Sarah Cypher's Blog, page 4

Shoplifters Will Be Shot

In the heat of the Ferguson protests, it was hard to look at Darren Wilson’s corn-fed, supposedly bruised face and not suspect you’re looking into the eyes of white privilege. Or flat-out racism. If anything, the months since the verdict–verdicts–have showcased the ease with which an individual can become a synecdoche, an effigy, or a martyr.

Darren Wilson displays the worst of his injuries.

I started writing about this in the midst of it the original protests, but return to it now because people keep getting shot in my neighborhood. Backstory: Last summer I moved from a middle-class neighborhood in Oakland to one where unemployment is high. This was to purchase a house in a place we could afford, because real estate in Oakland is not much cheaper than it is in San Francisco. However, illegal stuff happens on my street all the time. Most of it–casual drug dealing by the mild-mannered guys who live in their vans–doesn’t bother me. Yet the neighborhood has its paroxysms of sketchiness, and sometimes outright scariness. Last week I called the cops three times in 24 hours. That Friday, three people were shot a few blocks away, on a bike route I often use. This came at the end of a two-week period in which our streets were shut down three times for police raids. We woke to the sound of helicopters, smoke grenades, and K-9 units, and seeing men with drawn guns run past the house. The police presence around our new home is huge.

Two blocks away on Jan. 9, OPD tried and failed to serve a high-risk warrant.

So it is fair to say that I listen closely when people talk about crime, being black, or the police, because though I am white/Arab, my home is not.

Creepy graffiti on our fence.

Yet since December’s spate of protests that shut down freeways around our house, popular discourse looks less like dialogue than it does street marches that turn violent; or whole bristly ideas jammed together in a tweet and hashtagged (#fuckthepolice #blacklivesmatter), ideas that rub shoulders in discourse but which are practically antithetical. The most useful material I’ve encountered so far are personal essays about racism and an art project connecting everyday people in Manhattan with ones in Tehran.

It feels like nonsense. It’s almost as if there are no words. And maybe that’s just how it feels to encounter the system. The reason this is on my blog and not tidied up as an essay for Salon or somewhere is because, like so many others, I have nothing to add except more doubt. Yet it almost physically hurts to not talk about it at all.

The protests leave me uncomfortable, albeit not as sad and angry as seeing systemic racism played out in predictable ways at unpredictable times. It makes sense to me that this is a relevant Occupy issue. Yet in trying to sort out what I think of it all, while it’s happening, I am unable to dig very far through this rocky soil before hitting a number of questions that make me feel stuck anyway. Yes, today’s Mike Brown is yesterday’s Oscar Grant, but do we really think we can accomplish something in a society that can’t even prevent school shootings? Does someone, somewhere, have a way of talking to one another instead of over one another? Is there a way to make it better?

And by mitigating or replacing capitalism, will we really solve systemic issues? I answer this bookishly, by turning to the moral center of my literary world, Ursula Le Guin. In her anarchist novel, The Dispossessed, the hero struggles with the same flaws in human society despite living in an otherwise successful anarchist colony. Le Guin is no fan of capitalism, but even she seems to recognize that short of creating Humanity 2.0, some problems just don’t go away. They have to be solved over and over again at the individual level, in everything from your own ethical choices to how you raise your kids.

Or how you train your police, as it were.

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Yesterday a woman was shot about a half-mile from my house. A helicopter almost directly above my backyard brought me to the window. Wondering what was happening, I turned–as my wife and I learned to do during the Ferguson protests–to Twitter. A few people had already posted photos from the fringe of the crime scene: a 25-year-old black woman named Yvette Henderson confronted security guards after shoplifting in Home Depot and ran away, encountered Emeryville police officers, and following about seven gunshots, she was dead. They recovered a gun from her body. A witness on a passing bus cast doubt on the report, saying she was waving for the bus to stop and held a purse in her other hand. Cop cars, bystanders, and news crews gathered at the scene all afternoon. By nighttime, Yvette Henderson was a hashtag, and protestors shattered a window at Home Depot. Someone tweeted that her body had “been left in the street for hours.” The news crews posted the story, a brief repackaging of the police statement.

