Caught on Midday.

Yes. I listen to speeches in my car from time to time. I'm not going to do a lot with these words, just that Harold Kushner (America's Rabbi, apparently. How awesome is it that I have a rabbi though I am not Jewish?) said some good things:

Stuff that applies to the class I just took:

He was talking about age and aging, and one of the great inferences he made is that with baby boomers aging, we might actually begin to see age in this country. We do not have a society that is particularly down with aging. It leads, inevitably and frighteningly towards thoughts of death.

America's rabbi has two things to say about aging and dying. He says we must end "the war between the generations". The elderly must stop being annoyed with the noisy chaos of youth and the young must "stop seeing the elderly as an obstacle...but see them as people with stories to tell."

Yes. and thank you.

On the big D: "Do not be afraid of death. People about to die are not afraid of dying...but of having wasted their lives...Go to the cemetery. Tell me if you find one headstone that reads 'really good salesman', 'very effective CEO', 'really good with numbers', 'always drove a new car'. No. You know what the headstones say at the cemetery: 'Beloved husband and father', 'cherished wife, mother and grandmother', 'dear friend'. If you have achieved that you don't need to have achieved eminence in any other area of life."

It can probably seem a little trite, but it really struck home with me today. Also, I hope my headstone says "dear friend." (And also that it has Egyptian-style cats on either side of it.)

Kushner finished his talk with a quote from William James: "Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact."

Bring it on home.

Work

The obvious right out of the gate: I am not dedicated to my job. It is a means to an end. I would hate to have it pulled out from under me at this point, but I also do not treat it like it is the most important thing in my life.
I have a coworker who cannot separate herself from her work. If she has to do it, she's going to make it important. This is not necessarily a bad trait to have. In a lot of circumstances, I imagine it's an asset. But I think she has told herself a self-importance story when it comes to her work as a faculty secretary. I also think she knows that I keep myself pretty separate from work, and I kind of think it drives her crazy that I can do this.
I don't think her job is made any easier because she's so committed either, if anything, it makes it more difficult because she starts to get edgy when things she sees as 'hers' are 'taken' from her. This has happened recently over the transition of a student activity that reports to one of my disciplines, but she has been taking care of it for the last four years or so.
She is forever saying to me: "Not that I think you're incompetent." But ah, when you hear it often enough, the message sure becomes "I think you're incompetent." I mean, I've been known to do that from time to time.

I had another one of these little run-ins after a meeting this morning. I ask her questions because: 1) she's had the job longer than I have, and 2) she's not my boss (who is a whole different kettle of crazy). Asking a simple question resulted in spew about the result of a faculty meeting in which "my faculty" were surprised that "her faculty trusted" her with website alterations from the word go.
Now, I don't have a lot of work on a daily basis, and maybe it is because these people think I'm "incompetent", but this was a meeting of department chairs. Most of the people who are department chairs right now are individuals I've had as teachers. They know I'm no fluff-brain.
They may indeed have implied that they didn't want me working on the website, I don't know, but I still got the impression that I was being put down, not by "my faculty" but by my coworker.

I've given this woman the benefit of a doubt a zillion times. She is brash and abrasive and not afraid to tell anyone what she really thinks, but man...I think this time, she IS afraid to tell me what she thinks. And she's doing a piss poor job with her passive aggression. (Unlike well...blogging about it...which is totally direct. Guess I'll step off my high horse now.)

Fit.

I have had so much that I want to write about, I have been writing about none of it. I feel, every time I sit down to begin something, at risk of rambling endlessly. These posts of mine are long anyway.
Anyway...I've gotta start somewhere.

Back in undergrad, when I took a creative nonfiction class, I was surprised by how much fun it was, and the amount of positive feedback I received on a form that I didn't consider my primary. I'm starting to feel like that in my current class run. I've been startled at the ease with which I dove back in. My papers have been strong. Perhaps not "several years of learning to construct academic writing again" strong, but I have had positive comments.
Last night, one of my classmates wrote an on-the-spot poem about my words as I gave my mid-term presentation. He said I was compelling. I probably turned pink with embarrassed pleasure.
There are people around me with bigger vocabularies, and libraries in their minds from which to draw, but I'm doing just fine, and my teacher thinks I have the skills necessary. I find it hard not to wriggle like a rewarded puppy.

