North Carolina Missive, October Edition

Hi Friendlies,

I just wrote the below post, and decided that it was better to let it be its own thing and then I could write a cheerful news related post (that’s this one!).

I got a job! I’m going to be a Barista at Bean Traders, a charmingly coffee shop/hangout on Ninth Street, otherwise known as the street with the interesting and worthwhile shops. I have my first fullish shift this evening, after previously having only had a two-hour-information-overload-shift. It seems like a good combination of ease and interest. I like meeting lots of people who need coffee, and giving it to them. It makes me feel like I am generating happiness.

Our garden is sprouting! So far the radishes are in the lead with turnips and mustard close behind. The carrots and kale are just peeking above the soil and we hope that we’ll soon see beets and lettuce and leeks. It was lovely and warm the past few days, and then rained like crazy last night. In a few weeks we might have to break out the clear plastic and hoops, but right now, if I were a plant, I would be happy (I am happy, I’m just not a plant).

My roommate Eva’s sister, mother, and grandmother visited us on the weekend, and they brought a bunch of pumpkins that we carved! Mine is called Henry. He has small eyes, a big tooth, a bigger nose, and the biggest grin you’ve never seen. They also left our fridge stocked full of delicious farm fresh food.

I usually refrain from talking about how wonderful Dana is, but she is really wonderful. She has joyfully immersed herself in school, especially her entomology class. Her cyanide death jar has been the end of many interesting insects, including a huge praying mantis we found on our drying laundry and a cockroach or two that we found on our floor. We even took a day trip to a nearby river and collected mayfly and stonefly larvae. We tend to compound each other’s happiness, like compound interest.

Love,

Ishai

P.S. I’ll see what I can do about getting some pictures on here.

Doing Nothing

I have been practicing doing nothing. By this, I mean something very specific. There is nothing that I have to do. Officially, I am doing nothing. But as I have learned from suffering through years of taking “doing nothing” literally, the key to doing nothing effectively is to actually do something. Just some something, not all something, because no nothing is not nothing at all. The nothing gains definition and a satisfactory aura of relaxation and repose when it exists in between somethings. It only occurred to me yesterday what a valuable life skill this will be for me, or conversely, how much unnecessary stress I have caused myself simply by being bad at doing nothing. Like any other taboo, doing nothing has a shameful aura that often prevents one from thinking about it directly.  The world needs a Dan Savage of doing nothing to liberate us from this oppressive brain fog, and if I weren’t so busy doing nothing, I might just do it myself.

One of the somethings I did last week was participate in two psychological studies. Though I am not at liberty to divulge the specifics of the experiments, interesting as they are, I can say that I answered a bunch of questions and did a bunch of menial tasks, and then they gave me money. Considering much of what I had to do felt like school – sitting, thinking, clicking, staring, performing tasks that give a sense of accomplishment that evaporates when examined closely – this recently de-schooled individual was happy to exercise those parts of the brain.

Another something that has happened over the last couple weeks is the creation of a garden bed. We bought a shovel, a rake, a hoe, and some bags of dirt and cow poo, and now we have a beautiful 20*5 ft. bed where there used to be sod. Plans exist to plant beets, chard, lettuce, and lots of garlic. We are thinking of adding another bed, since we all want to do gardening and one bed might not provide enough work.

When I came to Durham I brought all my stuff. Included in this stuff was an immodest amount of miniature swordsman, spearmen, militia, knights, cannons, mortars, skeletons with spears, skeletons with bows, skeletons with bows riding on skeleton horses, skeletons with spears and bows riding in chariots pulled by skeleton horses, giant birds made out of magically reanimated corpses, giant scorpions made out of magically reanimated magician corpses and huge things I can only assume are whale vertebra, magically animated statues, giant genetically modified future humans wearing giant future armor with guns, giant genetically modified future humans wearing future armor with giant flamers, giant genetically modified future humans wearing future armor and guns and chainsaws and future jetpacks, giant genetically modified future humans wearing slightly less future armor (they are giant genetically modified future humans in training) and guns and chainsaws, giant genetically modified future humans wearing even more giant future armor with even more giant guns, angry norse football players, human football players, wood elves, high elves, lizardmen, desert dudes with guns, orcs with bows, orcs with meat cleavers, night goblins with bows, night goblins with spears, night goblins with giant balls and chains, orcs with spears riding boars, goblins with giant crossbows, faux catholics with spears, faux catholics with holy hand grenades, faux catholic giant anthropomorphized steam and magic powered fighting machines with giant maces, faux catholic giant anthropomorphized steam and magic powered fighting machines with giant flame belching fists, some more faux catholic giant anthropomorphized steam and magic powered fighting machines with assorted giant weapons, and a whole bunch of time do play with all of them. :) I have successfully sussed out the appropriate gathering spots for like minded people with other, similarly impressive assortments of miniature giants so that mine and theirs might meet and determine their respective owners’ potency by engaging in a complex ritual in which the winds of chance and fate are represented by six sided dice and the whims of the aforementioned owners, respectively. It’s fun.