It all happened RIGHT THERE. But a fog materializes around the events anyway. It is reflexive to doubt everyone. Of course her body was left in the street for hours–it’s evidence! And how does shattering the Home Depot window help? What does that have to do with anything here? But also: “Police recovered a weapon.” In its calm neutrality, the statement seems undermine itself. A lawless, cynical voice that I had no idea existed in my head silently adds …that these same police planted on her. And more cynicism: The rapper, The Jacka, was shot in East Oakland the night before, but tweeters and candle-holders only appear in semi-gentrified neighborhoods, close to middle-class twenty-somethings in downtown and West Oakland.

A frequent bike route in my own neighborhood is as far away as Ferguson. But the truth feels like it is on the tip of my tongue. What really happened? Some lady shoplifts and goes running down the street, but rather than end up in jail for the afternoon, she’s dead?

It seems wrong, and it is happening all around us.

A reminder to self and others

Orwell died this day in 1950. Here’s Knopf’s form rejection of a “stupid and pointless fable” called Animal Farm:

“Damn dull.”

Likewise, in a spirit of defiant optimism, I’m calling this year Project 2015. It’s going to be a year of positive thinking, hard work, laughing at old rejections, and readiness for the future. Read all about it over on my Threepenny Editor blog post, “How to Build Something Out of Nothing.”

Back in the workshop groove!

Five years ago, I moved away from Portland, Oregon, which took me away from an informal and much-loved writing group. It’s been a long time since I sat around a table and talked about fiction with fellow writers. Needing some fresh air in my writing life, I signed up for a class at the rave-reviewed The Grotto, a creative space in San Francisco that hosts all kinds of writing workshops.

What:  The Craft of Developing Dramatic Emotions 

Who: Junse Kim, instructor and author

When: Wednesdays, 6:30-9 p.m., January 28-February 25, 2015

Where: The Grotto, 490 2nd St., San Francisco

How Much: Inexpensive enough that I might make this a regular thing.

Editing and freelancing resources

I have been on a hunt for great editing and freelancing resources these past few weeks–the changing of the seasons always inspires me to take a fresh look at my writing and editing business, and make sure everything is on track. Once in a while, Amazon’s list of book recommendations is spot-on, and I thought I’d share a few titles that may be helpful if you are or want to be a freelance editor.

The Business of Editing (2013)

by Richard H. Adin (Author), Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (Foreword), Jack M. Lyon (Foreword)

How to Start a Home-based Editorial Services Business (2013)

by Barbara Fuller

The Wealthy Freelancer (2010)

by Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage, and Ed Gandia

Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore (2008)

by Elizabeth Lyon

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (2010)

The Editor’s Lexicon: Essential Writing Terms for Novelists (2010)

by Sarah Cypher (yes, I’m plugging my book, but you really will find it helpful in discussing fiction with clients)

 

Also, don’t neglect to join the Editorial Freelancers Association. It gives you access to the brisk traffic on its JobList, and also the invaluable forums where editors discuss everything from prospecting to business operations. They are generous with answering questions, too.

What Happens in Rancho: Race Report from Challenge Rancho Cordova 70.3

In some fog bank of memory, years ago, I told Erin I might someday race a half Ironman–a.k.a. a “70.3” for its number of miles. The 70.3 distance is her favorite because, compared to the whimpering, twitching, starved-but-can’t-eat state that beset her after Ironman Louisville 2010, she claims that a half Ironman is hard but only “leaves you sore enough to know you’ve done something.” And indeed, as I write this, the particulars of how I came to feel both hung over and like I’ve been run over by a Prius are wreathed with the kind of debauched haze that usually follows a trip to Las Vegas.

Yes, I “did something” yesterday: in 90-degree heat, for almost six hours, while consuming a copious amount of sickly sweet mixed drinks, which led to peeing in my shorts twice. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first 70.3 at Challenge Rancho Cordova.

Rancho Cordova, CA

Swim (1.29 miles, 35-ish minutes, 1:43/100m-ish pace)

Speaking of pee, triathletes are wary of borrowing or renting wetsuits for a reason. We like to buy our own, because if there is one constant in every race, it’s that after a few days of obsessive careful hydration combined with pre-race nerves, it’s that you’re going to pee in that wetsuit. So when you see over hundred athletes paddling around in the deep water, gazing with mock interest at the line of course buoys… Yeah, we’ve all done it. Endurance athletes check their shame at the neon inflatable balloon arch.