One of my classmates asked last night: Has there ever been a time when you felt like you really fit in the story you were living? What did that feel like?
And our talkative class went quiet.

I've had small moments like that, I think. When I learned a dance in a week and performed at Ren Fest, the story fit.
I want so badly for the school story I'm beginning right now to fit. I feel like it does, and I just don't want to mess this up.
The problem is, that's one element. And I know now how much that one element isn't everything. I need to be socially happy as well, and, for good or ill, now that I've experienced a long-term relationship, that's part of the equation as well.
If I could get my intellectual life and my personal life moving in positive directions at the same time...I don't even have a concept of what that would feel like.

Maybe high school. Which is a terribly strange thing to look at as my benchmark for "good" because there was plenty that wasn't, but a lot of it was my own making and living at home.
Has it really been ten years since things fit?
Not that things have been bad, but the question just brought things home for me. What makes a story fit or not fit?

I haven't gotten to the bottom of all this yet anyway. Just throwing stuff out there.

(Sometimes I'm annoyed that the blog is a place of eternal first draft-i-tude. Sometime, I will put something up here that is polished.)

Variations on a Theme in G Major: Mississppi River Song

Yesterday finally felt like the fall I look forward to every year. Warm-ish. Smelling of nostalgia. Colorful. All those lovely things. I took a walk. At first, I was feeling a little sorry for myself that it was a walk alone, but I started taking pictures. The more pictures I took, the happier I became. I thought of my sister sending a photo diary of the State Fair back to CT to her friend. It occurred to me that there was no reason not to treat my random outings alone as things worth documenting. If I want experiences in life, perhaps I must treat my small joys as "experiences", and then, just maybe, I won't be so full of longing. I'll still want to travel and take in places that are unfamiliar with friends and family, but there will be beauty in finding pieces of my city/state that I don't know so well yet too.

And so...I'm not quite sure how this project will go, but here's the start of the project that I'm calling "Variations on a Theme in G Major".

Ford Bridge:

Looking from St. Paul to Minneapolis:

Off the edge of the map:

Hat left behind, Minneapolis side:

And now we know where I was...

Behold, I am Jim Brandenburg with an iPhone:

And someday, I might even get this layout thing down...

Cheers!

Random poetry

Sometimes, I wax romantic about my friends...

Tentatively titled"Bright and Hollow" (with all due credit to "The Passenger" from whence the lyrics come and the inspiration is stolen.)

I'm driving through a reflective world,
pavement layers of red and green.
My car falls deep
pothole, rabbit hole.

We used to dream these nights,
plotting the best way to catch
(and confuse) a man, spinning
white on black through the ghosts
of misleading light and sight.
Refraction.

They are our song.
Our you and me;
raining down years of us.

We ride and we ride.

The internet gap.

I'm laying in bed analyzing...'cause what else are you going to do when you're unfortunately awake at not quite 8 on a Saturday morning.  I began in the pleasant task of thinking about how I was going to become a zombie for this evening.  Quite pleasant, but this, of course, lead to concerns about the masses of people that are going to be in my house.  This would not be a concern if I had some party support.  

I'm not sure I'm going to...so I started rambling in that direction which lead me to an interesting place.  

The young ladies that DB is friends with should be people with whom I have things in common--and they are, to a certain degree.  I even think that if we had all been the same age together, we might be really good friends ('specially L and me), but they are from the "I grew up with/on the ninternet and with video games" crew.  Exposure to this is super fascinating.   Now, I've got friends who are not much older who are more like me in relation to the world, so I know it is a matter of upbringing as well, but roll with me here for a while:

I'm thinking back to my first and second year of undergrad (which puts me right in the age bracket), and the mindset that lead me to complete and total obsession with Darth Maul.  I drank nothing but Pepsi products all summer (and I hate Pepsi and Mountain Dew); I wanted those Star Wars cans.  I had merchandise like a crazy woman.  I sought supplemental entertainment on the internet, joined e-groups, wrote my own fanfiction.  I even had small giggle fits whenever I ran into a cardboard standee of Maul unexpectedly.  DB brought me comics signed by martial artist and Sith Lord Ray Park.  Everything fed into my drooling obsession, but the internet was new...the communal THING that is fandom was relatively new.  I didn't know how to break into it, so (as I did all through high school with Gargoyles), I fringed.  

