blargh attack.

New website, new business

2011-09-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Howdy. I just want to let everyone know I've started a new editing business, which is represented by this website:

www.augusteditorial.co.uk

Please wander on over and click a few buttons (and keep me in mind for all your editing needs). The website is a work in progress -- any and all feedback is appreciated.

Dreams

2011-07-10T23:14:00.001-07:00

I dreamt my beautiful flat had become so disgusting that there was an expansive ecosystem living the fetid piles of filth. Spiders would grow so fat that their yellow-and-black striped abdomens would burst and hang in tatters as they scrambled through the layers of pee-soaked rugs and discarded fast food wrappers. The cats staged a protest and dragged their overflowing litter boxes into the living room, which they had politely covered with towels to minimize offense to their delicate, wrinkled noses. Frogs would rape each other in the laundry room amongst cat litter spills and heaps of unwashed towels. Everywhere except the children's table, which was sparkling clean but set in the middle of the living room where it did not maximize space. The first thing I did was move it in front of the windows…

…and the whole problem was that I was actually in California, visiting my boyfriend, and was supposed to be in Barnaby, working on a series of short films, and was so scatterbrained that I had left half my luggage at the airport and wouldn't return their calls. When I went to McDonald's, I'd frequently steal my food, not because I was immoral, but because I'd forget that you had to pay for things.

But all of that was done now. Enough was enough. (The poor kitties, dealing with rapist frogs and exploding spiders and who knows what else.) I was going to clean my house, and I was going to clean it now.

30 Years from Now and 75 Years Ago

2010-08-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote something, but then I edited out all the unnecessary words and all that was left was this:

And then I wrote something else:

When you're seventy-five and the whole world thinks you're old, I'll laugh and I'll ask you if you remember thirty years ago when I wrote you that one thing but all that came out was "I love you". And you’ll laugh too and pat my hand and say of course you remember, even if you really don’t.

27 Years Have Passed Since Then.

2010-07-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

Has anyone had that ideal age that they can't wait to reach? For Lyra it's eight. She even had me type it out on the keyboard tonight: "Lyra is excited to be 8 years old." Yeah, well, me too, Lyra. I'm sure you'll be just as cool when you're eight.

I used to be a pretty devout Catholic, and as such (or perhaps, not as such), I used to believe that God would do me favors. If I prayed really hard, why wouldn't he grant me a simple wish? Not being satisfied with the limited life of a kid, I would ask, very nicely, to be shown images of the future: to dream of my life when I'm 27. Because that was the perfect age.

He never followed through.

But one thing he did, if he did anything at all, was allow me to create 27. To become 27. To still be alive, to have this rich and wondrous life. Or maybe I did dream of it, of sitting on the bed typing away, next to my husband, next to my dog sucking too fervently on his blanket, my child asleep in the other room: maybe I saw all this, and didn't recognize it as my own.

And that's fine. I suppose God deserves the benefit of the doubt.

A Moment of Peace

2010-07-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

Photographs I took from the airplane on our way to Italy.

Lyra's Philosophy

2010-05-28T05:30:00.001-07:00

"Teddy thinks I'm his toy, but really, you, me, and Teddy - we're all Barbies. God's Barbies. And when he loses us, we die!"

New Blog

2010-05-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

I have a new blog, hopefully temporary as this agony slowly lifts. It chronicles my new and final attempt to quit smoking, hopefully providing me some sort of accountability and, perhaps more importantly, a distraction. Feel free to read it, but be warned: I don't know how much you're going to take away. It's necessarily ego-centric and self-absorbed. But maybe it'll be useful for someone, either in commiseration or if someone needs to take a good hard look at someone even more desperate than they are. That makes people feel better sometimes.

So here it is: Breathe.

Lyra Speaks

2010-04-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

Lyra: So pretend I'm a nice little girl.

Me: You are a nice little girl.

Lyra: No. Pretend I'm a different nice little girl. And pretend that this - (waves a stick) - is a gun. Pretend I'm a nice little girl with a gun.

Me: Oh dear.

Lyra: A nice little girl who shoots baddies. Pow! POW POW POW! Umm... Mom?

Me: Yes?

Lyra: Actually, let's just pretend I'm a horse.

When Fevers Run High

2010-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

...make cookies.

Life here has been a whirlwind and annoyingly still all at once. I'm slowly getting organized and settling into the idea that I do live here - no, it isn't an extended vacation; yes, I can make friends and engage in various activities and more or less feel at home. I can get a job, even. Go to school. Those are the generalities.

The specifics are much hairier. We closed on the flat and managed to squeeze most, if not all, of our stuff inside. Boxes still line the door outside my office area, and I imagine they'll be there for quite some time. Ron comes and goes to his conferences and meetings, and Lyra and Teddy and I walk the beach and collect seashells and I, at least, beg the skies for warmer, drier weather. Lyra goes to her hippie school and comes home with all-organic artwork. And so it goes.

Until one day - last Saturday - Lyra wakes up covered in red spots. By evening, her forehead is blazing. The doctor asks her to stick out her tongue and the next thing I know I'm filling a prescription for ultra-strength penicillin to treat scarlet fever. Scarlet fever! None of the British I've told seem surprised or even curious at the diagnosis, but my limited knowledge of European history allows me to conjure up little more than DEATH! when I combine the two innocent words "scarlet" and "fever". I consult with my American friends and family, and we all agree, yes, DEATH! is the right word. But the British were right.

Right now Lyra's howling at the television in the other room. She's a "magic angel dog", she says, and occasionally she gallops on her hands and knees down to the kitchen where, for the price of an orange popsicle, I can get her to swallow her medicine.

In other words, thanks to modern medicine, scarlet fever has had no impact on Lyra's life - if anything, she'd say it's been a vast improvement. Two weeks free from hippie-school, and near-infinite popsicle treats. Plus cartoons!

As for me... let's just say I miss those quiet hours when she's at the hippie school, busily crafting away some new gift whose purpose I can't immediately comprehend (see: my mother's day present). But despite the sudden infiltration of howling, prancing, and galloping in my daily life, I remember to be grateful that we live today - with medicine! with internet! with fine processed ingredients for chocolate-peanut-butter cookies! - in a world where scarlet fever can be little more than a blip on the screen.

Transitions

2009-10-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

Lyra's just asked me how cooked tomahtoes feel - are they squishy? This, in response to me flailing my hands about, trying to get a scalding flap of tomato off my lips and back onto the plate.

"Indeed they are," I said. "Very squishy."

Today I've met yet another American - a Hawaiian, this one. She recognized my voice from Lyra's ballet class (not my face, because I generally drop her off and dart to the nearest cafe to enjoy a nice, peaceful cup of coffee and a few minutes' uninterrupted read). Now that Lyra's in school, I'm feeling more social, a bit more open to actual social interaction. Once you have children (and ride the bus), people become easy to meet: the gorgeous French woman whose daughter dances with Lyra at ballet; the father whose daughter is in Lyra's kindergarten class; the woman whose son also attends Steiner - all of these people ride the bus with me, and we chat about families and balancing and do you have two children? How does that work?

These families are all lovely, the way they make it work and their willingness to reach out to newcomers with open arms and share bits of their lives and the secrets of how they not only keep it all together, but create rich, warm, inviting lives for themselves and their children.

As for me, I've never spoken to so many "strangers" before, and it's just as well. I'm learning to be a little more open, to extend a warm hand to others as they've done for me. And still learning, too, how to balance my own newly-formed family. These things take time, but I've been incredibly lucky.

The Last of Budapest's Summer

2009-10-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

There are so many photos of Budapest, far too many to sort through them all. I like these, the ones that don't really fit in anywhere - no landmarks, no important people in my life - just quirky little shots that I snuck in while walking to one of the many delicious restaurants or cafes in the beautiful city.

We visited Budapest just a month after moving to Brighton, and being away for almost a week helped me think of Brighton as home for the first time. Even though I loved the Hungarian city (and especially the weather), I couldn't wait to get back.

Today I'm reading about writing, thinking about writing, and hoping my new books come in soon. It's rainy and overcast with just a hint of chill in the air, and at night the smell of woodsmoke is beginning to fill the air. This feels like my first autumn in a long, long time.

Food.

2009-10-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when I discovered a casualty of Lyra's splatter-paint. The effect was so beautiful, and so perfectly unlikely.

Berries here are smaller, redder, and more delicate. This isn't the first time I've stopped in the middle of breakfast and taken a photograph.

Breakfast.

Snack and subject. In the background, the first rainy autumn day of the year.

It'll Get You

2009-10-01T09:43:00.001-07:00

And this is what happens when I write early, early in the morning.

Every advice column about relationships invariably begins with the questioner, usually female, attempting to persuade the giver of advice as to the genuine, deep feelings of goodness she has for her partner. "He's wonderful, kind, nice, sweet, caring, and really, really great!" she writes. "But he's also an alcoholic."

Every time. "But he... beats the children." "Sleeps with other women." "Is emotionally abusive."

This isn't the part I have a problem with, believe it or not; my problem is with the initial description. What exactly is "wonderful"? Can we be more specific?

"He's the only guy I've ever ever met who loves "Mork and Mindy" as much as I do! He loves it when I order sardines-and-pineapple pizza! And he makes hand puppets out of dirty socks! And for some reason I love this! But he's an alcoholic! Help!"

Exclamation points aside, at least my attention is piqued. She must really like this guy; let's push back our shirtsleeves and get to work. 

Unfortunately, I don't think people are all that specific when it comes to choosing a mate. They're looking for that certain je ne sais quoi that tells them someone's special, and this thing, whatever it is, is apparently capable of overriding Good Sense.

My pet theory, the one I made up just now, is that what we normally call compatibility isn't finding that one special person who lets you eat with your toes so much as finding someone who can simply relate to you on your level. I'm just thinking back to a number of perfectly good relationships I've had with perfectly good people who were perfectly nice (and wonderful, and caring, and sweet, and great, and probably those really are the only words I could have thought of to describe them). I'd never quite let any of these people in on my private thoughts (not the "I hate how you leave your washcloth in the sink" thoughts, more like the "Do you know what I was... um... nevermind" thoughts) because I knew they would think I was crazy. Utterly insane. And I wasn't ready for that. 

It's good to let the crazy out.

I'm not claiming to define the laws of attraction; we have other people to do that (remember: big eyes = infantile = good).

Come to think of it, letting the crazy out probably includes eating with your toes. Poor pet theory... she died so young.

October 10, 2008

Once upon a time, it was Spring...

2009-09-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, it was Spring, and things were different. Then everything changed. The world was no less beautiful and in many ways was even more beautiful than before.

As time passed, more and more information had to be examined and accommodated. Still, the world was beautiful.

October 17th, 2008

Patrick and the Love Hand

2009-09-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

At a whim I thought I'd peer into those forgotten drafts that began to be written, once, but were set aside, perhaps because they were no good and perhaps because I had something better to do. The titles always take my breath away. This one, "Patrick and the Love Hand", was a dream I wrote down on May 31st of this last year.

I don't have much time. We're getting married in an hour, in a week. My dad's paid for it all; the little altar adorned in lilies, Grecian somehow. A priest. A chaplain. A cheap wedding dress.

I'm ready to walk down the aisle.

No, no, I gesture for him to come near me, wiggling my index finger like it's about to fall off. "Come here, come here." He comes. "This isn't how it's supposed to happen. It isn't in the script."

____________________________________________________________

Once again I'm in my little apartment. Shells are being fired here and there; I've got my helmet on. A couple of troops are leaning against the brick wall; I'm sitting down for a cigarette. "It's horrible," they say. I nod. "It's not so bad. What's that smell?"

A horse, lying down. Green. Palomino once, I think. Before it died. Before it was killed in all the fighting. I wonder if it served its country well, if it can have any concept of how or why it died. The horse gets up. Flies circle its eyes. It looks at me.

"You have to go back," it says. I wonder how it survived, how it can live like this, puss oozing from every orifice, a saddle still on its back, its dead eyes gazing into mine. Horses have a different perspective. They can't see straight ahead.

"You have to go back," it says. "Sure," I tell it. I know. I find the bridle. Its legs will catch like that, wandering around with the reins hanging down around its ankles. "Hold on." I reach to twist the reins and loop them around the neck so they'll sit still, not wopping around the legs like they want to catch fire. "Not like that," he says. "He's afraid of the reins. Gently." He likes what I do, and I move past him toward the door.

___________________________________________________________________

"There's a ghost in the house." She heads for the closet, ignoring my words, tired of the repetition. "There's a ghost in the house. You don't see it but it's there. Don't be afraid. It doesn't want to get you; it wants to be free. Do you know what that feels like?" I try to throw my cigarette against the ground but it just bounces and I catch it beneath my boot. "Do you know what that feels like?" She pulls back the curtains: the closet, full of all of our clothes. Dresses, hats, a violin. "Do you get it?"

She pulls out a suitcase. A sigh. Brushes a stray curly lock from her forehead. She doesn't care about me anymore. I care, but there's the horse, its ass sticking out from four feet of designer dresses, green and moldy and stinking up the place. I hate it, but I gotta take care of this thing.

This is a Sham

2009-06-19T00:33:00.001-07:00

Blarghy blargh blargh.

The Slug Came Back

2009-05-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

...and so did I.

To That Last Reader, Hopefully Hanging On (Or Hanging On, Hopefully)

2008-12-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

I mentioned once, long ago, I promised to tell a story. A beautiful story, about a girl who rediscovers her very first piece of writing, composed lovingly, innocently, once upon a time in a kitten-covered diary. A story about how her emotions were wrung as she tenderly turned each pink page, knowing that here, in her hands, she held the beginning, the birth of a love, the dawning of something bigger and brighter than the girl herself.

That story's boring. If I wrote a book on my writer's genesis it would say, in its entirety, "Couldn't spell. Poorly crafted sentences. Author has demonstrated markedly little progress in recent years." Whatever story I thought I was writing contained nothing but errors and a rushed anecdote about a fish flipping its way out of the water and landing on my sister's feet. Frankly, finding that singular crumpled entry so many years ago did nothing but earn it a prized position in the throw-away box.

Yes, I threw it away: finito, gone, good-bye. I disposed of the nostalgia. It may sound harsh, but trust me, no one is going to regret this, just like no one is going to regret that last month I threw away my old journals from high school. Why? Because no one wants or needs to read the profound thoughts of angsty fifteen-year-old. Least of all, me.

I am a firm believer in closure. For instance, when my first boyfriend and I were separated for three months - such a long time! - we engaged in unbelievably long, unbelievably vapid daily correspondences that resulted in quite the pile of paper to pack in one person's suitcase. Granted, I was fortunate with my timing, because all this drivel came to an abrupt end when he informed me that he, having detected that I may not be spending each waking moment peering forlornly into the mailbox, had taken his teenage aggression out on his only momento of my love: a sweater that I had so lovingly given him to await my return. My only response was an enraged "THAT WAS MY FAVORITE SWEATER!" (interruption: note that I'm fixated on the consequence of his actions on my belongings - that he destroyed my sweater - rather than on the implications of his actions - namely, that he's the kind of person who would destroy my sweater). So then I was free to dispose of all that paper. And that was that.

That was that. So.

This is the part where I tell you that I'm ending my blog.

It's over.

That Girl? That's Not Me.

2008-11-17T00:36:00.001-08:00

Who is this impostor? And why is she wearing my clothes?

Alright, fine, that is me: the absent-minded I'm-staring-at-trees expression is a dead giveaway. Or maybe I'm contemplating murder. Who knows. But I didn't quite recognize myself the first time I saw this photograph, even though it was taken less than a year ago, even though one would think, given the frequency with which I gaze lovingly at my reflection, that I would immediately identify with anything approximating my own likeness.

But that girl, she isn't me. She aspires to become me, perhaps, or more correctly we share a desire to become the same person, someone better. She'll have to go through me to get there, just as I'll have to go through someone else, the next in the line of continuous drafts. That girl and I happen to share a collection of memories, memories that diverge the moment this photo was taken. Our futures look radically different. Our expectations, even more so.

I mentioned I recently went through my writings and my notebooks, looking for a common thread to the years, stable curiosities that might prove I'm not at as willy-nilly about my interests as I've come to believe. Those common threads are there, the same questions popping up throughout the pages, my attempts at answers in various stages of development. It's reassuring and disheartening at the same time: reassuring in that I will probably spend my entire life in the same pursuits, disheartening that I will surely never have a satisfying answer.

Perhaps resolving the questions isn't the goal, just as my own personal evolution will never produce the perfect, final draft. Whatever perfection may look like, I can never hope to reach it. I can only hope to improve.

Will I recognize myself one year from now? In many ways, I hope so. I hope I can see my current blessings and my shortcomings with the objectivity that is never presently available. I hope I will cherish the memories of these days, and smirk at my impatience for their ending. Mostly, I hope that I'll appreciate how much I've grown in only one year, and be able, by looking back, to see how each of these errors, these brief moments of discovery, and all of these tiny, seemingly inconsequential seeds of ideas have, together, formulated precisely the draft that I'm living then.

The Bad Boyfriend

2008-11-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

Some of you may be familiar with the frequency with which I use this analogy. Anything unpleasant, irritating, or pain-inducing can be likened to the bad boyfriend. Car not starting on that frigid winter morning? Bad boyfriend. Disgruntled professor gives you a B? Very bad boyfriend.* Is your writing not pouring onto the page as quickly as you would like? Awful, terrible, horrible boyfriend. How dare he.

But to qualify for the upper tiers of bad boyfriendhood, the act or thing in question must be something you would otherwise adore or is somehow instrumental to your plans. Being at once utterly desirable and infuriating, it must leave you in an agonized limbo of indecision in which you wax nostalgic for the good times but yearn to break free of its tyrannical dominion over your life. Most especially it must disappoint you the moment you decide to "work things out", but, then, strengthened with your new-found resolve to end it, the bad boyfriend will regain its charm and worm its way back into your cold, dark little heart.

See? I have it all worked out.

The original inspiration for the bad boyfriend analogy was, of course, my puppy Sirus (pictured above). He was the worst but cutest of boyfriends, and had the unfortunate habit of not only driving me insane, but of trying to bite people. Of scaling fences, just so he could BITE PEOPLE. It was a problem, naturally one with a very expensive fix. Or, I should say, a very expensive possibility of a fix. For only a hundred and fifty dollars an hour, I could have a trainer look at my dog and tell me whether we would be giving her a lot more money, or, you know, putting him to sleep.

Bad boyfriend indeed. I didn't want to know whether we should put him to sleep, so I would constantly reschedule the appointment and cry, clutching Sirus's confused and soggy head in my lap. I hated that dog for being such an asshole. But I certainly didn't want him to die.

I'll just ruin the ending and tell you straight out that Sirus met his soulmate, aka my father, and they are now living their happily-ever-after complete with overflowing food bowls, squirrels, and the white picket fence. This was a miraculous last-minute save, and all of us (not least the various victims of his chompings) were very happy.

Even though Sirus is no longer with us, the bad boyfriend analogy still lingers, manifesting itself in unwritten papers, petulant children, and the cat that occasionally relieves itself in your shoes. Naturally, there are actual bad boyfriends, of which I have little experience but am nevertheless quite convinced of their existence. These are the people who prompt their lovers to write in to advice columnists every day with opening sentences such as, "I am in love with the most wonderful, amazing, great, super, fantastic guy, but he cheats on me, like, all the time." Obviously, using the bad boyfriend analogy with these folks isn't very funny. Why? Because it isn't an analogy anymore. Keep up.

Anyway. I only brought this up because my laptop, my soul, my lifeline, has broken all previous records of bad boyfriendness to become the Greatest Bad Boyfriend that Ever Was. And I hate it. But I love it so.

*I am not in any way, shape, or form implying that any professor, living or dead, is, was, or ever has been, disgruntled.

Swing Swang Schmleh?

2008-11-13T22:49:00.000-08:00

And Chris said that was unpronouncable.

Sometimes I think I should change the title of this blog to "The Stupid Shit I Write", because if it isn't that already, it's about to turn into it. I made a pact with myself to write regardless of whether or not I have anything useful to say. It's part of my newfound stability.

Apparently, yes, I am like a child. My routine is my safety, so to speak. Fortunately, my routine includes singing many a rendition of "My Favorite Things" and of course the beloved "Taxi". This is nice for me.

Lyra asked me tonight if I am good to her. She seemed genuinely curious, so I'm guessing she didn't think of this question on her own. I told her I hoped so, that I very much want to be. Does she think I'm nice? She kissed me on the cheek and replied that she loves me very much.

I feel achy all of the time. Ache from not knowing where I stand with myself. Ache from missing Lyra. Ache from not knowing what the future holds. I know my life has gone through some bad feng shui recently, with the complete rearrangement of everything I know and letting go and settling into a new apartment, a new life, a new skin. I long for the days when "problem" was singular, not a tangled knot of many. And yet I don't regret a thing.

My sister gave a speech about regret once, at her high school graduation. I only know this because my mother paraphrases it often, meaning she says, "You know that thing your sister said about regret at her high school graduation? I think you should think about that." Except that I have no idea what she said. But I get the impression it was good. And, apparently, applicable.

So... that. Whatever she said.

Precipice

2008-11-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

There comes a time when the only thing left to do is leap off the edge.

