Departures

Public parks are ubiquitous throughout Taipei, and virtually all are equipped with exercise equipment unlike any I’ve seen in the States: steel posts with rope pulleys for tugging and stretching arms, metal elliptical trainers painted red and yellow, mechanical horses that lift your entire body with each pull of the crossbar.  My favorite was the lateral swing; I hopped on after watching a tottering and toothless Asian woman set all 4’9” of self in vigorous pendular motion, then spent a good five minutes trying to mimic the rhythm and height my elder example had managed so effortlessly.

As you may guess from the fact of this post, I’m back from my Asia jaunt.  My first day returned to Cambridge saw me crunching through piles of leaves on the sidewalk and grinning like a fool.  I made an impulse purchase of a sunny yellow flower during my morning walk and giddily handed the blossom to a stranger sitting down the street from the florist.  She looked confused about my intrusion into her personal space, but I grinned blithely and—certain of the joy she was concealing beneath her gruff exterior—carried on my merry way.

My Asia trip was useful and thought-provoking, though not the colorful experience you might expect such travel to be.  Hours spent alone, language butchered, mosquito bites accumulated, and lots of extended family met and re-met and smiled at from within the confines of my American-ness.  Smiles are certainly a universal language, but there are only so many grins you can exchange across an otherwise silent supper table.

That being said, it was a month I regard as very well spent.  I’m arriving back in Massachusetts with renewed perspective and much more confidence in my trajectory, as well as some appreciation for the virtually limitless number of shapes daily life can take.  As such, I’ve decided against looking for another 9-to-5 post, at least for a little while.  Instead:

I’m going to work part-time.

And I’m going to write.

!

Changes, changes, changes.  More on these changes later … maybe.  I sense that some end or alteration is coming to this blogging experiment I began a year and a half ago.  Where I’ll be in few months’ time is happily, and uncharacteristically, uncertain.  But so I depart.

Ends at odds

Throwing Away the Mail  [Wendell Berry]

Nothing is simple,
not even simplification.

Thus, throwing away
the mail, I exchange
the complexity of duty
for the simplicity of guilt.

I threw away the mail yesterday.  …Or rather, I threw away the envelopes containing the mail.  The mail itself has been piling up in my cubicle for the past month, as installers working on the 100+ stimulus-funded solar PV projects across Massachusetts continue to send me their weekly certified payroll for confirmation and filing.  The job is about as glamorous as it sounds.  But yesterday being my last day at DOER, I finally caught up with cataloguing the stack on my desk — no more tomorrows on which to relegate such rote office tasks.

I swapped out this payroll mail for post of another sort, a handsome stack of notes authored in the wee hours of Thursday night into Friday morning.  Writing is how I say my goodbyes, and dropping cards on the desks of colleagues Friday evening gave me good excuse to wander through our empty office one last time.  Was that reluctance I detected as I slid shut the drawer of my cubicle filing cabinet?  Unexpected.

I know it is my nature—and perhaps universal human nature—to wax sentimental about an experience as it is ending, but this past week in particular has been a remarkable capstone to my year at DOER.  Tuesday sent me out to an event at Berkshire Community College where we celebrated the school’s stimulus-funded solar PV system with the help of various talking figureheads.  I managed a long conversation with the workmen on site during our roof tour (“wow, so we have actually put folks back to work”) and was pulled into a photograph with the head of our 1000-person Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.   He greeted me by name, thanked me for my efforts, and wished me well on my next steps.

Thursday saw me out to lunch with the head of DOER, an accomplished businessman in his own right with whom I’ve exchanged only pleasantries.  Between bites of sandwich and stories about my garlic bread-loving housemates, I asked him honestly and openly about his vision for the state’s energy future.  He responded at length.  Though I may not agree with him on all fronts, the conversation did much to impress upon me the care with which he and other bright minds chart our course.  He joined DOER the day his company went public; he has faith in the possibility of good governance.

The highlight of my week was a lengthy Thursday evening out with coworkers who have become friends over the past 55 weeks.  I was flattered at the number who came to see me off, and floored by their thoughtfulness: much toasting, some roasting, and a handmade card accompanied the signed and framed photographs they presented me with.  I responded with a lengthy account of my first-day-of-work population snafu and raised my glass to all that I’ve learned as their colleague.   Though I didn’t say it, I thought it: some wry gratitude towards the stern manager who unwittingly provided me with fodder for a farewell speech.