My third year of school, I lived with a girl who introduced me to some (then odd) things about the internet, but now, especially with facebook and myspace, I think they're the norm.  My roomie had a webcam and a blog; she had friends with the same set up, and they had followers. People who just liked the window into the lives' of others, and they became mini-celebrities just for being themselves....without the zillion-dollar TLC contract.  It was pretty new (at least to me) at the time.  

It also was part of the reason why I started to become annoyed with my roommate situation. I didn't understand, or appreciate, the "famous" for nothing, cult-of-personality that was creeping into my living space.  

A few years later, I started spending a lot of time reading Harry Potter fanfic.  I became a casual observer to the phenomenon that is fandom.  I didn't post a lot, just read, watched and followed certain authors.  While there was certainly talent I admired (there are a lot of people writing out there who could make money at it if they wrote their own characters), I started to find that the internet fed hive-mind like whoa.  And it feeds the cycle of obsession...in a way that seems to have a distinctly young, female quality to it.  

Cults-of-personality left and right as people worshipped at the alter of others' art and writing.  The art and writing is the spontaneous outpouring of happiness the creator takes in (let's just use) Rowling's work--and then others partake, and the cult of Rowling expands to include the cult of these writers and artists (like Saints to God??).  And high spirits feed high spirits...and so it seems like the mood in such forums is always one of great excitement and silliness.  

(Part of me always thinks of Humbert Humbert--in the wry tones of Jeremy Irons--"Ah fame.  Ah Femina." as he observes Lola and some Hollywood magazines.)

This culture of disjointed distance friendships, I think, has given rise to "meet-ups" and a greater number of conventions than there have ever been previously.  Comic/entertainment industry conventions make sense to me.  People should see what's out there, what's up-and-coming, and have a chance to display their work.  Conventions/fan meet-ups that are cropping up now for a specific fandom just sort of confuse me.  

I understand on some level.  There is a powerful normalizing effect of being amongst people with the same mindset.  This is why I enjoy a con or two a year (that, and I like costumes).  It is also good, in many ways, to take these friendships made in cyberspace to a flesh and blood level, but often, when your friendship is based on "OMG bunny!Draco is so funny! *squeeeeeee*" translating that into anything else seems difficult.  ...or at least translating that level of excitement into something that suits daily life seems difficult.  I'm not just basing this on L and Bosie and their friend J.  I have, in my casual arm-chair sociologist way, listened to recordings and watched movies made by artists and writers at meet-ups.  Granted, the stuff that gets posted is filtered for fandom content as well...so they're not going to post the times they sat around talking about elections or rent or if they like strawberry ice cream--unless Draco likes strawberry ice cream...possibly a moot point.  

Regardless, there is something bizarre in the way people who are heavily involved in fandom via livejournal and other such forums relate to each other.   And I just don't really know how to get there anymore.  

I can be silly.  I'm often silly, in fact, and it often relates to geeky things.  (Ask me about how much I giggle at Star Wars references in ANYTHING...or about Zombieland OMG.)  But there is this understanding gap that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with internet and the way people in fandoms relate to each other.  

And I losing my train of thought here entirely....this was all so tight in my brain when I got out of bed.  bah.  Must be time for brain food.  

Ideas from the peanut gallery?  

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I think I've wrung out the problems DB and I are having into one issue really...everything else is possibly work-on-able, but the make or break thing (after some observation last night), is a respect issue. I don't think I can be with someone who will listen to me say: "I'm not comfortable with this" and then say, "But telling me not to do it is going to make it irresistible to me, so I have to do it." (This is the conversation we've had in the past.)

I can be ok with a female friendship, but I don't think I should have to be ok with the way high spirits in said friendship turn into wrestling matches.

I haven't hashed this one out completely with him yet, but back in the beginning of summer when I was trying to set boundaries, Miss K pointed out that DB and I flirt with everyone. Crap. We do. And I crawl into girls' laps when I'm a bit into the wine. ...usually, they are my friends, not DB's friends, and ah...crawling into Bosie's lap makes having the above conversation difficult...without including her.

