5 Happinesses

Happy Last Day of February. I seriously need to update the blog. I am sorry. I've been busy. I've been away. I've been neglectful. Let's change that, starting with 5 Happinesses for this Last Day of February:

1) still riding on the wings of vacations long over. We've been to India and Costa Rica in the last month. What an incredible ride life can be, if you let it. The best part was that we went to CR with some close friends from MA. It was as nice to spend time with our people as it was to be in such a beautiful place.

2) the chance to bring some eco-friendly programming into work. Generally, work is going really, really well.

3) Finding the BEST BREAKFAST IN TOWN. Wow, there are a lot of places to eat breakfast in Morgantown, but not a ton of really good ones. Don't tell too many people, because part of me wants to keep this quiet little place all to myself and the handful of people there this morning, but today we went to Zen Clay's Sunday brunch and it was awesome. What a restorative effect a good breakfast place can have on your outlook on life/WV.

4) other chicken people. I'll admit it: I like to talk chicken whenever I can, so it is nice to get the chance to talk to other chicken people, which has happened a lot in the past couple of weeks.

5) Dream Snow. So much snow! I can't believe how much we've had this year. It's so pretty, so lovely, but so crappy to have to drive in. I love waking up to a new coating of several inches fallen in the night, taking Elf off the leash to run and tunnel and lick at the fresh surface, and coming back in for coffee.

"Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((())))."

I just want to take a minute to acknowledge the loss of the author who probably played the most instrumental role in my life. JD Salinger died at 91 last week. He wrote some of the best prose I’ve ever read. I blame him for my inability to write a proper ending. He is, without a doubt in my mind, the reason I read, the reason I’ve written, and the reason I got a degree in English.

I was not a reader growing up. I wasn’t one of those kids who devoured books or even slogged through them. Reading was for school and I honestly didn’t see much point in doing it on your free time. I hate to admit all this, but it’s true. I liked being read to, but hated reading.

Then, my mom’s friend started coming once a week, giving me assignments and doing just what I wanted: reading to me. We read a lot of the major children’s literature classics, namely the Narnia books and Madeleine L'Engle. I started reading a bit on my own.

But it wasn’t until I was 13 and I read Catcher in the Rye that I realized that this reading thing was really something to cherish. It was my first “adult” novel. I read it because I took a quiz in Teen Magazine that said my ideal boyfriend was Ethan Hawke and the little blurb mentioned that he’d have a dog-eared copy of Cather in his back pocket for some reason. (This is so embarrassing.) So I read it and I couldn’t believe that anyone could write like that; that writing like that was allowed at all! It was so real. It just floored me: books were supposed to be fake. Literature got a lot more interesting with a narrator like Holden. And then there is the Glass family. I have outgrown my initial feelings/obsessions with Salinger, but the Glass family will always be a literary miracle. After that, I just read, and read, and read. And I have to say, I always read the good stuff. I drank in all of those books one should read as a teenager: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Slaughterhouse-5, One Flew Over the Coo-Coo’s Nest, Brautigan, On the Road, etc, etc. No Twilight-type stuff, ever, thank heavens.

And so, JD Salinger has followed me through my life. Aaron and I basically became friends because of Franny and Zooey. And the rest is history there. I named two of my cats after characters in Salinger stories: Esmé and Sergeant X. And I met my best friend Meghan because I was giving a presentation on Salinger’s uncanny ability to Address the Reader in “Seymour; An Introduction” in a Creative Writing Workshop we were in together and she happened to be reading that story at the same time.

And now, he is gone.

Incredible India

Let me start off by saying that India was a totally wonderful, totally draining experience that I am so happy to have had the chance to go. It was like no other place I have had the privilege of visiting. Of course, vast wealth and vast poverty mingled at every corner. One thing to note: seeing people live their lives gives you a unique perspective. I never felt sorry for anyone there, even as they were showering or shitting on the roadside. This is life and they are living it. It might be different than mine, but it is no less fantastic. It’s so important to realize that saving the world isn’t always a good thing because you’re saving it in your image, when theirs is just as valid. The richness of life was felt in full.

The sights were gorgeous. Beautiful buildings, beautiful landscapes. Fields of mustard waiting to be pressed into oil. Bold colors, pink cities. Of course, there is the Taj Mahal. Can I just say it is covered with the most intricate inlaid marble I’ve never seen. It is more incredible than pictures can convey. And yet, it is small inside. You feel that she is protected there. Having seen (or rather, not seen) all that the British had looted out of India , I am so surprised it is intact at all. Did you know that once upon a time the Brits rented it out to honeymooners? Seeing the Taj was worth the trip.

My favorite city was Jaipur. Everything is painted pink or constructed in Pink sandstone. It’s gorgeous. I loved the Hawa Mahal (The Palace of Winds) and the Amber Fort (of course!). Hawa Mahal is just this incredibly vertical palace in the middle of the city and it reminded me of a pipe organ or something.

And the Amber Fort was just all around gorgeous. It was classic Hindu style, beautiful decoration. So much fun to wander.

I won’t mention the bad stuff like 9 hour bus trips, food poisoning, cancelled flights and Al Qaeda terrorist threats. We were so lucky to have had the chance to go to such a unique country.