Fuck it, I'm not doing it. In case you don't know what it is, it's National Novel Writing Month. A few minutes ago I wrote a blog that's super-ambitious, too ambitious for a Sunday evening with a test to write and papers to grade and a job to (temporarily) loathe, and it didn't come together properly and I'll have to think on it for the next two weeks. And then it still may not work out well. But, at least it's written. But damn, if it's written and nobody gets it (as they shouldn't), what the hell kind of a writer am I?
Just a few years ago I thought an imminent test was a big deal. If I missed a class I felt sick about it. Those days I didn't understand the word talent or consider what it would mean to lack for it. Now every day is vomitous, especially days like today, when I'm convinced I should never write another word a-fucking-gain.
So let me rant for a few minutes and state clearly why I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year or ever:
1) Ambitious writers piss me off. I'm talking to you, Stephen King, because who has the time to read your 40+ novels, and where is your poetry by the way, and fuck you for saying in your oh-so-well-written On Writing that it's impossible to be a writer and watch TV. Me and Chris Matthews and the Housewives of Atlanta say you can have the finger--the middle--for writing that so glibly (and, fine, eloquently).
2) I don't understand the concept, really, of NaNoWriMo, since I haven't bothered to explore the website because the Housewives of Atlanta reunion is so compelling.
3) Blogging takes enough time as does pouting about not having completed my first book yet.
4) My book, yes! Why don't I take this month to finish my book so I won't live in the University of Alabama land of composition forever!
5) Finishing my book requires a lot of work and after all I want to be a great teacher and inspirational and organizational, which means I'd better grade those papers soon.
6) The only person I've ever known to write a book in a month, when asked what authors she read to get inspired to write, said the most inspirational writer she's ever known was herself. If writing a book in a month means being anything like that asshole, screw it--I'm sans Nanowrimo.
After having composed this list quickly and easily I've decided that one goal I have is to post at least one blog every day this month. Even Meghan McCain can do that, and she gets paid for it.
A caveat, though: if I'm writing one blog per day that means they'll have to come quickly. Therefore I won't be able to revise and think thoughts through and will thus often be dumb. I hope readers are ready for this, and if they aren't, I hope November finds them very busy in other endeavors.
And if you're writing a book this month, fuck you and you aren't my friend.
Unless you are. And in that case, I'm sorry for the last three minutes of your life.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
My Last Cigarette
Our Australian shepherd King, in the light of 8 a.m., in the bite of the cold and early burn of the sun, is absolutely regal. He lives up to his name, as hopefully will our future son, Cash Guthrie. If things go well, and I'm sure they will, Brock and I will die poor and a long time from now, with hopefully our names written down at least one spine. And our son will be able to afford a couple of lovely funerals.
As I rocked on the porch this morning King tilted his head high, looking east and not squinting a bit. The original buggy is always on guard for something approaching. Back in Baton Rouge this could be a mailman, or a kid selling candy, or the dozens of cars passing our Cloverdale home every day. Each approach not mine or Brock's was deemed The Enemy. And if you weren't us, or someone we loved, King could bark you back to where you came from. Strangers, King don't play that.
Maybe this morning as he balanced straight and firm on his hind legs King was thinking he's living so far into the woods he never sees strangers anymore, and this is worrisome. This possibly led to some profound questions: Who do I hate, Who do I love, Where are all of you...and maybe I was thinking these things too. Courtney's pack of Ultra Lights sat on the wicker table holding perhaps her last five cigarettes on this earth (she'll start her Chantix prescription tomorrow), so I lit one up. Seeing as I only smoke with Courtney, because it reminds me of our first semester teaching and how much I love her, I considered that this might be my last one on earth too. Isn't it pretty to think so? I thought.
Other pretty things: the way my friends take care of me in ways so overwhelming I can hardly appreciate them. Courtney, with books and music and beer and decor and food. Greg, with what's baked in his kitchen and what's on his mind. Generous ears from Jessica and Amy. My mom, the best, filling cards and emails that could be read as lessons to anyone on how to love well. They all do it so facilely, this loving me. And sometimes the most I can offer in return is the emotional equivalent of a handshake. I love you, don't touch me. Well, you can touch me, but not so much. If you don't mind I'm gonna stand over here and half-listen for awhile because to listen wholly means I'm really in for some pain. Your pain plus mine plus the pain of the unidentified suffering humans in far-off regions of the earth is too much for me to handle. I've got my husband. I've got my buggies. I love you, I do, but it's a good thing you're over there, where I can get away with only half-listening. Right here's plenty full.
* * * * *
For that first searing pain, though, I really listened: it was me and Brock inside my Toyota Echo after a trip to the casino in 2004, a date before we officially started counting dates. That night we won $250 on slots and drank $50 worth of free Beam. Brock said the win was inevitable because I was with him--my presence was that powerful--and the greatest beauty of it all was that I didn't know it. This was before casinos were scary and depressing, back when I could laugh while inside them. Back then, I only saw was Brock's face, the vagueness of light and his halo of cigarette smoke. A Camel Light first in his mouth, then in mine.
