I want to get there, I just don't want to go in

Sometimes when I arrive at my destination, I sit in the car and take a mental coda before the next movement. I'm not sure why I do this, maybe I want arrival to mean that I've finished something, or that arrival by itself is enough.

Griffin House and magical thinking

500 Days of Summer captured the feeling I had last Thursday night better than I think I will be able to do here. If you've never seen the movie it's a love story for the way things usually work out which is not good but in a cosmic way, for the better. There is a scene with two screens, one with the way the protagonist imagines and hopes the way the night will unfold, and the other with the way the night actually unfolds.

Before last Sunday, I had never heard of Griffin House. I was poo-pooing around the house, streaming music on Pandora, moving stuff around but not really getting anything done and this song came on. I loved it instantly and stopped what I was doing to look him up. When I did, the first link was for his show. Enter magical thinking. Between the mood of the song and the happenstance of the link, I just knew it had to be a sign. I beat myself up from time to time for being a bit of a hermit, feeling like I need to be in the mix and bring myself more often to the places that I like so I'm more likely to meet someone like minded. But I really like my house and I wish he (whoever he is) would just come here and hang out with me. Then we can go somewhere zany and crazy or maybe just Target.

So anyway, it just seemed like an invitation from the universe and if I didn't go, I would never end up sitting next to that guy that was going to turn everything on its head and make everything make sense. I would finally know who I had been waiting for and would also know at long last if I was waiting for anyone at all. That's a lot of pressure for a small concert at a suburban coffee house, no? I know/knew it was a ridiculous thing to think but I just *love* a good story and wouldn't that be a pretty neat 'how we met' story? Girl who never leaves her house, randomly goes to show and meets her Mr. I know, I should be embarrassed. The cynics are the ones who want to believe the most, even though they have the most evidence that what they want to believe in doesn't exist.

But it got me out the door and parked just in time to sit on the floor behind a table of middle aged white women and 2 old white guys while eating a microwaved pretzel and drinking a crappy beer out of a plastic cup like I was at a frat party. I left during the first encore with a headache, likely the consequence of awkward body positioning as I readjusted each time one of my limbs fell asleep. My ticket said seated show but apparently that meant I could sit, not that I would have a chair. There were about 150 people there. Just like my adventure with Dan Aykroyd, I was amused that I pictured a sparsely attended event instead of a premium grab for the best floor space that allowed you to still see the concert.

Me and an old guy who looked like he wandered in from the VFW lodge were the only two black people there. I'm not sure if he was there for the show or was waiting for his family to find where he had wandered off to so they could pick him up. He just hung out by the door and didn't appear to be listening to the music. But that didn't bother me. Still holding on to hope, I was still the only *female* black person there which meant I would be easier for Mr. to spot. Ha. Even I am amused by myself sometimes.

It was a very diverse group age wise. Most of the crowd was solidly in their 20's but a third of them were at least 45 and still rocking their work blazers. There were at least two young white kids rocking the dreds and both of them made eye contact with me in what appeared to be a check to see if I would give them some sign of approval for their look. Didn't happen. Neither did anything magical. The show was fine, good even but the high point for me was when I got clever and left the club to use the bathroom at Petco (where the pets go and where smart concert goers who don't want to wait in the long-ass intermission line at the concert do as well). Even bought some doggie poo bags for Baloo. Score.

With Spanish subtitles and crappy video quality but the best I could find after looking for a full 3 minutes. Enjoy. :-)

Jungle Fever in Eastern Europe...aka how internet search terms bring weird people to your blog

Since the prologue to my sure to be best selling debut memoir/guidebook, The Black Person's Guide to Eastern Europe, I have been getting some weird traffic on my blog. Any traffic at all on my blog is happy-dance town to me but this traffic is particularly amusing because of how people arrive here. I'm not sure if I just noticed it or blogger has always done this but you can view stats on your blog and get a sense of how people find your blog if they aren't just entering your site directly through a bookmark or reader.

Particularly interesting are the Google search terms which I optimistically hope are an indication someone is more likely to assist me if I'm set upon by a pack of wild dogs and less likely to have set the pack of wild dogs upon me. For example, "black american girl in eastern europe" which I swear on a puppy paw is verbatim what someone in Croatia was looking for. Now maybe that was a black man or woman in Croatia looking for the other black people in Eastern Europe so we could get a support group going but maybe that was an English speaking local who is trying to find out where the sistas are. I can not divine intentions from Google queries and between us adults, that was probably an adult oriented search but it does appear the person lingered on my blog even though the only ebony beauty on the site is Baloo. Probably a function of how long it took them to figure out in their second language that this was not the site to find what they were looking for, but food for thought and amusement anyway.

