After dinner with the witty, blue-eyed chap, he indulged my morbid curiosity and took me the BodyWorlds exhibit at Science World. Together we lingered around the plastinated deceased, considering life and death and how on earth they [successfully] created Drawer Man. He was not deterred by my dark and twisty side, which gloried in the company of the cadavers, so we went out again. And again. And so on.

Quite quickly we navigated the no-man’s land of casual dating and the nervous volleys of phone calls and texts fired from the trenches; we made our relationship facebook official. This was followed by several reenactments of Meet the Parents during a marathon weekend of birthday celebrations (his, not mine). After rave reviews from all three sets of parents, my nerves were considerably calmed and we have settled into something I’m reticent to call a serious relationship. Because serious is such a dreadful word – serious condition, serious illness, serious accident, serious repercussions… Serious has a nasty connotation; serious tends to imply that something terrible has been done to you.

I like to think this development is quite wonderful.

Last night, McDreamy – who has earned the moniker by means of  possessing ridiculously thick hair, an impish grin, and eyes blue enough to make Patrick Dempsey jealous - cooked me dinner. After digging into the fabulous meal he whipped up, we sat with our feet propped up on the cold glass of the coffee table and attempted to rationalize how quickly we’ve jumped into our serious relationship. I joked that we had already spent about 150 hours investing in our relationship through phone calls, texts, and various outings, which is more time that some couples invest over a matter of months.  Today, my McDreamy corrected me: we’ve spent 75 hours together and 25 hours speaking on the phone – and that doesn’t include the 3600(ish) text messages we’ve exchanged.

So maybe we’ve jumped into the deep end a little.  I’ve always been a serious relationship sort of girl; I like to have the relationship clearly labeled and understood by both parties. But this time it seems different. For the first time in my life I believe I deserve a brilliant man and it just so happens that one fell into my lap. I’ve got a man in my life who cooks me dinner and remembers my complicated Starbucks orders.  He does all the little thoughtful things that matter.

I could get used to this.

Days like today, I become acutely aware of my own mortality. I just heard that a friend lost his grandfather, and it’s sobering. I appreciate the way my friend spoke of the matter; he said that life is fleeting, and our time on earth is just a quick drop in the bucket. So true!  Yet we spend so much time pursuing the wrong things while our proverbial drops race towards the bottom of the bucket and disappear into the mass of other drops that have gone before us. We should all be more concerned about the ripples we’re making because once we’ve hit the bottom of the bucket, the ripples are all that will  remain. The kinds of ripples we make ultimately define the kind of people we are and the way we’ll be remembered.

Several years ago, I had just begun dating someone when his great aunt passed away. I never learned the woman’s real name; to everyone, myself included, she was Aunty Boo-Boo.  I’m not sure why she was called Aunty Boo-Boo and I’m positive her real name was something along the lines of Ruby or Muriel or Maureen; her real name was nothing like Boo-Boo, I knew that much.  Aunty Boo-Boo had been a hoarder, of sorts. She was a high-class hoarder, however.  She was very wealthy and her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder manifested itself in her need to buy every color available of whatever she purchased. If she wanted a set of blue towels, she would buy the same set in pink and peach and yellow and green.  She would use the blue towels and the pink and peach and yellow and green towels lived forever in boxes piled floor to ceiling.  It should not surprise you that I became the recipient of many relics de Boo-Boo as the family set about cleaning out her mansion of treasures.  I received what I affectionately call my Boo-Boo beads, two long strings of black plastic beads that were coming in to fashion once again on the eve of Boo-Boo’s death.  The boyfriend’s mother also gave me a greeting card box with smiling twin kittens on the front of it; Kitten Cuties, the box says. Inside were innumerable treasures – a WWII era Navy Booster pin, a Navy production award pin, pretty silver ring, a quality set of false pearls, and an antique 14 karat gold Hamilton timepiece. These were of little consequence compared to the real jewelry the family divvied up. From what I saw, Boo-Boo was a woman of impeccable taste.  What strikes me whenever I think about Aunty Boo-Boo is the long arm of her legacy.  As a girl that never met Aunty Boo-Boo, I carry her antique treasures, and I will carefully preserve them and pass them on to someone else in the future.

We’re all like Aunty Boo-Boo in one regard or another. Our actions all impact other people. Sometimes our zany actions lead to great stories told at dinner parties after a compliment on a killer set of beads or a unique pin. Our actions also have the possibility to create a legacy of infamy, transforming the very memories of us into the skeletons in the someone else’s closet. Or, if we are wise and blessed, our actions can leave footprints on other people’s hearts, forever making the world a better place. I know what kind of ripples I intend to make.

