i would've baby-stepped into intimate

i'd like to suggest that this starting over is a success, in the sense that life seems to be softening around the edges, much in the way that it did in new york. it's a slow process, if i remember it well, but it's like how, with grieving (and i read this in a really good book recently) you don't ever stop hurting, you just feel a little less miserable as time goes on.

i'm feeling a little less unsettled as time goes on.

so remember that salad place? sumo salad, to be exact. indeed, i am working there now. yes, according to my morning pages, and maybe even this blog, i don't remember, i swore off food service. and let it be known, i still do not like food service. but i like this job enough to keep it. i work every weekday from 7:30am to 2:00pm, and i'm busy the entire time, and the people i work with, usually, are all nice enough. my manager can be a bit of a dragon lady, but she cools off easily enough. today, her manager was in the shop helping us out, as we've been short-staffed or everyone who works at this location is all relatively new, or i don't know, we're basically half a mess, so here she was to help out. and as someone wisely noted recently, most people who work in these positions are total fucking control freaks. this woman fit that to a t. there was absolutely nothing she could not find something to make comment on or try to correct in some way. for some reason, it didn't really get to me.

i don't know, maybe it's because i know that i'm not going to eclipse in my career as being a manager of a fast food salad chain found in various shopping malls across australia. i'm good enough at my job after only one week, but let's be honest: i never want this to be something i'm 'good at.' i liked that i was good at advertising and sales, and that i'm 'good at' writing or being creative in some way more intellectually stimulating than knowing how much dressing to put on a salad. i'm just here to pay the bills, folks.

i was having a brief chat with this woman today as she asked how long i'd been in australia, and where i was from. "you're from new york, and you came to melbourne?" she asked incredulously.

i smiled. "i know, everyone says that. but it's been nice, doing something different."

she sort of laughed. "but it's not that different! the pace is a little slower, that's all."

wait, i'm sorry, what?

so it should be mentioned, plenty of other people have asked, "why would you leave new york and come here?" with some sort of...well, humility, i guess. melbourne's great, i'm not putting her down at all, but let's not be ridiculous. melbourne and new york are not the same. i wouldn't have come here in the first place if they were the same.

and so probably because this woman was already starting to get on my nerves, and because of this, albeit slowly calming, frenzy of foreign exhaust, and also because i am the only american i see for days, i'm very protective of my home country. tag onto it the whole obama thing, if you want, and the fact that coming to australia only solidified for me that new york is in fact home, and i'm basically the most territorial i've ever been.

i didn't really know what to say to her. i mean, the point of leaving new york was not to go to the outback and, i don't know, dig for root vegetables for nine months. i wasn't looking for the polar opposite. i don't even know what i was looking for anymore.

so i said, "well, i wouldn't want to be out in the country."

earlier, my boss was making some comment about how i didn't hear what she was telling me (it doesn't help that she doesn't actually seem to be addressing me when she's talking to me; she's one of those people you're perennially guessing with), and half-jokingly cried, "damn americans! they don't understand english!"

once again, a bit choked with national pride, i said, "well, it's a different english."

some other guy, somewhat understanding enough, noted, "it's because we talk so fast!"

once again, though, totally off the mark. i can understand you people just fine. and if you insult my country one more time, i'm going to drown you in a bucket of mayonnaise.

i could be a bit ridiculous these days. i talked to both jay and joe on the phone the other day, and it's not so much that their accents resonated with some sort of deep familiarity--i don't even hear accents anymore, to be honest, american or australian--but that sense of 'your own people.' one of my friends here made a point months ago of saying he wouldn't be in a long-term relationship with someone who wasn't australian, because something would be missing, some common history. when he first said it, i thought, "well, that's not fair at all." and i'm not saying, "oh yeah, i totally agree now," because i still don't, but i get it to an extent. there's something to be said for "your kind."

this is not to romanticize america or its people, or to put down australia and its respective inhabitants--i'm quite fond of and totally over any number of folks from either population--but i think wherever we go--and maybe i can only speak for myself here--we crave that sense of familiarity. we want something we can come to intimately know, be that a person, place, or thing.

except, of course, for making salads. i have no interest in intimately knowing how to make salads.