Is eating me alive. Sheryl asked me during my individual conference to consider why I'm writing about this period in my life. That this is perhaps the key to the essay itself. And I don't know. I had to pick something. What a terrible answer. And I tried to back off and write a travel piece but it's not very compelling. It is also perhaps noteworthy that I wrote this draft while at home on my parents' computer. Whether consciously or unconsciously I'm not particularly at ease with saving an essay on my parents' desktop about sex with girls, sex with boys on Havana's sea wall and drinking until I couldn't tell the difference between the asphalt roof and the night sky. Though my parents are respectful and I'm sure wouldn't open it.
Sheryl gave me a book of women's travel essays called The Unsavvy Traveler:Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe, edited by Pam Houston. It's good. It's been helpful. It's a collection of fractured travel essays--humorous and not entirely successful trips. Especially helpful was the atrocious piece I read last night from a woman who traveled to Cuba. Reading something terrible always gets me pumped up. At least what I write will be better than that. But a lot of them are good and I'm going to bring the book down to the computer with me and look at some of the intros to get me in gear. Sometimes my trip sounds funny. I didn't like it very much. I felt out of control and generally disconnected. I was a reluctant traveler. But sometimes it doesn't seem funny at all. Absurd maybe, but in a sad sort of way.
On Friday I finished a book called Sickened, by Julie Gregory. It was a memoir of being the victim of Munchausen's by Proxy. It was something between The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors. It was good. It was hard to put down. At the end of the book she said something that stuck with me--that the writing of her memoir was so exhausting. That it was like pulling a hair out of your throat. It was a relief but sometimes once you start pulling you have to just pull and pull and pull. It wasn't a super solid metaphor but I like the visceral feeling of it. Pulling a hair from your throat. Such a bizarre sensation.
And last night I started Lauren Slater's Prozac Diary. It's good so far. What's most familiar is that she's taken Prozac then wakes up one morning and feels normal. For the first time. That it's disorienting. That you feel part of the world for the first time and you understand how "normal" people make it through the day. (Or that "normal" people enjoy the day, it's not simply about "making it through.")
Anyway, it's helpful so far. She said something about opening up her Kierkegaard and Nietzsche books and looking at the underlined portions and feeling like she'd be ok to never read them again. She didn't need to intentionally go so far down into the depths of depression and meaninglessness anymore. That it didn't resonate with her as it did before. She also made me laugh when she described philosophy texts as an elite form of self-help.
Back to the Cuba essay which is at the moment sucking. (The life out of me, and just sucking in general). But I'm sitting with coffee with soy creamer and that's really good so I think I'll begin again...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Cuba--Travel!
New essay direction. Many of you indicated that I was writing about three essays, and I agree. I've decided to make this first incarnation more of a travel piece. I may or not make it topical, including this week's announcement that Obama will lift travel restrictions to Cuba. (Thoughts on whether to begin with this current event or not?):
In the summer of 2002, I spent three months in Cuba. Six weeks studying in Havana and six weeks volunteering at an organic farm in Cardenas, a city just east of Havana. The college required a semester abroad in a second or third world country. Each group spends six weeks in the country's capital city, studying language and culture. The second six weeks of the term is spent volunteering in a rural area—at schools, construction sites and farms. Our group was the first to travel to Cuba; we were among the first Americans students to study in the country for more than two weeks.
Havana, Cuba:
In Havana, our evenings were free and I spent most nights ambling down el Malecón. El Malecón is a wide walkway that runs along the north shore of Havana. The sidewalk is the width of a lane of traffic and follows the sea wall from Habana Viejo (Old Havana) to Vedado, the university district, where we were staying. On el Malecón, the breeze off the sea was cool and salty. The houses that line the walkway are old world mansions with stone arches and balconies; most of them are crumbling, held up by support beams and scaffolding. They aren’t safe, but I’d often see lines of laundry hung across the balconies of these disintegrating structures. Some afternoons, I’d see sweaty teenage boys tear off their shirts and dive off the sea wall, into the choppy ocean.
In our first few weeks in Cuba, we wandered the streets together, a mass of bright white students stumbling over Havana’s crumbled sidewalks and past brightly colored mansions, divided into apartments after the revolution in 1959. Cubans are known for their resourcefulness. They keep cars running decades longer than most—-the country is held together by duct tape and baling wire. Most of the cars on the streets were 1950s Chevrolets or boxy Russian Ladas, imported from the USSR in the 1980s. Downtown we heard camellos shift gears and roar down the main streets of the city. Camellos are a uniquely Cuban creation—-semi-trucks used for public transportation. Passengers ride in the trailers, which have been redone with bus windows and benches. Most of the trailers are painted pink and the trucks spray diesel fumes into the air as they haul passengers throughout the city.
During our six weeks in Havana, we lived in a Baptist Church. After the revolution, what Cubans call “el triunfo de la revolución” (“the triumph of the revolution”), Cuba became an officially atheistic state. From 1959 to 1961 most Catholic priests and Protestant ministers left Cuba for the United States. The new Cuban government was suspicious of church operations, but over time relations between churches and the government have improved. In 1998, Pope John Paul II visited the island, invited by the Cuban government and the Catholic Church.
The church had two rooms upstairs with ten twin beds in each. Before bed we’d change into pajamas. The atmosphere was very much like a sleepover. We braided each other’s hair and traded CD’s to listen to before bed. On Sunday mornings, I could hear the congregation singing hymns in Spanish over the hum of our window air conditioner. Some of our group went to the service, but I didn’t. I was content to lie in my bed against crisp white sheets, the morning sun on my face as I listened to the music through the walls of the sanctuary.
Each morning, the church served French bread and strong black coffee. After breakfast, we’d gather in groups for language study. On the first day of class, the instructors asked us each a few questions. The instructor said to me, “Hola, me llamo Ava. Como te llamas?” (Hello, I’m Ava. Who are you?) I answered with a simple, “Hola, me llamo Emilia. Estoy una estudiante de la Universidad de Goshen en los Ustados Unidos.” (Hi, my name is Emily. I am a student from Goshen College in the United States). My accent was impeccable. After one sentence Ava sent me to the advanced class. I could pronounce anything with poise, but my vocabulary was stunted.
During each lesson, Ava would ask me the same question again and again. I couldn’t answer her because I didn't understand the question. Often, a more advanced student would take pity on me and translate the question, but Ava spoke no English and after three weeks I could tell she was no longer fond of me. I spent six weeks of language study on a single bit of grammar— el subjuntivo. (the subjunctive). When Ava pronounced “subjuntivo,” she drew out the word, “El subjuntiiiiivo.” The sentences all went like this--“Si yo fuera hambre, quiero comer” (“If I were hungry, I would eat”). “Si yo fuera un perro, yo la corteza” (“If I were a dog, I would bark”). After two week, her voice had begun to grate, and I'd grown tired of this confusing tense with an endless variety of irregular verbs.
I’d never like language study, but I was able to function in Havana. I told Cuban friends,“En el pasado, nado. (“In the past, I swim”) and “En el pasado, yo tengo un perro morendo y blanco.” (“In the past, I have a brown and white dog”). Students in the college’s study abroad program normally live with families, but the Cuban government would not allow students to live with families. Instead, on Saturdays Cuban families from the church would take us in for the day. The first Saturday, I spent the day with Jorge. He was in his 50s, with dark thinning hair and light caramel skin. He wore a blue t-shirt tucked into jeans. We didn’t speak much, just smiled at each other as we walked the two miles from the church to his neighborhood. When we crossed busy city streets, Jorge would absentmindedly take my hand in a fatherly gestire as we hurryied across four lanes of traffic.
We stopped at the market near his house. Vendors were set up under a canvas roof selling tomatoes, cucumbers, and pork. Whole skinned hogs hung on meat hooks from the ceiling. Jorge pointed to the cut he wanted. The vendor sliced off a piece of meat with a tarnished steel knife. He wrapped it in a piece of white butcher paper through which blood began to seep.
Outside the market, Jorge pointed to a park bench. The bench was wrought iron and on its left side was a bronze statue of John Lennon which the Cuban government constructed in 2000, on the 20th anniversary of his death. The Beatles had once been frowned upon by the government as a decadent Western influence. Cubans would hold clandestine parties, listening to smuggled tapes with the lights off. But now Castro calls John Lennon "a fellow dreamer," a born rebel who was a constant victim of U.S. harassment. who was a born rebel and a constant victim of U.S. harassment.
Jorge ushered me over to the bench and took my camera which dangled from my wrist. I smiled and wrapped my arm around John Lennon’s shoulder as my little plastic camera wound forward with a low grinding sound. On the way home, we stopped at the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón. The cemetery was made up of elaborate stone mausoleums, chapels and family vaults. The cemetery looked like pictures I’d seen of New Orleans graveyards, each grave above ground. Jorge sent me to a white stone statue of an angel on its knees, hands raised to the heavens. I tucked my hands in my pockets and smiled broadly for the photo.
In the summer of 2002, I spent three months in Cuba. Six weeks studying in Havana and six weeks volunteering at an organic farm in Cardenas, a city just east of Havana. The college required a semester abroad in a second or third world country. Each group spends six weeks in the country's capital city, studying language and culture. The second six weeks of the term is spent volunteering in a rural area—at schools, construction sites and farms. Our group was the first to travel to Cuba; we were among the first Americans students to study in the country for more than two weeks.
Havana, Cuba:
In Havana, our evenings were free and I spent most nights ambling down el Malecón. El Malecón is a wide walkway that runs along the north shore of Havana. The sidewalk is the width of a lane of traffic and follows the sea wall from Habana Viejo (Old Havana) to Vedado, the university district, where we were staying. On el Malecón, the breeze off the sea was cool and salty. The houses that line the walkway are old world mansions with stone arches and balconies; most of them are crumbling, held up by support beams and scaffolding. They aren’t safe, but I’d often see lines of laundry hung across the balconies of these disintegrating structures. Some afternoons, I’d see sweaty teenage boys tear off their shirts and dive off the sea wall, into the choppy ocean.
In our first few weeks in Cuba, we wandered the streets together, a mass of bright white students stumbling over Havana’s crumbled sidewalks and past brightly colored mansions, divided into apartments after the revolution in 1959. Cubans are known for their resourcefulness. They keep cars running decades longer than most—-the country is held together by duct tape and baling wire. Most of the cars on the streets were 1950s Chevrolets or boxy Russian Ladas, imported from the USSR in the 1980s. Downtown we heard camellos shift gears and roar down the main streets of the city. Camellos are a uniquely Cuban creation—-semi-trucks used for public transportation. Passengers ride in the trailers, which have been redone with bus windows and benches. Most of the trailers are painted pink and the trucks spray diesel fumes into the air as they haul passengers throughout the city.
During our six weeks in Havana, we lived in a Baptist Church. After the revolution, what Cubans call “el triunfo de la revolución” (“the triumph of the revolution”), Cuba became an officially atheistic state. From 1959 to 1961 most Catholic priests and Protestant ministers left Cuba for the United States. The new Cuban government was suspicious of church operations, but over time relations between churches and the government have improved. In 1998, Pope John Paul II visited the island, invited by the Cuban government and the Catholic Church.
The church had two rooms upstairs with ten twin beds in each. Before bed we’d change into pajamas. The atmosphere was very much like a sleepover. We braided each other’s hair and traded CD’s to listen to before bed. On Sunday mornings, I could hear the congregation singing hymns in Spanish over the hum of our window air conditioner. Some of our group went to the service, but I didn’t. I was content to lie in my bed against crisp white sheets, the morning sun on my face as I listened to the music through the walls of the sanctuary.
Each morning, the church served French bread and strong black coffee. After breakfast, we’d gather in groups for language study. On the first day of class, the instructors asked us each a few questions. The instructor said to me, “Hola, me llamo Ava. Como te llamas?” (Hello, I’m Ava. Who are you?) I answered with a simple, “Hola, me llamo Emilia. Estoy una estudiante de la Universidad de Goshen en los Ustados Unidos.” (Hi, my name is Emily. I am a student from Goshen College in the United States). My accent was impeccable. After one sentence Ava sent me to the advanced class. I could pronounce anything with poise, but my vocabulary was stunted.
During each lesson, Ava would ask me the same question again and again. I couldn’t answer her because I didn't understand the question. Often, a more advanced student would take pity on me and translate the question, but Ava spoke no English and after three weeks I could tell she was no longer fond of me. I spent six weeks of language study on a single bit of grammar— el subjuntivo. (the subjunctive). When Ava pronounced “subjuntivo,” she drew out the word, “El subjuntiiiiivo.” The sentences all went like this--“Si yo fuera hambre, quiero comer” (“If I were hungry, I would eat”). “Si yo fuera un perro, yo la corteza” (“If I were a dog, I would bark”). After two week, her voice had begun to grate, and I'd grown tired of this confusing tense with an endless variety of irregular verbs.
I’d never like language study, but I was able to function in Havana. I told Cuban friends,“En el pasado, nado. (“In the past, I swim”) and “En el pasado, yo tengo un perro morendo y blanco.” (“In the past, I have a brown and white dog”). Students in the college’s study abroad program normally live with families, but the Cuban government would not allow students to live with families. Instead, on Saturdays Cuban families from the church would take us in for the day. The first Saturday, I spent the day with Jorge. He was in his 50s, with dark thinning hair and light caramel skin. He wore a blue t-shirt tucked into jeans. We didn’t speak much, just smiled at each other as we walked the two miles from the church to his neighborhood. When we crossed busy city streets, Jorge would absentmindedly take my hand in a fatherly gestire as we hurryied across four lanes of traffic.
We stopped at the market near his house. Vendors were set up under a canvas roof selling tomatoes, cucumbers, and pork. Whole skinned hogs hung on meat hooks from the ceiling. Jorge pointed to the cut he wanted. The vendor sliced off a piece of meat with a tarnished steel knife. He wrapped it in a piece of white butcher paper through which blood began to seep.
Outside the market, Jorge pointed to a park bench. The bench was wrought iron and on its left side was a bronze statue of John Lennon which the Cuban government constructed in 2000, on the 20th anniversary of his death. The Beatles had once been frowned upon by the government as a decadent Western influence. Cubans would hold clandestine parties, listening to smuggled tapes with the lights off. But now Castro calls John Lennon "a fellow dreamer," a born rebel who was a constant victim of U.S. harassment. who was a born rebel and a constant victim of U.S. harassment.
Jorge ushered me over to the bench and took my camera which dangled from my wrist. I smiled and wrapped my arm around John Lennon’s shoulder as my little plastic camera wound forward with a low grinding sound. On the way home, we stopped at the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón. The cemetery was made up of elaborate stone mausoleums, chapels and family vaults. The cemetery looked like pictures I’d seen of New Orleans graveyards, each grave above ground. Jorge sent me to a white stone statue of an angel on its knees, hands raised to the heavens. I tucked my hands in my pockets and smiled broadly for the photo.
Poetry
This spring I took Poetry Writing with Heather McNaugher. (A warning to fall '09 students--she is a fantastic teacher and generally very informal but prefers to be called Dr. McNaugher. I can't get used to it so I don't talk to her without first making eye contact. Kind of like I did when I was a kid and at a friend's house and wasn't sure how to address my friends' parents...Mr? Mrs? First name?).
Anyhow, it was a wonderful class and I've decided to make poetry writing my main focus, though I still plan to finish my CNF dual focus. I don't know what I'll decide to do for my thesis. Just poetry, a little bit of both. We shall see.
I have always loved the idea of writing poetry, of being a person who writes poetry, but I've never felt confident in my ability to turn out anything coherent or meaningful. But now, all of a sudden, I feel like a natural and am pleased with my own work for the first time in a long time. To focus in on a single event, a single topic, a single thought is so liberating. What I like most about writing is that it often feels like a puzzle--and I must figure out how the pieces fit together, sounding them out again and again until I get a sentence right. In CNF this slows me down, but in poetry this is the whole point. CNF has felt so cumbersome to me lately. Not reading it--I love reading it--but writing it. I hope to join up with you all in the spring of '10. We have such a rapport that I'd rather not lose. But if you want to send me anything, I'd be glad to read and respond. You all have so much say. (And I do too, I just need a break from prose I think...)
Here are two poems I'm proud of from this semester:
Amber Street
Yours is a locked ward
and a guard stands sentry at the gate.
He runs a wand lightly over my arms and legs
in case I've brought something to
spring you out.
I saw you pour the pills
down the drain, watched
them melt into a gluey mess.
And I heard you creep
through our room at night,
snip quietly at my dresses
with red-handled scissors.
You'd fold each dress and
tuck it carefully in my drawer,
cut up like a paper snowflake.
Now you lie in this hospital bed,
curled like a morning glory at night.
I tug the stiff sheet down,
work a knot at the base of your spine,
and think of the night
I passed out on Amber Street.
A late autumn party,
a swarm of kids on the lawn.
You caught me as I stepped off the curb
and crumpled like a shriveled brown leaf.
I smelled of Bud Light and vomit,
but you held me firmly.
You held me as though I might break.
Double Yellow Lines (for Erik)
My blond tangles run wild against your chest
and I finger the dark beard that climbs your face like ivy.
The streetlight casts us in muted yellow
as we lie on blue pillows
in our brand new bed.
I chatter like a friendly child
and you listen like a loving mother as
I chronicle my life in bursts--
When I was young I brought lilacs to my teachers in spring,
stems wrapped in foil, a makeshift vase.
At sixteen I tried hard to swear,
vowed to say "fuck" at least once per day, though I winced every time.
And now I've driven drunk down every street of this town--
over bridges, through tunnels, eyes fixed firmly on the doubling yellow line.
Anyhow, it was a wonderful class and I've decided to make poetry writing my main focus, though I still plan to finish my CNF dual focus. I don't know what I'll decide to do for my thesis. Just poetry, a little bit of both. We shall see.
I have always loved the idea of writing poetry, of being a person who writes poetry, but I've never felt confident in my ability to turn out anything coherent or meaningful. But now, all of a sudden, I feel like a natural and am pleased with my own work for the first time in a long time. To focus in on a single event, a single topic, a single thought is so liberating. What I like most about writing is that it often feels like a puzzle--and I must figure out how the pieces fit together, sounding them out again and again until I get a sentence right. In CNF this slows me down, but in poetry this is the whole point. CNF has felt so cumbersome to me lately. Not reading it--I love reading it--but writing it. I hope to join up with you all in the spring of '10. We have such a rapport that I'd rather not lose. But if you want to send me anything, I'd be glad to read and respond. You all have so much say. (And I do too, I just need a break from prose I think...)
