When I flipped to the entertainment guide in the Hemisphere magazine located in the seat pocket in front of you..er..me, I was totally disappointed. I said dammit Out loud, like this:  “Dammit!”  

I’m somewhat of a “girl” when it comes to movies. I don’t like war stories, with all the pain and dust, exclusive filming in green and brown but for the red of one poignant sunset blotted out by a helicopter or two. I don’t like alien movies either, ‘cause I’m never impressed by the fancy starships, or slime, or strange birthing rituals. I’m not into movies with robots, whether they’re goofy metallic sidekicks or uber-evolved, rebellious and apocalyptic. I’m not a fan of cars as main characters, or people who are all crazy about them. I don’t like a lot of guns, explosions, or sweaty dirty men outrunning shrapnel, fire, and debris, that obviously would have cut, burned and crushed them in real life…not that beautiful men like these would ever be in such a situation in real life – they are all in their air conditioned Hollywood trailers having just enough makeup put on so it doesn’t look like they’re wearing any.  I don’t like blaringly obvious CG, especially when it’s used in place of good old fashioned stunt doubles…not that I really like stunts anyway. Don’t try to impress me with made-up-techno mumbo jumbo, or the use of silver curvy architecture to imply “future.” I’m not fooled by a slew of cornball slap stack fourth grade humor disguised as wit.– if you’re not funny, it’s ok, not everyone is, just admit it, and leave the jokes to the professionals, people. I don’t like heroines who have nothing to offer but fat lips and curvy legs; and no, a broken home life or an extensive knowledge of cars which you learned from your dad or brother (never a mother or sister, you notice that?) doesn’t count as personality.

When the Transformers movie starts playing on the big screen in the front of the airplane, I make a show of plugging my headphones into my iPod, and pulling out a book. Ten minutes in, I glance up to see an awkward geeky high school boy trying to get the attention of a total babe in his class. I watch without sound for a few minutes longer, as the boy continues to fumble. Clearly, this kid needs my moral support. I close the book but leave it out, just in case, and I hit pause, not off, pause, on my iPod. For the next hour and a half, my eyes are glued to the screen (not literally, because ow!). At one point, I come alarmingly close to standing up in my seat and yelling, “Autotrons Unite!” but stop short when my inner-judge reminds me that “Autotron” is a perfect example of techno mumbo jumbo.

Disclaimer: don’t read the rest if you’re bad at predicting predictable movies.

In the end, the boy gets the girl, the soldier goes back to his wife, the alien-robots save the human race, I shed a tear or two, and make immediate plans to watch the sequal. Recognizing the itsy-bit of hypocrisy in this plan, I can’t exactly walk into a theater or movie store and request the Transformers movie when there are other options available. This is the kind of movie I have to watch when I have absolutely no other choice. So, looks like I'm gonna have to head back to Hawai’i  about this time next year. Who’s with me? 

you make my eyes burn

my throat swells shut

i hate the way

my stomach turns inside out

and I can’t eat when you’re here

you’re always here, in my thoughts

you, get out of my head 

i can’t stop thinking about

what you did

before

i wish I could go back to

looking at you

and touching you

knowing you existed

was

what made me happy

i need to tell you

everything

i need to tell you

i still love you

I've heard it said time and time again that "women compare themselves to other women." Each time it comes up I think to myself,  "Do I do that? I hope I don't do that. That is lame and a waste of my comparative skills (which I need for other things like deciphering between apples and oranges lest I get confused and bite into a peel or tell someone they're the orange of my eye, and by the way, apple you glad i didn't say banana?)"  But no sooner do I leave a conversation on this topic than I find myself giving someone woman or other the old head-to-toe, and making various, lets call them assessments. "Nice shoes, weird hair, funky tee-shOOT! What am I doing!?"  And then I look away all fast, but not fast enough not to notice that the woman with the weird hair has just done the same to me. Should I have worn cuter jeans? Eyeliner? Excuse me Ms. weird-hair, how'd I stack up?  

So I confess that I look. But am I really comparing? Before I can answer that, first I should figure out what I am supposedly comparing. I'm assuming it's general attractiveness; if it was supposed to be wing-span, I've spent all these years way off the mark. But attractiveness on what scales? Am I trying to figure out who's prettier? sexier? in better shape? has better style? more class? more grace? more humility? greater confidence?  whiter teeth? smoother skin? better facial symmetry? brighter virginal blush? more colorful aura? I suppose any of these are possible depending on ones particular priorities. But seriously, how the hell am I supposed to come to any of these conclusions in the time it takes to pass a woman on the street, wait beside her through the Starbucks line, or even interact with her every single day, considering our ratings on each of these counts probably shifts daily. And also, if we're really comparing, then shouldn't there be some standard success or failure case? One of two things is possible:

1. I hope the women I see are less attractive than me.  That doesn't seem particularly likely, because aesthetically speaking, a pretty woman is a nice thing to look at. If we women wanted to look at less attractive women, the Cosmos and Vogues of the world would be gathering dust in warehouses manned by the out-of-work airbrush artists.  Further, why would I scour a room hoping to find less attractive women?  That'd be like reading bad books or lame blogs to reaffirm my own writing. No one hopes to interact with less interesting or less intelligent people, why would aesthetics be any different? There's nothing to be gained or learned from looking for less on any of these axes. Some may make the argument that finding one's self more attractive than others, may result in a confidence boost, but that is so short-sighted. Striving for relative attractiveness would prove a woman's low expectations for herself, since the success case would be pillow talk along the lines of, "You're the most attractive girl I've ever seen, baby." Subtext: But I'm keeping an eye out just to be sure...baby.

