In less than a year I'll be there, officially becoming what I've always thought of as Parents' Age. Having plenty of friends in their thirties, my husband included, I know this is farcical. Many are just as adorably screwed up and unwrinkled as they were in their twenties and few have kids, which I consider a good thing. (Though those with kids, I must add, are lovely and respectable, and I'd trust them with my dogs any day.)
When I was a kid there was a TV show called Thirty-Something, and watching it led me to believe that being in your thirties meant you were Married, fought with your Husband, had Children always running around, and were Beautiful. My own thirty-something mother was sometimes married, sometimes not, always beautiful, and always fought with men, especially the boyfriends. One of these, Bobby, once hid with me in my plastic Strawberry Shortcake house that had four walls, a roof, a real door and everything. Don't ask me how his lumbering goofy ass fit inside my tiny big-girl house, but there we were, me, confused as to what we were doing there, him with his finger over his lips. "Shh. Your mom's mad at me. It's not very fun." What saddened both of us was she never came to look for him. My thirty-year-old mom was probably on the couch, legs crossed, smoking a Virginia Slim and grateful for his absence. Mom has told me since then he popped too many pills and snorted too much coke. I'd wondered what those longish pinky fingernails were all about and assumed it had something to do with being Thirty. That night he played with me and my dolls and asked me about my life, and I was grateful for his presence.
The actuality of thirty is something I can't yet comment on, but will try (at least tangentially). Brock's almost three years into them, and now that I think on it he's been crying thirty since we met. At the time I was twenty-three, he was nearly twenty-seven, though he referred to his age as "close to thirty," and mine "closer to twenty." I thought all this very unfair and reminded him constantly that I was very Mature with intense Life Experiences he couldn't even begin to imagine, and he said that's what all immature people say when they're trying to compensate. He found ways to say everything more cleverly than I ever could, one of the reasons I just had to have him.
Thirty, from what I can surmise, just brings more pressure to fulfill the requirements from late 80s TV shows like Thirty-Something. In this decade of living two things seem to be important: Settling, and Success. The twenties are a great time to fuck around and be indecisive and take on odd jobs and diddle with your writing. By the thirties you've got to find a way to plant your ass somewhere doing something with security which leads to success and the reward of sprouting out grandchildren to bestow to one's parents. From what I can tell words that begin with an S are integral to your thirties.
I'm lucky to have a mother who's more than happy to let me wait-wait-wait on the kids front. Other friends' parents are asking whether or not their daughter's eggs are getting spoiled, or if something might be "wrong down there wink wink" with the husband. If any one of my parents/in-laws were willing to move around the corner from us into their own house and be a 24/7 nanny for me, I'd get Brock to knock me up with twins tomorrow. But as it is the dogs even get bored with me when I'm in writing/reading mode. An infant's lungs are built for detesting the selfishness of mothers with goals, and I don't want to hear it, you non-existent little brat. Even if for now, I'm still just diddling around.
Last night my dream of a crying baby woke me up at the usual hour, 4:30. My eyelids were thick and heavy as silver dollars from all the crying I'd done during the day because meanie colleagues won't let me teach whatever class I want whenever I want it (have I mentioned I'm close to thirty, and very mature with intense life experiences you can't even begin to imagine?). Another weird thing about my body when I wake up lately it that I'm super-rigid, lying on my back, heels and toes together, while my arms thrust straight above my head in the universal Touchdown! symbol. Maybe I'm celebrating in my sleep, but I can't remember what and only wish mid-night wakefulness were so exultant.
The point: I woke up and felt weird and felt pissed because of a fairly recent tradition of ours--Brock and I sleep with a night light. King has a habit of curling up in a different spot around our bed every night, and Brock was sick of tripping over him on his way to the bathroom. Hence, prevention of this by using a night light. (For the record I'm fine with tripping over black King in the black dark, because he is perfect and infallible to me, and tripping over his curled body is just a reminder of how much I love him.) The problem with the night light is it's annoyingly bright, and once I'm awake I feel drawn to its eminent orb. I feel as if Brock is Moon 1 and I'm Moon 2, and the night light is our big ole sun to work our way around till morning. These are the poetic thoughts I try to comfort myself with as redress for being needlessly awake in the blackest black of night, the King of night. We're alone during the scary hours, me and my skittering thoughts.
It's the same as when I was a child, and my mom was thirty, and I'd learned through plumb intuition that people someday die. At night the shadows hid death, every furniture creak betrayed death's approach, death could be found even in the micrometers between my bed and its sheets. I tried to read the shadows, death's minions, and tell them, I'm not scared of you, but I was. Back then I didn't have a night light and didn't need one because I was a Big Girl. Being close to thirty is a different time. Now I don't talk to shadows or fear death because I'm convinced they'll never find me. With the night light that keeps me awake I'm safe from the worst of life, the end of it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Buggy Satan
Last week I began my British lit class with my usual a-hem followed by the words, "I worship Satan."
My students know well enough by now when I'm being fantastical in an attempt to capture their attention, so only a few flinched. Still, from those few, daggers. We live in a Christian Nation, despite Sean Hannity's cries of the contrary, that we liberals are murdering Jesus (again!) and now Christmas.
We're reading Paradise Lost in British lit, and because the poem is so big and complicated and contains much of our world (both Christian and otherwise), I thought I might start with my personal connection to it. And that is my absolute adoration of the Satan character.
Critics love him too, ask my students (by way of Sparknotes). He is Interesting, and Complex. Ambivalent Concerning His Fall.
The past two fall semesters I've struggled teaching early British literature because, you probably know this already, it isn't my thing. I study modern American and world literature, particularly autobiography/memoir, more particularly the memoir of the disenfranchised (sorry, white men--I still love you). What occurred in Britain 200+ years ago doesn't get me going. Every Tuesday and Thursday of this fall semester at 5 p.m. with an encore at 6:30, I'm forced to fake it.
But Milton is different, because of his Satan. I'm genuinely in love with him. This is what I meant by "worship." His reactions to his plight are some of the buggiest I've seen in literature. Really. In his opening speech to his new dark hell he takes comfort in the fact that he proved something in the big fight he just lost. I mean, who would've ever known God was so powerful if it weren't for me, my challenge, my enormous defeat? There's an upside to this, after all!
And throughout that first book he revs up his fallen troops in the buggiest ways, suggesting maybe they could make something cool out of this infernal place, and that all is not lost. But the part I love most is that, even though he's grieving--I mean, he's in hell, and according to Milton that's even more painful than we imagine it to be--he's still grateful to have his mind. His wits will get him through, he tells himself, and even though we know he only delights in destruction there's something beautiful about the focus on the intellect. It's why he goes to Earth to check out Adam and Eve. Yes, he wants to bring them and their progeny down, but he's also intensely curious. Who are these people? What are they like? What might I do to learn and touch and conquer? Though he's quite fucked, he knows he'll figure things out.
It's optimism in the face of eternal damnation for which there is no escape. It's buggy.
My students know well enough by now when I'm being fantastical in an attempt to capture their attention, so only a few flinched. Still, from those few, daggers. We live in a Christian Nation, despite Sean Hannity's cries of the contrary, that we liberals are murdering Jesus (again!) and now Christmas.
We're reading Paradise Lost in British lit, and because the poem is so big and complicated and contains much of our world (both Christian and otherwise), I thought I might start with my personal connection to it. And that is my absolute adoration of the Satan character.
Critics love him too, ask my students (by way of Sparknotes). He is Interesting, and Complex. Ambivalent Concerning His Fall.
The past two fall semesters I've struggled teaching early British literature because, you probably know this already, it isn't my thing. I study modern American and world literature, particularly autobiography/memoir, more particularly the memoir of the disenfranchised (sorry, white men--I still love you). What occurred in Britain 200+ years ago doesn't get me going. Every Tuesday and Thursday of this fall semester at 5 p.m. with an encore at 6:30, I'm forced to fake it.
But Milton is different, because of his Satan. I'm genuinely in love with him. This is what I meant by "worship." His reactions to his plight are some of the buggiest I've seen in literature. Really. In his opening speech to his new dark hell he takes comfort in the fact that he proved something in the big fight he just lost. I mean, who would've ever known God was so powerful if it weren't for me, my challenge, my enormous defeat? There's an upside to this, after all!
