Friday QuoteDay

“Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Adventures In Unemployment

(September Edition is here. February Edition is here.)

Un, Under, Over Edition

First came the Un. Unemployment, the gift of soft pillows, of endless cups of tea, the quiet mornings of empty driveways and empty homes. It can be post-apocalyptic to walk suburbia during a workday morning. Row after row of houses abandoned for 8 hours every day, 5 days a week. The first time around I was in a city neighborhood, and there was always noise, always people. Seventh Street, Plaza-Midwood, Elizabeth. I could walk them all day and never be alone. This time it was just me and the small brown birds, the occasional rabbit, and once, one cold, foggy morning, three white-tailed deer clacking across the sidewalk to greener backyards.

Then came the Under. I worked, but not enough. An article here and there. Under-the-table editing for a bit of spending money. A contract position that was underpaid but steady for a few months. A blog post, a photo, a blurb. It was sometimes exciting, sometimes dull. All the while, I looked for full-time work. I was digging holes in a desert looking for a spring.

Multiple résumés, cover letters, inquiring emails, applications. Smiling through well-meaning advice from employed family and friends ("Have you tried Monster.com?"). Submitting writing samples, portfolios, editing tests. And more than once, squeezing into a business-appropriate pencil skirt and high-collared shirt, my feet in heels, clacking across marbled lobbies into office towers for interviews that would lead to nowhere.

It seemed an Over was ever just out of my reach. Work harder. Ignore the sweat and bleeding palms and dig deeper for a bountiful well. A field of holes was behind me; cracked dry earth ahead. Keep digging, keep scraping, keep going. Is that damp earth? No.

It was an ocean, it was vast and salty on my face, there was an old man building a boat and there were animals swimming by in pairs. Where was once a desert was suddenly a deluge. I was asked to edit a magazine for the summer while the editor-in-chief was on maternity leave. I was asked come in to do some temp work at my old job at the alt weekly. I was asked to write several articles for more than one publication on topics that interested me and were a pleasure to do. I was asked to submit my portfolio for a corporate job. I was asked to send in writing samples for an uptown gig. Swimming, floating, the tidal wave had finally, finally come in. No more vigils on dry, infertile sand.

But then, just as swiftly as the waters came, the course turned. The magazine I was to help edit for the summer folded after only one month of work. My weeks of temp were up. Word came that the corporate job decided to not hire anyone for the moment. The uptown gig fell through. I was alone again with my shovel, muddy, tired, and thirsty. I couldn't remember the taste of fresh water, and the sight of greener backyards. What next?

The only thing to do was pick up and keep digging. The last of the salt water on my face may have been tears. They were well-earned. When I walk the mornings, the houses stand at attention, faceless windows fitful for human bodies. My desktop overflows with résumés. I keep a spreadsheet of all the job applications I've submitted; the final count since the start of the new year reached 173. I've long lost count of the interviews.

It is June, and the sun shines, and the birds sing, and the rains come late afternoons. My desert story ends not with a tidal wave, but a tiny trickle. After a month of worry and walking, the corporate job which previously decided not to hire, called. If I wanted it, the job was mine.

Here now, in the waning green month of June, comes the Over.

You Find Me: The Advice Round

Much like the recent Weird Facebook Ads, I will occasionally write a routine post after I check my stats and see who is visiting FitC and what brought them here. Previous searches are here, here, and these two here. Today's round is dedicated to those looking to FitC for advice. I'm sorry that I am your source for wise counsel, but I'll do my best at supplying the advice you seek.


1.) DO NOT DO THIS.

FitC advice: Do not do this. This is not a Thing. This will only result in pain and chaffing and, if mixed with vinegar, a penis volcano. Contrary to how cool that sounds, it is not sexy nor comfortable. Nobody wants that for you.


2.) Not Even Close

FitC advice: Well. If you would like to donate funds to make FitC into Dan Feuerriegel's Wikipedia, there's a PayPal button to your right. It will take a few million, so have at it. Dollars or Euros is fine by me. Looks like you get the star for this round.

Other than that, I don't think FitC is quite what you're looking for. (How do you feel about David Bowie? Yes? No? Come for the Dan, stay for the Bowie?) Anyway, here's his Twitter: https://twitter.com/DgFeuerriegel


3.) If I Had It, I Would Share It

FitC advice: Call Iman. She's got the goods.


4.) Are You Asking?

FitC advice: Does Daniel Feuerriegel have a girlfriend? I don't know. Or is this Dan Feuerriegel looking for a girlfriend? Well, alright, Danny-boy. Since you asked in such a round-about way, yes. I'll be your girlfriend. I'm sure my husband won't mind. Do you like David Bowie? You do now.

This image totally does not belong to me. Found via every Dan tumblr in existence.

I spelled your name right multiple times. In Internet terms, that probably means we've reached first base. Your move, Dan.


5.) Magical

FitC advice: Is this real? A whole shop devoted to nothing but BOWIE?! Where is this magical place? Take me there. Like Narnia. I will hop in any wardrobe for Bowie.

I want to go to there.

If it's not real, my advice is for everyone to empty out their piggy banks and we'll open a Bowie shop ourselves. AshleyISee has already named it Bowie's Boudoir. Let's do this.

Friday QuoteDay

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” 

― Ray Bradbury, American author, from Zen in the Art of Writing

 

Weekly Flâneur: Rosy

Pink roses by lake. Click to enlarge.

Rosy Summer Days are here!

Happy Summer Solstice, Northern Hemisphere! 

Let's go dance in the sun. 

Wild roses growing by Lake Wylie, McDowell Nature Preserve, Charlotte, N.C.

Friday QuoteDay

"Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures -- the fuller breasts and rounded hips -- have become distasteful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.”

— Sandra L. Bartky, philosopher, "Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," in Feminism and Foucault: Paths of Resistance

Weekly Flâneur: Peachy Keen

Image of ripe peaches in wooden baskets. Click to enlarge.

Summer time!

In the last years of my grandfather's life, his home in a wooded area had two large, unruly peach trees growing in the backyard. My mother would send me outside to pick peaches, but I would spend more time sitting in the tree and eating my fill than plucking a supply for later. Since the trees were left unattended and overgrown, the best fruits were at the top, and it took bare feet and scratched arms and legs to climb through the bramble of branches. Totally worth it though, and my memories of summer are forever peach-flavored. 

If you ever find yourself on a road trip in the South, no matter where you go, there will be a stand somewhere along the way selling both fireworks and Georgia or South Carolina peaches by the basket. They will be your best purchase. The fruits of summer are waiting for you.

Sweet peaches from the King's Drive Farmer's Market in Charlotte, N.C., June 2013

Friday QuoteDay

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, Native American author, from The Painted Drum LP

Weekly Flâneur: Little Star

Image of hand holding wildflower. Click to enlarge.

Twinkle, twinkle?

Spring wildflowers grow on the graves of Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte, N.C.