part of me knows that $1.85 is too much to pay for the espresso brownie at starbucks. another part of me knows i would pay much more than that. i wish they put less crack in those :o(

Growing up in my family, the love of reading was just as much a given as converting oxygen into carbon dioxide. My father is a journalist and both of my sisters are currently writers. Even though one of my sisters and I both have dyslexia, the we still caught the reading bug. We just caught it at 7 instead of 2 like my oldest sister. My parents' house is full of books, with one room's walls entirely covered by built-in bookcases. To my knowledge, no one really reads any of these books anymore (with the possible exception of my mom, who still looks up things in our 1994 edition encyclopedias because she thinks "to google" is an R-rated verb) but I think we all like knowing that they're there.

The tendency to collect and hold on to books is in my blood, and my room at my parents' house is just as full of literature as any other room, if not more so. I have one free standing bookcase that is overly-full of books, a row two and three deep along one wall, and 3 more full shelves in the walk in closet. As part of my move in September, I have started trying to cut down on my possessions. Clothes were fairly easy- anything that didn't fit or I hadn't worn in a year was gone. I only need one pair of jeans. I only need one black shirt. I can let go of the clothes. Books were not so easy. I decided to go through them this past weekend while I was home alone (with the dogs) while my parents were at the beach. I poured myself some red wine, turned on some Shostakovitch, which felt appropriate, and dug in.

Books aren't like clothes. You can't ever outgrow certain "children's" books, and even if I haven't read _The Secrert Garden_ in a year (or 8) you'll have a tough time getting me to let go of it. My sister was telling me that when she went through her books to cut them down to the essentials, she only kept ones that she would purchase again if she were to loose everything in a fire. I've thought about it a lot, and I think if I were to loose all my books in a fire, I would only replace a few of them. I would buy a new Bible (hopefully the same edition as mine so I could still know where everything is). I would buy _The Irresistible Revolution_ by Shane Claiborne, and I would buy _The Old Man and the Sea_. I would hope someone would give me the complete set of classic Winnie the Pooh books, but I wouldn't buy it myself.

Lucky for me, my books were not all lost in a fire. Rather, I vowed that i would keep only what i could fit on my one bookcase (which is well over 6 feet tall) and nothing more. I ended up breaking them into categories, and then arranging the categories into (what I felt was) a logical order. At the top is poetry and classics, heavy on the poetry. The classics I kept were largely from Hemingway, Dickens, and Steinbeck. The next shelf houses the most influential books from my classes at college, from the politics of human rights to environmental political theory to liberation theology. These flowed easily into all the other liberation theology I have purchased, which flowed nicely into more or less "applied" versions of these books, like _Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger_ and _Practical Justice_. These transition into (and this only makes sense if you're me, which I am) travel books, including a Swahili- English dictionary I stole from the Reston public library. Actually, the travel section could just as easily be the Africa section, except for one book on the politics of Central America that I read during my breaks in the back room one summer at the zoo. From there we go to the memoirs of several people who worked with international humanitarian groups and true-life accounts of child soldiers, which leads into what I called in my head "regular good books". In this section I grouped authors together, which means one shelf is almost entirely taken up by Toni Morison and Chaim Potok. These section is also home to several children's or young adult books. S. E. Hinton makes an impressive showing. From these we have "funny good books", where Dave Barry, Christopher Moore, and Nick Hornby all make impressive contributions, numbers wise. The bottom shelf is books about horses and books about art. Art could have fit in well with my books from college, but to be honest, several of them were just too tall for that shelf. A few things I managed to save from selling by giving them to my nephew (who better enjoy those Beatrix Potter books I adored so much as a child) and the rest- five giant bags full- are heading to the used book store.

I think the books I'm giving away are almost as interesting as what I'm keeping. For example, those bags contain three copies of _Emma_ and two of _Oliver Twist_, neither of which I have ever read. There are several books on Hindu mythology, and at least 5 on the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. What can I say, I had some interesting phases in junior high.