Here are two poems I'm proud of from this semester:
Amber Street
Yours is a locked ward
and a guard stands sentry at the gate.
He runs a wand lightly over my arms and legs
in case I've brought something to
spring you out.
I saw you pour the pills
down the drain, watched
them melt into a gluey mess.
And I heard you creep
through our room at night,
snip quietly at my dresses
with red-handled scissors.
You'd fold each dress and
tuck it carefully in my drawer,
cut up like a paper snowflake.
Now you lie in this hospital bed,
curled like a morning glory at night.
I tug the stiff sheet down,
work a knot at the base of your spine,
and think of the night
I passed out on Amber Street.
A late autumn party,
a swarm of kids on the lawn.
You caught me as I stepped off the curb
and crumpled like a shriveled brown leaf.
I smelled of Bud Light and vomit,
but you held me firmly.
You held me as though I might break.
Double Yellow Lines (for Erik)
My blond tangles run wild against your chest
and I finger the dark beard that climbs your face like ivy.
The streetlight casts us in muted yellow
as we lie on blue pillows
in our brand new bed.
I chatter like a friendly child
and you listen like a loving mother as
I chronicle my life in bursts--
When I was young I brought lilacs to my teachers in spring,
stems wrapped in foil, a makeshift vase.
At sixteen I tried hard to swear,
vowed to say "fuck" at least once per day, though I winced every time.
And now I've driven drunk down every street of this town--
over bridges, through tunnels, eyes fixed firmly on the doubling yellow line.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Prompt: Test IV, Free Write
Three minutes on each of these topics.
A memory of bread and butter:
When I was a kid, my mother and I would visit Charlie's Butcher Block after my doctor's appointments. (Charlie's was by the pediatrician's office, and we were never in the neighborhood when I wasn't sick). We would buy loaves of fresh crusty Italian bread. I often had strep throat or bronchitis when we went to the shop. The doctor's office had a "sick" entrance, to keep the ill from the infants in the waiting room, there to be vaccinated. Charlie's did not have a sick entrance so I always went in while we waited for the pharmacy to dispense the thick pink liquid antibiotic I was always prescribed. I once saw my pediatrician, Dr. Peterson, lunching at Charlie's after my appointment. He looked at me strangely, noted my cherry-red feverish face. He said nothing, but from then on I waited in the car on self-imposed quarantine, wheezing and hacking, while my mother purchased this most delicious bread.
A memory of drinking out of a bottle:
A group of 15 students, studying abroad in central Cuba. An ill-conceived game of spin the bottle. (My first game of the spin the bottle). I was 21, too old for a first game of the spin the bottle--I figured it was now or never. We spun an empty bottle of Havana Club Rum while passing a full bottle of rum around the circle. I had to kiss my best friend David--I could barely do it. I had to kiss my good friend Tim, who'd I known since 8th grade--I squealed uncharacteristically loud and gave him a peck on the cheek.
A hill you once knew:
I grew up on Valley View Drive in Elkhart, Indiana. Halfway through our subdivision Valley View Drive became Hilly Lane. The top of Hilly Lane marks the highest point in Elkhart County, one of the flatter counties in the midwest. I played both soccer and softball from grades 2-11. In high school we filled out a conditioning journal in summer. We were to do one 30 minute physical activity per day. Some days I roller skated. Some days I biked. But most days I ran--straight up Hilly Lane. By the top I could barely breathe, but I pressed on and completed the mile loop through the subdivision, stopping at our beige tri-level with scraggly bushes and a rusty basketball hoop. I was not a great athlete. I liked the exercise, had little to no competitive drive. I liked it when we lost away games. I didn't have to fake excitement; I could quietly do math homework or stare out the bus window. I played both softball and soccer in high school, mostly because it was a cool and prestigious thing to do. Also, for the outfits. On game days, we'd wear our uniforms to school. I loved dressing up in jerseys and knee length green soccer socks, letting everyone at school know that I was one of the chosen few, though really I spent most of my time on the bench. And that was ok. Playing was stressful, crouched in front of third base, not knowing if the batter would bunt or hit the ball straight at my head.
A moment in a library:
I'm in the public library at this very moment. My home computer is behaving strangely--freezing, requiring a restart every 10 minutes. I'm behind a large brown bookshelf, but I can hear a librarian yelling. She said, "Leave now if you can't be courteous!" I have no idea who she's talking to, but I think they are young. (And it's 2:00pm, aren't kids at school at 2:00pm?) Now she says, "Leave now. Come back and start over again tomorrow." I spent a lot of time at the library when I was young. My mom checked out mysteries--at least 4 every week, and the library had a large children's section. The young adult section was also part of the children's library, which I found extremely embarrassing when I became a "young adult." Though I'm certain I was embarrassed by most things from ages 7-oh, 28? (I'm 28 now). I remember taking summer classes at the library when I was a kid. I took a quilting class in first grade--I made a potholder. I took a friendship bracelet making class in third grade--I can still make a thick multi-colored friendship bracelet. Perhaps this will come in handy some day. Girl Scouts met in the school library. I was a Girl Scout for years, but mostly for the sleepovers and snacks. I used to sneak into our meetings after school because I knew it was geeky and didn't want to be outed as a Girl Scout. Our troop earned about three badges and were laughed out of Girl Scout Camp. I sold six boxes of cookies a year (to my parents).
A memory of bread and butter:
When I was a kid, my mother and I would visit Charlie's Butcher Block after my doctor's appointments. (Charlie's was by the pediatrician's office, and we were never in the neighborhood when I wasn't sick). We would buy loaves of fresh crusty Italian bread. I often had strep throat or bronchitis when we went to the shop. The doctor's office had a "sick" entrance, to keep the ill from the infants in the waiting room, there to be vaccinated. Charlie's did not have a sick entrance so I always went in while we waited for the pharmacy to dispense the thick pink liquid antibiotic I was always prescribed. I once saw my pediatrician, Dr. Peterson, lunching at Charlie's after my appointment. He looked at me strangely, noted my cherry-red feverish face. He said nothing, but from then on I waited in the car on self-imposed quarantine, wheezing and hacking, while my mother purchased this most delicious bread.
A memory of drinking out of a bottle:
A group of 15 students, studying abroad in central Cuba. An ill-conceived game of spin the bottle. (My first game of the spin the bottle). I was 21, too old for a first game of the spin the bottle--I figured it was now or never. We spun an empty bottle of Havana Club Rum while passing a full bottle of rum around the circle. I had to kiss my best friend David--I could barely do it. I had to kiss my good friend Tim, who'd I known since 8th grade--I squealed uncharacteristically loud and gave him a peck on the cheek.
A hill you once knew:
I grew up on Valley View Drive in Elkhart, Indiana. Halfway through our subdivision Valley View Drive became Hilly Lane. The top of Hilly Lane marks the highest point in Elkhart County, one of the flatter counties in the midwest. I played both soccer and softball from grades 2-11. In high school we filled out a conditioning journal in summer. We were to do one 30 minute physical activity per day. Some days I roller skated. Some days I biked. But most days I ran--straight up Hilly Lane. By the top I could barely breathe, but I pressed on and completed the mile loop through the subdivision, stopping at our beige tri-level with scraggly bushes and a rusty basketball hoop. I was not a great athlete. I liked the exercise, had little to no competitive drive. I liked it when we lost away games. I didn't have to fake excitement; I could quietly do math homework or stare out the bus window. I played both softball and soccer in high school, mostly because it was a cool and prestigious thing to do. Also, for the outfits. On game days, we'd wear our uniforms to school. I loved dressing up in jerseys and knee length green soccer socks, letting everyone at school know that I was one of the chosen few, though really I spent most of my time on the bench. And that was ok. Playing was stressful, crouched in front of third base, not knowing if the batter would bunt or hit the ball straight at my head.
A moment in a library:
I'm in the public library at this very moment. My home computer is behaving strangely--freezing, requiring a restart every 10 minutes. I'm behind a large brown bookshelf, but I can hear a librarian yelling. She said, "Leave now if you can't be courteous!" I have no idea who she's talking to, but I think they are young. (And it's 2:00pm, aren't kids at school at 2:00pm?) Now she says, "Leave now. Come back and start over again tomorrow." I spent a lot of time at the library when I was young. My mom checked out mysteries--at least 4 every week, and the library had a large children's section. The young adult section was also part of the children's library, which I found extremely embarrassing when I became a "young adult." Though I'm certain I was embarrassed by most things from ages 7-oh, 28? (I'm 28 now). I remember taking summer classes at the library when I was a kid. I took a quilting class in first grade--I made a potholder. I took a friendship bracelet making class in third grade--I can still make a thick multi-colored friendship bracelet. Perhaps this will come in handy some day. Girl Scouts met in the school library. I was a Girl Scout for years, but mostly for the sleepovers and snacks. I used to sneak into our meetings after school because I knew it was geeky and didn't want to be outed as a Girl Scout. Our troop earned about three badges and were laughed out of Girl Scout Camp. I sold six boxes of cookies a year (to my parents).
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Lying + Girl, Interrupted
Part # 1--A reflection on Lying as related to the long list of memoirs I've read on young women's depression/ennui...
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen was published in 1993. After having been made into a feature film, I'd like to note that the book itself is much different than the movie. The film script uses characters Kaysen has described in her memoir, but the book doesn't contain the action/narrative that is included in the movie--the book is not a cliffhanger.
The structure of the book is interesting. It begins with a photocopy of Kaysen's medical records from the time during which she was committed. (She was committed for two years, from ages 18-20 at the same psychiatric hospital that treated Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles). Copies of her records are interspersed throughout the book and the chapters themselves are rarely more than six pages long. It's been awhile since I've read this book, but having looked through it briefly today each of the chapters/essays could be freestanding essays. The book is a sort of patchwork quilt of bits and pieces (mainly scenes and medical records)that by the end become an accurate picture of Kaysen's life during this period.
The book is full of scene, less reflection. It reminds me a bit of my own writing. Her writing is not ripe with reflection, but she picks the right scenes and in the end her scant reflection is sufficient. Her style/structure echoes her state of mind. She's distant as a narrator, reporting less than reflecting, which is clearly the way in which she was thinking/feeling at the time.
Her diagnosis was borderline personality disorder, but she argues that her diagnosis was wrong. Overall, she reminds me of me. She is simultaneously emotional and numb. She takes a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka and wanders into the street; she's so out of touch with herself that she's not sure why she's done it. She doesn't want to die; it's as though her life is worth so little to her that she doesn't particularly care if she lives or dies. I don't think that she does have borderline personality disorder, but she did see herself primarily from the outside, and this is what I identify with. That obsession with wanting to know what others think of you because you have little idea of who you are. You suspect you are an actor, which makes it difficult to believe that anyone loves you, or to accept any praise at all. More on this later. I'm terrified I have borderline personality disorder, though my therapist assures me that I most certainly do not.
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen was published in 1993. After having been made into a feature film, I'd like to note that the book itself is much different than the movie. The film script uses characters Kaysen has described in her memoir, but the book doesn't contain the action/narrative that is included in the movie--the book is not a cliffhanger.
The structure of the book is interesting. It begins with a photocopy of Kaysen's medical records from the time during which she was committed. (She was committed for two years, from ages 18-20 at the same psychiatric hospital that treated Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles). Copies of her records are interspersed throughout the book and the chapters themselves are rarely more than six pages long. It's been awhile since I've read this book, but having looked through it briefly today each of the chapters/essays could be freestanding essays. The book is a sort of patchwork quilt of bits and pieces (mainly scenes and medical records)that by the end become an accurate picture of Kaysen's life during this period.
The book is full of scene, less reflection. It reminds me a bit of my own writing. Her writing is not ripe with reflection, but she picks the right scenes and in the end her scant reflection is sufficient. Her style/structure echoes her state of mind. She's distant as a narrator, reporting less than reflecting, which is clearly the way in which she was thinking/feeling at the time.
Her diagnosis was borderline personality disorder, but she argues that her diagnosis was wrong. Overall, she reminds me of me. She is simultaneously emotional and numb. She takes a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka and wanders into the street; she's so out of touch with herself that she's not sure why she's done it. She doesn't want to die; it's as though her life is worth so little to her that she doesn't particularly care if she lives or dies. I don't think that she does have borderline personality disorder, but she did see herself primarily from the outside, and this is what I identify with. That obsession with wanting to know what others think of you because you have little idea of who you are. You suspect you are an actor, which makes it difficult to believe that anyone loves you, or to accept any praise at all. More on this later. I'm terrified I have borderline personality disorder, though my therapist assures me that I most certainly do not.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Response to Lauren Slater's Lying
Both the book's introduction and its reputation dominated my reading for the first 70 pages. The tone of the book, a sort of--maybe I had epilepsy, maybe I didn't, or maybe I did--detracted from the story. Slater describes her memoir as "impish" and that's exactly how it felt. The dictionary definition of impish is--"naughtily or annoyingly playful" and this descriptor seemed for the first third of the book an accurate description--annoying and unnecessarily playful.
Slater overemphasizes the notion that her epilepsy is possibly fiction. She seems to care so much what the reader thinks, as on page 56, "I still loved my mother, understand that, please." She goes so far as to address the reader in second person; she pleads with us to understand. Slater also refuses to suspend disbelief, refuses to re-imagine scenes from her past and present them as truth. As on page 23, "I'd say she smiled then," she self-consciously reminds the reader that she is in fact imagining her past. This is redundant in that she is writing a memoir. Pointing out that she's imagining didn't seem interesting enough to point out in such a specific way. It struck me as an unnecessary reminder that memoir is in some ways fiction. Her continual noting of this took away from her story, as though the author is concerned that her memoir won't be noteworthy unless it continually emphasizes this focus on truth-telling. It strikes me as a self-conscious tic that takes away from her story.
But what kept me going were her one-liners:
-"...the kind of sky they show in decongestant commercials" (34)
-"...an illness so existential, so oddly spiritual, you are stuck out in the stratosphere with Sartre and Kierkegaard, with dead dogs and owls" (34).
-"This, this is the happy part of my story, which does not mean I was happy" (55)
-"In there, girls leaned toward the mirrors, fell into their faces' reflections like it was love, like it was hate, snapping open clam-shaped compact cases and patching up their oily skin" (65)
-"A home has many purposes, but it should primarily be a place where you can cry and run a good fever" (70)
....And on and on.....
At page 88, the book became weightier, less an exercise in truth telling than a real narrative. "...I ask you to please consider this--perhaps Munchausen's is all I ever had. Perhaps I was, and still am, a pretender, a person who creates illnesses because she needs time, attention, touch, because she knows no other way of telling her life's tale." It is at this point that Slater becomes vulnerable. She suggests that she's not being impish on purpose, that it is quite possible that she too has confused fact and fiction.
Slater overemphasizes the notion that her epilepsy is possibly fiction. She seems to care so much what the reader thinks, as on page 56, "I still loved my mother, understand that, please." She goes so far as to address the reader in second person; she pleads with us to understand. Slater also refuses to suspend disbelief, refuses to re-imagine scenes from her past and present them as truth. As on page 23, "I'd say she smiled then," she self-consciously reminds the reader that she is in fact imagining her past. This is redundant in that she is writing a memoir. Pointing out that she's imagining didn't seem interesting enough to point out in such a specific way. It struck me as an unnecessary reminder that memoir is in some ways fiction. Her continual noting of this took away from her story, as though the author is concerned that her memoir won't be noteworthy unless it continually emphasizes this focus on truth-telling. It strikes me as a self-conscious tic that takes away from her story.
But what kept me going were her one-liners:
-"...the kind of sky they show in decongestant commercials" (34)
-"...an illness so existential, so oddly spiritual, you are stuck out in the stratosphere with Sartre and Kierkegaard, with dead dogs and owls" (34).
-"This, this is the happy part of my story, which does not mean I was happy" (55)
-"In there, girls leaned toward the mirrors, fell into their faces' reflections like it was love, like it was hate, snapping open clam-shaped compact cases and patching up their oily skin" (65)
-"A home has many purposes, but it should primarily be a place where you can cry and run a good fever" (70)
....And on and on.....
At page 88, the book became weightier, less an exercise in truth telling than a real narrative. "...I ask you to please consider this--perhaps Munchausen's is all I ever had. Perhaps I was, and still am, a pretender, a person who creates illnesses because she needs time, attention, touch, because she knows no other way of telling her life's tale." It is at this point that Slater becomes vulnerable. She suggests that she's not being impish on purpose, that it is quite possible that she too has confused fact and fiction.
Response to Marjane Satrapi Lecture
How enjoyable it was to attend an event but be responsible neither for performing nor organizing--I attend a lot of events as a singer and public relations lady, but it's so seldom that I go to an event I'm not required to. What a different experience. I feeling a need to do this more. It's hard to take in a concert or lecture when you're eager for it to be over so you can clean up the artist's dressing room and go home.
Perhaps something that's just been on my mind and I'm projecting, but it was striking to me how comfortable Satrapi was in her own skin. I've been exploring the idea of taking up space--both in terms of women in general and in terms of my own unwillingness to claim a physical space for myself. In college, I considered doing a senior thesis on this issue, using Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Wharton's House of Mirth but it got too big and I'm not sure I was ready for such an expansive project. Instead I edited a collection of critical and personal essays for an introduction to women's studies course, which was the absolute right choice at the time and of which I'm proud. But I'm thinking again about this topic...
I was also intrigued by Satrapi's talk of fanaticism, that really this is what causes conflict around the world. Muslim fanatics have so much in common with Christian fanatics. I have respect for those who are thoughtful and patient on all sides of the political/religious spectrum. What angers me is when people take the word of their political or religious leaders at face value and don't think critically about what's being presented. (This issue makes me see the importance of the liberal arts--teaching one to think critically!)