I gathered together everything I had written yesterday, everything I could find. I was seeking validation, I suppose, but also some hidden pattern, hoping to discern an interest of mine farther-reaching than what was immediately available to me through reflection. I didn't find anything new. I found ten papers about zombies that had little or nothing to do with zombies. I edged the zombies out early in the first paragraph so I could go on to write strange things about God. The correlations were tenuous at best but that didn't seem to matter; it was a writing class and the only thing the teacher cared about was whether or not we had words on a page. I had a lot of words.

I used to have a lot of words. I had words for everything, any time, any place, I had words. I wrote often, blogging even, allowing other eyes to see these words. The blogging was nonsense and I didn't really care; I've made a career out of getting praise for nonsense. For so little work.

It's a risky business, putting your heart on a page, even if you merely skirt around a deeper issue, cloak your life with cute phrases and fancy wordwork. It doesn't really matter, I suppose. People will read into you as they please, and there's little you can do about that, other than hide behind the thickness of the internet or say nothing at all. When I want to hide, I prefer to say nothing. When I don't want to fail, I prefer to not even try. At least then I can I claim to have chosen my failure.

But then there are times when failure isn't really an option, when you have to make that leap and hope that you'll fly even though the odds are good that you'll fall straight to the ground. It isn't the falling that makes one a failure, it's backing away slowly, it's refusing to participate. I can't refuse, I've barricaded myself with a collection of bullies and academic pushers who are staring at me, expectantly, wondering only why I'm not moving faster than I am. Why I haven't leapt yet. I tell them I'm frightened I'm not good enough, or that I'm not sure I'll enjoy the work, or that I like to take too many naps. None of these are true, but I try to convince myself of their truth in order to have an excuse to back away. In reality, I'm worried I'll be boxed in. I'm worried that once I take that leap, I'll never be able to get back again. I fear that my hesitancy is a sign of something deeper, that perhaps I should be looking elsewhere to get what I need. And to give back the best that I can.

Ultimately, I just want to be useful.

Writing about Writing

2008-10-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

This blog was born to give myself a quasi-creative outlet minus the serious analysis and editing required of most things I write. A second, more minor reason for this blog was to allow myself to somehow feel connected, to let other people into the normally intensely private world in which I live and let them see a side of myself unguarded. This has been impossible to maintain.

I said once that blogging requires the presence of three factors: a passion/annoyance/sense-of-the-interesting for a particular subject matter; a desire to express one's thoughts on said subject; and, lastly, a desire to share those thoughts with others. Lately, I've been prone only to the first two out of three, and this does not a blogger make. My need for privacy, while held for a moment at bay (though not really; most of my posts skirted, whether cleverly or clumsily, around the heart of my reality), has returned full-force and I no longer have any desire to extract the senseless and superficial and coat them in some sort of attractive gloss. Why I couldn't make a career out of writing about plaid pants and bus stops, I will never know.

Until I realized this about myself, I was struggling with what I thought was a form of writer's block, and, my God - that is now officially on my list of top five most unpleasant sensations ever encountered in this lifetime. This means that lately I've been thinking about writing more than actually writing, the realization of which gave me an attainable and happy purpose for this blog: an exploration into the whys and hows of the writing process. How did we become writers? How does writing shape the way we process and remember events? What's up with that dreadful writer's block, anyway? With respect to blogging, what is it like to have your social status in flux with every post, and to have complete strangers segue into conversation with a casual, "Heeey... I've been reading your blog."?

So: writing about writing. In my next post, I'll tell you about my first thrill with writing, and the horror I felt when I rediscovered that little piece - resplendent with bad grammar and spelling errors - a year or two later. Stories like these give insight to the buddings and struggles of writerhood that aren't directly evident from the-thing-that-is-written. I hope, if you identify as a writer, that you'll feel free to share stories of your own.

Lastly, I'm still very much an ego-centric human being: I retain full rights to pop in and recount various goings-on in my life, particularly if I'm passionate/annoyed/find-it-ridiculously-interesting. And, of course, if I want to share all that with you.

Tea.

2008-10-17T03:18:00.000-07:00

I drink this tea sometimes, Yogi Tea. If you live in Portland, chances are you've had this tea yourself, or at least seen it staring back at you as you hemmed and hawed in the coffee aisle. Each tea bag carries a little message. I like to try to see how that message speaks just to me, how it fits in with my day, my life, my thoughts or problems. Sometimes it's obvious, or too generically insightful to be interesting: "Have faith." "All is light." Sometimes it takes me a minute.

I'm drinking this tea now, but only because I've run out of jasmine. It's fine. The water's already a little cool, but it's fine. My entire apartment smells a bit like fabric softener, and the smell itself is soft, too, like it belongs in liquid. Vaguely floral. Pale blue. Soft, like no one lives here.

Maybe humans are just too talented at seeing the signs. Lately, the past two weeks or so, I've felt gently pushed in a new direction. It's subtle at first, a new book here, a conversation there, and it's all coincidence. But it adds up. Then it's the unmistakable boredom, the comfort of an ego assuaged, and I wonder what I really want. What would make the best use of me. Moments later, a new perspective - wherever the attention is, I'm there. I'm there doubting the clarity of it all.

My daughter: she snores. Not now, just breathing gently through her nose, breaths in and out and in again. It's reassuring. Grounding. She keeps me tied to this path, wherever it is that it goes.

To the Person Who Stole My Garbage Can

2008-10-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

I love Lyra. God, I love her. I love the way she wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to go to Starbucks, and the way she doesn't believe me when I tell her they're closed. The way she wants to put on her "daytime clothes" and go see. I love how she's the only person who can talk me into anything, and the stabbing pain I feel when I've upset her and her bottom lip trembles just so. I love the way she's so free, so passionate, so unrestrained. How she knows exactly what she wants. (I loved that about childhood: always knowing what you want, and not caring if it's good for you.) I love her blonde hair, her blue eyes, and how she demands to know why she does not have two mommies like her friend. I love everything about her.

I love my Love, the one who's mine. I love how he, inexplicably, charmingly, is convinced I'm an interesting person. I love how he loves, so wholeheartedly, honestly, fiercely. I love the way he can pierce through the heart of an issue in a second flat. How he radiates intelligence. I love the way he gestures with his hands. I love his conviction and his calm self-assurance. I love his faith. I even love the way he bullies me into attending class, late and wet-haired and grumbling. I love the way he genuinely expects the best from everyone else.

I love my friends, every single one of them. I love Sara, for being simultaneously so self-righteous and yet so endlessly forgiving. I love Chris, for every ounce of patience he has had with me, and his eternal optimism. I love him for the way he adores Lyra as much as I do. I love Mem, for being Mem, and my God, that hair. I love how he can be so intellectually ferocious despite looking for all the world like he just rolled out of bed. I love Tim, for being so reticent, so independent, and how he understands what I mean when I say, "It just so interesting." I love Austin and Noelle, not even for all their charm and wisdom and talent, but for the depth with which they love each other. I love my sister for bringing me to tears with laughter, but also for her endless ability to bring me back down to earth. And I love Kaeti, for her indominable passion, for always opening the doors of the world to me, for letting me be so honest.

I love my mother, too. My mother is the strongest, and most beautiful, person I've ever met. For all of our bitching and affected bitterness, we will always love each other. We both know it. My mother is the only person on the planet allowed to be mean to me, and she would KICK YOUR ASS.

But you know what, person who stole my garbage can? Despite the fact that I cannot begin to comprehend your motives, I probably love even you, just because you too have friends, and a mom, and maybe even kids who move you to tears with that grip they have on your heart.

Just keep the damn thing.

Dramatic, Sure. But Boring? Yes!

2008-10-09T20:10:00.001-07:00

This blog, my alluring mistress of Procrastination, seems incapable these days of drawing me into her bed. How long have we been together? Six months now, and this last month it was clear that we were drifting apart. I thought we had only hit a rough patch, that I was simply busy, that we would reunite in our time and on our own schedule.

Now, I'm not so sure.

I'm only good at those things I find appealing; I tend to steer clear of all things that look like Work. I do not like Work. Ask my friends. I have, however, become gradually more and more talented at fooling myself over the years, to the point where I can squint really tight and pretend that a great deal of boring activities that I should do are really fun-bells-and-whistles. Then there are a myriad of minor details I must attend to that promise to reward eventually; these I can usually suffer with only a modicum of grumbling. And a few well-timed sighs.

This blog looks more and more like Work everyday. I think it was a nice creative exercise, once, in the beginning, but now I really have to squeeeeeze that sponge to get any words on the page. At all. I don't know if you've noticed (you may have noticed) that I've been fudging a bit lately, posting some pictures and then something I wrote ages and ages ago and then some more pictures... that wasn't me being cute, that was me being pretty damn lame.

I think we're going to work on it; maybe we'll go to bloggers' counseling and see if we can patch things up. We won't put any pressure on it. We'll take it slow. I'll learn to be more patient and she can buy a new dress, or get out more with her blog friends, or go to the gym or something. Stop being so damn needy.

This is why you never marry the mistress.

Peekture

2008-10-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

Wherein I post a photo of some totally random child.

Photo taken one year ago today.

Aren't I Poetic: Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

2008-10-06T14:00:00.001-07:00

I wrote this little synopsis as the frosting for my zombie class cake two years ago; I just stumbled over it in my momentary struggle to locate those Hume essays from spring term. The professor had asked us to reflect on how our writing had grown since taking the class (and reading ever so many papers about poor Zombie Mary, my responses to which I would deign to include if I had had more experience with the topic and had been just that much nicer to their authors).

I am just. so. dramatic.

Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

We all grow in different ways, and I cannot claim to grow symmetrically or at the same rates at all times. Nevertheless, it is difficult at first to perceive how what appears to be stagnation, or even a period of moving backwards, can actually be a moment of profound growth not yet realized on the scape of the conscious.

It was during this class that I realized that I had failed myself as a writer; I had grown so comfortable in the little place that I occupied on the writing spectrum that I had refused to see how I could improve, evolve, or just be a little different. The infatigable attention-seeker that I am, I leaned too readily on the new teacher ready to praise my performances, and ignored the fact that I was a one-trick-pony, pulling out the same old routine for a new set of eyes.

So what inspired me to see myself in an honest new light? It’s hard to say. A part of it is that I grew tired of writing; grew weary of putting down the same words on the same page in the same order. I wasn’t proud of what I was writing anymore. I had lost my edge. In my melodramatic despair, my writing fulfilled its own prophecy in becoming worse, and I felt incapable of salvaging it. Even more painful, though, was watching my peers succeed me: what I had once done so easily and felt so proud of, my talent, was now being performed by others while I watched from the sidelines. Such humbling moments should never be ignored.

What have I learned from this experience? Only that transformation will come as surely as a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. The samples that I have included in this portfolio are not the product of this transformation; they are not my best work. But these samples bear witness to a process that has only just begun, an awkward growth-spurt of creativity that expresses itself first timidly, tentatively, before it can remerge with confidence.

Such is what I have learned in these few short weeks. While I have not been able to completely shed my competitive edge, I have realized that it is no longer with the other members of the class that I am competing: I am competing against myself, a battle that will leave part of me vanquished, part of me the conqueror. Who I will emerge as, I have no idea.

Princess Ponies Must Be Watched in Style

2008-10-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

For Christmas Lyra received a series of squishy tents and tubes that seem to be little more than giant nylon Slinkies. When strung together, these Slinkies take up more square footage than any house I've had the pleasure of living in.

Thursday night Lyra brought one section - a single tube - with her from her father's house. The first two nights she didn't get much more creative than mashing it down, stepping inside and then letting it sproing upright: Lyra in a tube.

She found this hilarious.

Today, though, it occurred to her that she could stuff the tube with pillows. She tried to cram every pillow from the bed and every pillow from the couch into the thing - twelve pillows in all - which resulted in quite the overflowing pillow situation. But! It also meant that the tube now functions as a chair, from which My Little Ponies cartoons can be comfortably watched, and also as a pirate ship, which as we speak is sailing far, far away to Disneyland.

I miss my imagination being so sustaining.

The Christians Got 'er! Arrr...

2008-10-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is now a Christian. She wouldn't call it that, but I would, and I don't appreciate that her new-found Christianity entails calling me "juvenile". Luckily such a remark was only inaccurate in context, and provides me with the freedom to rebel vindictively against my categorization with a pre-script jab.

Wasn't it just yesterday I was having a conversation with myself about the different varieties of Christians? I believe it was yesterday, if yesterday was the day with the very loud, very bad band playing on campus and all the student groups with their tables, trying to peddle their memberships and ideas. One of those moments where you deliberately stare at your feet because if you look up you are guaranteed to make eye contact with someone, and the odds are they're trying to give you something.

I still have one brochure from an extreme, but rather clever, Christian group on campus. Someone had drawn a cartoon about "Pavlov's frog" wherein the possibility of meaning (as in the kind that actually exists) is entertained. Very quickly the frog takes a yewey off the deep end and finds God.

I don't like the idea that God only exists at the end of a U-turn. I understand this concept in the "seeing the error of my ways" sense, and that's fine, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the lack of logical connection between idea A and idea B: present something befuddling and hope the reader accepts "God" as the only possible solution. This despicable literary device is found only in the shallow waters of religious propaganda, where I hope it one day dies. A few things:

1. It's insulting to the reader's intelligence. This is enough in itself, but there's still some more ground to cover. Moving on...

2. Any spiritual view that is the product of fear, coercion, or confusion, has missed the point completely. Religious brochures may draw us in with cute frogs or peaceful pictures of sunsets on the cover, but a steaming pile of rage lies in wait for us on the second page. This hurts my feelings. Also, it makes me want to smack people, which is not a very Christian thing to do (although arguably that's exactly why I need the brochure in the first place).

3. Even if fear, coercion, or confusion is left out of the picture, I'm still a bit unnerved by the idea of convincing others to hold specific spiritual beliefs. This isn't even because I find it annoying - which I do - but because any so-called belief that would result from persuasion is, again, ingenuine. Let's just suspend our own thoughts on the matter for a second and imagine that God is very much a real person, and all that He wants is for you (yes, you!) to love Him dearly. Can you imagine how God would feel if He had to talk you into falling in love with Him? Can you imagine how you would feel if you had to talk someone else into falling in love with you? Intuitively, would any of us say that such a love would be genuine, or worthwhile, or satisfying to the one who is allegedly loved?

Maybe none of that matters; besides the fact that God isn't necessarily walking around in the flesh (at the moment or not; there are far too many bases to cover here), maybe the type of love or how it's acquired is beside the point. Maybe spirituality isn't immune to the "see what happens" methodology: try it out, see if you're better adusted. See if all this works for you. I certainly wouldn't call this a belief, though; it's adopting a series of agreeable principles.

This brings me back to a conversation I had with my friend D several months ago. I had been trying to find a way to characterize spirituality without calling into play all of those deep-seated emotions that one generally associates with the term. If spirituality really is a series of values, arbitrarily chosen or not, which produce behavior that orients oneself effectively and happily within the world... I can make sense of that. I'll tell you what I cannot do: give you a reason to hold those values that doesn't call upon their effects. I cannot do that. It's circular. Why is this is a problem? It's a problem the moment you step back and ask yourself why you want those events to occur.

I could easily appeal to the many probable reasons we have for why we behave the way we do, all of which, again, speak only to effects. Evolutionary psychology is full of explanations for cooperation. Unfortunately, it's also full of (sometimes contradictory) explanations for why we might refuse to cooperate. Why we might behave, say, murderously. It's a problem, but it isn't a problem, because that's just shuffling off our value judgments onto a convenient if untidy body of evidence. On some level it may not be inaccurate to say, "Awww, honey, I love you because I've been arrested by the same biological processes that spurred my ancestors to reproduce!" Yeah, not the sweetest thing anyone's ever heard but no one can say it's completely off the mark. It just doesn't explain everything.

Same with value judgments: you can cite potential reasons for tendencies, but what about how I feel? The sheer fact that I am aware of a social and biological impact on my behavior renders those same impacts useless as a basis for values (unless you think I'm just impossible to please. Stack that on top of my arbitrary attributes pile).

One of the problems with values, though, is that you still have to interact with other people while you're making up your mind. There are, fortunately, two solid reasons for a well-thought-out action, and those are:

1. It's good for you, and

2. It's good for other people.

Yes, I have just completely backtracked, because I haven't resolved this internally but I still need to be a halfway decent human being. Neither of these avoids the word "good" or disinvites the question "why?" but they're deliciously hard to disagree with (and that's the other thing: the end tends to be the same, no? At least usually? It's the means that are so damn confounding).

I suppose then, taking a murky trek back to religious propaganda, that the creators of such have, or should, ask themselves a few questions: Is it better to terrorize and confuse if I get people to turn to God? What are the odds that the few people I do recruit, in their terror and confusion, will spread more terror, and more confusion? Does the image of God that I want to portray condone peace and clarity? If so, why am I not sharing that image? Do I want to convince others of God, or that I'm right?

Every day I have this dialogue with myself, and every day it resolves: I will never know why I am here. I only know that I am here. What do I want that to look like?

It should look the same, either way.

Intro to Formal Logic

2008-10-01T01:29:00.001-07:00

If Mem does not believe in cell phones, Jen has a hard time finding Mem.

If Jen has a hard time finding one of her favorite people, she is unhappy.

Mem is one of Jen's favorite people.

Mem does not believe in cell phones.

__________________________

Go Create Some Reality

2008-09-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

My well-oiled plan did not produce the best results.

There's something to be said for exploration, but then there's also something to be said for having a plan of attack. I enjoyed the luxury of dabbling in many subject areas my first two years of college, a luxury that I am paying dearly for now as I sit through the pre-requisites I put off and put off while I took the more interesting courses. To be honest, I probably could have used these classes a couple of years ago, rather than labor through everything the hard way.

I arrived on time but not early enough to secure a good seat (although, given the usual first-day attendance, I should be grateful for any seat at all). My horror of standing in line compells me every term to buy my books a week early; the girl next to me, the one emitting equally spaced non-commital hrmmphs every few moments, came prepared with a notebook containing a single piece of paper which she proceeded to cover, top to bottom, with equally non-commital doodles. The professor handed out a packet, labeled "Arguments".

Socrates is a man? Socrates IS a man! I wonder, in all seriousness, how much of this could be taught to second-graders:

"What is this?"

(pregnant, or not so pregnant, pause)

"This is the subject. And this? This is the predicate. So what is this whole thing, together?"

"An argument?"

"No, this is a premise. But what is THIS whole thing, together?"

"An argument?"

"Yes."

"Yay!"

And the peasants rejoice. Maybe some grammar schools already have this covered, but in case they don't - as mine surely didn't - I think we could safely take the next step and teach some basic logic to the kiddies. Douglas Hofstadter apparently had the chance, in his teenage years, to teach an elementary class some of this in an effort to see whether their nubile young minds could easily assimilate the information (and did this happen? I'm interested to know). Whether the results of that particular investigation were positive or negative, I think we ought to try again, give the kids a head-start on their syllogisms. It would really save so much time in the long run.

In keeping with my self-imposed stylistic constraints, I suppose there's also something to be said for repetition. I have a hard time drawing the line between useful repetition and the annoying: in first grade, copying the spelling list over and over and over again was annoying, but perhaps also useful (or at least, that was the general idea). Now, learning the difference between induction and deduction yet again is annoying, and I'm pretty sure it's no longer useful. This also applies to the number of times I'm assigned "The Republic", although an argument could be made that this is somehow good for me, or some under-accessed part of me that is not only busy at work internalizing this story but is also deeply, deeply concerned.

This is fine. In many ways, it's also easier.

In an hour I'll be off to Sci-Fi Fantasy Land, where we will hopefully watch movies and be assigned hours of page-turning fun. I can't believe that I actually complained about taking this class - I should be grateful, if anything, for the delicious distraction.

Nine Minutes

2008-09-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

That's how much time I have, and I'm not using those minutes very efficiently. Managed to power through two articles on the bus, and am very much looking forward to reading sci-fi on the couch in my pjs tonight (for a class, no less!).

Bit of a boring update, really. Blog notwithstanding, I'm remembering my roots as an intensely private person, one who recently may have spent too many days with too little adult interaction. Ah, well. That will be over now, both the lack of engagement and the nine minutes.

Great. More Pictures.

2008-09-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

I tried to circumnavigate jetlag post flight by submitting myself to twenty-four hours of pre-flight wakefulness. Not one of my best ideas. By the time I climbed aboard a bus in Newark at 7:15 in the morning, about to embark on my six-hour tour of New York, I was irritable and nodding off upright. Looking back over my photos from that brief but inspired blink of my life, I realize that I perfectly captured, not the subject of each photo, but my mood: exhausted but insatiable, a hundred photos taken of a wall but all from the same straight-up vantage point. My physical expenditure was kept to a necessary minimum, so in response I seemed to have snapped photos of everything from the mandatory Statue of Liberty to scenes from the subway to a potted plant in a restroom.

Most of the photos aren't that great, especially, interestingly, the ones I was most invested in at the time. I'm lucky to salvage a few of the above-mentioned wall that inspired such immediate obsession; many of the objects and novelties that captures one's eye when sleep-deprived are less than extraordinary under normal circumstances. So while I find this particular selection fascinating, I imagine that you, dear viewer, may not find yourself transported to my momentary frame of mind.

A Random Smattering

2008-09-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

What follows is pretty much the entirety of my non-Vasa Sweden photos... yes, I know, a bit pathetic, especially considering that these were all taken within 48 hours of my arrival. Whatever. This is what you get.