Before the race, in wetsuits. (Photo Kasey Caletti)

I queued up in my favorite starting location, just behind the far-inside starting buoy, and shared a few excited words with super-fast Oakland Triathlon Club teammate Christina Liebner. Then the countdown seemed to jump from ten to two, and the horn sounded. I sprinted the first 100 yards to the first buoy, according to plan, and for the first time all season, I saw that I’d kept up with the lead swimmers.

That all changed as I slowed down to settle into my normal pace, and I switched to stage two of the plan: Enjoy the day. Folsom Lake is placid, cool, and clear (but not too clear–I don’t want to know what’s on the bottom). As I rounded the first big turn in the course, the sun came up over the trees, lighting up the return buoys a glowing, neon orange. I found myself too far to the outside of the course, adjusted, and sped up a little. My wetsuit forced me to arch my back, causing some lumbar pain which would return with a vengeance later.

Bike (56 miles, 2:58-ish hours, 19mph-ish)

Like all my OTC teammates, one of my main goals of the day was staying cool. As the sun got higher, heat began to rise from the road; I noticed it every time I passed out of a shadow–and there weren’t many of those on this drought-stricken, exposed course. I was thankful for the loan of Coach Raeleigh Harris’s white aero helmet, borrowed to replace my unvented, black cast iron kettle Giro Selector. I also used Pearl Izumi white cool-sleeves for the first time, worn under my wetsuit to get soaked, and which I kept damp with water throughout the bike and run. I actually was chilly for most of the race.

I tackled the first 25 miles of hills (total elevation gain, just under 2,000 feet) in an easy-to-moderate gear, and made sure to maintain the same effort on the later downhills. For the first forty miles, I jockeyed back and forth with a few other women with enormous quads; every time they coasted down the hills to recover from grinding up the hills in a huge gear, I passed them and gained a few minutes. Then they’d catch me again on the next flat. This probably would have continued to T2, until the stabbing pains in my lower back and hips caught up with me, too.

By mile 42 I had to give up on the aero position. I really couldn’t ride the drops, either. Sitting up in a headwind was a bummer, and so was the resulting loss of speed. I still had a half marathon to run, though, and I didn’t want to do it with back cramps. I took my friend Paula’s advice, and looked around for some native blue oaks to appreciate. I didn’t see any, so I enjoyed the singing birds.

Meanwhile, I’d kept up with my nutrition and blew past the final water station only to feel the urge to pee afterward. Peeing on the bike is actually a good thing in long triathlons, because otherwise, it means you are too dehydrated. But the caveat is that you have to do it before a water station so that you can rinse off. Not doing so is gross, and it also leads to chafing. But I’d lost my chance… for now.

Run (13.1 miles, 2:07-ish, 9:42 min/mile pace)

What can I say? I felt GREAT for the first 6.2-mile loop. And then I DIDN’T for the second one.

I haven’t run more than 10 miles (at once) all year, and had cut way back on my weekly mileage while recovering from some annoying hamstring issues. The first loop of this two-loop course felt almost miraculously comfortable: I felt no pain anywhere. My heart rate was good. My pace gradually increased. I drank my nutrition on schedule, poured ice-cold water over my head every mile, and yes, proved to myself–twice–that my hydration was right on target.

A cheering passel that included teammates, Coach Raeleigh, and Erin started off the second loop of the run very well. But by mile 8, my legs tightened up and I felt like I was running on wooden puppet legs. A very fit guy with a carbon fiber prosthetic passed me with an enviably smooth stride. I told myself to toughen up, and stop focusing on what hurt. I sped up for about a half-mile, but my legs weren’t interested in speed. Only by mile 12 did my impatience intervene. My impatience is a force to be reckoned with, and it bullied my legs to hurry the hell up and get this race over with.

Total time: 5:47:something.

Along with six small children, I stood in the Village Green water feature for at least another six hours. I relished the feeling of rinsing off the accumulated sweat, Cytomax, sunscreen, and other byproducts of a day in the heat, imagining that my nausea and fatigue were swirling away, too. And by the time I got a real shower in the hotel, packed up the car, and sat with teammates in the shade, I was ready for that Neapolitan shake from In and Out.

So went my last triathlon of the season. Thank you to everyone who raced this summer, put their fitness to the test week after week, and cheered for Oakland. I know you all have your lives outside of this sport, but speaking as someone who hasn’t lived anywhere for more than 18 months at a time for many years, I am so grateful for your friendship and the chance to share this fun, difficult, dirty, slightly crazy, completely self-affirming sport with you. Have a great off-season!

