Life's Little Changes - A Review

By Edith McClintock

Last month, I packed up and shipped off my worldly belongings to Washington, DC. In the process, I lost my sister’s cat. We scoured her neighborhood for five-days looking for the poor skittish thing. We climbed over train tracks, looked under porches, inside blackberry bushes and homeless camps. Cages at the Humane Society. Craigslist. At my sister’s request, I even visited a psychic’s office. But eventually, I had to give up and wave goodbye to my sister and family. I shed tears along the entire length of the spectacularly scenic Columbia River gorge that bisects Oregon and Washington. Into Idaho and Wyoming. For the cat, myself, all the things I’m going to miss while my nephew and niece grow up.

I’m moving overseas.

The just returned cat.

Just before arriving in Denver, I learned the cat had finally come home. I was relieved. I continued driving—more than 3,000 miles in total—through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia, finally stopping in Maryland. I began searching for a place to live. I met a woman whose granddaughter has been missing for three years. I felt guilty about my stress over a missing cat. I started a new job/training. I ironed a lot of suits. I re-remembered how to plan and pack for a commute. I spent weary, nauseous hours on the metro. I got to stare out at the Capitol dome all-day during training and drank too much coffee. I spent every free hour searching for a place to live.

And what a fun process that was—turns out DC has a tight and very expensive rental market along with at least one truly mental Georgetown lady with an English basement to rent. I learned not to say things like: “Are you going to paint or clean the apartment before I move in?” or “Is a cat okay?” or “You do know the windows in the bathroom don’t actually close?” In fact, I didn’t get several apartments I bid on. I grew worried. So when the crazy Georgetown lady from Craigslist sent me twenty-plus phone calls and emails over a one-hour lunch, I wavered. I made excuses. I considered still going to look at her place. Just in case. But ultimately I made the right decision. I canceled my appointment and received this in response:

i apologize you are demented but we keep forks here to gauge cats eyes out and linens to smother them in so sorry this wont work out for you because you are psycho and will make sure everyone knows you are a complete and total waste of everyones (expletive deleted) time.. you lame (expletive deleted) your excuse was not even creative in the least.. and lose that number its a friends phone as mine was lost in the linens and towels cats suck like their crazy owners.. stay at your paretns hoouse you are gonna be picked up soon by the man in the straightjacket and who the hell is named edith anymore?? LOL!!

Yeah. But the next weekend I finally found a place to live with a fantastic landlord and in a beautiful, walk-able neighborhood near a metro stop. I slept on a blow-up mattress for a few days and waited for my worldly belongs to arrive. I was in the midst of unpacking said worldly belongs when my laptop died. The Apple store told me my precious laptop was vintage, gone, that I should just toss it away. I spent a few days pondering my options, processing the loss. I bought a new computer. By then, I was way behind on a project for work and spent every evening of this past week catching up. Which leads me to my point: I’m tired. My brain is on information overload from work. I haven’t read a book, watched a TV show, or seen a movie in months. I need to exercise.

But still, I tried. At the moment, I’m working next door to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and since I’ve visited a few times for lunch (and it has a great, although not cheap, café with native foods from the Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso-America, and the Great Plains), I decided to attempt a visit to the actual museum today and write a review.

But still, I’m tired. And it’s impossible to grasp any substance during a 20-minute jog though a packed museum, much less a Smithsonian museum. My brain is not currently capable of much synthesis. I remember colors, masks, teepees, some beautiful horses, and lots of videos of Native Americans dancing. Something about Carib Indians. The kid’s area seemed fun—it made me miss my nephew.

But it’s free. It’s on the mall next to the Capitol building, so no doubt it’s worth a visit if you’re in DC—definitely for the café—and I’m pretty sure for the actual museum. I’ll go back one day soon, attempt a slightly slower amble through the exhibits, and get back to you.

Since it’s best to end on a positive note (and a little personal promotion), Monkey Love and Murder is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And for those of you overseas, the Book Depository has a discounted version with free shipping anywhere in the world.

