It's not lost on me...

It's not lost on my how incredibly privileged I am.  I took the D Line bus to work and had a seat the whole way, brought a home made lunch (frozen vegetarian chili that we had prepped for days like today), enjoyed a pretty productive day with my co workers, made plans to go out in the evening.  These plans changed and I ended up heading over to the University District on a Pronto Bike Share Bike so that I could have ramen noodles (from a Japanese restaurant and not a box), catch up with a friend, see a pretty good films about the removing the dams from the Elwha River and then run (literally) to catch a #43 bus home.  I was in my neighborhood within 10 minutes and home in 5 more.  Safely.

And I could expand on this in so many ways and on so many levels but I'm not going to do that here tonight.  But it's not lost on me.  I am fortunate.  I am privileged. And I have privilege.  

Bikes!

Paris bike share!

Pronto Cycle Share debuted in Seattle this week with the kick off of 500 bikes primarily around the University of Washington, South Lake Union, downtown Seattle and some of Capitol Hill.  I easily visualized sitting at a bar like I did with iRoxy, Lara and Vic in Copenhagen watching hundreds of people ride home from work.  Or in Paris, when Lara and I walked the City of Lights, with rivers of people biking by on beige colored bikes (of course) that were part of their ride share.  That maybe a little optimistic considering the hills and dreary weather that plagues Seattle but I was excited to try it out.

Wednesday's morning downpour convinced me not to bike to work though I initially dressed in my "bike" (workout) clothes.  I unpacked my bike bags, put on my work clothes and ask Lara for a ride - which was traffic mess because no one really seems to know how to drive in the rain - and someone had knocked down a traffic light which is impressive.  My boxing gear was in my backpack so that I could grab a bus to Cappy's at the end of the day.  A sun break in the afternoon gave me a chance to run test out Pronto. I didn't understand at first that you just rented the bikes from one place to another.  You have 30 minutes to get from your Point A to Point B.  I suddenly didn't like it and thought it was kind of dumb.  I mean I needed a bike to go to Cappy's and back downtown.  I needed to be able to lock it and go to my workout. However, I found a Pronto station only a few blocks from Cappy's at Madison Market and decided I would ride up the hill from the Paramount Building and park it.  Walk to Cappy's. Workout.  Then walk back and take a bike back downtown.

It was extremely easy.  Bought a "key" for my $8/day ride, grabbed a helmet (yes - they provide helmets), adjusted the seat, put everything in my backpack and up the hill I went.  It wasn't like riding my own bike. A little more upright (good for my quads) but I shifted into the easiest gear and went up the to Madison park with no problem.  I parked the bike in the station. Deposited the helmet and walked down to Cappy's on a beautiful fall evening.  

Getting back downtown was just as easy - as it was all downhill plus I was able to grab my same bike that I had already adjusted (after grabbing some hippie snacks from Madison Market).  I was able to take it to a station two blocks further from work and got to my bus stop just in time to catch a D bus home.  So. Easy.  I decided I would be an annual member for $85.  I was sure I would easily use the bike share 10 more times this year.   

I didn't realize that I would use it again today - as I left my bike lock key at home (damnit!) and didn't realize it in time to take the bus to my doctor's appointment.  My co worker found the Pronto bike station closest to where I was going - which was about 7 blocks away - and I made into the doctor's office with about 2 minutes to spare.  Biked back to work where my bike was securely parked and biked home.  

I'm totally sold on it for my short trips in the city and around downtown - which my day is filled with many of them.  I'm sold on the 30 minute limit, no need for locks, helmets provided (tho I used my own helmet today) and what I understand will be the expanded route. 

So my idea of sitting at bar watching hundreds of people bike by will probably look like me meeting my friends at the bar where we all arrive on bike - whether it's your own bike or a bike you've borrow for just 30 minutes.

Getting back to all the art

Around the same time I signed up for the Hugo House 30/30 Challenge - I also finally decided to try my friend Connie's Art Journal workshop. To call her my friend is a bit of a stretch.  She's my friend Carol's friend from Cleveland who moved to the dessert to paint, create art and do all things creative.  I had hung out with her a couple of times and I thought she was courageous and amazing for deciding to do her art.  Her project/passion Dirty Footprints Studio showed up on Facebook and I decided to follow it.  About twice a year she would launch an art journal workbook series that you could purchase, download and follow.  I don't want to say I was intimidated - it was more that I didn't have the time - or didn't make the time for art.  I am not a great visual artist - and this isn't self deprecation.  I am sincerely just not that talented.  I like to sketch and doodle and paint but I don't have the skills to create things of depth.  I probably took two final years of art in high school before putting down my paintbrush, found objects, pencils and charcoals.  I tired again in college with an beginner's painting class that I eventually dropped.  They were just so much more talented than me and just understood the fundamentals better.  Their pieces weren't "flat" but rich and lively. I eventually turned to photography where I found a niche for sure.  Film.  Photography. Writing.  Theatre.  Those were my tools.  Definitely not painting and drawing.