I love every single book left on that book case. I will probably pack only the essentials to Baltimore (the "fire re-purchase" books, plus a few others but I like knowing the rest of them are there, waiting for me. In all likelihood I will only end up selling the rest at the end of this year, hopefully in preparation for some exotic several-year trip in a developing tropical country, but I'm not ready just yet. In this strange time between adolescence and adulthood, between the sheltered suburbs and inner city Baltimore, college and a "job", I don't yet know how to define myself, and I'm happy to let my bookcase do that. Poetry, politics, theology, travel, and young adulthood mixed in- I'm all there. I know I will continue to cut titles, and even entire sections (because let's be honest, the horse section can't last much longer) but for now, it's where and who I am.

let me run through my day for you so far.

7:15 am: Maggie wants to sleep until her alarm goes off at 7:30. Jack wants to yell what can only be assumed to mean "THIS BABY IS EQUIPPED WITH LUNGS AND ABLE TO YELL! HEY EVERYONE! I LEARNED HOW TO YELL! HEY! HEY! HEY EVERYONE!"

8:10 am: Maggie wants to watch saved by the bell. Jack wants to throw up on Maggie.

9:15 am: Maggie wants to take a shower. Jack wants to cry. Maggie finishes shower, picks up jack, who promptly throws up her. Again.

10:15 am: Maggie wants to watch E.R. Jack wants to scream.

11:30 am: Jack continues to scream. Maggie wants to die.

11:45 am: Jack finishes eating, is burped, and falls asleep for exactly 5 minutes, then resumes screaming. Maggie tries to decide if she should kill Jack or herself. Realizing Jack would be much, much more missed than she would be, she decides she should be the one to go. Then Maggie realizes Kristen might be mad if she leaves Jack unattended and in the same room as a dead body. Maggie takes Jack to the mall.

12:45 pm: Jack wants to sleep, but only if the stroller is moving. Maggie wants to try on a dress. Maggie puts on dress in dressing room, but the stroller is stopped, so Jack wakes up, and, of course, screams. Maggie leaves the store, embarrassed. Jack falls back asleep.

3:30 pm: at the library to use internet. Maggie wants to either surf internet, take a nap, or call her college roommate and cry and miss college. Jack wants to yell.

Jack always wins. Always. the "i'm 8 weeks old, bitch!" is a trump card that i simply can't compete with.

------------------------

this is a really exciting time for my friends and i. we all just graduated college, and are all doing really different things. some are going to grad school, some are getting jobs (or trying to). some got married or are getting married. one is in the peace corps in Kazakhstan, one is teaching in english in tanzania, one is teaching english in france. in september, i'll be moving into a community house owned by the north baltimore mennonite church. the house is currently home to about 12 people. there will be about 4 volunteers thorough the mennonite voluntary service (like me), a few boarders, and a few refugees from places like Iraq, ethiopia, and camaroon. I'll be working as a personal advocacy counselor at a homeless shelter in the city.

i'm really excited about my "job", and even more excited about my house and housemates. my friends are also excited about grad school or jobs or marriage, whatever they're doing. i'm excited. i really am. but as i prepare to enter this semi- "real world" where things like health insurance and dinner and transportation are things no longer handed to me, i can't help but miss school a little bit. i'm realizing, thanks to jackson, how incredibly selfish the last 22 years of my life have been, especially the last 4. the reason it's hard for me to stop everything i'm doing and ignore what i want to tend to the needs of someone else is because i've never had to worry about anyone but myself before. i know it's good for me to learn to be more selfless, especially since i'll be taking care of (adult) people at the shelter next year. i don't expect they will need or ask me to wipe their butts or feed them breast milk (God, I hope not) but i know that there will be times when i'll want to sleep (or eat, or go home, or call my roommate and cry) and they'll need something, and i will have to forget about what i need or want and take care of them and their needs. that's what my job will be, that's what i WANT my job to be, i WANT to take care of people. i'm good at it and i enjoy it, but holy crap, sometimes it's draining.