That's the wacky part here. I want their interactions to change, but she has to know why too, I think. ...also setting boundaries for him/them means setting boundaries for me.
I can't say: You don't get to be attracted to this person, when I enjoy playing with that attraction all cat and mouse. (Not that you can say: you can't be attracted to this person. It doesn't work that way. Believe me, I've tried to tell myself the same thing.) The point here is...we're still being reactionary. He flaunts his freedom to play (essentially) catch-and-kiss, so I react by playing up the titillation of the two girls fantasy which will go nowhere. Wicked. Evil cycle of pettiness and juvenility.

Adulthood is tricky this way, and I think that's what drives me super bats about this whole thing--yesterday's whole thing. There was a collegiate feel to the evening...that started earlier in the day when L, Bosie and I were sitting on the floor like dorm-mates having a lovely afternoon. We made cupcakes. We colored. We had grilled cheese. We talked about "what we want to be when we grow up". ...of course, we also talked about Batman...which in this circle is the equivalent of talking about boys.

DB's arrival changed the dynamic, but it stayed very college-party. (And the girls, bless them, don't know that things should be different.) Bosie and L like to play little tricks on him; he teases (often like an older brother). He shows off the things he's doing that will get the fangirls squeeing. Lovely girls with whom I have shared a quiet afternoon are reduced to DB's little ego-boosting squad. And they become a little exclusive, though not so bad as it was three months ago. (I think I have a little loyalty from L, after all. She notices things, is observant. Is wise for her age.)

I don't know a compromisey way out of this one...well, I do, but it's up to someone who is afraid that growing up means no fun. My half has already been completed: not walking out/saying outright NO to Bosie. The rest is out of my hands, but for the conversation that needs to happen.

I want us to just be able to have a good time without over-analyzing everything, and I don't feel like boundaries and fun should be mutually exclusive. At least I finally feel like (after nearly a month of break from high-spirits event-friendship) that DB and I are in a place where talking about this is possible.

My stories: Revisiting The Woman Warrior

When I was an undergrad, I read Maxine Hong Kingston's book The Woman Warrior as part of a creative writing class. It was a meaningful reading experience, and I kept the book.
Now, reading it again, I'm amused by the things I had underlined (and by my metallic gel pen phase). I was obviously reading from a word-use perspective, but I was also reading as a girl who was neck deep in a story about a woman warrior.

I was attempting my first rewrite of Armina's story at the time, and she was still a kick ass first, think about it later sort of gal. I honestly think it was in the reading of this book that Armina started her metamorphosis into something less sword-wielding and crazy.
Coming across my younger self in the pages of this book alone makes the reread worth it, but reading it now feels downright exultant to me. Reading this book is like building up buttresses around the walls of my personal cathedral.

The way MHK travels through Chinese legends as herself is a great reminder of how powerful story can be. I've been trying very hard to focus on my school work, not getting side-tracked into the land of my fictional characters, though my brain is firing at 90 miles an hour, and all this talk about myth makes me want to work on Rak and Dane...and all this talk about gods makes me want to work on Armina.

It's very hard not to cave because I haven't had the focus, or desire, to work on either since my life went wonky in June. I was just starting to get back on the train the week DB met Bosie. (ah ha. yes. so clever my literary history references.) Then, I couldn't even think about anything...much less a story where the female friend gets the hero...whose lovely, sad wife is conveniently disposed of in childbirth. I thought about rearranging my favorite love story because of real life...VILE.

This is the power of story...both the story I was living, and the stories I have been telling.
If stories can hurt (and I'm choosing to treat my perceptions/DB's actual behavior as a form of story), stories can heal as well.
I recently wrote a paper for class about my connection to Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. I found that I was really angry about the way this story had been co-opted by DB and Bosie, so I wrote about redefining my relationship to Wendy Darling. It is time to do that with my own stories as well. I won't allow myself to hate characters that are parts of myself.

Armina and Justin, close friends of the opposite sex or not, are not representations of that other life story, and they predate it by years! (Though I can't say I won't include some of what I've learned this last summer in adding poignancy to the relationship between Justin, Anne and Armina.) I will not allow my annoyance with Bosie's one track mind to cloud the way I write Dane's ambiguous sexuality. That was in the works long before I knew she existed.

