My dreams last night, the ones I can remember, were related to my colleagues at United Way. In one, I received a box here in Memphis that had a medium-sized fan in it – a circle shaped fan, the kind you put on the floor and it tilts (not the skinny oscillating type). It was black, heavy plastic. I had no idea where it came from, I knew I hadn’t ordered it. I looked at the box, and it had my writing on it – in marker. It was a box we had used to move offices back at United Way. Taped to the inside of the box was a clear plastic pouch and in the pouch were two folded up pieces of poster board. The one, in big letters, read Happy Birthday. And the other read here are some breads and oatmeal cookies for you… I love oatmeal raisin cookies, and the breads were really muffins (I like them too). It was from my colleagues back at United Way… and I knew it was my former co-worker Katie who put it together and sent it out. The fan was because it gets hot down in the south and they thought I could use it to keep cool. This dream really warmed my heart. Shortly after that dream, I had another one about my former colleague Tim. He had assumed my housing and homelessness responsibilities when I left. He was talking to a young man – someone who volunteered with us. Now that I’m thinking about it, I think it was a taller, slighter older version of this high school kid we (especially Tim) had taken under our wing at the office. This person was in a rough spot – they were now homeless, and Tim was trying to figure out how to help. He was a little flustered, because he also had the baby with him – Tim doesn’t have a child, but in the dream, he and his partner had adopted…. That’s when Nick came in, walked across my back and woke me up.
Yesterday, I got a text from my former colleague Katie. She worked for me almost the entire time I was at United Way. She took over publishing the annual report and magazine this year – it was big part of my job the last two years I was there – made my March and April months pretty stressful. Last April, given the state of my personal life, I nearly walked off the job – I was certain I was going to miss getting the publication done. Writing and editing work takes concentration, and my mind was not at all on work. Yesterday, Katie was texting to send me a digital copy of this year’s magazine. She said the way I set the magazine up made it easy to do and she said she really misses me. It was sweet and uplifting and clearly influenced the dream. I think the adopted infant thing was a strange manifestation of thinking about my ex-fiancee, B, and kids… both of us wanted biological children of our own. One time, as we drove in to Philly, she wondered out loud what it might have been like for the two of us to have met sooner – would we have had a family. It prompted me to say that if she wanted to consider adoption, perhaps an older child, I’d be open to the conversation. With mother’s day coming up, these things are sometimes on my mind. Obviously, I think the work stuff is just a manifestation of applying for jobs…Given my last work experience, I very much appreciate the people I worked with at United Way. When I compare the two environments, it’s like night and day. At United Way we supported each other and we were friendly and we always tried to see the best in people. I remember far too many days with my last job where I came home saying the place was a swamp or a rats’ nest. Everybody played cover your ass and pointed fingers and cut other people down. I follow the news of what my friends back in Bucks County are doing. I’m really proud to have been a part of that work.
This morning, ever so briefly (and longer now that I’m writing about it) I thought again about breakfast… specifically about a few that have stood out, and the nature of novel experiences and memory. I remember a couple of breakfasts in Italy… being surprised by the slices of salted and cured meats that were often served. I remember a hotelier falling off his stool as we ate (though I think that was closer to lunch). I remember a chocolate filled croissant in Venice – we were arguing. I also remember the breakfasts on my honeymoon in Anguilla – the white linen tablecloth on the small dining set on the patio – there was such a simplicity and elegance to it – toast and croissants with butter and jams, rich dark coffee, the sun, the water, the warmth. I remember quite a few breakfasts with B – having butterkuchen in Baltimore (you just have to have it – it’s amazing), I remember the time she left her credit card at Sabrina’s in Philly and we had to go back (we were heading out of town – I think to San Diego), and I remember the tiny place out in San Diego, C’est La Vie, she took me there because it was a place she and her mother liked to go to. I also remember a breakfast before a hike in Virginia. My friend and I were going to go to a Waffle House (I’ve never been), but ended up at a tiny place called Kind Roots Cafe in a strip mall. The eggs were the deepest yellow and the sausage was homemade and juicy… it may have been one of the freshest breakfasts I’ve ever had. The freshness made me think of the time I had lobster in Maine. We were at a place where the boat pulls right up to the restaurant and unloads the lobsters from the trap. The difference between those two meals (other than the obvious one) was that I had had plenty of eggs and sausage in my lifetime, they stood out because… well, they stood out. I had never really had lobster before. The experience was new and without comparison.