2. Alternatively, am I hoping all the women I see are more attractive than I am? No way. Deciding another woman has a brighter smile, sexier eyes, or stronger abs has the obvious corollaries that I have a duller smile, pruder eyes, or weaker abs. How could I walk through life subject to such judgement, especially when when that judge is me (and therefore I can't even have the satisfaction of throwing an angry pie in my inner judge's face without guaranteeing victory for all the women I pass on my way to a shower). There are a lot of freaking beautiful women out there: on the streets, in the stores, on the screen, and most of them so skinny they fit between the pages of just every magazine. Making these kinds of comparisons is like heading to the Olympics for a sport I played in high school. Sure, I score a few points in the right settings, but I don't need some judge waving 4s 5s and 6s in my face all the time. When I'm less good than someone at something, who cares? Unless I can either feel objectively happy for them (maybe i don't want a symmetrical face - so to all of you with matching moles, more power to you) , or use these people as a model for self-improvement...a realization which recently led me to the conclusion that even though it's possible that some "women compare themselves to other women" -  I don't.

So why do I keep checking out women all the time? Meagan, sorry to put you on the spot, but the answer came to me the other day when you looked fantastic in a particular skirt/tee combo. And when Carolyn did something sexy with her bangs for Dave Morin's Birthday party, and on the night of the Limo ride, Julie put on bright red lipstick, and Naomi pulled off a classy gold scoop-necked shirt, my answer was validated: I don't compare myself to women, I shop them. 

Perhaps this means I'm a different kind of cliche-girl, but I'm much more comfortable with this one. So much more comfortable, in fact, that I let out an audible sigh of relief when I found Ali Rosenthal's super-strong shoulders inspiring rather than something to envy. "Oooh! Nice shoulders, tell me where to get a pair just like them?"  So it's still true that I make judgements, but they're not about the person I'm looking at. If I think to myself "weird hair" I'm not judging her, i'm just thinking "pass. what else you got?"

Foot Note: The other day at the Stanford Mall I kept passing hoards of high school girls so supper skinny and uniformly dressed (short skirts and Uhgs. uhg.) I felt like a Chicken McNugget in a super-sized order of french fries; and in true chicken fashion, i peaced out before getting what I came for. On the way home I worried I'd have to revise my new found revelation. Then I decided that kind of comparison will come from anyone who looks significantly different than everyone around them, ask Reece Witherspoon or Bridget Jones about their bunny costumes. So no revision necessary, just a foot note.

I like R and L socks. Not because the lettering helps me get my socks on the correct feet, because it doesn't. I'm so bad at right and left, that even if i did read my socks before i put them on (but who has time to read these days, really.) I'd probably still get it wrong.  "So this sock has an L on it. Now i just have to put it on the foot with the L...Dammit." So usually I grab two random socks out of the drawer whip them on with total disregard for labeling, and rush out the door.

...oops. i'm back. I forgot my shoes.

The joy these types of socks bring me comes at the end of the day, when i sit down, lay down my load, honey, i'm home. I kick off my sneakers and lean over for my official end-of-day sock-removal ritual. That's usually when i notice the labels for the first time, and one of three things happen: 

First, I may have grabbed two of the same sock from different pairs, in which case I look down and see two Rs or two Ls.  I pat myself on the back for having made my outfit match, even during the morning rush. Part of me prefers two Ls to two Rs but that's only the narcissistic L-stands-for-Leah part of me, so we can discount it.

Second, I may have gotten the socks on the opposite foot; L on right and R on left. At these times i appreciate the sarcastic faux-irony. Oh. My. God. It's crazy that I was trying to get the L on the left foot and the R on the right foot, and I ended up with the exact opposite. Isn't that ironic? It's "like 10,000 spoons when all you need is an knife." That's right, Al, you were looking for option 1 out of 3 options , and you found option 2. WHOA. But also, the five-year-old in me giggles at the concept solving the problem by switching my feet instead of my socks. You know, give my big toes a break from each other for a while. Let my pinky toes get to know each other better. Like a little neighborhood mixer! Cocktails? Snacks? Decorating tips? No? Maybe?

No?  

Finally, there are the rare times, lets call it one in four, when I get the right socks on the right feet (er, right on right foot and left on left, you know what i mean.) After a long hard day, i put my hands up in the air, bow my head, and celebrate my little (v for) victory.

A couple weekends back I played ultimate with a kid named Jeff who is spending a summer in Seattle to say goodbye. In September he’s off to South Korea to spend six years in a mosque. That’s how you become a monk, apparently; a long time and a lot of distance.

I met Jeff last summer when we played together on a disaster of a team for just a couple months. Probably because of the team dynamics, Jeff and I never connected (we didn’t not connect, we just didn’t, ya know, anything. If not for this tournament, I might have forgotten his name).  At one point during a bye, Jeff and I were walking together across the fields and I made some cheesy joke. While he was still laughing, he reached up and put his hand my shoulder. That physical appreciation from some one I barely knew surprised and delighted me; anyone can laugh, I thought, but that was warm, like fresh sheets straight out of the dryer warm.

           After our games had ended, my teammates dispersed to all different vantage points from which to watch the tournament finals (which featured a Japanese team whose players celebrated every victorious point like they’d won the World Cup, and mourned each mistake like they’d just happened upon their own dead dog. The team was so busy running the emotional gambit I was surprised they had enough energy left to run down the field. The moment they lost the game, universe point, 16-17, they all dropped to the ground in anguish, like their opponents had wrenched the oxygen from the air, rather than the disc from their offensive possession.) After the game, as I was walking back toward the parking lot, I saw Jeff on the far side. I held my arm up high to wave and he did the same; we smiled.