The first thing one notices when stepping off the plane is that everything in Sweden (well, more specifically, everything in the Arlanda airport) is beautiful. I hadn't yet quite recovered from snapping a million-and-one impromptu pics of Manhattan, so I felt compelled to take more, even here in airport hotel. Pretty, no? This country was made just for me.

But it gets better! Here's another hotel lobby. I failed (failed!) to take any photos of the staircase in this hotel: a shame.

A boat. Probably my favorite photograph.

Another boat, streetsign adjacent.

Look at the pretty flower... believe it or not, I took about thirty photos of this damn flower in my attempt to capture the detail of the petals. If you can't appreciate the photo, at least appreciate my time (and slavish dedication).

This is a structure, and it's made of bricks. I do not know what possessed anyone to create it, although I'm rather glad they did.

A window. I know.

Sweden's motto: Cover your bases! I assume these are photos of famous Swedes, maybe even famous Stockholmians (Stockholmites?). Whether you're coming or going, they're here for you.

Can't Type: Fingers Broken

2008-09-24T11:47:00.001-07:00

Where did September go?

I just looked at my blog list: 15 posts for August, 18 for July, 16 for June, 32 for May... and 1 single, stunted, under-watered post for September. Which, I might add, is almost over.

Somehow I'm going to have to make up for this - not for you, dear reader! - but to raise myself again in my own esteem, recapture my blogger identity. How shall I do this? I think I'll post some pictures (they're worth so many words, they say).

Recently I took a merry trip to Sweden (that's where September went!). Didn't actually... see much of Sweden, but I did occasionally venture out for bagels and other Swedish delicacies, and one day I went to a museum! Beautiful country. Here are some pictures; try not to be overwhelmed:

Vasa Museum: The Vasa is a ridiculously ornate Swedish warship that sank half an hour after setting sail on her maiden voyage in 1628. Not well-designed, one might say, but beautiful. The low salinity of Stockholm's harbor preserved the ship until she was discovered

and, eventually, resurrected - 333 years later. The brightly colored carvings above and below are reproductions; the originals, having lost their hue after years underwater, are located on the Vasa herself.

The darkness of these photographs is partially due to the dim lighting necessary to preserve the Vasa, partially due to my resolute refusal to use flash. R eventually pointed out that raising my ISO would help, too.

Beautiful bondaged mermaid.

The Vasa was no tiny ship - this photograph gives a good idea of her depth.

I'll post more photos from Stockholm tomorrow - I'd post them now but they don't quite fit in with the feel of this set. See you soon.

Jigsaw

2008-09-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I thought of writing as the overflow of ideas and emotion, the pressure-release valve that brings relief and keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground. Now I feel as though I've waited too long, intimidated by my own words or, rather, by my inability to capture an essence or a simple wisp of feeling that I no longer know how or what to say.

Unused as I am to this feeling of trepidation, I'm hesitant to post anything at all. In the past I've accepted words for what they are - a swirling, insubstantial, beautiful mask for what lies beneath - but I'm forced to reject that now, wanting as I do for words to mean something, to say something true, that I can't simply use them as a game or a ploy but want them - need them! - to reflect what I mean as if that would somehow prove myself. Somehow make myself real.

In the end, we're only as real as the impact we've made, whether in the minds of others or some arguably more tanglible creation. It's not that I fear mortality; I fear never having been. I fear that everything I've never said will vanish like unseen smoke and I with it, unrealized.

Slugs Do Not Live the Lowliest Life

2008-08-29T04:28:00.000-07:00

My apartment complex insists upon watering our small patches of grass twice a day, and subsequently the smaller patch of concrete that is my front doorstep is frequently covered with earthworms, slugs, centipedes, and other invertebrates inspired by the moisture to flee their homes.

I particularly enjoy the slugs. They may not be capable of higher math but I like to believe that they think great thoughts in their own way. They’re steady, determined creatures. They probably think that they move very fast. Maybe they even see my front porch as a new uncharted territory, and that they’re off on a grand adventure. Going where no slug has gone before, and whatnot.

Except, slugs have been here before. A few hours ago I was sitting on this front step of mine, admiring the antennae of a smart green slug. He was left in the dust by the occasional centipede but he didn’t seem to mind, making slow but tireless and happy progress. He seemed quite content, and I enjoyed looking at him. A few hours later he was dead.

I smooshed him. Very much by accident, and I still haven’t recovered. I know he had started on the south-hand side, heading west. I figure after an hour or so he encountered the front door and had to turn north in order to avoid exploring the prickly welcome mat. An hour after that he would have had to turn again, east this time, when he had found his way barred by another door, the door to the storage area, where I keep my cigarettes and lighters.

Cigarettes are the reason I went outside. Cigarettes are the reason I put my feet in front of that door and, in a single, irreversible moment, snuffed out the grand adventure of one slug’s life. In that moment I became an instrument of murder, driven by a petty and irrational love.

Afterwards I sat sadly and watched his poor body, the little antennae no longer probing about curiously but sticking straight up and awkwardly in the air. I did ask myself why I was so upset about one slug’s death. I eat meat. I eat chickens, cows, and pigs. Do I not think that chickens, cows, and pigs also deserve grand adventures? Do I think that perhaps their grand adventures are trumped by my desire to eat them? I lamented that I didn’t have an answer, except that chickens, cows, and pigs do not live on my front doorstep, and that if they did, I would not eat them. Not those particular ones.

There has to be some way to deter the relatives of this slug from venturing out upon my doorstep. Short of putting his dead body on display in an effort to warn the others, I would do pretty much anything. I do not want to smoosh another slug. I do not want to wrap another slug’s body in tissue paper and dispose of him in the garbage. I do want my slugs to continue their grand adventures, and while I admire their willingness to take risks in life I do not feel that they have the perspective necessary for adventuring near sidewalks and doorsteps.

I wish that slugs could recognize that they are vulnerable. They are not protected by external armor or even the stiffness of bones. I wish, at the very least, that they could have their playground, while saving for myself a small, slug-free pathway that I could pass through unencumbered by potential murderous guilt.

Until this dream is realized, I can only watch my feet.

Hundred and Twenty-Five Posts, Wow

2008-08-27T22:56:00.001-07:00

Funny how you can go from eating, breathing, sleeping one thing for two weeks before you wake up and wonder what you saw in it in the first place. It’s like flirting with a new boy when you’re married; at first you think this is just a great friendship but then you wonder if it’s something more, something until you realize that it’s just the same lines stuck on repeat. You’re back to your old ways.

I thought maybe, for a day, that I had something here, something bigger than me and possibly even better. But it didn’t make my heart race, the way this does. It brought just bad dreams and nightmares and made me write lots of frightened little lists. Lists of things I could do. Lists of things I could be.

Yeah, so I don’t totally make sense. I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of sense to make even more, put my faith in something outside of myself to find out who I really am on a good day. I know enough about the other ones.

It's Called 'Frugality,' My Dear, or, Why I Should Neither Buy Books nor Blog After Drinking

2008-08-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

Logic puzzles are getting harder and harder to find.

I remember the very moment I laid eyes on my first logic puzzles. Dad had driven Jamie and I to Houston for a school thing, where we'd go to the natural history museum and the renaissance faire and then afterwards, inexplicably, we would all go to the cinema to see The Beverly Hillbillies (which still sticks out sorely in my mind because it was a terrible movie and I could never quite figure out how it fit into the whole trip-thing). After that it was dark and I was probably wound up, having had so much excitement packed into my day followed by two hours sitting still in the dark. I'm sure I was whining.

"Dad. I'm BORED."

Dad's answer to boredom has always been one of two things: airshows or bookstores and, there being neither in the near vicinity, we ended up in the magazine aisle of the local grocery. (What people will do, in a pinch.) And there they were: logic puzzles. A whole magazine full of them. I remember having that tingling sensation as I flipped through the pages, knowing at that moment that my Solitaire-playing days were over. (Yes, I DO care to find out whether John's last name is Jones or Bobton or Trent, and whether he married Sally or Alicia or Jane, and whether they went to the Galapagos or the Bahamas or to boring old Yosemite on their honeymoon. This is IMPORTANT INFORMATION.)

Tough little buggers they were, too. The logic puzzlers are a dying breed, I'm pretty sure, and when you're little and you're puzzling and kind of stuck, there's really no one that can help you. ("Mom? Can you read this?" "...No.") Only once has someone ever approached me while I was puzzling away and said, "YOU LOVE LOGIC PUZZLES?!" and that person was really, really excited, and she told me how she thought she was the only one in the world who did them, but I was like, well, obviously someone is coming up with the things, and she was all, no, no, really, IT'S JUST ME. AND NOW YOU.

Suddenly I know how she feels.

One would think, of all places in Portland, Powell's would have logic puzzles. Would you like to see how many shelves make up their Sudoku section? Or perhaps their crossword section? Would you now? Because I can show you. I can also show you their Mensa section, and their stupid "Fill-It-In" section, and their anything-that-anyone-else-has-come-up-with section. I had to plead with the info guy to search for "logic puzzles" because he kept sending me to the math section and then back to the puzzle section and I had to keep telling him that I wasn't FINDING IT please just search for them and tell me where they are because every time you send me out I keep picking up a new book and I can't afford all of this PLEASE - thank you. Finally he did and the one book we came up with seemed to be an assortment of general brain-benders so I sighed and then bought my books and left.

Which! is actually the point of this post. I need to stop buying books, because A) I do not have time to read them so they just sit and look rather pretty, which sounds pretentious but actually feels really comforting and good and B) I should probably save my money, considering that I haven't gone to work in well over a month now. But last night I was cleaning up after Lyra left and I lined up all of her books on the shelf under the tv and they really didn't take up much space, so at Powell's today I very carefully selected a few new additions to her library.

It's time-consuming, picking out Lyra-books: I know, or think I know, what sort of stories she would like and the kinds of illustrations she's attracted to, but then I have to read the entire story all the way through because I've been tricked by pretty pictures before. Also, and barely relatedly, there's a book called "Henry Works," about a bear who is supposed to be Henry Thoreau, and while the illustrations are fantastic the story is quite boring, although the end is funny in a three-year-olds-will-never-get-this kind of way. I did not buy it. Instead, I ended up choosing a delightful rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes" and this fabulous book of poems called "Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant." How could she not love these? I like to think that I'm shaping the future memories of her childhood, that she'll look back in twenty years and ask me just which book it was, the one with the flying frog toasters? And I'll say, "Ah, I remember the very day I picked that out of you..." and then I'll spend a whole weekend digging through box after box in search of it just so I can run my fingers over its wrinkled pages and cry. Then, when she wants it, maybe she's thinking about having her own kids or she just wants to revisit those pictures and the way she felt back then, I'll make her promise to take care of it and hopefully she'll roll her eyes and say something like, "MOM. You bought that book for ME, remember?" And I'll probably offer to buy her a new copy, one without wrinkles, and maybe we'll even fight about it a little bit, a good kind of fight, the kind you can only have when you both really love each other as well as something else.

See? Books are special.

Some of you are probably wondering how I can get so off-topic so quickly, and I really have nothing to say to that.

Corporal Punishment? Really?

2008-08-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of "Schuyler's Monster Blog", brought something to my attention that I thought was tucked safely into the past of our, erm, enlightened society: schools are still spanking, paddling, whacking, beating our kids.

Excuse me?

He says that the numbers have gone down, and, great, plenty of counties are outlawing corporal punishment. But where have I been? I thought it was ALREADY illegal, hands down, for years and years. To top things off, kids in special education are far more likely to receive bodily harm at the hands of their teachers. Robert, whose daughter has an extremely rare neurological condition called Bilateral Perisylvian Polymicrogyria, had this to say:

Even if you're one of the people who think that hitting a child is a good way to discipline and to educate, or perhaps especially if you believe that, I'd like you to stop for just a moment and think about that. I'd like for you to close your eyes and imagine how that scene might unfold.

Meanwhile, what's the topic of the most vocal outcry from disability advocates of late? The use of the word "retard" in a movie.

And I thought I would just quote that here, because he really hit that nail on the head.

Natural Punishment

2008-08-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not drinking that wine again.

To be sure, I was already in a bit of an odd mood when the wine-drinking commenced, and, to be doubly sure, I nodded off over Aquinas's account of the sins that deserve of eternal punishment. But the dreams that followed were so vile, so repugnant, that I hate to think that they came directly from me, so I'm blaming the wine.

I've never dreamt such dreams. I couldn't label them as nightmares, because there was no element of fear, just a profound sense of sadness and pain as I watched the goings-on and, later, participated. Certainly, there was also a submission to weakness: knowing that I didn't have the strength to call attention to the situations or even verbalize what was going horribly, horribly wrong. It couldn't even be called "wrong," really, not in a definitive sense. Everyone was partaking in these strange crimes and I felt as though my own conviction was being called to me from another lifetime, barely remembered.

I just noticed there are Fruity Pebbles all over the floor. Lyra's alternating between dusting with a basting brush and drinking hot cocoa on my yoga mat (she calls it her "sleeping bag," leading me to think that I haven't subjected her to the camping experience enough). The fact of her woke me from my dreams more than once, when I would mention her name and then realize that I didn't know who I spoke of. Every time I would awaken, then, I would check to make sure she was still alive, because I'm always fearful that my dreams are prophecies but thankfully they never are.

Lyra tells me now, strangely, that she dreamt of the two of us last night; that she was stolen by a bus driver but I attacked him with swords, like a pirate, and I saved her. But she was still hurt, she said, so I took a band-aid from my pocket and put it on her knee, and then I told her that I was holding on tight and she'd never get away again, and we were very happy.

It occurs to me that Lyra's image of me and my image of myself are not one and the same.

Normally I would comment on how I hope that I can maintain this disparity, somehow, or more ideally transform myself into the person she believes that I am. I could say that, but I won't, because right now I'm just grateful that she thinks I'm someone worth knowing, someone capable of protecting her and that I've been granted this power to comfort her by simply being the person who's always been.

All this talk of punishment can pervert a person, at least temporarily, the way social workers tell me that they can't look at happy families in the park without visions of domestic violence and molestation. That isn't the life I want to live; I'd like to look past the maintenance of baseline human interaction and see what else is out there, what happens on the other side of the line. Artists try to reach this place, as do scientists and anyone else concerned with the classic trio of "truth, love, and beauty". Owen Flanagan puts it a bit more elegantly, calling these areas the "spheres of meaning", and that our navigation through these spheres is essential to reaching eudaimonia. (You can read his book for yourself, if you have some preternatural sort of patience: "The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World".) I agree with him about these arbitrary (I mean, fluid) spheres of meaning, at least in respect to individual navigation and individual fulfillment, but as a theory for groups and large communities I failed to see how it could really hold up (except for the obvious "happy people make happy communities" - largely unsatisfying and simplistic). Maybe he covered all that in the chapter I skipped.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever is past the bare minimum of acceptable human behavior towards one another seems, even now, to be the subject of just sheer speculation. We have these notions of an ideal society, or collective nirvana, or what have you, but what we don't have is any evidence that these states are objectively possible and what they would look like, just overly-poetic waxings on the one hand and cult experiments on the other. I think this is a bit of a curiosity.

I'd like to say more now, but it's time to go to the park.

I Hart Rawls

2008-08-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm having that sinking feeling that I get before an impending all-nighter, when I know that I will waste at least an hour staring at my computer screen, trying to convince myself to select all of the text I just wrote and start over. It isn't good enough, I'll tell myself, and I will stall, paralyzed. I will not move.

Well that sounds a bit dramatic. It probably looks a bit dramatic, too, me all wide-eyed and afraid of my own writing. But, that is the way it is, and I suppose that that's possibly why I find the act of blogging so attractive: it's unthinking, nonjudgmental. I censor myself, naturally, but stylistically I'm unconcerned.

(But then I say something like the above, and I wonder if I'm just slipping that in as a disclaimer.)

I had another point, too, but if this blog is a whipping-boy then I'm afraid I have to invent my point-making energy in another arena and end this here. Tut mir leid.

Where Blogs Go When They Die

2008-08-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much time for superfluous writing as of late, but I didn't want you to think I've been slacking. Heavens, no. But the truth of the matter is that not every blog entry makes the cut, and when I don't have the time or self-esteem for cleanup most of them are left to wither and die like forgotten... things... that wither and die. Like plants! Right.

So anyway, I thought it'd be fun to give you a rundown of all the posts that didn't make it in the last few days... time for the List O' Week!

1) State of Nature - Hobbes meets reality television: think Lord of the Flies, but better. Take your all-rights-waived contestants and throw them on an island with some berries and wild pigs. None of these silly obstacle courses, but then again, no one's going to save you! Make a social contract or die.

2) Nasty, Brutish, and Short - Our existence, that is. Why my inner theologian is very happy.

3) Why Having a Hippopotamus for a Friend is Inconvenient - Alternately titled "Sorry, I don't Speak Duck," or "What is this Booh-Bah You Speak Of?" More commentary on children's television.

4) I Know I Already Said This? But the Food? IT'S SO GOOD. - Why buying a car must take so, so long, and the embarrassing programs one may watch to pass the time.

5) Top Ten Reasons Not to Sleep with Him - Why sex with your boyfriend is a major no-no, including but not limited to "He'll want to have sex with you again" and "He might be married... to someone else." Does not include worthwhile reasons such as "I find him annoying" and "I would, but I already slept with his father."

6) Four Horsemen of the Divorce Apocalypse - No one could have convinced me that anything about divorce is funny until I read this line. (Stolen from forgotten source.)

7) Playdoh's the Gorgeous - How much I adore my professor's accent.

8) I Was Flirting with Your Pizza, Not with You - When stomach rumblings and a longing glance conspire, and the awkwardness that ensues.

9) "In god shape. Does run." - Wherein I discuss why, exactly, I couldn't bring myself to buy a cheap car.

And finally:

10) Paris Hilton's IQ is 117. Can You Beat her Score? - And how! Leftover musings from a Dear Abby column ("Find a nice man with a high school diploma") and whether intelligence can even be measured in unsocialized children (I think not).

Sister.

2008-08-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

From what I've been told, she came early and quick, tearing her way painfully into the world. It would be the first, but not the last, time she would enter a room this way, taking over with her eagerness, her steady competence. This day she would become the first of four children, all girls. Later she would become my idol.

My mother and father say that she was an easy child, ever quiet and cooperative. Her steady attention would become her biggest asset: at two she would sit with my father one day and learn every letter of the alphabet; at four she would alter the course of my life forever - me, the yet unborn - by teaching the other children to read. Her teacher would call my father one day: did you know what she's doing? and resulting months of testing and observation would shape our educations, our expectations.

I worshiped every breath she took, tagging along on walks with dogs and expeditions through literature. I would copy every move she made, read every book she read; I would emulate her gestures and retell her jokes in the hopes that I could capture the essence of her easy humor (I never could). I would love her the way a dog loves its master and she in turn would be abominably cruel in her efforts to shake me. These early years of torment would be replaced, later, as I grew into a semblance of a human being - she would teach me then about God, about love, what it meant to be a family when the family is gone, raising me when our mother left for school and our father knew little more about educating children than imparting them with endless facts. She would question first, but more thoughtfully, less loudly, generating a wake for me to ride upon, a preformed reputation at school that I could slide into without trouble. They would think the best of me because they thought the best of her.

Only once would I see her cry. Years later I would hear her cry, again, on the phone, and I would remember the overwhelming helplessness that I felt the first time: that I cannot help her, that she will always be above me, that I am the one who is supposed to fall. My love for her will always be traced with this outline of adoration, even as we grow now into adults with responsibilities and desires and depressions, sharing rather than forcing our stories onto one another, drunkenly dialing, lamenting and laughing and offering the best bits of advice we can muster.

So here's to you, dear friend, the most influential person in my life: I love you more today than yesterday, and more then than before. I still kind of (sort of) worship you.

Happy Birthday.

P.S. - I know this is late, but then I was never the punctual one. That would be you.

What Makes Things Right Again

2008-08-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

Not sure if this is the title to a previous post; it popped up in my little title bar and seemed like such a sweet and fitting line.

I'm not really in the mood to write. I have an hour, still, before class begins, and while there's something or another that I would like to be saying to someone I don't seem to have the words for that either. If you live in Portland, you know what the weather is like today: the thunder, the rain, the still, oppressive mugginess. Lyra woke up from the thunder and wouldn't return to bed despite my protests that I would keep her safe. In the end it didn't matter, because it was late. We were late. I can never tell what time it is in my apartment when the blinds are drawn and the sky is blanketed by clouds and rain.

So I'm typing this, not really even thinking, just dancing my fingers around because words will come out of them even when you're thinking about something else. I've written many a poor story that way, little over-trimmed topiaries of stories that are missing all the good parts but somehow still seem to embody a bit of the original intention, whatever that may be, whether it's plant-ness or story-ness or emotionless-ness or, I don't know, pick something. I'm sure you'll be right.

I had never noticed how beautiful it is here in the Memorial on an overcast day; the contrast between the green of the park blocks and the gray of the sky and the sweet tryingly-modern lines of the interior. Such a simple pleasure, really. I was surprised at how comforted I was to walk through the doors after only two weeks of absence, but in many ways I feel like this is my home, the one constant location of my last two years. Over there is where I met Mem for the first time but not the first time, when we both came to hear Fodor speak. If I were to take a right down that hallway, I would come to the place where all the dirty smokers go to talk about everything or nothing, the place where I realized my advisor didn't recall that moment in which I briefly entered the philosophy department and left again, when I asked him how he came to be a philosopher and he said, "Delusions of grandeur." I went back to my science at that moment but returned when everything I read seemed to keep bringing me back here, to these thoughts and these people, and I thought I would at least take a look, investigate, see what there was to find.

