As I write this, I am stuck on an airplane full of Southerners that is parked in a FedEx cargo hold in a remote part of the airport in Greenville, NC. My flight to Portland is leaving from Atlanta, which is 80 miles east from where I sit. To put it mildly, I don’t want to be here. In addition to the general inconvenience, the crying babies and my desire to get to Portland, I’m also made uncomfortable by the presence of all the southern accents. I don’t know what it is exactly, but these days I feel a palpable distaste and scorn for all things southern. I know that it is a sweeping generalization, but I equate Southerners with George W. Bush’s presidential victories, aggressively righteous Christians and Wal-Mart.

**I just overheard a woman state to her group of co-workers, “I drive church vans!”
Christian stereotype confirmed!

This is the first time since I was 7 years old and a thunderstorm delayed our (my mom, my sister and I) flight from Philly back to LA, that I have had flight difficulties. On my return from Indonesia four years ago, I was bumped from the final connecting flight of my journey, which bugged the shit out of me, but didn’t delay me too much. Those flights ran every hour, so I was able to get on the next one.
I don’t see getting to Portland tonight to be in my future.

There is a little boy, probably 2 ½ or so, dressed in baseball uniform pajamas who has made two trips up and down the isle, with his father in tow. He is adorable and is grinning delightedly at all the people who are smiling at him in appreciation of his unabashed innocence. The only one who is untouched by his beatific gaze is the baby wailing with discomfort in the last row of the plane.

My best flight ever was one from Chicago to Philadelphia, in the late summer of 2001, but I didn’t know that it was my best flight until a year ago. I sat next to a woman and her daughter, and we chatted from take off until landing. I had been in Indonesia earlier in that summer for the Subud World Congress and was left extra open to conversations that were able to go deep, wide and spiritual. We talked openly about looking for community and feeling of connectedness. I told her about growing up Unitarian Universalist and how it had given me the ability to look at world religions with an accepting and open attitude (despite opinions voiced in the above paragraph). That I had been taught that the most important thing was to ask questions, think critically and make a choice based on something greater than rote knowledge. I then told her about Subud, and it’s ability to give one a sense of spirit within your body. She told me about her childhood as a fundamentalist and the understanding she had come to as a teenager that it wasn’t the path for her. Her exploration of yoga and her desire to find a welcoming community for her daughter. When the flight landed, we parted warmly, and I gave her my contact information, just for kicks. Last spring she called me. To tell me that she had started going to a Unitarian church in Chicago. To tell me that meeting me on that airplane had changed her life. That doesn’t happen much in life. You don’t normally hear back from the people upon whom we make an impression. Having her call me confirmed my feeling that it all isn’t random, that there is some order and importance to the people who drift in and out of our lives.

I spent last night in the airport. I could have gotten a hotel room at a discount rate, but that option didn’t materialize until 1 am, and at that point they had me booked on a 8 am flight, and it didn’t really make sense to leave, only to return six hours later. I’m now on at 9:44 am direct flight to Portland and I’m really regretting that I didn’t take that hotel room. I slept about three hours on the floor of terminal B, sleeping for 40 minutes and then waking from the noise or the temperature or the numbing of limbs. At this point I’m really looking forward to getting on an airplane, because it’s got to be more comfortable than my last eight hours on the floor.

For some reason my head hasn’t been in the blogging game for the last couple of days. I’ve done a lot, gone to Live 8, hosted a brunch potluck, had a date, fought with my father briefly and celebrated the 4th of July with a crew of great people. And now I’m heading to Portland tomorrow to visit my parents.

It almost feels like the more living I do lately, the less I have the energy to write about it. With so many interesting experiences coming my way, it also becomes harder to identify the one thing to write about. I’ve been self-censoring too, feeling like the little things that flit through my head aren’t worth a post.

So that’s where I’m at. Hopefully I’ll be able to shake this off soon and be back to my regular self.

So my date on Wednesday and the resultant funk I experienced afterwards had sent me down the path of interior exploration and examination. Yet again.

First of all I realized that what this guy said to me has nothing to do with me. That it wasn’t personal. That I wasn’t being minimized for the perspective with which I approach the world. That it’s his stuff, not mine and while I wish him the best in dealing with that stuff, I shouldn’t, in any way, take it on me.

The next thing I came to realize is that I’m approaching this whole dating thing with the wrong attitude. I feel very impatient about the process. I want to meet my person and be done with it. When I meet someone new, inside I’m all antsy, thinking, “is this the right person, I want them to be the right person.” Then when they aren’t, I get pissed off at the universe, mostly because it hasn’t brought the right person my way yet. This impatience is keeping me from living my life as fully in the present as I could be.

The last thing I realized is that I need to throw this whole check list that resides in my head out the window. By having some expectation of who this person should be, I’m limiting the universe’s ability to bring me the very best partner for my life.

So basically, I’m being reminded of the lesson that’s come my way more than once.

Calm the fuck down and enjoy life, just as it comes.

Little Pete’s is closing. I wrote a little something about it over at Philly Metblog.