And throughout that first book he revs up his fallen troops in the buggiest ways, suggesting maybe they could make something cool out of this infernal place, and that all is not lost. But the part I love most is that, even though he's grieving--I mean, he's in hell, and according to Milton that's even more painful than we imagine it to be--he's still grateful to have his mind. His wits will get him through, he tells himself, and even though we know he only delights in destruction there's something beautiful about the focus on the intellect. It's why he goes to Earth to check out Adam and Eve. Yes, he wants to bring them and their progeny down, but he's also intensely curious. Who are these people? What are they like? What might I do to learn and touch and conquer? Though he's quite fucked, he knows he'll figure things out.
It's optimism in the face of eternal damnation for which there is no escape. It's buggy.
The Brick and the Blanket
Stop reading before even starting and just consider this one thing: name the numerous ways in which one can use a brick.
Got one? Two and three? Keep going. Try it for two minutes.
I first took this test a few months ago at my sister-in-law's apartment in Savannah, and forced everyone there to take it too. At first the party was pissed I'd stopped Yahtzee to make everyone write, but then they got the hang of it, and when we read our answers to each other, ah, it all went down superbly with the Kentucky moonshine and whiskey. Our fingers were sparklers, our teeth pearls. Everyone was adored by everyone else.
Because I try to keep everything I write, even if it's on a post-it, even if it will likely get lost, I still have the half-sheet on which I took this test. My answers are below.
Brick:
to build
to tear down
to hold up to my face and wear as my new mustache
to be a doppleganger for Brock
as a shoe lift, to see the world better from up high
to stack around a fire pit
in track and field, as a substitute for shot put
as paperweight
for carving the initials of lovers
as baseball bat for pygmies
for bashing the heads of racists and pedophiles
for bashing into pieces and creating more rubble in the world
The great thing about this test, of course, is that there are no wrong answers, and if you can come up with at least more than three, a lot will be revealed about who the test-taker is. Looking at my list, I see two practical uses, at least six that are absurd, two that are violent, and maybe three that are sort of loving. (If you know Brock, then you probably know of his old tradition of getting drunk and picking up the object closest to him and holding it up under his nose as he tells friends and strangers, "Look at my new mustache!" At the John Kerry party we attended in '04, right after I decided I was going to love him, he picked up a 5' x 6' sign, refrigeratoresque in breadth and heft, and held it up under his nose and said his famous old (but new to me) line. He had me at mustache. Thus my brick-as-mustache answer, five years later, is an ode to him and is firmly ensconced in the absurd/loving category.)
But I shouldn't kid myself. There is a way to do badly on this test, and that is to be solidly practical. Like with bricks, one might admit they stack and build and come to think of it that is all one should do with bricks. Lots of people's brains work this way and they likely make lots of money with their practicals degrees and jobs. But it isn't fun to read their results aloud at parties. Though these types will always be welcome at any party of mine, because hopefully they'll supply the fancy drinks and finger foods.
The other part of this divergence test is asking the test-taker what are all of the possible uses for a blanket. I forced my Savannah party to take this part of the test too, and I've since--not surprisingly--lost the scrap of paper with my results. Instead of revisiting uses of a blanket, then, I'm thinking of ways in which I've been a blanket in my life. Five minutes, here I go:
Brooke as blanket:
*when a friend in some bad state calls, and I'm smart enough to remain silent and truly listen and empathize, and maybe only say, "you are loved"
*when Lala was in the hospital, and I opened up the rear tent of her gown and spooned up into her, and didn't retreat even when nurses bustled in to move tubes and crank oxygen levels but instead rubbed Lala's back and scratched her head, thinking of my dogs and my childhood and nothing of pain
*when I'm hungover and can only drape over this chair or that sofa, basically feeling wide, long, inanimate, so not really feeling at all...just draping
*when King or Nola look at me in that real way that kills, and I'm a bundle on the floor and let them tap dance all over my body, licking and wagging their desires, and I'm fixed as the floor, only moving when they decide I should, letting their snouts roll me over
*when Brock awakens late with the comforter crumpled in the corner of the bed, and from the other room I hear a long, "Buuuuhh," and I run to the room and flatten myself across his torso. In this case I'm also sort of a brick.
The brick and blanket tests taken here are my tacit apologies to myself for my history of bad standardized tests scores. It's funny I truly don't think these tests are worth a damn in proving anyone's intelligence except my own.
This comes up because last week in my freshman comp class I allowed students do perform a mock interview of me to help prepare them for the real live thing they would have to do for their profile essays. One of the last questions a student asked was, "What was your ACT score?" Thank god he asked for this score, which was a decent 27. I remembered how I felt so goddamned special for getting that score without even trying that when I took the GRE four years later, I felt like, what's the point of studying? I've got a decent brain. Plus tests like this don't matter, I'm going to be a Writer.
But here's the truth about the GRE: out of a possible score of 800 on the Verbal Reasoning section, I received a 400. That's 50% wrong, to you and me. This is still the lowest score I've ever heard of in the history of that test and because of it, I will always see myself as hopelessly stupid, and anything I do to prove otherwise as pure farce.
So I've shown my brain can work divergently. Super. Invite me over and ask me what are the potential uses for your cat, or plant. But don't expect me to bring too many fun party supplies, because I'm poor, divergent, dumb.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Where are you from?
Earlier tonight I ordered takeout from Sitar, formerly known as Maharaja, which is the only Indian place in town. Later I paired the meal with the rubbing alcohol-esque Glen Ellen Chardonnay from the PB gas station and am feeling alright, though slightly guilty for not cooking enough lately. Every time we've got a little extra money we become super lazy and less creative with meals, so much so we often forego preparing them altogether. When Brock and I are broke, though, it's artistry: two-meal spaghetti dinners and four-meal tuna casseroles, and for lunch, Brooke-style-Subway sandwiches. I've learned to slice onions looseleaf thin, and one head of romaine lettuce lasts for two weeks' worth of sandwiches if wrapped correctly. Sometimes, there's beauty in the pedestrian.
At least when you're broke. When I'm broke, anyway, the slow circle I make with my wrists when washing the dishes is a goddamned miracle. The way I slice an onion makes me feel like Botticelli's Venus. Movies cost too much so I pleasure myself in these small ways, by thinking of myself in big ways. Sometimes I'll even think, why isn't there someone way high up in the sky filming this shit? It's brilliant! Brooke washes a dish and is so calm and serene and selfless about it that, really, the whole world should see.
But no poetic poverty today. My benefactor, Lala, came through for us this week with my belated birthday cash, so I'm not broke, but in fact full of Sitar. I've got Sitar in my stomach and Sitar on the brain.
Three hours later Sitar is still in my head because of my strange takeout experience there. The restaurant was, not surprisingly, empty at 5:15, so both men behind the bar opened their eyes wide and smiled the perfunctory we've-got-a-customer smile. My order was already bagged and on the counter. I pulled out my debit card and felt the usual long moments of horror--do you know these moments?--when we're all just standing around and waiting for the machine to do it's gobbledy-gook, process the transaction, spit out the receipt and get me the hell out of there. I busied myself with some invisible thing I was looking for in my purse, and one of the guys clicked and unclicked a pen half a dozen times. Smile and look down. Smile.
These moments make me inwardly, maybe outwardly, cringe, because the older I get the more I'm incapable of small talk. I'd like to think strangers appreciate this, that I don't ask them about their days, or comment insipidly about the weather. It's not rudeness, I swear: I'm all smiles with strangers, smiles and nods. But there's absolutely nothing to say sometimes--I give you money, you give me food--and I'm not going to pretend there is.
The men behind the bar waiting for the receipt to spit out appeared to appreciate my smile and nod and general pleasantness. We were happily silent. But as I was signing the receipt and leaving one dollar on $15 (a fair tip, I think, for a quick styrofoam-wrap-and-bag job), one of the men asked me a seemingly simple question: "Where are you from?"
For a long time (now, still!) I was flustered by the question. This sounds strange, but I didn't know what he meant. I made the famous rhetorical move of responding to his question with another question: "Do you mean, like, physically where was I born? Or where is my family from?"
Then he did the strangest thing. With his index finger he pointed at his own face, and drew a continuous circle around and around its periphery. He didn't answer my questions but pointed at my face. He said, "You. Where are you from?"