“How do you say goodbye to someone who’s leaving for six years?”  I asked the friends walking with me. I wasn’t really sure why I cared, given I hadn’t thought twice about him, or even once, when I moved away from Seattle. For some reason “six years, at least” feels longer than “maybe never.”  I think the unique way he’d put his hand on my shoulder had something to do with why I felt so sad waving across the field. The whole world and everyone in it buzzes with sexual energy. Besides the familial kind of contact, I think people rarely touch each other gently with true platonic affection; platonic contact is always tough: a tight hug after a long visit, a slap on the back after a job well done, high fives (good game, good game, good game); perhaps the reason is to clearly disambiguate it from any sexual intention. I couldn't have guessed it from Jeff's gesture alone, but I wasn't at all surprised to learn later that his path to monasticism is paved with celibacy.  Is that the only other way to disambiguate a physical gesture? By first swearing off sex? (I just wrote that question like this is an episode of Sex and the City, in which case i'd have to spend the second half of this post/episode proposing an answer. But that question isn't actually the point of this post, and i have no good answers to propose, so i'm going back to the topic at hand, but I welcome comments from you all).

            Back at the car, I was joyously removing my cleats, when Jeff walked up, apparently parked directly beside us. “Dammit!” I said, a little too violently. He actually looked taken aback. So I clarified. "I’d just been trying to figure out how to say goodbye to someone for six years, but I didn’t think I’d actually have to.”  We chuckled, changed the subject, and spent the next few minutes repacking our bags, and stretching our own muscles.  Eventually it was that time, everyone in. I hopped in the passenger seat and held the door open, feeling just a little bit dazed and confused. “Well, Jeff, check ya later?” He smiled, appreciating the reference, and the elephant in the room, er, on the field. “Exactly. Check ya later.”

Vnyl sounds like the name of a new hot cell phone – slimmer than the Pebl, faster than the Razr, hotter than the enV. But it’s actually the name of the hip New York restaurant where Lance Rubin took Susannah Raub and I for dinner last week. “What kind of food?” Susannah asked before the menus arrived. “The fanciest potato chips you can still call potato chips.” Lance said. You get the idea.

At one point during the night, Susannah and I started “geek out” (Lance’s words) about the Silicon Valley subculture. Given that Lance is a budding New York actor, we began consciously translating everything into Hollywood terms.
“Valleywag? It is to tech moguls what US Weekly is to entertainment celebs.”
“Marisa Meyer? She is to Valleywag what Lindsey Lohan is to US Weekly.” 
After a pause in the conversation but not in the potato chips, we contemplated the curiosity that people in the same social circle can exist in such distinct microcosms. 

Personally, I am quite familiar with the lines that separate my friends and I. Emily, for example, works for a mountaineering company. You think tech geeks are bad? Sometimes Emily says ten words in a row I’ve never heard, and I find out later she was trying to describe winter rock climbing. Jen Rosenbaum had to consult a whole new dictionary while teaching in Oakland public schools, and Angela Feraco throws medical jargon around so frequently, sometimes I duck when I’m with her. Because of my own familiarity with the knowledge gaps, I was surprised by a conversation Dustin and I had the week before. We’d been playing Celebrity at Angela and Rob’s San Francisco apartment. Dustin had put “Richard Branson” in the hat, and was somewhat surprised when no one knew who he was. “Virgin?” he asked the quiet room. (Tee-hee. I don’t hear that question very often.)
“People don’t really know CEOs” I said – only familiar with Branson through Dustin.
“They know some,” he responded. “Everyone knows Larry and Sergey.”
“Who?” Rob’s eighteen-year-old sister asked.
When we got home later, Dustin let it out. “I just can’t believe she didn’t know Larry and Sergey.”
“I can’t believe you think she would.”

So there we were, Susannah, Lance at I, resting back on the sticky Vynl, surrounded by wall-mounted LPs of actually famous people, like Cher and Nelly and Dolly Parton. I mentioned that what surprises me more than the existence of discreet social microcosms, is that there are people so close to the centers of them that they can’t remember where the edges are. I told Lance and Susannah about the Larry and Sergey story, after which, as I expected, Lance asked “Larry and Who?”
“They’re the Google founders.” Susannah offered.
“They are to the Valley, what Burt and Ernie are to the Street” I added.

We formed a hypothesis. For every subculture, there exists exactly one representative figurehead which everyone is expected to know. Other subculture-VIPs may be known to some, but familiarity with their identities can not be assumed.

Baseball has Babe Ruth, and breasts have Pamela (and Pamela has breasts). 
Power has Trump and playwrights have Shakespeare.
Evil has Hitler and aerobics has Jane Fonda.
Fast food icons have Ronald McDonald; children’s books have Harry Potter.
Pulp fiction writers have Danielle Steele and porn has Jameson.
Boxing has Ali; grunge has Cobain (Dustin knew Branson, but not Eddie Vedder)
Vampires have Dracula, video games have Mario Mario.
Homemakers have Martha; reggae has Bob Marley.
Skateboarding has Tony Hawk, and scientologists have Tom Cruise.
Dolls have Barbie, and tech has Gates.