This fall Connie had a free series to try out her art journal workshop.  And I decided, at the same time that I was going to do the 30/30 writing challenge that I follow and try out her workshop as well.  I bought many of the materials she suggested and set off doing the first few "classes".  It was easy and fun. (I set a very low bar for myself and the goal was to just paint.)  It reminded me of sewing.  It was creating something immediately.  It was tactile. It meant creating immediately and quietly. And I'm enjoying it.  

I'm not creating in my art journal every night.  Tonight was the first night I've picked up a brush in a week but I was too tired tonight to write and thought I would just dabble paint for a bit.  And though, like writing, I have a long ways to go with my art journaling, it's great to be exploring all of my creative self.

On my bus...

I learned, probably in a Malcolm Gladwell book, that we could have, at max, 150-200 meaningful relationships.  It's called Dunbar's Number and it had to do with the maximum number of members in social groups.  I like to think of my life as a bus, driving through and participating in some most amazing experiences.  Only 200 people can have a seat on my bus (or anyone's bus) at any given time.  This is also why I'm not terribly sad when friends fade away.  This is also who I don't consider high school, college, Peace Corps, roller derby, the greatest "time of my life".  Because then it would mean my bus had stopped and I had stopped.  My bus keeps moving along to the next adventure.  I don't like to lose friends but there is no way that they can all fit on my bus.  And as we grow and change in life, we want different people to have a seat.  I'm still friends with a few people from childhood, college, Peace Corps, when I lived in Cleveland, etc.  Though social media like Facebook has helped me stay connected with some of these folks, there's still only so much room on the bus.

I'm amazed by all the people I've met and who riding on my bus right now - just as I was amazed 10 years ago. I know a rock climbing, super nerdy physical therapist, a long time project manager and mother of two kids who run or run stairs with me anytime time. I know a handful of nerdy scientists - like real ones who work in labs, run experiments and have to go into work in off hours to "stir the soup" - and I know writer who report on that soup. I have friends that are very talented knitters, seamstresses and crafters - who not just have visions of amazing but can then put those skills to work and create murals, sweaters, collages, and games. I have friends who are compassionate doctors who manage elderly people's deaths and slightly crazy nurses who will likely save your life, friends who love dogs more than people and people who love delicious red wine and gourmet food above all else.  I have friends who have been convicted of felonies and can't travel to Canada and friends who are city cops and municipal judges.  I have a friend from third grade who I remember meeting and memorizing her phone number.  I have friends who are living with HIV. I have friends who have followed a very traditional path from school, to college to a chosen profession - whether they chose that path or not - I have friends have yet to find their path and probably never will and don't mind a damn bit.  I have friends who in are the midst of very intense career changes.  I have friends on the bus who will run a marathon with me, a silly 5k sprint, race up the steepest stairs, or hike the most beautiful trail we can find within 30 minutes of the city.  I have friends who will camp under the stars in Western Washington discussing feminist politics and believe in me as strongly as a believe in them.  I have friends who have spent their wholes lives fighting for justice from Washington state to South Sudan and back again and I have friends who don't even know what injustice really means.  I have friends who will go boxing with me at Cappy's gym and then have beers at Chuck's in the CD.  I have friends who will join at a local brewery on any given weekend, trying new tasty brews or settling into old favorites.  I have friends who have taught me how to garden in my community P Patch.

And this is just some of the people on my bus - at this moment - today.  There are empty seats and some of my friends aren't going to stay on this bus for long.  They might step off and hop onto someone else's bus.  And that's ok.  They're absolutely wonderful people.  You'll love having them as friends.

My very own bucket list...