I hate Columbus Day.  I hate the fact that we praise him as the man that discovered the “new world.”  When Columbus reached the Americas, there was already an indigenous population. They had discovered the land and settled it long before he did. Moreover, Leif Eiriksson, a viking explorer, reached North America some 500 years before Columbus set sail.

So why all the fuss about Columbus?  Why does he get a day? I wish I knew.

The history books gloss over the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men. I can’t say I disagree with this, as his actions were very gruesome and not at all appropriate for small children. Yet, by secondary school, you’d think more educators would take strides to rouse us from our blissful ignorance about Columbus and his expeditions. From his first interactions with one people group, the Arawaks of the Bahama Islands, Columbus planned to capture and enslave this peaceful group.  Of them, Columbus wrote:

They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

This was, eventually, what Columbus and his men set out to do.  He exaggerated the resources of the Americas and was given a seventeen-ship fleet and 1,200 men to snatch up any and all resources.  Historian Howard Zinn (whom I love, love, love and mourn, nearly 9 months after his death) wrote:

The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor (emphasis added).

As you can imagine, Columbus and his cadre hardly showed their captives common respect. It isn’t surprising that a multitude died needlessly.  Sea travel, disease, and brutality took its toll, and Columbus was unable to repay those who invested in his slave trade. He turned his attention to hunting for gold and mutilated the natives who could not bring it to him.   The Europeans had lofty dreams of fields laden with gold; this was not a reality. The small pieces of gold the indigenous populations had were happened across in streams, no more than tiny flecks. Still, Columbus pressed the Arawaks.  Zinn wrote:

…they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Avoiding the brutality, the Arawaks commited mass suicides and killed their babies to save them from a life of torture. Zinn offers startling statistics: within two years, half of the 250,000 Haitian Indians had committed suicide or been killed by the Spanish; by 1650, none of the indigenous people or their ancestors remained on the island

Columbus represents a dark period of history that merits careful reflection, not celebration.  He did not discover North America. Instead, he laid the groundwork for brutal subjugation and domination over those Europeans encountered in the “new world.”  I cannot fathom why we would possibly designate a day in his honor.  This seems akin to celebrating the slave traders that brought hundreds of Africans to the United States in the eighteenth century. It’s our duty to dig through history as best as we can and to preserve and protect it in its purest form. Continuing to celebrate Columbus Day shrouds the man’s actions in fiction and undeserved glory. As a generation of young people with the power to write truer, more-accessible history, we need to educate ourselves and others, lest we proliferate the same moral failings in the future.

If you’re curious about Columbus or other dark and twisty parts of history, I encourage you to pick up some of Zinn’s books. A People’s History of the United States is a particularly riveting read.  It chronicles the United States from the time of Columbus through the 2000 Election from the view of the underdogs in society. He writes the little known stories of women, slaves, and war vets and adds a fabulous human dimension to history.  Read it. You’ll love it. And it’ll make you think.

I will preface what is about to follow by stating it is entirely factual, although likely hyperbolized. Possibly hyperbolized to the point of unrecognition, but that is not to say that it isn’t completely true…

Last night I entered an altered state.  Or maybe it was a particularly vivid dream.  The latter is more likely, but the former is entirely more intriguing and I shall henceforth refer to whatever I experienced as such.  My altered state, I am convinced, was a resultant of an overdose on Red Bull, shoddily written Philosophy articles (Igor Douven’s; not mine), a sizable brick of chocolate, and general sleep deprivation. The cause must appear to digress from the tale, but I feel it’s important to note, as, for scientific purposes, I feel there may be merit to recreate the events of last night. I drank 1 triple sized Red Bull at approximately 7:00 pm; this was later followed by two standard-issue Red Bulls between the hours of 11pm and 2 am, along with approximately 32 squares of Cadburys delicious chocolate. I went to sleep at 5:04 – or at least that was the moment at which I sealed my eyes after casting a final look at the neon numbers of my clock. And in the darkness of my mind, I seemed to transcend human limitations and travel to a magical place.