Star-Crossed Balconies

By Beth Green

Photo by JP

At the age of nine, when I wasn’t making up elaborate (and slightly shocking) stories about what Barbie and Ken were up to, I’d devote hours to drawing my dream house. I pestered my father until he gave me a half-unused notebook of graph paper. Then I would carefully sharpen all my hoarded Faber-Castell colored pencils, and set about drawing elaborate, fantastical floor plans. These dreamy blueprints encompassed private filming rooms for the movie studio I was sure to one day run, stables full of horses

I’d one day learn how to ride, swimming pools shaped like mythical beasts, ballrooms fit for the princess I imagined myself to be, and, in every bedroom, a white-railed balcony.

For where would Juliet have been without her balcony?

When I was 18, I finally moved into my own place, a two-bedroom apartment in Moscow, Idaho, which I shared with a roommate, a couch-surfer, and a friendly ghost who liked turning my CD player on randomly at night when I was home alone and scaring the bejeezus out of me. We had a bathtub, a purple carpet, but, alas, no balcony. The building itself was a handsome marvel of western, small-town America. Built of red-brick, the former hotel housed some of the town’s best bars and restaurants and dozens of apartments.

After a year there, for a few months I lived in a tiny studio apartment tucked under a common metal stairwell in Bend, Oregon. In the evenings I looked out the windows at the tenants’ car lot and the ankles of my upstairs neighbors coming down the stairs, and dreamed that one day, I could rise in the world.

Photo by JimBap

Later that year I moved to Spain, a country whose streets are studded with handsome, dignified half-moon balconies complete with elegant wrought-iron railings and pots of bright and trailing flowers. I’d walk down the roads of my neighborhood during the siesta and gaze up at the green shutters above me. Occasionally, an old woman would peer down while hanging up her laundry. I’d glimpse TVs flickering in the living rooms beyond, sleepy cats flicking their tails through the bars of the balconies. But did I get one? No, I somehow managed to find an apartment—perhaps the only one in the city?—without a balcón.

After university I transitioned to working in Florida, in a retirement community where I’d often tell people how to find me: “Don’t worry, I’ll be the youngest person in the room.”

The architecture here matched the terrain—flat. The movers and shakers there had, not towers, but estates--one-level suburban palaces coiled around the turquoise shallows of their swimming pool and embraced by green swaths of imported grass. The residents were protected by 12-foot-high gates, which in turn were surrounded by strip-malls. A balcony here translated into a terrace, a patio,or a sun-room. I rented a unit in a converted motel by the beach and fed stray cats on the cracked concrete path, pretending it was my own Mediterranean suite.

Travel called me again, and I answered, starting all over in the Czech Republic. If Spain is meant to have balconies, then Prague is meant to have spires on its buildings, but they don’t lack for balconies either. My “flat”—as I took to calling the plain old American “apartment”—was in a building more than 150 years old. Each day when I walked down my neighborhood streets, I’d gaze up and notice some new detail—a plaster cherub, a particularly arched window—that I hadn’t seen before, even after several years of passing by. My building had squeaky wooden floors, an ample kitchen, double-paned glass windows, and quirky neighbors, but, again, I lacked a balcony.

Original oil, Ford Madox Brown, 1870

Four and a half years following in China found me living in an ivory tower separated from the crowded streets by key-card entry and uniformed guards, in a haphazardly-split 1980s-built unit in a building too short to warrant a permit for an elevator (you need six floors or more, too bad if you’re in apartment 501), in an ageing beauty queen of housing estates, where taxi drivers never needed more than the name of the development to bring me to my door.

And still, no balcony.

This week, I’m setting up a new home in Cebu City, Philippines. I’ve looked at a multitude of places to rent. A two bedroom, brand-new townhouse. A three-bedroom faded-glory affair on a back street above a shipping company. An upmarket studio slightly more homey than a hotel room. A minuscule “two-bedroom” apartment that took out the kitchen to provide the extra bedroom. But all of them, every single one, has got a balcony. Whichever apartment I choose, I get to be Juliet. I get to have a balcony.

My boyfriend’s getting a memo in the morning: Time to start rehearsals. “Tis the East…