I wouldn’t wonder whether or not Lance knows Bill Gates, because he’s the icon people should know. Any knowledge outside of that, Balmer, Jobs, L & S, Zucker…something, is purely extra credit.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I am thrilled about evolution. I prefer two legs to four, I find opposable thumbs particularly handy, and I got a great pair of jeans last month which I could not have pulled off, literally & figuratively, had I a tail.  I also appreciate evolution as the happy ending to the sad story of natural selection. My heart goes out to the daydreaming gazelle, the bunny who comes in last on field day, and the colorblind chameleon. But whenever I’m tempted to cheer for the underdog (“don’t die, old yeller, don’t die!”), I must remind myself that when it comes to natural selection, the dog that goes under, does it for the greater good. Imagine if every gazelle stopped to pick out shapes in the clouds:

“That one looks like George Washington.”

“You think? I see Cher.”

“Cher? But the hair is curly and white.”

“I meant Cher in twenty years, obviously. Use your imagination, man, er gazelle.”

It’d only take a few hungry lions and a few cloudy days to take out the species. Evolution is the big old earth-sized mural created out of each seemingly haphazard stroke of natural selection. So mostly I’m cool with it.

But earlier this week, evolution got me down. I’m half-way through reading The God Delusion, in which evolution plays a major role (as it should, in any good book about hip-hip-hurr-atheism!). In it, I learned the term Irreducibly Complex*. Maybe you all knew it? I didn’t. To call some thing irreducibly complex, is to call it useful exactly as it is, but if you take away any part, it would become totally useless, or more dramatically, harmful.

Irreducibly Complex is a concept tossed around by creationists as the ball which will shatter the theory of evolution (as if it’s made of glass…right). In doing so, they believe they will restore “God” to being the default answer to “where did we come from?” by virtue of being the only remaining contender. Sigh. For so many of life’s mysteries, God puts the fault in default, as far as I’m concerned. Man Creationist scientists have set out to find examples of irreducible complexity in the natural world. For this, I applaud them on two counts: The first, is that in doing so, I imagine they have led evolutionists to some of the most complicated creature features for what must have been super-stimulating research. The second reason I applaud the creationists who believe that if they look long enough (and pray hard enough) they’ll find an example of an irreducibly complex system, is for their sense of hope.

And this, finally, brings me to my complaint about evolution. Before reading The God Delusion. I’d thought with enough tinkering any molecular combination, and therefore just about anything was possible. One day we’ll fly! One day The Academy will recognize a good movie!  One day humans will freeze time while they shave because no such menial task should waste our most precious commodity!  Before I realized evolution had these limits – defined by those features which could not be arrived at by additive elements – my creativity could run wilder than Paris and Brittney before jail and electric clippers, respectively, slowed them down.  Since finishing that chapter, I’ve been trying to imagine all of the features we’ll never have. Luckily, none have come to mind yet, but I know as soon as I think of any, I’ll be even more depressed than I already am by the mere prospect.

Part 2.

This is the unintentional kind of “Part 2”, like the second Home Alone movie, or the fourth season of Lost. I didn’t expect to write it, and therefore didn’t account for its existence in part 1, which I didn’t even name “part 1” because I didn’t plan on having parts.  Had I planned this section, I would have kicked off the tale by explaining how irreducible complexity nearly cheapened my awe of evolution. Normally in stories in which the hero (me) has a near-escape from disaster (losing respect for evolution), she or he has to do something awesome, like kill the bad guy, solve the mystery, or derail the train. In this nail-biting tail, it turns out all I had to do was turn to the second chapter of The God Delusion.

As it turns out, evolution is capable of producing the irreducibly complex. The author gives another author’s example of an Arch: Remove any stone, and the whole thing crumbles, thus it’s irreducible. However, start with a pile of stones, and start removing them one at a time, eventually you could end up with an arch. If stones were mutations, Evolution is capable of building the initial pile one stone at a time, and use the same systematic measure to take stones away.  Thank G…Evolution! as long as a feature is Expandably Complex ( I just made up that term), it doesn’t matter if it’s irreducibly complex. Clearly there may be a set of features which are neither, but that’s got a be a damn small subset, so I won’t stress about those. 

The only thing that’s got me struggling now is one half of that pile of stones. Let’s say natural selection finds it advantageous to continue adding stones to the pile. Let’s say the stone-pile species reach 99 stones each. Another pile hits 100 stones, and has some advantage such that 100-stone piles are selected for, and 99-stone piles die out. But then, something about the environment, maybe, changes such that now 99 is favorable to 100. Through natural selection, piles of 99 stones make a come back and piles of 100 die out.  And then 98-stone piles come back, and those with 97 stones. Maybe, eventually, this will lead us to an irreducibly complex arch comprised of 10 stones. But along then way, we’re basically be undoing much of the evolution that got us to the 100-stone pile. How do you think the fifty-stone piles of today feel, knowing that one of there earliest decedents also had just fifty stones?

The point of is, I really like the pair of jeans I got last month, and I would not be comfortable, literally and figuratively, if one day I had to thank evolution for returning to me my tail.

* Immediately after finishing the chapter I found myself humming a tune written and recorded by our very own Dan Craig (play the video). Frustrated that I couldn’t remember the lyrics, I circled to his album on my ipod until I found the sticky melody. Intro, verse, chor…BAM there it is, “irreducibly complex, irreducibly complex, it wouldn’t be love if it were anything less.”  Funny how the subconscious plays games, isn’t it? I’m laughing.