Satrapi noted that fanaticism works by manipulating followers' emotions--something I've been thinking about and was glad to hear articulated. And this issue is what I see as the biggest difference between a president like George W. Bush and a president like Barack Obama. I don't think that Bush is malicious, he was just lazy. He relied on his advisers to explain policies to him and if they sounded like a good idea he said yes. I think of a program like No Child Left Behind which according to my teacher friends has been a nightmare that made them teach to tests more than ever before, but it sounds like a good idea. I see Bush in the Oval Office thinking, "No child should be left behind. Great policy," without going further and researching exactly what the impact of the program will be.
She thanked us, as Americans, for Obama, and pointed out that the leader of such a powerful country as the United States really becomes the leader of the world and perhaps we should hold a global election! How complicated would that be...but interesting thought.
Also interesting was during the Q&A portion of the lecture when Satrapi said as a sort of aside that she thought that had the Shah not been overthrown in a revolutionary fashion, she thinks that Iran would have evolved into a democracy in much the same way that India has.
Perhaps something that's just been on my mind and I'm projecting, but it was striking to me how comfortable Satrapi was in her own skin. I've been exploring the idea of taking up space--both in terms of women in general and in terms of my own unwillingness to claim a physical space for myself. In college, I considered doing a senior thesis on this issue, using Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Wharton's House of Mirth but it got too big and I'm not sure I was ready for such an expansive project. Instead I edited a collection of critical and personal essays for an introduction to women's studies course, which was the absolute right choice at the time and of which I'm proud. But I'm thinking again about this topic...
I was also intrigued by Satrapi's talk of fanaticism, that really this is what causes conflict around the world. Muslim fanatics have so much in common with Christian fanatics. I have respect for those who are thoughtful and patient on all sides of the political/religious spectrum. What angers me is when people take the word of their political or religious leaders at face value and don't think critically about what's being presented. (This issue makes me see the importance of the liberal arts--teaching one to think critically!)
Satrapi noted that fanaticism works by manipulating followers' emotions--something I've been thinking about and was glad to hear articulated. And this issue is what I see as the biggest difference between a president like George W. Bush and a president like Barack Obama. I don't think that Bush is malicious, he was just lazy. He relied on his advisers to explain policies to him and if they sounded like a good idea he said yes. I think of a program like No Child Left Behind which according to my teacher friends has been a nightmare that made them teach to tests more than ever before, but it sounds like a good idea. I see Bush in the Oval Office thinking, "No child should be left behind. Great policy," without going further and researching exactly what the impact of the program will be.
She thanked us, as Americans, for Obama, and pointed out that the leader of such a powerful country as the United States really becomes the leader of the world and perhaps we should hold a global election! How complicated would that be...but interesting thought.
Also interesting was during the Q&A portion of the lecture when Satrapi said as a sort of aside that she thought that had the Shah not been overthrown in a revolutionary fashion, she thinks that Iran would have evolved into a democracy in much the same way that India has.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
SXSW Part I
I was in Austin, TX last week, performing at South by Southwest. SXSW is the biggest music festival in the U.S. It reminded me a little of Disney World, and a lot of the church youth conventions I went to when I was in high school. We stayed at a hotel outside downtown and had to take a shuttle back and forth.
I gave up trying to look cool after the first day--I ended up carrying a large backpack filled with an odd assortment of items--Benadryl, Water Babies brand SPF 50 sunscreen, and a sports bra that I'd put on after seven hours of wearing a regular bra. I brought a collection of impractical shoes to go with my dressier shirts but after the first two days my feet were covered in bright white blisters. Then I discovered an Asics booth in which they were giving away free tennis shoes to showcasing artists. So, I got some and proceeded to wear them with my fancy shirts. I felt silly but much more comfortable.
My boyfriend Erik is also my guitar player. We are both a little awkward, emotional and damaged. Erik wears torn up jeans and old shirts from bands he's been in. He recently cut off his beard, but never got around to actually shaving. It's an odd length--sort of a 7 o'clock shadow. We both dress a like grunge is still in fashion. We looked like Eddie Vedder and My So Called Life era Claire Danes as we walked down the streets of Austin.
The rest of our band went to show after show, even the big ones--Erykah Badu, PJ Harvey, Echo and the Bunnymen. Erik and I are terrified of crowds and went instead to a series of post-rock classical shows that were not crowded at all. Most of the shows were at the same venue, the one we'd played at the night before.
We went back to our hotel early most nights, provided that we could find a cab. We are both terrible at hailing cabs. We would take turns holding our hands up feebly in the direction of passing yellow cabs and it would take at least three tries to get one to stop.
Erik and I often feel like a pair of misfits. We're both a bit damaged but we always figure things out, and we're supportive of each other as we do. Erik is stable in his own way. His is also loyal and kind and loves me fiercely. But on the way home it was another of our band members who got into a terrible fight with his wife over the phone. A fight so awful that we stopped in Memphis and rented our own car while he drove the rest of the way home in a panic. And he was the one who seemed most stable. He is stunningly capable, has three children, and a wife who is also an artist.
When we got home from the trip Erik and I laid together on the couch and I said, "It's funny--we're such misfits, but in the end we have the most stable relationship." And he agreed and we snuggled in to watch an episode of Paranormal State in which undergrads from Penn State investigate ghost sightings. We speculated as to which "paranormal investigators" were sleeping with each other and laughed while our little black cat crawled onto Erik's chest and promptly fell asleep.
(I will write many more posts on this trip...I have much to say).
I gave up trying to look cool after the first day--I ended up carrying a large backpack filled with an odd assortment of items--Benadryl, Water Babies brand SPF 50 sunscreen, and a sports bra that I'd put on after seven hours of wearing a regular bra. I brought a collection of impractical shoes to go with my dressier shirts but after the first two days my feet were covered in bright white blisters. Then I discovered an Asics booth in which they were giving away free tennis shoes to showcasing artists. So, I got some and proceeded to wear them with my fancy shirts. I felt silly but much more comfortable.
My boyfriend Erik is also my guitar player. We are both a little awkward, emotional and damaged. Erik wears torn up jeans and old shirts from bands he's been in. He recently cut off his beard, but never got around to actually shaving. It's an odd length--sort of a 7 o'clock shadow. We both dress a like grunge is still in fashion. We looked like Eddie Vedder and My So Called Life era Claire Danes as we walked down the streets of Austin.
The rest of our band went to show after show, even the big ones--Erykah Badu, PJ Harvey, Echo and the Bunnymen. Erik and I are terrified of crowds and went instead to a series of post-rock classical shows that were not crowded at all. Most of the shows were at the same venue, the one we'd played at the night before.
We went back to our hotel early most nights, provided that we could find a cab. We are both terrible at hailing cabs. We would take turns holding our hands up feebly in the direction of passing yellow cabs and it would take at least three tries to get one to stop.
Erik and I often feel like a pair of misfits. We're both a bit damaged but we always figure things out, and we're supportive of each other as we do. Erik is stable in his own way. His is also loyal and kind and loves me fiercely. But on the way home it was another of our band members who got into a terrible fight with his wife over the phone. A fight so awful that we stopped in Memphis and rented our own car while he drove the rest of the way home in a panic. And he was the one who seemed most stable. He is stunningly capable, has three children, and a wife who is also an artist.
When we got home from the trip Erik and I laid together on the couch and I said, "It's funny--we're such misfits, but in the end we have the most stable relationship." And he agreed and we snuggled in to watch an episode of Paranormal State in which undergrads from Penn State investigate ghost sightings. We speculated as to which "paranormal investigators" were sleeping with each other and laughed while our little black cat crawled onto Erik's chest and promptly fell asleep.
(I will write many more posts on this trip...I have much to say).
Response to The Country of Language
It took me a bit to get into this book. It was such a short piece and didn't have the clearest thesis. I had hoped that it would be more about his coming to writing and teaching, but the first two thirds felt more like a brief summary of his life prior to the age of 25. The book was definitely too short to be both a memoir and an in depth reflection on the importance of writing and literature. The memoir felt so brief, just scraping the surface, which made him seem like such a boring character... He briefly mentions his father's alcoholism, but overall he comes across as such a bland person. And this is quite possibly a matter of taste--I'm not particularly interested in the writing of happy, well-adjusted writers...
It wasn't until page 76 that it began to get interesting and become more clearly about teaching when he's in the classroom:
"No wonder literature's so confusing," someone said.
"Just like life," another student remarked.
"Just like Life," I agreed, "only books hold still so we can look at them."
This is an interesting sentiment I hadn't thought of previously. Also on page 75 he talks about his first experience teaching and he says, "I feared silence in the classroom, feared the students' boredom or indifference...In defense, I filled the air with nervous talk."
How familiar that feels...
It wasn't until page 76 that it began to get interesting and become more clearly about teaching when he's in the classroom:
"No wonder literature's so confusing," someone said.
"Just like life," another student remarked.
"Just like Life," I agreed, "only books hold still so we can look at them."
This is an interesting sentiment I hadn't thought of previously. Also on page 75 he talks about his first experience teaching and he says, "I feared silence in the classroom, feared the students' boredom or indifference...In defense, I filled the air with nervous talk."
How familiar that feels...
Friday, March 13, 2009
Response to Persepolis
What I found most striking about Persepolis was the way in which it emphasizes the nature of Iran before the Islamic revolution. I don't want to admit this because it makes me sound ignorant, but I didn't know that Iran's Islamic government came to power as recently as 1978. I'd seen photos of women in veils and had assumed it had always been this way. We (I) have a tendency to think of cultural evolution as moving on a direct path--from conservative to progressive. I didn't realize what a back-track it had been. Maryam posted a quote from Satrapi on her blog:
"If you notice I didn't use any cultural markings. You didn't see anything Iranian in the animation or graphic novel because I wanted my audience to realize that this could be anywhere, it could be Connecticut."
This is what I found most powerful about the book. That this sort of revolution could happen anywhere. I was moved/disturbed when I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale during my first week of study abroad in Cuba. The synchronicity wasn't intentional but it certainly turned out that way. Cuba's revolution was sudden, and so was the revolution in The Handmaid's Tale. The woman in the book's story begins in contemporary America, but soon a religious regime takes over and women's bank accounts are turned over to their husbands/male family members. And after that women's rights are slowly taken away until women are essentially property of the dictatorial and conservatively Christian regime that has taken over the United States.
I'm also glad that we read a graphic memoir--it was my first experience with the graphic novel/memoir, save a Superman comic I read when I was twelve. Structurally, I found the structure of the memoir fascinating in that Satrapi had only a few carefully chosen words to tell her life story. She picked all the right words and as Libba said in her blog, her graphics also function as words.
"If you notice I didn't use any cultural markings. You didn't see anything Iranian in the animation or graphic novel because I wanted my audience to realize that this could be anywhere, it could be Connecticut."
This is what I found most powerful about the book. That this sort of revolution could happen anywhere. I was moved/disturbed when I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale during my first week of study abroad in Cuba. The synchronicity wasn't intentional but it certainly turned out that way. Cuba's revolution was sudden, and so was the revolution in The Handmaid's Tale. The woman in the book's story begins in contemporary America, but soon a religious regime takes over and women's bank accounts are turned over to their husbands/male family members. And after that women's rights are slowly taken away until women are essentially property of the dictatorial and conservatively Christian regime that has taken over the United States.
I'm also glad that we read a graphic memoir--it was my first experience with the graphic novel/memoir, save a Superman comic I read when I was twelve. Structurally, I found the structure of the memoir fascinating in that Satrapi had only a few carefully chosen words to tell her life story. She picked all the right words and as Libba said in her blog, her graphics also function as words.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
What religion did you grow up with? Part II
I grew up Mennonite--a fairly personally conservative, but politically liberal denomination. (We might not have an abortion ourselves, but think that others have the right to chose). Our school district was not. Our principal, the head of the school board and the superintendent met in a classroom before school for prayer meeting. The youth pastor from a charismatic, conservative church attended school lunches, sat with students, chatted, and was really "cool." In retrospect, I can't believe this was allowed and think the role of this pastor was a little like that of the A&R reps major labels send out to scout bands. Young guys who wear chuck taylors and vintage Lacosta t-shirts. Guys who convince bands that major labels are much less diabolical than they are rumored to be.
I think that everyone at my school went through a period of attending this church--Beulah Missionary (incidentally, Beulah is my grandmother's name and means "heaven"). When my brother was going through his 7th grade evangelical phase, the youth pastor lit a bonfire and members of the youth group were to throw CD's into the fire. Music that was not Christian enough, or "blasphemous," though I doubt they used this word. I think that most students burned anything that made them uncomfortable.
My brother Dan burned two CD's--Live's debut album "Throwing Coppper." Live is a fairly Christian band it turns out, but their lyrics are intense, and I imagine they scared him. He also burned "God Shuffled His Feet" by Crash Test Dummies, another album that somehow made it onto pop radio with the affecting song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (a really stupid title, but a creeper about ostracism, injury and Pentecostal Christianity).
By the 10th grade Dan was done with Beulah Missionary. He even transferred to the Mennonite high school that was progressive and where most of the students dressed like hippies and went to protests.
When I think about this phase in Dan's life (and mine too, in junior high) I think about how understanding my parents were. They never made fun of us for refusing to listen to music that even they liked. They let us go on our own journeys and I hope if I ever have a son or daughter I'll be able to have as much patience. When we think of parents who force their children to conform we assume they are conservative and want their children to take out their piercings and pull their pants up, but that's not always the case. I think it's just as bad when parents who consider themselves liberal scoff when their children want to go to Christian rallies and pull their pants up.
I think that everyone at my school went through a period of attending this church--Beulah Missionary (incidentally, Beulah is my grandmother's name and means "heaven"). When my brother was going through his 7th grade evangelical phase, the youth pastor lit a bonfire and members of the youth group were to throw CD's into the fire. Music that was not Christian enough, or "blasphemous," though I doubt they used this word. I think that most students burned anything that made them uncomfortable.
My brother Dan burned two CD's--Live's debut album "Throwing Coppper." Live is a fairly Christian band it turns out, but their lyrics are intense, and I imagine they scared him. He also burned "God Shuffled His Feet" by Crash Test Dummies, another album that somehow made it onto pop radio with the affecting song "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (a really stupid title, but a creeper about ostracism, injury and Pentecostal Christianity).
By the 10th grade Dan was done with Beulah Missionary. He even transferred to the Mennonite high school that was progressive and where most of the students dressed like hippies and went to protests.
When I think about this phase in Dan's life (and mine too, in junior high) I think about how understanding my parents were. They never made fun of us for refusing to listen to music that even they liked. They let us go on our own journeys and I hope if I ever have a son or daughter I'll be able to have as much patience. When we think of parents who force their children to conform we assume they are conservative and want their children to take out their piercings and pull their pants up, but that's not always the case. I think it's just as bad when parents who consider themselves liberal scoff when their children want to go to Christian rallies and pull their pants up.
What religion did you grow up with?
I grew up in the Mennonite Church. I sort of hate to say this to people who have no background with Mennonites. We didn't wear outfits, we drove cars. In fact, Mennonites were the most liberal people I knew while growing up. (Though this is when compared to the charismatic churches that most everyone else in high school--teachers and students--went to).
Mennonites sing hymns. Seriously sing hymns. Even in the most liberal, tiniest churches, everyone sings in four part harmony. I didn't realize that this was special until I visited a Presbyterian Church and the same hymns sounded so flat and a little pathetic in comparison. My parents can't sing in four part harmony. They didn't grow up Mennonite and can't read music. But I can. I remember the day I figured it out. I think I was about thirteen, in seventh grade. I'd played piano for years and realized one Sunday that I could sing any part if I used my leg as a keyboard and tapped the notes out as I sang.
My parents grew up in the Christian Church. (The domination was actually called "The Christian Church"). We met Mennonites while living at an intentional community (I'm not sure that non-Mennonites know this term--if not, read it as commune though that's not entirely correct). I was four the year we lived at Koininia Partners, a communal farm in Georgia. ("Koinonia has nearly 65 years worth of history—Clarence Jordan, the civil rights movement, local African American history, the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity and other organizations, involvement in many peace and justice movements, community living, agriculture, and much more").
My parents met Mennonites there and were impressed at the humility with which they participated in social justice projects, that they lived their lives with this goal in mind. While at Koinonia, my dad decided he wanted to go to a seminary. The way he tells it, he went to the library to look up seminaries and Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary was first on the list. He took this as a sign and we moved to where the seminary was located--Elkhart, Indiana. My mother got a job as an executive assistant at the Mennonite Church's denominational headquarters and because of this we stayed.
When I was a kid, we learned that God was kind and forgiving. That he/she loved us. (And they really did say "she" sometimes). I once told my mother that I didn't understand the notion of "sin." That as long as you were trying your best (and I always was), wasn't that enough? And she said she thought so too.
Almost everyone we knew from church had spent time in the "developing" world. My mom always had her Sunday School class (first graders) draw pictures for those abroad. A couple living in Pakistan for three years (most people were out for three years--not to proselytize, to work on quality of life projects like clean water) said later that the government had intercepted their letters and cut out pieces of the children's drawings that were apparently too political.
In addition to the weekly offering, we had a "Banana Bank," in which we were encouraged to contribute the equivalent that we spent on bananas and coffee that week, to acknowledge that the growers of these crops were treated unfairly--that trade policies on these goods were unfair. Then we sent the funds to areas in which this was an issue.
My mom still works for the Mennonite Church, almost 25 years later. Though after my brother got sick Dan said he told her, "I don't think that God cares that much about my life." So I suppose that she still believes in God, but not a god that is active in our lives.
When my brother got sick, he thought he was Jesus Christ. He told me this after he'd finally given up the delusion. He wrote a paper about his experience with schizophrenia the summer he started to come out of it. It was called "What a Strange Trip It's Been." I think there was a second part to the title, but I don't want to look at it right now. It's an extremely coherent piece. He died three months after writing it. After he died, the college at which he died sent my parents his belongings. They threw them out after awhile and I never had to look at them, but it included a journal that said in giant letters, "FUCK YOU WORLD, FUCK YOU GOD."
I felt this way before Dan's death and I still feel it. I don't care at all about religion or "spirituality." I don't even feel like calling myself an atheist. It all seems so ridiculous, both spirituality and the notion of calling yourself an atheist, like you have the authority with which to say that there is or is not a god. Of course humans want to believe in a higher power, that we're not alone. It's a predictable psychological need but that doesn't mean there is a God.
