2.10.01

Every year it's a bit different.

The first year, it was tragic. Every detail of February 10 was etched so clearly in my mind: the hard calluses on my palms from rowing competitions, the uncanny thirst in the back of my throat, that sinking feeling that I'd be doomed to adolescence forever. There were details that I'd attributed as somehow significant: the tulip painting on the hospital wall, the blue lights of the Tower Theatre mirroring the scene from the Sacramento River, the haunting chords of a Dave Matthews song. Everything is epic at 16 years old. What boys think is important. What teachers say could influence career choices. And what a body feels like--there are few things that dictate puberty more than the clash of control and instinct.

The second year, the memory was no less vivid. The illusion of control followed me to a more adult life--my freshman year of college. I circled the Lagoon that day, watching the gulls hem the coastline, realizing with a sudden finality that growing up meant taking ownership over imperfect organs.

Every year it changes. Those first three years, February seemed so mournful. I wrote poems to cells. I was still angry. I explained everything all the time to anyone who so much as blinked in my direction.

The fourth year I was abroad. That was the year I decided an anniversary didn't have to be sad. We landed on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, at midnight, and the minute it was February 10, I felt something new: defiance, in the form of optimism. And then I got dressed for Carnaval and learned how to relax in Spanish.

This eighth year, February 10 means something entirely different. February 10 is pancreas day, Julia day, adulthood day. I feel extraordinarily lucky. Not everyone can pinpoint the loss of idealism to one specific day. There are so few moments of perfect drama in our lives--of actual, novel-worthy frustration, unembellished, random crises of faith. For so many people, personal tragedy is not something so easily calculated: how does one quantify depression? Or the injustice of homophobia? Of lost opportunity to some invisible, imperfect law of human nature?

Mine is an unfairness I can chart, plot, and review. Mine is a plague of minimal pain. Mine is never a solitary journey. Mine is the confusion that actual life plots for all of us--the rearrangement of meals, the reminder that nobody is invincible, that there are consequences to every decision. Diabetes has always been a lesson in opportunity cost and effect, and while I never really appreciated my high school economics class, these things are more easily understood when one measures them in the form of a finger prick.

Eight years later, I no longer wonder who I'd be without diabetes. I'd be someone else, with some other Trojan horse, accomplishing other things. It doesn't matter. I am who I am just as a tree is just a tree, and a dog is just a dog. There is comfort to be found in identifying as something or someone. I am a diabetic, but I am also a woman, and a professional, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a person with opinions and aspirations. And, at times, catapulting blood sugar.

February 10. I look forward to the year that there are even more important anniversaries than this one.

1-20-09



The sun rose slowly over the Washington Monument on January 20, 2009. Flocks of seagulls swarmed the air, reflecting the excitement from the ground. The air was bitterly cold, fresh and clean. Journalists, tourists, officials and ROTC volunteers poured into the National Mall in steady streams.

By some awesome trick of the universe, I was there. I was there in long johns, jeans, leg warmers, three sweaters, a ski jacket, scarf, beanie and gloves. Michelle and I packed the Washington Post, a bag of carrots, apples and crackers, and two fleece blankets. We were far from the Lincoln Memorial--very far, but much closer to meaningful change than I have ever been.

What did it feel like? I've never been the type to quote "America the Beautiful" or remember the Pledge of Allegiance verbatim--any sense of American identity I have is the result of open debate, often defiance for the system we have yet to reform. It is hard to let one's guard down after several years of tuning out the status quo. Mine is a generation used to being let down by the global gag rule, by decreasing funds for public education and hard-fought battles against racial profiling and homophobia. But last Tuesday--the Presidential Inauguration at the Capitol steps--the crowd was pulsing with growing optimism.



"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met."

We sat in the cold for five hours. The longer we sat, the more surrounded we became. Surrounded by little old black women from Tennessee and Alabama, waving Obama flags, by twenty-year-old college reporters with manual cameras, by five-year-olds decked out in snowsuits. Every time I stood up, the sea of people grew to meet me. The energy of the crowd was raw, unadulterated. And somehow, I was there.