I know that my year at DOER has been marked by wild bouts of cynicism and deep questioning of priorities, but here at the conclusion I realize how rich it has been, too.  It is bittersweet, this ending at odds with what I’d have imagined departing to be.  My despondent self one month into the job would have pictured personal jubilation; my pragmatic self as month six would have anticipated relief.  But my Friday self and my self today feel neither of those emotions.  I’ve left behind an unlikely literary friend in the fiscal director 20 years my senior; I’ve called an entirely unsatisfying truce with the Milton Friedman disciple who tossed libertarian volleys and the occasional parenting anecdote over our shared cubicle wall.  Leaving DOER is simplification of one sort; but such paring down is not so clean nor so certainly easy.

In any case, dear readers, I’ll leave things there for now and offer my temporary farewell: I fly on Tuesday to Asia for a month with family and a dear college friend.  Without a computer, I make no promises to remain in electronic touch.  So stay tuned for December updates instead, and be good in the mean time.  I’ll send some mail.

Me and my pal Secretary Bowles — check out our solar surroundings.

(Jolly good) Clean Energy Fellows

They know me very well.

Wendell Berry, “Throwing Away the Mail,” The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (New York: Counterpoint Press, 1999); 117.

Pretty respectable, Harwich Half

Just two days removed from racing the Harwich Half-Marathon, I caught myself counting the joggers I overtook during my Charles River jaunt this evening. Nine total.

By almost any measure, my race this past Sunday was a great success. I PR-ed by one minute and 46 seconds, crossing the line in 1:24:36. This put me at 6:28-pace over the cranberry boggy, Cape Codder-adorned course, and just under my personal goal of averaging 6:30 miles. I even had my picture taken with running giant Bill Rogers at the cafeteria awards ceremony.  And that plaque?  Swag collected for winning the women’s race.  Looks like I’m back in the saddle.

A wise running friend once told me that his high school coach had abided by a simple and powerful philosophy: that running is personal, not relative.  If you felt you’d worked hard, you had reason to be proud; if you didn’t feel you’d worked hard … well, that was your burden to live with. Coach Keene had a similar ethic — he’d warn against middle-of-race bargaining (“Don’t let yourself start with the ‘Oh, I’ll just try harder next time’ mentality”) and implored us to Run With Heart (“No Day But Today,” anyone?).

That you are your own judge.  The loveliest and most difficult part of running.  And since I’d hardly be the first to draw moral lesson from physical endeavor, I’ll keep things personal and brief:

Sunday made me realize that I’m still struggling to race in a way I feel proud of.  I’m still shying away from the blazing and blinding agony I remember racing to be.  I’m still not sure I’m racing for a simple love of the sport.  I want to figure out how to do that.

And I also want to figure out: how Bill Rogers does it.  He managed to congratulate me, ask about my air force brother, tell a story about Dayton, and flash a goofy thumbs-up in the space of a few sentences.  Good guy.

[Results: http://coolrunning.com/results/10/ma/Oct3_Harwic_set1.shtml]

Reaching the beach, episode 2

Well, Dad, since you asked, here’s the Reach the Beach Round-up, Episode 2, Photo-documentary Edition.  [Exclusive photo credits to DJA and whoever got their hands on her camera.]

Ours was a 12-person team comprised of college pals and acquaintances from Boston and New York.  Given our divergent home bases, we didn’t meet up as a full group until race day, but no harm done — there’s nothing like 27 hours in two (odorous) minivans to bring a group together under the Rhinocesaurus Moonrocket team name.

Our team’s start-time was 2:20pm on Friday.  Given that slower teams had been setting off in waves since 7:30am that morning, we were technically in the “elite” category.  This category included such powerhouse teams as last year’s race winner, who averaged 5:54-minute pace over the entirety of the 200-mile course.  Eek.

Still, I was positively giddy at the start line seeing our first teammate off.  I don’t think I’ll ever shake my love for the butterflies of pre-race anticipation.

We covered miles of scenic New Hampshire in vans and on foot, swapping out runners every 4 – 9 miles at specified checkpoints.  Reflective vests, headlamps, and flashing lights were required for the night portion of the event, and no one on our team got much more than 2 hours of sleep.  I ran legs at 4pm, 1:30am, and 11am; 4 miles, 8 miles, and 9 miles, respectively.

It wasn’t all scenic.  But with teammates out on the course and hordes of ludicrously decorated vans passing you along the road, there’s little cause for complaint.

We crossed the finish line sometime around 4:40pm on Saturday.  A quick dip in the ocean, and then it was off to post-race dinner.  Followed by more dinner.  Following by a bit of snacking, noshing, munching, imbibing, and some sitting.