After the race.

 

Threepennyeditor.com will be back up on Friday, Oct. 2

I’m transferring my website and e-mail to a new hosting company, due to extremely slow service with 1and1.com. As the Interwebs learns my new address, you can’t access my site or e-mail me.

Believe me, this is more stressful for me than for you!

The good news is that all will be well by tomorrow. You can reach me until then at my personal address: s a r a h c y p h e r [at] g m a i l . c o m.

Earth on Us: A review of Kate Gray’s “Carry the Sky”

Carry the Sky by Kate Gray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In her debut novel, award-winning poet Kate Gray breaks the surface of a calm New England boarding school to tell a breathtaking tale about honor, violence, and responsibility.

Set in 1983, in the days after Taylor Alta loses her best friend and beloved to a rowing accident, she arrives at St. Timothy’s as its girls crew coach, grieving and unprepared for the curiosity of eighteen-year-old Carla. Carla’s interest is uncomfortable and hyper-sexualizated, a behavior rooted in her dark history. It’s a past whose consequences also blur the teacher-student boundary with Jack Song, a Korean science teacher who tries not to fall for her.

These narratives connect to the bullying of brilliant oddball Kyle Harney. Taylor, Jack, and Carla have secrets that shame them, and each finds a brief moral balance in their concern for bullied Kyle. What they can’t know is the weight Kyle himself carries, burdened by the threat of nuclear annihilation: a threat he understands all too well from his mother, a Japanese woman scarred in the bombing of Nagasaki. The leitmotif of origami pays off well as the diverse planes of each characters’ suffering begin folding together around the shape of Kyle’s ultimate plan for getting back at his tormenters.

For all Jack Song’s concern with honor, it is Kyle who feels like a moral axis. Secrets and injustices drive the story (as does the insider’s look into the world of competitive rowing; Gray is a former crew coach). Yet Kyle is the only character who keeps no secrets, and is unable or unwilling to be anyone except himself, even when it earns him brutal retribution from the school bully. He harms no one, and he felt sometimes to me like an existential ideal: a fully aware, moral being who chooses what customs to follow, and who sees his own life as a choice. It’s a painful irony that in choosing nonviolent retaliation, the people who end up suffering most are himself and the people who loved him.

While the story itself is robust, Gray’s attention to language makes the writing one of the novel’s most important elements. It sometimes competes with the story itself, but at its best, the characters’ distinct voices resonate with their different notes of pain; and in Jack’s chapters, the writing riffs between the world of science and the mysterious realm of the heart—with surprising, ingenious effect.

Kate Gray is amazing.

View all my reviews

The Fat Lady Sang

I was sitting up and angry, which was a good sign. The old lady who’d hit me with her Prius was standing next to my bike in the middle of the street, and a few inches away from my bleeding leg were her feet. She was dressed all in taupe, and from her taupe summer heels, all twenty of her painted toenails were lined up beside me on the pavement. She was standing with her feet very close to each other, and offering me her hands.

“Just would you stand up? So I know you’re okay?”

Her gnarled joints were right in my face and I was still tangled up in my bike and disoriented. Standing up was the last thing I wanted to do. I lifted my bike a few inches, and more blood gushed out of a cut on my knee. It was deep enough that beads of the fatty subcutaneous layer protruded along the edges. Great. Let’s assume I was in shock, because I only felt annoyed and sort of dismayed.

I’d turned around early on this particular training ride because I was still recovering from food poisoning. The heat wasn’t doing my stomach any favors, so that is why I was riding alone. I stopped at the stop sign, checked the map. I started rolling again, beginning a left turn onto Tice Valley Road, and saw the Prius gliding up to the stop sign–and not quite stopping. An old woman in big black sunglasses looked left and right–and kept rolling. I yelled and tried to speed out of her way. She sped up, too, looking straight at me, and hit my leg and back wheel.

And now she was eager for me to get up so she’d know I would be okay, “Because I’m on my way to the opera.”

My knees felt wrong, but not too wrong. I didn’t want to get up yet, though, because not only did I not care about her urgent need to arrive at the opera house on time, but running through my head was this weird memory of an interaction I’d had with another old woman when I was sixteen and working retail in a chain of department stores called Lazarus. She was shopping in the junior’s section, browsing but clearly just drifting through the store, looking for someone to talk to. Her hair was dyed very black and she walked with a cane, and talked with a labored curl of her lips.