It took well over an hour to leave the Mall. We huddled like penguins, wandering en masse toward any available exit. Both my shoes had loose laces, but the combination of the crowd and the freezing cold kept me from leaning down to fix the problem. Each step forward resulted in two tugs in opposite directions, and yet it was symbolic of that thread that tied us all there, filing past national monuments and weaving through political officials like the latest group of tired and hungry masses.

The promise of renewal is strong.

One week later, it is hard to believe how much of the universe shifted that day. I've read and watched a lot of interviews in which citizens express their fears that Obama has been idolized to an unhealthy extent, and that his is an unlikely journey. Perhaps, and yet anyone standing in National Mall on Inauguration day will tell you that the sheer power of belief--of honest, critical expression--is enough to mobilize the most diverse groups.



On January 20, 2009, I felt vindicated. I know I wasn't the only one.

Poem I Like

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

two thousand nine

There's a certain ring to it, isn't there? As a child, I always preferred odd numbers. I love the fact that numbers can be imperfect, like the universe. This will be a good year.

I wish I had something prophetic to say. I wish I were wise. My body has more wisdom than my brain does, and it's rare that the two communicate. I can say that there is a looming momentum to this particular year, with the promise of a new administration.

Here's what I hope to see in 2009:

1. More, not less, jobs. I'd love to join the forces of Obama's version of the New Deal--if he's reading this, I'll up and move to Tennessee if that means I can get a job recording oral histories of our first Work Progress Administration.

2. Mobilization, on both the grass-roots and corporate levels, for guaranteed civil liberties. For once, I'd like to see the government pass amendments that grant rights, not deny them.

3. I want a continuous blood glucose monitoring system--yet another piece of diabetic hardware that could help pinpoint the times of day when my body flips over inside.

Here's my open invitation to the new year:

1. 2009, I'm offering you my open palms, blossoming confidence, my willingness to work, unadulterated opinion and indiscreet expression, and a damn fine promise to avoid skepticism.

I'll try. You try too. Maybe everyone will. Maybe this will be the year global warming doesn't accelerate quite so fast, that the world sees the United States as just that -- an entity of diverse opinions. Maybe we'll all get ponies. I don't really want a pony. I just want an incentive, a carrot at the end of my stick.

two thousand nine. Good things will happen. Let's see.

Thoughtlets

I am transcribing journals from my year spent teaching in Spain. There are three bulky ones, the day-to-day ones, and four slim pocket-size libretas, the ones for expressions and new vocabulary words. Transcription is a tiring process, but rewriting--that's a process I really enjoy. Many times, when rereading old journal entries, I'll find these little tidbits, thoughtlets, really, that could easily replace pages of foreign-correspondent-description. Here's one I just found tonight:


When I left I split your mirror in half
I keep my half in my pocket
And when I look down to see you
There I am, reflected back
Across an ocean, a year, a novel, a song.

I might have been thinking about a boy I left behind in California. It could have been Santa Barbara, or university life in general, or even my country as a whole. The truth is, I still feel that way, about most anyone and anything that has ever meant anything to me.

In a way, so much of our lives are defined by cleaving things into pieces. Cells divide. People meet, fall in love, drift apart. Decisions are made, cities change, things grow and die. What do we actually remember, and stays remembered inside us?

Thanks for the Legs, Dad

The day started at 6:30 am.

In a fun, adult role-reversal, I had my parents over last night so I could finagle my father into a 10k run in Golden Gate Park today. The three of us slept in my V-shaped attic room and crashed down the stairs early to make chicken-apple sausages before the race. I wasn't expecting it to be such a clear day--it hardly feels like winter.

We got to 8th and Lincoln by 8:10. The race started adjacent to the recently renovated Academy of Sciences. Dad and I jogged straight to the starting line just as the announcer was winding down. We were told to line up according to our approximate mile splits.

"We can do 8:30," Dad said.

He's a seasoned runner, and my favorite running partner. We did the Bay to Breakers this year (my longest race, and my first B2B), plus a number of 10ks and a few Turkey Trots back in my hometown. This is the man who woke up with me four days a week to jog around the village green when I was an insecure eighth-grader, the same one who followed our racing shells after regattas to make sure my rowing team and I made it in okay off the Sacramento River. He's got a ponytail and usually runs in board shorts.