After realizing I didn't know how to answer the question, I said very quickly everything I knew about myself at that moment to be true: oh, I don't sound like I'm from around here, do I, some people say I've got a Brooklyn accent, which I think is ridiculous, well I was born in New Orleans and that's in Louisiana, but my mother's from Ecuador and she's where I get my face, I believe, but I did live in Baton Rouge for the last six years before moving here, and no, I'm definitely not from Tuscaloosa.
In retrospect I should've left three dollars.
My confusion is not the Sitar bar man's problem. He asked a perfectly legitimate question, even if he didn't exactly have the language to clarify it afterwards. Where we are from is basic human knowledge, and it is what we ask when we want to get to know someone. It's a question on every survey I ask my students to fill out at the beginning of every semester. They never struggle with it.
Still, I struggle. Maybe it's because my first impulse is to read the question as a pejorative: you don't look like other people around here, thus you are unfamiliar and strange, thus you don't belong (and thus, in my head, no one loves you except maybe your mother, so go home and cry to her about it).
Also it's scary because it proves that someone has really looked at me, looked at and studied my face if only for a couple of moments, and made an analysis of it: this shape, that shape, brown this, brown that...ah, not from around here. And despite what I said earlier about imagining my more impoverished, mundane moments as poetic and beautiful, it's a frightening thing to be simply looked at. I'm scared I will somehow be read, and will not come across as a particularly enlightening text. I worry that if I were to be filmed from on high, the picture wouldn't be as pretty as I'd imagined it to be, that it would be boring, actually, that the lens would focus in on the soap scum I can never quite scrub off the edges of the sink, the big dots of sweat on my upper lip, on these increasingly wrinkled little hands.
At least when you're broke. When I'm broke, anyway, the slow circle I make with my wrists when washing the dishes is a goddamned miracle. The way I slice an onion makes me feel like Botticelli's Venus. Movies cost too much so I pleasure myself in these small ways, by thinking of myself in big ways. Sometimes I'll even think, why isn't there someone way high up in the sky filming this shit? It's brilliant! Brooke washes a dish and is so calm and serene and selfless about it that, really, the whole world should see.
But no poetic poverty today. My benefactor, Lala, came through for us this week with my belated birthday cash, so I'm not broke, but in fact full of Sitar. I've got Sitar in my stomach and Sitar on the brain.
Three hours later Sitar is still in my head because of my strange takeout experience there. The restaurant was, not surprisingly, empty at 5:15, so both men behind the bar opened their eyes wide and smiled the perfunctory we've-got-a-customer smile. My order was already bagged and on the counter. I pulled out my debit card and felt the usual long moments of horror--do you know these moments?--when we're all just standing around and waiting for the machine to do it's gobbledy-gook, process the transaction, spit out the receipt and get me the hell out of there. I busied myself with some invisible thing I was looking for in my purse, and one of the guys clicked and unclicked a pen half a dozen times. Smile and look down. Smile.
These moments make me inwardly, maybe outwardly, cringe, because the older I get the more I'm incapable of small talk. I'd like to think strangers appreciate this, that I don't ask them about their days, or comment insipidly about the weather. It's not rudeness, I swear: I'm all smiles with strangers, smiles and nods. But there's absolutely nothing to say sometimes--I give you money, you give me food--and I'm not going to pretend there is.
The men behind the bar waiting for the receipt to spit out appeared to appreciate my smile and nod and general pleasantness. We were happily silent. But as I was signing the receipt and leaving one dollar on $15 (a fair tip, I think, for a quick styrofoam-wrap-and-bag job), one of the men asked me a seemingly simple question: "Where are you from?"
For a long time (now, still!) I was flustered by the question. This sounds strange, but I didn't know what he meant. I made the famous rhetorical move of responding to his question with another question: "Do you mean, like, physically where was I born? Or where is my family from?"
Then he did the strangest thing. With his index finger he pointed at his own face, and drew a continuous circle around and around its periphery. He didn't answer my questions but pointed at my face. He said, "You. Where are you from?"
After realizing I didn't know how to answer the question, I said very quickly everything I knew about myself at that moment to be true: oh, I don't sound like I'm from around here, do I, some people say I've got a Brooklyn accent, which I think is ridiculous, well I was born in New Orleans and that's in Louisiana, but my mother's from Ecuador and she's where I get my face, I believe, but I did live in Baton Rouge for the last six years before moving here, and no, I'm definitely not from Tuscaloosa.
In retrospect I should've left three dollars.
My confusion is not the Sitar bar man's problem. He asked a perfectly legitimate question, even if he didn't exactly have the language to clarify it afterwards. Where we are from is basic human knowledge, and it is what we ask when we want to get to know someone. It's a question on every survey I ask my students to fill out at the beginning of every semester. They never struggle with it.
Still, I struggle. Maybe it's because my first impulse is to read the question as a pejorative: you don't look like other people around here, thus you are unfamiliar and strange, thus you don't belong (and thus, in my head, no one loves you except maybe your mother, so go home and cry to her about it).
Also it's scary because it proves that someone has really looked at me, looked at and studied my face if only for a couple of moments, and made an analysis of it: this shape, that shape, brown this, brown that...ah, not from around here. And despite what I said earlier about imagining my more impoverished, mundane moments as poetic and beautiful, it's a frightening thing to be simply looked at. I'm scared I will somehow be read, and will not come across as a particularly enlightening text. I worry that if I were to be filmed from on high, the picture wouldn't be as pretty as I'd imagined it to be, that it would be boring, actually, that the lens would focus in on the soap scum I can never quite scrub off the edges of the sink, the big dots of sweat on my upper lip, on these increasingly wrinkled little hands.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry?
Diane Keaton is a brilliant actress, sure, but one of the reasons I truly adore her is because of how Woody Allen once described what it was like to work with her and know her and love her: "She's one of those incredibly smart women who finds herself apologizing all the time. She wakes up in the morning and looks over to you and says, 'Oh, I'm sorry.'"
When I first heard this years ago, I was incredibly neurotic if not smart, and I thought, oh, she and I would get along. We'd apologize even for getting along so well. If someone I love is having a bad day, my first assumption is that I'm responsible. When someone doesn't call me back, like, within five minutes after I leave a message, it must be because I haven't made amends for one or another of my indiscretions. Also since I tend to snap quickly and frequently for reasons I don't understand until immediately after the snap, I have just cause to apologize almost daily. So along with being a crier, I'm an apologizer.
(Quick aside: I'm always telling my students how people who march around saying, "Let me tell you about me: I'm _______ type of person" really grates on my nerves. And I'm fast discovering that this blog is that very obnoxious self-defining thing, only perhaps worse because instead of letting the words die in the air, I'm chiseling them into some wall of my computer, and yours. I never said I wasn't hypocritical.)
Now for a slight turn: I've gotten into maybe a handful of verbal arguments since I've been a real live adult. One of the few was with my sister last year, and it ended with some face slaps and hair tugging, so now that I think of it that probably counts as a fist fight. It's a lot of pressure being the educated, equanimous adult in the family.
The last verbal argument happened earlier today, and it was with my aunt, my mom's sister. This blog isn't a place to air out the dirty details, but I can say that the whole discussion was stunning and that in this argument, unlike the many in my life, I had very little to say. I let her rant at me for minutes while I cried and then hung up with a final "I'm sorry!".
Daily I make dozens of mistakes, and say and think mean things and become happy when bad stuff happens to Republicans and other people I don't like. These are things for which I should apologize. But in this situation, I had no fucking reason to say I was sorry.
It's okay if you don't believe me. I didn't tell you the whole story and for at least the reason of equivocal writing don't deserved to be believed. That's no matter, because here's the kicker: a few hours after the incident, my aunt called my mom to apologize. She explained to my mom what happened for the second time (I'd already blubbered in her ear) and how she was in the wrong, how it was bad timing, how I didn't deserve to be yelled at, etc. All of this, to my mom. Thank the stars that my mother, my hero, relayed the message to me quickly and for the second time today assuaged my pain by confirming our beliefs: I was right, it was all her fault, that meanie. But still I was disappointed, because the apology didn't belong on my mom's end of the receiver. It belonged in mine.