Soon, it will be three years, and I will be gone. But I will always miss this place.

Explanation.

2008-08-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

There are no words, Mem; that’s why. I’m not as eloquent as I would like to be, not yet, possibly not ever, and I would rather endure the dignity of silence than scrape at some superficial veneer of what I cannot name. Words have boundaries. Words aren’t emotion, and words aren’t things. When a thought refuses to be encapsulated by words, I can’t simply succumb to the limitation. I can’t agree to the lesser truth.

Not now, anyway. Not in this case, when every thought lost in translation was the very thought I wanted to obtain.

Retro Baby!

2008-08-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Lyra: not quite two. I never could get enough of these socks.

Divorce Kills, Except Not Really

2008-08-15T11:29:00.001-07:00

"One divorce, please."

"With children?"

"With children." She circles an option on the menu and tells me to head to the cashier to pay for the forms. I look down at the sheet.

"Ooh, annulment - that sounds fancy. Do I qualify?"

"Did you marry your brother, sister, mother or father?"

"No."

"Were you forced into the marriage?"

"No."

"Was your spouse previously married but his partner died and then came back to life?"

"No. That definitely did not happen."

"Then you can't get an annulment."

"You know what? That's fine." I pay for my paperwork and she hands me the forms, a five-pound packet - the instructions, she tells me - accompanied by a single sheet. Husband's name. Wife's name. Sign here at the bottom. I'm a bit confused.

"Are you sure these are the instructions?" She nods.

Mem and I are in the sports bar. He's upset about the air conditioning. Too cold. It's over a hundred degrees outside, I say, enjoy the air conditioning. Here, eat the rest of this.

He tells me it's never hot enough, that he has to store the heat of today for the impending winter. Right, I say. Look at this. I hand him the giant packet of instructions. Isn't this funny?

Mem flips through the first few pages, raises his eyebrows. "You have your work cut out for you, Jen. Look at the third page."

I grab the packet from his hands. Third page, fifth page. There's at least a hundred pages here.

"Oh crap. I have to fill out all of this?"

Mem laughs, settling back into his seat, and I realize that he always looks this way, as if he's just waking from a long and pleasant dream.

"You're funny, Jen," he says. "You're very funny."

I get to the house late. Lyra wouldn't go to bed on time, probably because it's so hot, Chris says. I tell him he looks nice. Also, does he have any alcohol?

We go over the forms line by line. I read every one aloud. Property, no, thank god. You can have the bank account. No alimony, no child support, but you're paying for Lyra's health insurance. Can I check this box, the one here? I don't want to have to notify the court if I move. Ok, ok... do we have a parenting plan? Did they think we had one before the divorce? Maybe they should make everyone have a parenting plan... waive the 90 days; waive the order of resistance. You know I wouldn't move without telling you, right? Where are we? What's next?

We're done, I say, but we can't sign them now, have to sign them in court. I'm reading over the instructions again. It says we have to make an appointment for the class, then we're onto stage two. Stage two is court, I tell him, and all the paperwork that comes with it. Then we're really done.

He tells me about his friend, how he met her. He tells me she left something of hers at the house, something small, and how she came back the next day to retrieve it. I smile.

Of course, I say. Of course.

Children Would Be Great If It Weren't For All The Crumbs

2008-08-11T17:44:00.001-07:00

My daughter, the blond one with the giant blue eyes? She’s a bit weird.

I’m in the kitchen, perusing the bills (yes, I said “peruse.” That’s what I do with bills.). Lyra marches in, practically goose-stepping, a Geico brochure clenched tight in one teeny fist.

“This is my truth!” She declares. Stomp, stomp, stomp. “My truth! I must tell the ditizens!”

"The what?! The citizens?"

"THE CITIZENS!"

Sorry, I can’t even type this without laughing. But seriously... what is this? No one warned me about this when I decided to become a parent.

(Confidential to Jamie: watch out. Except your children are going to grow up talking funny; you should have thought of that, hmm?)

That Was Unexpected

2008-08-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

Has it really been more than a week? I apologize to both of my dear readers; I didn't mean to neglect you so. I was a bit lost in my own reality for a few days.

Here, have a random picture of Lyra gnawing on a scone:

Cute, eh? That should make it all better. (Oh, and you may notice the uneven haircut - I mean, "haircut." That was not my doing, thank you very much.)

This Thing

2008-08-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't be writing this, not yet, not while my stomach is still uneasy and my thoughts haven't settled. Most likely I can't even add to this piece that someone else has already written. In every way, it speaks for itself.

The girl in the window.

Two of my favorite bloggers have already posted this link; neither knew how to react except, seemingly, with the same sense of despair that I now feel. Perhaps parents react differently; perhaps parents of daughters react differently, but everyone who has grown up with loving parents or unloving parents or anyone at all that can feel - you will react to this story.

To be fair, I only read the story with curiosity and only a vague sense of discontent until I reached the section about the mother. The adoptive parents, I admired them. I admire their selflessness and their solid picture of reality: possibly the rest of their lives will be dedicated to the care of this small but growing person. Here I did confront a gnawing fear of mine, that I would be unfit for such an enormous task should it ever somehow be placed upon my shoulders. I am not a selfless person.

Yet it wasn't until the story turned to the mother that I couldn't read anymore, had to pace around the small rooms of my apartment before I could force myself to return to the entry. They portray her with such oblivious desperation, trying, maybe, to do what she could but failing to meet anyone's standards of a mother. I'm at once both disgusted and alarmed. The journalists went so far as to list her IQ, by way of what - explanation? Reassurance to the reader ("this could never happen to you")? Simple comparison? And yet, at the same moment, we wonder for an instant how much hope there could be for Dani, with neither the force of nature nor nurture falling in her favor.

Deepest, though, is the fear that I could suffer from my own delusion, doing what I think is best for my child but somehow blind to a grave and certain danger. It's this fear, perhaps, that keeps us rooted in our perseverance or at least to our consciousness of the parenting act: how is she growing, is she happy, are her moods a phase or is there something I need to adjust? I said once that the only thing we ever want is for our children to live, but it simply isn't true: we want so much more. We worry that our own expectations will stunt our children, or that our lack thereof will keep them from blossoming into the persons they could have become. We worry, not just that they'll be harmed, but that we will do the harming. We, the ones entrusted with these small and tender shoots of personhood, as if they've brought nothing to the table but are truly the tabula rasa upon which we write our own scripts, our own fears, our own shortcomings and neuroses.

This is not the optimistic view, to be sure, and it denies our children not only their own weaknesses but also their strengths, confining them to a sort of eternal childhood free of agency and strapping ourselves into the role of hapless provider. And yet this thought does not soothe me because I'm still shaken; I cannot, at this moment, tiptoe into my own daughter's room and gaze at her peaceful sleeping face.

I Think Joe Should Marry that Deaf Chick

2008-07-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

The sexual tension between them is so obvious.

In case you're wondering, Joe is the new guy on Blue's Clues. He stepped in when the old guy had to "leave for college," not caring, apparently, about the lifelong commitment he made to his DOG. Even a weird, brilliant, preschooler dog with a fetish for stamping things with her feet. Even a dog who won't just say what she wants, but makes you wander the house peering under the bed and jumping into picture frames until you collect enough clues to sit down and put it all together. And after all this is over, you have to actually DO whatever it was she was trying to tell you. God, having that dog in the house would be exhausting.

Anyway, Joe is much cuter than the old guy. In fact, Joe appears to have frequent female visitors, if you know what I mean. But I can tell he really has a thing for the deaf chick, the one who comes by to "teach Joe sign language." Yeah, I can see right through that little act, my dear. Sign language... right.

I think this whole bachelor theme is getting old. Do you think Blue actually has it out for the lady friends? Maybe she relishes all this attention a little too much... not hard to guess, considering how much effort she makes Joe put into figuring out what game she wants to play for her birthday. Anybody that self-centered would have a difficult time incorporating a whole new person into her household, especially a HUMAN BEING, one with breasts, that Joe might just enjoy spending some of Blue's precious time with. In fact, Joe might even like her better than Blue. MAYBE Joe would even realize that these bizarre little games are exactly that - bizarre - and send Blue to the animal shelter, where no one would put up with her passive-aggressive crap. Or maybe he'd just send her to a nice farm. Who knows.

At least Joe's getting some action. Caillou's parents are about as shapeless and asexual as two people can be (but they are very, very nice). It kind of bothers me, really, how neither one of them seems to have a job and they can just hang around and pay attention to their kids all day. What assholes.

I have to wonder how much of the average American parent's insecurity stems from genuine keeping-up-with-the-Joneses and how much of it is generated through children's programs. I mean, that's why the kids are watching tv anyway, right? Because it's more entertaining than you are? I think that just about sums it up. All the parents on tv have all the time, all the patience, all the enthusiasm and caring in the world, and you! You're just an average slum, working all day and coming home to your kids at night, tired and cranky and not all that into figuring out whose toy was whose. Just send them all to bed! That's what you want to say, but you don't, and then later when you're reading your kids stories and they're yawning and snuggly you'll remember why you did this in the first place, and it isn't because they're about to climb into bed.

It's because they're lovely.

Glad I Didn't Sell That Bicycle

2008-07-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

The last thing I need right now is coffee.

"Don't you have any juice?" He points me to a little cooler in the back of the cafe, nearly hidden by an overgrown fern. I stare at the contents. Pennywort juice, grass jelly juice... chrysanthemum juice, basil seed juice. Aloe vera juice. This isn't what I meant. For the second time today, I wonder if I'm dreaming.

I go with the pennywort.

I fish out a buck twenty-five and pay him. He wants to know if I'll buy his basil cookies but I'm already out the door, heading back to the shade. At least I have something to drink. From the picture on the can it's hard to imagine how anyone could squeeze juice from such a plant. It's good, if not quite refreshing, like someone made tea from mustard greens and then added too much sugar. Not bad, anyway.

I look over at the car. A pool of red liquid is forming under the grill and I don't know what it is. Jasper's bleeding, I think. Poor kid. The tow truck's already here for the other car. I try to dial again - network busy. Now is not the time, network. I need to call someone. I need to get home.

They say if you think you might die your life flashes before your eyes. I always figured my last thought before impact would be something shallow, like "my face!" Something honest. But it wasn't either of those, just a simple acknowledgment: Here we go. And then we did.

I'd later learn his name was Ivan. He doesn't want to look at me, but there we both are, standing there. His wife is still in the car. She looks strangely serene. He says he doesn't know whose fault it was, but we both know; we both know you don't try to turn left if you can't see. Praying doesn't help you here. Now we're both looking at the rear passenger-side door, and I wonder if he's thinking the same thing I am - how if he hadn't hit the gas, how if this had happened just a moment sooner, his wife wouldn't be smiling at us right now. I feel sick.

He looks worse, though.

I couldn't get out of the car at first. My instinct was to call 911, but that was all I had - I try the door and it won't open and I just try it again. I can't get out. I climb over to the passenger side but it's even worse. Cars don't explode like they do in the movies, I tell myself. I finally climb to the back and I'm free and I'm smiling and shaking peoples' hands like this happens every day. "Yes, I'm fine, I'm fine," I hear myself saying. "Are you ok?" And the police come and everyone's fine and they leave and I'm here with my car and my phone isn't working. Damn network.

Finally I give up and drive the car home. It's miserable but it drives and we meander down the backstreets until we finally get to my house. I go inside. Chris looks up but I don't say anything, I just head to my room and change my clothes. Look at my face in the mirror. I go back downstairs and he's still sitting, head kind of cocked to the side, wondering why I'm back so soon.

"I'm going to try this again," I say, meaning that I'm leaving. "Also... the car." He wants to know what happened but I'm still not thinking yet and I head for the bus. I text my friend - finally the network relents - and I tell him I'm not coming downtown. He wants to know if I'm ok, and where am I going? I don't answer. For the moment, the question doesn't make sense.

Later I'll take a shower. The shock has worn off by this point, and I'll feel selfish for having felt so surprised, like this wasn't supposed to happen. People die every day, I'll think. People live in fear and then they die. Some people might even wish traffic accidents were the worst thing they had to worry about. But me, I get hit and I'm fine - we all walk away - and the best thing I can do is go down to Powell's and wander the aisles for a few hours. You might think it's comforting to be surrounded by all those books, the immortal imprints of their authors - a tribute to the people who lived.

Really, I just like the smell.

I'm not even paying attention to where I'm going. A book stands out, My Life Through Tarot, and I think, there's a wonder. I pick it up, open it to a page. Death.

"What if I'm not ready to have children?"

"Then don't."

"But what if I'm just afraid of having children because I'm afraid I'll get divorced? What if I screw up my children forever?"

"So what if you do?"

"What?"

"So what if you do ruin everyone's life? Life's an adventure - your adventure. What if you don't and you sit there thinking about what your life could have been?"

And that's all I need to read.

There's a Reason I'm Not in Sales

2008-07-27T02:52:00.001-07:00

Me: Hello?

Total Stranger: Hi, I was calling about your bike for sale on Craigslist.

Me: Oh, ok.

TS: So...

Me: Yeah?

TS: Can I have your address?

Me: Why?

TS: ...so I can take a look at your bike?

Me: Do you want to buy it?

TS: I'd like to take a look at it?

Me: Oh.

TS: I can come right now.

Me: Oh. Sure, yeah, my address, hmm...

[This is actually me stalling. He sounds like there's the teeniest chance he could be a serial killer. At the very least, he sounds kind of old and very scruffy, in an Appalachian mountains sort of way. At least, that's what he looks like in my head.]

Me: Sorry, I forgot, I already sold that bike.

TS: What?

Me: Yeah. Maybe next time.

*click*

Trying to Keep it Superficial and Light

2008-07-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

Most annoying thing about being a writer: redundantly dictating every minor action you take.

She hesitates: grapes or nectarines? She reaches for a nectarine; inspects it before tossing it in the cart. Realizes she's never bought nectarines before. Oh well, let's try something new, she thinks, scratching her foot with the tip of her toe... that girl has nice socks! I wish I could pull off socks like that, she wists. Girl envy... qua sock envy.

She's jerked back to reality - while writing that sentence, the neighbor, possibly drunk, screeches into his driveway and hits the side of his own house. Roommate decidedly pissed. She wonders what this world is coming to.

Remember when you first thought you were all grown up? I do, I remember exactly where and when and why, even, taking the first few puffs of my third or fourth cigarette, realizing that I had all this freedom. Suddenly writing wasn't something I did hidden away in my room, it was something I did in public, with beer, with a cigarette. The cigarette made me a better writer. I could feel it.

The faux french-existentialist that never was. If only I had a hat.

Nevermind that I was sixteen and couldn't write worth a damn. The point was that I tried, I channeled this overwhelming emotional energy into words and pages and more words until I had to replace the plastic inkwell on my fountain pen. It was more than cathartic; I thought I had found myself. I knew who I was. I knew who I wanted to be.

Now, not so much. The certainty of teenagehood is replaced by a nagging doubt that doesn't really take hold until you're well into your twenties. Am I good enough? Before, the "goodness" was just an assumption; you didn't question your obvious and admirable talent. Now - later - you look back over your own writings and seethe with mortification.

I didn't think I wrote like that.

Curse of the critic within.

Segue-that's-really-an-ending: Chris asked me what was up with my cryptic endings to my posts. I stared at him with what I hope was a mixture of how-dare-he-pry and general mysteriousness, but in the end I told him that I've always been bad with endings. I don't know where stories end. Ask my sister: when I was in fourth grade I told her I couldn't end this story I was working on, and she convinced me to add a bit after the Native American boy and his shadow-wolf lean in close to share a secret. (This is the climax of the story, by the way.) Anyway, they lean in close together and the boy is whispering his secret when - all of a sudden! - the wolf jets away into the bleak black of night. (This is the part where the audience is supposed to get really anxious!) And indeed, the wolf soon comes speeding back in a whirlwind of wolflike fury... a pack of tic-tacs dangling from his lips.

Ha ha ha.

You should have seen my poor teacher's face when she read that story out loud to the class. I was supposed to be the smart one - the serious one! But no. Curse you, no endings.

I Need Gumbo... I Need Help!

2008-07-25T20:15:00.001-07:00

I don't know if it's Firefox; I don't know if it's Facebook. I don't know what it is, but I have access to every subject line ever written by ANYONE. And it's fabulous.

Because Your Couch is Ugly, That's Why

2008-07-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Back when I was poorer than I am now I would rent these beautiful but tiny apartments and then die a little inside when I had to move in all my crappy furniture.

Now my situation is a little different. I, again, have a beautiful but tiny apartment and I have to go through the reverse agony: choosing which pieces of furniture to take and what to leave behind. I can take the red couch, for instance, but can I also take the matching chair? What would the couch without the chair look like? Would the piece-here-piece-there symbolically represent something... bad? Should I scrap this blog-post and start over?

Probably.

I shouldn't even be worried about this. There's an unspoken agreement about whose is what, and then there's the mutual rejection of, say, that baby-blue dresser. Whoo boy. Start a fire, as far as I'm concerned. But all of my things are so obviously mine: they reek of me, really (not in the smelly sense; I am a clean and delicate lady), and if I don't take them, they should probably go somewhere... else. No one wants to invite a woman over for dinner only to have her say, "Hey... where'd you get those weird couches?" and then you'd have to explain your ex-girlfriend's bizarre theory of living room aesthetics, and how she should have seen the LAST set of couches, and how much the old girlfriend really LOVES these couches but they didn't fit in her new apartment, and how she would fly into a murderous rage if anything were to ever, EVER happen to them. And then the woman would be like, I think those couches are watching me.

Crazy lady. They're just couches!

But! Those couches are such a bitch to move, I thought I'd look around for something affordable and pleasingly new to my sensibilities, but YOU KNOW WHAT? PEOPLE ONLY SELL UGLY THINGS ON CRAIGSLIST.

This post is dead.

That's Whack!

2008-07-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Gaming Reverie questioned the impossibility of blogging about the minutae of one's existence and have it be anything grand. My first reaction was more or less isn't that what blogging is? I mean, if we thought we really had anything interesting to say, wouldn't we write a book? But that was too simple, so I thought about it and decided I'd see if I could get to the really nitty-gritty of my daily life and see if I could pull it off.

Prepare yourself. Boredom is imminent.

So I wake up. Damn, it's bright. I left the curtains open. What time is it? Crap. Eight-fifteen. I should have taken the bus ten minutes ago. The only philosophy major in a philosophy class and I've been late 50% of the time so far. Poor professor; can't even get the philosophy major to show up. But I'm out of bed. I'm going.

This is where it gets rough. Every day I stumble out of bed, brush my teeth, suffer paralysis. WHERE ARE MY JEANS? WHERE ARE THEY? Why do clothes go missing? I wonder. It's not like I just get naked in random locations. I wonder if I own enough pairs of jeans to qualify as a girl. Probably not. But still, they should be right here. RIGHT HERE.

I go with the plaid pants. When in doubt, wear plaid, that's my motto. (And a good motto it is, too.) Ok, I'm dressed enough to go outside. Still freaking cold, I remember. What month is it? July? Right: birthday month. It's July, but it's cold. I remember the guy on the bus, the one that stared at me with something too much akin to anger for my own comfort before asking, "Why are you wearing a sweater? It's fucking July." To which I replied... actually, I didn't reply. I pretended I didn't realize he was talking to me. Better that way. Didn't matter, within five seconds he was making out with his girlfriend.

Back to today. I hate having standards, I'm thinking. I'm waiting for a bus and thinking about how I hate having standards, how it does little for my quality of life. Stupid standards. I can't even remember the last time I had sex. It feels like a million years ago, and you never think when you're having sex that it's going to be the last time for a long time; maybe you should make it memorable. Stupid sex. Stupid people talking about all of their stupid sex.

These are the wondrous thoughts coursing through my mind.

I make it to school, a minor miracle. Professor is nice, too nice to teach philosophy, but then everyone in the class is a business major. Ethics is required for business majors. He wants to know what we think about Plato's segregated society: would we consider this ethical today? What are the myths that we adhere to as Americans? Kid next to me thinks the whole thing's whack.

That's what he says. "Whack."

"Hmm," says Professor. "That's good. But that's not really an argument." And I'm stunned; I've never heard a teacher say such a thing. Maybe right now it's the only thing TO say.

Poor Professor. He's so gentle, so kind. I don't know how he ever made it this far. Like a teddy bear of a philosopher, teaching the masses in his teddy-bear ways. I like him. He doesn't seem to mind, doesn't seem to need to require more from his students except to gently prod them towards speaking. And then I realize that his students DO speak; they're not afraid of what's going to come out of their mouths or how it'll be received. Maybe he's onto something.

He gets tired of talking about Plato, lets us out of class early. I'm eating breakfast in the sports bar nearby because I gave up Market Street. They're playing "Love Train" on the radio. The service isn't as good here, merely perfunctory but fine enough in it's way; I don't get free beer or free conversation or anything else but I can hang out and write my blog and for now that's all I want to do. Maybe I should sort through some clams later and listen to "Atlas Shrugged" on tape. What I really want to do is go home and take a shower, the one I missed this morning. I wonder when I'll finally get to move. Never, it feels like.

