Oh Academia

If I have learned anything in this experience, it is that taking comfort in the familiar is nothing of which to be ashamed. There is a difference between making the easy choice, taking the safe road, and seeking comfort when needed in familiar faces, books and feelings. 

Little did I know, this solace is all the more satisfying when it is unexpected. I recently finished my first freelance piece for a Lebanese magazine. I had about a week to write 1400 words and though I managed to do all of the necessary reporting on a respectable timeline, I left most of the writing until the weekend before deadline. Silly, but not surprising. 

But as I sat on Sunday night futilely trying to concentrate and frantically trying to write articulately and efficiently about a topic of which I have a cursory knowledge at best, I had a flash. 

I felt a familiar pang of procrastination shame and I was immediately transported back to any number of dorm rooms, coffee shops and library desks where I had felt this feeling hundreds of times before. 

I sip cups and cups of coffee waiting. Waiting for that surge of creative energy brought on by shear necessity which inevitably comes. I have learned not to doubt my friend the surge, but in this case I wavered. Perhaps it would not come in this time zone. Perhaps the concept of professional writing would change my subconscious's sense for when it is time to panic.

I doubted, I admit. And with good reason, for the surge did not come until the morning of deadline. I woke up at 7 am and finished the story to satisfactory reviews from my editor. 

And after the euphoria of clearing the article off of my plate subsided I realized that the stress and the release were both equally familiar. And both brought me satisfaction in their own way.

In journalism, the subject is always new. But the process, and perhaps especially my process, is familiar. And when one can find comfort in the familiarity of even negative emotions, then maybe deadlines will be my friends. Maybe I have chosen the right career. 

life as a tile floor

The skills required to properly clean a tile floor do not come naturally to everyone.  The first act of simply throwing a bucket of water mixed with a green pine-scented cleanser into the corners of the room is shocking to eyes that have only ever imagined the options of mop or vacuum. Then  the giant squeegee comes out and the whole room must be swiped dry before the water reaches anything it should not touch. And then you do it all again.

The first time I witnessed the act, my roommate Ingie glided around the room in one fluid motion. Like Fred Astaire with a broom she quickly and effortlessly guided the water away from anything it would harm and out to the balcony to wash down the side of the building. Seeing the confidence and ease with which she had completed round one, I had no apprehension about round two and began the process again. But as soon as I playfully emptied the bucket of soapy green-tinted water onto the floor, it did not seem to obey me as it had her. The water ran in all directions and I could not seem to shepherd it as Ingie had. 

Despite my disastrous time of trying to control water on a flat surface, the casualties of my inexperience were low. A beloved blanket would have to be washed and a notepad thrown away. All bearable losses.

Cleaning the floor wasn't the first thing that had tripped me up in my quest to learn how to live in Lebanon. And it certainly wasn't the last. But as I stood on my balcony pushing the last of the water away with a curious amount of rage, dripping with sweat from the labor of the task, my back sore and eyes stinging from the sweat invading them, I realized that this is supposed to be hard. 

In the weeks before cleaning day, I had been ashamed to struggle. Ashamed to be lonely, to be scared, to be unsure. But now I am able to find comfort in the fact that this may well be the hardest thing I ever do. 

Each day is exhausting. Simply going to the post office requires planning, asking for directions, the rehearsing of requests in Arabic and then walking in intense heat to an unknown location. The challenge of each new task seems magnified far beyond the norm. But I know I will settle. Eventually  the traffic in my mind will slow down. 

For each day, when I lay down to go to sleep, exhausted from a day of what seems like simple tasks, my mind slows quicker and quicker. And eventually, all I hear is the traffic in the streets. 

the kindness of strangers

Anyone who has travelled outside the world of guided tours and mini bars has that story. You got lost, robbed, stuck on the border of country A, who just tossed you out, and country B who has yet to approve your visa. My story is less desperate but just as true. 

