The Reader Travels

So on the elimination diet you have to take out artificial sweeteners and food coloring. This left me with a dilemma. As on any other morning, the first thing that went into my mouth on that first day of the diet was my toothbrush with toothpaste sufficiently slathered upon it.

As I was brushing away, I realized that the toothpaste was blue and most certainly not approved for the diet. So I’m already failing at this thing, and I haven’t even had breakfast yet.

I knew about Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, so I did an Internet search for the ingredients, decided it was a great alternative to brushing with warm water and baking soda, then went to the drug store to pick some up.

Now, I know this is wrong, but everytime I look at this label:

I think of this:

Is there something wrong with me?

The Reader Travels is no longer just a solitary blog site feeding into my Facebook account. I’ve recently started The Reader Travels Vagabond Edition as part of the Vagabond Journey’s new blogger community. For now, it just means that I’m posting parallel blog entries each week, but I haven’t yet decided if I want to make it my new permanent home by transferring archives and merging the two paths.

I suppose that’s what adventures are all about — traveling down different paths, exploring the world beyond my living room.  The irony is that right now, I’m talking about traveling in my own home town over there. And Dallas is far from being a vagabond’s town, although I did give over five bucks in pocket change to a homeless woman who came up to me at a gas pump the other day asking for money to buy something to eat.

I just hate it when panhandlers give me some crazy story about how their car broke down and they need money for a hotel room or cab fare or whatever they say to make the story their own. But it’s almost always about their broken down car. When I lived in Houston, it was usually the guy pushing the kid in the wheelchair, a primal appeal to the heartstrings, and the guys washing windshields, working for their keep. In Dallas, it’s always the broken down car that tells the mark, this is just a one-time situation that will end as soon as I get my car fixed and go back to work.

I gave this woman money just because she said she was hungry. Granted, she was camped out beside a liquor store that hadn’t yet opened for the day, so she still could have been lying, but I don’t really care if my money went to feed her addiction or not. I may have given it to her if she had said she wanted to buy a bottle of rot-gut, just for her bold honesty.

The gas station and liquor store sits on the banks of the Trinity River, and I’ve often thought this river might be a viable place to live if I had no other. I have not walked this river, hidden by concrete, warehouses and industry, but I suspect I might find people there, forgotten by the rest of the world. The City of Dallas is revitalizing parts of the river, but I suspect there will be plenty of refuge to be had, still.

So I had another birthday yesterday, and I didn’t really care because the years are just starting to melt together at this point. But then I realized that my new age is actually the answer to life, the universe and everything, according to Douglas Adams. It’s also the atomic number of molybdenum.

Here’s to a year of enlightenment and hoping that the question to the answer is something deeper than, “What is six times seven?”

When I read Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, I kept thinking, this is a man I would have enjoyed hanging out with. You know how people sometimes ask you to name three famous people living or dead you’d like to meet, I’d probably have him on my list.  I may not have agreed with all his politics, but I had a lot of respect for him, and I got the impression he was a great conversationalist. I just liked him, plain and simple.

Anyway, it made me think of the questions Woody Allen raised in Bullets Over Broadway, about knowing the difference between loving the artist and loving the man.  They’re good questions to ask, especially if you’re somebody like Woody Allen, a great artist with an all-too flawed persona.  Some people can’t get past the man to appreciate the artist, like in the case of Roman Polanski and that thing with the thirteen-year-old girl. Others find themselves disillusioned when the media persona is shattered by reality, the most recent example being with America’s favorite golfer, Tiger Woods.

And though I don’t know any of these people personally, here are some thoughts I have on the artist versus the man:

1. Alice Walker - I think I love the woman more than I love the artist, even if I don’t always agree with her politics. Her art is often a vehicle for her politics, but that’s OK, because I just love her. Can’t explain it.
2. Gary Oldman - Love the artist. I have a strong feeling I might not be able to tolerate the man.
3. Sean Penn - Same thing. Love the artist. Not so sure about the man. 
4. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon - Wow, did they really break up? Love the artists, could have totally had a couples affair. Again with the politics, though.
5. Natalie Merchant - I used to love the artist, and I was in awe when I saw the 10,000 Maniacs in concert and she stood up there singing acapella. Then I just got too annoyed at all the smug dripping off her and her music, and I just can’t even listen to her anymore.
6. Ann Beattie - Love the writer, but after reading one or two interviews with her, she’s probably not much fun to talk to.
7. Matthew McConaughey - You know, I don’t care much for the artist, but I’d totally hang out with this dude, if only just to smell him and his no-deodorant-wearing self.