So that’s the round-up.  Results? We logging a total time of 26:23:15, or 7:34 pace over the 209.06-mile course.  43rd out of 429 teams.  Pretty damn good for a group that had named an 8-minute average mile pace and faced its fair share of injury-recovering members.

What’s next on the docket?  The Harwich Half Marathon this Sunday, for one.  I’m intensely curious about what the ol’ legs will churn out this time.  I’m setting my sights on some ambitious goals, so I’ll keep you posted.  If you hadn’t guessed, I’m pretty thrilled to be running competitively again.

Reaching the beach

1:30AM jaunt through pine-y forests and past moonlit lakes of New Hampshire.  Brisk 6:45 pace.  Alone save for whispered cheering from fellow Rhinocesaurus Moonrocketeers.

I’m back from Reach the Beach!  Miss being part of a team.

Milestones, approximately

Those green mile markers slide by pretty slowly when you’re in the right lane of the freeway, doing 50. This was me the first weekend in August: pink nail polish and sunglasses, bridesmaid’s dress flung across the back seat, my (rented) Mini Cooper convertible keeping pace with the boat-like Buick station wagons and their squinting elderly drivers. It was my first time driving alone on an interstate. I sweated my way through the experience.

Slowly passed milestones—and tardily passed milestones?—were a recurring theme for me in August: the month saw the marriage of the first of we four Greeney kids, and the first death in our family that was of personal significance. I mustered the courage to chew out a careless driver for the first time in my life, set a definitive end date to my first salaried employment, and mixed my first summery mojito. I cried in public for the first time, too, at least that I can remember.  And I assented to allowing into a place I call home the first pet tarantula I’ve ever known.

Arachnids notwithstanding, that list of firsts probably puts me in some category of late bloomer and “emerging adult,” to borrow from that much-emailed  New York Times piece. It’s true that I’m not heading towards marital bliss, motherhood, or 401k-ed financial security, but I’m also not heading a lot of places. I’m still doing okay without a credit card, and still have yet to visit a doctor under the obtuse terms of my health insurance. I’ve still never taken a pill before, either. Does I-90 cross I-91 to the north or the south of Springfield? my boss asked me back in January, as we navigated our way between site visits. I had no idea. None whatsoever.

By and large, I’ve taken on other projects in lieu of dealing with mundane details like understanding credit lines and co-pays. The project in August was a construction effort: after spotting and resisting a dismantled hardwood bed frame put out with the trash by my upstairs neighbors, I caved and dragged the pieces into my already-overflowing bedroom. Rebuilding it required a weekend of scurrying back and forth between the hardware store and my apartment, learning to distinguish the sizing on a variety of screws, bolts, and corner braces. But when I finally put the hammer down and took three sweaty steps back, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied at the product of my labors: thick futon mattress and pillows, crisp sheets and paisley comforter, all resting atop a golden-blond wooden bed frame awash in late-afternoon sunshine.

Unfortunate, then, to climb into bed hours later and—k-THUNK! k-THUNK!—feel support struts giving way beneath me. My head and feet were ten inches higher off the ground than my middle section, putting me into some reverse suspension bridge mode, banana-ed somnambulist pattern. I briefly entertained thoughts of spending the night in bowed form, but rapidly abandoned that idea along with my construction project. Pulled a mattress onto the floor. Gave the frame a few resentful hits with a hammer before going to sleep.

My intent at the outset of this post was to wonder why certain items—co-pays, credit histories—are considered important landmarks on the road to adulthood, but others—hardware stores, storytelling—fall off the radar. Now, though, I’m not sure that’s what I really want to write about. Both are important, no? Let’s just say this: here in the middle of September, I’ve slept for three weeks in a wood-frame bed that I was able to repair myself, and amused family at my grandmother’s memorial with animated recounting of my construction failures. I haven’t driven since my Mini Cooper outing at the beginning of August, and I continue to make purchases in debit or cash form. My teeth have not been scrubbed by a dental hygienist, and I’ve yet to have my blood drawn or knees knocked by some rubber-mallet-wielding Cambridge doctor. But I’m still thinking about it.  Particularly as my health insurance ends along with my job next month.

How’s this for an Adulthood aim?  That I want to know as much about building as I do about buying, and I hope to be handy and savvy, both. There is room for the obvious milestones when measuring maturity, but I think there’s also space for me to erect a few of my own markers. Approximate metrics for knowing how much of a grown-up I’ve become.

State employees, off the clock

Yes, we can
… blueberry jam, in this case.

Not a bad batch of coworkers, eh?

[Thx, DG.]