"Let's start at 9," I suggested. "We can always up it as we go."

The start was anticlimactic, as every race start is, requiring us to jog in place for a few minutes until the elite runners (I've always hated that word) left a clear spot for us to follow. The sunlight was clear, yellow; autumn light. We circled the 7th and Lincoln baseball field, the one where I've taken Kaplan Aspect soccer clubs, and looped out MLK drive all the way to the Panhandle.

Here's the reason I like to run with my father: because we are built the same, mostly legs and arms with long-twitch muscles that don't make us particularly fast, but do make us goddamn stubborn. Many times when we run together, there's no time or distance goal, but rather a personal challenge, usually involving an unknown fellow runner.

"See the guy with the obnoxious red-white-and-blue shirt? Yeah, the one about 100 yards ahead? We're gonna pass him. Now."

My dad is strong and powerful, and he had to take a brief hiatus from running this summer because of some particularly unruly vertebrae in his back. I signed us both up for the 10k a few weeks ago, somehow forgetting the 8 weeks this summer he spent off the track. And yet, today he was just as strong and determined--if not more so--than ever.

The real reason I am writing about running tonight is because it mirrors what I am thankful for. Quiet mornings with my family. Being outside. Functioning limbs. That sensation after exercise when one feels absolutely able-bodied. Whatever chemistry it is that brings friends together inside and outside, at all times of the year.

Dad and I both completed the 10k in good time, after cruising up above the Conservatory of Flowers and around Stow Lake. Mom was waiting for us at the finish line with our border collie Taj, and there was music, water, and goodies waiting for us between the de Young and the Academy of Science.

We weren't the fastest runners, nor were we the slowest. But we were the most goddamned stubborn. And thank goodness for that.

Fashionable?!



Last weekend I was stopped by a photographer as I was leaving the Bicycle Valet parking at the San Francisco Green Festival. These things generally don't happen to me. It was a hot day for mid-November, and I was attempting to bike in a miniskirt and pink Converse sneakers. And then this woman approached me.

"Do you mind if I take your photo?" she asked.

"What's it for?"

"Oh, I take pictures of fashionable women on bicycles for my blog."

I wasn't sure which part of this statement surprised me more--that she has a blog devoted to fashionable bicyclists, or that I somehow fit that description. I'm the kind of girl who tends to accidentally mismatch everything, usually because I'm more loyal to a favorite shirt than I am to an overall "outfit." My mother can attest to this--hers are the eyebrows that raise, hers is the voice that quivers when I leave the house. "You really want to wear that?"

I obliged her, and lo and behold, a week later, I stumble across her website.

I think I am an official San Franciscan now.

On Morality, of Sorts



--image by Kristen Blackmore, from SFist.com


On Saturday, November 15, my roommates and I biked down to the San Francisco City Hall to Join the Impact against Proposition 8. We arrived around noon, two hours after the rally had begun in 80 cities around the United States, and the lawn before the Civic Center was crowded with thousands of protesters. We wove through recently-married gay couples wearing wedding dresses and allies waving "another straight against h8te." There was nowhere to stand, so we wandered over to the Slow Food Victory Garden and perched atop hay bales. The sun beat down an almost impenetrable ray of civic justice, and yet the only speaker I could actually hear was a Baptist preacher. His voice had that hearty, scratchy pitch of someone who is accustomed to raising it high enough to be heard. He referenced the beginning of his education in civil rights at the death of Emmett Till, and argued that Christian fundamentalists and Evangelicals do not understand the hypocrisy of their "moral" argument.




--image from Flickr, by Generick11


My adolescence was highlighted by the infamous decisions of unfortunate politicians, whether it was George Bush Sr. throwing up in Japan, Clinton getting impeached for an immaturity not worthy of the Oval Office, or the various embarrassments and tragedies that have been the Dubya administration. And now, finally, the change I am witnessing has the potential to make our lives better. Thus, the pots and pans of November 4, 2008.

