One Year Later

 

Well, it’s been a year and a month since Mike and moved to Vermont, and about a year since I blogged.

What’s changed in a year?

I learned that moving after college is hard. It’s trying in a way that’s impossible for anyone who’s never gone through it to understand. It’s so much more difficult than that uncomfortable cesspool of mingling freshman year. Here, no one cares. No one is going to go out of their way to befriend you or take you to good parties-they already have friends. There’s just no natural way of getting to know people outside of work- to make friends, you have to actively pursue them. But asking makes you think you look desperate, or like you’re trying to sleep with them. It’s a delicate situation. But we’ve made some progress.

Burlington is a hippy kid paradise. Make no mistake, I am not a hippy—maybe in a tragically suburban hometown I’m woodsier than average, but my idea of a good time is sitting in air-conditioned movie theaters and tearing apart plot lines of summer blockbusters. If they’re going to spend all that money, can’t they make a clever story first? But hey, I don’t know if I could do better. I just like teasing out flaws in other people’s work. I coulda been a critic. Or a leech.

I just expect a lot out of my evening’s entertainment for 7 dollars. I suppose the rest of the country pays a lot more, but here the drive-in is 7 dollars for a double feature. It’s a great price to pretend you’re a wholesome 50s teenager out with your beau. 

I’ve fallen in with some environmental activist up here, which cemented the difference between my type of philosophical/hobby environmentalism and the devout. I truly admire their devotion and complete faith in the cause, but I find it difficult to align myself to any large group or institution (see, Penn State pride). Even in the purest campaigns, it feels like the quiet voices always get drowned out by the aggressive self-promoters. Or maybe that’s a shallow excuse for my laziness. 

But in all, It’s really impossible not to be happy with summer up here. It’s all bikes and beers and swimming in the lake. Maybe it’s a symptom of the nature deprivation we have to go through for 7 months when it’s grey and cold and very very sad, but I have never seen a city more outdoor oriented.

 

Safe to say, I’m enjoying my newfound Vermont Identity. 

date night

“Magical midnight dueling pianos cruise” sounded more like a psychedelic album name than my evening plans.

Mike and I were drawn to the big boat in the harbor when we noticed the dueling piano cruise event. We’d been playing a lot of Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter, and then seeing Midnight in Paris romanticized our nostalgia. We planned our big night out: I wore my best dress, a confection of grey silk and embroidery. Mike had his saddle shoes, for dancing. Money has been very tight lately (these are franzia and beans days), but 10$ seemed like nothing to be transported to an elegant era.

Never mind the extra 6 dollars in hidden fees.  I was impossibly excited.

When we boarded the Ethan Allen III, we couldn’t help but laugh. We’d been transported into a floating rec-room

A low drop ceiling bore down on rows of card tables covered in nautical themed vinyl tablecloths. The few other guests were a group of older tourists from Michigan, wearing capris and hoodless sweatshirts emblazoned with city names. The wait staff was comprised of bored looking Russian kids, who were more concerned with drinking than attending to guests. The pianists started to play, and informed us that they would only play requests. “Any song you want!” they guaranteed. But somehow all of mike and my requests were lost; apparently 80s covers  were a priority.  Passionate mediocre covers of bon jovi songs continued for an hour; the bolder members of the michigian party danced on the faux-wood floor in the only way that drunk moms can dance. At one point, the laser light show started up, and seizure-inducing green beams blasted around the space.

On a side note, This is when I realized that lasers are really pitiful outside of dance parties. Nothing calls attention to the lameless of an event than a bigger effort on lights than on guests; it brings me back to days of walking into a hyped party at the Meridian (or some equivalently god-awful apartment place) and the room would be thick with smoke and a strobe light, rap blaring, and four kids talking over a keg in the corner.

At this point, mike and I have polished off our overpriced, sickly sweet cocktails, and the band has upped the ante in their desperate bid for crowd-engagement. They pull out sparkly hats and try to start an Elton john sign along, but the michiganians aren’t giving in.

Enough. We left our table, heading out of the room and creeping up a set of stairs until we found a way onto the front deck. The surface was slick with cold water, and the wind was cool and steady. Everything was impossibly dark. The sky was black, but the lake was blacker; reduced to a landscape of flashing sound and light.

Facing something natural that powerful and totally indifferent to your existence is always breathtakingly humbling. It’s almost the same feeling as staring at a fire; I can’t help but be reminded of our vulnerability… the incredible insignificance of my problems, my challenges and triumphs, melt away, and we we’re just two piles of energy cutting through the surface of a body millions of times more massive than ourselves. If nothing else, this terribly tacky date gave me a moment of calm in a summer filled with uncertainty, and that’s more than I could ask for.

plenty of fish in lake champlain

Burlington is full of art in unexpected places.