The last few days I've been thinking about how I'm not really an adult in many respects, how I'm still a student and live off a student's income, how I don't really make money in any traditional respect. This is ok, this is fine - this is necessary - but at the end of the day I still feel like a child. And I do for other reasons, too: my propensity to waver, my tendency to see things in black-and-white, my still-selfish nature. I wonder when I'll finally grow up, and whether I'll ever really see myself as an adult.

Then I remember that all of these thoughts - the good, the bad, the mundane - are all to keep me from thinking about something else, something I can't get off my mind.

Courtship Behaviors of the Intimidated Male

2008-07-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is pure commentary, keep that in mind at all times.

I'm at school. I'm standing. This generally means I'm smoking a cigarette, because if I'm not smoking a cigarette or getting lunch, I'm walking. I have this bizarre habit of walking when I'm trying to kill time. It's like pacing at home. For whatever reason, I can think while I'm walking, so I walk. People don't talk to me when I walk.

Ok. So I'm standing somewhere, at school. Somebody ambles up. They strike up a conversation. We're at school, so the initial how-are-yous-who-the-hell-are-yous invariably turn to what's-your-major. They're probably in business. I'm a philosophy major, I say. Then I wait. One of three things will happen, ordered by common occurrence:

1) Oh, you're a philosophy major. You know, I always loved phil-o-so-phy. [That's how they say it. Totally draw those precious syllables out.] I always loved thinking about how reality isn't necessarily what it is, you know? I mean, that's crazy.

Guys assume that because you're a philosophy major you're attracted to intelligent men. Which, obviously. Maybe it's not that so much as that they're willing to project themselves into this idea of what they think you think an intelligent man looks like. And, ok. I know a lot of incredibly intelligent men. I have a dear friend who got his degree in what amounts to "rocket science" from MIT. But do we TALK about engineering when we're together? No. Not so much. Is his long-time girlfriend an engineer? Nope. Not a whit.

That said, philosophers do have an edge. Still, there's another approach:

2) Oh, you're one of THOSE people. [Ouch. Thanks, buddy.] Don't you think philosophy's kind of ridiculous? I mean, you just sit around all day and talk about things. Now, business, that's an interesting field....

These chaps aren't quite as endearing as the first group. They still think you want an intelligent man, but instead of trying to make themselves seem smarter, they try to convince YOU that you're not really as smart as you think you are. This allows them to either a) open up the possibility that you've realized the truth about yourself and run into their open arms or b) if you reject their phone number, as you surely will in about ten seconds, they can rest assured that you weren't really interesting in the first place.

Last group:

3) Cool. I'm blahbiddy-blahbiddy-blah. How do you like philosophy?

There you go. That's my cue, because then I get to tell them how little I know about philosophy, but that it's great because you can be any kind of philosopher, and I can tell them about how ethics makes me drowsy and how I knew it was love when I realized I could be a scientist and a philosopher AT THE VERY SAME TIME. And then they can tell me about neural networks, or physics, or whatever the hell they're into that day, and I can learn something too.

Of course, I never date these people, either, because I think I'm allergic to dating, but I can least have a good conversation and sometimes we even stick as friends. It's really the only way to act intelligently, regardless of your IQ: open to new ideas, willing to learn, trying to think about things and asking questions. There are no power-plays; it's Idea Land, pure and simple.

I loaned out a book recently to a friend who possibly wanted to take a philosophy class next term. I didn't say anything when I lent it to him; I wasn't trying to give him any strange ideas or pass off the book as THE TOME OF ALL BEING but later, when he said he was having a hard time reading it at first, I had to go back and give him an instruction: just read. Don't even try to comprehend, or get frustrated, just read. If anything was interesting, read it again. If not, life is short, read a different book.

I think I've been guilty of making this same mistake, too, but neophytes such as me always want that "click" that tells you you know what you're doing, that you understand. That's why math is great: you get it or you don't. But with philosophy, when you try so hard to comprehend the details you miss the gigantor idea-fruit that the author's actually offering forward for you to enjoy or inspect. If you can grasp just the idea (and you still care), you'll want to know the specifics: how do you propose this actually works? and that's where the rest of the work comes in (all those... words!).

I don't know when philosophers got such a reputation as being judgmental toward others (except that they have to be, by profession, judgmental to ideas). Believe me, I know what getting clobbered feels like, but usually it's in an effort to better my own thinking and reveal my own mistakes, not to make me feel small and insignificant (although it works for that, too, in a pinch). I guess the point that I'm trying to make - which isn't at all related to the point I was going to make fifteen minutes ago - is that there's nothing to be afraid of. Philosophy can be totally nebulous if you look at it that way, but then I guess so can science-in-any-form if you're in a group of philosophy majors (don't even get me started - philos shrink with the violets, too).

But really it's just a method; just throw it on something and see what happens.

Oh. Also... nobody really cares.

You Try Explaining It To a Three-Year-Old

2008-07-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Explanations designed for young children are fraught with weird metaphors and "don't worry; I'll tell you the real truth when you're older" substitutes. I used to think parents were just being silly. Tell the poor children the truth! But - no. Those cheesy cartoon books explaining pretty much everything under the sun from sex to quantum physics really do serve a valuable purpose.

It's just hard. Watch:

Lyra: Mom? Why does it get dark?

Me: It gets dark because the earth rotaa... because the earth spins around, but the sun more or less remains in the same place... sort of, not really, but rela... um... the sun stays in the same place and the earth goes in a big circle around it and... ok, this would be a lot easier if I had some styrofoam balls and a flashlight. And then we could do moon phases! But anyway, the earth spins, so we only get daylight on half of the surface at a time, so when it's daytime on our side of earth, it's dark on the other side. Isn't that neat?

Lyra: Moon phases?

Me: Yeah! It's so awesome. Completely blew my -

Lyra: THE EARTH SPINS?!

Me: Wha... yeah! The earth spins. Oh wait, did you know that the earth is sph... that the earth is a ball? It's shaped like your soccer ball! Neat, right?

Lyra: The earth spins... so we have air up in the sky and we're people and Ginger's a dog and everything else is earth?

Me: Umm, most things aren't earth, but yeah, there's a lot of earth out there, the ground and... whatnot.

Lyra: Everything is earth.

Me: No... no, there's just a LOT of earth.

Lyra: EVERYTHING IS EARTH.

Me: Oh. Right.

I could go on for days about our weird dialogues. Mostly the problem is getting the proper information in without going overboard with silly things like exactness. This is hard for me. Also, I need a better vocabulary.

Lyra: I have a brain in my head.

Me: Why yes, yes you do.

Lyra: Why is my brain in my head?

Me: Umm, well, it isn't there for a reason, exactly, but... I mean, it's certainly useful that... Ok, so your brain is really important. And you have a lot of senses on your head -

Lyra: Senses?

Me: Yeah. You see, you smell, you taste, you hear through your ears... those are types of senses.

Lyra: My brain goes down through my neck, to my heart, and gets sent all over my body before it comes back up to my head again!

Me: Whoa. You mean blood. Your blood gets pumped through your heart up to your brain and all over your entire body. Blood's great. Your brain, though, that stays put.

Lyra: No, Mr. Reggie said my brain goes down to my heart and...

Me: No.

Lyra: No, my brain! My brain goes through MY BODY.

Me: Oh goodness. Unless you're talking about neural... no. We'll talk about this later.

This reminds me of the time I tried explaining sound to a six-year-old. She was a really clever kid, and always talking about science, so when she asked me how we hear I thought she'd enjoy a slightly more technical answer. And kids, they do this thing where they get really quiet and an adult (that's really more into what they're saying than anything else) assumes that means they're really riveted by all this exciting new information you're giving them, when really it's highly possible that they just imbibed one fragment of information and started daydreaming about Pokemon. Delivery is crucial.

I had just gotten to the inner ear when we got to her house.

Bonnie: Mom! Guess what!

K: What?

Bonnie: Jenny says my head is full of air!

K: WHAT?

Me: No! No I didn't! I was explaining sound!

K: What - what did you tell her?

Me: Just... you know... that it's a vibration, and some stuff happens and it gets interpreted as sound by... our brain.

K: Yeah. You know she's six, right?

Me: She was listening!

Sigh. But I mean REALLY, do you ever remember learning these things? No, probably not, because little kids are about as inquisitive as you get and they ask "WHY?!" about a billion times a day. And that's good - that means you learn so many things about the world. It's just... exhausting. For the parents, obviously.

Living the Examined Life

2008-07-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Today would have been our wedding anniversary. Seven twenty-two, I liked that date. I liked it so much we had the ceremony on a Sunday, inconveniencing everyone, and I didn't care. I made everyone fly cross-country so they could watch me marry someone else, someone I had spent the last five years of my life with, someone I would leave within eight months.

Eight months.

The justice of the peace was late. I had five minutes to take her book and cross out every reference to God. I didn't want God in on my wedding; He had nothing to do with this. I didn't know how I felt about God then and I don't know how I feel about God now, but I will tell you this: He was not invited to my wedding.

Why do people stay in a relationship for years, only to break up the moment they're married? Everyone knows someone who's done this; I know myself. You ask them before they decide to take the plunge and they tell you marriage is just a piece of paper; it doesn't mean anything. Then you turn around and see the couple that's been together for less than a year getting married on their first anniversary. To them, marriage is anything and a piece of paper, but it's not the piece of paper that they want. It's the anything. The everything, even.

Yesterday I took the bus home. Sat in front of two teenagers, dissecting the love lives of their friends. "He said he loved her - really loved her - and I was like, you CAN'T love her, you're only sixteen. You don't even know what love is. It's biologically impossible."

Biologically impossible? I couldn't help thinking that she sounded just like me when I was sixteen. She would have sounded a lot like me when I was only four months younger than I am now, if only she had said no one can love, period. But these feelings that we have for certain other people, whatever name we give them, they're not unreal. They're not imaginary. And surely when you're sixteen you can't know if it's not "real" love if you believe you're inherently incapable of making a comparison. "I think I love you, baby; I'll call you in twenty years to confirm."

God.

Maybe it's the insufferable optimist rising up from within, but now I think that maybe people do find that... person. Or that thing-within-a-person. And maybe you even know right away, even if you're willing to take the time to make sure. I don't know. Maybe I'm just making stuff up. But I want to believe that these people getting married - you know who you are, all ridiculously and somewhat insanely in love - really do have something that I've just never had the time or good fortune to find. They better. Because if they call me in eight months, I am not going to rub it in their face. I'm going to be really sad.

I'm not sad for myself, though. I never thought that I had that-thing-whatever-it-is, so I didn't lose it, didn't have to grieve. I do hope that he finds it with someone else, though. He's a good person (a great person, even). And I hope she's kind, and that she wants him and appreciates him on a level he never thought possible.

Anyone that endured five years with me deserves at least that, and I don't mean that in a self-deprecating way. I mean that in a very honest, I-know-exactly-who-I-am way. I'm hard to deal with. I'm erratic, moody, and stubborn. I'm non-cooperative. I'm anti-social. I have a hard time accommodating someone else without showing resentment. I'm preoccupied with my own goals.

In other words, unless my partner has an ego of steel, I can be pretty horrible company.

Chris, though, he's a trooper. He's nice, in a very genuine sort of way. He likes people. He's willing to set aside (I think I referred to it as "derail") his own goals and plans, at least temporarily, for someone else to follow their own dreams. (That irritated me to no end, actually, but most of the things that irritate me in a partner are generally considered assets, so I'm putting it down as one.) Most of all, he's loyal, and he will work through anything at all that's thrown his way. That much, I am certain, is definitely a good thing. For some people.

I just read this over. It seems so abrupt - I was just going to end it there - but somehow that doesn't seem like a dignified ending to an entry acknowledging the beginning and the end of my last relationship. I didn't mean it that way. I don't know what a fitting ending would be, though, except to say that it's a day, it's a day that meant something but it wasn't really what it should have been. It was a day that I tried to do something I couldn't do. And, I'm sorry. I guess I never said that before, but I am. I didn't mean to try so hard, didn't mean to think so much about what I thought I should do and so little about what I could do.

I'm sorry.

Sleepyhead

2008-07-21T01:54:00.000-07:00

This is my "say no to all-nighters, say yes to sleep" face.

How Not to Write a Term Paper in 15 Easy Steps

2008-07-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

Step 1. Begin your research weeks before the rest of the class has even daydreamed up a topic. Read the relevant books and papers, highlight and take notes. Congratulate yourself excessively.

Step 2. Relax.

Step 3. When the rest of the class appears to engage in research-like behavior, organize your research and write a fabulous outline that needs nothing more than to be fleshed out and peppered with notable, relevant quotations. Congratulate yourself excessively.

Step 4. Relax.

Step 5. Feel threatened when, long before the paper is due, your former best friend attends class fresh-faced and fancy free... with the completed project casually dangling from their fingertips. "Oh, it's not done," they say. "I still haven't written the bibliography."

Step 6. Stop relaxing. You have a paper to write, you twit.

Step 7. Three days to due date. Three-quarters of your paper is written. Scores of mostly-mangled articles litter your desk. Decide this topic is boring, yawn, and pick a new thesis - the one you "really wanted to work on all along."

Step 8. Begin to panic. Skim abstracts at the speed of light. Print, staple, scan. Print, staple, scan. Furious highlighting and page-marking follows.

Step 9. Panic. This isn't you. You are not your paper. You are not a grade. Yes... wait. Yes. Yes you are.

Step 10. Transcend panic. Drink more coffee. Coffee is good for you. Take a break and compose blog: How Not to Write a Term Paper. Transcribe this upon a very necessary piece of paper that you will soon destroy with errant coffee-spill. Don't worry - at least it wasn't your laptop.

Step 11. Curse yourself excessively.

Step 12. Wriiiiite damn you!

Step 13. You're done. Hey - you're done! When did that happen? You don't remember - too much caffeine and no sleep.

Step 14. Congratulate yourself excessively. Tell yourself never to do this again.

Step 15. Repeat.

Responsibility

2008-07-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today. Two all-nighters and little progress will suck the morale from a person, and I've reserved the next few hours of this day for a little rest and recuperation. Relaxation will hopefully follow.

Right now, at this moment, I'm wondering if it's possible for a person to think too much. I heard a bit of advice (directed at myself): feel more, think less, work harder. Is that good advice? Possibly. Hard to dissect it without thinking.

Bad joke.

Throughout my adult life and as I've grappled with an occasionally debilitating fear of commitment, I've had only three stable expectations for my career: my work must be useful, thought-oriented, and I must be able to write. That fear of commitment, though, it's not a light fear. It's one that has embedded itself so fully into my personality as to have become not simply a pattern, but a serious rut, one that I have a hard time climbing out of (assuming that's how you get out of ruts, by climbing). There are so many interesting possibilities in this world, how do you know you've found the right one? Is there even a right one? Do soul mates manifest themselves in careers?

Probably not. But then, neither do people. Or so I'm told.

Had a conversation with Tim. First, the back-story: I was so intent on being free of my previous relationship that I expected the first thing I would do, once I was free, was date, or at least sleep around like a teenager, or something. Neither of which I've done, and my unwillingness baffled me until I realized that... I'm kind of a prude.

What an awful word, "prude." Sounds kind of like "prune," but with an even more unpleasant phoneme at the end.

I could probably go on at length about why, exactly, this is the case, but I'll restrain myself and you'll just have to believe me when I say it's true. At any rate, Tim and I were having this conversation, and he came to the conclusion that I'm not looking for a person - a real, live human being, in other words - I'm looking for "the perfect pack of cigarettes." Which, frankly, is a strange metaphor that breaks down in so many ways (so many ways!) but what struck me as completely odd is that even though I understood his point, I wasn't slightest bit phased. Sure, I said. Maybe so.

This blog is remarkably narcissistic.

In reality, I know there is no such thing as a perfect person. The reason this doesn't bother me is because, in love, I'm remarkably forgiving. It's not a lack of character flaws or strange idiosyncratic behavior that makes someone imperfect (I don't even want to accuse anyone of being perfect OR imperfect, those simply aren't words that can ever apply to human beings). But what I want, whatever it is, in a person - I just haven't found it yet. I can list a few random ideas of the top of my head, sure, whatever that means. Ideas aren't an apt comparison to real people, either.

What I'm trying to say is that I suppose this is where feelings come in. There are practicalities to every relationship, but mostly... mostly I just want to like someone. I want to like someone a lot. I want to like someone so much that there isn't even a "but" to the equation. Is that too much to ask?

I don't think so.

Seriously

2008-07-16T02:50:00.000-07:00

Any academic who quotes long paragraphs in another language without offering a translation and then goes on to build off of those CRUCIAL ideas is pretentious, opaque, and just plain mean.

I wonder if neurobiologists that expect their audience to be trilingual suffer from the same condition as those boys in high school that drove the twenty-foot-lifted trucks with those ridiculous monster wheels. What did we call them? Oh, yeah: COMPENSATING.

This is Me, Blogging

2008-07-14T23:44:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't been writing much lately. That's fine, with me at any rate, but I've received so many of what I've decided to interpret as complaints that I felt that, perhaps, I should string a few words together.

Alright then. Update: I had a birthday; forgot to get completely drunk. I assume this is because I'm so much more mature and rational than I was a few days before. But the birthday was lovely. As was the cake.

A few days before my birthday, something happened and I can't remember what. This isn't because I blocked it out and am now in denial, rather, I simply can't remember what it was. I believe it was something that could be described as a subtle change: I'm more relaxed now than I've been since March, more at peace with myself and the world around me. This is fine. The dust has settled, so to speak.

More updates: I need a new laptop. Ole Trusty here is going to bite the dust any day now, and I've been uploading my articles and anorexic writings as quickly as I can find them. Lyra's gotten into the habit of saying, "Thank you, suh," whenever anyone hands her anything, and I find that rather amusing. Ginger continues to shed at an enormous rate. The sun has risen and set a few times.

Yes. My life is boring. I'm no longer the exhibitionist I once was, and this is entirely due to the fact that I know who's reading this blog. I could wax nostalgic for the good old days of anonymity but I created this, and I will be the one to decide what sort of thing it will become. I'm still unsure of next year (here's something), after I graduate. I wasn't sure before, even, but I didn't like what I was doing, so I went to school. And I'm in love with these ideas, these topics, these areas of concentration, but I don't feel that "click" that tells you to forge full-steam ahead - to hell with these other options, these other ideas, these other possibilities. I don't know yet.

I have this bizarre fantasy of getting a job. Mostly I feel the pining sting of it when I'm watching a movie and the characters gather around the coffee machine and talk, usually of their sex lives. Maybe it's the idea of coffee, but at those moments I long for a simpler existence, one where I trot off to work with a briefcase and fulfill my civic duties until the time comes to go home and I make dinner and sleep a dreamless sleep.

I'm not depressed - there's no need to send me emails of concern. I'm not even frustrated. I'm just cautiously examining my dreams and wondering, for the first time, if perhaps I've dreamt too big, wanted too much. Maybe it would be easier, and more comforting, to dream smaller.

Then again, perhaps there's a nice middle ground that I can't see just yet. My other fantasy - the one involving an appropriately rustic cabin by a lake - that's sort of the grounding prerequisite for the rest of my life. Or, for some point in my life.

This is me, having a question: has anyone else noticed how quickly the moon travels across our sky? Because I looked up and out my window while I was in the middle of the sentence, and watched our growing-rounder moon sink from full exposure to complete obscurity behind a rooftop, all in a matter of seconds. And now my moon is gone.

Blargh. We each slowly navigate toward whatever we naturally do, one way or another. We rarely do what's difficult without having some sort of passion, the kind of passion that would be more difficult to overcome than accomplishing the thing itself. I suppose whatever it is, I should just do that.

Patriotism

2008-07-05T01:59:00.001-07:00

We left too late. By the time we got downtown the streets were packed and the parking garages too full. Lyra sang songs in the backseat about the fireworks, and she's dressed in her dinosaur costume from Halloween last year. She hears more than you think she does. She heard me say that this was her first year to see the fireworks. The first year we could keep her awake is more like it. She was excited.

Someone was waiting for someone else to pull out of their parking spot - I know that wait. Five minutes before they're supposed to go off and I'm in a parking garage with a kid who's here to see the fireworks. I send Chris and Lyra off to get a spot. I don't want her to miss them. I personally don't care. I don't care about the crowds and I don't care about the fireworks. Maybe I'm too depressive these years. I used to cry when I'd hear "God Bless America" but those were the days when I still put my fingertips together to pray. Kids believe what they're told, you just can't lie to them, because they'll remember. Kids can lie. You just can't lie to kids. It breaks all the rules, suddenly they don't know who to trust or whether you mean anything you say.

Stupid kids. Lighting off firecrackers with babies around, doing somersaults in the air on a steep incline, slipping and falling. These kids are as old as I am. They don't know any better. Lyra wants to go somewhere else, so we take her closer to the waterfront. They're playing music with the fireworks, in case the one wasn't enough. In case the show wasn't good enough. I know it before she says it: people are everywhere but that isn't the problem; the music is loud but that isn't the problem. The problem is the same as with the thunder - she won't like it. And she doesn't. To her the sounds of our patriotism reek more of the sounds of gunshots and hand grenades. I don't blame her. I don't know what we're celebrating either. She asks to go home and I take her.

