P o c k e t CT

It’s true

Today is National Dance Like a Chicken Day. In honor of the nutso dance popular at weddings. Don’t know how? Here

Don’t want to do this alone? Jump in on this class. They even know the words.

Think this is nuts? I may agree with you.

Is this song a polka? If so it would be fun to polka around all the chicken dancers don’t you think?

come on let’s!

Driving back from Philly Jan and I again lost the New Jersey turnpike. Well in reality this time we hadn’t found it yet. It seemed like a mythic place that moved further away every time we tried to get closer.
So the iPhone kept thinking I was heading in the other direction and giving me nutso roads to take to get home. Jan also can not figure out google maps on my phone and it is not so very safe for me to do it while driving. Down one residential suburban street and on to another we finally see the on ramp. Waiting for a light we spy this billboard.
No I am not expecting you to see what this says. I will tell you.
So & So’s plastic surgery. Speed liposuction this week, swimsuit the next. We suck so you don’t have to.

One of the things I enjoyed about last weekend was coming across things that I did not enjoy. It went past getting out of my usual circles and to meet new people. It went into the reminders about things that are in the world as a whole, that are not in my world, some that I find truly horrifying.

Let’s take for example that billboard. Sure it is a little witty. But it conveys something that I see less of where and how I live. The marketing that preys on body image and dissatisfaction with well, everything. It is something pretty distasteful to me.

The list of things that I come across in the regular world that seem less frequent in the wonderful place I live is huge. I can start enumerating them and you will see either how lucky I am or what a snob I really am.

strip malls and superfluous pavement
bottled water shipped from far away
conversations about tv or sports
lack of good food
fake breasts and other obvious plastic surgeries
rich people
unnecessary SUVs
traffic
rabid irrational republicans
isms like racism, sexism, homophobia and the like
McMansions
an absence of recycle bins
people who view the war we are in like a sports event and are rooting for the home team

I realize that these things are here. I even had a coworker complaining of getting DWBed* near Northampton. That just shocked me. I had thought that blatant sort of racism, so frowned upon here, that those who felt it wouldn’t act on it. I am naive a bit I think. So I am more aware of all these aspects of society when I travel and I often suspect that they are in other places in a higher measure. So why ever leave Oz?

I am recalling my first trip to India. My father said to me, “oh I would never go there” when I asked him why, he talked about their treatment of women, the profound unfairness of the caste system, the disregard for life. Considering the fact that there is still widow burning, that the lowest castes have very little opportunity and that there are huge slums where the mainstay of life is to pick through trash to reclaim something to live off of. I said to my father if you only keep your travels to places that meet your standards, the places that meet your standards will never get any larger. Meaning that it won’t just be India to change me but somehow I may change India in small ways to be more up to my ideals. In reality though it just started my struggle with approaching cultural ways in a less judgmental way. I remember a conversation I had with the owner of the farm I stayed at. I asked him what if anything he would change about India. He considered this and said that he would not scrutinize customs, they were above scrutiny somehow. In the end and being from Rajasthan he chose the literacy issue. I thought about that conversation for months after. I would like to be able to approach other cultures with and anthropologists total lack of judgment but somehow I think your own culture deserves your scrutiny. Yes tradition is lovely but it needs a review every once. All that is served by traveling, even a little ways, out of Oz.

That particular trip to India was in October 2001. There were almost no tourists. I took a trip to the Taj Mahal. As we were walking from the bus to the entrance to the mausoleum there were bike rickshaws outnumbering the people getting off the bus. They had absolutely nothing to do. So they all really wanted to be the one to ride us to the entrance which was about a football field away. After the long and bumpy bus ride, I wanted to walk. The prices kept going down. Finally someone is yelling at me “One Rupee! One Rupee!” I turn to him and say “OK… Ten rupees” and he looks at me like I am crazy, “But I get to drive the bike.” The bike had brakes that were um… temperamental, the handlebars were a little off, it wiggled horribly as I rode it. All the other rickshaw drivers were calling and yelling to ours who was sitting in the buggy laughing at me, probably with some trepidation knowing that his rig is something that takes so intimate knowledge to run without putting us all in danger. This is knowledge I clearly don’t have but we all survived anyway.

I am quite certain that this interaction changed me far more than I changed anything there. I think that travel makes me both appreciate why I adore my home and also notice that even though I can not see the negative things that I notice in other areas, they are probably still here. The Happy Valley isn’t entirely Oz, but it feels that way most of the time

*DWB is driving while black. This person was pulled over and the officer seemed to want to check on the safety of the white woman in the car. The woman is his wife.

