cups unbroken

There is a midrash that tells the story of a king with a set of fragile, glass cups. He knew that if he poured in hot water, the cups would expand and break, and if he poured in cold water, they would contract and shatter. So the king poured the hot and cold waters together and then poured them into the cups, which did not break. The lesson is that compassion and judgment are the hot and cold waters--either one alone would break us, and both need the other.

Thinking about compassion makes me think of my friend Stephanie. She's this beautiful Polish-Colombian girl with thick black hair and a fast-draw smile and excellent taste in coffee. We met in Oxford and as soon as I met her, I wanted to hear all her stories. She is whip-smart and always ready for an adventure. If I had to name something wrong with Stephanie, I would say she is too compassionate. When I hear that sharp voice in my head, criticizing the pretty girl or the man driving too slowly in front of me, I like to think what Stephanie would say.

Something today reminded me of Steph and the picnics we took on our trips. We had the most beautiful weather for almost all of our trip to Scotland. In Edinburgh, we picnicked in Princes Gardens, near a group of pot-smoking yahs and we read our newly purchased Vacation Novels. Another day we climbed up Calton Hill and watched some poor model in a tiny dress fight the wind as a photographer snapped pictures. It was so windy that when we'd finished eating we lay down in the grass, as close as possible to the ground, and talked about how our hearts were broken while the clouds shuffled across the sky. Steph is the only person I can remember ever just looking at the clouds with.

Steph and I during the first Oxford snow
In St Andrews we hiked back into Lade Braes, this creek-side walk. We found a place with mottled sunshine and sloping grass and ate stone fruits, fresh mozzarella, crusty white bread and individually-wrapped chocolates. There's this drink in Scotland, Irn Bru--it's the Scottish national soda, and I managed to live there for four months and not have it. So Steph and I bought cans of Irn Bru for that day in Lade Braes, and when she took a sip, she exclaimed--"This is Colombiana!" Colombiana is the same, sticky sweet bubble-gum flavored soda. "It tastes like home," she told me. On the way back to the flat it started pouring, pounding hail and whipping wind, and we sat watching the weather in Fran's flat.

Steph told me so many stories about her family and Colombia on our trip--how everyone dances, and when one of her siblings was married, she and her father were the only ones dancing with the new couple, because everyone else was afraid to join in. When Steph and I were traveling together, we were both claiming Scotland--her for the first time, me for the second or fifth or tenth time. No matter how much we talked about the men who'd hurt us, she refused to condemn what had been done to her.
"Steph, he was being a total asshole!" I'd tell her.
"Well, I guess," she'd reply.

I've been working to balance all of these things in my head. I like to think that during the trip to Scotland, Steph and I rubbed off on one another a little--that she cooled down my hot water, and I warmed up her cold water.

as of today

I am 1 month sober.

Yay me.

oatmeal

I sell a lot of oatmeal at the Cafe. Do you want blueberries, strawberries, bananas, walnuts, currants or cranberries? Hot or cold, non-fat or whole milk? Brown sugar? Butter? Honey?

My dad has a very specialized way of eating oatmeal. It's more of an Operation. He adds milk first--to cool it down, but also so it's the right consistency. Loose, but not soupy. He folds the milk in with his spoon. His favorite kind of oatmeal comes from this place down the street from our house, Joanie's, where they cook the oatmeal in milk, rather than water.

At Joanie's, they serve oatmeal with three little metal cups of toppings--brown sugar, granola, and raisins. Always, the toppings arrive first and we all begin to nibble at the granola and raisins. Always, our waiter brings us a second set.

After he has added the milk, my dad picks out a section of the oatmeal, near the edge of the bowl, perhaps four square inches. And he adds the brown sugar. He carefully folds the brown sugar into this one patch of oatmeal until it has turned an inviting maple color. Then he adds a few raisins and a few clusters of granola. These are lightly folded in, and then he proceeds to eat those four square inches of oatmeal. Then the next four square inches are duly folded with brown sugar and then raisins and granola and then eaten.

He has this magic talent of budgeting his toppings--I can't remember him ever running out of one topping before the others, or before the oatmeal was all gone. He only ever complained that there wasn't enough brown sugar. He, like me, prefers his oatmeal a molasses-laced bowl of softness, almost a dessert.

On one of my last backpacking trips, we made oatmeal--not the decadent, refined stuff from Joanies, but a thick, bubbling cauldron of cinnamon-y cooked oats studded with dried fruits and nuts--cranberries, prunes, apricots, pecans, walnuts, raisins. The fruit swelled up and started to disintegrate. A totally different kind of sweet from brown sugar, but sweet nonetheless. We couldn't get enough--we were ravenous; the oatmeal was fuel.

I guess the oatmeal at the Cafe is alright--not as creamy as Joanie's, nor as flavor-packed as the camping oatmeal.

Most everyone is baffled, overwhelmed, when I ask them so many questions about their cereal. Some people know exactly how they like their oatmeal, and are annoyed when I ask the questions--it's as if they are saying--Can't you tell I'm a regular? Jeez. The thing that got me thinking, though, was that oatmeal is one of the foods at the Cafe where people really have to think about what they want. Egg scrambles are already created--ham and cheddar, spinach-feta-red onion, swiss chard and bacon. But oatmeal means they have to think, the oatmeal's a blank until they make it their breakfast.

postcards

fancy one?
email me with your address. (pcarryer@gmail.com)
postcards from munich and sienna.

my heart is in a strange-but-happy place.
i'm excited to go home.
i'm excited for italy with my parents.

i'm not excited to fall asleep alone. the last three months have spoiled me. my stranger spoils me.

there will be, i promise, more updating this summer, not to mention more stories.

bad things are coming, we are safe

Last night I couldn't sleep and so my stranger told me a fairy tale about a foot soldier who found a magic jacket that made him handsome. The princess fell in love with him, and even when he took off the jacket, she loved him with all her heart.

I want to talk about my eating disorder.

I want to talk about it because I'm not ok, and I'm not healthy and it feels like some time, somewhere between sixteen and now, a switch flipped for everyone except me.

When you're sixteen, an eating disorder has a subversive kind of glamor--it's an act of rebellion. It's that teenage-girl way of being independent. These decisions are mine.

But when you're almost twenty-one, it's this shameful thing you carry around all the time, silently. When does this go away? Does it ever? Who is there left to rebel against?

When my stranger asks what's wrong, I don't know how to tell him that I feel like my body has nothing to do with my self anymore. That when I'm high is the only time I feel like a whole person, not trapped. That I don't know how to fix myself.