I have never been on one of those game shows where the host says,

“Now Ms. Pearlman, is the moment of truth. You see before you three doors. Behind one is a hungry lion who'd would like nothing more than to eat that trepid grin right off your suspecting face. Behind another door is nothing at all – the opening of that door will make your heart blush redder than it is already for having bothered to beat so hard. And behind door number three, well, there’s your pot o’ gold, Ms. Pearlman.”

Nor am I sure that any such game show ever existed outside the probability text books. However, if it had existed, and had I earned my way to that final round, I might know what feeling to expect, because it's a lot like getting to know the significant other of someone you care about. The act of it – opening the door, or meeting the person— isn’t interesting in and of itself..

But if that person turns out to be terrible, everything sucks. You’re torn between knowing you should tell your friend so they don't end up miserable and knowing you shouldn’t because you might not have all the information. You want to be supportive, but you also can’t stand to be in the room with someone so bad for your friend, and, lets be honest, bad for you.

If the significant other turns out to be wonderful, then you suddenly have two awesome people where you had one before. You can trust that your friend is in good hands (better than yours) and feel reassured that perfect matches do exist and you’re capable of making one of your own.

I’m not sure how the simile extends to the case when the door reveals no lion or gold…maybe that’s the feeling you get when you find out a good couple has broken up. Totally disappointed, but at least, unlike in the lion case, you still have a face.

Moral of the story? Kristin, Hauke’s girlfriend is a beautiful, funny, warm, intelligent human being. She’s a role model for me and I almost like her better than Hauke. Actually I do, but Hauke’s the one I love. (kidding, big brother) I’m just so thrilled about this match I can’t put it into words -- perhaps because the words I need are German, and a couple posts ago, I already confessed my limitations, in that regard.

PS. Other Couples I've felt similarly about: 

- John & Judy

- DJ & Dainna

- Jen and Sean

Hauke Heinzow lived with me for one year, and in all that time, I never learned more than ten German words, which isn’t nearly as shocking as the fact that I never thought to regret it until now.

Munster Cheese is actually from a town in Germany called Muenster. Upon first hearing that Hauke had been offered an interview at a hospital in Munster, DE, I used every kilo of my American willpower to refrain from asking “Munster? Like the cheese?” I didn’t want to be one of those assholes who visits Turkey and makes jokes about thanksgiving, or finds it hilarious to order Danish in Denmark.

This is not something I learned, but relevant to the above paragraph: I’m now sitting at a Danish café in downtown Copenhagen. Fear not – I’m breakfasting on a croissant. (PS – if you’re looking for a treasure of a country where everyone speaks English and no one has voted for Bush, Den-mark’s the spot.)

I panic when I see words and can’t read them. This happened to me just now on the train from the Kobenhavn city center to the airport (or so I hoped). I’m looking at the sign on the train like I’ve looked at dozens of signs on trains, except the letters on this sign, though familiar, mean nothing. It’s that feeling you get when you think you see someone you know, so you call out his name, which isn’t his name, but he turns around because you’re standing in the street yelling. (Do you mind? We’re having our coffee). When he faces you directly you realize that though the features are similar – the gait, the hair, the shape of the nose – you’ve never seen this guy in your life. I sit on this Danish train, desperately searching for affirmation that I’m heading toward the airport. But no matter how much I call out to the familiar letters on the digital sign (“Hey o, hey r, hey lmnop, don’t I know you from somewhere? Ellis Elementary School, maybe?”) ,they refuse to form words I actually know. Apparently the LCD could sense my frustration. Finally a little airplane icon appears on the screen after two words and a : I then decided could mean “next stop:” I get off the train and proceeded past the signs to Ankmst, Bagageudlevering, and on to the Afgang, whatever those mean.

A funny thing about the international airport of a very small country: is that no one knows how to address one another. We fear making assumptions, or inducing confusion, or being misunderstood, so we avoid communicating altogether. The only ones brave enough to try are the airport workers, who avoid all the aforementioned problems by takng no chances “Passport please? Paß, bitte? Pas, behage, vær så god at?” The rest of us lack the education, the patience, or the salaried incentive, so we smile and grunt our affirmations, we mumble our pardons and you go aheads, and no-yous, and really no yous, then we hum a couple notes to say thank you. Like a baby pterodactyl befriending a young brontosaurus, it’s adorably primitive.

Kristin made fun of the way I love you sounds in Swedish. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, poor (German) thing…

Though they annoy each other only slightly more than they do me (you should've seen us bickering in the hotel room last night), my parents, after nearly thirty years, still appear to be madly in love with each other. You’d never have suspected the previous-night’s bickering to see us all in the Hamburg airport hugging and saying our teary goodbyes. Mine were a bit tearier as I head back to the grid, er, grind, while Hauke and Kristin go to celebrate in Greece, and my 'rents head on to le relax in the French country side. When I was young and stupid I thought those types of goodbyes would end when I went off to college, little did I know.

I spent my last few posts waxing philosophic.

I spent my last few minutes looking up the definition of “wax” as a verb in this context. I didn’t find a good answer – any help? Quick please, I’m about to keep using the word and I’d prefer to understand it…

I’m not critiquing myself; I actually think waxing philosophic is preferable to waxing personal. Who really cares about my day-to-day besides the ol’ rents? …Actually, there is one other person: future leah. Someday I’ll look back at all these posts and wonder what the hell I was doing in 2007…besides waxing philosophic.

So here we go with an incomplete montage of my year so far, in review….