Hey, at least we're beating the crowds, Chris says. Yeah. The lady in the car in front of us is screaming - screaming - at the vw van that's winding down the parking garage too slowly. It's brakes are probably bad, I don't know. That thing's old.

On the way home the air is gray and smells of sulfur. I'm coughing. Lyra apologizes. My first fireworks and I don't like them, she says. I tell her it's ok, I don't like them much, either. I tell her she doesn't have to like anything if she doesn't want to. She's not just disappointed, but maybe she is. She's shocked at the boomingness of it all, and all the pretty lights and fancy colors in the world won't make up for it. I'm irritated. Not at her but my own trying. I hate going downtown, paying eleven bucks to park, and dealing with humans en masse. She hates it, too, but instead of thanking her I tell her it'll be great, get her excited, then I take her home when she's horrified. She's not me but she's like me, and I don't know how to act except how my parents acted. Like normal.

I keep trying to love her like she's someone else's child. But when I really love her, and maybe like her is a better way to put it, it's when she's doing nothing different but I'm looking at her, not as a child, but as someone who didn't figure out how to behave out of a book. Who hasn't learned all that yet. And sometimes I don't want her to be different; I don't want her to turn out like me, but then I look at where trying to be someone else has gotten me and I wonder what she'd be like if she just never bothered to try. Smarter, maybe. Definitely.

But where do we go when we only know how to act like normal? How do we act like ourselves? How do we raise our children to become who they are when we don't even know how to become who we are? I don't know.

Anatomy of a Sunset

2008-07-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

My feet had already hit the floor by the time I came to, my toes tipping into the moisture that had pooled in from the open french doors. I grabbed my blanket, throwing it over my shoulders and wrapping it tight before I remembered I had been shivering, the fan still humming away. Lightning. The entire house had shaken - where were the others? Lyra would wake up soon enough, not used to the thunder, not accustomed to the room filled for an instant with brilliant white light nor the rumbling that would follow. She didn't know that you can count the distance of the lightning by the seconds it took for the thunder to come. In a few minutes, she would be afraid.

In this moment, I am only still shivering from the cold.

You can feel a thunderstorm before it begins, how the pressure builds until you feel damp and tight with humidity. I had woken up only an hour before, having intended to watch a movie but awakening with the remote still in my hand, the television airing a nondescript show on a nondescript channel. Two-thirty in the morning. Stiff. It was still hot then.

Now I'm awake again, not remembering the thunder but knowing it had left me here with wet feet. Chris will come upstairs, ask if I want the doors closed, and I will project everything upon that moment, that moment that I do not want the doors closed. I do not want the doors closed.

Ginger will lay panting upon my bed, her short-legged heart racing to a finish line I hope it will not cross. No one likes the loud noises but me - not Lyra, not the dog, maybe not even Chris who came upstairs. And I think only that it's too soon while I listen to the drumroll of the rain, that it isn't my birthday.

That this present isn't for me.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream...

2008-07-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

It's unfortunate, perhaps, that our dreams efficiently mirror our waking mind-states. This can mean that never will you have to spawn a bipolar existence; but, on the other hand, should you be going through a particularly mundane period of your life, your dreams will also offer no vacation.

My dreams, lately, have dealt with repetition and frustration. In one dream, I washed and broke a dozen glasses, one after another, by haphazardly placing them on a wet windowsill, my frustration mounting as each new glass shattered. In another dream, I tried to have sex with four different people (not all at once), but each time something strange and disagreeable would happen: one partner grew a rather pinocchio-like nose, except much more frightening; another sprouted thick black hair all over his face; yet another fled when I suggested she take a shower (!); and the last, I fell asleep in a pile of clothes.

For a while, from about mid-March until quite recently, I wasn't sleeping. When I did sleep, it was restless and for months I hadn't been able to remember my dreams. Perhaps that's why they stand out so clearly to me now, these strange but frustrating dreams: very much like real life but exaggerated and with bonus special-effects. Yet in my dreams I am much more conscious of the forces at work than I am in waking life, despite being unable to change the inevitable outcome of whatever path I've taken: I'm aware in these dreams that I'm missing a piece of information or that I'm not looking at the situation in the proper way to achieve clarity. In waking life I merely bumble about. I may be suspicious that I'm missing something, but then again, we're all missing something - it's just whether that something is particularly relevant to what we need to know. Or what we want to know.

Right now, I'm awake. It's five twenty-five in the morning; still cool out. I think I'll make some tea.

Oh My Goodness

2008-06-25T09:55:00.001-07:00

I just experienced my first heart palpitation.

Lyra, my three-year-old daughter, has had a low-grade fever for the past three days. Last night was the worst of it: her forehead was burning, we couldn't get her to eat anything but a single blue popsicle, it took us an hour to convince her to take tylenol and the only reason she did was because we threatened her with a cold bath. For hours she lay feverish in my arms before Chris was finally able to transfer her to her bed.

Something happens when you're a parent, a strengthened fear-response that allows you to jump to many conclusions in the off-chance that you need to act on any of them. When your child is sick - very sick - your mind races. Is she going to die? Should I race this child that finally fell asleep to the ER? How do I know if it's serious? And in the end you check on them every half hour just like you did when they were brand-new and you were acutely aware that every year thousands of brand-new babies die for no good reason.

That's the entire investment of parenthood. Your children have to live. Of course you want them to be happy and fulfilled, and you want to help them grow up into wonderful and caring human beings, but above all else, you want them to just... live.

At three o'clock in the morning I heard a knock on my bedroom door. Lyra stood there, sleepy-eyed and feverish, asking if she could sleep in my bed. (The last time this happened she woke me up by throwing up all over me, but parents are somehow incapable of holding this against their children.) She padded over to my bed and promptly stole my favorite pillow.

This morning I opened my eyes and stared directly into a pair of very blue lips.

For an eternity of a moment, time stopped. Instinctively I grabbed her face, her skin shockingly cold to the touch after days of hot fever, and I shook her by the shoulder, calling her name, trying to re-start time.

I don't know how I didn't wake her. I'll spoil the ending and tell you that she was very much alive, that the only response I got out of her was a scrunched-up face and a nose-rub. And I was wide awake, staring at her blue-popsicle-grubby, no-longer-feverish face, not able to comprehend a reality that went the other way but hoping that I never, ever, have to feel that feeling again.

Now Lyra's watching Bob the Builder, her lips now bright red from a new cherry popsicle. She happy. Occasionally she comments on the absurd happenings on television, but mostly she bounces around, back to her normal self. She's earned a final day home from school, I think. I'm glad to have her here.

Love CAN Be Quantified

2008-06-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

My friend Tim and I went to Tugboat the other night, leading me to believe that locational and atmospheric properties do indeed contribute to the topics of conversation. That night the subject was love and relationships (what a sweet, sweet topic indeed). I won't share the particulars of our conversation, except that it was revealed during the course of the evening that I am a contrary and heartless individual who wouldn't know love if it beat me over the head with a stick.

I believe this particular piece of the conversation went something like this:

Me: "You know that feeling you get when you like someone, really, really like someone, and you can't stop thinking about them and you just want to spend all of your time with them and it's distracting and makes you feel all vulnerable and crazy? I hate that feeling."

Tim: "I think they call that falling in love."

Me: "Yeah. I hate that."

And it's so, so true; I do hate that feeling. I hate it so much I will go to any length to avoid it, but it sneaks up on you when you least expect it, usually when you're feeling cocky and self-assured and certain that you will never, ever fall in love with a particular someone. Like them, sure, but "like" is safe and devoid of any distasteful I-can't-wait-to-see-them-again emotions that creep into your mind and make you feel not only like a stereotypical mushy human being but also possibly a bit insane. Love makes me feel insane. Hell, I don't even want to call it "love" because that word evokes such a beautiful idea of sunshine and rose petals and the feeling that I'm really describing is more like "My heart is being choked by vicious ninjas trained in the art of Kinbaku."

Tim seems to think that people generally enjoy this feeling.

Me, not so much. And I didn't think much of it until my friend Timothy (not the same as the above-mentioned Tim) and I started talking about personality types and inspired me to peruse my own personality-type description. This is what caught my attention:

In forming relationships, INTJs tend to seek out others with similar character traits and ideologies. Agreement on theoretical concept is an important aspect of a relationship. By nature INTJs tend to be demanding in their expectations and approach relationships in a very rational manner. As a result, an INTJ may not always respond to a naturally occurring infatuation but will wait for a mate who better fits his or her set criteria. Persons with this personality type are very stable, reliable and dedicated. Harmony in relationships and home life tends to be extremely important to the INTJ. He or she tends to withhold strong emotion and does not like to "waste" time with irrational social rituals. This, however, may cause non-INTJs to perceive him or her as distant and reserved.

Yes. Yes yes yes.

See, the problem with falling in love is that you can't control who you fall in love with unless you take a certain number of steps to avoid them ahead of time, and naturally you can't predict who is a "bad match," so to speak, until you get to know them.

I feel like I need to invent a checklist:

1) Do you believe in God? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : Proceed to question 2.
If you checked "Yes" :

1a) Is your major referential source of God-belief a religious text? Yes/No
1b) Does your God-belief entail a personal God? Yes/No
1c) Is "God" not simply a fancy term for "probable higher intelligence"? Yes/No
1d) Would you fear a reality in which there were no God? Yes/No

If you checked "No" to all of the above, please explain your God-belief on a separate piece of paper and proceed to question 2.

2) Do you believe that the mind is immaterial? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : please proceed to question 3.

3) Do you believe that all occurrences are products of physical/explainable processes? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" : please proceed to question 4.

4) Do you believe that the mind-body problem is an illusory in nature? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" : please explain in sufficient detail before proceeding to question 5.

5) Are you wondering why I'm asking these question? Yes/No, I understand completely!

If you checked "No, I understand completely!" please move on to these non-theoretical questions:

6) Are you adverse to any of the following: children, cats, horseback-riding, a multitude of male friends, moving to foreign countries (with or without cause), coffee, long naps, frequent sex, reading, museums of any kind, excessive travel, long discussions and comfortable silences? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : please proceed to question 7.

7 a) Are you adverse to your partner spending 2-4 hours a day alone with her thoughts? Yes/No
b) Will you harass/interrupt your partner during these hours for any reason, with the exception of unusually impressive sex or impending doom? Yes/No
c) Does silence disturb you? Yes/No

If you checked "No" to all of the above: please proceed to question 8.

8) Do you write or produce art or music of any kind, professionally or as a hobby? Yes/No

9) Do you believe that the circumstances of your life are largely within your control? Yes/No

10) Do you generally relish your existence and feel strongly that you are an interesting and valuable person? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" on questions 7-10: Congratulations! Given further personality characteristics, professional compatibility, geographical proximity and a host of other factors out of our control, we could possibly be a good match! Well done.

Being excruciatingly picky may not get you laid, but it sure does make life easier.

List O' Week

2008-06-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a long conversation with myself. I've gone through (ahem, caused) a massive amount of change in my life in the past few months. Change is good. One of the better things about change is that it forces you to reevaluate your life, your plans, your goals. What do you want? What do you need? What are you willing to work for?

The conversation I had with myself was something of a non-surprising eye-opener, as all good personal conversations should be. Everything that I learned about myself last night I already knew. What I hadn't done until last night was prioritize; I hadn't given myself permission to accept my real goals in favor of what I felt I wanted. And here's my list:

1) The key to productivity is understanding yourself: Balance is everything.

Twice in my academic career I've created for myself what amounts to an existential nightmare. Both times were during terms in which I've taken nothing but philosophy classes. This is not because I don't love philosophy, but because I need to get my hands dirty on a daily basis to be a happy, functioning human being. Philosophy classes alone entail ten weeks of nothing but reading, and reading is not work. Reading is leisure. Math and science, and the daily homework that accompanies them, are mandatory. Everyone has their own particular balance, and this is mine.

Not coincidentally, the single term that I took nothing but science and math I ended up reading more philosophical works than any other period of my life. They were a good mental workout in comparison to the work I was doing in school, but even better, I was able to focus only on the philosophers that I loved and whose work I was interested in reading.

2) The key to productivity is understanding yourself: Play is not Play if there's no Work.

I was able to do nothing for four days and 17 hours. Then I got a job.

I am not happy when I have nothing to do. I am happy when I have pressing things to do that I can put off for a short period of time: what I call the procrastination/productivity continuum. When I am able to procrastinate, I can accomplish all sorts of things that, minus the pressure, I would never, ever do. I write. I make time to play. I thought that I would spend this summer writing and reading and doing whatever pleases me, but no. This is not how I spent my four days and 17 hours. Without deadlines, I learned the meaning of the four-hour nap. Then I watched two seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Afterwards, I took another four-hour nap, and woke up with a cobwebby nap-hangover. Then I had a long, long conversation with myself.

Then I got a job.

3) Settling is for people who settle.

Last night I was genuinely concerned that I would be unable to find work. Someone I met recently suggested working in grocery; they were hiring, after all. This did not please me.

When unemployment looks you straight in the face, it's easy to settle. Surely settling is better than going hungry, eh? Well, maybe... maybe not. Last night, in the middle of my long conversation with myself, I decided that I would take no action that was irrelevant to my goals.

Grocery is not relevant (to me. I know a lot of lovely people in grocery).

Interestingly, I had been trucking up to school every day for the last two weeks, trying to hunt down the head of the Environmental Sciences department, who had offered me a job about six months ago. While I was still ambivalent about whether I really wanted a job or not, I had had no luck. This morning, after my long, long conversation with myself, I found her. Then I got a job.

4) Happiness is more than a decision.

There's a lot to the idea that you can decide to be happy, that you can make the leap from glass-is-half-empty to glass-is-half-full. I think the mistake lies in that people think they can be truly happy doing work they hate or don't believe in, just by making this decision.

If anything, making this decision should allow you the courage to face your situation head-on. Choosing happiness isn't forcing happiness; it's caring enough about yourself to be honest about what you want and accepting the fact that what you want is (unfortunately) attainable.

Which means that it's your fault if you don't get it.

5) Sacrifice doesn't bother you when it's for something you love.

My mother always told me that if it hadn't have been for her mom, she would have been an astronaut. For years I translated this in my head as, "If only I wouldn't have listened to my mother, I would have been an astronaut."

I just realized she meant this literally.

I love my mother. I really do. She and I are both equally strange, somewhat aggressive people. We behave in many similar ways. She likes to think of herself as a fighter, someone tough, who doesn't take no for an answer and will achieve whatever she damn well feels like achieving. You don't stand in my mother's way.

Unless, of course, you're her mother.

I suppose parenthood makes fools of us all. My mother, who laments frequently over her broken dreams, still finds herself telling me not to go to graduate school, to stay home and raise babies and support my husband, and that I shouldn't leave my marriage just because we're completely incompatible and unhappy.

I've ignored such pleas my entire life. In high school, when she found out I was dropping choir to take journalism instead, we had to have a long and painful discussion about commitment and sticking to things and how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-into-college. A year later, when I dropped journalism for photography, we pretty much had the exact same discussion. These were relatively minor decisions, sure, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from the depth and agony of these conversations.

In other words, I learned a long time ago that the path to personal fulfillment is not through listening to your mother.

I'm still sad that she did, though.

Like it or not, we're role models for our children. I could stay with my husband; I could even stay home and pursue a career of four-hour naps. But I can't: it simply isn't physically possible to live a life you're incapable of living. Secondly, even if I could, I wouldn't. I have a moral responsibility to pursue my own happiness, so Lyra can see that this is a good way to live.

Most importantly, though, I can't place the blame for my unhappiness on Lyra's shoulders. I can't point to her and say, "If only it weren't for you." My decisions are not her fault.

6) Everything comes around and back again. You just can't tell when you're making the right decision for the wrong reasons.

A few months ago, I agreed to enter into a different graduate program than the one I had been planning because someone (cough, cough) didn't want to move.

Then I said to hell with it, I'm going to move anyway.

The liberation that comes with such a decision is breath-taking. Wondrous, even. And so I was happy, happy that I would be doing something that I love.

Then I had a long, long conversation with myself. And I decided to take the other graduate program anyway, not because someone wants to stay in Portland, but because it's right for me: the right balance, the right fit, the right pursuits and the right pleasures. I just couldn't see it because I wasn't looking at it in the right way.

Life is funny like that.

The end.

Muddy Waters

2008-06-16T11:03:00.001-07:00

Coffee. Early morning brownie. Table all of my own.

Mr. I'm-a-PhD-candidate (yes, that's your clever little pseudonym, hope you LIKE it) pointed a gun to my head and forced me to rewrite every word of my paper, which I did, submissively and gladly. Then I threw it at him.

Never make friends with your teachers. Then you can't embarrass yourself over four beers and a bottle of wine at Portland's nicest restaurant while you complain about how Professor so-and-so never gave you any worthwhile feedback on your paper and how 95% of undergraduates should probably just be taken out back and shot. And also, Carnap was a freaking GENIUS (who says that? Me, drunk, that's who).

But who else can talk about logical positivism over sushi? WHO ELSE?! Only philosophy professors, that's who. And now so can Mr. I'm-a-PhD-candidate.

Can't Make It

2008-06-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. I feel selfish. I feel bad.

I'm tired about bitching about things I should be doing and don't want to do. Since Tucson I've been severely intellectually selfish, not wanting to explore concepts or ideas of any kind that don't seem in some way relevant to the particular ideas that I want to explore, and this is detrimental to me in many ways. Grade-wise, for instance. Limiting my avenues of intellectual exploration.

Frankly, how I really feel is that there's only so much brain-space to be allotted per day. I have things to read, things to think about, things to write. I don't wanna play nice with the other kids anymore.

This leaves me confused, mostly. Luckily I have an entire summer of forced vacation, so I won't be pursuing anything distracting unless I'd like to.

I'm jealous of certain people. Chris, for one. Others, too. I wish I could just make the "choice," so to speak, to pursue one thing over another and be done with it. Life-mission accomplished. No more wasting time thinking about THAT. I've felt that sense of completion just once, when I decided to go to medical school, knowing full well that before a year was up I would have changed my mind again and run off to what I considered a bigger and better pursuit. But I'm left feeling not only dissatisfied but with the sneaking suspicion that the chase is better than the catch; that I don't really want a purpose so much as the excitement of feeling that perhaps I've found my purpose. But if you ask Chris, for example, software engineering isn't his purpose at all; it just happens to be something he's suited for, talented at, and highly lucrative.

Yay Chris.

Me, I've always been a softie, unspoiled by the toil of hard labor. Never once have I had to work for a living or do anything other than pine for my intellectual calling - I've always had the luxury of dabbling in one thing and then another and never making up my mind. Part of me understands that I would do myself a favor to throw myself out in the street and learn to fend for myself, but another part of me revolts at the idea of spending my time, well, working. I don't want to work; I don't want work to feel like work. I want to pursue a passion and incidentally get paid for it.

This all sounds so simple-minded, and I realize that. Of course we'd all like to do precisely what we'd like to do - no compromise entailed - but at certain junctures we invariably have to work when we don't want to, finish a project we don't particularly care about, and turn down the opportunity to run in the other direction just so we can earn the right to continue on in THIS direction. That's the part I don't get.

Being an adult, I mean.

Reading over this just now, I notice that the flow and feel of my writing directly corresponds to my mental state. I'm feeling flat and frustrated and uninspired, and my writing reflects that. No surprise, of course, but I miss the buoyancy of a happy writer, or even the anguish of an unhappy one. I can't be an apathetic writer; it will NEVER pay the bills.

Best Cities in the World

2008-06-14T18:34:00.001-07:00

The top 50 cities in the world, according to www.citymayors.com, and I've lived in two of them. Portland barely made it on the list, checking in at #48 (but out of, oh, HOW many cities? That's pretty good). Duesseldorf (still haven't figured out the umlaut, damn) made #5. Technically, I didn't live in Duesseldorf; I lived in this "tiny by European standards" town right OUTSIDE Duesseldorf, but I ate enough ice cream and drank enough beer and spent New Year's Eve 2000 there, so it totally counts.

Zurich topped the list at #1 (anybody got a clue about the umlaut?). Vienna, my all-time most favorite city and the place I plan on spending all of my future days, made #2 (yay!). Switzerland and Germany both had three cities apiece in the top ten, because they're awesome like that, and the US didn't even make it on the list until Honolulu at #28, but then we squeezed eight whole cities on before the end so I guess we did ok.

Damn. I can't remember where this post was going. Too bad.

I Only Wash My Dog with Aveda All-Natural

2008-06-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

Every time Spring rolls around I think that someone chased Ginger down with a seam-ripper and tore into her ass.

In case you didn't know, Corgis have this super-dense undercoat; so dense, in fact, that Corgi fans everywhere dread the two times of the year they have to deal with what they lovingly refer to as "tufting": when the stuffing falls from your Corgi by the pound (directly onto your couch). Until this afternoon, Ginger had more or less resembled a much-loved but little-repaired teddy bear, her fur danglingly helplessly from her rear-end.

I generally find this amusing. The endless vacuuming, however, not so much. My mother, convinced that I will one day channel the domestic goddess inside, purchased for me the high-end Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner, the one designed to "never lose suction" and guaranteed to remove all pet hair from all surfaces for five years (unless you try to vacuum water... what?). I actually did the one thing I swore I would never ever do: I vacuumed and then covered by beautiful red couches with FLORAL SHEETS in an effort to keep Ginger's endless supply of hair at bay. It didn't work. It's gotten to the point where vacuuming at all is a worthless enterprise; the rug and the furniture don't stand a chance for more than five minutes, and no, I can't just put Ginger outside; she's not that kind of dog.

