The Day That They Started Asking Me Questions At Work And I Felt Useful
Note: I can't decide how much I'll talk about work here, "here" meaning the little tiny bit of cyberspace that is this blog. For now, I'm not too concerned because I'm pretty sure I am my own audience. But in the future, lines might have to be drawn. For now, I will say that I started an internship a week ago at a place that I worship, and to have people asking me questions and assuming that I know things makes me feel very, very good.

Here is what I really wanted to talk about: default settings. They're the places that your mind automatically conjures when confronted with a piece of writing (or talking) that takes place in a familiar yet undefined locale. Like a house, or a restaurant, or a park. Usually, I forget to notice these things. And then I'll realize, halfway through a paragraph about a creek in the woods, that I am picturing a very specific creek in a very specific woods, and it's not the creek I would have guessed I would picture. It's a very basic idea, we do it all the time, but it's hard to catch ourselves doing it. I encourage you to try. Sometimes, you can get a friend to say random settings and if you let yourself react quickly, you can figure out what you're conjuring. Usually, though, I think you just have to notice them in the moment when you're reading or listening to something.

Here a list of some I've noticed lately.

House: this one I noticed a while ago (it was my first recognizable default setting) and I'm not sure it's true anymore. But for a long time, my default house was one that I only lived in for a few years when I was about 5-6 years old. It was the first house my mom lived in after she left me and my dad and probably the first place (aside from some unfortunate months when I visited her in motels) where I stayed with her regularly. It was a great house, and the backyard was the biggest sledding hill in town. It was called Handke Pit (Handke was the elementary school next door, but I didn't get to go there because my school was determined by my dad's address, not my mom's.) My favorite photo of me was taken on the stone path next to the flower beds that my mom and I planted. In it, I am wearing a purple dress, a red cardigan, brown leather shoes, and saggy white tights. The house isn't there anymore. They moved it to a neighboring town. I don't know where it is, and it's the only place I'ved lived in that I couldn't find if I wanted to.

Hotel room: this one makes me feel incredibly literary, which is special because I always felt like a poorly read English major. For whatever reason, my default hotel room is the room where the last part of The Dead takes place. I haven't read it lately, but in my mind, it is dark, there is a four-poster bed to my right, a large dresser in the corner in front of me and to my left, and windows all in front of me. Outside of them, it is snowing (of course).

Creek: I've only been there once and it was a few months ago, but there is a creek somewhere near New Haven that managed to become my default creek.

Baseball diamond: this is a weird hybrid one, because I first noticed it was my default baseball diamond when I read the fatal baseball scene of A Prayer for Owen Meany. And ever since then, I feel like Owen Meany is still there, that it's my diamond and Owen's diamond. Little bastard snuck right in there. Before it was his, it was one of the diamonds in the NW corner of the fields by my junior high where I used to play softball.

City: my default city is still Chicago, where I lived before New York. I think it will take a while for NYC to rise to the top.