Where Does Being Nice Get You?

"Nice" is basically an insult these days. I mean, I think so. I take it as "in lieu of a real compliment:" It's the backside of a silver spoon or a perfectly triangle slice of yellow cake.

And most of us at one point (or many) times in our lives have asked "Where will being nice get me for real?" Indeed, there are times we feel we cannot be heard if we're nice, successful if we're nice, loved if we're nice.

When you're an educator, and a student meets with you, and the student is nice, it's really hard not to help her succeed in the class. I wouldn't act immorally and pass a failing kid or offer extra help to some and not all, but I am hard-pressed to find flaw in a nice student.

When I worked at at Marble Slab, I remember it was literally as simple as Please and Thank You if I was going to help a customer out of a credit card jam, getting a discount, putting a cherry on top. Just being nice, the whole world opened up for those people.

In rehearsal this evening we discussed the US involvement with Pakistan. Complicated to say the least. And Jersey said, "It's so stupid. It's like paying a schoolyard bully not to beat you up, but, meanwhile, you're a six-foot juicehead!" Point taken. But, part of it is about...niceness. There's a niceness.

Nice flowers at a nice wedding in 2010.

Seriously consider what could have been avoided in the history of crime, violence, and hatred if everyone were nice. The immediate reaction is to say, "No, no. The nice guys would just get taken advantage of." But would they? If EVERYONE was nice. If everyone were nice, wouldn't domination seem a hassle?

Happy Bday, Muff!

Yesterday was Muff's bday, and as I currently live in the forest without reception, I did not get to wish her any happy returns--let alone many.

So, today, as it is my day off, I am wishing Muff a very happy belated bday.

Two really great things that happened while I visited her:

-She tried to get her husband to park in the numbered spot in the airport parking lot that matched my old college mailbox. This was crazy--but the type of silly little thing I actually was amused by.

-When discussing games she noted, "The only game I like it Truth or Dare." Maybe that's not a funny quote unless you know Muff, but I assure you, it's funny.

Other really great things:

-She's a super supportive friend.

-She works really hard at doing good.

-She doesn't have to work hard at all to love everyone and most every thing.

-Humility poster child.

Happy Birthday to my dear, dear friend!

I wish nothing but the best for you too.

Conversation about Past Mistakes

We discussed if bad things can be good because they lead to great things.

March 2012.

Before You Do Anything

Still thinking about my favorite couple. Two weeks ago.

Ask:

1. What am I going to give?
2. What can I learn?
3. How can I collaborate?
4. What's important here?
5. Do I have any reason to be worried or scared? (No.)
6. Am I listening?

Be Comforted

Cozy couple in PJS in VA.

Comfort. Capital C, sunny days on bicycles, chocolate cookies at the grad student picnic with Hill, trotting up to our favorite professor's door, being invited in for sits and thoughts.

The Comfort of the subpar but all-you-can-eat chocolate froyo and brownie squares at Sweet Tomatoes. "I want to be fat," I told Smirn. The Comfort of my home here. How it feels to punch in the code on our garage, taking an envelope out of my stationary drawer, knowing there is one pine cone stamp left for this letter Michigan-bound. The people I've met, and how they've turned into the people I can insult, or hug, and how it feels just right.

"You will begin to understand that healing is an effect. It's no longer the object of your intention. It becomes the unavoidable side effect."--Michael Pabst

I MISS VIRGINIA

It's been a great afternoon. Sincerely. Chelle greeted me at the airport with breakfast burritos stuffed with potatoes and pinto beans. Green sauce. We laughed these giant laughs and cast our nets far in the catch-up game.

I snuggled into bed eating the Reese's eggs Muff had decorated my guest room with. Trying to inch closer to Richmond. Super sunny here--I swam in the pool because I have one. My elementary school self would gasp at the idea that I don't jump in this body of clear water at least once a day, every day.

But, oh, I unpacked my suitcase and a tiny note "Love you so much" unearthed itself. Oh, just less than 24 hours ago I was in that white living room with one lamp on in Virginia, eating Spring Oreos with these PEOPLE, these LOVING PEOPLE. Oh, I suppose there are far worse fates to love so many people from so many different places, that no matter where you go, you're missing someone.


Hosts with the mosts.


Besties. Old Roommates. Love.


Cherry blossoms on the ground.

I mean, there are worse fates, but right now, I miss my dear friends.

I'm not drowning. There's no one here to save.

Made Up Journal Entry: Clarity

Right now.

It felt like June in Illinois today. The sheet of humidity. I watched farmland out the window from the backseat as Jamba drove us across Virginia this afternoon. Muff sat passenger side thinking. Think, think, thinking--little knots of think. She was trying to arrive at what she has been searching for this past year. What's...what's...what is it that she's been...looking for? Think. Think. Think.

At eleven PM, Jamba was asleep on the living room floor. Muff and I drank water in the kitchen. Suddenly, it was imperative to move. We started dancing, but we quickly turned into jiggling, wagging, slashing creatures of the night. Kicking our feet in zig zags. I doubled over with laughter. Muff literally fell on the floor. "Butt-down on the kitchen floor," she just said. She is next to me right now as I type. (See photo.)

Lightening lit up the sky. We crept past the sleeping husband, onto the front porch. We sat on the wooden steps and watched the lights come on and off. Natural fireworks. LIGHT-EN-ING. LIGHT-EN-ING. LIGHT! We were silent. Everything--clear, as it always is. It started to drizzle, then to rain. So we walked back inside.

Immediately, Muff knew. Think no more--she knew. There's clarity in spontaneous dancing and midnight storms. The clarity showed her: "Oh. I needed clarity to realize how much I need clarity--or how much I'm constantly trying to have it."

And you can tell Jane, if she writes,
that I'm drunk off all these stars and all these crazy Hollywood nights.

Rich!

I am RICH! I write to you from Muff's bed, covered in pastel yellow sheets. It's 3 AM (I must be lonely?) and I've let the lovebirds to sleep. But I am up, up and energized. It's juuust getting to bedtime in the desert.

1. The song "Alone" covered in Glee Season One has been stuck in my head ALL DAY. Do you have any idea what it's like to have Kristen Chenowith's belting energy bottled up on a day of planes?

2. I repeat, I AM IN MUFF AND JAMBA'S HOUSE RIGHT NOW. I was greeted with the utmost love. I sank into their embraces at midnight in the Richmond airport and I felt so grateful, welcome, satisfied: "My friends. My friends."

3. Decorations for my stay:



4. Dinner at one AM: veggie corndog, HOMEMADE RED PEPPER HUMMUS, Oreo cupcakes, Cadberry eggs.

5. This is my other family. You guys, friendship is the best.

'Til now, I've always got by in my own.
I never really cared until I met you.

Kashin' In

October 2010.

I love this picture because it's so normal. It's just Muff and her mom driving alone like any other day--except THIS DAY Muff got married. I like how seamlessly this big things just HAPPEN to us. We meet someone, next thing we know, we're married, we're dead, we're angry, we're addicted.

Happy anniversary to Muff and Jamba. Today it rained in Arizona. It felt like spring at Prin.

We both have regrets, those roads we never drove.
But it's pointless to dwell in the "what if"'s.
I mean, what if we had never met?