I Dream Of Dali

Almost every night, I have these vivid, weird dreams that I feel no one else can understand. For example, last night I dreamt Daisy was a puppy again, and she was trying to catch a baby turtle. But I was trying to stop her from catching the baby turtle because it was a baby, and because I thought it would just generally be a bad idea for a dog to eat a turtle.

And then I saw Hashim who is one of the boys from Kolfe Orphanage in Ethiopia. He's the boy who came to stay with us I think two summers ago. My mom would remember. He was grown up and looked stronger and healthier. He also seemed happy, which for a kid like Hashim was something big. The first time I saw Hashim smile was when Daisy the dog jumped up on his bed to wake him. Also when he learned to ride a bike. He smiled then.

There was one other time he smiled. I was taking him to meet Mary Beth, co-founder of Operation Hearts and Home, and the woman who organized the trip for the kids from Addis. We agreed to meet at the SUNY Purchase campus in Westchester. While we were waiting for Mary to arrive, I took Hashim into the student center. There was this super fancy Coke vending machine with a robotic arm that flew around locating your drink selection and dispensing it. He actually laughed out loud.

Maybe I have such strange dreams because my mind tends to wander, even in the daytime, as evidenced by the total tangent I just took on Hashim. 

My mom sent me an article last week about dreaming. It was written by Gina Barreca, a columnist for the Hartford Courant in nearby Hartford, CT, though my mom lives and reads her paper in Savannah, GA. I thought this bit was brilliant:

Men don't want to hear about dreams. When somebody says, "I was playing Barbies with Madeleine Albright and we were either in a circus or a brothel when suddenly I started to cut my hair with manicure scissors and Albright says, 'Shouldn't a priest read you your rights before he hears your confession?' which is what she always says in the dream but this time I answered, 'These are not my walls, but my paintings are on them,'" the natural question is, "What do you think it means?" And a lot of men don't like to analyze things.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/02/20/3338495/gina-barreca-women-unravel-dreams.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/02/20/3338495/gina-barreca-women-unravel-dreams.html#storylink=cpy

It just occurred to me what my dream might mean. I've been thinking of a book about Daisy for over a year now and done almost nothing. The turtle is symbolic of the slow traveler. Maybe Daisy was trying to eat the turtle in me. Because Daisy never dawdles. She goes for what she wants. Like socks. She really loves to destroy socks.

A Funny Thing Happened

Here's what happened. I kid you not. I went to this Christmas / Hanukkah party in 2009 and almost everyone there was unemployed. Either they'd been laid off or as freelancers the work dried up overnight.

I was in pretty much the same boat. I had two small clients left but had drained much of my savings. Then I got a call. I was in the library and I got a call from my friend Marybeth who is my friend Lou Lou's sister.

I've known Marybeth since Lou Lou and I were in college together in New Orleans at Newcomb College of Tulane University. I stress the Newcomb part only because Tulane decided to close Newcomb post-Katrina. Now Newcomb is this pretend "Institute" but we all know what happened Scott Cowen, President of Tulane.

Okay I'm getting off track.

Marybeth called and said, "Hey would you be interested in going to Ethiopia?" I think at first she was just trying to convince me to write some copy for her website. Then she said it again, "Hey would you be interested in going to Ethiopia?" And so I did. And so I did.

When I got back from my trip to Kolfe Orphanage in Addis Ababa, I realized I needed to get back on the horse. The freelance horse. Cold calling. Working my contacts. Get some money rolling into my checking account. Then I got a call from my friend Steven Stark, host of said Christmas / Hanukkah party for the unemployed. He had a referral for me. Unlike almost everyone else in the United States, Steven had too much work.

For example, Steven had to write copy for a commercial involving Playboy bunnies and his client Macanudo cigars. Then Steven had to fly to LA to oversee the shoot with the Playboy bunnies. Poor Steven.

So there's Ethiopia and Playboy bunnies and work. Finally some work.

I started as a freelance copywriter on-site. I went to work everyday for an agency writing web copy for multiple sites. It was very strange. Having been a freelancer for about 15 years, the idea of going to an office everyday was strange. The water cooler conversations, rehashing episodes of Lost or whatever the cool show is now. The intrigue, the politics, the hard work. I was in over my head.

Then a funny thing happened. I got into a groove. I made some friends. We went to Subway together. Then they offered me a job.

Working for the man. The man who has insurance. The real kind. With a plastic card and shit. Never underestimate the power of the word insurance. Or IN-surance as they say in Texas where I'm from.

It's been a big adjustment. The only way I can really explain it is to say it's like when I first got married. And I was all, "Whadd'ya mean I have to tell you where I'm going?" As jobs go, it's pretty cake. The people are nice. Like actually nice. Mostly we just work. Very few meetings about nothing. Most days I'm out of there by 5:30. And there's the insurance.

I'm reading this book by Laura Munson called A Story of Unlikely Happiness. So far, so good. I actually read the Modern Love column in The New York Times that launched her career. I could relate.