“I used to be beautiful,” she said. “Don’t ever get hit by a car, honey. It’ll ruin your life.”

Almost twenty years later, I still dread car accidents. Maybe it’s from that old woman. Maybe it’s from hearing too many horror stories about bike crashes–from the guy who looked fine until he turned his head, and his vertebrae snapped, paralyzing him; to Melody Gardot‘s beautiful, horrible song about her near-fatal crash; to my wife’s own broken jaw incident. California’s three-foot law just came into effect last week, but there’s not a law in the world that will save you from someone’s rush and inattention. When a driver hits a cyclist, they always say they didn’t see you; yet in may case, it was broad daylight, we were at a stop sign, and I was wearing neon green and yellow. (The Oakland Triathlon Club kit could only be more visible if we added strobe lights.)

I say all this by way of repeating, yet again, a wish for caution. Slowing down for a cyclist only delays you by a few seconds. Please pay attention. Most of us are responsible–as most drivers are. We just weigh a whole lot less, and are a lot more vulnerable. We go to great lengths to stay out of your way, choosing routes that you don’t normally use. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, though, and even if you find us annoying, neither one of us wants to be involved in a crash. All of that self-righteous posturing goes away real fast when there’s a bleeding person on the pavement.

Anyhow, I’m grateful to be okay. A few stitches are in order. My knees still feel weird, but I can ride and run. And whether the old Prius driver made it to her opera or not, my wife and I now have a new household joke: “Gotta go, babe. Gonna be late for the opera.”

Urban Space, Hometown Race: Report from the Oakland Triathlon

I’ve been afraid to admit how much I was dreading this one. Maybe it was the timing: a comedown from a busy year followed by buying a house. Maybe it was my training: I felt like I’d missed or shortened one too many bike rides. But mostly it was mental: I’d set the Oakland Tri as an A race, feeling like I needed to have a strong race on home turf; but then I put pressure on myself, got anxious, realized once again that stress wasn’t doing me any favors, and sort of checked out from the whole thing. With Erin injured and my mom just finishing a summer of radiation, I decided just to show up and be grateful for the experience, whatever it was.

Saturday’s 7 a.m. practice swim on glassy water improved my attitude. And five races into the season, preparation was habit. I had my gear and bike ready in 30 minutes, measured out my nutrition, and chucked it in the fridge the afternoon before. I focused on nothing but enjoying a relaxing Saturday with Erin, and half a loaf of banana bread.

Oakland Estuary, at Jack London Aquatic Center

Sunday morning, I cruised down a dark and quiet Market Street with Chris, Trish, and Erin. We rolled into the transition area, only for the OTC racks to be crammed full. So much for being an early bird. I set up my bike on an unmarked rack even farther into the area, and headed across the tracks for the swim start. Erin kept asking if I was okay, but the god’s-honest truth was the same every time: “I feel like I’m just here for a workout.”

Swim (1.5K, 22:17)

I hopped in the Estuary, warmed up according to plan, and realized that at that moment, there was nothing on Earth that I wanted more than to go for a swim. As luck would have it, it was 7:03 a.m., and my wave was lining up between the buoys. The horn sounded. I stayed as far left as I could and avoided the scrum, trying to draft where possible, but mostly I swam alone. The weird zigzag course was tough to follow at times, leaving me uncertain and sighting a lot. Near the end of the swim, purple caps began passing me, and I hopped into their wake for 10-15 seconds, getting a little rest. I didn’t know where the exit was, but suddenly saw a bunch of volunteers hauling swimmers onto carpeted rocks; not the most graceful swim exit of my life, but I was on land and happy to be in the middle of a race.

Bonus: Erin was working the Amtrak station, and seeing her made me even happier. Bonus #2: As I approached the bottom of the stairs, another athlete slapped the elevator button and the doors opened. As far as I knew, the elevator was a legal way to get to the bridge. Three of us hopped on and high-fived. The woman beside me was so happy about this development that she even offered me half of her Gu. (I politely declined.)

We ran the stairs at the Amtrak Station. Erin says I just missed seeing the homeless priest self-flagellating with a palm frond and dried pigeon wing.