This wouldn't be worth writing about if it weren't the second time in as many months that an apology that should've been directed to me instead went to someone who loves me. A couple of months ago I quit my former gym because of a disgusting series of events in which a big sweaty man said inappropriate things over and over again to a smaller sweaty me to the soundtrack of Def Leppard's Greatest. (It was a gross gym and I'm so glad to be out of it.) After that incident, in which I made my disgust and intention to leave the gym very clear to sweaty man, said sweaty man calls Brock to apologize for anything he said to me that might've been offensive. Calls my husband!
So I'm wondering if I'm stuck in some circle of Dante's hell, but one on earth, in which I, the profuse apologizer, become surrounded by strange and angry non-apologizers, and find myself apologizing to others for their non-apologizing ways. Hit me, non-apologizers, tell me you don't love me, that I should never write another word, that I'm a terrible teacher and not inspiring and not the things I'd always hoped to be when I became a real live adult, and I'll respond with an apology. For making you be strange and angry. For not being able to show you bugginess. For being Brooke instead.
When I first heard this years ago, I was incredibly neurotic if not smart, and I thought, oh, she and I would get along. We'd apologize even for getting along so well. If someone I love is having a bad day, my first assumption is that I'm responsible. When someone doesn't call me back, like, within five minutes after I leave a message, it must be because I haven't made amends for one or another of my indiscretions. Also since I tend to snap quickly and frequently for reasons I don't understand until immediately after the snap, I have just cause to apologize almost daily. So along with being a crier, I'm an apologizer.
(Quick aside: I'm always telling my students how people who march around saying, "Let me tell you about me: I'm _______ type of person" really grates on my nerves. And I'm fast discovering that this blog is that very obnoxious self-defining thing, only perhaps worse because instead of letting the words die in the air, I'm chiseling them into some wall of my computer, and yours. I never said I wasn't hypocritical.)
Now for a slight turn: I've gotten into maybe a handful of verbal arguments since I've been a real live adult. One of the few was with my sister last year, and it ended with some face slaps and hair tugging, so now that I think of it that probably counts as a fist fight. It's a lot of pressure being the educated, equanimous adult in the family.
The last verbal argument happened earlier today, and it was with my aunt, my mom's sister. This blog isn't a place to air out the dirty details, but I can say that the whole discussion was stunning and that in this argument, unlike the many in my life, I had very little to say. I let her rant at me for minutes while I cried and then hung up with a final "I'm sorry!".
Daily I make dozens of mistakes, and say and think mean things and become happy when bad stuff happens to Republicans and other people I don't like. These are things for which I should apologize. But in this situation, I had no fucking reason to say I was sorry.
It's okay if you don't believe me. I didn't tell you the whole story and for at least the reason of equivocal writing don't deserved to be believed. That's no matter, because here's the kicker: a few hours after the incident, my aunt called my mom to apologize. She explained to my mom what happened for the second time (I'd already blubbered in her ear) and how she was in the wrong, how it was bad timing, how I didn't deserve to be yelled at, etc. All of this, to my mom. Thank the stars that my mother, my hero, relayed the message to me quickly and for the second time today assuaged my pain by confirming our beliefs: I was right, it was all her fault, that meanie. But still I was disappointed, because the apology didn't belong on my mom's end of the receiver. It belonged in mine.
This wouldn't be worth writing about if it weren't the second time in as many months that an apology that should've been directed to me instead went to someone who loves me. A couple of months ago I quit my former gym because of a disgusting series of events in which a big sweaty man said inappropriate things over and over again to a smaller sweaty me to the soundtrack of Def Leppard's Greatest. (It was a gross gym and I'm so glad to be out of it.) After that incident, in which I made my disgust and intention to leave the gym very clear to sweaty man, said sweaty man calls Brock to apologize for anything he said to me that might've been offensive. Calls my husband!
So I'm wondering if I'm stuck in some circle of Dante's hell, but one on earth, in which I, the profuse apologizer, become surrounded by strange and angry non-apologizers, and find myself apologizing to others for their non-apologizing ways. Hit me, non-apologizers, tell me you don't love me, that I should never write another word, that I'm a terrible teacher and not inspiring and not the things I'd always hoped to be when I became a real live adult, and I'll respond with an apology. For making you be strange and angry. For not being able to show you bugginess. For being Brooke instead.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Snap Fitness
Tonight Brock and I went to the gym together for the first time in weeks. First he was sick, then it was my turn. Most times I go by myself anyway because run alone with my headphones. I don't like company in the gym. I run rogue.
Lately I've felt really shitty, coughing up green stuff, so the thought of picking up a weight tonight was daunting. It was even harder to do. Instead of using my usual 12 pound weights to do lateral raises, I selected the 7s. It must be said I'm not a tiny, wimpy person, but these were tiny, wimpy weights. I saw my reflection in the wall of mirrors and felt sheepish--it looked as if I were about to work out my fingers with these baby dumbbells. I felt like one of those really fat girls who do bicep curls with 3 pounds because, hey, she doesn't want to get bulky. Yeah. That's what it felt like.
Across the room Brock was laughing at me and shaking his head. So I marched right up to him and said I would never, ever go to the gym with him again. And don't he dare laugh at me. And who did he think he was, anyway?
After I did my 7s and presses and bent-over rows I realized what a dipshit I'd been. Those weights were too light. And I did look kinda silly holding them. Like so many other times in life, I'd gotten really upset about something I realized was ridiculous about thirty seconds later and had to live with the shame of it.
So as soon as we were finished working out I apologized immediately and profusely with stupid excuses in attempts to make Brock laugh: it was my broken headphones that put me in a mood, it was hearing Katy Perry over the loudspeakers spliced with Jay-Z in my earplugs, it was my congested chest, it was PMS! In short, "I'm sorry I snapped."
Brock just flared his nostrils and said, "I know this place is called Snap Fitness, but geez, you don't have to take it so literally."
After five years together I've turned my husband into almost as big a dork as I am. Pretty proud of that.
Lately I've felt really shitty, coughing up green stuff, so the thought of picking up a weight tonight was daunting. It was even harder to do. Instead of using my usual 12 pound weights to do lateral raises, I selected the 7s. It must be said I'm not a tiny, wimpy person, but these were tiny, wimpy weights. I saw my reflection in the wall of mirrors and felt sheepish--it looked as if I were about to work out my fingers with these baby dumbbells. I felt like one of those really fat girls who do bicep curls with 3 pounds because, hey, she doesn't want to get bulky. Yeah. That's what it felt like.
Across the room Brock was laughing at me and shaking his head. So I marched right up to him and said I would never, ever go to the gym with him again. And don't he dare laugh at me. And who did he think he was, anyway?
After I did my 7s and presses and bent-over rows I realized what a dipshit I'd been. Those weights were too light. And I did look kinda silly holding them. Like so many other times in life, I'd gotten really upset about something I realized was ridiculous about thirty seconds later and had to live with the shame of it.
So as soon as we were finished working out I apologized immediately and profusely with stupid excuses in attempts to make Brock laugh: it was my broken headphones that put me in a mood, it was hearing Katy Perry over the loudspeakers spliced with Jay-Z in my earplugs, it was my congested chest, it was PMS! In short, "I'm sorry I snapped."
Brock just flared his nostrils and said, "I know this place is called Snap Fitness, but geez, you don't have to take it so literally."
After five years together I've turned my husband into almost as big a dork as I am. Pretty proud of that.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Let's Try an Analogy...
I start lots of classes with this line. Or maybe I just interrupt classes with this line. I'm not sure, but the point is that when it comes to teaching, I'm always reaching.
Can I help it if Hotspur from 1 Henry IV reminds me exactly of George W. Bush? I mean, really. He's got no perception of reality, he believes in himself to such a degree that it would be admirable if not so damn destructive, and he can't see any other version of the world but his own (I'll admit, sometimes that's a difficult one for me to, but that's fodder for another blog).
Or if Falstaff (same play), has a point when it comes to eschewing honor for living, that life is more important than your ideals (or at least, that's the coward's--Brooke's--point of view)? And how this belief made me think of Harvey Milk's struggle for gay rights, that idealist, that activist who died for his cause because he wouldn't stop fighting for it?
Or if in my freshman comp class, I illustrate what it's like to be a great interviewer by using the example of Stephen Colbert, who is so indeed brilliant at getting people to say outrageous statements that he got Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) to say on camera, "Cocaine is a fun thing to do"?
