A Ponytail and a Poodle Skirt

My mom told me once on the phone that she was looking at a picture of a little girl in a poodle skirt with the devil in her eyes. That little girl was me. I know exactly which picture she's talking about. I'm sitting on a stool holding an old record with a cardboard cutout of a jukebox behind me. I guess I'm about 8 or 9 years old. It was our annual photoshoot before our end of the year dance recital. I'm wearing my costume for that year's tap number.

When Mom said that, I smiled a little because I could see that little girl in my mind: my scalp tingled from the remembrance of a pony tail pulled so tight and high I swore my face would stay permanently stretched back into my hairline. Every swift swipe of the brush pulled my hair even further away from my forehead. But it shone as much as the red silk ribbon holding it in place.

I miss that girl because I remember her as fearless. Spoiled rotten and stubborn, but never afraid to do things her own way. Actually, usually unaware there were other options. I've since learned to curb some of that willfullness, but there's a part of me that desperately needs to find the little girl in the poodle skirt again. I need her fearlessness, her belief that anything was possible, because why wouldn't it be? At an age when you have no responsibility to anyone, not even yourself, there are no barriers, no mental obstacle courses to overcome, no gymnastics of faith to perform to achieve a life of your own choosing. Things are wonderfully innocent and effortless and the future drips with potential.

Walking Manhattan - E Line, WTC station

I begin in lower Manhattan, the construction site of the World Trade Center off to my right and a handful of grubby looking men hawking their 9/11 souvenir booklets at the smatterings of people just hoping for a glimpse at the two block scar that's been healing for the past ten years. I turn around and walk the other way. Something about this place, this preview shop, the push for donations to build the memorial - an unliving thing erected to immortalize the names of the dead - sits unwell within me. We're fascinated with scratching at the wound, looking continuously at images of the tragedy, picking at the scab until we're disquieted and bleeding within again instead of leaving it be and truly letting it heal. The scar will be there forever, a constant reminder in and of itself, so I fail to comprehend why we're selling souvenirs to a train wreck. This place makes me angry and the oppressive air of misguided good intentions is suffocating within these glass walls. I need sunshine and crisp air and the life that's still going on outside in the streets. Why are we not remembering by channeling human feeling and resources into the ones in desperate need of connection instead of funding cold stone that isn't breathing?

Amtrak train - halfway to New York City

I want to travel. Unequivocally. It's what I absolutely love, it makes my heart sing, there's something in my blood that quickens and pulses with the raw possibility that hangs in the air when I'm going somewhere with a suitcase.

I feel so amazing right now, belly full of toasted bagel and cream cheese, lukewarm coffee with 5 sugars (yeap, I'm far from a purist) sitting in front of my notebook, train speeding passed what can only be called shrapnel scenery all the while bumping and weaving so much that I'm reminded every second why writing in a notebook on a train never comes off very well, romantic notion though it may be.

What amazes me most at this moment is that we're speeding across a lake, so close to the water I could almost skim my fingertips across the rippled surface, and not one person in this cafe car has even looked up. We're in the midst of beauty and sunshine, and save myself and the seven year old Spanish girl, all other eyes are glued to phones, computers or magazines. I am two seconds from yelling "Wake UP, people! Don't you see this? If you want life to reach inside and open you up, fill your chest and expand there, you have got to open your eyes."

I'm not a technology hater. I think it's amazing/scary some of the things we can do now. But it is stealing from us some of the richest aspects of reality and making our world into a monotonous, digitalized, pixelated amalgam of information. People are neglecting the world's texture, foregoing the simple pleasure of flesh and blood presence. All of these things that have been invented over the last ten years are not bad, but perhaps we have a responsibility to find a happy medium of seamless integration instead of seeking to completely replace things that have an art and richness all their own. Let us not sacrifice the beauty of what can be created with our hands on the altar of "life-like" technology. It will never be as good as the real things, the things we can see and smell and taste and touch all at the same time.