But Slenderly. . .

Warning: creepy morbidity ahead

So I arrived in Jakarta just in time to settle in, plug away at my work, and get ready to get lulled into sleep listening to the dulcet intonations of the iman calling the faithful to prayer from the nearby mosque.  Having gone through, count 'em, four hotel rooms – yes, I am that annoying squeaky wheel, but my previous three tries either lacked high speed internet or a working power – I was thrilled when the front desk threw up their hands and put me in a luxo-suite with delectable fluffy robes and slippers (oh how I am a sucker for a hotel robe and slippers).  Yet, just after midnight, I awoke from a jet-lagged comatose to the wooden hangers in the armoire next to the bed performing some sort of crazed skeleton dance.  In my haze, I wondered if there was some wacky alarm system set up in the closet for the determined snooze-button sleeper and stumbled out to check.  Which is about when I felt the room take a decided tilt left, then right.  The back again. 

My instinctual flight kicked in and I ran, still utterly foggy-headed, into the next room to . . . well, it's a little embarrassing, but I think to inspect my room service tray.  Somehow my tired, half-asleep brain pieced together that something very strange was happening and that it was conceivably very bad – ergo, the best verification was to crouch down and eyeball my waterglass sitting on the room service tray.  My subconscious has apparently watched Jurassic Park one to many times.  But, sure enough, the water sloshed over the side one way, then the other.  I don't know what I thought after that, but my body took over and decided to GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE. 

Without my purse, without my passport, clad in a flower-printed nightgown and yellow terry cloth robe, I ran down the hallway for the stairwell.  Other bleary-eyed hotel guests followed, though perhaps without my unrestrained gusto.  Robe flapping, I started sprinting down the stairs.  At about four floors down, it finally dawned on me that the shaking had stopped, that no discernable disaster sounds were forthcoming. I paused in my flight.  Nothing.  I met eyes with another hotel guest, a Japanese business man in his undershirt and half-buttoned pants, and I pulled my robe tight with a post-lapsarian cinch. A hotel employee came in and informed us there had been an earthquake but that it was safe to return to our rooms. It's hard to explain the weird sense of relief tinged with let-down after that announcement; I mean, halleluiah and thank god and all that, but my body was ready man, flight or fight, adrenaline up to my eyeballs. Instead, I turned back to sort of sheepishly shuffle back up the stairs to my (wide open) hotel room. I crawled back to bed and lay there thinking. 

This was the second time in under a month where I had found myself hurling myself down stairs because of a perceived threat. I work above Grand Central Terminal in New York and a few weeks ago, our building evacuated because of what turned out to be a steam pipe explosion. Before we knew, though, before Bloomberg announced the incident was not terrorist related, no one knew what to think except the worst. I was in my office with a summer associate when a horrible earthshaking rumble started up.  I looked out the window trying to figure out what was happening. "I think we need to get out of here," she said.  I walked out to the hallway and said something stupidly flip like "what's going on here, the end of days or what?" Then, a paralegal ran down the hall shouting that smoke was billowing out of the building next door. You know what we thought.  The entire building of 50+ floors evacuated, some dared the elevator, most cruised down the stairs. Once in the mezzanine, I gripped onto the summer's hand and she and I started walking towards Central Park. 

It's strange; in the flight moment, everyone is moving, is on, is scared. But no one loses their shit.  You still talk in a normal voice, saying things like "well, this is pretty crazy, huh?" and nodding that the best plan is keep walking north. There is this sort of fake coolness, an unfelt nonchalance because what else are you going to do?  I called DK once I was outside walking up Park, and it was the first time my voice shook. 

Luckily in both cases I quickly found out that everything was under control. A steampipe.  A strong earthquake far underground (though, still, a 7.6 on the ol' scale). I made jokes the next day about my wild-eyed descent with my Indonesian clients. I mentioned it to my parents, I wrote back to concerned friends, I called off my firm's travel office watchdogs (who, damn, are on top of things in eerily reassuring way.  Not an hour later after the quake struck and they called my hotel room to ask me if I wanted on the next flight out).  I haven't thought much about it except as "one of those crazy stories."