Hey everyone,
There’s a fun, new project that I’m in on and it just went live today!

Check it out–

Philadelphia Metroblog

So last night I went on a date. A date that I was really excited to go on with a person I was looking forward to seeing. It was the third time we had hung and I had really started to like him. But now, instead of feeling happy and a little infatuated, which was the way I started out the evening, I feel deflated. Like I need to retreat back into myself for a bit of reorganization.

A little back story. Three months ago, I answered his ad on craiglist. It wasn’t your standard, three sentence “I’m cool so let’s hang” craigslist ad. It was thoughtful and articulate. It described the person he wanted to be with in quirky and appealing detail and I saw a lot of myself in the traits he delineated. So I wrote back. And he wrote back and I wrote back again and crazily enough, soon it was two months later. Over the course of more than 80 emails we established that we had a great deal in common, saw the world through a similar lens and generally would probably get along pretty darn well.

And we did. We met three weeks ago in Rittenhouse Square and spent over five hours talking, laughing, eating and wandering the neighborhood. He walking me home at ten minutes to midnight and I skipped into my building, infused with that inner music that only a good first date can leave you hearing. It’s almost a physical sensation, when your vibration meets another with which it hums in harmony and I thought I had felt it. The following week we met up for a beer and ended up sitting in the Square again, talking until I was too sleepy to keep talking anymore. He came up to my apartment briefly that night on my invitation. Looking around, he commented on my mission style rocking chair and a blue enamel pitcher that hangs in my kitchen, two of my favorite objects.

Last week he was on vacation and out of communication and I was aware that he was gone and that I was looking forward to his return. And tonight, we met up in the same spot in the Square that we had several weeks ago and started another evening together. We got into his car and headed out to Chestnut Hill to go to dinner and then wander over to the Wednesday night concert in Pastorius Park. Dinner was terrific (sushi, how I love thee) and I felt like things were going well.

But the conversation we had while sitting in the park has left me feeling frustrated. He admitted to having a problem opening up and then proceeded to open up about that problem (and little else). We talked about relationships, and whether it’s worth it to have them at all, knowing how difficult they can be. Is it better to just be alone?

My conclusion is that it is not better to be alone, but neither do I want to be with someone because just for the sake of not being alone. I know that relationships are hard, but in the end, to me, they are worth it. There is value in building a history and store of common experiences with someone you care about. After that I asked, “So, what are we doing here?” I didn’t really get an answer.

He quoted back to me something I had written in one of my emails months ago about recovering from my break up, which said

The thing I miss the most is the talking when you get home, after you’ve been out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night. Debriefing and deconstructing the evening and experience with someone and then falling asleep with them. The sense of being allied with someone.

He said that this was something that had stuck with him as a reason to be in a relationship.

At one point he warned me off of him, saying something like “I’m trouble, in appealing packaging.” When I’m with him, I feel like he’s working to keep distance between us. We have not kissed and he doesn’t call me randomly just because he wants to, I guess because he doesn’t want to.

So why do I care? I don’t have a whole lot invested in this. But I was feeling hopeful and excited about him. Finding someone with whom I have a lot in common with, who I like enough to get a little excited about, isn’t all that easy. Finding someone who loved “What the Bleep do We Know” is even harder.

Oh well.

So I was checking my site statistics, cause knowing that more than three people have read my blog makes me happy. I noticed that someone had visited from pudger.blogspot.com and so I wandered on over there. And discovered that I’ve been quoted and snarked upon because of my slightly overly idealistic perspective on Live 8. Now, I’ve been called on my innocence and glass-half-full mentality on previous occasions, so I’m okay with this. But check it out and tell me what you think.

In four short days, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway will be serving as venue for one of the biggest events to hit town since I’ve lived here.

Live 8 is more than a concert, it is a way for artists/musicians/people of note to use their power as celebrities to call attention to the number of children who die as a result of extreme poverty, every day. It is attempting to be a wake up call to the political leaders who will be convening in Scotland for the G8 Summit.
I feel like people in Philly aren’t perceiving that way, though. Many I talk to are expressing frustration at having their city shut down for the day. They are bemoaning the fact that the performers in London are better/more interesting than the ones in Philly. They are seeing it as just another large, outdoor concert happening in Center City over the 4th of July weekend. But it’s not just another concert. It is an opportunity to be a part of a global community that cares deeply for the health and wellbeing of all humanity.

I walked into my office this morning and my papers were soggy. The windows were dripping with condensation. My normally demure, straight hair increased in volume threefold. If you sat quietly, you could almost hear the mold growing in the walls. I was surprised there weren’t little storm clouds forming up in the corners. At 8:30 am Megan dropped off a folder of papers for her site partner to pick up a bit later. When Dana arrived for the folder at 10 am, I had to apologize as I handed over the folder, because in that short time, it had gotten really damp.

Yes folks, it’s summer in Philadelphia.

I found this on Area 151, it’s a fun little blogger survey. If you have a blog, click the link and head over!