I feel like this post might spark some discussion and/or criticism but I feel like writing it. If I believed in God, I'd be a Mennonite. I admire Mennonites for what they do--it's most like 1/4 white guilt, but it's mostly a response to the teachings of Christ that they behave as they do. Mennonites are staunchly pacifist and take the idea of simple living very seriously. (Though it doesn't always work out--I knew a lot of wealthy Mennonites in college who tried very hard to hide their wealth, like it was a dirty secret--kind of a reverse conspicuous consumption).
But I don't believe in God. And I'm a lot more annoyed at those who describe themselves as not religious but "spiritual." I have no idea what that means. I am much less annoyed by people who at least grip onto a religion with history.
And that's one thing I can't believe I glossed over in my last relationship. My fiance's belief in something spiritual, some sort of higher power. A hodgepodge of American Indian spirituality from a post-Catholic, semi-scarred perspective. I'm glad that my current boyfriend is at least, if not more, annoyed with religion (especially in politics) as I am.
I haven't written about this because I have nothing more to say about spirituality than that it strikes me as ridiculous. I can't believe that most of the world clings to this childlike mythology as though it is in any way mature or reasonable. I still don't have much more to say than that but after this post it seems that maybe I do.
Mennonites sing hymns. Seriously sing hymns. Even in the most liberal, tiniest churches, everyone sings in four part harmony. I didn't realize that this was special until I visited a Presbyterian Church and the same hymns sounded so flat and a little pathetic in comparison. My parents can't sing in four part harmony. They didn't grow up Mennonite and can't read music. But I can. I remember the day I figured it out. I think I was about thirteen, in seventh grade. I'd played piano for years and realized one Sunday that I could sing any part if I used my leg as a keyboard and tapped the notes out as I sang.
My parents grew up in the Christian Church. (The domination was actually called "The Christian Church"). We met Mennonites while living at an intentional community (I'm not sure that non-Mennonites know this term--if not, read it as commune though that's not entirely correct). I was four the year we lived at Koininia Partners, a communal farm in Georgia. ("Koinonia has nearly 65 years worth of history—Clarence Jordan, the civil rights movement, local African American history, the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity and other organizations, involvement in many peace and justice movements, community living, agriculture, and much more").
My parents met Mennonites there and were impressed at the humility with which they participated in social justice projects, that they lived their lives with this goal in mind. While at Koinonia, my dad decided he wanted to go to a seminary. The way he tells it, he went to the library to look up seminaries and Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary was first on the list. He took this as a sign and we moved to where the seminary was located--Elkhart, Indiana. My mother got a job as an executive assistant at the Mennonite Church's denominational headquarters and because of this we stayed.
When I was a kid, we learned that God was kind and forgiving. That he/she loved us. (And they really did say "she" sometimes). I once told my mother that I didn't understand the notion of "sin." That as long as you were trying your best (and I always was), wasn't that enough? And she said she thought so too.
Almost everyone we knew from church had spent time in the "developing" world. My mom always had her Sunday School class (first graders) draw pictures for those abroad. A couple living in Pakistan for three years (most people were out for three years--not to proselytize, to work on quality of life projects like clean water) said later that the government had intercepted their letters and cut out pieces of the children's drawings that were apparently too political.
In addition to the weekly offering, we had a "Banana Bank," in which we were encouraged to contribute the equivalent that we spent on bananas and coffee that week, to acknowledge that the growers of these crops were treated unfairly--that trade policies on these goods were unfair. Then we sent the funds to areas in which this was an issue.
My mom still works for the Mennonite Church, almost 25 years later. Though after my brother got sick Dan said he told her, "I don't think that God cares that much about my life." So I suppose that she still believes in God, but not a god that is active in our lives.
When my brother got sick, he thought he was Jesus Christ. He told me this after he'd finally given up the delusion. He wrote a paper about his experience with schizophrenia the summer he started to come out of it. It was called "What a Strange Trip It's Been." I think there was a second part to the title, but I don't want to look at it right now. It's an extremely coherent piece. He died three months after writing it. After he died, the college at which he died sent my parents his belongings. They threw them out after awhile and I never had to look at them, but it included a journal that said in giant letters, "FUCK YOU WORLD, FUCK YOU GOD."
I felt this way before Dan's death and I still feel it. I don't care at all about religion or "spirituality." I don't even feel like calling myself an atheist. It all seems so ridiculous, both spirituality and the notion of calling yourself an atheist, like you have the authority with which to say that there is or is not a god. Of course humans want to believe in a higher power, that we're not alone. It's a predictable psychological need but that doesn't mean there is a God.
I feel like this post might spark some discussion and/or criticism but I feel like writing it. If I believed in God, I'd be a Mennonite. I admire Mennonites for what they do--it's most like 1/4 white guilt, but it's mostly a response to the teachings of Christ that they behave as they do. Mennonites are staunchly pacifist and take the idea of simple living very seriously. (Though it doesn't always work out--I knew a lot of wealthy Mennonites in college who tried very hard to hide their wealth, like it was a dirty secret--kind of a reverse conspicuous consumption).
But I don't believe in God. And I'm a lot more annoyed at those who describe themselves as not religious but "spiritual." I have no idea what that means. I am much less annoyed by people who at least grip onto a religion with history.
And that's one thing I can't believe I glossed over in my last relationship. My fiance's belief in something spiritual, some sort of higher power. A hodgepodge of American Indian spirituality from a post-Catholic, semi-scarred perspective. I'm glad that my current boyfriend is at least, if not more, annoyed with religion (especially in politics) as I am.
I haven't written about this because I have nothing more to say about spirituality than that it strikes me as ridiculous. I can't believe that most of the world clings to this childlike mythology as though it is in any way mature or reasonable. I still don't have much more to say than that but after this post it seems that maybe I do.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Response to Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
I'm in the process of writing up discussion questions for the presentation/discussion tomorrow of Another Bullshit Night... (I've taken to calling it Another Bullshit Presentation, which I thought was just so funny and clever--but it's most likely not as entertaining as it was to me last night at 1:00am).
Much of what we will be discussing is structure, and in what ways the structure of the book mirrors the story itself. This is my second time through the book and once again when I came to page 295, I was startled when Flynn glibly mentions that at this point in his story he's moved to Brooklyn to begin graduate school, "To study poetry."
This study of poetry seems to come out of nowhere. As far as I can tell, he hasn't done much writing. I can imagine that the decision to gloss over this portion of his life was intentional but I don't know that I would have made the same choice. The book is about fathers and sons and Flynn completely glosses over the significance of his choice to become a writer, a poet even, what his father has always claimed to be. ("I was declared--over ten years ago--in Federal Court in Boston as being one thing-a poet!—And that I am—always was and always will be!” (father, p. 321).
Flynn barely delves into his maturation post-Pine Street. He has chosen not to include the reader in his own process of redemption, which I think is unfortunate. I am often bothered by this at the end of memoirs, when the author quickly mentions that after all of the pain expressed in the memoir, they got better. But this is worse in that the book continues after Flynn's redemption. The story continues, he continues to visit his father. This new, redeemed Flynn is present in the end of the book but the reader has no idea how he came to this point.
During this second read I did finally look up Flynn's bio. He is 49, which helps me make some sense of the book. (I suspect that the photo on the cover is an outdated press pic...that or he has aged extremely well, which we can all ask Amy H., my presentation partner, because she met him at AWP last week). Without this biographical information I was confused by the end. Flynn is young and lost and works at a homeless shelter and then, all of a sudden, he is a successful writer with at least one book of poetry to his credit!
I just ordered Flynn's first book of poetry, Some Ether, and am hoping that when it arrives it will help me to fill in some of the blanks.
Much of what we will be discussing is structure, and in what ways the structure of the book mirrors the story itself. This is my second time through the book and once again when I came to page 295, I was startled when Flynn glibly mentions that at this point in his story he's moved to Brooklyn to begin graduate school, "To study poetry."
This study of poetry seems to come out of nowhere. As far as I can tell, he hasn't done much writing. I can imagine that the decision to gloss over this portion of his life was intentional but I don't know that I would have made the same choice. The book is about fathers and sons and Flynn completely glosses over the significance of his choice to become a writer, a poet even, what his father has always claimed to be. ("I was declared--over ten years ago--in Federal Court in Boston as being one thing-a poet!—And that I am—always was and always will be!” (father, p. 321).
Flynn barely delves into his maturation post-Pine Street. He has chosen not to include the reader in his own process of redemption, which I think is unfortunate. I am often bothered by this at the end of memoirs, when the author quickly mentions that after all of the pain expressed in the memoir, they got better. But this is worse in that the book continues after Flynn's redemption. The story continues, he continues to visit his father. This new, redeemed Flynn is present in the end of the book but the reader has no idea how he came to this point.
During this second read I did finally look up Flynn's bio. He is 49, which helps me make some sense of the book. (I suspect that the photo on the cover is an outdated press pic...that or he has aged extremely well, which we can all ask Amy H., my presentation partner, because she met him at AWP last week). Without this biographical information I was confused by the end. Flynn is young and lost and works at a homeless shelter and then, all of a sudden, he is a successful writer with at least one book of poetry to his credit!
I just ordered Flynn's first book of poetry, Some Ether, and am hoping that when it arrives it will help me to fill in some of the blanks.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Teaching and Writing and Puzzles, oh my!
I have two talents. Two things I have always been innately good at. Singing and editing. Singing I know how to do and always have, even as I sat in the backseat of our giant brown van on car trips, singing softly to Amy Grant.
I know what it feels like when I hit a right note and I'm not sure I've ever hit a wrong one. I'm unclear as to why anyone would take singing lessons. Unless of course they want to sing classical opera--I doubt I could do that. But to express myself in my own voice is easy. (Or as my mother would make us say when I was little, singing is "easy for me"--rather than simply across the board "easy." We were also not allowed to say that we were "starving"--because we weren't). (This sounds a little egotistical perhaps and now I'm paranoid one of you will come to my show and critique me, but lately I'm trying to acknowledge that my talents are special...to remember that not everyone can do what I do).
And editing is easy for me. I am a slow reader. I read out loud in my head, but this seems to give me a talent for editing. Like some of my friends are innately good at math, I am good at editing. It's like a math problem to me. A puzzle of sorts, and I love putting it together. (Though I hate putting actual puzzles together. Gives me a headache...especially the last one I did of The Kremlin in Moscow...).
I've sometimes thought I'd like to be an editor but lately I've been thinking I'd like to teach writing. This idea has been giving me so much energy lately. I always figured I'd get a PhD at some point and would teach literature and writing then, but now I'm thinking I might be ready. I love reading pieces and noting where the energy is. To express this energy and excitement to the writer/student. I'm feeling, I guess you could say, passionate about it. I want to encourage students, other writers, to be passionate about their work, to realize that what they're doing is important. Perhaps I even want to be inspiring...
I hadn't wanted to teach when I was an undergrad. Afraid of the old adage, "Those who can't do teach." But that notion is ridiculous. Most writers end up teaching and it's much more difficult to be a good teacher than a dismissive egotistical writer who's annoyed by teaching responsibilities. To get into your student's work even though it might not be the most brilliant piece you've ever read is a talent, and one worth pursuing.
In the past I hadn't wanted to teach, less because I don't like the work than because I've been insecure about my own talents, my own work. In workshops at Chatham, it's been challenging (and therapeutic) for me to learn not to dismiss a piece because I think it's terrible. It's been a good exercise both in editing/teaching and in ego taming. To instead work hard to discover what exactly is making a piece terrible. (To my fellow students, your pieces are not terrible...but there were a few pieces I really had to work hard not to dismiss in my other courses...) Wow, this sounds bad too but this entry is really about me, what I've learned, than about who's written something that I don't think is working. It's more about me getting my hands dirty and figuring out why it's not working.
I'm hoping that as part of my program I'll get to do some teaching at Chatham, to work with a professor and get my feet wet. (For the record, Sheryl, I'll do it for free if I have to!) :-)
I know what it feels like when I hit a right note and I'm not sure I've ever hit a wrong one. I'm unclear as to why anyone would take singing lessons. Unless of course they want to sing classical opera--I doubt I could do that. But to express myself in my own voice is easy. (Or as my mother would make us say when I was little, singing is "easy for me"--rather than simply across the board "easy." We were also not allowed to say that we were "starving"--because we weren't). (This sounds a little egotistical perhaps and now I'm paranoid one of you will come to my show and critique me, but lately I'm trying to acknowledge that my talents are special...to remember that not everyone can do what I do).
And editing is easy for me. I am a slow reader. I read out loud in my head, but this seems to give me a talent for editing. Like some of my friends are innately good at math, I am good at editing. It's like a math problem to me. A puzzle of sorts, and I love putting it together. (Though I hate putting actual puzzles together. Gives me a headache...especially the last one I did of The Kremlin in Moscow...).
I've sometimes thought I'd like to be an editor but lately I've been thinking I'd like to teach writing. This idea has been giving me so much energy lately. I always figured I'd get a PhD at some point and would teach literature and writing then, but now I'm thinking I might be ready. I love reading pieces and noting where the energy is. To express this energy and excitement to the writer/student. I'm feeling, I guess you could say, passionate about it. I want to encourage students, other writers, to be passionate about their work, to realize that what they're doing is important. Perhaps I even want to be inspiring...
I hadn't wanted to teach when I was an undergrad. Afraid of the old adage, "Those who can't do teach." But that notion is ridiculous. Most writers end up teaching and it's much more difficult to be a good teacher than a dismissive egotistical writer who's annoyed by teaching responsibilities. To get into your student's work even though it might not be the most brilliant piece you've ever read is a talent, and one worth pursuing.
In the past I hadn't wanted to teach, less because I don't like the work than because I've been insecure about my own talents, my own work. In workshops at Chatham, it's been challenging (and therapeutic) for me to learn not to dismiss a piece because I think it's terrible. It's been a good exercise both in editing/teaching and in ego taming. To instead work hard to discover what exactly is making a piece terrible. (To my fellow students, your pieces are not terrible...but there were a few pieces I really had to work hard not to dismiss in my other courses...) Wow, this sounds bad too but this entry is really about me, what I've learned, than about who's written something that I don't think is working. It's more about me getting my hands dirty and figuring out why it's not working.
I'm hoping that as part of my program I'll get to do some teaching at Chatham, to work with a professor and get my feet wet. (For the record, Sheryl, I'll do it for free if I have to!) :-)
Saturday, February 07, 2009
"Why I Write"
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on reasons for writing, Sheryl. Your response was articulate and felt familiar.
As for: "I liked the idea that maybe my writing would connect with someone else"--
I forget that someone might read my writing, or listen to my music, and be moved by it. Art is something that I want/have to do for myself but I forget about my own ability to affect others, to move my audience in the way that I am moved by literature and music.
I think that I've always had some guilt about my chosen "career" of artist. The Mennonite Church is generally a little guilt-ridden about art. It's important in the church that your work help others, that study and art be not only for the artist. Goshen College's motto is, "Culture for Service" and feels like an apology. The college is founded on the idea that students study, become cultured, for the purpose of serving the world after school.
And I fear that I've been writing as a sort of catharsis, hoping to get myself sorted out so that I can move on and be of service in the community. But I don't want to be a nurse and I don't want to be a social worker. And because I don't want to I would be terrible at it.
And, really, being an artist is a sort of service. To be willing to visit the underworld and bring something back. And this notion of writing as service, as a method of contributing to the world rather than self-indulgent therapy makes me want to get to work...
As for: "I liked the idea that maybe my writing would connect with someone else"--
I forget that someone might read my writing, or listen to my music, and be moved by it. Art is something that I want/have to do for myself but I forget about my own ability to affect others, to move my audience in the way that I am moved by literature and music.
I think that I've always had some guilt about my chosen "career" of artist. The Mennonite Church is generally a little guilt-ridden about art. It's important in the church that your work help others, that study and art be not only for the artist. Goshen College's motto is, "Culture for Service" and feels like an apology. The college is founded on the idea that students study, become cultured, for the purpose of serving the world after school.
And I fear that I've been writing as a sort of catharsis, hoping to get myself sorted out so that I can move on and be of service in the community. But I don't want to be a nurse and I don't want to be a social worker. And because I don't want to I would be terrible at it.
And, really, being an artist is a sort of service. To be willing to visit the underworld and bring something back. And this notion of writing as service, as a method of contributing to the world rather than self-indulgent therapy makes me want to get to work...
The Retreating Narrator...
I have wanted to be many things but there are few things I've wanted to do. I have wanted to be a cellist. I have wanted to be a singer and I have wanted to be a dancer. I have wanted to be many things, not for the work itself, but for the identity. I try on identities like they are outfits.
I have wanted to be an artist because I have wanted to be seen as passionate and tragic. I don't like to dance, but I like black leotards with pink tights. I like the idea of being thin and tortured by my art. I do love playing the cello, but was too busy thinking about what clothes I would wear to make myself look as dramatic as possible while playing the cello.
Having grown up in an emotionally volatile household, I've learn how to gauge the moods of others to a fine degree--I'm so good at this that I seldom notice I am doing it. It was pointed out to me this week (in therapy) that it's because of this learned habit of looking outward rather than in that I have very little faith in and very little knowledge of who I am and what I think. My brother reacted to our family by turning inward, by becoming reserved and spending most of his time alone in his room. I reacted by being unable to spend time alone, afraid something terrible was happening outside my bedroom door, something that I was sure I had the power to avert or fix.
I have an especially sharp memory. I can recall every detail of a room, the position of every actor in the scene but I can't tell you what I thought, at the time or now. This comes across in my writing. I am adept at creating evocative scenes, but I'm barely in them. I see my writing as a painting. A portrait of a room, every detail meticulously rendered, but I appear only as a retreating figure, having created the scene and then turned away.
And I'm beginning to think that I don't want to share my feelings and opinions on events because if they were put on paper, they would be permanent and I would be left exposed. I don't want to commit to my feelings or opinions because I have very little confidence in them, and they are constantly shifting. I am unclear about who I am and it is important to me to have control over what others think of me. I want to present a calculated version of myself in my writing, but this doesn't make for good reading or a compelling narrator. I think that what I'm discovering as I write this is that I need to let go. What others think of me is so important because the only way I know who I am is what I see reflected in the eyes of others.
But singing is something I have always loved. I love the way it feels, my breath running over my vocals chords like a bow across strings. I began with the idea of writing songs so that I could perform but after years of performing it's the work that I enjoy, not the performance.
