If You're Not Living On the Edge You Take Up Too Much Room

I haven't written here in a while, but tonight I had the greatest urge to. So this will be another long one.

Yesterday I moved into my new apartment in New Brunswick; I have two great roommates whom I hadn't met prior to giving them my first rent check. One is Egyptian and the other is Palestinian. They are both named Mohamed; the Egyptian is 28 and the Palestinian is 25. I'm loving sharing an apartment with them so far--they've been extremely hospitable and they're both really funny and great to talk to. They plan on teaching me Arabic :) I also started my new job last night, at a diner called Nuebies, owned by a Lebanese family. It is by FAR the most laid back job I've ever had; I wear jeans and a t-shirt to work, bring reading material, and talk to personnel and customers throughout my entire shift. I don't make nearly as much money as I had at previous jobs, but I realized tonight that I don't care. Of course I need money desperately, but I enjoy being there so much because it relaxes me. When I'm home my time is mostly occupied by my computer, or by worries and stress and chores, but when I'm at the diner it's just me, my job, my books and magazines, and really nice people. Tonight I read an article about Malaria in the newest National Geographic issue and it was one of the most peaceful reading experiences I've ever had; how strange is that?! Even though it was sometimes interrupted by my waitressing duties, I felt so comfortable there just reading. My manager and a delivery guy asked me what I was reading about and we talked about malaria for a while. Then this guy about my age came in to place an order for pick-up, and we talked for a pretty long while about what we wanted to do with our lives. He's a biotechnology major, and he said he wants to be the guy to make what people consider to be science fiction a reality. I told him about my tentative plans and he seemed really interested, so we talked about immigration for a while. When he left I went back to reading. I can't even relay how relaxing I find this job to be. It gives me so much time to think and just be myself. My manager, Hoda, is the sweetest lady, obviously going through menopause because she sweats like a beast one minute and then says she is freezing the next. But she and I talk about lots of different things, like what she likes to do on the weekends (she just takes the car and drives long distances to get away; since getting her car in December she's put 38,000 miles on her car)! I feel pretty bad for her because during the week she's there for 12 hours a day or more; it's pretty clear that she's exhausted. She often takes naps at the back of the restaurant. She asked me if I could work from 11 am to midnight tomorrow, but I told her I really can't handle that. I feel really sorry for her; she can't find anyone that will work the crazy hours she does. You know, I feel kind of strange saying "I feel sorry for her;" it sounds like an insult these days. People don't like to be pitied, but what do you say?

So now about that National Geographic article, the one about Malaria. It's one of the best written informative articles I've ever read. There was one part in the article in particular that really struck me. There is a man by the name of Stephen Hoffman who owns the only company in the world that is dedicated to the sole purpose of finding a vaccine for Malaria. He's been devoted to the cause for decades, and the author describes him as extremely optimistic about his chances of finding the vaccine, though many other researchers and scientists are becoming doubtful. Creating a working, lasting vaccine for Malaria has been an impossible task to achieve because there are many strains for the disease and parasites quickly develop mutations that resist drugs and vaccines that are developed to fight them. Still, Hoffman believes he will discover it. In fact, he thinks he may have the vaccine. He combined Ruth Nussenzweig's past research with his own and believes that if you expose mosquitoes carrying falciparum parasites to radiation, and then remove their salivary glands which carry the irradicated parasites, you can use these irradicated parasites as a vaccine for Malaria. The vaccine has been tested on mice and has proven to be effective. Hoffman wants to eventually administer this vaccine to all new-borns in Sub-Saharan Africa, for he believes this vaccine could protect 90% of them from Malaria, but administration stands in his way. It would take FIVE YEARS, if at all, for his vaccine to be approved by the FDA and other administration. It seems that with the Sub-Saharan African population becoming infected so quickly, and new-borns fastest of all, we don't have five years to wait for an approval. Of course this is a very delicate issue, and the vaccine must be tested meticulously and these things take time, but I think there may be a bit too much bureaucracy involved in this. But what do I know...

I leafed through the rest of the National Geographic magazine, saving more reading material for tomorrow night's shift, but I found this pretty cool bit that I couldn't resist reading, about this couple that got married on the Mendenhall Glacier in the Tongas of Alaska. How AWESOME is that?! It made me realize that if I get married, that's the kind of wedding I'd want to have. No guests, nothing superfluous, just me and my husband on a glacier or out in the wilderness somewhere. It seems that's what marriage should be about anyway; it's you and your spouse together forever with and against the entire world and all its splendor, danger, troubles, stresses, doubts, contradictions, hilarity, complexity, and simplicity. And I think having a wedding like that, on a glacier somewhere, just encapsulates all of that and makes a wedding all the more symbolic and memorable.

And then I realized, I'm not as pessimistic about marriage as I lead myself and others on to believe. I think inherently I want to have a lifelong partner. Of course the divorce rate, and infidelity, and childbearing/rearing scares the ever-loving shit out of me, but when it comes down to it I want someone whom I can share things with at the latest hour of the night, whom I can wake up next to in the morning and know that they'll be there for me next year, and the year after that, and ten years from now. Friends are great and they enrich your life tremendously, but nothing can guarantee that they'll be around for the next few years; they're not committed or devoted to you, even if they care about you deeply. I want someone whom I can travel with, cook for, share everything with, learn from--all of those ideals. And I don't think they're impossible. I think you just need to keep things fresh and don't fall too quickly into routines, which I think for me is pretty easy 'cause I'm constantly mixing things up (I, myself, am very mixed up). There's a great song called Heavy Weight Champion of the World, and the best line in the whole song is "If you're not living on the edge you take up too much room." Hells yea! And I don't think you need to abandon all traditions to live on the edge; you just need to keep things spicy.