I made my own graduation announcements on a very early version of QuarkXpress upon graduating from the University of Iowa in the 1990s.  The front cover is a picture of myself as toddler (above).  On the back is a list of ambitious goals that go like this:

On my way to an undergraduate playwright's meeting, a friend asked me what I was going to do now that I was graduating.  I wrote this:
Because I am greedy and because I am graduating, I'm going to tell you what I want:
I want to learn Portuguese.  I want to live in Brazil and master the cello.  I want a masters in Arabic and Senegalese culture and be able to do the Samba in my sleep and hit that center beat in Salsa that I always seem to miss.
I wanted to be married someday - honestly, I do.
I want to climb Mt. St. Helens again. I want to become a master chef.  I want to have my own arts center for you.  I want to give youth a voice.  I want to be forever young at heart.  I want to play the piano. I want to have a friend teach me to dance in a tight circle like the do in Zaire.  I want to visit Paris in the summer and Moscow too.
I want to teach French on Native American Reservations - there was a need a few years ago.  I want to play soccer again - every day.  I want to learn Hindi.  (I wanted to be Gandhi - but that was when I was young and didn't know anything.)
I want to meet Marisa Monte and maybe Nick Caves and visit Haiti and go to Trinidad during festival and learn Spanish.  I want to make an award-winning documentary and be a one hit filmmaker  I want to work for PBS and NPR and BBC.
I want to live with the gypsies of North Africa for a while.  I want to name the new color of a Crayola crayon.  I want to be someone's fairy godmother.
I want to be an art therapist.  I want to spend 20 years observing a primate we know nothing about.  I want to increase consciousness about malnutrition, disease, social injustice, justice, joy and hope.
I want to sleep on a firm mattress with a feather pillow under five quilts.  I want to drink lemon tea in the mornings and stay up every night engrossed in conversation about God and love and literature and dance and faint from exhaustion.  I want to live every second and not let it kill me.  I want to be able to live by the principle Voltaire once stated and that is "Change your small corner of the world and be content."  I want ethnic cleansing to stop.  I want Muslims to be respected and blacked and Latinos and the people who try every day.
I want every single person to respect at least one other single person.
I want to visit Nepal.  I want to stop the Chinese from destroying Tibet.  I want Tibetans to reclaim with culture. I want to live by the Buddhist saying "We call all choose to be awake."
And I want you to, too.

My only remaining copy is stored in a resume paper box - back in the day when you actually needed resume paper. Sometimes I'm embarrassed by its naivety and romanticism and also its greed. All the things I want and not a conversation about how I am going to interact in this world.  What am I going to contribute?  How am I going to contribute?  And I'm assuming that I would somehow be just and invited into any of these circles or any of these lives. 

But there is something kind of magical about it. I am so in love with the world.  I appreciate that none of the things on this list are easy tasks and take time and dedication, patience and understanding.  Many of them are not even things I could possibly influence or even be a part of but are ideals and desires for the world.

It is a bucket list long before there were "bucket lists".  Some of them have been checked off.  Some of them are impossible dreams.  Some of them are still ambitions and some of them are not my dreams to have.

 

Riding at night!

Riding at night is a lot like skiing at night.  The roads are empty.  The slopes are less crowded.  You find yourself going faster because you can't see the risks: no pebbles of death, no potholes, no slippery wet leaves, no pedestrians whose movements you can't anticipate.  All of these things are there - you just can't see them with your upgraded front bike light.  Not the $10 blinky light that says quietly "I'm here.  Look at me.  It's dusk." But the $50 beam that says "Oh look, that might be a pothole!  Oh watch out! Car screeching to a halt at the stop sign."  When you throw caution in to the wind, literally, you get home much faster than usual.

Be Still My Generous Heart

I find myself hesitating lately. 


Help Fund the London Rollergirls in their quest for the Hydra!

In lieu of house warming gifts, please make a donation to WA Low Income Housing Alliance... everyone should have a safe, healthy, affordable place to live.

Go Fund the funeral expenses for our youngest daughter who was tragically taken from us.

I get to the donate page, filled out my name and am reaching for the debit card when I pause.  I've tightened up my belt lately because of some debt we're carrying from our Super Fun Times Party this summer. It's not huge or insurmountable but I decided that I can't spend any extra money for a while. 

Do I do it without thinking?  Do I get something extra from it? Oh, as a fundraiser looking at my own habits, why do I hit the donate button?  Is it because it feels good to support my friends wishes for fair housing?  Because I can relate and I know how hard it is to raise money for travel?  Because those $25 donations add up to meaningful amounts?  Because it feels good to give? To be a part of the collective... impact?

It's been hard NOT to say Yes, sure, Of course. 

I'm surprised in my "you need to save your money right now" state of mind I find myself pausing and when I go to the donate button and "not now."