I began writing because I wanted to be seen as an artist but in another Wizard of Oz like turn, I've found that I've always been an artist. I am dramatic. I am tortured. I am, for better or worse, who I always wanted to be.
And now that I've proven, in the last few years of my life, that I am dramatic without trying it's time to sit down and do the work. To be a writer, but also to write. To be a singer, but also to sing. To wake up in the morning, make coffee, and be a courageous writer, to be present in my own story.
I have wanted to be an artist because I have wanted to be seen as passionate and tragic. I don't like to dance, but I like black leotards with pink tights. I like the idea of being thin and tortured by my art. I do love playing the cello, but was too busy thinking about what clothes I would wear to make myself look as dramatic as possible while playing the cello.
Having grown up in an emotionally volatile household, I've learn how to gauge the moods of others to a fine degree--I'm so good at this that I seldom notice I am doing it. It was pointed out to me this week (in therapy) that it's because of this learned habit of looking outward rather than in that I have very little faith in and very little knowledge of who I am and what I think. My brother reacted to our family by turning inward, by becoming reserved and spending most of his time alone in his room. I reacted by being unable to spend time alone, afraid something terrible was happening outside my bedroom door, something that I was sure I had the power to avert or fix.
I have an especially sharp memory. I can recall every detail of a room, the position of every actor in the scene but I can't tell you what I thought, at the time or now. This comes across in my writing. I am adept at creating evocative scenes, but I'm barely in them. I see my writing as a painting. A portrait of a room, every detail meticulously rendered, but I appear only as a retreating figure, having created the scene and then turned away.
And I'm beginning to think that I don't want to share my feelings and opinions on events because if they were put on paper, they would be permanent and I would be left exposed. I don't want to commit to my feelings or opinions because I have very little confidence in them, and they are constantly shifting. I am unclear about who I am and it is important to me to have control over what others think of me. I want to present a calculated version of myself in my writing, but this doesn't make for good reading or a compelling narrator. I think that what I'm discovering as I write this is that I need to let go. What others think of me is so important because the only way I know who I am is what I see reflected in the eyes of others.
But singing is something I have always loved. I love the way it feels, my breath running over my vocals chords like a bow across strings. I began with the idea of writing songs so that I could perform but after years of performing it's the work that I enjoy, not the performance.
I began writing because I wanted to be seen as an artist but in another Wizard of Oz like turn, I've found that I've always been an artist. I am dramatic. I am tortured. I am, for better or worse, who I always wanted to be.
And now that I've proven, in the last few years of my life, that I am dramatic without trying it's time to sit down and do the work. To be a writer, but also to write. To be a singer, but also to sing. To wake up in the morning, make coffee, and be a courageous writer, to be present in my own story.
Taking Care
In my last workshop Sheryl asked me about taking care, about what I get out of taking care of others. Is there something about it that I like? This question gave me pause. I have never wanted to be a caretaker of anyone--this is an identity that I am uncomfortable with. Caretakers put the needs of others before their own. They are passive, without passion and, in my imagination, frumpy. They wear bulky sweaters and orthopedic shoes.
It's more like Nick Flynn says in Another Bullshit Night...: "For if you are not responsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick him up off the ground if not you?"
I don't want to take care of my family. And I'm not sure that what I do is take care. I'm not sure what it is. But I can disconnect and function through anything. Even when I overdosed I wasn't particularly upset. It was a calculated act. I just wanted someone to notice that my life was very difficult. I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to be in charge anymore.
And really, in a Wizard of Oz sort of way, I always had the power to relinquish responsibility. Had I ever said that I couldn't take care of my schizophrenic fiance, my schizophrenic brother, and my depressed parents everyone would have understood. But it's hard to let go of the narcissistic belief you, and only you, have the power to save the ones you love.
It's more like Nick Flynn says in Another Bullshit Night...: "For if you are not responsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick him up off the ground if not you?"
I don't want to take care of my family. And I'm not sure that what I do is take care. I'm not sure what it is. But I can disconnect and function through anything. Even when I overdosed I wasn't particularly upset. It was a calculated act. I just wanted someone to notice that my life was very difficult. I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to be in charge anymore.
And really, in a Wizard of Oz sort of way, I always had the power to relinquish responsibility. Had I ever said that I couldn't take care of my schizophrenic fiance, my schizophrenic brother, and my depressed parents everyone would have understood. But it's hard to let go of the narcissistic belief you, and only you, have the power to save the ones you love.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Prompt
Have you ever felt like committing suicide? 10 minutes.
This will be a bare bones response, a journal entry. I will have to come back to it. I'm sure even as I start.
The answer is yes. The answer is also that I didn't realize everyone else wasn't as miserable as I was. If you've never known anything different, how do you know your experience isn't ordinary? I have always envisioned depression as a fall, a fall from happy to a dark place. But for me it wasn't a fall, it was more like a ball peen hammer beating slowly against my head until I was down without realizing how dark and deep I had gotten. I didn't remember happy well enough to know that I wasn't.
I have never felt sorry for myself. But I have felt sorry for my father. He grew up with a father with whom he didn't get along. My father liked art. My father was sensitive. His father thought art was for girls. He was emotionally abusive. Basically, I think that was it. But it hurt him and he was still angry and I felt sorry for him and I let him mope around our house and yell at me once when I was 18, yell at me for 20 minutes in a motel parking lot in Florida while I listened, dry eyed. While he yelled that he'd never wanted to be married or have children, that he should have been a priest and committed himself to study. And when he broke down, I let him lay his head on my shoulder and sob, breaths short and choked, as he said, "I remember what it was like before I was born, and I just want to go back..."
I'm starting to realize that feeling sorry for myself might be in order. For having taken on an adult role too early (so early that I didn't realize it was odd), for tip-toeing around my father. Trying to be quiet around him as he pouted around the house, his eyes bugged out in a way than even my future fiance noticed. Always on the verge of intense anger, though I only saw it come out a few times. But it was always behind his eyes. But when we were fun, we had the most fun of any family I had ever known. So much fun, largely due to my hilarious father. So much fun that I couldn't disconnect from him. I couldn't leave him alone. I had to fix him.
For reasons I'm starting to understand, for having had an inordinate amount of responsibility for others in a variety of settings, I wanted to kill myself. Especially after my brother died. I'd been cutting myself for a long time, and that was a great release.
But after my father was hospitalized--after a series of disturbing and (to me) embarrassing psychotic episodes, my brother got very sick--much sicker than my father and killed himself. My mother told me years later than when my father was seeing snakes in his food she considered poisoning both herself and my father, getting it over with. Then, months after my brother died, my fiance stopped taking the anti-psychotic medicine that had kept him steady for years. He grew paranoid and a little mean, and started to scare me a bit. I took him to the emergency room. We sat there for 4 hours. I somehow kept him there when he wanted to bolt. The hospital gave him back to me a month later, not much better. On Haldol. Drooling a little. Throwing up in the street.
The night after I got him back, I drank my usual amount of beer (an amount I would find out later almost killed me by itself), took a month's supply of the Wellbutrin I'd been taking, plus some of Kevin's Haldol. Then I called 9-1-1, put on my fleece jacket and Kevin's blue retro Adidas tennis shoes that were far to big for me. I went onto the front stoop and waited for the ambulance, totally rational, even polite when they arrived. Then I remember nothing. I learned later I'd been having seizures, had been put in a coma to stop the seizures, woke up days later, disoriented in a way that suggested brain damage (though my brain was fine). I came to days later as I was ordered to cough out a breathing tube.
After this, I continued to think about suicide when I was drunk. The last night I got drunk, I spent the night in the drunk tank at the psychiatric emergency room. They wouldn't admit me until I was under the legal limit, which took 10 hours to reach. I haven't had a drink since.
I am finally on a new drug (for five months) and feel great. I feel like I want to do things. Like getting cut off in traffic doesn't make me want to turn the steering wheel and sail off one of Pittsburgh's steepest cliffs. And a bad meeting at work doesn't make me want to jump through a third story window at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. I forgot to take the medicine during our most recent class. I couldn't concentrate on anything that was actually going on--class, discussion, workshop--but I was clear-headed in my desire to go home and slit my wrists.
When I got home, I took the medicine and was fine the next day.
This will be a bare bones response, a journal entry. I will have to come back to it. I'm sure even as I start.
The answer is yes. The answer is also that I didn't realize everyone else wasn't as miserable as I was. If you've never known anything different, how do you know your experience isn't ordinary? I have always envisioned depression as a fall, a fall from happy to a dark place. But for me it wasn't a fall, it was more like a ball peen hammer beating slowly against my head until I was down without realizing how dark and deep I had gotten. I didn't remember happy well enough to know that I wasn't.
I have never felt sorry for myself. But I have felt sorry for my father. He grew up with a father with whom he didn't get along. My father liked art. My father was sensitive. His father thought art was for girls. He was emotionally abusive. Basically, I think that was it. But it hurt him and he was still angry and I felt sorry for him and I let him mope around our house and yell at me once when I was 18, yell at me for 20 minutes in a motel parking lot in Florida while I listened, dry eyed. While he yelled that he'd never wanted to be married or have children, that he should have been a priest and committed himself to study. And when he broke down, I let him lay his head on my shoulder and sob, breaths short and choked, as he said, "I remember what it was like before I was born, and I just want to go back..."
I'm starting to realize that feeling sorry for myself might be in order. For having taken on an adult role too early (so early that I didn't realize it was odd), for tip-toeing around my father. Trying to be quiet around him as he pouted around the house, his eyes bugged out in a way than even my future fiance noticed. Always on the verge of intense anger, though I only saw it come out a few times. But it was always behind his eyes. But when we were fun, we had the most fun of any family I had ever known. So much fun, largely due to my hilarious father. So much fun that I couldn't disconnect from him. I couldn't leave him alone. I had to fix him.
For reasons I'm starting to understand, for having had an inordinate amount of responsibility for others in a variety of settings, I wanted to kill myself. Especially after my brother died. I'd been cutting myself for a long time, and that was a great release.
But after my father was hospitalized--after a series of disturbing and (to me) embarrassing psychotic episodes, my brother got very sick--much sicker than my father and killed himself. My mother told me years later than when my father was seeing snakes in his food she considered poisoning both herself and my father, getting it over with. Then, months after my brother died, my fiance stopped taking the anti-psychotic medicine that had kept him steady for years. He grew paranoid and a little mean, and started to scare me a bit. I took him to the emergency room. We sat there for 4 hours. I somehow kept him there when he wanted to bolt. The hospital gave him back to me a month later, not much better. On Haldol. Drooling a little. Throwing up in the street.
The night after I got him back, I drank my usual amount of beer (an amount I would find out later almost killed me by itself), took a month's supply of the Wellbutrin I'd been taking, plus some of Kevin's Haldol. Then I called 9-1-1, put on my fleece jacket and Kevin's blue retro Adidas tennis shoes that were far to big for me. I went onto the front stoop and waited for the ambulance, totally rational, even polite when they arrived. Then I remember nothing. I learned later I'd been having seizures, had been put in a coma to stop the seizures, woke up days later, disoriented in a way that suggested brain damage (though my brain was fine). I came to days later as I was ordered to cough out a breathing tube.
After this, I continued to think about suicide when I was drunk. The last night I got drunk, I spent the night in the drunk tank at the psychiatric emergency room. They wouldn't admit me until I was under the legal limit, which took 10 hours to reach. I haven't had a drink since.
I am finally on a new drug (for five months) and feel great. I feel like I want to do things. Like getting cut off in traffic doesn't make me want to turn the steering wheel and sail off one of Pittsburgh's steepest cliffs. And a bad meeting at work doesn't make me want to jump through a third story window at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. I forgot to take the medicine during our most recent class. I couldn't concentrate on anything that was actually going on--class, discussion, workshop--but I was clear-headed in my desire to go home and slit my wrists.
When I got home, I took the medicine and was fine the next day.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Random Things, Part 2
1) I like throwing up. I find it cathartic.
2) Now that I've finally found a combo of psychotropic drugs to keep me sane I try really hard not to throw them up.
3) Though I did throw up at Thanksgiving. I tried to eat a little bit of everything and it all expanded and I ended up pulling over at a Sunoco on the turnpike to throw up.
4) I am attracted to any and every overconfident man I have ever met. Especially if they are attractive, but sometimes even if they are not (or not immediately so).
5) I think that Shane from the L-Word is the most attractive human to ever walk the planet.
6) If I was married, I'd consider taking my husband's name if it was a really great name.
7) I've recently taken to Emily Dickinson, and wrote a poem for her last week.
8) I am struggling through Robert Frost, who is sooo boring. "Something inspires the only cow of late / To make no more of a wall than an open gate."
9) A girl on my softball team went to college on a bowling scholarship.
10) I once passed out and then went blind for 20 minutes after smoking pot. (And I'm sure it was just pot--a friend had grown it and we were smoking it at his house).
11) When I can't sleep, I think about shaving my head and it calms me down. I also think about shooting heroin, which I've never actually done.
12) I am 98% certain that I once spent an evening at an undercover cop's apartment. Something felt off the whole night, but I was sure when he tried to sell me coke.
13) The town where I am from--Elkhart, Indiana--has the third worst air quality in the nation. (It's the RV capital of the world and the manufacture of the foam that goes into the seats releases "particulates" into the air).
14) I am terrified of first floor windows.
15) In high school, I was always the last one up. It would take all of my courage to peek out the curtain before locking the door. I routinely thought I saw a man standing on the front stoop but he'd disappear when I blinked my eyes.
16) The man I often thought I saw at my window was Christopher Lloyd's character in Dennis the Menace.
17) One time, when I was 18 and had spent years imagining men at my window, I looked behind the curtain on the front door and there really was a man there. I locked the door, walked up the stairs to my bedroom and went to sleep.
18) By the time my parents moved out of my childhood home, they had renovated the house to include three porches and a wall of sliding glass doors, an entire house of first floor windows. I was routinely paralyzed if left alone at night.
19) The house that I live in now hasn't a single first floor window.
20) I have recently found that if you are very poor, drug companies will give you medicine for free.
21) I am really into The Divine Salt, by Peter Blair. Poems about working on a psychiatric ward at the old St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh.
22) My brother had an autopsy. If you kill yourself, they treat it as a homicide until they can prove otherwise.
23) I purposely overdosed three years ago and afterward everyone was afraid of me and no one wanted to be friends with me except for my (then friend, now boyfriend) Erik.
24) I am "handier" than my boyfriend.
25) I think Erik looks like Jerome Bettis.
26) The sweetest thing Erik has ever said to me was in last night's discussion of "polyamory" (the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved). He said that he wouldn't mind if I took up with a woman (which happens sometimes), but would be worried if I took up with another man. I assumed he meant because he'd be jealous, but when I asked he said it was because men are "dicks" and he wouldn't want to see me hurt.
27) My boyfriend would be so embarrassed if he read #26. He is not a fan of my compulsion to disclose everything.
28) A counselor recently suggested to me that my constant need to disclose is perhaps due to low self-esteem and a constant desire for validation. I think she's probably right but have trouble holding my tongue.
29) I wish I wasn't so fragile, but I've been told it's part of my charm...
30) A friend is interested in having a "polyamorous" relationship with me. I'm not entirely sure what I think about it.
31) I love making these lists. This is exactly how I think. A former boyfriend called it "pinball-esque."
32) The word "lover" makes me queasy.
2) Now that I've finally found a combo of psychotropic drugs to keep me sane I try really hard not to throw them up.
3) Though I did throw up at Thanksgiving. I tried to eat a little bit of everything and it all expanded and I ended up pulling over at a Sunoco on the turnpike to throw up.
4) I am attracted to any and every overconfident man I have ever met. Especially if they are attractive, but sometimes even if they are not (or not immediately so).
5) I think that Shane from the L-Word is the most attractive human to ever walk the planet.
6) If I was married, I'd consider taking my husband's name if it was a really great name.
7) I've recently taken to Emily Dickinson, and wrote a poem for her last week.
8) I am struggling through Robert Frost, who is sooo boring. "Something inspires the only cow of late / To make no more of a wall than an open gate."
9) A girl on my softball team went to college on a bowling scholarship.
10) I once passed out and then went blind for 20 minutes after smoking pot. (And I'm sure it was just pot--a friend had grown it and we were smoking it at his house).
11) When I can't sleep, I think about shaving my head and it calms me down. I also think about shooting heroin, which I've never actually done.
12) I am 98% certain that I once spent an evening at an undercover cop's apartment. Something felt off the whole night, but I was sure when he tried to sell me coke.
13) The town where I am from--Elkhart, Indiana--has the third worst air quality in the nation. (It's the RV capital of the world and the manufacture of the foam that goes into the seats releases "particulates" into the air).
14) I am terrified of first floor windows.
15) In high school, I was always the last one up. It would take all of my courage to peek out the curtain before locking the door. I routinely thought I saw a man standing on the front stoop but he'd disappear when I blinked my eyes.
16) The man I often thought I saw at my window was Christopher Lloyd's character in Dennis the Menace.
17) One time, when I was 18 and had spent years imagining men at my window, I looked behind the curtain on the front door and there really was a man there. I locked the door, walked up the stairs to my bedroom and went to sleep.
18) By the time my parents moved out of my childhood home, they had renovated the house to include three porches and a wall of sliding glass doors, an entire house of first floor windows. I was routinely paralyzed if left alone at night.
19) The house that I live in now hasn't a single first floor window.
20) I have recently found that if you are very poor, drug companies will give you medicine for free.
21) I am really into The Divine Salt, by Peter Blair. Poems about working on a psychiatric ward at the old St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh.
22) My brother had an autopsy. If you kill yourself, they treat it as a homicide until they can prove otherwise.
23) I purposely overdosed three years ago and afterward everyone was afraid of me and no one wanted to be friends with me except for my (then friend, now boyfriend) Erik.
24) I am "handier" than my boyfriend.
25) I think Erik looks like Jerome Bettis.
26) The sweetest thing Erik has ever said to me was in last night's discussion of "polyamory" (the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved). He said that he wouldn't mind if I took up with a woman (which happens sometimes), but would be worried if I took up with another man. I assumed he meant because he'd be jealous, but when I asked he said it was because men are "dicks" and he wouldn't want to see me hurt.