Anyway. Today I took the Ging out on the front porch and de-tufted her as much as I could possibly stand, decorated my yard with her hair in the hopes that some lazy bird didn't make a nest yet, threw Ginger in the tub and hosed her down. She did not like this, but she tolerated it, and I realized that this was the first bath I had given my dog in the three-plus years she's been sleeping on my very hairy couch (there may be a correlation). But believe it or not, this is not the point of my story.

No, the point of this story is that as I was recoiling from the shower Ginger bestowed on me after she hopped from the tub (even little short dogs can shake shake shake), I noticed some... hair. Under the sink. Now this shouldn't have been unusual; I was just describing to you how my entire house is covered in hair most all of the time, right? But no no, this hair was long. And blond. And... where was Lyra?

There's a point during every day of parenthood where you just stop, take a deep breath, and suck it up. Before finding your kid, of course. With the scissors you already know she has. Chopping her hair off. On your couch. The hair that you just had professionally cut, for the first time, and the couch that you just de-dog-haired (not for the first time).

Hair. Gone.

My daughter is now bald, in spots. And furthermore, she is FINE WITH THIS. Because she "likes it that way," she says. And I... I am okay, as well. I am okay.

Back to Atheism

2008-06-10T14:56:00.001-07:00

I changed my official description to "agnostic" for about three weeks there because I was feeling noncommittal but now I believe I've rectified the gap between agnosticism and atheism well enough for my intents and purposes.

Atheists profess to a lack of god-belief while agnostics, traditionally, claim that we are unable to know, unable to intelligibly approach questions such as the existence of God.

I think we're talking about something else.

Heartbroken

2008-06-10T14:07:00.001-07:00

Twice today, my little glass heart crushed to splintery shards.

First, this, found perusing the advice section:

Dear Carolyn:

I have no problem with sleeping with many women. None. The only guilt I feel is sin, and I go to confession and try to stop, but I just love the "chase" too much. I want to get married (I'm 40) when I find the right girl. I want a sweet, innocent girl who actually says no to me. I know you think I am a rat, but women have made it far too easy to sleep with them . . . at least in N.Y.C.

New York

Oh, sweet and gentle person... these innocent girls you chase are no less innocent for sleeping with you, though they won't be when you're done. Sex isn't a barometer of moral fortitude, something with which to test someone and discard the next day like a pair of sweaty socks... though it can be a vulnerability. Everyone learns someday that placing your trust with someone does not mean that they deserve it. You don't deserve it.

Heartbroken.

Then Jezebel, sweet Jezebel, how you rage against men for objectifying women, for minimizing women, for subjecting women to judgment and stereotypes. Then you print this, that I can't even copy here due to its sheer length, an email from a man pouring his heart and soul out to a woman who doesn't want it. Because she doesn't want it, it's humiliation, something to be mocked and scorned and picked apart. But what it is - someone's feelings, someone's vulnerability - that's not an email there, that's life. That's love.

Heartbroken.

The goal of love isn't to receive; it's to give, to offer it up and release it without expectations. We're all afraid of our love falling to the ground uncaught and so we mock those who give it freely and unashamedly, when it's we who should be ashamed. They, at least, are living, their hearts not yet fossilized by their fear.

Me So Sexy

2008-06-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

Is there any possible chance that you guys have been able to avoid those dating service advertisements on myspace? You know, with the guy all grinning at what is, apparently, just his computer screen, the one covered with hot hot chicks dying to meet him, and he's like, yay, baby, oooh... and he runs his hands through his hair, smiles some more, makes some meaningful eye contact with the camera? That one. Because it's supposed to make you all "Wow, I'm going to sign up right now but only if I can have THAT guy!" But of course THAT guy, the one who spends all day grinning at his computer, isn't going to be on the site.

Natch.

But there are some good things to come out of this, because those ads have inspired me to practice my own sexy I'm-alone-with-my-computer face. There's lots of grinning and little pigeon-neck how-ya-doin's and occasionally I run my fingers through my hair all huh. And then I make sexy sexy eye contact with my imaginary camera. Yee-ahh! Hotness strikes.

Ok, that was supposed to be a joke, but now I'm totally going to DO that. And you know what? I bet I'm not the ONLY ONE.

HUNGRY

2008-06-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I just cannot get enough to EAT today. It's like my liver is saying LOOK, it's going to take approximately three weeks and 62,000 calories to undo last night's damage, let's get cracking.

I won't even tell you everything I've scarfed, but let's just say that I could use some more of that yellowtail. Mmm... deliciousness. And then Chris had to go off to a stupid barbeque that I can't even think about without salivating, and so I hate him - just for having the audacity to feast on roast pork and barbequed ribs dripping with their own delicious fats and juices. Hate hate hate.

(I bet you never knew how much of a barbarian I can be.)

When I was pregnant I would wake up in the morning, make myself a glass of juice, a glass of milk, and a cup of super-great decaf green tea (which they won't even let pregnant people drink anymore, by the way, because they prefer that pregnant people just don't even breathe because guess what - life kills - and if it will kill you then it will DEFINITELY kill that unborn fetus within), and I'd make a sandwich. For breakfast. And a bowl of cereal, as well as, usually, a bowl of oatmeal. And possibly some french toast. Then I would spoon-feed myself peanut butter and nearly barf because when you're pregnant, that's just really gross, but I was convinced I wasn't getting enough protein so I'd spoon it down anyway.

I gained FORTY pounds when I was pregnant. I think I weighed all of a buck ten when I got pregnant, which is what I weigh now, and by the end of it I was just a walking balloon of myself. Like some huge person came along and ATE ME. I could just never, ever get enough, my existence was this demented diet wonderland where I would sit down and add up all the calories I consumed from this non-stop eat-fest and when I clicked "calculate" it would only add up to twenty-four. I remember finally losing my shit and hauling out a buffalo burger, slapping a fried egg and ten pounds of cheese on top and stuffing it in my face, just so I could hit 3,500 calories.

Do you know how much FOOD is in 3,500 calories? My dear sweet Jesus. No one should have to eat all of that in one day.

I was convinced I was going to give birth to a twenty-pound whale of a kid, but actually, she was quite tiny. And the baby weight? I retained not one ounce of it, prompting mothers of all kinds to say things like, "What? You gave birth only THREE YEARS AGO?! Get out of here!" Which I totally do not understand. I mean, three years? Really?! Let it go, THAT is not baby weight.

Baby weight is having to carry a three-year-old twelve blocks because she says her legs are too short. Not that she's lying or anything, they really are quite short. Remarkably short.

We cut her hair two days ago and I nearly cried, because she looks like an old person. I mean, an old-ER person, one that isn't just too young to know anything. She asks her aunt things like, "Do you see the Blue Morpho butterfly?" and she's started saying "Whatever, Mommy. I just DO NOT care."

She takes after me. The weird, frenetic, straight up-and-down jumping, though, she gets that from her father. And the climbing. His mother told me once that they had a parakeet when Chris was really small, and the only thing it ever learned how to say was, "Chris get down! Chris get down!" And I laughed. I think I was more of a horizontal rather than vertical explorer, and either way you still get tons of bruises, but us horizontal types do tend to have fewer concussions.

God, I'm hungry. What is it about being hungry that turns me into a pansy-cake? I have this delectable lobster ravioli in the fridge, just begging to have some sauce slathered on top and devoured, but I'm like, oh no. That would be Effort. When really, I want... Delivery. Except I don't want to eat anything that anyone would deliver.

Food - or the lack thereof - can be so emotional, especially when you're incredibly hungry and your blood sugar is low and your nerves just feel so, so frayed. Once I cried in a restaurant (I was pregnant!) when I ordered the blueberry pancakes and they served them to me covered in this disgusting "compote" with whipped cream melting down the sides. I felt like my deepest desire had just been desecrated. I cried sad, sloppy tears. What did they expect me to do with this, eat it? What happened to butter and syrup? My dining companion actually had to take it back FOR ME because I wasn't just sad, I took it personally. I was deeply offended at what these people had done to my food, and just what sort of person did they think I was, anyway, that would want to eat something as sickeningly sweet and horrible as THAT?

Compote. Gross.

You know what's NOT gross? Raw, delicious yellowtail served on a dainty little bed of rice. Sweet. Sticky. Rice.

Oy. Because... oy.

2008-06-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

What a gorgeous day!

In between the whining over my vodka-induced headache and the much drinking of jasmine tea, the sun emerged from its cloudy blankets long enough to make a lasting impression on my hungover mentality.

We even had to make a Ben and Jerry's run for hot fudge sundaes. And then another run for yellowtail and Philadelphia rolls. (Lyra's now using the chopsticks in some weird, intricate performance that she calls a "pony dance" and asking me about when she was a little baby and why, exactly, she does not have a "baby in her tummy." Don't worry, I am a master of answer-avoidance. I tell her only that she has to be much, MUCH taller.)

Last night was an evening of delightful drunkenness and only slightly embarrassed karaoke singing. I have never done this before (and I won't be doing it again, I don't think). But it was wonderfully fun, thanks to Yule's most excellent company and an unfortunate, endless supply of vodka and cranberry juice.

Drunken conversations are just so... entertaining. I distinctly remember the most bizarre snippets of information, such as one person's highly detailed account of their ethnic heritage and the napkin caricatures another person made of his friends. (By the end of the night, everyone is your best friend, no?) I wrote someone a secret message... in German. Another guy tried to convince me that my body is just a vessel for my immortal soul, to which I could only give a non-committal "hhmph." That's just not a conversation best served drunk.

Anyway, oy. I am STILL hungover, but luckily for me the day was gorgeous and I could be hungover in style. And also, thank goodness for sushi.

Back to Silliness

2008-06-06T22:23:00.001-07:00

I'm getting a tattoo. Because I'm CRAZY like that. Here it is:

Except it'll be just the inner five stars with their symbols and the green outline. And when Lyra asks me what the hell is on my arm, I'll say, "You."

Hiatus Schmiatus

2008-06-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

Hiatuses are for wimps.

I realized something yesterday. I realized that the whole purpose of the hiatus was to go within, figure it out, come back with something of some modicum of value. But that's not the way knowledge works... what if the questions that I ask have no real answers? What if the most important questions have only the answers that we give them?

I have a suspicion this is very much the case, but a curious arrangement arises out of such a perspective: you can't be wrong. Initially this is dis-settling. We like to be wrong; being wrong tells us that we can, if we try/think/look/listen long enough, be right. This is a familiar enough concept to metaphysical realists: the problem is that if you aren't aware of the true nature of reality, you're just... done. Taken along for a ride. Screwed. Deprived of truth.

This is why I hate epistemology.

At some point we have to accept that even the most basic perception is relative: we don't see individual atoms because this is unhelpful to us, being composed as we are, giant, lumbering organisms. But there's an important distinction here between the observability of atoms and one's musings over meaning and role within the universe, namely that one is, over the other, definitive. To some extent, at any rate.

Last night I fell asleep during a show about the Big Bang, dozing off to Einstein's displeasure with an idea of a universe with a beginning, his preference for a static, eternal universe with no end, no beginning. I can understand that sort of frustration; how your own theories upset your deepest convictions, how he must have felt (and how the church must have felt) when the evidence pointed to a universe that exploded into being in a singular moment of force, fire, and expansion. Neither is really the easy path, though, is it? Whether it's a static universe or one that expands and contracts and expands again, the question remains: where did this matter come from?

Did you see that question coming? What I mean is that it isn't just God that's an infinite regress; the Big Bang is just a fancier version. How did the universe begin? At the singularity. How did the singularity occur? Because of the contraction of the universe. Why did the universe contract? Because it stopped expanding. What caused the expansion? The singularity.

I think it would be funny if the universe began in utter paradox, if someone found a way to travel infinitely far into the past and as they did spacetime was invented to accommodate them and then BAM! they were shrunk to the size of an electron. And then BAM! again, explosion-city. Universe created. Thanks!

What was I talking about? Oh, right. The hiatus. See, the thing was that I thought that just by looking within, I could find some sort of definitive method of dealing with the world around me. But I just can't. I need to be outside, out in the world, fumbling around and making mistakes and loving and learning and trying to be the best I can be, every day... that's how I learn. The very best way, in fact.

As for the rest of it, I can't say. Can I find God? If I do, it will be a deeply personal experience, and even then I don't know if I could fully surrender. Nor can I fully subscribe to strong atheism - the belief in no-god, not just a lack of belief in God - because it relies on the same conviction, the same belief in rightness. Instead I will learn to be more comfortable in my discomfort, my not-knowing.

So that's it, then. If you want to follow along with me in my trial and error and success, please do. You won't always get a giggle, but then again, you might. You might curse at my stupidity, or, more frequently, just curse at my very bad writing. But I won't censor myself anymore - this is real. The only thing that's ever stood between you or me or anything else has been fear. Fear of the unknown.

And, well, fear be damned.

Hiatus

2008-06-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

The purpose of my questions has always been to find an operational stance with which to approach the world, a method of translating thought and feeling into action. Traditionally, I've always had the impression that until I knew how to think about the world, I couldn't know how to feel about the world, much less how to act within the world.

It occurs to me that until I find a decisive approach I'll continue to sit here, thinking, without finding any sort of peace or taking any sort of action.

Finding a philosophy of action that is cohesive with not only the external "facts" but primarily with my internal realities is difficult, to say the least. For one, the internal reality is mutable, so any operational stance begins within and is projected onto the external world. The question, then, becomes one of "how can I think about this in an effective way?" I want to know how to approach myself and see who I am really am (or, more importantly, who I can become) so that I can answer the larger (or maybe the smaller) questions.

I can think a great many thoughts, all of them proceeding from what appears to be a truth or a reality, but when I'm confronted by two or more contradicting, seemingly logical conclusions, it's difficult to see where the fault lies: in the origin, the method, or the deductions. I have as yet no way of deciding or rectifying these ideas.

So, I've decided to start over. Tear the house down, as they say, and begin again. As such, I won't be posting for a while, but I'll be back soon, and hopefully I'll have learned something new and have something to say.

Adios.

When Reality Hits, it Hits Hard

2008-06-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Warning: Strong emotional content.

While I'm writing this, Lyra is working on devouring an entire box of shredded wheat, and we're watching cartoons. The sun's out, sort of, and the birds are singing and Chris is doing the crossword. This all seems so normal, so very placid and mundane, almost a cruel contrast to my turbulent inner world.

When you've spent five years of your life trying to be someone else, trying to be someone responsible and mundane and concerned with nice houses, nice furniture, a nice education; trying to raise children and not run away; just trying to be a normal American with a normal life... when you let that go, when you step outside of yourself for just one moment, the result can be earth-shattering.

Last night, I cried in a movie theater. The movie, Persepolis, shook me to my core, making real for me a reality that I could never emotionally comprehend through history books or the daily newspaper.

The last time I remember crying like that was in July 2006. The day before my birthday, Hezbollah launched rockets at small Israeli border towns... the day of my birthday, Israel retaliated by bombing, I think, a Lebanese hospital. I didn't know this until the next day, when the front page of The Oregonian showed a man turning away from the wreakage, his face iced over with the shock and the sadness. In his arms was a dead boy.

I just... cried. What else could I do? I was immobilized by this picture of the man and the boy; I didn't know what was going on, how these people could bear to even live, day after day. I couldn't understand how I could live my little tidy life, fretting over the grade I got on a paper or whether I shouldn't be feeding my one-year-old more organic foods. I didn't know how to break free of this blindness, because that's what it is, it's blindness but also ignorance and desensitization to the happenings in our world.

Of course, the next day I was fine.

And then, this. This that has again shaken my world except that this time I feel ashamed. I feel shame for getting on with my life, for saying things like hating the war but not ever doing anything, you know? Because we don't know what there is TO do; we don't know anything, really. Sometimes we read about the casualties in the paper and feel bad for their families, but really the overriding emotion tends to be one of mute disbelief, wondering if the kid thought that war would be glamorous, if he thought he was serving his country, if he believed in the righteousness of the war, if he really thought that he was somehow invincible. Didn't he know that war kills?

Do I really know that war kills? Isn't it an abstract concept, really, to those of us who have never even seen death? Have you ever seen someone shot or crushed beneath the rubble of a bombed building? Have you had to live with yourself after shooting someone else?

I don't know what to do, don't know how to rectify the darkness of this feeling with a new possible reality. I don't know how to help. I'm afraid that this feeling is going to be replaced by numbness; that I'll go on with my own hen-pecking concerns and forget all about this.

For now, I can only learn about the world around me: the world I know so shamefully little about.

Lyra Says

2008-05-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Lyra's talking into her "microphone," a giant pink plastic gadget with springwork on the inside that does, indeed, amplify her tiny three-year-old voice.

Lyra: "Yah, yaaah! You can't do this because you don't have no energiiiiiiiiie!!!"

Chris: "You have no energy."

Me: "Why don't I have any energy?"

Lyra: "Cause you need to eat lots of fooooood!"

Me: "That's how you get energy? From food?"

Chris: "How else do you get energy?"

Lyra: "Oh no, I peeled this off..." fiddles with her microphone... "From the sun! The sun helps us GROW!"

Me: "You get energy from the sun?"

Lyra: "And from sleeeeeeping!"

Me: "Maybe you should be the PhD candidate." turning to Chris "How does she know these things? Didn't she just turn three?"

Chris: "She watched a show."

Me: "Oh."

Moral of the story: you don't need an education! Watch more television.

There's No Line Between You and Me

2008-05-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Blogging is bad for the soul.

I'm sinking into deep meditation, a shiny-warm feeling of peacefulness beginning to pervade my core, spreading outwards toward my hands, my fingertips, and my toes. My chest rises and falls, rises and falls, rises and falls.

"I feel my mind merging with the mind of..."

Shh.

I shake my head involuntarily, as if the thought will jar itself free and float away, off into nothingness. Silence.

I feel the weight of my body, a weight made up of trillions of cells, each on their own mission, unthinking but knowing, fueling and refueling and reproducing and expiring, all in perfect harmony. None them aware of their intricate organization, not in the least aware of their own importance. All in perfect faith.

"Sorites paradox: How many cells before I am no longer a body? One less? Two less?"

Shh.

"... a million less?"

Shh!

I giggle at my mind's playful rebellion. I wonder what I must look like on the outside; if yogis ever giggle in the middle of their meditations. I decide that they must.

*******

I often marvel and how we're always talking about the same thing. Last summer I read The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's infamous plea to contemplate the beauty and the mystery of life. Look at the cell. Just try to comprehend the complexity of this universe - think you can do it? Try. Please.

At least, that's how I read it. I remember thinking that Deepak Chopra must be thrilled with the book; that it was one more piece of evidence for unity, that science is yet again demystifying what we intuit to be true, that spirituality and science will culminate in the same description of the same world. Pantheist - that's what Dawkins called the person who saw God in every particle, in every breeze, in the elegance of the galaxies.

Despite the book's title and intent, very little of it had to do with God; his attempt was rather to inspire within the individual an almost religious respect for the brilliance of the world around us, rather than needing a belief in a "master plan" to satisfy our desire for wonder, excitement, or meaning.

I feel this way, too, but still I feel the need to "know," to "intervene," to "prepare." It's instinct, perhaps, more than a residual effect of faith: faith doesn't teach us to know; it doesn't pretend to give you an answer. Faith only teaches you to listen, to trust.

Imagine a skin cell, for instance, trying to comprehend its place in the organism. I assume it can't attempt such things, but if for the sake of argument it could: would a skin cell ever gain enough perspective to see the entire organism? Could it understand the magnitude of such a being, or fathom its finite but vital role in this being's life? Could it ever be in a position to understand the being's complex web of social relationships, of the intensity of its emotions, of the love it can feel, or the pain? Could it even begin to wonder about the being's own curiosity and awe regarding its own place in the universe?

Of course not. Even if a single cell had the apparatus necessary to think such thoughts, it could never step back far enough to ask the right questions.

Do we think that we can? Can we ask the right questions, and go about finding the answers? I don't know. Intuitively, I want to say no, but I think it's unwise to doubt the curiosity, ingenuity and audacity of the human spirit.

Deepak Chopra didn't like the book. In fact, he wrote quite the missive damning the book to all sorts of hell. I was unhappy, feeling like I was forced to choose between the awe of quiet and the awe of mind, but still knowing that all roads lead to Rome, as they say.

All Roads Lead to Rome

Let's assume we have two choices, or perspectives. Choice One: the universe, or at least what we know of it, is part of an intentional system. Choice Two: the universe is intentionally inert, and the only organisms that make up meta-organisms (or intentional systems) are the individual cells of that organism as well as some meta-organisms that are also perceivably part of a greater structure, such as mushrooms, Aspen trees, and coral. Considering that each meta-organism is composed of trillions of individual cells (and I won't do the math on this one), the odds of you - you right there - laying claim to the pinnacle of the organism is, crudely put, trillions of trillions of trillions to one. Nearly impossible, really. Completely impossible if you consider humanity and our social structure as a whole.