I'm in Bali this weekend, which is absurdly delicious. I've done some work, but mainly I have indulged by finishing two books, sitting on the beach and getting a ridiculously long spa treatment package thingie that included having scented oil poured on my forehead for thirty minutes. But I keep finding myself dwelling on the slightly morbid. My plane to Bali went through a patch of turbulence and I sort of complacently thought, "Well, at least DK knows I love him."  Uh, what? Then today, as the masseuse rubbed me with various oils as I lay on a slab with my eyes closed, all I could think about was how loving ancient funeral rituals must have been, to perform this last tender anointment; and how sad that we were so far removed from that ritualistic touch. While please lock me up if I ever go to pull out a bottle of my fanciest olive oil at the news of loved one's passing, I have to admit, at that moment, it just seemed so desperately sad to think of some cold and brightly lit room, with tubes and fluids.

Jesus Christ, I have just succeeded in totally creeping myself out. Perhaps the earthquake has affected more than I thought? You think? Sheesh.  Off to get a restorative glass of wine, stat. 

Internal Clock is Confused

I'm sitting in the lounge in Singapore waiting to begin my long wander around looking for my gate for Jakarta.  I think it leaves soonish, and given my increasing blindness and propensity to get lost and squint incomprehensibly at signs, I should probably get going just about now. 

But hi!  I have to say, the long ass flight wasn't so bad.  There are few times I can think of where sitting for sixteen hours sounds even remotely appealing, but, strangely, this was one of those times.  See, I am not so down with the walking these days.  Despite having done minimal training (save for three spirited weeks in early June), I went ahead and ran the Nike half-marathon on Sunday. 

Sore?  Why yes, my poor unsuspecting legs are a touch sore.  Who would have guessed?  Back in April when this craziness was proposed, I was all "yeah! I'll train and I'll run every morning and it'll be great because I will be so very fit and ready, rrrwoorrh!"  And then?  Um, there were a few spirited weeks in early June when I dutifully checked off milestones on my calendar, but then . . . not so much (see post below).  But I still decided to just go for it, giving perhaps undue credit to my body's ability to wing it.  Actually, the first ten miles went ok -- which is surprising given the longest I've run in one go during the last two years is maybe 8 miles -- the last three were some of the most painful.  I kept thinking that so long as I didn't walk, I could take it as slow as I needed and that little mantra actually pushed me through.  I finished (not great time, but under 10 min miles), got myself a plastic medal thingie, and can now say I got to run down the middle of 42nd street and Times Square with nary a car, ala Vanilla Sky.  Anyway, a good long sit with movies and a decent glass of wine on a plane wasn't such a bad end.

Yarg, off to find gate F42.  This airport is a doozy; at 5:45 am, there were fancy sunglasses shops and burger kings and duty free shops opening up for business.  I can barely find my own nose, much less have the wherewithall to shop.  I did, however, manage to pour myself a cup of coffee and have convinced myself it's Wednesday morning, instead of early Tuesday night.  Sort of.   

Breaking news: Life Balance is Important (sheesh)

I'm not exactly sure how this happened, but starting in about April, I have morphed into a workaholic.  It's a weird thing, particularly for me, as I naturally tend towards the lazy and the daydream and the put off to the last minute.  In the absence of a looming deadline, you can usually find me over yonder idly sifting through case law, but most likely gabbing away with a friend or plotting an escape. 

But for the last several months, I think work, I do work, I talk work.  I have become extraordinarily boring, in other words.  It's not just one thing – sometime people get on a big monster case where the looming deadline is everyday for months.  You can spot those people a mile away as the sleepless, glassy-eyed pallor of resentment fairly booms over them.  And I've been there, not in a couple years, but oh those three hateful months on case X in 2004, those are hours I will never get back. 