27) My boyfriend would be so embarrassed if he read #26. He is not a fan of my compulsion to disclose everything.
28) A counselor recently suggested to me that my constant need to disclose is perhaps due to low self-esteem and a constant desire for validation. I think she's probably right but have trouble holding my tongue.
29) I wish I wasn't so fragile, but I've been told it's part of my charm...
30) A friend is interested in having a "polyamorous" relationship with me. I'm not entirely sure what I think about it.
31) I love making these lists. This is exactly how I think. A former boyfriend called it "pinball-esque."
32) The word "lover" makes me queasy.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
25 Random Things
1) In first grade, we were required to write a book. I plagiarized a book and got called out by another student and had to write a new book. The new book was good, and was about a frog named Lucy.
2) In third grade, I wrote 12 different books and won our class' Newberry (for writing) and Caldecot (for illustration) awards.The 12 books featured such plots as: watching chicks hatch with my brother, meeting a new kid who spoke no English (true story, he as in our class), and a story about teenage triplets that was suspiciously similar to Sweet Valley Twins (except that they were triplets).
3) If left unchecked and without sleeping pills, I'd stay up until 4am and sleep until 5pm.
4) I've never been happier than with a pack of cigarettes, a case or two of beer, and a good friend to talk to.
5) I've never been sadder or more self-destructive than after a pack of cigarettes and a case or two of beer.
4) I quit drinking 8/07
5) I quit smoking 12/07
6) A significant portion of my song lyrics come from misheard lyrics. (I hear them in other people's songs and think they're great lyrics and lament the fact that they are already taken, until I realize I've heard them incorrectly. Then I put them in my own songs).
7) My songs are written piece meal--in short spurts of a line or two kept in a journal. After a week or so I come up with some chords and put the lyrics together. They almost always end up fitting together in a meaningful way.
8) My passion in junior high was visual art, but it made me crazy and I had trouble finishing anything.
9) I'm a fairly accomplished pianist, though in 8 years of lessons I averaged about 15 minutes a week in practice time.
10) When I was 17, I performed the piano in a big deal contest at St. Mary's Contest in South Bend, IN. I forgot the piece halfway through and had to start over. The judge's comments included the question, "Do you really like playing this piece?" And I didn't really. It was Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca (last movement of Piano Sonata 11, a "turkish march"). I could play it technically but I felt nothing for it.
11) I'm starting to think that people having psychotic breaks tend to gravitate toward me.
12) I am lactose intolerant. I know what I will look like when I'm pregnant--exactly as I do after a glass of milk or a slice of soft white cheese.
13) I think that "King of Carrot Flowers" by Neutral Milk Hotel is the most uplifting song ever. Second is "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve.
14) I was in love with Eddie Vedder when I was 15. I would listen to Vitology over and over and get teary eyed, knowing we would never meet.
15) I refused to kiss a boy until I got my braces off. I got felt up before I'd ever been kissed.
16) My first kiss was horrendous and lasted 20 minutes. I had chap marks around my lips for days. I hated kissing until I was 20 and kissed a boy who was nice and knew what he was doing.
17) For years, my all-time favorite movie has been Reality Bites. I even wrote a 15 page paper on it for film class my junior year of college. But the last time I watched it I wasn't as wild about Ethan Hawke's character as I once was. He's kind of a self-centered dick and I'm not that glad that he and Winona end up together. Perhaps I've matured...
18) I blame my 10 years of smoking on Reality Bites.
19) I have the best job ever but I have trouble getting in before noon.
20) I once locked myself in a broom closet at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (where I work). The building is a giant old mansion that is reputed to be haunted. It was a Friday night and everyone else was gone. I was about to use my cigarette lighter to set off the fire alarm when I got the door open.
21) I drive a 1993 Subaru station wagon. It's the best.
22) I spent a semester at Marlboro College in Vermont, but I lived with very mean boys, one of whom I was in love with. I got into an accident over Christmas break and broke my pelvis. It was a blessing in disguise and I came back to Goshen College in Indiana, where everyone is nice.
23) When I broke my pelvis, I had to crutch around campus in a really embarrassing way. Basically, pelvis first. When I got off the crutches, I walked like I was 9 months pregnant. I found out later there was a rumor that I was pregnant.
24) I've gained 40 pounds in the last two years, but I was sad and skinny 40 pounds ago.
25) I used to be embarrassed of my small feet. I thought they looked like hooves.
2) In third grade, I wrote 12 different books and won our class' Newberry (for writing) and Caldecot (for illustration) awards.The 12 books featured such plots as: watching chicks hatch with my brother, meeting a new kid who spoke no English (true story, he as in our class), and a story about teenage triplets that was suspiciously similar to Sweet Valley Twins (except that they were triplets).
3) If left unchecked and without sleeping pills, I'd stay up until 4am and sleep until 5pm.
4) I've never been happier than with a pack of cigarettes, a case or two of beer, and a good friend to talk to.
5) I've never been sadder or more self-destructive than after a pack of cigarettes and a case or two of beer.
4) I quit drinking 8/07
5) I quit smoking 12/07
6) A significant portion of my song lyrics come from misheard lyrics. (I hear them in other people's songs and think they're great lyrics and lament the fact that they are already taken, until I realize I've heard them incorrectly. Then I put them in my own songs).
7) My songs are written piece meal--in short spurts of a line or two kept in a journal. After a week or so I come up with some chords and put the lyrics together. They almost always end up fitting together in a meaningful way.
8) My passion in junior high was visual art, but it made me crazy and I had trouble finishing anything.
9) I'm a fairly accomplished pianist, though in 8 years of lessons I averaged about 15 minutes a week in practice time.
10) When I was 17, I performed the piano in a big deal contest at St. Mary's Contest in South Bend, IN. I forgot the piece halfway through and had to start over. The judge's comments included the question, "Do you really like playing this piece?" And I didn't really. It was Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca (last movement of Piano Sonata 11, a "turkish march"). I could play it technically but I felt nothing for it.
11) I'm starting to think that people having psychotic breaks tend to gravitate toward me.
12) I am lactose intolerant. I know what I will look like when I'm pregnant--exactly as I do after a glass of milk or a slice of soft white cheese.
13) I think that "King of Carrot Flowers" by Neutral Milk Hotel is the most uplifting song ever. Second is "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve.
14) I was in love with Eddie Vedder when I was 15. I would listen to Vitology over and over and get teary eyed, knowing we would never meet.
15) I refused to kiss a boy until I got my braces off. I got felt up before I'd ever been kissed.
16) My first kiss was horrendous and lasted 20 minutes. I had chap marks around my lips for days. I hated kissing until I was 20 and kissed a boy who was nice and knew what he was doing.
17) For years, my all-time favorite movie has been Reality Bites. I even wrote a 15 page paper on it for film class my junior year of college. But the last time I watched it I wasn't as wild about Ethan Hawke's character as I once was. He's kind of a self-centered dick and I'm not that glad that he and Winona end up together. Perhaps I've matured...
18) I blame my 10 years of smoking on Reality Bites.
19) I have the best job ever but I have trouble getting in before noon.
20) I once locked myself in a broom closet at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (where I work). The building is a giant old mansion that is reputed to be haunted. It was a Friday night and everyone else was gone. I was about to use my cigarette lighter to set off the fire alarm when I got the door open.
21) I drive a 1993 Subaru station wagon. It's the best.
22) I spent a semester at Marlboro College in Vermont, but I lived with very mean boys, one of whom I was in love with. I got into an accident over Christmas break and broke my pelvis. It was a blessing in disguise and I came back to Goshen College in Indiana, where everyone is nice.
23) When I broke my pelvis, I had to crutch around campus in a really embarrassing way. Basically, pelvis first. When I got off the crutches, I walked like I was 9 months pregnant. I found out later there was a rumor that I was pregnant.
24) I've gained 40 pounds in the last two years, but I was sad and skinny 40 pounds ago.
25) I used to be embarrassed of my small feet. I thought they looked like hooves.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Scratch
Write about a time you itched.
In February of 2004, my fiance Kevin and I bought a house. My brother had died in September. My boss/good friend Tricia's advice not to make any changes in the first year after he died seemed silly as I adopted a cat, bought a house, planned a wedding. In a bizarre (and perhaps cosmic, though that word and its meaning always seems a little fruity to me) coincidence Tricia's brother (also her only sibling and best friend) was murdered on the exact same date--Sept. 16--25 years before.
The house was a small bungalow in the quiet and scenic Pittsburgh neighborhood of Stanton Heights. The back room held a wood burning stove and was lit by skylights and a wall of windows that lined the entire space. The small second story deck was surrounded by a magnolia tree, the blooms of which were pink and white and felt soft and smooth when I plucked them. Our house abutted a lush and undeveloped valley and from the deck you could see the city skyline. Fireworks lit up the sky over the valley during Pirates games and highlighted what I most love about Pittsburgh, that it is simultaneously urban and wild.
During winter, I worked on the interior of the house. I painted the kitchen a light blue, the attic practice space light purple, and began to paint the living room a light green until I realized the house was beginning to look like a basket of Easter eggs. But I was proud of the work I had done and the rooms looked good.
When spring hit, I cleared flowerbeds in the front and planted Dutch irises. In the back, along the alley, I planted gladioli. The backyard was a tangle of weeds and scrubby trees. Once it was warm enough, I dressed in one of Kevin's white t-shirts and set to work on the yard. I uncovered a brick patio under inches of mud. I pruned hedges at the edge of the property. And I set to work pulling weeds. Some of the weeds were attached to long underground vines. I pulled them up, wrapping the tough ones around my waist and using my full weight to wrench them from the ground. It was later that I realized I had been enfolding myself in poison ivy.
For the next week, I wore a cotton pajama set from Kmart. I covered myself in calamine lotion. I struggled to sit still when the rash reached my armpits. My arms and legs were covered in a seeping rash. My left arm was swollen to double its size. My only relief was to step into the shower and turn the temperate as high as it would go. The water hit my body and scratched it, scratched it in a way that I could not do with my hands. It hurt but felt nearly orgasmic at the same time. Ultimate satisfaction. A deep itch finally scratched.
After a week, I went to the emergency room, despite my lack of insurance. The doctors asked me three times if I had started any new medications. I hadn't. They couldn't believe that my rash was simple poison ivy. But it was. $300 later I had a prescription for steroids. My arm returned to its standard size and the red began to fade from my skin. Though if one looks closely at press photos I had taken weeks later, a rosy outline can be seen running the length of my arm and into my armpits...
In February of 2004, my fiance Kevin and I bought a house. My brother had died in September. My boss/good friend Tricia's advice not to make any changes in the first year after he died seemed silly as I adopted a cat, bought a house, planned a wedding. In a bizarre (and perhaps cosmic, though that word and its meaning always seems a little fruity to me) coincidence Tricia's brother (also her only sibling and best friend) was murdered on the exact same date--Sept. 16--25 years before.
The house was a small bungalow in the quiet and scenic Pittsburgh neighborhood of Stanton Heights. The back room held a wood burning stove and was lit by skylights and a wall of windows that lined the entire space. The small second story deck was surrounded by a magnolia tree, the blooms of which were pink and white and felt soft and smooth when I plucked them. Our house abutted a lush and undeveloped valley and from the deck you could see the city skyline. Fireworks lit up the sky over the valley during Pirates games and highlighted what I most love about Pittsburgh, that it is simultaneously urban and wild.
During winter, I worked on the interior of the house. I painted the kitchen a light blue, the attic practice space light purple, and began to paint the living room a light green until I realized the house was beginning to look like a basket of Easter eggs. But I was proud of the work I had done and the rooms looked good.
When spring hit, I cleared flowerbeds in the front and planted Dutch irises. In the back, along the alley, I planted gladioli. The backyard was a tangle of weeds and scrubby trees. Once it was warm enough, I dressed in one of Kevin's white t-shirts and set to work on the yard. I uncovered a brick patio under inches of mud. I pruned hedges at the edge of the property. And I set to work pulling weeds. Some of the weeds were attached to long underground vines. I pulled them up, wrapping the tough ones around my waist and using my full weight to wrench them from the ground. It was later that I realized I had been enfolding myself in poison ivy.
For the next week, I wore a cotton pajama set from Kmart. I covered myself in calamine lotion. I struggled to sit still when the rash reached my armpits. My arms and legs were covered in a seeping rash. My left arm was swollen to double its size. My only relief was to step into the shower and turn the temperate as high as it would go. The water hit my body and scratched it, scratched it in a way that I could not do with my hands. It hurt but felt nearly orgasmic at the same time. Ultimate satisfaction. A deep itch finally scratched.
After a week, I went to the emergency room, despite my lack of insurance. The doctors asked me three times if I had started any new medications. I hadn't. They couldn't believe that my rash was simple poison ivy. But it was. $300 later I had a prescription for steroids. My arm returned to its standard size and the red began to fade from my skin. Though if one looks closely at press photos I had taken weeks later, a rosy outline can be seen running the length of my arm and into my armpits...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Response to "Miss New York Has Everything"
I'm starting to feel like a star-f*cker after my continual mention of the fact that I know Lori, but it has been interesting to re-read a book now that I know the author. It gives me a perspective that I've never had before--to be able to read a text but also have knowledge of the person who created the text, to know what she is like in conversation, to know what was not mentioned in the memoir. The first time I read Miss NY I had not met Lori. I finished the book an hour before my boyfriend Erik (who went to high school with Lori's husband) and I went to their house for dinner. Lori, her husband Dave, and their two children live in Lori's childhood home in Trafford.
I wandered through the little ranch house and felt like I was touring a celebrity home, or Emily's Dickinson's Amherst homestead. I had finished the book so recently that it was fascinating to be in the place where most of the book took place. And to see the transformation that the house has taken on. Lori speaks of the house as a typical Pittsburgh suburban ranch house with no privacy in a nice neighborhood, but the house has been remodeled to include offices for both Lori and Dave, who are both writers. I am fascinated and inspired by Lori's ability to quite literally go back to her roots while at the same time making the space, and the town, her own.
Lori's writing is hilarious--last week I stole my favorite line, in which she speaks of sitting on Santa's lap as a Junior Miss contestant and in the pictures looking, "fat and insane." The producer who worked on my last album is making a video of one of my songs. He lives far away so I've been given the task of filming myself for the project. I have yet to capture a moment in which I don't look like an idiot, or like I weigh 200 pounds. Last week I asked for patience from the producer of the video, noting that I was working hard to capture footage in which I did not look "fat and insane."
As I understand it, Lori has written a sequel to Miss NY, a sequel that documents her relationship with her husband (a fabulous husband who is certainly worth wading through the awful boyfriends she mentions in Miss NY).
Questions I have for Lori are--she has a great David Sedaris-like ability to discern which moments should be funny, and which should not. How does she do this? I've felt inspired to write something funny.
Also, she has a talent for beginning with a point/anecdote and then riffing off of the story with other semi-related stories but never straying from the initial point of the chapter in a distracting way. This is the way that I think--a former boyfriend called my mode of thinking "pinball-esque." I'd like to write in the manner that I really do think.
And, I'm not sure that the story is really about the desire to "make it big" or the experience of being a flight attendant. I'm wondering if these foci were emphasized for the purpose of publication. The book was promoted as chick lit, but it has more in common with Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs than anything else.
I wandered through the little ranch house and felt like I was touring a celebrity home, or Emily's Dickinson's Amherst homestead. I had finished the book so recently that it was fascinating to be in the place where most of the book took place. And to see the transformation that the house has taken on. Lori speaks of the house as a typical Pittsburgh suburban ranch house with no privacy in a nice neighborhood, but the house has been remodeled to include offices for both Lori and Dave, who are both writers. I am fascinated and inspired by Lori's ability to quite literally go back to her roots while at the same time making the space, and the town, her own.
Lori's writing is hilarious--last week I stole my favorite line, in which she speaks of sitting on Santa's lap as a Junior Miss contestant and in the pictures looking, "fat and insane." The producer who worked on my last album is making a video of one of my songs. He lives far away so I've been given the task of filming myself for the project. I have yet to capture a moment in which I don't look like an idiot, or like I weigh 200 pounds. Last week I asked for patience from the producer of the video, noting that I was working hard to capture footage in which I did not look "fat and insane."
As I understand it, Lori has written a sequel to Miss NY, a sequel that documents her relationship with her husband (a fabulous husband who is certainly worth wading through the awful boyfriends she mentions in Miss NY).
Questions I have for Lori are--she has a great David Sedaris-like ability to discern which moments should be funny, and which should not. How does she do this? I've felt inspired to write something funny.
Also, she has a talent for beginning with a point/anecdote and then riffing off of the story with other semi-related stories but never straying from the initial point of the chapter in a distracting way. This is the way that I think--a former boyfriend called my mode of thinking "pinball-esque." I'd like to write in the manner that I really do think.
And, I'm not sure that the story is really about the desire to "make it big" or the experience of being a flight attendant. I'm wondering if these foci were emphasized for the purpose of publication. The book was promoted as chick lit, but it has more in common with Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs than anything else.
Sprints
Do three-minute sprints with each of the following topics:
Cantaloupe
My favorite fruit. I'm not usually a picky eater, but I'm a bit of a baby when it comes to seeds in my fruit. I can't do watermelon. Even seedless makes me nervous. A meticulously de-seeded and cut out of the rind without a speck of rind material and not the slightest bit turned (which makes it tastes suspiciously alcoholic) is a one of my favorite summer memories. Out on the porch of our old house on Roys Avenue, where I lived between the ages of five and nine, until we moved and everything changed and, in my memory, everything began to grow dark. Where my dad took care of us after school. He worked for the school district and got home before us. Gave us snacks of celery with peanut butter and raisins ("ants on a log"). We were allowed to watch half an hour of tv--usually Duck Tales and then were ordered to go out and play, to enjoy the sunshine. When we moved, our house was more expensive, the school district was less rough (less rough on me, which was why we moved) but the district was more expensive. We lived in a modest 60s split-level in a subdivision. Few cars passed. We played tennis in the street, roller skated at the nearby church parking lot, walked around after dark. Parents from other neighborhoods would bring their children to our neighborhood to safely trick or treat. The night before we moved, I sat on the hardwood floor and cried, cried for the change, cried for the house. My dad sat with me, looked a little teary himself and said, "It's been a good house." When we moved, my dad began work at a nursing home and was irritable all the time. His interminable sighing began and my mom hit menopause at 40 and started crying into her spaghetti at dinner and I started to look fondly back at Roys Avenue.
