The interview game

So, Ruthie started the Interview Game, where someone asks you 5 questions, you answer them, and then you ask someone else 5 questions. If someone wants to be up next, let me know. Here's what Ruthie asked me...

1. How did you end up living in New York?

Oh jeeze - there are so many answers to this question, and they are all so long and complicated. The simplest story is this - I was living in North Carolina, a situation which was becoming increasingly wretched. I had a bunch of online friends in New York, and when I asked for advice on how to deal with the wretched situation, they said "Screw the advice, come live in New York." So I did, and have ever since. When people ask me "What brought you to New York" all I really have to do is look at them blankly for a second, say "New York." and they get it.

2. How did you end up in the Quakers?

Well, I was raised uber-Catholic, very, very Catholic, and I loved it. My parents took the pious pill when I was about seven, which is a great age to discover God and organized religion. I was finally getting these gorgeous Baroque answers to the "why" questions I'd been asking since I was two. Plus at that age you love smoke and magic and sparkly things and angels and you love ritual - that's the age where you learn all the jump-rope and counting-out rhymes, and you begin starting your secret "no boys allowed" societies, and you're looking to associate with a group, very strongly. So I jumped in with both feet and didn't stop until I was 18. I had been reading mystical texts like "Cloud of Unknowing" and St. John of the Cross, and I was really expecting to become a nun. Then, freshman year of college, I started reading more, and learning more, and my new uncertainties were used and guided by other people for their own angry reasons. My faith broke down, and I figured I'd lost a certain type of innocence, which I had. There's a certain kind of blind, unquestioned faith that you lose once doubt is introduced. It's not a bad thing, but it was kind of traumatic for me, and I dealt with it by becoming a very unhappy brand of agnostic. I thought "you can't go back without wilfully blinding yourself" which is mostly true. I poked around Buddhism for a while but it wasn't right for me, and I kind of let go of the whole God/religion question. Then I started trying to go to Mass again, but I always left feeling so sad and uncomfortable and lonely. I was pretty miserable in this area of my life, because I had no idea how to fix it. One day I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. One of the main characters was a Quaker, and I suddenly remembered the little bit I knew about them. I went online and started reading everything Quaker I could get my hands on. Inspired (somewhat ironically) by Martin Kelley's Quaker Ranter I mustered up the courage to show up at 15th Street one morning. And I kept showing up. Quakerism gave me room to let God find me, rather than vice-versa.

3. Other than working, blogging and Quakering, what else do you do with your spare time? (Do have any? I seem to remember that you work seriously long hours)

Well, my seriously long hours are seriously non-demanding hours. It's kind of like being in prison with good lighting and lots of coffee. No one really expects much from me. So I read, a lot, and write, and sew and knit and stare into space, and compulsively check my e-mail, and play music and chat with friends who stop by. For the service industry, it feels pretty damned aristocratic. (I guess it's like Martha Stewart in the slammer) In the rest of my spare time, I am talking to my boy and at any given moment plotting my descent upon and overthrow of his town. In what's left over, I sleep. I like to sleep almost as much as I like to read, but not quite, which might explain the funny contortionist thing I have to do to get comfortable with all the books in my bed.

4. What is the best thing you have done in your life so far?

It is probably kind of scary and telling that my first knee-jerk response to this question is a song from The Sound of Music....

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somwhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth...

...Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Uh, I dunno. I have been disappointing in the grand acts of goodness or thrilling stunts of coolness department. If we're talking about what was the best decision I ever made, moving to New York would probably be it, but then we get into the whole butterfly effect, there are lots of decisions that lead up to the one to move to New York, not all of them good, and there are a lot of decisions after moving to New York that justify it into "the best thing". It's confusing. I think it might clear things up if I would just run into a burning building and save some puppies already.

5. You get to invite 3 people, from anywhere in the world and even from beyond the grave to a dinner party. Who do you invite and why?

Oooh, I hate this question. My first response to it has always been Oscar Wilde, but the more I learn about myself and him, the more I think he would hate me. I can think of endless permutations of people that would be astonishing to watch and see how they get on, though I wouldn't want to be in on the conversation. Ghandi might be an awkward dinner companion, though I'd love to invite him for a week in the country.

Here's one that might make for some laughs - President Bush in a straitjacket, Godzilla, and a Giant Sentient Can of Spray-on Butter.

I can think of a lot of real-life people I know from my everyday that would be great to have for dinner. With lots of hotsauce.

I am completely losing my sense of the hypothetical these days, and it's disturbing.