These analogies often fall on deaf ears. Or maybe they're listening and getting it, I can't tell anymore. But here's what their eyes say: What the fuck is she talking about? I'm talking about the work, of course, I'm trying to talk about life and patterns, about the meaningfulness of all of it, the meaning of the work within themselves. But. I think for the 18-20 age range this is a little bit of the too much, too fast, too soon.
And do you know what that reminds me of? This reaching for analogies is like when I tried to get boys to fall in love with me on the first date. It wasn't like I even loved them! But I thought, surely, this person should love me, he's just a guy...and I'm Brooke! I'll decide later whether or not I'll love them back.
Only this didn't usually work. After dates with sundry undergraduates I wasn't loved nor did I love in return. We did drink a lot of Purple People Eaters though. And backed our asses up on the dance floor. Ah, late 90s, you were a time.
What else doesn't work, I must at long last admit, is this reaching in the classroom. What am I trying to do? My analogies might be good for a couple of chuckles (haha! she said "cocaine") but I don't think much learning is going on. Isn't that my goal?
(Though secretly, or as it were, not so secretly, don't I believe that being liked by students is an important pedagogical tool, and if they're laughing even a little, I'm doing something right? Aren't they learning to appropriately react to a teacher's desires? Yeah. That sounds good to me.)
So I'm going to try an analogy to make you understand my meaning here. My analogy-reaching with my students is kinda like when I'd try to go too fast in love with sundry undergraduates more than a decade ago. I'd go, "Love me now!" Then they'd go, "Hold on, lady, let's do a few shots first."
Yeah. That's exactly what it's like.
Can I help it if Hotspur from 1 Henry IV reminds me exactly of George W. Bush? I mean, really. He's got no perception of reality, he believes in himself to such a degree that it would be admirable if not so damn destructive, and he can't see any other version of the world but his own (I'll admit, sometimes that's a difficult one for me to, but that's fodder for another blog).
Or if Falstaff (same play), has a point when it comes to eschewing honor for living, that life is more important than your ideals (or at least, that's the coward's--Brooke's--point of view)? And how this belief made me think of Harvey Milk's struggle for gay rights, that idealist, that activist who died for his cause because he wouldn't stop fighting for it?
Or if in my freshman comp class, I illustrate what it's like to be a great interviewer by using the example of Stephen Colbert, who is so indeed brilliant at getting people to say outrageous statements that he got Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) to say on camera, "Cocaine is a fun thing to do"?
These analogies often fall on deaf ears. Or maybe they're listening and getting it, I can't tell anymore. But here's what their eyes say: What the fuck is she talking about? I'm talking about the work, of course, I'm trying to talk about life and patterns, about the meaningfulness of all of it, the meaning of the work within themselves. But. I think for the 18-20 age range this is a little bit of the too much, too fast, too soon.
And do you know what that reminds me of? This reaching for analogies is like when I tried to get boys to fall in love with me on the first date. It wasn't like I even loved them! But I thought, surely, this person should love me, he's just a guy...and I'm Brooke! I'll decide later whether or not I'll love them back.
Only this didn't usually work. After dates with sundry undergraduates I wasn't loved nor did I love in return. We did drink a lot of Purple People Eaters though. And backed our asses up on the dance floor. Ah, late 90s, you were a time.
What else doesn't work, I must at long last admit, is this reaching in the classroom. What am I trying to do? My analogies might be good for a couple of chuckles (haha! she said "cocaine") but I don't think much learning is going on. Isn't that my goal?
(Though secretly, or as it were, not so secretly, don't I believe that being liked by students is an important pedagogical tool, and if they're laughing even a little, I'm doing something right? Aren't they learning to appropriately react to a teacher's desires? Yeah. That sounds good to me.)
So I'm going to try an analogy to make you understand my meaning here. My analogy-reaching with my students is kinda like when I'd try to go too fast in love with sundry undergraduates more than a decade ago. I'd go, "Love me now!" Then they'd go, "Hold on, lady, let's do a few shots first."
Yeah. That's exactly what it's like.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Daddy
Though I'm sure I must have, I don't remember ever calling the man who helped make me Brooke by the name "Daddy." In my mind and memory he's Dad and Father and Roy. Growing up we weren't yuppies either--in fact, Dad and I just spoke on the phone this evening, and he warned me not to turn into a yuppie as per my fear of mice, which I was scared to explain to him may just be his fault (see previous blog for explanation). So he's not the "just call me Roy" type of dad. In my memoir I refer to him in every way but Daddy. But tonight, when we got off the phone, I almost said I love you, Daddy, but instead said Bye, and we'll talk soon. And just like every time we get off the phone, I already miss him.
My father can recite lines from all eight of Shakespeare's history plays. Tonight he quoted Hal's line from 1 Henry IV, "I do. I will," as it's the prescient moment in which Hal promises to someday banish Falstaff. He then summarized 2 Henry IV for me, as I haven't read it, and said that the only actor out there capable of playing Falstaff is himself, but it's too bad he's so fit and good looking.
At another point in the conversation my dad started talking about the Germans and the Russians and some important historical interchange between the two, and this was leading up to a witty joke, only I couldn't hear what he said because, you see, my dad doesn't really know how to use a phone. Half the time he's covering up the receiver with his index finger. I've seen him murder many a cell, and sometimes even use it as an ashtray.
I'm no Plath, thank god, but I've romanticized my father in similar ways. Intellectually he's a genius, but when he was married to my mother she had to do things like change the light bulbs because he couldn't. If I ever had a question--historical, philosophical, religious or otherwise--I'd think, man, I should ask my dad about that...only he wouldn't have a phone number for me to call. He'd be living somewhere mistakenly auspicious-sounding like the Friendly Inn, smoking more than cigarettes and more than that other thing you might suspect one would smoke at the Friendly Inn. During high school and college, I only knew him as the man who was never a phone call away.
Where is this going? I've always begrudged girls their daddies, I guess. Daddy's girls grew up and found ways to own other men, thus own the world. Meanwhile I could barely own myself.
An ex-boyfriend once told me that girls who were abandoned by their fathers were the best kind: so willing to please, so loving, so...desperate. According to him Daddy's girls were the pits, and I was the shit. We weren't together very long, probably because he'd so savagely sized me up without even realizing how much it hurt me to be so plainly seen. I'm guessing he was a Momma's boy.
Don't fear for me though. I'm a big person now, have learned how to love and be loved with relative ease. I still hold one thing against my father, though: he didn't teach me any salable, interesting skill. Other people in the world, people I admire, can build things and cook things and climb things and sew things and grow things and film things. Not me. I interpret things.
Though I don't underestimate myself. I want you to know I believe in my importance. Therefore I will make a correction to a previous post. In "Musophobia," I said my dad wanted to teach me to read before I turned four; it was actually before I turned three. At sixteen months I could read the words "moon" and "boy," and perhaps these nouns were prescient for moments in my life that my father would never know about, only because he wasn't curious--I would have gladly admitted everything to him.
Still, don't think I have no skill. I can be a brilliant sixteen-month-old. I can long for a Daddy like the Dickens.
My father can recite lines from all eight of Shakespeare's history plays. Tonight he quoted Hal's line from 1 Henry IV, "I do. I will," as it's the prescient moment in which Hal promises to someday banish Falstaff. He then summarized 2 Henry IV for me, as I haven't read it, and said that the only actor out there capable of playing Falstaff is himself, but it's too bad he's so fit and good looking.
At another point in the conversation my dad started talking about the Germans and the Russians and some important historical interchange between the two, and this was leading up to a witty joke, only I couldn't hear what he said because, you see, my dad doesn't really know how to use a phone. Half the time he's covering up the receiver with his index finger. I've seen him murder many a cell, and sometimes even use it as an ashtray.
I'm no Plath, thank god, but I've romanticized my father in similar ways. Intellectually he's a genius, but when he was married to my mother she had to do things like change the light bulbs because he couldn't. If I ever had a question--historical, philosophical, religious or otherwise--I'd think, man, I should ask my dad about that...only he wouldn't have a phone number for me to call. He'd be living somewhere mistakenly auspicious-sounding like the Friendly Inn, smoking more than cigarettes and more than that other thing you might suspect one would smoke at the Friendly Inn. During high school and college, I only knew him as the man who was never a phone call away.
Where is this going? I've always begrudged girls their daddies, I guess. Daddy's girls grew up and found ways to own other men, thus own the world. Meanwhile I could barely own myself.