There’s a really good taco place here with eight delicious salsas. You can buy a container one of the salsas for three dollars and take it home, or you can get a two dollar taco, and cover it in as much of the eight salsas as you want – as much as you want! - for no additional charge. Something about that business model seems flawed to me.

I love you.

North Carolina Missive

Today is my twelfth day in the vicinity of North Carolina. Last night I got back from my first vacation, an experience that always makes home feel more like home, and so I now feel home enough to write about it.

I live in Durham, North Carolina. It is in centrally located within the state, very near Chapel Hill and Raleigh (collectively the three cities are known as “the Triangle,” but if you are imagining an equilateral triangle, you are incorrect, for Durham is closer to Chapel Hill than Raleigh, and Raleigh is farther from Chapel Hill than Durham (so it’s sort of a 3, 4, 5, right angle triangle with Durham at the right angle)), and a quick stint down I-40 from Greensboro and Winston-Salem. There a big trees everywhere, all the houses are one story, and cicadas hypnotize the unwary. Other than that, it seems to be filled with people, pretty much like any other place except for the ones that aren’t filled with people. Some of the social stuff is different – the history of racial conflict can be felt if not seen – but really people are people wherever you go. We all have the same supermarket layout.

I live in a house with my girlfriend Dana Powell, and our fun and friendly roommates Tyler and Eva and their four Chinese Fighting Fish (kept in separate bowls: they are fighting fish). We have 1700 sq. feet of space consisting of our bedroom, their bedroom, a guest bedroom (and storage space), a living room (with fireplace), the study room (a barren place), the kitchen (with flower vase), and the unfinished basement (with mold and washer and dryer), and about 700 sq ft. worth of furniture. Happily, all the empty space is a nice hardwood floor. All the rooms have ceiling fans! We have a front lawn and back lawn and a crappy push lawnmower. We’re hoping to tear up some of the pointless grass and put in a little garden, at this point it would be garlic and greens.

Tyler is letting me use his mountain bike and I went exploring the area the other day. In Walla Walla, the bike into town was slightly uphill, and the bike home was slightly downhill. In other words, there was one hill. In Durham it goes up and down and up and down. It makes for a wonderful variety of existence! My bikeborne wanders led me to the local nerd shop. It seems that when I go to a new place and have a bunch of empty time I easily gravitate towards fantastical pursuits, but then that time fills up and I become all sober and responsible and wanting to use what little spare time I have for the careful doing of nothing at all.

Dana is going to Duke and learning cool stuff. She is taking an entomology class, which means I am taking a regurgitated entomology class. She has a little death jar full of cyanide into which she puts her unsuspecting specimens so that she can learn about them.

I am making a concerted effort to learn how to do stuff. So far I have learned (with the patient guidance of my roommate Eva) how to back bread and make granola. Neither is very complicated, but they are the sort of value added product that cost less than half as much if you make them yourself. I intend to add to that list bike repair and the telepathic manipulation of large birds and small machines, which can be quite expensive if left to a professional.

Overall, I think I am doing an admirable job of accomplishing my pre-move intention of relaxing for a while. A time will come when I will be full of angst and worry, and then I will get a job to fill the time and bank account (the steady emptying of which is a surefire way to accumulate angst), but for now I am doing what I need to in order to be able to do nothing effectively. This does not mean that I always do nothing – that can become oppressive – but I do just enough of something that the nothing feels proper and reasonable. I received confirmation of my relaxing skills on the vacation mentioned in the first paragraph. All four of us spent Sunday at Tyler’s family’s friends’ lake house in Virginia. Everyone was very impressed with my ability to do nothing. And I can’t think of a better place to be doing it.