The thing is I don't know her story. I will by the end of this book. What I like already is that she is a writer. She wrote in obscurity for years - 14 books according to the one she finally published. That's me. Writing in obscurity. Down to about 1 blog per month now that I'm insured. Laura Munson reminded me to get off my ass and keep writing. In obscurity. Ad inifintum. Here I go.

N.B. I was talking to my friend Marc at work and I told him I used to work at The Washington Post. He said, "You worked at the Washington Post? Wow, how far you've fallen." And that's what I love about Marc.

Also I don't have to tell my husband where I'm going. He knows I'm going pee.

Do I Dare?

In late 2009 I started helping out a Long Island charity run by Mary, the sister of my college roommate. Helping might be too strong a word but I did a bit here and a bit there. The organization is called Operation Hearts and Home and they provide aid to orphaned children in various parts of the world.

Right now their focus is on Ethiopia and trying to help three orphanages that are housing older children who are unlikely to be adopted. Instead, they want to prepare them to become independent adults by providing an education and materials needed to get that education like financial aid, school supplies, and shoes, because you can't go to school without shoes.

Last Thanksgiving, Mary called to say a volunteer going on a trip with her to Ethiopia had dropped out for medical reasons. She wanted to know if I could go in her place. I jumped at the chance but we couldn't make it happen. The other volunteer's ticket was non-transferrable (of course) and I didn't have the $2,000 it was now going to cost to go at the last minute.

The Thanksgiving trip was designed to make preparations for a second trip Mary was planning for this February when she would be bringing a group of volunteers with her. She wanted to make sure their housing and transportation were organized. Also she was trying to get materials together to do various improvement projects for the orphanages.

All along Mary has been sending me updates about the February trip. She organized a group airfare that was about $1000 cheaper. She sent lists of what the kids needed and asked me to forward to my network. Then she called me yesterday and left a long message about some options to help me pay for the still very expensive trip. I could find a rich corporate sponsor who needed a tax write-off. (I'm not sure there are any rich corporate sponsors left.) I could pay for part of the ticket and she would try to help me find the rest. She would pay me to write during the trip, as there would also be a photographer in the group.

There a million reasons why I shouldn't go to Ethiopia in February. It's next month for one thing. It doesn't make much sense financially for me. The trip is over my son's February break and Valentine's day. I'll be leaving my family for ten days. Yada yada yada.

On the other hand, there was a time when I would've said screw it, I'm going. My mom and I used to travel together when I was in college and when I got out. She'd say, "Hey want to go to Egypt then we could meet some of my friends in India?" I'd say "Sure! Just tell me when."

We had big adventures. In Egypt we took a tour with a crazy group of Americans, Brits, a New Zealander and a rather dour Canadian who took an immediate dislike to me because I didn't know where Banff was. I probably couldn't have pointed out Toronto or Vancouver either but I can now.

Egypt was so fun but everyone got sick. Everyone. I think it was the boat trip down the Nile. One morning I saw one of the crew dipping the tea kettle in the Nile. I was a kid. I didn't really put two and two together. The New Zealander was so ill he fainted on the toilet and smashed his nose on the sink. My mom and I repeatedly had to go outside potty, not number 1. I lost 15 pounds in a week and a half. But I saw the Pyramids. I saw the Nile and Karnak and Cairo. Incredible things.

India was another matter. We were meeting a friend of my mother's who had a daughter studying there. The friend is Jonathan Demme's mother-in-law coincidentally. We actually recovered physically in India although at that point I was pretty much on a strict diet of dal--smushed up lentils. India was out of this world. So beautiful and colorful but so poor. Where Egypt, at that point, welcomed Americans and our music, culture, movies. In India multiple people asked to take a picture of me. I was an alien to them.

We spent too much time in Srinagar on a houseboat on Dal Lake. It was freezing. We burned our books to stoke the fire. My mother tried to teach me how to play bridge. Famed LA divorce attorney Melvin Belli stayed on the same boat. In their guestbook he wrote, "Quoth the raven, Nevermore." The houseboat owner, Mohammed, didn't get it, but we sure did.

The thing is, I did it. We did it. We didn't stop to think about the dangers or lack of medical facilities or any of that. We just went.

I'm not like that anymore. Or I haven't been. I'm always talking myself out of even little adventures like going to hear a lecture in the City.

At Tulane, I had a professor who taught Yeats and other poets. Mainly Irish poets and writers. He was Professor Finneran after all. By the way Professor Finneran, nobody wears a blazer with elbow patches in New Orleans. Anyway we dissected T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Even then as young as I was, this poem frightened me. I could feel the life draining out of this man as he grew old. I could see how much routine and the pressures of society can turn you into a coward. I particularly loved this stanza:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces
that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your
plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Do I dare? Do I dare? That's the question right? Can I pick up and go to Ethiopia in three weeks? Should I?

Totally along the lines of Eliot and equally profound, one of my favorite movies as a teenager was The Breakfast Club by the great John Hughes who died unexpectedly last year. Ally Sheedy's character says at one point, "When you grow up, your heart dies." Told you it was profound.

Here's to hoping my heart won't die and maybe I'll find my mojo in Ethiopia.

And on a lighter note, another fave John Hughes film was Sixteen Candles. Click to see the memorable "No more yanky my wanky" scene.