Experience and memory are funny things, inextricable from each other, always informing each other. Being present in the moment, usually involves trying to enjoy the experience as it is and without much comparison, yet past experiences are almost unavoidable….. For me, and I suspect a lot of people, it can be difficult to turn off that little critic. For a number of years, I made pulled pork every summer. It’s an all day process of smoking a pork shoulder… it always tastes good, but the level of goodness, for me, is about how it compares to other times that I’ve made it. I do the same thing with my bolognese. Breakfast in Virginia stands out because it was some of the best eggs and sausage I’ve ever had. Breakfast in Anguilla might not have been that great, but everything tasted better sweeter and richer because of the experience.
… I was hoping to have that thought process go somewhere more profound. I was hoping to be able to write about how to move forward in life (job, relationship, tomorrow’s breakfast) with or without the comparisons of what has come before. As I thought about it, I thought about the value of bad experiences and how they prep us to appreciate good ones (and how the reverse can also be true). I once walked away from what was probably a good relationship because I had been with someone who had a lot of the characteristics I was looking for. I met B after being in a relationship that wasn’t great for me. I’m heading in to a job, at some point, having come off a pretty bad experience. I may eventually try a relationship again, but on the balance (while it didn’t work out and there was a lot of hurt), I’m still coming from one of the more fulfilling relationships I’ve experienced. I don’t know what to do with those things…. I suppose it’s an observational aside, a taking the temperature of the water, an anticipatory visioning on how to like and appreciate whatever comes next. Ironically, the key is probably to not have anticipatory visions, but to just be. I’m working on it.
I’ve climbed back in to bed to finish this post. I feel a little bad that it’s undisciplined and rambling…. from dreams to memories/experiences to the influence of the past to whatever this paragraph is. I have my second cup of coffee with me. Memphis got cool overnight and I left the windows open – so it’s about sixty degrees in the apartment (and Nick is hogging the blankets on the sofa). I’ve been amazed at how much work culture still influences my behavior. During the week, I feel pressured to look for jobs and “be productive” – my days really shouldn’t look or feel that different from each other. Having applied to three or four jobs yesterday, I felt accomplished, and therefore didn’t want to be productive last night. At the same time, I couldn’t settle in to anything and started to feel a little lonely. My friend in Omaha, as predicted, has disappeared. My friend here in Memphis is interested in a guy, she too has pretty much disappeared. I kept telling myself I should finish some of those poems, or I should send some off…. and would quickly counter that with “stop saying I should.” Taking time off, from everything, has been beneficial. I’ve never just stopped like this. It’s a little like pouring the entire contents of your life out, looking at it and trying to decide what you want to pick back up…. ok, here are all the things from the work bucket, what’s worth keeping? Here are all the things from the relationship bucket…. the breakfast bucket. Doing this, stopping, has not only made me more observant of the world around me, but it’s made my past more accessible to me. It’s made me appreciate some of the things I might not have been as observant of in the moment. It’s forced me to think about how I can keep this “presence” moving forward when life starts to crowd back in. Stopping to listen and see, to be aware of my thoughts as they interrupt other thoughts has made me more aware of the different types of noise that I let in. And I try to say that without judgment – there’s a value to just following your mind and heart. Perhaps not by coincidence, as I was writing, I paused and checked Facebook. An acoustic version of “The Wind” by Yusuf / Cat Stevens has been making the rounds.