My heart may not bleed, but I see Che as depicted in The Motorcycle Diaries as my kind of leader. He’s one who serves those he leads. I like to think of myself as a servant leader, a term I learned from a friend who was big into her church.  She told me what she was learning in her class at the church, and I said, “That’s what I am,” and she promptly agreed.

Sometimes it goes beyond servant leadership into outright mothering.  I tend to get all maternal on people with all the protecting and nurturing and whatnot. You’ve got to watch out for stuff like that because some people might take it as condescending, especially if you’re doing it to your boss or your boss’s boss. You can see it now:

Me:  “Aww, you poor thing, are you having a hard time? What can I do to help you, darlin’?”
Boss: “You can do your job and get outa my bidness. That’s what you can do. I’m The Man, and I’m better than you. Grrr.”

That kind of “empathy” can actually get a person in trouble. I’ve lost friends over it. Of course, another thing that gets me in trouble is the fact that if I’m maternal, I’m inadvertently exhibiting mothering techniques learned from my own mother, which means, I’m hyper-critical.

I had this kid come to work in my department once, fresh out of the nearby Catholic university. Having escaped from his own domineering mother in Nebraska after high school, he wasn’t quite ready to meet up with her counterpart at his first big job. He was a talented kid, but he needed to learn attention to detail. He just wasn’t ready to learn it from me.

This whole maternal protector thing has been my biggest CLT. I once did a “Whatever!”-talk-to-the-hand to the company’s CEO in the middle of an all staff meeting in lioness protector mode. I’ve taken on superiors and adversaries who abused their power and their people. Thankfully, I’ve learned a little diplomacy since then.

All I can do now is serve and lead and help others to recognize how powerful a combination that can be.

My one experience riding a motorcycle was a dirt bike my boyfriend owned in high school. Of course my mother forbade my riding on it. She knew it would be futile to forbid me to date the wretched boyfriend, but she could hold onto her illusions about the motorcycle thing.

I have to say, it’s always been easier for me to keep secrets than to tell outright lies. If I hadn’t crashed the bike on the dirt trail and twisted my ankle, it would have been smooth sailing. But sporting an Ace bandage and a limp meant I had to come up with something to tell her that wouldn’t have me admitting to the crime.

When you’re a terrible liar, you have to keep it simple. The boyfriend was all about elaborate lies. He told my parents he had been doing some mechanic work underneath his car, when an axle or some other heavy under-body part swung loose and hit him in the head. All so he wouldn’t have to admit that he got drunk at the beach and lost a fight with a guy who was simply talking to me. I don’t remember the lie he expected me to tell when he flipped his car into a ditch and left it there because he didn’t have a driver’s license, all while I waited for him at the Stop N Go, my purse in the back seat of his car. All I knew was that it was just too complicated, and I wouldn’t have pulled it off if pressed about it.

So I kept my little lie simple, to something I could envision myself doing, as clumsy as I am. I can still see it now, even more vividly than the truth of the motorcycle lying on my ankle. I was just walking along the brick steps beside the house I grew up in. I twisted my ankle by stepping off the side of one of the bricks as I had done twice before, for real. The fresh mint was overgrown there because of a leak in the hose, spraying water, so the steps were damp, but everything smelled minty clean.

Of course I ended up married to a great storyteller. If he were telling the tale, I would have twisted my ankle fighting off a large pack of wolves. The wolves would all be dead or severely wounded, but all I’d have to show for it would be a bruised ankle from landing a little wonky after drop-kicking the leader of the pack.

My Halloween tradition had me paying tribute to the late Farrah Fawcett this year. I had the perfect shirt in my closet already. I just needed a wig. Of course I didn’t own any jeans that weren’t oversized or holey, but I needed to remedy that situation anyway. So I took off work on a Friday afternoon and went shopping.