And yet, the civil rights movement is not over, nor will it ever be. The perception of homosexuality and all non-heterosexual communities has evolved at an almost incredible rate during my lifetime. I will never forget how the word "gay" was such an accepted insult when I was in junior high, or how risky it felt to join a Gay-Straight Alliance in high school. I'm straight, and yet I still feel the intensity of that association as a teenager.

Eight years later, it feels almost criminal not to be an ally. Being human is being human, regardless of where we're from, what we look like, or who we love. I live in one of the "gayest" cities in the world, and instead of feeling threatened by the non-traditional or the unexpected, I'm more comfortable because of it.

Yesterday was a full day. After the protest, I met up with Laurel at the Green Festival downtown, an indoor sustainability fair with a seemingly endless supply of free samples. In the evening, we headed down to the Box Theatre in Potrero Hill to see a dance performance that benefited the Darfur Women's Center. I forgot how effective nonverbal communication can be sometimes. It was an evening of expression, and the movements of last night, combined with the images of the protest and the festival, have slid through the microfilm of my mind all day. Politics and art have been chewing away at my brain these days, and for the first time in a long time, they are a source of inspiration.

Thank goodness.

A Thorn in the Midst

I'm in my Halloween costume already--suspenders, straw hat, plaid and jeans as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Just spent the past hour trouncing around the house with a trail of little straw flakes billowing out behind me. It's been a joyful kind of week, month really, with the upcoming election and the brilliance of San Francisco autumn.

It's funny how the starkest of realities bring us back down to earth just as we are the most oblivious. I get frustrated when my blood sugar wakes me up in the early morning, or when the copier breaks down at work, and then I learn about frighteningly real tragedies like the death of my former classmate Jake Thorn.

I met Jake as a sophomore at UCSB--2004, shortly before the last presidential election. The campus was full of a palpable electricity: students were mobilizing, registering voters and protesting the ongoing war in Iraq. We wanted Bush out. My second week back at school, I joined the Campus Democrats club. Immediately we were put to work: flyering freshman dorms with voter registration information, canvassing for the local supervisor race (I had a John Buttny sticker on my bike basket for the duration of the election, until he lost to the beer-brewing, father-of-"The-Bachelor" Firestone), tabling on the quad. Jake was one of the first fellow volunteers I met.

Jake epitomized the kind of friend you never quite have the time for, but always admired and wanted to actually know. He was thin, and smiley, with reddish hair, and a penchant for Amnesty International and equal-opportunity education. He wrote well. I remember him editing the club newsletter (it had a "donkey" theme) with a girl who later became my housemate here in San Francisco. He was one of those community members who you could count on to have an editorial in the paper at least once a week.

Throughout my time at UCSB, Jake's interests and passions often criss-crossed my own, whether it be voter registration, a local nonprofit we tried to start called Free Skool, the underground belly that was co-op culture and independent music.

All of these characteristics and memories slide into view now, two years later, when all I know of him are a list of hobbies and interests from his Facebook profile and a half dozen digital photographs from community events. I can't claim to have known him intimately or even well; he was one of many classmates who accomplished great things and had plans to accomplish even more.

I heard from him for the first time since graduation when he posted a note online about his May 2008 lymphoma diagnosis, a startling and fast-moving disease. Suddenly he was bald, suddenly he was excited about popsicles and writing songs about doomed youth. It wasn't until today, the day he passed away, that I noticed a small link on his webpage advertising his music:

http://www.purevolume.com/jakethorn/

There are few things more chilling than hearing someone's recorded voice shortly after they have died. I can only imagine what this must mean to his family and close friends, and the people who mattered the most to him. His voice sounds fragile at first, but then I recognize the quality of sound not as a weakness, but rather an informed complacency. He knows what is happening to his body, just as he knows which politicians are screwing up the country, and which animals are being mistreated. He knows, he knew, he always will know.

Perhaps the greatest pity in all this is how much he wanted to see next week's election. I remember the fervency with which he followed politics, and the idealistic hunger that pushed him forward. What's more tragic, I wonder: that so few people can maintain this intellectual idealism, or that those who do are often prevented from creating change?

Yet another reason to vote--vote for progressive change, and you'll be voting for Jake Thorn.

May 11, 1985--October 30, 2008