i keep thinking about my senior year in college. i keep remembering "beer, backrub, and bachelor" nights where my friends and i would drink beer, give each other backrubs, and watch the bachelor online (God, i could go for a good backrub). Or nights when we'd go out to a bar and come back slightly inebriated, arguing about if i should write on that guy's facebook wall again (the answer to that question is ALWAYS no, but unfortunately, angela was never once able to convince me of this). i'll miss waking up on saturdays at 11, looking over and seeing my roommate on her computer, getting up and playing on the internet, then lazily walking to the cafeteria for a brunch of scrambled eggs, pizza, and diet coke. i'm going to miss staying up til 2 and writing papers. i'm going to miss having access to amazing art facilities and incredible faculty. i'm going to miss knowing about 40% of the people i see, by face if not by name. i'm going to miss living with my best friends.

actually... i already do.

and again, i'm excited about this new chapter in my life, and i do love taking care of jack. and leaving school doesn't mean i've stopped learning. for example, i have learned that i don't want kids for at least another 43 years, and i will learn how to get around on the baltimore bus system. but i still can't help feeling while i'm trying to convince an 8 week old that he really, really will be happier if he stops spitting out his pacifier, and look ahead to a life where i am expected to be out of bed before 10 EVERY DAY and to never wear my pajamas to work, i can't help but feel a little sad about the life i've already left behind. maybe we're never ready to move on. maybe it's better to leave while i still like it, to keep college as a happy place, full of good memories. maybe it isn't all downhill from here. maybe i'll like grocery shopping.

i don't know, though. i'm going to call my roommate; she knows most stuff.

effective birth control

i'm working as a live-in nanny this summer for a baby who is currently 7 weeks and 1 day old. the baby doubles as my nephew, and my bosses double as my sister and brother-in-law, something that is convenient for me. i think if it were a "real" job, sending the mother texts like "your baby is broken- scream button stuck" while she's at work would be frowned upon.

anyway, i've been thinking of posting about this job for a long time, but every time i sit down to do it, the baby freaks out, or the internet (which is wireless stolen from the neighbors) breaks, or it's after 9:30, which is pretty much when i pass out.
it's just as well, though, since my days currently consist of dodging projectile spit- up, warming up and testing the temperature of breast milk that is not from my breasts, and living in constant fear that i will loose the one binky that jackson actually likes. also, i have incorporated words like "binky" into my everyday vocabulary, which is, i think, a substantial transition in and of itself. one of the strangest things is that when i take him out in public people think he's my baby, what with him being strapped to my chest in his "snuggli" and all. the thing is, i look a lot younger than i am. (case in point: i was carded for an R-rated movie. at age 22. which means they thought i was 16 or younger. WHEN I WAS 22.) as a result, i get some funny looks when out with jack. that kind of curious, pitying, judging look reserved for unwed teenage mothers and people who dress to match their pets. because of that, i've taken to wearing my ring on my left ring finger, but turned upside down, so it looks like a wedding band and not a $15 ring from amercian eagle with a horse shoe on it. i also frequently consider screaming things like "YEAH, YOU WATCH YOURSELF!" or "IT HAPPENS MORE EASILY THAN YOU THINK!!" at teenage couples i see holding hands in the mall; they're the ones who give me the best looks, this combination of fear and "that will never be me" self-righteousness. sure it won't, sweetie.

anyway, so that's how my life is going right now. i'm lucky if i brush my teeth before 11 and shower before 2. my day centers around breastfeeding (uh, again, from a bottle, not my breast milk) and diaper changes. i get really excited about things like going to the post office (CONTACT WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD!!!) and when i can make this 12 pound person burp.

it's mind-numbingly boring most of the time, with interjections of ear-splitting screams. i get really lonely, and really, really frustrated sometimes. but the thing is, a 7 week old can smile, and when he looks at me and smiles, i almost re-consider my plan to leave him on the front porch with a sign that says "free". of course, when he's screaming and refuses to be consoled, my plan becomes leaving him on someone ELSE'S porch with a $50 taped to his chest.