Now, it's a totally different game.  There are many many many unhappy lawyers out there.  Many people who went into the law because they graduated college with their shiny liberal arts degree in philosophy/English/art history and figured, "eh? Law school?"  And others go into a Big Firm and get sucked dry with some hideous insurance case that they work on for two solid unrelenting years.  And still other associates who ultimately resent the nature of the egos they have work for (why, for instance, must partner Y respond to an intricate four part question that requires direction as to choice a, b, c or d with a one word "yes" sent on his blackberry?).  It's a service industry at the end of the day, run by the needs of sometime mercurial clients, with various partners running their little fiefdoms with little oversight or management skills. 

But I kind of love it.  I like I don't have a one boss, or a set job description, or do the same old thing everyday.  I'm working with six or seven different partners right now on radically different cases with personalities ranging from gregarious/irreverent/maniac to absentee/intimidating/traditionalist.  But every personality, even hale-fellow-well-met parter, after a certain amount of time, wears on you if it's all you get.  But because I'm busy on a bunch of other matters, I can do a little of case A for a couple hours, then switch to case B for a change and the have a conversation or two about the other matters.  Not every case is hopping at the same time (that happens, of course, but that is a very bad week), so filling the day with intense bursts of work on totally different matters keeps me from feeling bored.  Say what you will about the law, and lady, I've probably heard it all, but it is a profession that can keep you on your toes because every new case has at least something (or many many somethings) I've never seen before.  The learning curve is steep, yo. 

Anyway, see what I mean?  I've become a stinking cheerleader of New York lawyerdom.  Insane.  Ah, but here's the rub.  Getting the good mix of work, the good partners, the good cases has another price, and one that I am really struggling to figure out.  Time.  God, the time.  I miss DK, I miss getting to do things I enjoy doing (see blogging, cooking dinner, crosswords, reading, being a decent friend, wife, daughter).  I have to cancel on things I really want to do.  Juggling a mix of cases (and really, I wish I could take off at least two, because it's too much right now) means there is a deadline almost every other day.  I went to Detroit last week; I'm leaving on Monday for Jakarta, the next week to Singapore.  It is work that I genuinely enjoy.  But there is a cost. Duh. 

But before, when I looked at these people who do so much work, who send emails at 2 am, who wake up thinking about how to do a certain nuance, or argument, I looked at them as if they were aliens.  And now I get it.  I do.  It is surprisingly easy to get pulled into the undertow – your brain whirs and ticks and thinks, "oh! I could say X and I should talk to Y" or even just feel, like an eerie prickle under your skin, the deadlines sitting on your desk from across town.  And there is ambition.  To be well thought of, to be recommended, to take on hard and bigger responsibilities and knock it out of the park (don't I wish) – that is a very powerful motivator for me. 

But do I want to be that person?  The other night, I came home early (7:30 let's not get too excited), and threw on my jeans, DK put on some music and opened some wine, we cooked our "poor man's cassoulet" and sat at the table talking.  I never want to jeopardize that easy intimacy.  No job is worth it.  But there is also no need to create some false dichotomy – i.e. the notion that challenging work and a fulfilling personal life are somehow mutually exclusive and honestly, deep down honestly, I think women in particular are sometime sold a false bill of goods on that count.

So, balance.  Balance.  I think I'm getting better. I sent out my out-of-office email for the end of August (DK and I are going to tool around the Pacific Northwest – Whistler, Vancouver, Seattle and finally Portland in time for our newest niece's arrival). And next weekend between the meetings in Jakarta and Singapore, somebody just bought a ticket to Bali, baby.

I'm also going to try hard to just post here more often, my little secret corner of creativity, because who wants to be too busy to post about the outrageous things overheard on the subway? (seriously y'all, yesterday I listened, seething, to three youngish thugs spend ten minutes bitching about how "them ugly ass old people come in the subway with their ugly ass canes and want me to give up my seat? Fuck that!  You just live longer, that don't deserve no fucking medal."  Nice.)