The magical place was much like the train station at which the Narnia children arrive in the countryside. In the BBC version, not the new-fangled Hollywood version; I will permit, however, that new Lucy is infinitely less annoying than BBC Lucy (but let us not digress!). Only, it had been lifted and nestled somewhere in New Jersey; I know this because I could hear the distant chatter of people and they all sounded like Snookie and the Cake Boss.  The sprawling lawns all around the intersection of two train tracks rose into Deli’s and hole-in-the-wall cafes. It was one such cafe in which I found myself. In the cafe, I heard soft voices that told me all the secrets to unlock the mysteries of philosophy and to write what would most certainly be the most kick-ass philosophy paper of all time. Of. All. Time. In fact, the more I reminisce about my experience, I’m fairly sure the voices were those of Dumbledore and Harry Potter, from the scene towards the end of Deathly Hallows, at the point in the story when Harry has died (oops, spoiler!) and has an out-of-body experience, meeting Dumbledore – also deceased (if you didn’t know that, you’ve been living under a rock); in the book, I suppose Harry learns something of the mysteries of life and death, but it seems to me they were really talking about epistemology and the meaning of everything in the universe. Clearly, I shall have to re-read the book. It’s a dreadfully important conversation.  In any case, Harry and Dumbledore were about to reveal the most secret, sacred secrets of the universe to my listening ears when a terrible thing happened.

My bedroom door opened and my mum said, “It’s 7:30. How late are you going to sleep?”

Apparently, I was only going to sleep until 7:30, despite the fact my alarm remains set for 8:00 am. Curious, indeed.

I was cruelly snatched away from epiphany – and Harry and Dumbledore and the distant cast of the Jersey Shore – and hurled back the the cruel reality that is a drab Wednesday morning after just two and a half hours of sleep. I do not possess knowledge of the innermost workings of the universe, nor the dark and twisty corners of my mind that converge to create such an altered state. But from the experience I have learned three things:

1. In my dream I did compose the 56 words my paper lacked, which had left it hanging just below word count. I scribbled these down immediately.

2. Out of body experiences, dream sequences, and the like, all seem to occur more frequently around train stations – both in my head and in children’s literature. This must be further investigated and researched thoroughly.

3. There is a safer, at-home alternative to having John Stamos put you under anesthesia, should you want to experience vivid dream-sequences of the Glee-inspired variety.  Red Bull be thy name.

The following D.H. Lawrence has been hailed as “sourly misogynistic”:

To Women, As Far As I’m Concerned

The feelings I don’t have, I don’t have.
The feelings I don’t have, I wont say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don’t have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.

The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they’ve got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven’t
got them.

So if you want either of us to feel anything at all,
You’d better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.

Perhaps I’m failing miserably as a feminist (and as an English major), but I don’t feel any sense of misogyny radiating from the words Lawrence wrote. Was the piece titled To Men, As Far As I’m Concerned, it might be hailed as a fundamental work of feminist poetry. Was it titled To Men, As Far As I’m Concerned, it would succinctly sum words I’ve failed to find many times. I would thusly argue the poem speaks more to the human condition than anything else. Lawrence is keenly aware that we’re often in love with the idea of love. As I’ve discovered many times, wanting to fall in love doesn’t mean you are in love, nor will it make you fall in love. And I don’t think this is trap that ensnares women only; men fall victim, too.  Maybe Lawrence is right, if we are to feel anything at all, we better stop idealizing.

Go is the word that sums my rushed existence. Go – the word itself – is hurried in nature. It’s painfully brief and lacking in substance. Without embellishment, it’s directionless. Go, like the implicit command of a starter gun, is jarring, reactionary, and hollow, as it hangs in the air. Catapulting forward, even with the speed of Usain Bolt, is pointless if you are rushing to an unknown or ambiguous line in the sand.  And pounding pavement anxiously may take you many city blocks, but it wont take you on a journey through used bookstores or allow you to browse the windows as you pass or to soak in your surroundings with a scalding cup of coffee.

Go where? Go with who?  Go to what? And why even go in the first place? It’s easy to forget.

I’m so swept up with going that I’m at a loss to remember why I started running in the first place. Caught up in the momentum of this marathon stretch, I feel like what I’m doing has lost any meaning.  It’s just empty, purposeless, journeyless, go.

I’ve been told that runners reach a second wind, that after pushing through the pain and exhaustion, they hit a new high, abounding in energy and enthusiasm. I keep telling myself that if I just keep going, I’ll hit my second wind, too. But it hasn’t happened yet, and I wonder how long I will continue harried and hurried. How long must I wait to hang up my running shoes?

There are a lot of silly, nit-picky, ridiculous things that upset me. I hate it when I share my toothpaste with someone and they squeeze it from the middle. I get infuriated if someone leaves toast crumbs in the butter. If you leave the toilet seat up in the middle of the night, I will kill you. And if you get my drink order incorrect whilst wearing a Starbucks apron, I will curse the day you were born.

I care about having silverware arranged correctly on the table. I hate when people end sentences with prepositional phrases (and sink into self-loathing when I do so).  I need for the volume on the TV and stereo to be set on an even number.

But there’s something I don’t care much about: the way my name is pronounced.