But probability is not why we're having this discussion, we're wondering if the universe had a Creator, which in my terminology means that there is some force - a higher intelligence or what have you - that intended on the universe's existence, AND is in some way invested (possibly a poor choice of words) in the cumulation of the universe's activity. If the Creator merely created and lost interest, in other words, that would go in Choice Two. And if the universe itself is Creator, that goes in Choice One.

I say it doesn't matter which you choose, and here's why:

1) If the universe is an intentional system, its intention is necessarily greater than ours. Laws of physics and human behavior will all fall under this intentionality, and unfold accordingly. Ultimately, events are out of your control.

2) If the universe is intentionally inert, the laws of physics and the laws of human behavior will play out according to their deterministic beginnings, an inevitable free-fall of circumstance which, while not steered by intention, is still outlined according to the physically possible. That is, things won't frequently "just happen." At any rate, events are out of your control.

This still gives us room to adopt a philosophy: attribution theory of meaning, nihilism, whatever you feel like. There's wiggle room because we see that either way we're unable to see what's going on; knowing the intentional stance of our world frankly doesn't help us much. Rationality doesn't provide the answer.

The only answer, then, is to live a life of your own purpose. You can know, for instance, that if there is a greater force governing your life, you are at every single moment fulfilling its deepest desires, your interactions and your purpose entwining with every other soul, bringing each other closer to the goal. You can also know, then, that if there is no inherent purpose and no inherent meaning, that you are your own Creator, here to play and experience and generate a life worth living.

And that's how that works.

Symbology

2008-05-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

That's right, I said symbology.

Today I put up blinds, all by my very own self. It only took an hour, what with the lifting and then oh-crapping and forgetting the pen and wondering how I'm supposed to hold all this stuff at the very same time... it was a work-out. But it looks NICE.

Then I put up curtains.

And rearranged my bedroom. Hung "sconces" (worst word ever. Best word ever: WINGNUT.).

I'm tired. Still have to go back to Ikea and exchange the futon mattress for a new one... must resist temptation to buy a new rug, at least for now.

Pretty, pretty things... they will all be mine.

Does This Make Me Mrs. Coulter?

2008-05-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Watched The Golden Compass last night with C. Lyra's badass, almost as good as the book, and Lord Asriel (who looks strangely, strangely like C with a beard) is also, you know, badass, and Mrs. Coulter is gorgeous but a manipulative evil bitch.

Guess who I get to be!

Barfity Barf Barf

2008-05-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm sitting on the couch mulling over the idea of whether C and I can co-exist peacefully, and whether he's over the relationship or at least getting there, and thank goodness he's so emotionally mature, when I realize what I'm watching (TV, I mean). It's called... hang on... Must Love Dogs.

Agh. I feel like I'm confessing to fondling my sister or something, I'm so embarrassed to admit this. But I have to admit it so I can tell you what I just saw - namely, our single but scrappy heroine goes grocery shopping (wee!) and when she scrappily saunters to the deli counter to purchase a single scrappy chicken breast she's confronted with, "Oh? Just the ONE chicken breast? Are you aloooone? Have you tried... the internet? Hmm?"

And I just want to scream.

I'm usually a very anti-relationship person, at least until, uh, Houston and... Yule (sorry guys, I really suck at pseudonyms) came along. I mean, I was the biggest fan of Against Love: A Polemic before I was even single because I felt like I could have written the damn thing: Relationships are limiting and doomed to failure. You often have to give up your goals for the greater good. You can't laugh at a stupid joke because your partner's watching. Being single and partaking in desirable amounts of casual sex is the only way to maintain freedom, happiness and sanity.

But then after C and I broke up I started spending more time with Houston and Yule and all of a sudden I was struck by a kind of weird... feeling that maybe, just maybe, relationships aren't inherently distasteful, and maybe, sometimes, at least with the right person, they can be fun and exciting and also meaningful and you can even possibly grow as a person without having to give up your identity and fit yourself into a preformed relationship mold. What I mean to say is that Houston and Yule aren't sitting around going if it weren't for THEM I would so be laughing at that JOKE right now.

Anyway.

The point is that I'm tentatively coming around to the idea of relationships. Disclaimerly but! I still firmly stand by my belief that being single is good, and that no relationship is far superior than a bad or mediocre relationship. (Blah dee blah, I could have read that out of a book. See, that's the other thing: we SAY these things but then we watch movies and read books that completely and utterly destroy these feeble ideas of ours.) Which brings me back to my ultimate point, which is that, no surprise, this movie is destined to end not in the scrappy heroine's discovery of single-life happiness, but in love. No, not love. Sweet sweet luuuurve.

And yeah, it's cool, and sweet, and whatever, and right now she's jumping into the river with all of her clothes (and shoes!) on to profess her undying I'm-so-stupid-to-have-not-noticed-you-before let's-get-married-right-now lurve. Oh wait! Now they're grocery shopping! And buying lots of chicken breasts! And kissing! And now the movie's over! What a success.

Anywho, just wanted to share.

Impressed

2008-05-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

I'm impressed by so many things. By how three-year-olds can make friends in five seconds, just by virtue of sharing a table with someone. By how when I ask Lyra what she wants for dinner, she says "Mayonnaise." By how Ginger starts following me around the moment I get home, and I think it's awfully sweet until I open my bedroom door, sniff sniff... oh Ginger! and she looks at me so apologetically that I can't help but pat her on the head and trot off for paper towels and carpet cleaner.

By how I can drive a stick-shift and eat ice cream at the same time.

By how C and I are at Ikea buying him a bed, and after we load it into the car a million miles from the entrance he looks at me, looks at the empty cart and says wanna ride? (Hell yeah I do!) And we go veering off into the distance.

By how after all this time of looking for an apartment or a roommate I realize that I already have one.

I... guess this makes us a non-traditional parenting household. I'm impressed by this, too, but maybe a little uncertain because it's still early; we haven't had to deal with boyfriends or girlfriends or even just a drunk friend on the couch. We haven't had any problems.

Then again, maybe we're just evolving; maybe the dust finally settled on the first and hardest stage of our breakup. It's been almost two months now, not long but not brand-new. We have our own bedrooms. We've figured out the bank accounts, the schedules, the chores; we've delineated appropriate post-breakup behavior and how we'll deal with one of us inevitably dating someone else. Best of all, we're both right down the hall from our daughter at all times.

Maybe all of the precautions in the world wouldn't be enough... but what if they are? What if they could be? What if we can pull this off and parent our daughter together but not together?

There's one obvious problem with this situation.

We were mulling around the dining wares section of Ikea, killing time after we begged, pleaded, and failed to coax Lyra out of the playroom. I'm squinting at the place settings when it occurs to me that if we were both seeing someone we'd always have an instant dinner party and ooh, we could make that one Mexican soup I liked so much, the one with all the toppings... which would look so great in those blue bowls right there... and then I realize that this is madness, no I'm sure it is, but at the same time it seems like the pinnacle of emotional maturity, like a situation we should actually strive for. Dinner parties. With dates. Or something like that.

Or I'm, you know, delusional. But living together isn't a cop-out; there's no room for miscommunication and anything that would demand only greater maturity from myself and from C... well, it just can't be all that bad. Neither one of us is particularly jealous to begin with, and what's a little jealousy when the benefits - both of us getting to live full-time with our kid AND having a permanent movie-watching partner - so obviously outweigh the drawbacks?

Again, maybe I'm dreaming. I think we'll tread lightly into this vague and uncertain future.

Writing About Dreams

2008-05-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

This is a new thing for me, and I think it’s brave of me to share such personal details with you (what was I thinking?).

The first part of the dream that I can remember, I was waking up. I sat up, in the dream, on a lawn surrounded by thousands of people just milling around, like it was a massive summer vacation and we had all congregated in this particular location for the sole purpose of being lazy and talking to each other. The grass was unusually green and the sky, well, the sky was very blue, with some lovely fluffy clouds in aesthetically-optimal locations.

I got up and ran. I knew that a lot had happened up to that point but it was a dream and it didn’t really matter. What did matter was that I was late for something.

I stopped running when I saw a large, grubby man with unkempt hair standing by a mop bucket and a broom. He had the janitor jumpsuit on, but there was grease on his face. I think I was confusing a janitor for a mechanic. He hands me a key, and we talk. I remember thinking that I was so small and breakable-looking next to this man, but that that was only because I was still very young. I got my own jumpsuit.

My job, as well as I can remember, was to take care of this key. There was only one for all of the jumpsuit people, and I couldn’t lose it. It unlocked every window at the university, and also all of the sheds and any utility closet I could find. I started smoking in the hallways at school. I liked impressing my friends by whipping out the key and unlocking things, and also the way I could push the windows up with just a flick of my wrist.

I started finding things in the closets. Pieces of things, puzzle pieces. I would collect them and take them all back to the same closet (my favorite closet) and throw them in there on top of a bucket.

There were lots of jumpsuit men, but my favorite was the one that hired me. One day all of us jumpsuiters had to go on this retreat, to a farm on the outskirts of the university. There were fireworks, and someone was talking to us from above. We were all listening, but I couldn’t understand the language so I started spying on what the people around me were doing in the dark. Later a dozen or so of us went back to jumpsuit man’s house. His lover, another jumpsuit man, was there in bed with a woman. Her name was Lisa. I know this because every time the lover spoke, the words spelled themselves out in the sky in black cursive font, even his moans and sighs. But mostly he just said “Lisa”.

I remember that the jumpsuit man saw this coming, or rather, that he knew somehow that it was eventually going to happen. That was the way it was with jumpsuit man; everyone had their job and they couldn’t escape it. It would all play itself out one way or another. He was still sad, though, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

He told me he misplaced something. I showed him the collection of puzzle pieces in my closet. I remember his eyes were glowing, and again I didn’t understand anything except that it was big, and even though I didn’t know what was going on I had done something well. He was happy. He let me keep the key.

There were people everywhere. Sometimes I felt like we – the jumpsuiters – were the only ones that knew we had jobs. Every time I stepped outside, I had to wade through masses of people. It took a long time to get anywhere.

I was really happy to be wearing a jumpsuit, even though I had to clean up after everyone and make sure the mowers were running properly and that there were the right number of mops in each closet. I had to do this so other people could do their jobs. I was the janitor’s janitor.

At one point we all went to steakhouse, like the ones you find in Texas where the word “Texas” is written all over it because in Texas they’re really proud that they live in Texas. It was big and long and one big room and they served baked potatoes and steak and we watched a show in the center of the room. I was always watching things. I don’t remember talking much in the dream, except to tell people where they could find things.

The end of the dream was fuzzy. There was no drama and no resolution; life just went spinning on as it always does. The jumpsuit man found another lover. I found more puzzle pieces, and kept putting them in the closet. At one point, I saw a gigantic mower that stood several stories tall. It was an apt shrine, I remember thinking.

Then I woke up, and I had a headache from last night’s wine.

The Dangers of Blogger Love (Plagiarism Watch-out)

2008-05-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

Whoa.

Ok, so I just read two columns - one from a blogger girl, one from a blogger boy - chronicling their romance and break-up and the publicity of it all, given the girl's popular bloggerificness. The boy didn't like it; the girl couldn't help it... the blog inevitably ended their relationship, let us say.

Boy wasn't happy at how her emotions were aired online. Girl felt like she was being herself: her blog was a natural extension of her emotional and at bare minimum personal self. Boy felt like Girl was exposing her vulnerability. Boy felt violated. Girl didn't realize... I suppose... that Boy felt this way. The blogging seemed, at any rate, to destroy the secret newness of it all, especially since they were not only co-workers, but both newly out of long-term relationships.

Okay. Got it. Lucky this got to me in time, because I was totally just going to write about the incredibly new, hot romance I've got going on and all the HOT HOT SEX we've been having. I was even going to include details about the new guy's beautiful... yeah right. Whatever. Had ya going.

I'm totally not getting any. But that is not ANY of your business, ok? So what if I write about it on my "blog" that gets, like, a mere fraction of Miss Emily Gould's readers (just google her and get it over with already, wouldja)? But if I WAS, and I COULD BE LYING, I would totally write about it all the time, every day, every single last detail. Yep. Every bit.

I guess the moral of this story is: blog and get dumped. Or, blog and get lots of sex (depending on whether your dear old bf wants to be blogged about or not, I suppose). Or, keep mum and just be a normal human being who hides their life away and never tells a single soul anything about themselves without their having earned it, or something. Which, let me tell you, blogging is NOT about.

Glad THAT'S over! If only our great-grandparents could have known what their future generational offspring were in for, romantically-speaking. Blogging isn't just gossip; it's straight-from-the-source direct: my heart, it's brooooken! He or she suuuucks! But I luuuurve them! It's pathetic, is what it is, but it's real and like it or not, some people actually enjoy putting their hearts on their sleeve.

Not what you're in for? Don't date a blogger.

Nothing to Say, Part Two

2008-05-23T19:50:00.001-07:00

Prognosis: lazy.

Today was picture day at Lyra's preschool. Remember picture day? Did you mom get you all cuted-up and adorable so you looked basically nothing like your normal self, and this make-believe you would be captured on film to spend all eternity perched on a wall in your grandma's hallway?

Yeah, I thought so. This happened to me AT LEAST once, but I only know this because of the hallway thing. I think as I got older I grew either less cute or less cooperative.

I'm not cooperative now, either, but this is usually because I forget. Last picture day at Lyra's school, she didn't attend for some forgotten reason or another, so they nabbed her the next day in very much her normal attire (read: mismatched socks and wild hair). Luckily, I have trained Lyra to love the camera, and the series of photos that were returned to us were a perfect embodiment of her personality and patience. The first: wide smile, classic pose. The second: possibly genuine smile; body language lacking enthusiasm. The third: teeth stretched obligingly over gums. Possibly irritated.

Today, though, Picture Day! I was as excited as any mother of a young child could be. I expressed this by dutifully picking lint off the cutest possible sweater and crossed my fingers in an attempt to supernaturally prevent the morning's inevitable spills and stains. Then: I brushed her hair, opting not for the boring ponytail but for two "dinosaur ears" (two earlike buns, for those of you who do not parent the dinosaur-obsessed). Afterwards I made sure she was wearing matching socks and we experienced only a minor crisis when I thwarted her attempts to wear her pajama pants to school.

Of course this was all too much excitement for me, so I drove her to school and promptly returned home for a nap.

All of this is to preface me saying that the analytic portions of my mind are... shrinking. I had a beer with Chris later in the afternoon (and a busy beer it was, what with everyone having the same idea to take off work early and get a head start on the, erm, beautiful Memorial Day weekend), and I cannot BELIEVE how much that man can remember. While birthdays are not his shtick, quantum fragments of information regarding chemistry, the general theory of relativity, calculus, etc. - all gleaned either from his education or the distant reading of books - these all ride the eternal waves of his mind, never to be forgotten. And, unlike when we discuss politics, ethics, or psychology, I actually believe he's gotten the facts right.

What does this have to do with me? I dunno, nothing. What does it have to do with you? I dunno... nothing. Why are you even reading this post?

Jeez. Some people.

I Am Anger, Hear Me Riiiip Your Heart Out

2008-05-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

I know this guy who is just RIDICULOUSLY happy, all of the live-long day. He's smart and not obnoxious and has that easy comfort where he'll just talk all through class and smile and generally act like he's never had a care in the world, ISN'T THAT SO COOL. I don't know him very well but I limbo between wanting to be this guy's best friend and wanting to give him a stinging wallop upside his blue-bandanaed-head. How dare he be so optimistic.

I am not so perky-perky-how's-your-day. Today was great: I was all excited about the primaries and the future of our country and about the fact that a seventh of Portland showed up to see Obama yesterday, isn't that neat, but then I couldn't find a parking spot for half and hour and got burnt hashbrowns with my eggs and oh my goodness, I feel like I'm metaphorically strapped to this guy's back, except he's facing up and I'm facing down so he sees blue skies and fluffy white clouds and I'm like THIS IS JUST A BUNCH OF DIRT.

Burnt hashbrowns? Ruin a whole day? Really?

It's been a short day.

Not even that, really, this is just me. It's been a weird couple of months, and I'm excited and scared and looking forward to the future but also kind of looking back on the past. It's like I can't quite turn around all the way and look ahead, and my plans are shifting and my goals are changing which isn't even all of my own making, what with Chris not wanting to move for me to go to graduate school and now I'm going into a program that sounds great and lucrative and interesting but it wasn't what I saw myself doing, I had it all figured out and now NOTHING is the same. All that's scrapped. And that's life, right? Change. I guess it is, I just thought that I'd have more control about the outcome or at least the direction, but then I made decisions and those decisions helped other decisions fall into place while closing the door on others and I don't like this. I'm pissed, and I'm afraid, and I wanted to keep a foot in all of the doors so they can't slam shut but they did anyway and there wasn't a damn thing I could have done about it.

And my writing always reflects my physical state of mind; all breathless and winded like I want to stop running and just hold still and get my bearings back. Which I do. And frankly, I don't have a choice.

NOOOOO!!!

2008-05-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

The library won't renew my books! WON'T RENEW MY BOOKS!

Now I can't pretend I own them; I have to give them BACK! THIS IS CRAP.

Blargh Attack

2008-05-19T18:05:00.001-07:00

For an Atheist, I Have a Lot of Spiritual Crises

2008-05-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not a very good atheist. Ha.

No, actually, I'm a great atheist. A lot of people assume that atheism excludes any belief in the possibility of god, but that's not atheism, that irrationalism. We don't really know such things, not even you believers out there who "know" there's a god - now, I'm not trying to offend you, I'm only stating the obvious: you don't know there's a god, you feel there's a god, and that is perfectly legitimate and even, I would say, vital. Denying such things when you feel they're real and just and true would also be irrational. You would not make a very good atheist.

Atheism is about accepting the unknown for the remarkable reality that it is. Even if I can't define it.

In my kitchen I have a ceiling fan with two long, dangly pulls, one for the fan and one for the light. I have a habit, every time I walk by them, to flick one and send it spinning around the other, wrapping it tighter and tighter until the ends meet and the whole process reverses. This morning I watched them spin and unspin and spin again, twirling around and untwirling, ever slower and ever less violent, until they were finally still.

I knew as I watched that this whole process could be defined mathematically; defined by virtue of physics and taking in to consideration weight and length and shape and air pressure and so on. Such a simple, normally unremarkable thing. Completely complicated.

Nothing in this world happens without a reason. Situations unfold according to the natural laws they've been given, and I don't just mean twirling dangly-bobs, I mean you and me, our meeting and our interactions and what we say and why we say it. Why we feel what we do; why we do what we do: it all unfolds naturally and gracefully. It really couldn't have happened otherwise.

There is a rhyme and reason to this universe, I mean. I know this. I don't have to guess; I don't have to pretend; I don't have to have faith or even just hope.

I know.

Lyra Eats

2008-05-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the table: a bowl of cheerios, a half-eaten apple, scrambled eggs, one glass of juice, one glass of milk, and one glass of water.

This is Lyra's breakfast.

I saunter off to the bathroom, where I spend approximately five minutes brushing my teeth and washing my face. When I get back, the eggs are dark brown and gooey.

"Lyra... what is that?" She points to a small heap of brown powder next to her bowl. Chocolate jello mix. Gross. Where does she keep finding these things? I can't even remember buying jello.

"Gorgeous - chocolate eggs? Is that good?"

"I like chocolate eggs." She spoons another fudgy bite into her mouth.

"Ok. Alright. I'm getting dressed now."

This is the girl who, on Saturday, refused to eat her eggs until they were daintily anointed with candy sprinkles, the kind most people never witness except on ice cream cones. Rather than locking away the liquor, we have to hide even the most innocent-looking of decorative toppings: the icing I used once when I made her first-birthday cake, the green sprinkles from Christmas, the food dye. Once I found her on our kitchen counter, making "muffin-cakes" for her friend Selma. Twenty cupcake liners arranged neatly into rows on the counter, each with a few drops of food coloring and a generous shake of green sprinkles.

Other times I have found her raiding the freezer, her mouth stuffed full of bon-bons or any other tasty frozen treat that was doomed to live a brief but meaningful existence. The thrill seems to be in the verboten; if I were to actually hand her an ice cream cone she would but take a few quick licks, decorate it with marshmallows, and declare it unsound. This is a dangerous enterprise, usually resulting in me locating the cone, abandoned, melted, and mushy, possibly in a closet or deep within the cushions of the couch. Sometimes she just feeds it to the dog.

When it comes to "real food," at least she gives us a few options: macaroni and cheese is popular, as is white rice and occasionally spaghetti. Most of the time she flatly states she's not interested in "real dinner," and can she please have a bowl of cereal, no milk this time. Whatever. I'm happy to feed her anything that isn't composed ONLY of sugar.

I'm certain some of you might be quite upset that I've taken this blase attitude toward my daughter's eating habits, but I like to think that I'm fostering independence and teaching Lyra about consequences. The consequence, for instance, of my no longer stocking bon-bons in the house. Or Oreos. Or candy sprinkles. And especially the one where she has to brush her teeth... for the fifth time... in one day.

But like I said, whatever. She's a kid, she likes sweets, and most of what she steals goes straight into the dog anyway. They're a team.

Besides, I know that one of these days she'll be like me and care not so much for sprinkles as she does for paying bills and getting work in on time, and the highlight of her day might be to come home to a quiet house and crack open a beer before she takes one last stab at that project and heads off to bed.

She'll have a satisfying life, I know, but the love of the adult world can just never compare to the love of a child for candy sprinkles.