Personally, I feel like this is the most effective kind of art. When I visit somewhere like PS1, I’m expecting my mind to be blown by the incredible creative wackiness. My expectations are too high! And then I ended up wandering around a room full of stuffed animals dripping with peanutbutter, dejected, feeing for that creative high.

But Burlington can’t afford to be pretentious; it’s too distant, too out of touch with major metropolitan happenings. Wanna see a show? Drive to Montreal. Despite a lack of venues; artists make do. Pop up galleries invigorate abandoned (beautiful historic) mills and storefronts. My favorite was a sculpture we found in an vacant lot behind the rail yards; filing cabinets, stacked on top of eachother, reaching three stories tall. Boulders that define the waterfront (pieces of the breakwater) are carved into disturbingly realistic faces.

All this art has been inspiring; I’ve entered two contests! I figure, since the contests are based out of Vermont, my odds are a little better. This state has about 20% the population of brooklyn. And I’ve got a lot of Free Time, what with our limited social network. Making friends is terrible; it’s like dating. It takes a surprising amount of humility, or bravery, or something I’m sort of lacking. There comes this terrible point in your pleasant conversation with a stranger where you have to ask for her number, if you ever want to hang out again. Awful awkward. That said, I’ve had some recent social triumphs. But enough on that.

I’m trying to get adjusted to the idea of this being a permanent place. Signs of a permanent job offer are positive; they gave me my own towel hook at work, complete with name label. My name’s label-maker sticker covered up the last employee’s, Liz. (of course we don’t use paper towels, it’s Vermont).  Could I be a vermonster?

i just dont get the appeal of sudoku

It’s not even math, right? It’s just arranging numbers. I feel as though there are so many more exciting things just asking to be arranged; flowers, deck furniture, decor in the Sims..endlessly more stimulating.

I’m recovering from my brutal re-introduction to backpacking. We tackled part of Vermont’s Long Trail this weekend, to try out the new gear. I learned I’m scared of the woods. Too much Game of Thrones/an over-active imagination left me awake imagining scenarios where a white-walker zombie moose attacked our fluorescent tent. Despite the heavy rain, extremely challenging terrain, and my paranoia, it was a really awesome trip. Maybe this is a testament to mike’s relentlessly positive attitude, despite flooded out trails and a sulky girlfriend. And hey, I took down some mountains! Take that Breadloaf mountain range! (a name that really strikes fear in a hiker’s heart).

Speaking of Mooses;the apartment has a chinchilla, named Moose. I painted her likeness on top one of these great Bob-Ross-style landscapes I picked up at a yard sale for 50 cents.

its been radio silence

old writing!

Feigning nonchalance, we were constantly conscious of the space between our knees. His, clad in stiff black jeans, pushed roughly into the back of the Skymall, forcing the magazine into an awkward bend. Mine leaned against each other, pointing to the window, announcing that any contact our limbs might find while we were sleeping was purely accidental, as I was directing all my attention at the blinding clouds across the plexiglass threshold. Although we’d only interacted briefly at the start of the flight, it became clear we shared little common ground. He was an older Turkish man, who read pamphlets with enigmatic symbols on the pages, and he chased each line with a blue ballpoint pen. I was a foreign exchange student, set to catch a transfer in the Frankfurt airport. Our differences made us polite in way that stemmed from discomfort more than kindness.

My odd new relationship with my seatmate started an irrepressible wave of reflection on my big move. I felt like a breathing cliché; although I had been expecting this jumbled mix of anxiety and anticipation, the impact of these feelings was still sharp. I was headed to a country where I had no one. Would every human interaction for the next six months be obscured, something lost in translation like my awkward interactions with my seatmate? Would I always have to feel so conscious of my exclusion from a culture, viewing every experience through my tainted American glasses?

Pop-news articles love to point out the increasing trend of women in academic positions; we’ve now reached the point where female graduates outnumber males. I’d always felt proud to be a part of this landmark moment in gender equality. But thousands of feet in the air, I started to doubt my own motives behind my achievements. Perhaps I strived academically because of my desire to please, and the obligation to give my parents something to brag about at family dinners where cousins are inevitably ranked like show dogs in elaborate avoidant social dances. Perhaps this people-pleaser quality was more feminine than I’d like to admit.

I thought about my boyfriend, now half way across the ocean, who I pretended not to miss. We were young, so our relationship was open to public critique. Many well-intentioned advisors warned I should not stay home and regret my choice for the rest of my life, so I pretended not to miss him. But I couldn’t. Like all other couples in love, we shared that private belief in the profundity of our union; the secret idea that our love was the strongest the world had ever known.

I thought of my friends, ticking them off, visualizing them moving through their daily routine with naive stability and confidence. I realized the mundane temporal organization of my week, from the 10 am yoga class to Friday’s jazz night, had defined my identity.