Some people fly into a rage if you mispronounce their names.  They will sneer and pronounce their names the way they prefer with a condescending air of superiority that makes everyone feel stupid for reading the name incorrectly. They show no grace, despite fact there are numerous popular pronunciations.

I’m not one of them.

I will admit that I was mildly annoyed when the Starbucks barista handed me the cup in the following picture:

Frankly, I was annoyed because Niomi isn’t an actual name. I didn’t want anyone to think my parents were crazy hippies with the need to channel their creativity through spelling a perfectly normal name in a completely ridiculous way.  But, had the barista pronounced my name NYomi or NAYomi, I would have picked up my drink, without saying a word, and strolled out of Starbucks unperturbed.

For 23 years, I have been living with two first names.

NAYomi?

NYomie?

Which is it?

I’ve never bothered to correct anyone. My parents call me NAYomi, so I suppose that’s my “real” name, but my mum’s accent occasionally makes it sound more like NEEomi. It didn’t help matters that my mum’s side of the family tended to call me NYomi, while my dad’s side proliferated NAYomi. To further the confusion about my name, on the first day of school I was always too shy to respond to the teacher’s first run through the attendance with anything more than a nod or a wave of my hand. Until I was about 14, I would have rather died than speak up in front of a room of silent classmates. The teacher could have called me Bob and I would have gone with it. Every year I deferred to the teacher’s pronunciation of my name, and every year the kids in my class followed my teacher’s lead.  Thus, my friends are almost equally divided between the NAYomi and NYomi pronunciations.

I should probably care about how my name is pronounced, but I don’t. In grade school, I was the fat kid with the last name Hogg. As long as nobody was connecting those dots, I could have cared less about what they called me. Beggars cannot be choosers! It just seems really unnatural that I have no preference; neither pronunciation resonates more deeply within me. I don’t hear one as “right” and one as “wrong.” They’re both my name.

Still, it’s been troubling that I don’t have a preferance. I recently met someone who asked me, “NAYomi? or is it NYomi?  Which do you prefer?”  I realized it was completely ludicrous to reply, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Either way.”  It’s my name, for goodness sakes!

The thing that makes me reticent to decisively pick one pronunciation over the other is the fact I’d have to start correcting people that have known me for more than 10 years. It seems like it would be an overly burdensome – and possibly rude (?) – thing to start now.  Do I pick a pronunciation and leave a grandfather clause for those who met me before I chose?   Or, should I adopt one of my many nicknames and vehemently proliferate it at every opportunity presented, desperately hoping that it catches on?  It might be fun to be NJ, Mimi, or Mia for a while.

Although, I suppose that would lead to confusion about whether my name should be pronounced ME-ah or MY-ah…

Earlier today, I snagged a copy of Katy Perry’s new album.  By snagged I mean that I bought it from iTunes, but snagged sounds better.  I’m disappointed with the album. Katy Perry doesn’t have a particularly strong voice, so the number of ballads made the album feel completely underwhelming.  I sincerely hoped the entire album had a California Gurls vibe, but it was a lot more Teenage Dream than anything else. In any case, the album does have a few good songs, and I suppose it was a better purchase than three cans of  Red Bull.

Having listened to it beginning to end with no pauses, stops, or repeats – the way I always listen to a new album -I decided it was complete pop fluff with one exception: Who Am I Living For?

Check it out (and ignore the certain air of cheese, that seems obligatory when making this sort of video. And the spelling/grammar mistakes, for that matter. I did not make this video):

I am ready for the road less traveled
Suiting up for my crowning battle
This test is my own cross to bear
But I will get there

It’s never easy to be chosen, never easy to be called
Standing on the frontline when the bomb starts to fall
I can see the heavens but I still hear the flames
Calling out my name

I can see the writing on the wall
I can’t ignore this war
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

This really stuck out as a timely reminder to always consider who I’m living for.

You can suit up to do battle, walk the least traveled road, and bear the most difficult cross, but, at the end of it all, what does it matter if you’re doing it for yourself or for purely selfish motivations?  The thing that keeps me forging ahead, no matter how difficult it may be, is the knowledge I’m not living for me. Although I’m not a particular fan of The Purpose Driven Life, I believe everyone should open the book and read the first line: “It’s not about you!”  Living out our selfishness and narcissistic tendencies may lead to the appearance of success, but it doesn’t lead to purpose of fulfillment.

Here’s a little something upon which I’ve been reflecting:

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

Philippians 2:1-11 (The Message)

My friend Simon is a lot of things. He is a filmmaker, a chocolate cake enthusiast, a critic, a cynic, and a button-up wearer. He is also right. Not all the time, but a good chunk of the time.  Last night, he was right. He suggested I respond to a young man’s invitation by simply writing, “No Thanks.” I have never been good at harsh, solid responses to men. I try to be polite and ladylike. So I buffered my response with an, “I don’t really know you.”  Simon was right.  A simple “No Thanks” would have been better.

