated under. How’s that for an awkward sentence.

Anyway, if you have happened upon this site again, I commend you for your tenacity, or for your very sensible use of Google Reader (so smart, right?). I think my procrastination is done, and I go to join my fellow adventurers in our soon-to-be-painted-“Bullfrog”-green-bedroom.

[it’s been (so long] seattle)

double entendre. 

1.  I have not been good about writing. Maybe it’s not my time yet, for regular blogging. We’ll see what happens. Don’t give up on me. 

2.  This is my second to last night in Seattle. Tomorrow I will probably not take the time to write about my last day. I will be out living it. 

I really love Seattle. I’ll miss it. I’ll miss it above the shoulders. But the people, the friends I’ve made, I will feel their absence deep in my chest. Strange to think that I didn’t know them nine months ago. My elastic heart will bend to hold them the best I can. But sometimes I wonder if the stretching tries the strands. Through the years I have learned to say goodbye with less ache. Will I grow weary or stronger over time? Will I love more sparingly or more deeply? 

And so I take my leave of another life and keep the important things with me. The things I’ve learned, the ways I’ve changed. The people I love and the people I will vaguely remember. The places that have become home.

This adventure has been thoroughly enjoyable and deeply fulfilling, but I am on to others even more challenging. This summer: leading the high school program at Camp Hammer in Santa Cruz; This fall: living in New York City. Sort of like 2008 (counseling at camp, then moving to a new city) but x 100. But I’m up for it. Me and this elastic heart.

Stay tuned.

cd shelf update

Sea Sew, by Lisa Hannigan

little si

  It is a well-known Seattle proverb that the early bird gets the worm, but the late bird gets more sleep and sunshine for her hike. Today was my day off, and I hadn’t been hiking for a long while (my family and I walked around Lodi Lake Nature Area, but there was no vertical gain). I had intentions of getting up at an epic 6:30 am, but this didn’t make alot of sense to me at 6:30 am, so instead I got up at 10, and  set off east down I-90 to North Bend and Mount Si. I decided on Little Si, since I wanted sort of a laid-back day. It couldn’t have been more perfect. The overcast morning had turned to a hazy noon, and the sky was turning a bright blue as a reached the top. It’s was only 2.5 miles to the summit, and much of the trail lay flat under the forest canopy. Really, anything looks like a yawn and stumble after Machu Picchu last December.

  It was one of the wettest hikes I’ve taken in the United States. The trail was muddy in places, and the trees and boulders were covered with dripping mosses and lichen. Ferns were the predominant groundcover, along with leafy ivies and other plants that I hadn’t seen before. I should have brought my Pacific Coast Tree Finder book. This was also my first hike alone. It was very refreshing. You’re at your absolute own pace, and you can do whatever you feel like doing, without having to run it by the other person, and there is more room to think. But, as in life, you can’t really share what you’re seeing and experiencing with anyone else and, were the trail more difficult, no one to encourage you on. With my job, though, I enjoyed being on my own for awhile.  

  At the top I found a rock ledge jutting out from the side, out of sight from the trail. There was a thick bed of dry moss on the level parts of the ledge, so I sat and ate, read some, then finally curled up and took a short nap in the sun. Behind me was the rock wall of Little Si, and in front was the sloping gorge of the space between Little Si and Mount Si. Mount Si rose like a curtain of cedar before me. My eye level at the top of Little Si was about half the height of its brother, and up and to the left, bright snow and textured rock crowned the summit of the larger mountain, so close I felt like I could touch it. To the right, Mount Si’s vertical tree-lined edge dropped to reveal Snoqualmie Valley and other snowy peaks to the south.   

   And that, my friends, is what I call a day off.

findings update

Love it: Facebook in Real Life

graveyard thoughts on love

  Tonight I am doing my first graveyard shift. At school, I’d pull all-nighters to get papers done before the morning they were due, and while I suppose being a student is a sort of job, this is my first time getting paid for doing an all-nighter. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

  I’m working at the gym. My second job. I only work one day a week, and cover shifts when needed. And for four hours of folding towels, I get a free membership to a really nice club, four blocks from my house. Not a bad deal. I’ve always been intrigued with the night shift, but the night shift crew is pretty regular, and rarely take time off. Until tonight. Even though I worked 6 hours this evening (I covered 2 hours of another girl’s shift), I felt pretty good about venturing into the graveyard hours. A secret talent of mine is staying up late, a skill which was engendered initially by my father’s genes and fostered by years of homeschooling. Now I’m a machine of noctural wakefulness.

  In preparation for the night, I went to Fred Meyer’s and purchased junk food (popcorn, energy drink, an orange, instant pad thai in a box, a vitamin water, blue razzamatazz sour punch straws, and some Botan Rice Candy). So far, I have consumed only a third of this stockpile, partly because my friend Daniel stopped by to deliver me a PB & J + banana sandwhich and a tiny carton of milk. Kind. Then I packed up my laptop and some movies. Movie watching is allowed/encouraged by management. Sweet.