An ex-boyfriend once told me that girls who were abandoned by their fathers were the best kind: so willing to please, so loving, so...desperate. According to him Daddy's girls were the pits, and I was the shit. We weren't together very long, probably because he'd so savagely sized me up without even realizing how much it hurt me to be so plainly seen. I'm guessing he was a Momma's boy.
Don't fear for me though. I'm a big person now, have learned how to love and be loved with relative ease. I still hold one thing against my father, though: he didn't teach me any salable, interesting skill. Other people in the world, people I admire, can build things and cook things and climb things and sew things and grow things and film things. Not me. I interpret things.
Though I don't underestimate myself. I want you to know I believe in my importance. Therefore I will make a correction to a previous post. In "Musophobia," I said my dad wanted to teach me to read before I turned four; it was actually before I turned three. At sixteen months I could read the words "moon" and "boy," and perhaps these nouns were prescient for moments in my life that my father would never know about, only because he wasn't curious--I would have gladly admitted everything to him.
Still, don't think I have no skill. I can be a brilliant sixteen-month-old. I can long for a Daddy like the Dickens.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Musophobia
The first time I remember seeing a mouse was on the cover of the first book I learned how to read, Santa Mouse. That mouse looked nice, and I liked him because he wasn't really furry or angular and always wore a red suit and hat. I could dig a mouse that wore clothes. Oh, and he had a barely-visible tail and walked properly on two legs, which was very human of him. My dad bought this book for me and, I learned later, had the goal in mind that I'd read it before I was four. I reached his goal way ahead of schedule and learned early something about pride. My dad had A Baby Who Can Read.
The second time I saw a mouse my dad murdered it in his hands. His house was infested. Each night filled itself with pittering and pattering. The sheep I'd try to count would even run away from the mice. The murder was vivid and strange, like the nightmares you get when you're sick. I was in bed reading some bigger book to dad and one of the mice in his closet wouldn't stop squealing. When I wouldn't buy dad's poetic line--that perhaps that nice mouse was trying to read a book to her father--he sighed and ran to "take care of it." For a reason I can't remember, perhaps to make me understand the truth about mice, that they are small and inconsequential, that they cannot harm anyone, or maybe because he'd finished up the six pack, my dad dangled the mouse a few feet in front of my face. I screamed. The mouse screamed. My dad said "Goddammit!" and the mouse disappeared into his hands and there was silence. Strangulation? Smothering? I still don't know the exact cause of death, but my dad's hand was the penultimate coffin. Then, the toilet, his pink toothpick tail the last of him to go down.
Twenty five years later I've discovered my worst fears are true. It hasn't been cockroach poop on the kitchen counter all these weeks, something as easily dealt with as the crumpling of looseleaf. I turned on the light in the kitchen and prepared to take care of that sinkful of dishes and the mouse--no shit--stopped in his place on the counter, blinked once, and ran under the cutting board that I laid across the stovetop grates to dry (unbeknownst to me, creating the perfect tent for a mouse to settle under). Minutes later when I stopped screaming I realized I was in the dining room now, plates still in hand, and Brock was patting me on the head like the scared little girl I felt I was and saying all would be well soon. We just need some good traps. Meanwhile I was thinking we need a better fortified house.
I can anticipate an appropriate response to this: you live in the woods, you're surrounded by big and small creatures, many of which can actually hurt you, so grow up and get over it. Trust me, I'm trying. But so much of every day is tied to that moment with my father, one of a handful of memories that I don't need Proust's madeleine to recall. It's always there, that toothpick tail a swinging pendulum in my subconscious.
Which leads me to this question: can I murder a mouse? At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical liberal who brakes for every squirrel in the road, I have to balk at the idea. It's possible I'm scared of all the others I've come across in this life because of how that first one dies. I basically ratted it out (ew: bad pun). If I hadn't done that, then my dad wouldn't have searched and swung and destroyed, and I probably wouldn't have this irrational fear. In other words it's all my fault, and now I've got to kill this mouse to rid myself of the fear of the first (either that or I have to kill my father...clearly I've forgotten Freud).
Several weeks ago my friend Jessica found a baby mouse dying in the woods behind her house and has been feeding it some mouse-formula from a tiny mouse-bottle ever since. I am not Jessica. I can let a mouse starve. But can I set up a device to crush, torture, dash it out of its life? Not sure, but I do know it's got to be gone from my house or I won't be able to eat. As it is I'm not looking forward to my coffee and English muffin breakfast tomorrow morning. I may have to skip it. Brooke's breakfast-less birthday. Some creative thinking must be done to solve this problem, and I'm not disregarding hypnosis as a possibility. Though I'm dubious about the effect of a swinging pendulum watch just feet in front of my face.
10,000 Hours
On the eve of my 29th birthday all I can think is I don't want to work. I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, a book which I'm teaching my freshmen this semester, and one of its principle theories is that in order to be a real master at whatever it is you want to do--guitar playing, football, law, writing--you've got to put in 10,000 hours. Do the calculations, or don't: either way you've gotta know this is a fuckload of time.
The first day of class I asked my students to calculate how long they've been students. We figured if they went to school for 8 hours a day, about 200 days per year, that after 7 years they'd just hit the 11,000-hour mark. But then I asked them how much of that time they'd spent truly being a student, being intellectually as well as physically present. Most said it was less than half that amount of time, a few said they spent little time at all being real students. After giving these students high-fives for their honesty I insisted they get their asses in gear, that they wouldn't live forever. Then they got scared and looked at me funny, in the same way I often look at my own reflection in the mirror.
All this made me think of myself, how much time I've spent being a real writer. I decided in earnest I liked to write when I was in high school, but because it came so easily I spent little time on it. My writing and journaling and private ideas English teachers force us to share for a grade were the only moments in school in which I received positive recognition. So maybe I spent a little more time on my journals than on math. I didn't treat writing like a genuine skill to be built and crafted until much later. Sadly, my seriousness about writing came even after graduate school, which I look back now as three years where I probably put in a full 10,000 hours toward my mastery of drinking and self-loathing.
In college I took workshops: nonfiction, poetry, fiction, playwriting. When I received an assignment I thought about it nonstop for days. Then, the night before it was due I wouldn't sleep. I'd crank. Write for hours, stop to look outside the window or clean the toilets or long for someone to love me, and then write again. Editing was something real writers did and I was only 19, after all. I figured I'd still produce something better than the rest of the class and to my detriment, that was usually true.
In graduate school I took workshops, all of the above. The only difference was such a misguided one I want to slay the seven-years-ago me: I truly believed all the hard work was over. I'd gotten here, after all, to the hallowed halls of Allen at LSU. Not everyone gets into an MFA program, and many many would-be writers are placed on hold. But I got in and got funded immediately. True, I probably had some strings pulled by my undergrad professors who loved me, but however I got in, I was in. This is the problem, I suppose, with allowing 21 year olds to pursue the MFA. Or at least me at 21. Then and now I've no discernable skill besides my desire to write. And as you know from reading the first sentence of this blog, though I'm approaching an advanced age, I sometimes still don't want to put in the work I know is necessary.
So I'm writing this now with the recognition I've got to put in the work, but I'm still trying to figure my own writerly calculations. How close am I to 10,000 hours? This depends on how one views a skill such as writing. If you want to be Jimi Hendrix, yeah, you've got to practice on the guitar for hours on end. In that situation I don't think just listening to good music counts.
But I wonder if it's different with writing. Are the recordable moments only the ones in which hand grips pen, or finger bounces on keyboard? Moments in which words, sentences, paragraphs are created? Though I'm clearly trying to compensate for my skinny hours, I do think other times should be incorporated if one wants to write: time thinking about your work, time reading the dictionary, learning new words, time studying what others' work is like and what should be avoided and embraced, time editing your work and reading it and loving and hating it. Maybe even time recognizing how much time you've put in so far in your life?
Some of this time has to count. If not, I'm alright, I'm okay, but here's what my calculations look like: I've written about one hour per day, seven days a week, for the last eleven years. That brings my total hours to just over 4,000. With this blog and some other journaling I did this morning I suppose I'm at 4,001. If I put my ass in gear the same way I've asked my students to and double that amount of time to 14 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, I'll reach my 10,000 hours right around my 36th birthday. And I can live with that. Prodigious writers who reach brilliance early often burn out early as well. Or they die: Keats, Shelley, Plath, Sexton, David Foster Wallace, etc. And I certainly don't want to die. Thus, the hours come slowly. (See how that works?)