In my own defense, the guy said, “I know you live in Canada and all, but I think we should start doing something.” I wasn’t sure if that was a euphemism for something else, so, despite the thousand other reasons I felt no inclination to respond positively, I felt that I ought to decline the offer. That and I don’t respond to facebook messages that begin with the words, “hey mama.” Especially not from a white guy.

Of course the guy followed up, insisting that we could get to know each other, and I found myself responding with a classic bull-filled response about being so over long distance relationships and being too busy with school and work.  Well, I suppose my response was honest enough. I am “so over” long distance relationships. And I am very busy with work and school and trying to finish a damn novel. But would those things really matter if I met someone with whom I had real chemistry? No. They just wouldn’t stand up as a real reason to not pursue the elusive Mr. Right. Or someone that seemed awfully right, for that matter. If I met someone I really hit it off with, distance and busyness would seem like very small obstacles.

Last summer’s brief spell dating a man that shall only be known as “Jersey Shore” (total guido!) was enough to remind me that I should only get involved with someone I really click with. Over the past year, I’ve also learned that I need to stop looking for Kevin 2.0. It would be so easy to continue looking for someone “just like Kevin, only he doesn’t do [insert frustrating thing] and actually likes [thing I like].”  I’m over it. I’ve moved on. And I need another Kevin about as much as he needs another Naomi. I’m pretty sure that amount roughly equates to “not at all, not even a little.”

So where does that leave me?  Single.

Sometimes I feel like I have become incredibly picky, but looking at the guys I’ve been involved with in the past, I know I haven’t been picky enough. I’d rather spend a lengthy period watching all my friends pair off and settle down than to keep dating for the sake of dating. It’s just frustrating. I feel like I’m finally at a place where I’m emotionally ready for another serious relationship, but I’m just not meeting any one that catches my fancy.

I still believe in fairytales and true love and being swept of my feet. Actually, the problem is that I’m just not willing to settle for anything less.

Now, if you excuse me, I shall go find my copy of Sense and Sensibility; perhaps Jane Austen will hold the answers.

Tonight I write about cardigans. Josh requested I write about cardigans, and, as I have little else to write about, I shall offer you a few thoughts about cardigans.

I have a long history with cardigans. As a Scottish school girl, the cardigan was an integral part of my identity. And uniform.  That formative period of my life left me with a general distaste for cardigans. I’ve always been the rebellious type; thus, I felt it necessary to rebel against cardigans for a long time. This led me to embrace several alternative fashion faux pas from the mid 90′s until about 2003. I’m talking about serious faux pas. On many a day, I left the house wearing denim from head to toe. I even carried a denim purse. I owned denim shirts and skirts and jackets and pants, and I wore them all in some sort of ridiculous blue ensemble. Don’t even get me started on the strange color combinations that I paired with my Old Navy tech vest. Although I courted cardigans upon occasion, I was bullied out of my openness to the garments by a giant, butch pain in my ass, who gave me hell for wearing pink.  Looking back, I see nothing wrong with my hot pink sweater, but I suppose anything from the Gap or Old Navy would intimidate a 13-year-old who grew up on a basketball court and lived in over-sized sweat pants.

So it seems strange that cardigans have become a staple of my clothing diet.

In the past six months, I bought at least 5 or 6 cardigans, all of which I’ve over worn to the point of destruction. I love cardigans. Two of said cardigans are pink, and I’m sure everyone I know is sick of seeing me in pink cardigans. On a particularly bad day, I found myself waiting in line at the Tommy Hilfiger outlet, baby pink cardigan in hand. It took every ounce of will power I had to put it back and walk out of the store. I own black cardigans. I own grey cardigans. I have biscuit coloured cardigans. Yes. Plural. Three biscuit coloured cardigans, to be exact. Beige, if you prefer.

Why am I telling you all of this? It just serves to illustrate that we’re a product our journeys. It might be my nature, after all, I come from a long line of cardigan-wearing women. It might be nurture; I was raised with cardigans, sweater sets, and films in which Doris Day wore cardigans. Whatever the reason, cardigans are in my blood.

The sooner we embrace our roots, the living history in us, the better. You can runaway from who you are and your past, but it’s still going to be there. When you finally confront it, it will hit you with a vengeance. You will wake up one day with a closet full of cardigans.

I’m a girl who wears cardigans. I’m not even cool enough to rock a hipster look. I am a Gap poster child reject. And I’m happy with that.