Cow
I have many black and white portraits of cows, taken by my brother a few years before he died. On the occasion of my college graduation, he gave me a card he had made, on which he had drawn a pen and ink sketch of flowers in a vase. I saved the card. The image is a surreal, a unique take on a standard still life. The inscription on the inside of the card said, "Remember me always, your loving brother." Even at the time, it was both cryptic and sweet. Something between an honest expression of genuine affection and a goodbye. He was the one who knew me best, who got a kick out of my incessant talking, my constantly shifting dreams/plans. He really loved me. Inside the card were a series of black and whites of cows he'd photographed in Wisconsin. The composition is striking, creating evocative portraits of black and white spotted cows with numbered tags hanging from their ears.
Breast
In sixth grade I overheard Cory S., the most beautiful boy in our class say disdainfully, "The only girls here who have any breasts are the fat ones." And I remember looking down and thinking, I do and I'm certainly not fat.
Then came college when they just kept growing and growing. And everyone--and I mean everyone, most everyone was Mennonite and related--had pear shapes. I realize that "pear shaped" evokes big thighs but no one had big thighs. As I remember it, most everyone was svelte. Small on top and a little bigger on the bottom, much like the artsier models I'd seen growing up. And there I was, giant on top, tiny on the bottom. And I felt as though I were simply too much. Just to scratch the surface on this issue, but the men at Goshen were egotistical and not particularly interested in girls. It's suspicious in retrospect, that most of them wanted simply to work on their pottery and spend time with each other, but at the time it was devastating. For me but for all of us. No one wanted to date us. We were lucky if we got someone to spend the night with us after heavy, heavy nights of drinking. When I tell my boyfriend Erik about this time in my life he says, "So, a single red-blooded male would have cleaned up at Goshen?" and I say, yes. Most definitely yes.
Window
Looking out my window now, at a quintessentially Pittsburgh scene. I live in a valley, a "hollow" ("holler"?) and look up at red, blue, green houses that with each street stretch higher and higher, ending at an ancient brick, Victorian style school building at the top of the hill. Two stories, all gables, with a long abandoned stove top emerging from the top of the building. We do not live on Mt. Washington. We live three block from "Mt. Washington" but our neighborhood is Duquesne Heights. And the contrast is noticeable. Tiny condos that sell for half a million dollars on Grandview Avenue. Three blocks down the hill, Duquesne Heights where the houses cost $60K. This is quintessentially Pittsburgh. Before Duquesne Heights, I lived in Friendship. A quiet neighborhood with towering single-family owned Victorian houses. Two blocks away, crossing Penn Avenue, was Garfield. A dangerous neighborhood with nuisance bars, few street lights, drug dealers every few blocks.
Urine
The worst public restroom I've ever used was in Havana. I spent nearly every night at what we called "The Pig Bar." It had no discernible name, but the image of a pink pig on the sign out front. I'd drink beer after peso-priced beer and have to visit the bathroom frequently. No toilet seat (common in Cuba), floor coated in urine, no toilet paper (very common in Cuba), and flushable only by quickly pouring a bucket full of water into the bowl, which would activate the flush mechanism. But there was no bucket, no sink, and as far as I could tell hadn't been flushed in days. But I continued to go there. The beer was cheap, it was outside, I could smoke half a pack of Romeo y Julieta cigarettes in peace and chat incessantly to my fellow students and sometimes Cuban students from the University of Havana.
Pillow
I was just eyeing a back pillow that I bought with an image in mind of me sitting up in bed and typing away at my laptop, poems, essays, stories. But now it serves as decoration and a place for my little brindle pitbull to lay his head while he stares out at the window.
Vanilla
Is startlingly expensive. I don't bake very often, but I do make peanut butter cookies from The More With Less Cookbook, a Mennonite staple, a book written in the 70s that presents recipes that use less of the world's resources. Definitely ahead of its time but does include a variety of hilarious anachronisms, including instructions to place hot casserole dishes on your asbestos pad, and to add lard, as though we all have lard hanging around, to a variety of dishes. The recipe requires vanilla. I made a recent trip to Foodland to buy some and was, as said earlier, startled by the price. But I bought it and all eaters of the cookies are grateful.
Cantaloupe
My favorite fruit. I'm not usually a picky eater, but I'm a bit of a baby when it comes to seeds in my fruit. I can't do watermelon. Even seedless makes me nervous. A meticulously de-seeded and cut out of the rind without a speck of rind material and not the slightest bit turned (which makes it tastes suspiciously alcoholic) is a one of my favorite summer memories. Out on the porch of our old house on Roys Avenue, where I lived between the ages of five and nine, until we moved and everything changed and, in my memory, everything began to grow dark. Where my dad took care of us after school. He worked for the school district and got home before us. Gave us snacks of celery with peanut butter and raisins ("ants on a log"). We were allowed to watch half an hour of tv--usually Duck Tales and then were ordered to go out and play, to enjoy the sunshine. When we moved, our house was more expensive, the school district was less rough (less rough on me, which was why we moved) but the district was more expensive. We lived in a modest 60s split-level in a subdivision. Few cars passed. We played tennis in the street, roller skated at the nearby church parking lot, walked around after dark. Parents from other neighborhoods would bring their children to our neighborhood to safely trick or treat. The night before we moved, I sat on the hardwood floor and cried, cried for the change, cried for the house. My dad sat with me, looked a little teary himself and said, "It's been a good house." When we moved, my dad began work at a nursing home and was irritable all the time. His interminable sighing began and my mom hit menopause at 40 and started crying into her spaghetti at dinner and I started to look fondly back at Roys Avenue.
Cow
I have many black and white portraits of cows, taken by my brother a few years before he died. On the occasion of my college graduation, he gave me a card he had made, on which he had drawn a pen and ink sketch of flowers in a vase. I saved the card. The image is a surreal, a unique take on a standard still life. The inscription on the inside of the card said, "Remember me always, your loving brother." Even at the time, it was both cryptic and sweet. Something between an honest expression of genuine affection and a goodbye. He was the one who knew me best, who got a kick out of my incessant talking, my constantly shifting dreams/plans. He really loved me. Inside the card were a series of black and whites of cows he'd photographed in Wisconsin. The composition is striking, creating evocative portraits of black and white spotted cows with numbered tags hanging from their ears.
Breast
In sixth grade I overheard Cory S., the most beautiful boy in our class say disdainfully, "The only girls here who have any breasts are the fat ones." And I remember looking down and thinking, I do and I'm certainly not fat.
Then came college when they just kept growing and growing. And everyone--and I mean everyone, most everyone was Mennonite and related--had pear shapes. I realize that "pear shaped" evokes big thighs but no one had big thighs. As I remember it, most everyone was svelte. Small on top and a little bigger on the bottom, much like the artsier models I'd seen growing up. And there I was, giant on top, tiny on the bottom. And I felt as though I were simply too much. Just to scratch the surface on this issue, but the men at Goshen were egotistical and not particularly interested in girls. It's suspicious in retrospect, that most of them wanted simply to work on their pottery and spend time with each other, but at the time it was devastating. For me but for all of us. No one wanted to date us. We were lucky if we got someone to spend the night with us after heavy, heavy nights of drinking. When I tell my boyfriend Erik about this time in my life he says, "So, a single red-blooded male would have cleaned up at Goshen?" and I say, yes. Most definitely yes.
Window
Looking out my window now, at a quintessentially Pittsburgh scene. I live in a valley, a "hollow" ("holler"?) and look up at red, blue, green houses that with each street stretch higher and higher, ending at an ancient brick, Victorian style school building at the top of the hill. Two stories, all gables, with a long abandoned stove top emerging from the top of the building. We do not live on Mt. Washington. We live three block from "Mt. Washington" but our neighborhood is Duquesne Heights. And the contrast is noticeable. Tiny condos that sell for half a million dollars on Grandview Avenue. Three blocks down the hill, Duquesne Heights where the houses cost $60K. This is quintessentially Pittsburgh. Before Duquesne Heights, I lived in Friendship. A quiet neighborhood with towering single-family owned Victorian houses. Two blocks away, crossing Penn Avenue, was Garfield. A dangerous neighborhood with nuisance bars, few street lights, drug dealers every few blocks.
Urine
The worst public restroom I've ever used was in Havana. I spent nearly every night at what we called "The Pig Bar." It had no discernible name, but the image of a pink pig on the sign out front. I'd drink beer after peso-priced beer and have to visit the bathroom frequently. No toilet seat (common in Cuba), floor coated in urine, no toilet paper (very common in Cuba), and flushable only by quickly pouring a bucket full of water into the bowl, which would activate the flush mechanism. But there was no bucket, no sink, and as far as I could tell hadn't been flushed in days. But I continued to go there. The beer was cheap, it was outside, I could smoke half a pack of Romeo y Julieta cigarettes in peace and chat incessantly to my fellow students and sometimes Cuban students from the University of Havana.
Pillow
I was just eyeing a back pillow that I bought with an image in mind of me sitting up in bed and typing away at my laptop, poems, essays, stories. But now it serves as decoration and a place for my little brindle pitbull to lay his head while he stares out at the window.
Vanilla
Is startlingly expensive. I don't bake very often, but I do make peanut butter cookies from The More With Less Cookbook, a Mennonite staple, a book written in the 70s that presents recipes that use less of the world's resources. Definitely ahead of its time but does include a variety of hilarious anachronisms, including instructions to place hot casserole dishes on your asbestos pad, and to add lard, as though we all have lard hanging around, to a variety of dishes. The recipe requires vanilla. I made a recent trip to Foodland to buy some and was, as said earlier, startled by the price. But I bought it and all eaters of the cookies are grateful.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Exercise: What do you know by heart?
What do you know by heart?
-My childhood best friend Carrie Warkentin's phone number and address.
-The day I had braces put on--2/14/96, around the time everyone else got them off and couldn't stop running their tongues across smooth, braceless front teeth. I insisted on "clear" braces that turned yellow the first time I ate tomato sauce.
-The day I almost got married--June 17, 2006.
-The pledge of allegiance, and one of my dad's favorite stories in which one of his students asks, "Who is Richard Stans?" As in, "To the country, for Richard Stans..."
-Mozart's Piano Sonata 11 in A Major, though I forgot most of it when I played it at a competition at St. Mary's College in 1998.
Things I can't remember:
-My boyfriend Erik's phone number. Last week, I had tags engraved for our pets. They now wear metal hearts around their necks that read 412-781-2902, which is bound to be another Pittsburgher's number.
-My last 3 addresses. Even the house that I owned.
-My own lyrics. Even those I've been singing for years. I take a journal on stage. Last month, I forgot my lyric book at home. Thirty minutes before a show I begged to be let into the venue's basement that was stacked with oversize cans of chick peas and oil and to the ancient Mac they keep in the corner. I printed out what lyrics were saved in my email and spent the night playing only those songs. It has been suggested to me that I can't remember my lyrics because I always have them, that I use them as a crutch. But I feel that having lyrics on stage helps me lose myself in the song. If I don't have to worry about the next verse I can disappear into the chorus and look at my cue cards if I'm too lost to remember my next line.
-My childhood best friend Carrie Warkentin's phone number and address.
-The day I had braces put on--2/14/96, around the time everyone else got them off and couldn't stop running their tongues across smooth, braceless front teeth. I insisted on "clear" braces that turned yellow the first time I ate tomato sauce.
-The day I almost got married--June 17, 2006.
-The pledge of allegiance, and one of my dad's favorite stories in which one of his students asks, "Who is Richard Stans?" As in, "To the country, for Richard Stans..."
-Mozart's Piano Sonata 11 in A Major, though I forgot most of it when I played it at a competition at St. Mary's College in 1998.
Things I can't remember:
-My boyfriend Erik's phone number. Last week, I had tags engraved for our pets. They now wear metal hearts around their necks that read 412-781-2902, which is bound to be another Pittsburgher's number.
-My last 3 addresses. Even the house that I owned.
-My own lyrics. Even those I've been singing for years. I take a journal on stage. Last month, I forgot my lyric book at home. Thirty minutes before a show I begged to be let into the venue's basement that was stacked with oversize cans of chick peas and oil and to the ancient Mac they keep in the corner. I printed out what lyrics were saved in my email and spent the night playing only those songs. It has been suggested to me that I can't remember my lyrics because I always have them, that I use them as a crutch. But I feel that having lyrics on stage helps me lose myself in the song. If I don't have to worry about the next verse I can disappear into the chorus and look at my cue cards if I'm too lost to remember my next line.
Fake Siblings and Grilled Grapefruit
This Christmas David and I sat down to dinner with his parents, both retired school teachers. I glanced across the room to his mother’s elaborate collection of Babushka dolls she’s collected on frequent trips abroad. We dug into our grilled grapefruit, a food I have only had at their house, and his father told me about his upcoming trip to Ghana.
From ages 5-9 David and I spent Sundays together at church, learning Bible stories and sneaking downstairs to play the piano. He was a bit persnickety, a bit spoiled, and not my favorite playmate. His family switched churches later and I didn't see him until 12 years later when we climbed onto a plane bound for Havana.
My Spanish was passable but I’d speak too softly, and would be left communicating with cab drivers and hosts in a rudimentary sign language. It wasn't until David and I became friends that I was able to connect. David's vocabulary was vast but his accent poor, his words coming out in flat midwestern tones. I, in contrast, am an excellent mimic but have no patience for languages. With my flawless accent and David's knowledge of verb conjugation, we combined into a veritable dynamic duo, a top notch exchange student. And with our fair complexions and matching Caribbean sun-bleached hair people often mistook us for siblings.
We spent our evenings out, drinking Cuban beer, of which there are two varieties--Cristal a pale ale that tastes like Bud Light and Bucanero, which is darker. We'd often spend the evening at what we called "The New Year's Bar," a bar in Havana that had tinsel and "Happy New Year" banners up in June. We made friends with the bartender and chatted about Havana, Miami, and other topics we knew the words for.
As I sampled the grilled salmon David's father had made I said, “David is lucky to have inherited your adventurous spirit, your love of travel.”
At this David's mother, who looks very much like my own, laughed and began to tell me about a trip they took to Denmark's Legoland amusement park when David was ten. After a week of Danish cuisine--cabbage, barley, potatoes and beetroot—-they came upon a hot dog stand. David took hold of his mother’s sleeve and dragged her to the stand in the middle of a crowded city square. When the vendor handed him a bright red sausage the size of an index finger he chucked it to the ground and screamed, “Can’t these people even make a decent hot dog?!”
I smiled and tussled what is left of David’s hair. Despite all our time drinking together, we've never ended up in bed together, and neither of us has the desire to do so. There is a magnetism that pulls us together, but it is not sexual. When I visited him at college he told me he was thinking of introducing me to friends as his sister, and since then he's called me his "fake sister." David is an only child who loves the notion of siblinghood and now that I've lost my only sibling the feeling is mutual.
From ages 5-9 David and I spent Sundays together at church, learning Bible stories and sneaking downstairs to play the piano. He was a bit persnickety, a bit spoiled, and not my favorite playmate. His family switched churches later and I didn't see him until 12 years later when we climbed onto a plane bound for Havana.
My Spanish was passable but I’d speak too softly, and would be left communicating with cab drivers and hosts in a rudimentary sign language. It wasn't until David and I became friends that I was able to connect. David's vocabulary was vast but his accent poor, his words coming out in flat midwestern tones. I, in contrast, am an excellent mimic but have no patience for languages. With my flawless accent and David's knowledge of verb conjugation, we combined into a veritable dynamic duo, a top notch exchange student. And with our fair complexions and matching Caribbean sun-bleached hair people often mistook us for siblings.
We spent our evenings out, drinking Cuban beer, of which there are two varieties--Cristal a pale ale that tastes like Bud Light and Bucanero, which is darker. We'd often spend the evening at what we called "The New Year's Bar," a bar in Havana that had tinsel and "Happy New Year" banners up in June. We made friends with the bartender and chatted about Havana, Miami, and other topics we knew the words for.
As I sampled the grilled salmon David's father had made I said, “David is lucky to have inherited your adventurous spirit, your love of travel.”
At this David's mother, who looks very much like my own, laughed and began to tell me about a trip they took to Denmark's Legoland amusement park when David was ten. After a week of Danish cuisine--cabbage, barley, potatoes and beetroot—-they came upon a hot dog stand. David took hold of his mother’s sleeve and dragged her to the stand in the middle of a crowded city square. When the vendor handed him a bright red sausage the size of an index finger he chucked it to the ground and screamed, “Can’t these people even make a decent hot dog?!”
I smiled and tussled what is left of David’s hair. Despite all our time drinking together, we've never ended up in bed together, and neither of us has the desire to do so. There is a magnetism that pulls us together, but it is not sexual. When I visited him at college he told me he was thinking of introducing me to friends as his sister, and since then he's called me his "fake sister." David is an only child who loves the notion of siblinghood and now that I've lost my only sibling the feeling is mutual.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Response to Swamp Songs
This was my second time through Swamp Songs. The material is of course still powerful, but I was able to read this time with an eye for craft. I have much to say about this text and will most likely be blogging about it more in the future but for now I think I will focus on elements of craft that I noticed this time through.
The author's choice of tense is interesting in this text. For example, in "Eye of the Storm," the author begins in past tense. "It was 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit..." (6), but in the next paragraph the author shifts to present tense: "Today, more than thirty years later, I'm visiting my mother..." Also in "Controlling Francois"--"I was moved by how well he could write," is followed by a story told in present tense, "My family is having their traditional Christmas Eve party" (63).
The choice to use shifting tenses is effective in Swamp Songs--when the tense shifts to present the reader knows that this moment is important. The portions of the text in past tense set us up for the anecdotes told in present tense. And what is really achieved by this choice is that the author is truly IN her memories.
"Controlling Francois" is one of the most successful pieces in the book. The subject matter is powerful, but the author manages not to come across as maudlin, a feat that is perhaps only possible after some time has passed. Also, the comparison of the author's autobiography to the landscape is particularly successful here: "We are not unlike the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi, my brother and I...making our way to the same end through different routes" (77). This comparison is spot-on, the events of the author's life are not being stretched to fit the nature writing motif of the book.