My calendar tells me that it is Lost Sock Memorial Day and it conveniently comes right on the heels of No Socks Day, which was yesterday.

So here is a big confession - I wore socks even after a lovely breakfast conversation about the holiday. Of course I wasn’t sure what the holiday meant until I just looked it up and it is as you would think - a day to free the little piggies from the confines of knits. But I had been thinking it was the day to kick off the weather being warm enough for bare ankles. This would allow me to strip the tubes off the feet anytime in the future which I can definitely commit to. But I have to admit I missed it entirely. I think I was a little distracted getting dressed. No worries! There is always next year. Don’t forget May 8th = no socks.

So now I should pay more attention to the Lost Sock Memorial Day. I will go home and look in the little basket on my dresser. It has unmatched socks from the laundry. The next load pulls some out and add some more. I think there may be three socks in there who haven’t left the basket in months. I think it is time to accept the fact that the other sock is truly gone for each of them. So for the time I have been typing away at this I have been thinking about those departed pieces of footwear, before reusing them as tomato ties and appliance polishers. I think maybe I have done my memorial duties.

I have been trying to write a post this week that is a little over ambitious and am getting stuck. In the meantime I will give you lots of my fluff and some other people’s meatier content.

Go see what you could do if we didn’t spend three trillion dollars occupying Iraq. http://3trillion.org/
It is a pretty interesting shopping spree.

Is it too dorky to wear my Tequilacon lanyard around for the coming week just so I can show off my flair?

Drat! How will everyone I come across see my super cool Dave2 buttons?

Things at Tequilacon that made me feel super special
10. I got to wear a crown Ok it is blurry like everyone else’s drunk photos later, but right then it was only due to cell camera and potholes
9. I got to watch all the twitter bugs enjoying their tweeting and twatting before I decide to delve in (if I do)
8. I had to actually introduce myself as PocketCT a wierd and wonderful thing.
7. Vahid put a lovely tattoo on my neck
6. Hillary is just as charming as you would expect and I got to be right down the hall from her. She was also rooming with Becky who is completely awesome and Miss Britt who can do this long cheerleader from the hood variation of L on the forehead for looser I will never forget. If you ever meet her ask her to do it for you.
5. Dave and I have the same iPhone cover but mine is way more broken than his (as in way more loved up) TC was like an iPhone festival.
4. I got to drive the last hour home listening to a fabulous 80s mix from Brandon AND I got to sleep with him in my room. OK not the real him but the Bradon head on a stick that Jan took.
3. I touched the cap of the TC mascot - Jan touched his hair because she is more badass than I am.
2. On Sunday morning after I stuck the bags in the car I knocked on 1011 and when Hilly, Becky and Miss Brit saw me they burst into uncontrollable laughter. I say “Hey what’s with me walking in the room and you all just bursting out laughing?” and that just made them laugh even harder.
and
1. Avitable drew me a monster cartoon. It is now on my fridge and will go with me to Naked Ladies on Wednesday. Wow!

It was interesting to meet people after only seeing their online presence. I’m looking forward to adding some of the blogs I couldn’t get to before TC to my blogroll.

I like the conversations I have trying to explain exactly who someone is. Here is one trying to pinpoint a particular dancer.

You know who he is… He is like 5′6, has redish brown scruffy hair…
     blank look
has facial hair that isn’t in any particular styled way, not a lot but all up and uncontolled like his hair
     blank look
He’s lovely, medium build, brown eyes
     blank look
He gives good gaze
     Ha! gives good gaze I like that.
Oh me too I think I said it first and I want it to catch on. Maybe I should write about it.

In contra dancing usually the person you are dancing with looks at you while you are dancing. This ranges from looking at a point on your shirt, forehead or hair to diving right into the depths of someone’s eyes for the time you are together. There is a very practical purpose for this is that you wont be a dizzy with swinging. Commonly the looking directly in the eyes offers a stronger connection dancing, or at least the appearance of one. This freaked me out considerably for the first few months I was dancing. I am supposed to go from one person I don’t know to the next, have their arms around me was enough to make me pause. On top of that sometimes they are regarding me with an loving expression that until this scene, I have reserved for people I have a more intimate relationship with. I just could not put out like this; I stared at shoulders.

Along the time I stop having to worry about dizziness I stared to be a little bolder in the eye contact arena. First it was just a few very accessible people, then more and more. Now there are only a few people who shake my comfort with this and mostly I enjoy it. Especially when I can use the distinctive way people give out their gaze to get the “Oh I know who you mean.” In the conversation above however it didn’t work and I will have to remember to point him out next time.