Seattle still makes my heart go thump, which I partly know because I had such a Veronica Marsalicious, Dr. Mariohmygoodness, Frisbeestly, Gossiphiphurray time visiting there in late February. I also know it’s true because I feel it, “thump”, every time the Seattle skyline makes its Grays Anatomy cameo. I used to say that I’d know to leave when that skyline stopped taking my breath away. Circumstantially, I left before that happened, so there’s a pretty good chance I’ll head back some day. I hear MySpace just opened a Seattle office….Oops. Only thing that could have made that joke less funny is if it somehow featured a MySpace profile of a dead baby. I bet there are some.

The size of the word “work” is inversely proportional to space it takes up in my life. The opposite is true of the word “relaxation.” Once, in early February, I bragged to Ezra that through powers of sheer efficiency, I balanced my life with 40 hour work weeks. The rest of my time was spent making new friends, remaking old ones, running fractions of marathons, posing as a Yogi, Frisbee as usual, wwing, one two, dance, three four, near-snowless Snowboarding, finding Lost (not recommended), Exploring Battle Star Galactica (not recommended), and watching Home Movies (highly recommended and recommended high), hell, I was even writing with acceptable regularity lest Carolyn slap my wrist at our weekly writing workshops.

Perhaps daring to speak those words “40 hours” I tempted the fates, ‘cause that was about the last moment it was true. At night I now snuggle with my blackberry instead of my stuffed animals. I ride my bike to work because it gets me there faster—you should see me balance a latte in one hand. I eat at my desk more than makes me or my keyboard comfortable. The increased load is due to some combo of PM-team shrinkage, important ish at the ‘book, and my resolve to learn PHP. Turns out programming is nothing like riding a bicycle except a) years later, I remember stuff, and b) I can do both with latte in hand.

Is there a story about a frog-princess? There should be. About a month ago, the same guy who brought us Facebook Idol & Facebook Valentine (and Facebook Assassins, but I don’t think I blogged about that) brought us Facebook Game Day: An event involving six hours filled with eighty-some Facebook employees running around in the sun dodging balls, and kicking them, capturing each others flags, tossing horseshoes and bocce balls, tugging ropes, crab walking, and more. Marcel and I leapt some serious frog to help land our team a spot on the third-pace Lilly pad. We won a trophy just big enough to hold a shot of tequila…or a frog.

The wilderness is way less wild than the city. When Andy and Alison Brown came to visit,. we took bikes to Napa with a plan to tour through country wineries. Unfortunately an unrelenting downpour kept us off our bikes and in the city. The following day we hiked a few hours out to a German backpackers pub hiding off a trail in the Marin Headlands. No serving German Beer and Pickles. Cash only. Pack in food – pack out trash. Make room around the fireplace for other weary travelers, board games for all, don’t swallow the pieces, don’t stress about the timers – this place is timeless.

Denver. Vegas. Seattle. Every time I approached the airport in the last month, I had to dig a little deeper to remember which trip this was, of all the trips. Emily and I hadn’t spent more than 3 hours together since oh-my-god-how-can-you-call-your-self-bff nearly a year ago. I went home where we skied, argued, made up, drank Frapaccinos, ran 15 miles (that’s the average of my 10 miles and her 20) and said “it’s been too long, never again.” I ended up in Vegas for a developers conference, the highlight of which was either the last scene in Cirque du Soleil’s Ka which made me feel like I was in Zelda, meeting the MySpace heads-of-state (ask me about that in person), or eating Matzo ball soup every from a casino deli. Who does that? Finally – I flew back up to Seattle for a Frisbee tournament with my old team. I haven’t improved at all since leaving Washington, but they were nice enough to only discuss this in private, if at all.

A few unrelated comments before signing off:

1. It’s ridiculous that MS word doesn’t recognize “Frapaccino” CATCH UP word.

2. Shane Gillespie (andy’s sister’s best friend’s boyfriend) was born on February 29^th. I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet one of those. I did a little dance when I found out.

3. Andy and I watched “Babel” Afterward we commented on appreciating how the writer was trying to show how powerful body language was to helping you understand people, given that we couldn’t understand the languages spoken. A week later I found out my TV settings had kept us from realizing…Babel has subtitles

.

Below is the essay i entered in a "How Buffy Changed My Life" essay contest. I lost the contest, but decided to preserve the essay by blogging it. I wrote it by stringing together buffy references and quotes, so if you're not a buffyhead, I either apologies if it makes little sense, or don't, because it's your damn fault you're not a a buffyhead.

***

When I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I try to imaging life without Buffy.

Who’d be my role model? Superman?  He wouldn't know stylish, yet affordable, boots if they kicked him in his Metropolass. The President? Hardly; at least Buffy can pronounce the armies she’s fighting. Barbie? With a name like that? Please.

Without Buffy, could I appreciate the power of metaphor? Angel taught me that when some jerk loves me and leaves me, it's his fracking curse, not mine. Joyce revealed racism in a whole M.O.O. light. Instead of drugs, Willow used magic to summon "addiction" from the tired plotline graveyard.

Without Buffy, would I know how narrow the gap is between comedy and tragedy? I probably thought Comedy sat at the fun lunch table with Hugs and Puppies, while Tragedy’s life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it, ate all alone… 

…But then Buffy died, and her tombstone read: "She saved the world, a lot."

Despite my broken heart, I laughed at that inscription. I laughed and cried until my devastation and joy were as inseparable as Glory and Ben. Without Buffy, how would I know laughter was The Key? A key that comes in several (mostly) human forms: Dawn, obviously, and Buffy, Oz, Spike and Anya, Andrew, Xander and his Snoopy dance?

But enough about a Buffyless douplegangland. I much prefer the reality in which Buffy existed to teach me this: fight like a girl and keep the faith; everything will turn out five by five…whatever that means.