I didn’t even notice the tag on the jeans until I got them home. Here’s what it said:

Sweet ‘N Low (R)
She is always fun.
She is the girl that knows everyone and is loved by all.
She is refined yet fashionable… and she remains true to herself.
Her mid rise, easy fit with a flare makes her ready for anything.

I don’t know about you, but I think she sounds like a real slut.

When the postcard came in the mail with the word, “Islam,” in huge print, I was intrigued. The local Islamic center was holding an open house to invite non-believers to learn more about their faith. It was an outreach program designed to dispel myths and open up conversations with a predominantly Christian community.

If it was any one of the Christian churches that does recruiting events like this, I wouldn’t go. Of course, their postcards and flyers are often on the preachy side, which is a big turn-off. But going to the Islamic center was kinda like going to one of those free time-share weekends knowing full well you weren’t going to buy a time share. We were just in it for the adventure.

But now that I’ve been, I have a strange urge to go back. I’m still the time-share lurker, but I feel like I didn’t get enough face time with the women. I felt like I walked in there with an open mind, but I didn’t engage any of the women in conversation because of some inexplicable reserve. I don’t want to ask any of them if they like sex or anything. It’s disrespectful, and I already know the answer. Most do, some don’t. It’s a universal truth that unites us all, right?

What I did learn is that women wear a hijab to cover their hair out of some expression of modesty and piety. It’s a personal choice that marks them as Muslim like crosses around the neck and those little Jesus fishes on the backs of people’s cars will mark them as Christian. I still don’t know why modesty and piety are important or what they really mean, but the women gave me a lovely hijab of my own when I was there.

Somehow I feel that I would wear it in the comfort of my own home but not out in public. I know, it’s the opposite of what I would do if I were Muslim. I can pretend in the bedroom, but out in the world, I am who I am. Unless it’s halloween, and then it’s all fair game if some famous Muslim chick dies.

(Note that the picture is not me. It’s a model.)

After working a twenty hour weekend, I can’t seem to get my priorities straight. Do I write a blog entry to keep up my weekly goal (yes, obviously)? Do I exercise to keep from getting stressed and flabby? Do I wash the laundry that’s piled up over the last two weeks? Do I pay my bills? Or do I wash my hair so I don’t have to go back to work tomorrow in shame and disgust?

And Dan just reminded me I’ve forgotten to watch my fantasy football team and that despite the fact that I just want to go have a nice dinner and a glass of red wine, the Cowboys game is kicking off in less than an hour. Sure glad I brought home the leftover pizza from lunch, or else I’d have really been screwed.

 Peace out.

Every week day I drive east in the morning, heading for the gold towers along Dallas’s Central Expressway. I park my car in the garage and head for the elevators. Now, I don’t see a lot of road rage or impatience on my drive to the office. It’s a nice three-lane road, the lights fairly well timed, a lake and some trees along the way. It’s all relatively serene for rush hour driving.

But in the elevators there is evidence of the impatience to get in, get to work, get out, get home. What evidence, you ask? Well, it’s an old building, a bit of a landmark in Dallas, and the elevators are well worn.  You’ll see some southern hospitality as people do hold the doors for each other, and gentlemen often let the ladies get on and off first (though I’m not sure what that’s all about).

But note the Close Door button. All of the buttons have a clear plastic window covering them, all except Close Door, whose plastic cover was cracked and smashed through years ago, the letters rubbed off by thousands of oily thumbs and index fingers frantically pressing the button to get going already. I haven’t checked those for the higher levels, but all four elevators going to floors one through ten of the south tower suffer from this same symptom.

Now, it could be that the close door function doesn’t really work. These elevators are going to close their doors when they darn well please. Or, it could be that people are just impatient; they want to get where they’re going and not be held up by this slow machine that they can’t control.

Or it could simply be another symptom of the discomfort people feel when they’re in elevators.  Being in a lift with other folks has always been a strange social phenomenon. We avoid eye contact and stare at the door, waiting for it to open and let us off. There’s a risk of claustrophobia or entrapment, and the sooner we get it over with the better. For those people who are most uncomfortable with the forced social situation, they may just be pressing the button to give themselves something to do.

Rumor has it, they’re installing new elevators in the building. This tiny evidence will be gone, this fossil remnant of our evolution to a society that expects nothing less than instant gratification.