all in all, though, it's more than worth it, and i'll seriously miss him when i move out in september into a house with 12 adults and no binkies or snugglies. i doubt anyone there will cuddle with me while we watch er (from 10- 11 and, if we don't fall asleep, 11- 12) and not laugh when i cry at the sweet episodes of "the office". but they probably also won't make me wipe poop off thier asses, so maybe it's an even trade.

well that stinks.

since coming home from kenya i've made much more of an effort to be socially conscious in my purchases. things like making a strong effort to buy certified sweatshop free clothing, or, more often, second hand clothing, helps me not feel like my gap jeans are laced with the blood and sweat of Chinese children. things like that. it's a fuzzy line, though, as to where "socially conscious" becomes "trendy and stupid".

one decision that continually baffles me is the choice between buying the cheapest possible toiletries (because spending $20 for foundation when the same $20 could vaccinate a child against 5 preventable childhood diseases is wrong, regardless of how glowing and flawless it makes my complexion) or buying, say, $9 organic, fair trade shampoo (because then i know it's not in a bottle made in Vietnam by exploited workers, put in said bottles in Bangladesh by underpaid children, after the chemical runoff from the grown ingredients and all the byproducts are dumped into the amazon (or whatever the hell the process is before it gets to target)). i don't know. this makes it very, very stressful for me every time i run out of shampoo or soap or toothpaste, because lives depend on my hygine choices- sometimes the lives of CUTE CHILDREN, or worse, HANDSOME MEN. i generally try to work it out so i can buy organic, fair trade things when they go on sale, but that doesn't always happen.

so, anyway, long, boring story short, i went off the organic deep end this summer, plummeting head first into a deep, deep pool of organic aloe vera and carefully cultivated lilac and rose hips (which was sticky). i bought a bottle of organic, fair trade, hemp and orange all-purpose "magic soap", made by dr. bronners. i bought it BEFORE i went to the company website and read that the formula was developed after the original dr. bronner escaped from a dutch insane asylum; i wouldn't have bought it if i knew it was crazy soap. i was seduced by it's claim to be 18 kinds of soap in one, including shampoo, body wash, dish soap, and toothpaste; clearly this was a product that could change my life, so i bought it, and it is AWESOME. it smells great, and i feel clean, and i love that it is organic and fair trade and family owned and the highest paid employee at the company makes just 5 times the amount of the lowest paid employee. at first i thought that was a lot, then i learned that in 2000, the average u.s. CEO made over 500 times the amount of the lowest paid employee in the company; suddenly, i could respect a cap at 5 times the amount.

not all such adventures into the large, hemp-scented world of organic toiletries were so glorious. i tried organic toothpaste, Tom's of Maine, specifically, which was awful. it was advertised as being "spearmint" flavored, but really was simply "bland white paste" flavored. i used it, because it was expensive, but let's just say i wasn't kissing anybody that month. um, or really any of the past few months. but i digress. i did give the organic toothpaste another try, though, and bought nature's gate brand peppermint flavor, which tastes much better, but, i later realized, is not fair trade (like Tom's) or give any of its proceeds to wilderness conservation (like Tom's). dammit.

so anyway, the biggest plunge i took was in switching to organic deodorant. risking that my hair might be slightly less supple and shiny is one thing, but risking becoming a stinky, sweaty mess is quite another. still, with some research claiming that the active ingredient in antiperspirants, aluminum, can lead to breast cancer, and the fact that all the other funky chemicals in there are bad for my armpits (and other living things), and that they're manufactured God knows where by Lord knows who being compensated in Jesus knows what way, i decided i might as well try. plus, one was made by Toms, a company i already respected, and it was rose and honeysuckle scented. now, if there is anything i'd like my armpits to smell like MORE than Secret Platinum Protection Powder Fresh, it is roses and honeysuckle. so i bought it. and you know what? i'm a stinky, sweaty mess. i smelled like roses and honeysuckle for about 56 seconds, but then the sun came up, and it all went to hell. even though the container says the formula now contains hops (uh, isn't that a main ingredient in beer?) and that should help me smell better, it did not.