  Even though I like watching movies and folding towels, the highlight of the night was when Daniel and Josiah, some of my best Seattle friends, visited me at the desk. It reminded me of working at Smart Stop, my on-campus job in college, in which friends or perfect strangers would come and loiter on the other side of the desk in conversation while I deftly and simultaneously delivered excellent customer service to our patrons.

  The subject somehow turned to relationships, and we discovered a curious difference between myself and the guys. I don’t think it was necessarily because of our genders, but I wouldn’t rule it out. We were discussing the reasons why we are drawn to one person out of the rest, and what is attraction? Why do we want to be particularly attractive to that one person? And why do we need confirmation of that attraction? I, in my cold analytical grey matter, concluded that it’s because we have been cared for by parents, and now that they are getting older and we relate to them less than our peers, we want someone to look after us as we travel through life. You’ve got their back and they’ve got yours. They are hand-picked for compatibility and relational ability, according to our unique taste in physique and personality. Also, we have a sex drive. But I also realize that all this practicality is enshrowded in a mystical force that poets have been trying to understand and describe since, I’m sure, the dawn of language. English lazily scrawls, “Love,” and calls it a day.

  But Josiah presented an alternative perspective, which was corroborated by Daniel. He attributes his attraction to a monogamous relationship to a desire to be known. In his partner he finds an endless source of facination, an impossible depth to plumb. I remember Anne Dillard’s character Toby Maytree feeling the same way about his wife. And reciprocally, he wants his partner to feel the same desire to persue knowledge of himself. This made sense. Not all of your friends can know you to the same depth. And if you contantly exposed your depths to everyone with whom you came into contact, you would probably frighten the newcomers. And you would spend alot of time talking about yourself. And indeed, I feel a weariness at times in moving through the various parts of my life and exposing myself anew to the people I meet there. Lodi, Jamaica, England, Biola, Honduras, Santa Cruz, Seattle, and I hope to add on to the list. I value those who have spanned those two or more of those locations, who continue to know me deeply and take an interest in me. And so I understood what Josiah was referring too, though I don’t prioritize it. I don’t know why. I think I feel ok not being known, sometimes. Or perhaps it is because I am lucky enough to have people in my life that do seek to know me.

  It’s 3:30 am, and at my present state of mind, that is about the extent of my discussion on love. It isn’t helping that I have Animal Collective playing. I’d love to hear your own perspective of the Whys of love, by the way.

  The last person to come in the club checked in two hours ago. I guess graveyards aren’t known for bustling crowds. Suits me fine.

findings update

The MOBA

the outlaw journalist & i

  I was working at Marketime last night. For those of you who didn’t know I work at a grocery store, I do. It’s pretty fun. Non-corporate to the max, and, except for the owners and the manager, all the staff are in their twenties. We have fun. Bulk food-fights. Reading Laffy Taffy jokes over the PA system. Etc. 

  Doug Bright came in while I was at the check-stand, one of our regulars, and it got me thinking about how fun it is to have these quirky regulars. Doug is one of my favorites. Doug sort of intimidated me at first. He always needs us to call for customer assistance to help him shop. He tells us what he wants, we write it down, we collect the items and bring them back while he waits at the check-stand. Every two weeks when the store specials change, he has us read out each item and price to him. Because Doug is blind. I think it took me a little while to determine if he was completely blind or partially, because he holds himself with an air of capability, and he doesn’t wear dark glasses. And as I had more interactions with him, I realized he is one of the coolest guys ever. He loves music and has played it for ages. He publishes a small music review that we carry in our store. I love talking to him when he comes in. One time he told me “I just can’t help but play music, and I’m crazy enough to think I can make a living doing it.” So great. Last night my iPod was playing and The Kinks were on. I asked Doug if he could name it. He replied, “Sounds like it’s after my time.” (Doug, come on, you are not that old). But the thing is, he is totally into stuff from the 20’s and 30’s, bluegrass and jazz. He’s a character. And I’m glad he made his way into my story. Check out these links: The Outlaw Journalist, Blue Jay Live.

okx: stereogum salutes a classic

 

  

  I came upon this last night, and I was going to put it on the Findings page, but I didn’t want it to be overlooked, because I’m pretty excited about it. 

  Albums that are composed of covers by different artists are…risky. I once bought a CD at Ameoba called Revolver Reloaded. Each song on The Beatles’ Revolver was covered by, from my perspective, some random mediocre artist. I think that maybe they were all on the same label. At any rate, it was a grievous disappointment. I was therefore skeptical when I stumbled on this little number from 2007 in the archives of Stereogum. 

  BUT, it’s great. Quality artists that we’ve actually heard of, and they do a good job of adding their own style to Radiohead’s genius. Apparently, this project was in honor of the 10 year anniversary of the release of OK Computer. I don’t think it was ever produced, and I don’t see a way to stream it in a continuous flow, but it was worth selecting each track. Some of my favorite contributions were from John Vanderslice (“Karma Police”), My Brightest Diamond (“Lucky”), and Doveman (“Airbag”). “Fitter Happier” is real fun too.