 

Bike (40K, 1:14:02)

The closed streets were something out of a dream. When I started my ride, there weren’t a lot of cyclists on the course yet (or at least we were really spread out), and flying down an empty Broadway made me giddy. I passed a handful of people and focused on keeping my cadence over 95 rpm. At times this felt too easy, but by the second loop, I was glad to have kept a smooth, fast rhythm. I averaged 20.1 mph, which wasn’t my best pace of the season, but there were over forty 90-degree turns in the course, as well as potholes, train tracks, and scummy puddles to avoid. I even got off-course for a few blocks at one point, having mistaken some garbage men for volunteers, and took a wrong street. Oops.

Run (10K–maybe, 48:56)

My training runs had been going particularly well, and I hoped for a fresh, fast run. I didn’t get it. My legs were fatigued and I didn’t have much oomph for the first two miles. Yet it was wonderful to be racing on such a familiar route around Lake Merritt, and I took joy in telling the other pedestrians good morning, in the group of huge white pelicans feeding in the shallows, and in the suddenly clear sky. I was surely going to get passed by a lot of runners, but I figured I shouldn’t make it easy for them. I picked up my pace, and realized that fast and slow felt equally uncomfortable, so I might as well go fast. I felt strong all the way back to the Amtrak station, where Erin was volunteering. She clutched her chest as if I was way behind schedule, which made me wonder just how slow of a race I was having.

I ran the stairs and felt fine, but started to lose steam as the course looped back to the swim start, rounded a bunch of cones in a parking lot, and meandered toward Jack London Square. I couldn’t hear a finish line, and had no idea how much farther it was. Just then, I saw some athletes wearing finisher medals, and someone shouted that the chute was right around the corner (and added, “C’mon! Finish strong!” What’s that supposed to mean, I thought. I’ve been going as fast as I can for two and a half hours!)

The clock read 2:37:something as I crossed the line. Subtracting four minutes for my 7:04 a.m. start time, I ended up with a PR of 2:33:56.

“Las Esposas,” taken by fellow OTC-er, Christina Grijalva.

Lessons Learned

It’s good to be at home. And it’s good to race with a team. I saw so many OTC kits on the course that it was impossible not to enjoy the day. Thank you to everyone who showed up at the start line with me, who cheered me on, who raced with Oakland pride, and who stuck around until the very last athlete crossed the finish line. The Oakland Triathlon Club is truly a class act, and also consists of just about every single friend I have in this town. Thanks for sharing this season with me, and your friendship, and I can’t wait to see you at Rancho Cordova 70.3 in October. Safe, happy training, everyone!

The Year of the High Bar

It was a classic case of “be careful what you wish for,” and probably inevitable. At the end of last year, I wanted a couple of things. I wanted to get back into triathlon shape. I wanted my Arabic to be good enough to write academic papers in it. And I wanted to become a better writer–a published one.

And in January, I got the chance to achieve everything I wanted. A place on the Oakland Triathlon Club’s team, a seat in Arabic 402, and one of the best agents in the publishing industry. It felt like Christmas and a birthday and a lifetime achievement award all rolled into one–except rather than giving me a big head, after seventeen years of writing and getting rejected, it was just healing. I had no idea how hard I’d have to work to just barely live up to these privileges.

As summer wraps up, I look back on the last eight months of frantic, sometimes panicked efforts to keep up with everything. At times, I no longer felt like the person who’d been capable of getting to this point in my life. Day-to-day tasks sometimes felt no less than a kind spiritual crisis: how to be a whole human being and not just a list of responsibilities.

I am still in the middle of living up to these opportunities, but as I am finally getting a handle on the revisions to my manuscript, I realize that more than just opportunity, I got something else I’d always wanted: a master class in fiction. Working on a novel is solitary, and some days you feel like the best writer in the world, which inevitably means you’re due to feel like a hack by Friday. Real feedback from industry pros gave me perspective on my storytelling habits, and how to get better.

I ended up with a B in the Arabic class; I can write a paper, but can’t speak it to save my life. I got back into triathlon shape, but really, training (for me) is never going to be about real speed. It’s about having made a bunch of new friends in a new city, and loving the camaraderie in an otherwise solitary sport.

This perspective was hard-earned, but in the words of an old friend who taught me how to ski: “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying hard enough”; and god knows I’m grateful for the chance to keep trying.