this wouldn't be SUCH a big deal, except i also forgot my razor at my parents' house, and now live at my sister's house. so i haven't shaved in a few days. so i'm getting a little hairy. and am now stinky as well. so, yes, in one weekend, i went from someone who dabbled in burt's bees lip balm to a full, all out, lentil eating, Birkenstocks wearing, henna hair dying, stinky, hairy, dirty hippie. it was a short but painful fall.

to be fair, though, i don't actually have Birkenstocks, i wear chocos. and i'm not dirty, i use dr. bronner's magic soap.

on riding

When I was in junior high, my mom said that the only time I ever sat up straight was when I was on a horse. I started riding when I was 8 and rode every week, sometimes several times a week, until I graduated high school. I leased my first horse, Dusty, when I was in seventh grade. Later in high school I began to show horses, usually a temperamental chestnut quarter horse named Kirov. He had a violent temper and, as a result, had his own field separated from the other horses and a stall in an isolated part of the barn. He had no fear of anything or anyone, would jump anything you put in front of him, and throw any rider he didn't like. We were a great team.

I know that riding is a privilege usually reserved for the upper crust of society. I know that, stereotypically, it the sport of stuffy upper class British men or, worse, spoiled American tweens. Although my parents did make me work off many of my lessons by cleaning stalls, cleaning tack, and doing other various chores at the barn, it was really more on principal than out of necessity. Over the years my parents must have spent thousands of dollars on riding lessons, boots, brushes, tack, show fees, leasing horses, and, of course, every saddle club book ever published. When I think about the money that was spent on my hobby, I can't help but cringe.

At the same time, it is hard for me to classify riding as a complete waste of time and money. In high school, I dealt with self-esteem issues (like everyone), depression (like most people), and an eating disorder (like all too many people). Riding was one of the only constants in my life, the one thing that I did all the time, and one of the only things I did well. I slouched while sitting, standing, and walking because I was scared and shy and ashamed of who I was, but I sat up straight on a horse because it was a place I could feel confident, comfortable, and strangely enough, safe. I had to respect myself while riding because a horse won't respect a person who doesn't respect herself. I learned to be confident and commanding while maintaining composure. It is difficult to get a 2,000 pound animal to do anything, let alone take make an circle with an exactly 30 meter diameter, jump a 4 foot fence, or bend his neck at a perfect arch; riding takes strength, determination, and self-assurance. Riding taught me patience and to put my needs and desires second to the needs and desires of someone else. Many mornings before 7:00 I ignored my own hunger to feed 35 horses breakfast, many evenings I sat pulling briars out of my leased pony, Yankee's, tail until my fingers bled. I learned that the sport is more than the glamour of showing and jumping; like anything, you have to shovel a lot of shit to get anywhere worthwhile.

I stopped riding when I graduated high school, but not for long. I rode again the summer after freshman year, although my beloved Kirov had died of intestinal cancer. I instead leased a massive, barely broken draft cross named Ranger. He was... difficult. After that I began riding at school as well, taking lessons from a trainer north of the twin cities. It felt good and right to be in the saddle again, to forget everything else going on in the world and my life and focus exclusively on the task at hand. That's another thing about riding: it forces you to focus, to really, really concentrate, because the last thing you want to be thinking about while in mid-air over a jump on a horse is English homework or some guy. Of course, accidents happen even while focused, and on February 20, 2007 I was thrown from a horse. He was a giant, gorgeous bay gelding named Dante, perhaps 4 or 5 years old. He was a good horse, but feeling anxious, and as we cleared the last jump of a course he started bucking. I sat two of them (thank you very much) but was thrown over his head by the third, landing flat on my back in front of him. I broke my back in three places and ruptured a disc. It hurt.