Another craft-related observation I had was in "Eye of the Storm." The author takes us into a memory of her childhood and uses the lines, "I couldn't have understood then, but I think I was feeling..." and "I know I felt _____ (my dog ate the last word of this sentence) as a child, though I could not have expressed it" (8). These lines serve as a device for inserting higher level thinking into a child's perspective. This device is something I anticipate "stealing."
And perhaps a list for myself on what was powerful to me in Swamp Songs, portions of the book that I would like to reflect on and write about in the near future:
This was my third time through "Controlling Francois." The story is similar to my own experience in the loss of my brother. The story is not precisely similar in that my brother had no problems until schizophrenia began to eat away at his brain at age 17. He was the one who we all thought would make it, the one who would escape the family curse of mental illness. The closeness and the complicated nature of familial intimacy is familiar however. "There's something about our spirits that rhymes" (63) is a quote that I'd like to reflect on in the weeks to come. I think that this closeness is born of a complicated upbringing. I had a depressed, emotionally inconsistent and sometimes psychotic father and a depressed mother who routinely cried at dinner--though no one drank, hardly a drop. As someone who quit drinking right before it killed her, I am shocked that neither of my parents sought refuge in oblivion.
As Dan grew into a man, I was drawn to him. I'd spent years being conflicted and confused about my father and Dan was the only one who knew what it was like, the only one who was there. And now he's gone and it's this loss that has hit me hardest. I was lost, then found for a few years, then even more lost after his death.
I am also intrigued by the line, "I whisper something in his ear, feel empty and stupid, and walk out of the room" (71). I am curious--does the author not remember what she said or has she chosen not to tell. I remember exactly what I wrote in the note that I slipped into my brother's coffin. I'm willing to give away a lot in my writing, but I'm not sure that I want to give this away.
"I've come to understand this nakedness as a mask of sorts, nakedness a shield for nakedness. After all, if it appears you have revealed all, no one will be curious about what you have not revealed" (20). Masks and false intimacy have been a pattern for me. I have always considered my inability to hold back, my compulsion to reveal too much to be a fault of mine but it's been pointed out to me recently that I am doing just this--using this calculated nakedness as a shield for what lies beneath.
The author's choice of tense is interesting in this text. For example, in "Eye of the Storm," the author begins in past tense. "It was 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit..." (6), but in the next paragraph the author shifts to present tense: "Today, more than thirty years later, I'm visiting my mother..." Also in "Controlling Francois"--"I was moved by how well he could write," is followed by a story told in present tense, "My family is having their traditional Christmas Eve party" (63).
The choice to use shifting tenses is effective in Swamp Songs--when the tense shifts to present the reader knows that this moment is important. The portions of the text in past tense set us up for the anecdotes told in present tense. And what is really achieved by this choice is that the author is truly IN her memories.
"Controlling Francois" is one of the most successful pieces in the book. The subject matter is powerful, but the author manages not to come across as maudlin, a feat that is perhaps only possible after some time has passed. Also, the comparison of the author's autobiography to the landscape is particularly successful here: "We are not unlike the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi, my brother and I...making our way to the same end through different routes" (77). This comparison is spot-on, the events of the author's life are not being stretched to fit the nature writing motif of the book.
Another craft-related observation I had was in "Eye of the Storm." The author takes us into a memory of her childhood and uses the lines, "I couldn't have understood then, but I think I was feeling..." and "I know I felt _____ (my dog ate the last word of this sentence) as a child, though I could not have expressed it" (8). These lines serve as a device for inserting higher level thinking into a child's perspective. This device is something I anticipate "stealing."
And perhaps a list for myself on what was powerful to me in Swamp Songs, portions of the book that I would like to reflect on and write about in the near future:
This was my third time through "Controlling Francois." The story is similar to my own experience in the loss of my brother. The story is not precisely similar in that my brother had no problems until schizophrenia began to eat away at his brain at age 17. He was the one who we all thought would make it, the one who would escape the family curse of mental illness. The closeness and the complicated nature of familial intimacy is familiar however. "There's something about our spirits that rhymes" (63) is a quote that I'd like to reflect on in the weeks to come. I think that this closeness is born of a complicated upbringing. I had a depressed, emotionally inconsistent and sometimes psychotic father and a depressed mother who routinely cried at dinner--though no one drank, hardly a drop. As someone who quit drinking right before it killed her, I am shocked that neither of my parents sought refuge in oblivion.
As Dan grew into a man, I was drawn to him. I'd spent years being conflicted and confused about my father and Dan was the only one who knew what it was like, the only one who was there. And now he's gone and it's this loss that has hit me hardest. I was lost, then found for a few years, then even more lost after his death.
I am also intrigued by the line, "I whisper something in his ear, feel empty and stupid, and walk out of the room" (71). I am curious--does the author not remember what she said or has she chosen not to tell. I remember exactly what I wrote in the note that I slipped into my brother's coffin. I'm willing to give away a lot in my writing, but I'm not sure that I want to give this away.
"I've come to understand this nakedness as a mask of sorts, nakedness a shield for nakedness. After all, if it appears you have revealed all, no one will be curious about what you have not revealed" (20). Masks and false intimacy have been a pattern for me. I have always considered my inability to hold back, my compulsion to reveal too much to be a fault of mine but it's been pointed out to me recently that I am doing just this--using this calculated nakedness as a shield for what lies beneath.
Monday, January 12, 2009
34DDDD's and waiting
I didn't know they made bras in size 34DDDD until I was in the market for one.
I worked at a department store in high school, a regional chain called Elder-Beerman at the Concord Mall in Elkhart, Indiana. I dreaded the "May I help you?" portion of my job, so I kept myself busy folding the table of turtlenecks that was continually in disarray and helping the Lingerie Dept. manager reshelve bras that had fallen from the racks. The manager was a heavy woman in her 40s who wore pantyhose and black tennis shoes and kept a yellow cloth measuring tape around her neck. She gave me directions and then left me alone. The task was interminable, untangling bras straps and slipping them onto tiny plastic hangers, but I liked the quiet. Occasionally I'd stumble onto a gigantic bra at the back of a row--a bra the size of my head.
Ten years later, I placed my bra on my head in an attempt to be funny and found that it fit perfectly. Whereas an average sized bra would rest on one's head like a yamaka, mine fit more like a knit cap that could have kept my ears warm in winter.
For years I'd hated my breasts and would cringe when I'd unhook my bra for a boy and hear, "What are those DD's?" To which I'd reply, "At least," as he gripped them and smiled. And shopping was quite possibly worse, my upper half something like a 12, my lower half more like a 6.
It's been six months since I had surgery to reduce them. Plastic surgery, which sounds as absurdly grown-up and bourgeois as the fact that my boyfriend is a "divorcee."
I've been told the surgery can take up to a year to achieve a final result, and I've begun to repeat this to myself when I am irritated at the fact that my breasts still lay heavy against my chest and buttoning my coat is not always possible. My breasts are still big, not much smaller than they were, and this fall has been a season of waiting, something like Advent, for the swelling to go down.
So for now I spread shea butter on the thick purple scars that run around my nipples and down the front of my breasts. And as I do I am resassured that the sensation is odd, not unlike touching a twisted and swollen ankle. I can feel the fluid between my skin and flesh and hope against hope that when the swelling goes down, I will be happy.
I worked at a department store in high school, a regional chain called Elder-Beerman at the Concord Mall in Elkhart, Indiana. I dreaded the "May I help you?" portion of my job, so I kept myself busy folding the table of turtlenecks that was continually in disarray and helping the Lingerie Dept. manager reshelve bras that had fallen from the racks. The manager was a heavy woman in her 40s who wore pantyhose and black tennis shoes and kept a yellow cloth measuring tape around her neck. She gave me directions and then left me alone. The task was interminable, untangling bras straps and slipping them onto tiny plastic hangers, but I liked the quiet. Occasionally I'd stumble onto a gigantic bra at the back of a row--a bra the size of my head.
Ten years later, I placed my bra on my head in an attempt to be funny and found that it fit perfectly. Whereas an average sized bra would rest on one's head like a yamaka, mine fit more like a knit cap that could have kept my ears warm in winter.
For years I'd hated my breasts and would cringe when I'd unhook my bra for a boy and hear, "What are those DD's?" To which I'd reply, "At least," as he gripped them and smiled. And shopping was quite possibly worse, my upper half something like a 12, my lower half more like a 6.
It's been six months since I had surgery to reduce them. Plastic surgery, which sounds as absurdly grown-up and bourgeois as the fact that my boyfriend is a "divorcee."
I've been told the surgery can take up to a year to achieve a final result, and I've begun to repeat this to myself when I am irritated at the fact that my breasts still lay heavy against my chest and buttoning my coat is not always possible. My breasts are still big, not much smaller than they were, and this fall has been a season of waiting, something like Advent, for the swelling to go down.
So for now I spread shea butter on the thick purple scars that run around my nipples and down the front of my breasts. And as I do I am resassured that the sensation is odd, not unlike touching a twisted and swollen ankle. I can feel the fluid between my skin and flesh and hope against hope that when the swelling goes down, I will be happy.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Exercise: What do you know by heart?
What do you know by heart?:
-My childhood best friend Carrie Warkentin's phone number and address.
-The day I had braces put on--2/14/06, around the time everyone else got them off and couldn't stop running their tongues across smooth, braceless front teeth. I insisted on "clear" braces that turned yellow the first time I ate tomato sauce.
-The day I almost got married--June 17, 2006.
-The pledge of allegiance, and one of my dad's favorite stories in which one of his students asks, "Who is Richard Stans?" As in, "To the country, for Richard Stans..."
-Mozart's Piano Sonata 11 in A Major, though I forgot most of it when I played it at a competition at St. Mary's College in 1998.
Things I can't remember:
-My boyfriend Erik's phone number. Last week, I had tags engraved for our pets. They now wear metal hearts around their necks that read 412-781-2902, which is bound to another Pittsburgher's number.
-My last 3 addresses. Even the house that I owned.
-My own lyrics. Even those I've been singing for years. I take a journal on stage. Last month, I forgot my lyric book at home. Thirty minutes before a show I begged to be let into the venue's basement that was stacked with oversize cans of chick peas and oil and to the ancient Mac they keep in the corner. I printed out what lyrics were saved in my email and spent the night playing only those songs. It has been suggested to me that I can't remember my lyrics because I always have them, that I use them as a crutch. But I feel that having lyrics on stage helps me lose myself in the song. If I don't have to worry about the next verse I can disappear into the chorus and look at my cue cards if I'm too lost to remember my next line.
-My childhood best friend Carrie Warkentin's phone number and address.
-The day I had braces put on--2/14/06, around the time everyone else got them off and couldn't stop running their tongues across smooth, braceless front teeth. I insisted on "clear" braces that turned yellow the first time I ate tomato sauce.
-The day I almost got married--June 17, 2006.
-The pledge of allegiance, and one of my dad's favorite stories in which one of his students asks, "Who is Richard Stans?" As in, "To the country, for Richard Stans..."
-Mozart's Piano Sonata 11 in A Major, though I forgot most of it when I played it at a competition at St. Mary's College in 1998.
Things I can't remember:
-My boyfriend Erik's phone number. Last week, I had tags engraved for our pets. They now wear metal hearts around their necks that read 412-781-2902, which is bound to another Pittsburgher's number.
-My last 3 addresses. Even the house that I owned.
-My own lyrics. Even those I've been singing for years. I take a journal on stage. Last month, I forgot my lyric book at home. Thirty minutes before a show I begged to be let into the venue's basement that was stacked with oversize cans of chick peas and oil and to the ancient Mac they keep in the corner. I printed out what lyrics were saved in my email and spent the night playing only those songs. It has been suggested to me that I can't remember my lyrics because I always have them, that I use them as a crutch. But I feel that having lyrics on stage helps me lose myself in the song. If I don't have to worry about the next verse I can disappear into the chorus and look at my cue cards if I'm too lost to remember my next line.
Tell me everything you remember about a radio.
Tell me everything you remember about a radio. Go. Ten minutes.
Between the ages of six and nine, I lived on the corner of Roys and Cleveland Aves. in Elkhart, Indiana. On my dresser, I had a Lloyd brand clock radio that had been my father's in college. The radio had a faux wood finish and a "flip" style clock face. Each minute, the numbers flipped over with a loud click.
My friend Carrie had a similar Lloyd brand radio and after school we'd tune in to U93 which played top 40 hits and used "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship as its theme song. We'd turn down the volume when provacative hits came on like "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred and "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc (that included the lyrics "She got AIDS from doing the wild thing").
I listened to the radio before bed and at least once a week, I'd hear the unmistakable voice of Lt. Dave Shock from Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers was a regular spot that recounted local unsolved crimes in detail, and at the end asked residents to call in with anonymous tips. Each segment ended with its theme song--"Crime Stoppers, Crime Stoppers, no one will know your name!"--and the words, "Crime Stoppers does not have caller ID."
I'd lie in bed, paralyzed by tales of cold case murders and robberies. When I finally crossed the room to switch off the radio, I'd run. One night a spot came on about the murder of Kari Nunemaker, a sixteen year old whose murder was still unsolved. Kari was a sophomore at Bethany Christian High School, the Mennonite high school in our town, and had disappeared at a railroad crossing while waiting for the train to pass.
Her body was found a week later in Bonneyville Mill County Park, near the observation tower I'd climbed many times before. Not long after my fourth grade class prepared to take a field trip to Bonneyville Mill, where we would go sledding. I remember feeling terror on the bus, afraid I would run over a body under a snow mound as I sailed down the hill on my plastic sled. Kari's murder hit the Mennonite community hard, but I was the only Mennonite in my class and I don't think that anyone else understood the significance of the place.
This year, seventeen years after Kari's death, a 58-year-old man was convicted of the crime, primarily on DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence in California for rape.
Between the ages of six and nine, I lived on the corner of Roys and Cleveland Aves. in Elkhart, Indiana. On my dresser, I had a Lloyd brand clock radio that had been my father's in college. The radio had a faux wood finish and a "flip" style clock face. Each minute, the numbers flipped over with a loud click.
My friend Carrie had a similar Lloyd brand radio and after school we'd tune in to U93 which played top 40 hits and used "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship as its theme song. We'd turn down the volume when provacative hits came on like "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred and "Wild Thing" by Tone Loc (that included the lyrics "She got AIDS from doing the wild thing").
I listened to the radio before bed and at least once a week, I'd hear the unmistakable voice of Lt. Dave Shock from Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers was a regular spot that recounted local unsolved crimes in detail, and at the end asked residents to call in with anonymous tips. Each segment ended with its theme song--"Crime Stoppers, Crime Stoppers, no one will know your name!"--and the words, "Crime Stoppers does not have caller ID."
I'd lie in bed, paralyzed by tales of cold case murders and robberies. When I finally crossed the room to switch off the radio, I'd run. One night a spot came on about the murder of Kari Nunemaker, a sixteen year old whose murder was still unsolved. Kari was a sophomore at Bethany Christian High School, the Mennonite high school in our town, and had disappeared at a railroad crossing while waiting for the train to pass.
Her body was found a week later in Bonneyville Mill County Park, near the observation tower I'd climbed many times before. Not long after my fourth grade class prepared to take a field trip to Bonneyville Mill, where we would go sledding. I remember feeling terror on the bus, afraid I would run over a body under a snow mound as I sailed down the hill on my plastic sled. Kari's murder hit the Mennonite community hard, but I was the only Mennonite in my class and I don't think that anyone else understood the significance of the place.
This year, seventeen years after Kari's death, a 58-year-old man was convicted of the crime, primarily on DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence in California for rape.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Vulnerabilty and The Enneagram
I surprised myself tonight when I answered the question, "What is the biggest problem you face in your writing?" with, "I have difficultly being vulnerable." In my writing, I disclose lots but there's much more that I'm holding back. Everything I reveal is calculated. I disclose facts and paint pictures--the pictures are evocative but I'm hardly in them. I struggle with competing desires--to reveal absolutely everything and to withdraw. I want so much to be understood, but at the same time I hate to feel vulnerable.
So, moving in the direction of vulnerability I share my affection for The Enneagram, a personality theory that I've studied off and on for a very long time.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
The theory includes nine different personality types and a person is categorized not by his or her actions, but by his/her motivations. So, in essence, two people could be doing the exact same job but for decidedly different reasons.
And this is the personality type that I most certainly am, a Four:
Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else. While it is true that Fours often feel different from others, they do not really want to be alone. They may feel socially awkward or self-conscious, but they deeply wish to connect with people who understand them and their feelings. The “romantics” of the Enneagram, they long for someone to come into their lives and appreciate the secret self that they have privately nurtured and hidden from the world. Fours typically have problems with a negative self-image and chronically low self-esteem. They attempt to compensate for this by cultivating a Fantasy Self—an idealized self-image which is built up primarily in their imaginations. In the course of their lives, Fours may try several different identities on for size, basing them on styles, preferences, or qualities they find attractive in others. But underneath the surface, they still feel uncertain about who they really are. The problem is that they base their identity largely on their feelings. When Fours look inward they see a kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting pattern of emotional reactions.
So, moving in the direction of vulnerability I share my affection for The Enneagram, a personality theory that I've studied off and on for a very long time.
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
The theory includes nine different personality types and a person is categorized not by his or her actions, but by his/her motivations. So, in essence, two people could be doing the exact same job but for decidedly different reasons.
And this is the personality type that I most certainly am, a Four:
Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else. While it is true that Fours often feel different from others, they do not really want to be alone. They may feel socially awkward or self-conscious, but they deeply wish to connect with people who understand them and their feelings. The “romantics” of the Enneagram, they long for someone to come into their lives and appreciate the secret self that they have privately nurtured and hidden from the world. Fours typically have problems with a negative self-image and chronically low self-esteem. They attempt to compensate for this by cultivating a Fantasy Self—an idealized self-image which is built up primarily in their imaginations. In the course of their lives, Fours may try several different identities on for size, basing them on styles, preferences, or qualities they find attractive in others. But underneath the surface, they still feel uncertain about who they really are. The problem is that they base their identity largely on their feelings. When Fours look inward they see a kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting pattern of emotional reactions.
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