Some random things I'm tired of on Facebook

Facebook postings on Fridays talking about Friday. It's Friday people. It comes every single week without fail, why do you post about it EVERY SINGLE WEEK?

Facebook status updates with one side of an emotional argument with an anonymous person.

Status updates on any social networking platform that discuss your attempts to conceive with details like ovulation or updates which convey your disappointment that your husband will be away when you're most fertile.

Updates inspired by something the poster read in The 7 Habits of People who Buy Books Like This admonishing or encouraging the masses to some level of greatness they may have never reached but for their status update.

It's been covered at length by so many people, all funnier and better known than me but for the love of all the kitten whiskers and puppy noses, please, please, PLEASE stop providing a blow by blow narrative of your day; e.g.

0810: The kids are up. Coffee time!

0820: Sara doesn't want to wear her warm sweater but she'll thank me later!

0830: God it's cold! Good thing I'm wearing gloves!

1000: I wonder what movie the kids will want to watch tonight. Maybe Finding Nemo.

And social network friends of this serial spammer, STOP LIKING AND/OR commenting on inane status updates.

And for our couples on Facebook; Facebook PDA is kind of weird. When you post on each other's wall how much you love each other, it makes me wonder if your relationship is in trouble. Maybe if I had love like yours, I would shout it from the top of the internet but I'm thinking that I would probably just call them at work, text them, or tell them since they are just downstairs in the basement paying bills. It's one thing to share with the world how you feel about someone, it's another to post to your feelings to their Facebook wall when you see them everyday.

A Black Person's guide to Eastern Europe

Last week as our class was wrapping up, I struck up a conversation with the professor of the incoming class. He is black, I am black so naturally we needed to talk. Why is the subject of another post. He asked me in Spanish how I was (not sure why since he teaches ESL to a Chinese woman), I responded in Spanish (mistake) and he naturally began asking me additional questions in Spanish that I started answering in a combination of English, Spanish, and the language I'm studying. He corrected my Spanish (unnecessary) and then we (finally) began chatting in English.

I told him I was heading to Eastern Europe. He laughed and said I was in for an education and warned me about the racism in Eastern Europe in a way that suggests I will long for the sublime discrimination of the United States. Then he gave me the brief which most older black professionals give to younger black professionals. It's hard to describe it but it's parts cautionary tales, part mentoring, and part pat on the back for still being one of few. But that was just for my job and the good old U.S. brand of discrimination he had observed at my employer over his decades of work with them. For the Eastern European brand of racism he would only hint at the delights in offense I was sure to experience.

I would ordinarily categorize him as an angry black intellectual. He had some over the top name like LaFontaine Higginsworth, greeted everyone in Spanish though it was clear we weren't studying Spanish, and had the social ineptitude to correct my Spanish when I was just playing along to be polite. Unfortunately, every guide book I have read about this country has a section on race and it's never a good news story. One in particular recounted a story about a stray dog that mortally attacked a foreigner. The natives sided with the dog. The author noted it was partly because their culture loved dogs but also partly due to racism. Wow. A dog living on their streets deserved more consideration than the visiting businessman? A dog *they* aren't even taking care of? Wow. Just wow.

Another noted that if you were black specifically, you can forget about dating anyone local because it was just too much. Well shit, then. Guess I'm going on a 2 year fast which in my dating world is nothing. Essentially it's situation normal. Still it's weird that total legit travel guides (e.g. Frommers, Lonely Planet) would make a note of race like they have. I'm skeptical. Just as it is in the U.S. I think gender matters. Minority women of all creeds move differently in society than their male counterparts. I also think in a foreign country as a representative of the U.S., being American matters. I'm American before I'm anything else which will make me wary on the local dating scene anyway. Women aren't the only ones running the seduction for green card schtick. Most importantly though, all of these guides have been penned by white people. I'm not sure if they ran a Soul Man experiment or just kept meeting random locals who talked about how much they hated black people and foreigners in general. Aside from the anecdote about how foreigners stack up against stray dogs, there wasn't much in the way of explanation.