But still I'm back where I began, not wanting to work. I so don't want to that my desk plant, the one with the ironing-board-shaped leaves, is reaching toward the window because in lieu of the water it needs, it will take the sun. Knowing this I'm still too lazy to give it water. Doing so might make me forget that I've sat here to write. Outside my window the pine needles want less cold, more sun, and turn brown despite themselves. Listlessly they hang. Listlessly so do I. But if I note at least a little of what I think and see as I sit here, so not wanting to work, then I've done something. I've spent five minutes more.
The first day of class I asked my students to calculate how long they've been students. We figured if they went to school for 8 hours a day, about 200 days per year, that after 7 years they'd just hit the 11,000-hour mark. But then I asked them how much of that time they'd spent truly being a student, being intellectually as well as physically present. Most said it was less than half that amount of time, a few said they spent little time at all being real students. After giving these students high-fives for their honesty I insisted they get their asses in gear, that they wouldn't live forever. Then they got scared and looked at me funny, in the same way I often look at my own reflection in the mirror.
All this made me think of myself, how much time I've spent being a real writer. I decided in earnest I liked to write when I was in high school, but because it came so easily I spent little time on it. My writing and journaling and private ideas English teachers force us to share for a grade were the only moments in school in which I received positive recognition. So maybe I spent a little more time on my journals than on math. I didn't treat writing like a genuine skill to be built and crafted until much later. Sadly, my seriousness about writing came even after graduate school, which I look back now as three years where I probably put in a full 10,000 hours toward my mastery of drinking and self-loathing.
In college I took workshops: nonfiction, poetry, fiction, playwriting. When I received an assignment I thought about it nonstop for days. Then, the night before it was due I wouldn't sleep. I'd crank. Write for hours, stop to look outside the window or clean the toilets or long for someone to love me, and then write again. Editing was something real writers did and I was only 19, after all. I figured I'd still produce something better than the rest of the class and to my detriment, that was usually true.
In graduate school I took workshops, all of the above. The only difference was such a misguided one I want to slay the seven-years-ago me: I truly believed all the hard work was over. I'd gotten here, after all, to the hallowed halls of Allen at LSU. Not everyone gets into an MFA program, and many many would-be writers are placed on hold. But I got in and got funded immediately. True, I probably had some strings pulled by my undergrad professors who loved me, but however I got in, I was in. This is the problem, I suppose, with allowing 21 year olds to pursue the MFA. Or at least me at 21. Then and now I've no discernable skill besides my desire to write. And as you know from reading the first sentence of this blog, though I'm approaching an advanced age, I sometimes still don't want to put in the work I know is necessary.
So I'm writing this now with the recognition I've got to put in the work, but I'm still trying to figure my own writerly calculations. How close am I to 10,000 hours? This depends on how one views a skill such as writing. If you want to be Jimi Hendrix, yeah, you've got to practice on the guitar for hours on end. In that situation I don't think just listening to good music counts.
But I wonder if it's different with writing. Are the recordable moments only the ones in which hand grips pen, or finger bounces on keyboard? Moments in which words, sentences, paragraphs are created? Though I'm clearly trying to compensate for my skinny hours, I do think other times should be incorporated if one wants to write: time thinking about your work, time reading the dictionary, learning new words, time studying what others' work is like and what should be avoided and embraced, time editing your work and reading it and loving and hating it. Maybe even time recognizing how much time you've put in so far in your life?
Some of this time has to count. If not, I'm alright, I'm okay, but here's what my calculations look like: I've written about one hour per day, seven days a week, for the last eleven years. That brings my total hours to just over 4,000. With this blog and some other journaling I did this morning I suppose I'm at 4,001. If I put my ass in gear the same way I've asked my students to and double that amount of time to 14 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, I'll reach my 10,000 hours right around my 36th birthday. And I can live with that. Prodigious writers who reach brilliance early often burn out early as well. Or they die: Keats, Shelley, Plath, Sexton, David Foster Wallace, etc. And I certainly don't want to die. Thus, the hours come slowly. (See how that works?)
But still I'm back where I began, not wanting to work. I so don't want to that my desk plant, the one with the ironing-board-shaped leaves, is reaching toward the window because in lieu of the water it needs, it will take the sun. Knowing this I'm still too lazy to give it water. Doing so might make me forget that I've sat here to write. Outside my window the pine needles want less cold, more sun, and turn brown despite themselves. Listlessly they hang. Listlessly so do I. But if I note at least a little of what I think and see as I sit here, so not wanting to work, then I've done something. I've spent five minutes more.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Some Reading
If I said I was shy you might not believe me, but if you're reading me you must know me well enough to guess I'm insecure. This is why readings of any kind are hell for me. For this reason I think the best thing to read at a reading is something super meta-, that pokes fun at what you're doing or yourself or someone in the room--preferably all three. The audience usually likes this, because it makes them feel as if they are reading themselves.
That's another weird thing about readings: if it's a round-robin with a lot of readers, it feels as if all of them are just waiting to read their work. They aren't listening. We might as well be a roomful of cokeheads pretending to listen but really just waiting for our turns to speak. Whatev. I read on Wednesday and even though I was full of the whooping cough I got a few laughs and that's all a writer who wants to inspire bugginess can ask for.
Things you should know if you read this and don't know Vince: he's absurd, speaks in absurd poems, drinks a lot, has a beard, has bad taste in rap, has written an exceptionalist manifesto which I do not understand, and is my friend.
This is for Vince, and it's called Some Reading.
It’s ten-thirty and I’m on the phone with Vince trying to convince him I shouldn’t read poetry at Teddy’s. “Look, Vince, I’m not a poet anymore.” “Fuck nonfiction,” says Vince. “Exceptionalism. Whiskey. Hamburger with pickles. Talk radio. Kidney disease. America.” I say, “I’ll say! But look, Vince—I still don’t write poetry anymore. I don’t get line breaks. I write about my life, prosaically. In prose, I mean. You know.” “Fuck it,” says Vince. “Borrow my bicycle.” So two weeks later as Brock and I are driving to Baton Rouge and I’ve got my memoir in my backpack I’m thinking, that fucking Vince is really gonna make me read poems. I mean, as soon as I get up on that stage and start reading something about my grandma and how she breastfed me, he’ll really lose his shit. I know the guy—he will not be amused. I’m scared, and that’s saying something, if you can imagine how it was for me growing up with someone like my grandmother! I ask Brock, “What should I write for the reading? Quick! We’ve got eight hours!” And he says, “Thinking about Poetry is so unsatisfying,” and he switches out the Jerky Boys CD for The Blueprint III, which incidentally, Vince thinks he’s too cool for. No shit. Jay-Z does not compare to Lil’ Geezy or whoever the hell. I mean, we’re friends with this guy. We like him, and we have to listen to this kind of stuff. But we go visit him anyway because he’s given us a place to stay, plus he’s lovable (for an exceptionalist) and we’re laughing now and there is whiskey and that does improve my situation and also Brock just winked my way and that’s poetry enough for me, but still I would’ve rather read to you about my grandmother, her dry breasts, or maybe about the time I punched my pregnant sister because she was asking for it, just ask Brock, and instead I just read a poem I’m hardly even capable of writing because of that goddamned bearded exceptionalist Vince.
That's another weird thing about readings: if it's a round-robin with a lot of readers, it feels as if all of them are just waiting to read their work. They aren't listening. We might as well be a roomful of cokeheads pretending to listen but really just waiting for our turns to speak. Whatev. I read on Wednesday and even though I was full of the whooping cough I got a few laughs and that's all a writer who wants to inspire bugginess can ask for.
Things you should know if you read this and don't know Vince: he's absurd, speaks in absurd poems, drinks a lot, has a beard, has bad taste in rap, has written an exceptionalist manifesto which I do not understand, and is my friend.
This is for Vince, and it's called Some Reading.