I thought about the negativity poisoning these musings. I had made the commitment. As always, regrets were futile. I decided to see the romance in this opportunity splayed out before me. New spaces, cities, and systems were in my immediate future. And perhaps healthiest of all, here was a chance to step outside of the stateside life I’d spent the last 21 years carefully assembling. This opportunity would be a forced break from the addictive comforts that permeate our American lifestyle and soften our empathy. Somewhere between a nomad and a tourist, resigned to my frightening beautiful future, I didn’t flinch when the plane hit the runway.

linkedin

so i’m online again!

we’d been too cheap/lazy to buy internet, so we just bummed off a mystery unlocked signal for the past few weeks. it was very unreliable, and made me realize how reliant i am on the net. so what if i’m addicted to gawker and diet rootbeer? hey, we’ve all got our vices. (i have to buy my sodas outside of town and hide them in my car to avoid the organic crowd’s judgement.. my warm contraband tastes so sweet)

but now it’s back, and here to stay! we got the neighbors password.

a real post comes later, as for now, here’s the best song ever for you listening pleasure:

the simple life

Here, we have 2 bowls, 2 cups, and 2 spoons. When your bowl is dirty and you’re hungry, you wash it. This works very well for me. I like a simplified existence. It isn’t ideal for everyone though.

 

 

with pictures

in Vermont somehow they managed to get four Es in ice cream.

Our place. all found furniture

a chalkboard wall!

view of the park

a mannequin.. and a sign that the roommates must be good people.

off to lay in the sun. free giant panda guerilla dub squad show later! hooray.

landed.

The bike rack started to fall off somewhere around Whitehall, New York. I slammed on my breaks to avoid hitting the stalled milk truck ahead, and my already-precarious bike wrestled free of its bungees and crashed into the back of Scion. I pulled over to the gravel and tried to jury-rig something to get me through this last 50 miles, and I struggled with the elaborate knots on this heavy mess. I realized how ridiculous I looked, a fluffy blonde in a sundress futilely battling a greasy bike rack in the 90 degree heat.  Farmer’s pick-ups rolled by, and I thought of that nice bro who helped me get this bike on in State College. Where were the bros now?

Not in Vermont, it seems.

People are cool. Not cool in the New York way, with styled hair and careful name-dropping. Everything is very casual, but also deliberate… You should try to look as though you were farming on your friends CSA all day, but in skinny jeans.  Lots of beards, lots of white people with dreads (is this ever a good decision?). I love this dressed-down thing; I’m never wearing socks or brushing my hair again. That part is easy. There are a few things Mike and I are missing:

1. Tattoos. Everyone has them. From punk teenagers in the park to microbiology PhD candidates at UVM, sleeves are everywhere.
2. A Dog. A big, fluffy dog. Something healthy, maybe carrying one of those backpacks holding its water and snacks.
3. A longboard. I thought that maybe we could get a tandem longboard. I doubt mike would find that cute.

Apartment/house photos once things are unpacked!

Resurrection!

The Taryntaryn Berlin blog (or more accurately, State-College-Manhattan-Berlin-and-back-to-State-College-again blog) has triumphantly returned! The timing seems right. So, at my friends/familys requests, here I go.

Tomorrow, I leave for Vermont. Imagine it’s a new chapter heading in my memoir.

Sometimes I draft memoir in my head, and realize how dull it would be. There’s a real lack of conflict; not even those tumultuous teenage years seemed to get that rocky. Maybe it’ll be illustrated to spice things up; woodcut prints of me stuck in the Senate building elevator or locked in a bathroom in Stuttgart.

I’m hesitant to get excited about Burlington. One the eve of this next big step, I’m feeling noncommittal.

It’s possible mike and I will become stereotypes of contemporary liberal proto-yuppies; farm-to-table microbrew bikram yoga snobs. Mike is already showing symptoms; on the phone he seems blissful, in that infuriatingly peaceful way that the truly crunchy manage to exude. Maybe he’s discovered the path to nirvana is extreme bike rides and fresh mountain air, and maybe I’ll be converted in a week, too.

Maybe I’m just too snarky and suspicious to embrace their lifestyle, and we’ll move to the city (a real city, sorry Burlington) and be broke in Brooklyn. New York has a much stronger pull than Vermont; it seems unfair to compare the two.

Or perhaps I’ll become born again and move to the bible belt to get to birthing and spreading god’s word.

Who knows? I said I’m feeling noncommittal.

The nice thing about this internship is it’s built-in expiration date; if I become claustrophobic or landscapearchitecturophobic, I have a way out. But the unsettling thing about this internship is it’s long-term uncertainty. I might get an offer, but I’m not about to go apartment hunting. So when August ends I’ll either be homeless or homeless and jobless.

Vermont has bought me three more months where I can blissfully ignore my open-ended future. And I will toast a vegan microbrew to that.