So...I think while I'm out there, I shall pen a guide for the brown people who randomly have this area of the world on their bucket list of places to see because I'm confident I will have experience there that completely discredits the notion that not being from around there means that if I'm attacked by a mangy stray, the locals would be rooting for the dog. But if it does, after I heal, that shit is getting written down too and they will be off my Christmas list FOREVER.

Opening Act: I bought a ticket

I went today after class to buy a ticket to the next object of my Teen Beat affection. The venue is a coffee house in a strip mall between a Petco and a hardware store deep in the northern Virginia suburbs. The number of signs warning customers not to park at the Petco (towing strongly enforced-Petco is not effing around) may outnumber the number of actual band posters. Gotta feel like a rockstar when you're the headliner at this place. If I'm the traveling band man, maybe I look at the red/blue Petco sign and all the other signs on my venue door warning me about Petco and I think maybe I missed a turn somewhere on the way to my dream.

I was the only person in the place which was staffed by three college aged kids, predictably wearing all black. One of the guys was sporting the required obnoxious slouchy knit cap. The girl was wearing the small hoop nose piercing of a person who is straddling the gap between looking like someone who recycles, likes PBR, obscure bands, and Russian literature, and having something they can take out when they want to interview for a real job one day. Pretty sure there was some strong parental resistance with that nose ring and she has to take it out for church on Sunday. Didn't spot a tattoo on any of them which means their parents probably pull in at least 200K a year. I've been to the 930 club in D.C. and it's an intimate space but it feels like an authentic venue with authentic homeless people waiting to stab you after the show. It's amazing how quickly the neighborhood turns as you get within a half block of the club. It went from chit chat with my girlfriend to a quiet, brisk, situational-awareness stride. No signs about parking at the Petco at the 930 club and the staff is authentically alternative and not angling for that congressional internship anytime soon.

So we shall see.

Words, words, and more words

If nothing else is left of me, there will at least be this.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of little letters to me, to you, to strangers, sharing my whiny angst, my rage, sorrow, joy, amusement.  I write because I need to, because I want to.  I like to know people laugh when I'm trying to be funny and intrigued when they laugh when I didn't think something was funny at all.  I write to connect. I write to be heard.  I write to create a community of like minded people and to attract the challenge of dissent; both kinds of discussions are enlightening.  I write to sort it out.  I write instead of talking but sometimes I talk instead of writing; the latter I do with very few because so few have that kind of time.  I write while stalling dog walks in unpleasant weather.  I write until I decide what to make for dinner.  I write instead of folding laundry.

I write because I want people to read.  I want people to read because I want to be known.  I'm not sure if I want to be known in a 'face on a bus' way or just known to enough strangers to believe that what I'm writing is good.  Not sure why I feel popularity would be validating in a culture where Snookie is a celebrity and I reluctantly know more about the Kardashians than I do about my own extended family.  Maybe everyone wants once in their lives to be celebrated for something; Gatorade cooler over the head, carried on someone's shoulders to bring them even closer to the sky.  Could just be me.

Sometimes I feel an urge to get my house in order.  It might just be that I've been watching too many Investigation Discovery spouse-murdering marathons but I'm reminded that I'm not going to be here forever and I don't know how much longer I've got.  It's a little macabre to consider but it's also healthy for a person like me-maybe people in general-to consider.  It's the frame of mind in which I'm considering going to a concert Thursday night.  It's a school night, it's winter, it might not be any good, it's not super close to the house, I'm getting over a nasty cold....  But I love music, I'm a sucker for a drippy white boy in a t-shirt and tousled hair singing his journal poetry about some girl he loves the way I wish someone would love and write about me.  Especially if my monthly event is taking place at the same time as his dirty hipster acoustic poetry about love and at least one war protest song (which only bugs me because I'm pretty sure none of these guys have ever even been in JR ROTC).

The other lameness that figures into my decision matrix is my tendency to pine after seeing t-shirt acoustic guitar boy.  It's one of my least favorite things about me.  I can't just admire their hooks, melodies, pick work, arrangements, vocals.  No, I want to have their children.  I want to leave everything and just be around people like that all day.  People trying to turn their inner visions into something accessible to them and relatable to the rest of the world.  So I'm miserable and inspired for weeks after I see someone I really like live.

Tickets are $15.  A steal for what is sure to be some kind of blog fodder.  I'll keep you posted.