From about January of last year when I passed my qualifying exams until mid-August, life was magical. Evidence of this is all over my blog. There were the multiple vacations Tom and I got to take with family and friends to tropical islands (only to return to Santa Barbara, California, land of staggeringly gorgeous scenery and perfect weather), the progress I made on my dissertation (and the grants I was awarded to fund it, and the people I’ve met while working on it), and the freedom and flexibility that my fellowship provided to work as late as I wanted and sleep when I wanted (I am a work late/sleep late girl). I feel like a jerk just typing all that out and those are just some of the highlights. Suffice to say that it’s no coincidence I started a blog about gratitude in what was one of the best points of my life.
In May we used free airline miles, accrued during our trip to Puerto Rico, to fly back to the east coast to see one of my favorite bands reunite. In the week between those shows and the cruise we took with Michele and her family and friends to the Bahamas, I presented my work to a team of government researchers who were looking to add someone to the fold who did the type of research I do. After my presentation and Q&A session, I spent more than three hours talking to them and asking them questions. They offered me the job two weeks later; I accepted. With my mid-September start date in mind, Tom and I waited until July, when my hiring paperwork was in progress and I’d received the go-ahead from my future supervisor, to plan the move. We secured an apartment; we hired movers; Tom put in for a transfer with his company; we started packing. More of the same magic.
Then, my paperwork hit its final stages of approval at the federal office in Atlanta, where they decided that…I couldn’t be hired for that position after all, because my degree wasn’t on a list of those approved for it despite the job call encouraging folks with my degree to apply. I’d have to go through a different hiring process that would take months with no guarantee I’d get my own job.
It was bad news but…alea iacta est—the die has been cast*. The gears were in motion for us to move and they kept turning. Our movers (Lion Transportation, Inc.) were total scumbags. We couldn’t get in touch with them for days before they were scheduled to pick our stuff up. When they finally did show up late (at that point we were relieved they showed up at all, since our lease was up the next day) they told us our bill would be twice the estimate they’d given us. By the time they left with all our stuff and a large piece of what was in our bank accounts, I was almost sick. The next day we started to drive east, two humans and two dogs in a Volkswagen Golf for a week. On the way, a rabbit ran in front of our car in Arizona in the middle of the night and we spun out to avoid it, shredding our tires to the tune of $400 (we are friends to animals). Our dogs were attacked by bees in Colorado. Our movers wouldn’t answer their phones ever (this went on for weeks). When we finally made it to our new place, Yuuki had severe panic attacks whenever we had to leave without her and yelped like she was being tortured until we came back.
Two weeks into this new life, I had no job, almost no money, hardly any friends, no furniture, no clothes aside from those I’d been wearing for three weeks, no means of communication with our movers, and no way of knowing if or when our stuff would ever arrive. The straw that threatened to break the camel’s back was registering our car in Maryland, which meant submitting to the state’s safety inspection. I’d read horror stories of unfortunate souls who had to pay thousands to get their cars up to code, and while we’d gotten a lot of work done on the Golf before we left California, I braced myself for the dollar value associated with getting a 11-year-old car “safe.”
So on what would have been my start date at the job we’d moved across the country for me to work, I found myself wandering along the side of Route 650 looking for a place to sit and work on my dissertation while the guys at a gas station inspected my car for safety violations. I already wasn’t where I should have been, and I couldn’t help but think that this whole “wandering along the side of the road looking for somewhere to be when I should be somewhere else” thing was a meta comment on my life (i.e., What the hell am I doing here?/I don’t belong here). With limited options, I surrendered a tiny piece of my soul and went to McDonald’s because it was there and I was there and hey, why not? Given the myriad unpleasantries I was facing, why not spend my afternoon in a McDonald’s? It was poetic. I ordered a small drink and found a booth in the back where it seemed least likely that someone would bother me. Another girl had her laptop plugged in to an outlet on the ceiling so I stood on the table and plugged my laptop in as well. The wireless was just poor enough to discourage me from using it, except for a brief sweep of Facebook, where I saw a post from a friend that The Dismemberment Plan were playing reunion shows in Washington, D.C. in January.
Just like that, everything got better.
I love The Dismemberment Plan. They are one of my favorite bands ever. Emergency & I is one of my favorite records ever. Others have written about the beauty of this record here (and a million other places) more eloquently than I ever could, so I will just point out some things about it that I love. Their bassist is excellent, and as someone who plays bass, it is the first instrument I listen to and care about in music. Bass is often an afterthought, but for the Dismemberment Plan it is a focal point just as much as the other instruments. I love that. The drumming is creative and the rhythm section together makes this record worth listening to even if brilliant indie rock isn’t your thing. The lyrics are smart and the themes are consistent enough to be noticeable, but not obvious enough to dominate the record like so many bands have done with “concept albums.” I suppose it helps that lately I can relate to feeling hopeful and hopeless, fearless and afraid, and like the world is both starting over and about to end at the same time. Emergency & I captures those feelings, which makes it a record you can listen to and feel like someone understands you, even at what is certainly a transitional, uncomfortable, intensely weird but also strangely beautiful point in your life.
Now imagine the feeling of comfort in being understood and multiply it by hundreds, and that comes close to approximating how you feel at Dismemberment Plan’s live shows. Everyone there gets it. And of course, the band itself is amazing live. They play forever, and the whole time they look like they’re having fun (how many bands can you say that about these days? Very few). I recently heard someone say that this band’s records are personal experiences, and their shows are communal experiences, which struck me as accurate.
But back to Mc-fucking-Donald’s. So this singular moment in a day that was starting to seem as though it would be the nadir of a spectacularly bad stretch of time completely changed my outlook. It was like a little pinpoint of light breaking through the dark, threatening to broaden into something bright enough to see by.
With all this said, handing Dismemberment Plan’s singer Thank You Card #14 after Tom and I had seen them play two nights in a row last weekend was a really nice moment for me. And even things are decidedly not going your way, it’s these moments that keep you appreciative of life for the lovely, messy, complicated, uncertain, wonderful thing that it is and allow you to be happy right where you are.
*One of the two phrases I remember from Latin class (sorry, Mrs. Piedmont!) The other? De porco datum est, which translates into “A bit of pork was given” — it’s unlikely you’ll ever see me use that here though.
** The video above was taken by my brother Adam from onstage at the Plan’s show in NYC on Saturday, January 29.