I needed an apartment. I moved to Beirut and, eternally hindered by the frugality my mother instilled in me seemingly from birth, I was tired of taking advantage of friends and tired of calling fully booked hotels, begging for any availability. 

I was being dramatic, this I know. I have heard horror stories thousands of times worse than my situation here. However, the desperation of a situation is directly proportionate to the experiencer's ability to handle it. And I was ill-equipped for such uncertainty. I could be embarrassed at this confession. I could compare myself to the free-spirited wanderers one meets in hostels the world over and wish to be more like them. But, comfort and security are in the eye of the beholder, and of this, I have decided to be unashamed. 

It is in these harrowing situations, no matter if the struggle is only internal, that we turn to the only option available to us. The traveler's saving grace: complete and total strangers. 

And in this particular tale, my stranger's name is Ingrid. 

Perhaps it is a good thing that we don't get to choose our strangers. If we did, I dont think i would have chosen the 5' 11" blonde DJ from Holland who ended up in Beirut 12 years ago as a result of an extremely short-lived marriage and never left.

It is human nature to trust the familiar. But when we are relying on the strangers that find us, we dont get to choose. So we have to put our trust in the unfamiliar. And it's difficult, but beautiful. 

So i walked in an american-style diner to meet Ingrid, or Ingie as everyone calls her, for the first time. She had posted on a website that she needed a roommate and the price was right. When we found each other and Ingie got up from the bar stool where she was sitting to reveal her long long legs extended well below her micro-mini t-shirt dress.  She immediately ordered two mexican beers, which is really just a regular beer with salt on the rim. We talked in a zig zag pattern discussing everything and nothing until she said "yalla, let's go see it."

We walked the five blocks to her apartment and the hours after that swirled into a blur. Somehow we managed to agree to live together, go rescue my bags from the horrible hotel where I had dropped them and open a bottle of wine. 

And then I had an apartment and a new stranger in my life. 

Ingie is less of a stranger now. Since I started living with her we have had two nights of sitting up late, drinking wine (she stays about two glasses ahead of me), and talking. She does most of the talking as it turns out she is an excellent story teller and her life has had so many twists and turns that i have seriously considered creating a written timeline so that I can keep track. Two husbands. Dozens of jobs. at least 6 different countries. Several tragic losses of family and love. 

The bottom line, and perhaps the most important thing to know about her, is that her lifestyle: partying now, worrying later, living paycheck to paycheck, her striking minimalism in material possessions- it is all the culmination of 35 years of tumultuous changes and disasters. 

Perhaps this is why she feels so comfortable in Lebanon. She has not been back to her home country of Holland since she was born. But here, where you live today because tomorrow, everything may be gone, she has found a home. 

Her history is the history of Lebanon. She understands the people and they understand her, though neither may know why. 

title page

I began to write a post for this blog before I arrived in Beirut. And as I look back at it, I realize that there is a factual flaw in almost every phrase. I am relieved that I never managed to finish it nor publish it, for I'm sure I have learned more in the past two weeks than I will ever be fully aware of.

Grammatical sin in the last sentence aside, I am going to attempt to record some of my revelations and observations here, in hope of becoming more aware of my own evolution and largely in a effort to quell some of the stateside voices screaming for constant reports. 

First of all, the title I have chosen for this blog is, of course, a tribute to Joan Didion's famous tribute to W. B. Yeats. Didion said that Yeat's words "reverberated in [her] inner ear as if they were surgically implanted there." And though modern Beirut is about as geographically and socioculturally removed from Haight-Ashbury as possible, Didion's writing and her style of "reporting" have stuck in my mind since an excellent professor assigned the book. 

Didion wrote what she saw, with little judgement and scarce attempt at summation. But at the same time, she managed to translate the behavior of the drug dealers and runaways she met into terms I could understand. I hope to do the same thing for this society into which I have taken a cultural swan dive. 

here goes . . .