But even this I count as a blessing, because at no other time has my strength been tested like that. After some time bedridden, and some time in a ridiculous brace, and some time in physical therapy, I'm (more or less) recovered, and evermore thankful for my life and mobility. I was inches from being paralyzed, and now often find myself checking buildings for wheelchair access, wondering what my life would be like had a landed just a little differently.

I've only ridden twice since the accident, due to financial reasons. It is harder and harder for me to justify spending so much money to feed and care for and ride animals when humans around the world starve to death. I can't bring myself to fork over $60 for an hour of riding when that amount of money give 60 people clean water for a year (http://www.bloodwatermission.com/). But I still don't regret the time and money spent on my behalf to ride horses, because it has made me who I am and taught me things I don't know that I would have learned any other way.

Today I packed up all of my riding gear- my boots, chaps, helmet, pants, show shirt, show coat, brushes, boxes, crops, etc- to give to lift me up, a therapeutic riding program for kids with developmental and/or emotional disabilities (http://www.liftmeup.org/). I will miss riding, but can no longer justify it to myself (especially since my income next year will be (ta-da!) $50 a month). But I sincerely hope that my boots and spurs and tack will be used by some other kid who needs them, not just to have fun, but to learn about hard work and self respect and caring for living things. I also hope they make the kids who are physically able clean the stalls and throw hay once in a while; it's good for them.

montana night

"I hear these put three times the amount of tar in your lungs," she said, with more than a little pride in her ability to take her own life in her hands.
"I just think they taste good. Like herbs," I said, still secretly wondering if I was doing it wrong.
We sat for a few silent minutes, admiring the Montana stars at midnight and the mountains we couldn't see.
Taking a drink, I said, "I feel like we're twelve, sneaking cigarettes and beer in the backyard," knowing full well that at twelve I was far more interested in early American poetry and the U.S. equestrian team than alcohol, that I hadn't had any alcohol until I was a month away from 20, and this was only my second time smoking cloves, having smoked hookah twice before that. I never smoke or drank at twelve, and she knew it.
She stayed silent. We had been friends since we were six, but I was suddenly unsure of myself, wondering what, exactly, she had done at twelve without me.

artist statement

It's been twelve months since I left Kenya and there in the fourth week I saw the first and only dead body I've ever seen-- a child. On a cot in the Kakamega public hospital (not the one for white people) I think he starved to death. So skinny and dead. Oh god oh god he's dead that one on the cot he's dead muffled Kiswahili skinny dead.The day we took the babies to the clinic I picked the chubby baby because I needed one to be healthy and I needed to hear she was going to be OK and carry her out and feel better but they said no, this one, she's not fat because she's eating, she's fat because she's being eaten. Parasites, they said, that whole big belly of yours full of worms, all 20 pounds of you were parasitic worms and you weren't OK and I'm sorry I'm so sorry I chose you to take to the clinic and I'm sorry I never knew your name and I'm sorry that you're not OK.


I'm sorry, Bonnie and Maxwell and Ben and Luvembe and Wyclif and Steven and Eric and Issac. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left you. I'm sorry all I ever gave you was a soccer ball. I'm sorry I didn't give you the candy bar the day on the street when you were high. I was so scared. You're twelve and I'm scared. I'm sorry if you're dead now and I'm sorry I don't know if you're dead. And baby Joesph with the yellow hat, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I put you down I had to leave we had to leave I had to leave Mathare. And baby Nakariah from Huruma-- Huruma, it means Mercy-- they call you and orphan but someone had to put you in the dumpster where they found you. Who, baby, who? And Kathleen stared at the chest of that boy she held and told me over and over she had to watch his chest to see if he's still breathing is he breathing he's not breathing and that one, that one is dead now, I'm quite sure of it.


30,000 every 24 hours. 20.83 a minute. I made 25 a minute so I could stay ahead of you but 2,460,000 more starved to death in the two months it took me to make this one day.






more images at www.maggiepageonline.com