Growing up, I was able to use fiction as a means of channeling the things that were bothering me, and somewhere along the line (perhaps in believing I could do this for money), I blocked up that flow. I'm hoping that having a career path that is not entirely dependent on fiction writing will open this up for me again. There is so much wealth in the upside down world.

And there are many other stories it is time for me to take back and make my own again. I think that was the pull and giddiness I was feeling as I was reading Maxine Hong Kingston retell the Fa Mu Lan story with herself at its center. Of course, some of that was still the idea of myself as swordswoman: years of training on the dragon mountain, gaining the skills to return and take her father's place in the army. Riding out with revenge characters carved into her back, gathering armies, being undiminished by marriage and a child, coming home in triumph to live in peace.


P.S. I have chills that "Muhammad My Friend" was playing on itunes as I completed this: "We both know it was a girl/back in Bethlehem."

Rose Ensemble: Il Poverello

Friday night I went to a concert made up of music devoted to St. Francis of Assisi--in some cases with lyrics by St. Francis.
Here are some ramblings based on things written during the show:

I.
During the pre-concert discussion, Jordan Sramek (the director--who looks so young to be so accomplished!--I give him four years on me, if that) told us a bit about the religious climate of Italy in the 13th century. Great fervor all around certainly, but the thing that never fails to grab my brain and hold on tight is sects of flagellants. These were individuals so devout that they cut a piece out of the back of their robes, so that they might roam through the streets, displaying their wounds and adding more.
Mr. Sramek called this "penitent pain." I'd not heard it described in that manner before and I'm sort of in love with the term.
Modernity doesn't get this behavior. (Though I'm sure there were those in the middle ages who didn't get it either.) In general, we are all raised to be so sure of ourselves and so self-sufficient, that the idea of "penitent pain" causes much squirming.
I can't come up with the sort of feelings that would lead me to beat myself in the name of god....and if I can't (I who often have feelings of "unworthy" in the face of the divine), it seems no wonder this sort of thing holds no sway in hearts and minds but to be labelled bizarre--unhealthy.

I don't condone this sort of behavior--self injury is never a good thing, but there is the sort of wonder in it...an intensity that defies definition. Is it a blend of feelings of near-pathological unworth and longing that mingles with frustration as one cannot touch the divine? Chronic apologia for behaviors in fellow humans that are less than godly? ...so there is a greater involvement with the community/ion of souls than we are currently capable of? Or hidden in the depths of all this there is fear?
I always feel that people who are overwhelmingly sure of their faith are completely full of it, and have no place displaying it like they do, but honestly under certainty (of any sort) there is so often doubt and fear.

I have no answers, and I'm not out to make an analytic argument one way or another. Regardless, I find it fascinating that on the one had the religious fervor led to cathedral construction like crazy, the springing up of various monastic orders (even things that approximated a monastic order among lay people) and masses of music, and on the other: penitent pain. mea culpa. mea maxima culpa.

II.
I enjoy the chill of large churches. I can't really explain this feeling, but there is a special vaulted-ceiling, stone floor, stone walls chill. It always soothes me. Perhaps it is just the association with travel and having spent some of my very best days roaming around in damp monuments to faith. Whatever it is, it's cozy to me when logic says it should be exactly the opposite.

III.
There is a special power in doing something alone. I have been fighting with myself lately about whether I need someone to share in my "religious" experiences with me--my moments of soul-soaring (music, outdoors, etc) or if these are things that are just as glorious when the communion occurring is with the self. I think I may have answered this on Friday.
I would like a companion who enriches my life in some way, but there was power and great calm to be had in just allowing the spirit and joy to flow out of myself (to the gods--to other people--to the wooden Marys over my head) and then back into myself. I've been mourning having someone to share "my moments of overflow", but perhaps I do not need that as much as I thought.

IV.
Post the above, this dialogue came to me:

Once, I feel I was a great lady
and groups of musicians played
for my pleasure in the sun
of a great garden.
A question:
Once?
Yes. Once, I reply,
for what am I now?
Comes the stunned response:
What aren't you now?