(Grrr...Argh!)

Several years ago, if you’d asked me if I believed in god, I would’ve answered something snarky like: “Sure! I believe the invisible pink elephant standing behind you, too. And dude, he’s putting bunny ears on you. Hee Hee. That’s embarrassing.”

But about five years ago, I had it out with myself. I really didn’t believe in the invisible elephant, but there were times I found myself looking up, and using my silent voice (the one that helps keep people from thinking I’m crazy) to talk to someone.

“Will I get accepted?”
“Will he be ok?”
“Did you see me make that basket?”
“How will this feel a year from now?”

I set down my liberal elitism. I put away my uninformed biases. I admitted to myself that if someone held my hand to the fire until I told the truth, I’d eventually scream it out: “Fine! I Believe! I do! I Believe!

The next step was to figure what I believe. I could take the Janitor key ring approach, and try all the gods on till I see which one fits. But that route seemed to research-heavy. I didn’t want go on quests and fasts and learn languages to read scriptures to find out time and time again I was barking up the wrong Idol.  So instead, I decided to pay more attention to my abstraction-in-the-sky to see if s/he would reveal him/herself to me. I paid more attention to the commonalities among the times I chose to consult him/her. Quickly, a pattern evolved.

-          When I do something embarrassing, impressive, or hilarious, and no one else was there to see it. Catching my microwave on fire; knocking over a glass and catching it right-side up; shaving the same leg twice.

-          When life seems shitty or hard, I ask someone to please tell me what the world will look like a year from now, to reassure me of the insignificance of this particular little crisis. A car accident; the end of a relationship; a rejection letter.

-          When I want to know the answer to an unanswerable question. Will the random guy two cars over somehow come into my life?  How many times have I had a conversation with someone in which something was misheard or misunderstood, and neither of us noticed? How many unintended puns have I made without noticing enough to say “no pun intended”?

I never asked this god to tell me what I should do. I never asked it to give me anything. I never blamed it for anything.  My god isn’t a creator. It isn’t a judge. But to be cliché about it, my god is my witness. It knows how many watermelon seeds I’ve eaten. It knows where Bear, my childhood stuffed animal went when I lost her. Perhaps I once cut-off my future mother-in-law  in traffic, my god got a good chuckle about that.  

Question: “If a tree starts telling a joke in a forest, and another tree halfway around the world tells a punch line, is the joke still funny?”

Um, I say no. The humor must be appreciated to be realized.  Without someone there to acknowledge all of life’s brilliant little details, the coincidences, the implications, the close calls, the misunderstandings, the logical explanations, so much humor and meaning in this world is completely lost. To me, that notion is as tragic as an unreleased episode of Buffy; a clown on an island of clowns; a blond joke in Norway; a banana peel which biodegrades before ever being stepped on.

The idea that god serves as an ever present friend and expert witness (with a great sense of humor) made me feel like any answer was attainable, even if I didn’t have it. And this comforted me...for a few years anyway.

Eventually the few things that bugged me a little, started bugging me a lot. If I really know god now, why can’t I picture him? Is it a him? A her? And if it has a separate conscious than mine, can it really appreciate the same things the same way I do? And the separate conscious thing gets kind of embarrassing if it really follows me everywhere. Does everybody share one god, or do we each have our own, tracking our individual statistics? If it’s the former, I worry again about us all sharing the same sense of humor. If it’s the latter, is that really a god? Or a fairy god mother? Or an invisible friend? And finally, god? Really? I’m SO not a god person. (no offense at all to god people, I’ve always held that every person owes it to themselves to believe in the thing that gets them through, I just know deep down mine isn’t god)

A few months ago, I’m sitting at a café writing something or other, when an answer to all these questions hit me right on the forehead, saving me the trouble of doing it myself. Who laughs at all the same jokes I do? Who’s consciousness am I comfortable following me into the dressing room? Who can witness me cut-off some lady in traffic, and appreciate that one day I’ll meet and marry her son? Who knows where I lost Bear? Who knows how many watermelon seeds I’ll eat in my lifetime?

The answers, in order are: I do, me, a future me, a past me, all the past me’s who swallowed a seed, and all the future me’s who will. All I have to do is accept that time is as fluid as any of the other dimensions. In the same way I can see someone’s feet and head (height), left hip and right (width), perspective on kafka and k*fed (depth), I can see the beginning of their life all the way to the end (time). This means every Leah I was and will be is present right now. The way i know future Leahs are with me, is the same way I know the Leah of right now was there, waiting for that college acceptance letter, and past Leah is with me because i know everything she does. So i know every Leah is right there for me to ask all the questions I brought up in the beginning of this post :

“Will I get accepted?”
“Will he be ok?”
“Did you see me make that basket?”
“How will this feel a year from now?"
And all the rest...

While she might not answer directly – the cool thing is that since I am her and she is me, sometimes just asking the questions get me closer to seeing the answer, because the answer is really just information I already have +  new information. Take the first question, for example. WillI get accepted? I really wanted to go to a particular university.  So I asked some elusive god if it’d get in. The empty response I got back was as meaningless as the “you’ve been waitlisted” letter the school sent (technically, I’m still waitlisted). Had I asked future-leah, she might have said “You and I both know it might be your first choice for the wrong reasons. So ask a better question.”  It’s not that some abstract god couldn’t hand down the same advice, but it just makes so much more sense to me this way, because who knew better than my own self, how significantly a boy had impacted my professed first college choice?  