It’s ten-thirty and I’m on the phone with Vince trying to convince him I shouldn’t read poetry at Teddy’s. “Look, Vince, I’m not a poet anymore.” “Fuck nonfiction,” says Vince. “Exceptionalism. Whiskey. Hamburger with pickles. Talk radio. Kidney disease. America.” I say, “I’ll say! But look, Vince—I still don’t write poetry anymore. I don’t get line breaks. I write about my life, prosaically. In prose, I mean. You know.” “Fuck it,” says Vince. “Borrow my bicycle.” So two weeks later as Brock and I are driving to Baton Rouge and I’ve got my memoir in my backpack I’m thinking, that fucking Vince is really gonna make me read poems. I mean, as soon as I get up on that stage and start reading something about my grandma and how she breastfed me, he’ll really lose his shit. I know the guy—he will not be amused. I’m scared, and that’s saying something, if you can imagine how it was for me growing up with someone like my grandmother! I ask Brock, “What should I write for the reading? Quick! We’ve got eight hours!” And he says, “Thinking about Poetry is so unsatisfying,” and he switches out the Jerky Boys CD for The Blueprint III, which incidentally, Vince thinks he’s too cool for. No shit. Jay-Z does not compare to Lil’ Geezy or whoever the hell. I mean, we’re friends with this guy. We like him, and we have to listen to this kind of stuff. But we go visit him anyway because he’s given us a place to stay, plus he’s lovable (for an exceptionalist) and we’re laughing now and there is whiskey and that does improve my situation and also Brock just winked my way and that’s poetry enough for me, but still I would’ve rather read to you about my grandmother, her dry breasts, or maybe about the time I punched my pregnant sister because she was asking for it, just ask Brock, and instead I just read a poem I’m hardly even capable of writing because of that goddamned bearded exceptionalist Vince.
Soybeans
This poem is Brock-approved, which is the only reason I'm posting it. Because I don't consider myself a poet anymore, I don't feel like an asshole as posting poems as blogs. I didn't read this at Teddy's because I felt like I was dying and just read a funny poem about Vince (perhaps only funny if you know him), which I will post once I get it onto my computer.
This is for Brock, and it's called Soybeans.
Inside the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
I find one of Brock’s discarded lines:
“In the grocery aisle, the soybeans are notoriously absent.”
So loving this line that’s never found another home,
I place it in a new white box:
Facebook status.
Suddenly, friends believe I’m a poet again.
They say, only you could make grocery shopping
poetic, Brooke. Only you
could make soybeans sexy. Maybe I just needed
to see the word again next to my name: poet.
Blue name tag: Hello, My Name Is Poet.
Now, as long as I can avoid my own face in the mirror, I’m on a roll.
Now, I compose my own line: “tomato soup and grilled cheese for my sick buggy and for me.”
One more: “avocados sit glibly in their rows.”
Only…my poetic lines aren’t as poetic as his.
See how that works?
I hate the thief in my heart and the poet in my husband’s.
I take a pen to bed, hide it under the pillow: a way to weaponize love.
That last phrase I just wrote: a way to weaponize love—I stole that
from some guy on Keith Olbermann.
I don’t even know what it means.
Now Brock’s snoring—the soft kind that never wakes me up
but while awake, I can be appreciative about.
Holding fast to pen I remain vigilant:
of the air wending in and out of his mouth
when suddenly the air stops, his eyes are open,
and he ends this poem.
This is for Brock, and it's called Soybeans.
Inside the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
I find one of Brock’s discarded lines:
“In the grocery aisle, the soybeans are notoriously absent.”
So loving this line that’s never found another home,
I place it in a new white box:
Facebook status.
Suddenly, friends believe I’m a poet again.
They say, only you could make grocery shopping
poetic, Brooke. Only you
could make soybeans sexy. Maybe I just needed
to see the word again next to my name: poet.
Blue name tag: Hello, My Name Is Poet.
Now, as long as I can avoid my own face in the mirror, I’m on a roll.
Now, I compose my own line: “tomato soup and grilled cheese for my sick buggy and for me.”
One more: “avocados sit glibly in their rows.”
Only…my poetic lines aren’t as poetic as his.
See how that works?
I hate the thief in my heart and the poet in my husband’s.
I take a pen to bed, hide it under the pillow: a way to weaponize love.
That last phrase I just wrote: a way to weaponize love—I stole that
from some guy on Keith Olbermann.
I don’t even know what it means.
Now Brock’s snoring—the soft kind that never wakes me up
but while awake, I can be appreciative about.
Holding fast to pen I remain vigilant:
of the air wending in and out of his mouth
when suddenly the air stops, his eyes are open,
and he ends this poem.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
My Name is Brooke, and I'm a Poet
I'm reading at Teddy's in Baton Rouge tomorrow night. This is the first time I'll read poetry in front of a large audience in years (maybe three? yikes!). On top of this I've got to read for about ten minutes and that equals about four poems all of which I'll post here for the two of you to read.
Here's the poem I know I'll read because it's safe. I wrote it high as a kite last Thanksgiving, and titled it this way because it took about 30 seconds to write and another 30 seconds to read, and at the time I thought that was pretty funny. Here it is:
30-second Thanksgiving Poem
The room smells like cigarettes
and we’ve moved with impressive swiftness
from Sarah Palin to Beowulf’s gods
then to the capital G God of Milton and America
but I’ve got to piss
so I go to do so
and bend my head between my legs
to make it come out faster
so I can return the conversation quickly
and proffer my piece:
I think intellectuals can believe in God
even though I don’t
even though in my non-judgment, I’m judging
and I hate that
but Broc’s there
and Jen’s there
and Brock’s there
and they’ve got their pieces on the subject
which don’t necessarily cohere with mine
but they’re all smart
so who is correct
I’m not sure but I love them all
I even love myself right now
and I don’t know of the veracity
or perfection in any of us
but God does
Here's the poem I know I'll read because it's safe. I wrote it high as a kite last Thanksgiving, and titled it this way because it took about 30 seconds to write and another 30 seconds to read, and at the time I thought that was pretty funny. Here it is:
30-second Thanksgiving Poem
The room smells like cigarettes
and we’ve moved with impressive swiftness
from Sarah Palin to Beowulf’s gods
then to the capital G God of Milton and America
but I’ve got to piss
so I go to do so
and bend my head between my legs
to make it come out faster
so I can return the conversation quickly
and proffer my piece:
I think intellectuals can believe in God
even though I don’t
even though in my non-judgment, I’m judging
and I hate that
but Broc’s there
and Jen’s there
and Brock’s there
and they’ve got their pieces on the subject
which don’t necessarily cohere with mine
but they’re all smart
so who is correct
I’m not sure but I love them all
I even love myself right now
and I don’t know of the veracity
or perfection in any of us
but God does
Monday, October 5, 2009
On Being Sick
A leaden lung, two timber legs. My back made from the earth, half-dollars for eyelids. Allow me this tiny attempt at poetry: I have been sick.
Woolf and Didion and others have written beautifully about illness, about the prison of the sick-bed and the horror of the congested head, but I can’t quote them now, because my fingers marching across the keyboard are marathon enough. To pick up a book, to bear the weight of all that ink on sheaves, might be deadly.
I’ll just try to relate what happened last night on top of our brand new sheet set from Wal-mart—army-white colored—which I’ve christened with my sickness. I lay there, sunken down, becoming part of the pillow top. For a moment I had the secret wish that someone would break into the house and brutally murder me, preferably with a sharpened kitchen knife, because to be stabbed would be something visceral, a pain to know, and though it would mean my end, to be finished on that note must certainly be more dignified than passing banally atop pressed army white. Mainframe brand. 200 thread-count. Orange tag clearance sale.
I don’t want to be murdered, not really. But there was a feeling last night, and it was that a force was pushing me into the earth. How low could I go? It felt a giant iron made for unwrinkling humans moved back and forth across my torso: up towards the head to help expel the breath, back down to the feet to secure another inhalation. Something mechanical and invisible in the ether was responsible for my every action and breath. I was alive because something I couldn’t even see said so.
Since I’ve been a grown-up I haven’t taken a sick day, soldiering forth through classes with tissues and Halls Vapor candy. This will likely happen again tomorrow. Something mechanical inside me will find words to say about Henry IV and the need for every person alive to know Shakespeare. But for now I’m of iron, I’m about iron, I’m even among and amongst iron. I am the heaviest human alive, and can see with surprising clarity each thread to count on these new sheets. Being sick often gives me fresh eyes. Still, though, I have a wrinkled stomach and lung and heart.
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