This notion that 26-year-old Leah, 30-old Leah,  51-year-old Leah, and 94-year-old Leah are all right there helping me, advising me, cheering me on, voting for me, counting on me, even laughing at me sometimes, is astoundingly comforting. Not only to I owe good life-living to myself, I owe it to all my selves, and I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to let us all down.

Epilogue.

A couple weeks ago my parents were in town and I took them to Golden Gate park. My dad hung out in the grass with his book while my mom strolled in the Japanese Tea Gardens, and I went for run. At one point I emerged on top of a hill with a view of the entire city. Hundreds of people swarmed the park below, but somehow, my hilltop was empty. Just then, Absolutely Not by Deborah Cox started playing through my headphones. Can I listen to this particular song without dancing? Absolutely Not. I started small, bouncing and head bopping. Then my shoulders started leaning forward and back, my hands got involved, my arms, some shuffling and kicking of the feet, bouncing at the hips. When the chorus began I was fully unabashedly b-bopping and hip- hopping all over the top of that hill. I might have felt ridiculous dancing alone like that; but just as I can’t resist the beat of that song, neither can the infinite past and future instances of me. I knew then that I wasn’t dancing alone – nor will I ever. As long as I remember I always have me to live for – life will be a full-on top of the mountain dance party.

PS – me and my selves officially invite you and your selves to be our guests to the next dance party. The more the merrier, as far as we’re concerned. 

Thanks to the Denver blizzard this year, I only got to spend three days at home. “You should see the snow here!” My mom called to say. ”It’s three feet high against the garage door and I can’t get my car out.” I shivered at the thought – not of cold weather, but from sympathy for that poor trapped car – I sympathize now that I live in a garage too.

Day 1: Christmas. After driving and flying and napping, about fifteen of my favorite people came to my parent’s house for the annual Muppet’s Christmas Carol party. Imagine a bunch of kid-adults socializing, eating all holiday sweetness, and singing along with Kermit as Bob Crotchit, Gonzo as Charles Dickens, Animal as himself. The event usually comes during the wee hours of Christmas Eve after the midnight service and before Santa wiggles down the chimney, but my friends kindly accommodated my updated schedule. Tim Holme (my first grade crush), Andrew “Beast” Appel (the nickname’s a misnomer: he emails my parents just to say “hi”), and Chris Witte (the guy you’d want your daughter to marry) were the first three to arrive. I still had a towel wrapped around my wet hair when I answered the door.

“As you can see, fellas, I need a few minutes to get ready. In the mean time, I have a job for you.”

“Nice to see you too” one of them said.

“My dad is in the living room watching the 1997 national spelling bee competition. Please, Please, save him.”

Flash forward to an hour later when fifteen of us are gathered around the big screen TV with rapt attention as Rebecca Sealfon spells euonym for the 1997 victory.

Day 2: Growing Up. I ran into someone I deliberately haven’t seen since high school. I’ve held a grudge against this girl all these years because of something I can’t exactly remember now. When she walked in the door, all my 17-year-old insecurities coursed through my 24-year-old veins. I actually looked for window to jump out of before she saw me (the three feet of snow would break my fall) but she caught my eye. We ended up having an meaty and personal conversation that I actually had to tear myself away. I don’t know why I was surprised, the only people who have the power to hurt us are the ones we look up to. After the encounter, I ran faster, harder, and longer (crap, now my blog will show up in Viagra searches) trying to escape the regret of having unnecessarily held on to hatred? hurt? humiliation? for seven years. What an f*ing waste.

Day 3: Waking Life. Have you seen that movie? Some badly-drawn kid wanders around dreamland having philosophical conversations with other well-scripted, but also badly-drawn characters. My final day in Denver, I was that kid. First coffee with mom, who helps me focus on the now stuff. Doctors appointments? Travel arrangements? I’d float away if that woman wasn’t holding tight to my balloon string. For lunch, I drove to Mike Lane’s house, and helped him climb into my backseat. After traveling for 18 months, he broke his kneecap into just as many pieces. I tried to tell him how sorry I was about his accident as he crutched into Annie’s Café.

“Hey, I could’ve broken my face.” That’s such a Mike Lane way to see life.

I looked at the optimistic spread of his grin and thought “I’m sure glad he didn’t, it’s a nice face.”

We spent two hours at our booth catching up a little, and planning ahead a lot. I told him about my most recent book ideas. He helped me flush them out and promised to edit, if I promised to write. Mike, I’m almost done with chapter one. Keep hitting refresh on your inbox. Shit, you can’t walk, ski, or travel, what else are you gonna do?

On my way home from lunch, I stopped in at Sarah Showalter’s house. I think we meant to get an overview of each other’s life, but instead we gossiped. We’re allowed because other times we have such deep conversations, that other times a little “he feels how?” and “she said what?” balances it all out.

That night Dan Craig, from math class, picked me to go to see a show (featuring this amazing band). Dan and I weren’t really friends in High school.

“It’s ‘cause you hated me.” He always says.

“True. But that’s ‘cause you were too cool for me.” I always respond. How we got past that is beyond me, but thank God.

The bar was so packed, we ended up back at my house drinking tea and talking, as we do, about love, life, & the modern-day privileged-middle-class ivy-educated, agony of the pursuit of happiness.*  “We’re such assholes” I thought a few times. But we’re similar assholes, which makes me love him, and we’re doing the best we can, which makes me forgive us both.

*Dan’s said “Hold on a sec” to med school to pursue a music career. Last month he released his first CD. I have listened to nothing else since I received it. Go get it.