There was no sexy way to hold a cigarette, nor did I need to find one, I realized. All I wanted was to fold this person into me and protect and love him, and he loved that--though he was far from trusting it. You love me, he thought, but don't touch me. Well, you can touch me there, but not here.
Later that casino night I dropped him off at his apartment. I was not sleeping over, I was independent and had very important things to do the next day. Neither of us wanted him to get out of my car and go inside. The Toyota Echo's speakers whispered Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, and when "You're a Big Girl Now" began to play, Brock wept without tears. This, and many other things, he showed me was possible. I leaned over to the passenger's side, and held and stroked and held, and didn't say anything, not even after he told me, "It hurts." Back then I was dumb to it, but Bob Dylan knew, because on top of Brock's quiet sadness he sang another kind:
Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence,
He's singin' his song for me at his own expense.
And I'm just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin' just for you.
I hope that you can hear,
Hear me singin' through these tears.
Dangerous women in Ohio brought Brock to Louisiana, and I was so even and boring I could never be dangerous. Back then, that night in my car, this was my biggest fear. "You're the most dangerous kind," he told me later, "because you are caring and everyone can love you and you can love everyone back." Even King, too cool for most of Brock's folks, loved me a lot. With his paws on my shoulders he licked circles around my face every time I stepped in their door. Dangerous women bored him, and when they became enraged he balanced his hind legs in the corner of the room and slowly sunk down on his belly, paw over paw, a resting place for his chin.
That night at the casino was the last time I remember Brock and I smoking alone together, without the company of smoker-friends. We simply stopped buying packs. Who needs this? we thought. Whiskey is good without cigarettes, so long as you're listening to me.
Years later, and only after working my way through this blog, I'm not sure I completely listened to that first pain, or if I did, it was only halfway. The first pain Brock shared with me bore my first real one. Yes, I'd had boyfriends before, and some punched and spit and ignored and cursed me, but in retrospect they were funny because they were all so small. If they'd made me cry I couldn't remember it. Brock was as enormous as his sadness, and from here on out my tears would be infinite.
It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way.
There's guilt here, though, because my first reaction to loving the saddest man in the world was to consider my newly-born pain. I asked myself as I held and stroked and held: how do I get him out of this? What woman can I kill? What memories can I stab away with kisses? The proliferation of Is is only pronounced now in the white space I'm writing in. Only now I wonder where Brock resided in my insides as he rested his head on my shoulder. Did I let him in right here, or did I hold him away, just let him touch over there?
After Courtney and Greg leave this morning, Brock marvels over Courtney's gifts, and though he doesn't say it I know what we're both thinking: I'm not the best gift-giver in the world. He says we need to get her something really nice before we see her again, and I agree. Surely there's a CD, book, or movie with her name on it. She's easily inspired, for which we're grateful.
Brock's not thinking this but I am: years after that first hurt I'm not even so good at listening. I should be thinking of a present, really brainstorming it, but it's just the memory of Brock on my shoulder and a heart that was halfway empty. For a minute I consider my lack of concentration could be the lack of cigarettes. I can still bum from Amy. Maybe Courtney's Chantix won't work.
As I rocked on the porch this morning King tilted his head high, looking east and not squinting a bit. The original buggy is always on guard for something approaching. Back in Baton Rouge this could be a mailman, or a kid selling candy, or the dozens of cars passing our Cloverdale home every day. Each approach not mine or Brock's was deemed The Enemy. And if you weren't us, or someone we loved, King could bark you back to where you came from. Strangers, King don't play that.
Maybe this morning as he balanced straight and firm on his hind legs King was thinking he's living so far into the woods he never sees strangers anymore, and this is worrisome. This possibly led to some profound questions: Who do I hate, Who do I love, Where are all of you...and maybe I was thinking these things too. Courtney's pack of Ultra Lights sat on the wicker table holding perhaps her last five cigarettes on this earth (she'll start her Chantix prescription tomorrow), so I lit one up. Seeing as I only smoke with Courtney, because it reminds me of our first semester teaching and how much I love her, I considered that this might be my last one on earth too. Isn't it pretty to think so? I thought.
Other pretty things: the way my friends take care of me in ways so overwhelming I can hardly appreciate them. Courtney, with books and music and beer and decor and food. Greg, with what's baked in his kitchen and what's on his mind. Generous ears from Jessica and Amy. My mom, the best, filling cards and emails that could be read as lessons to anyone on how to love well. They all do it so facilely, this loving me. And sometimes the most I can offer in return is the emotional equivalent of a handshake. I love you, don't touch me. Well, you can touch me, but not so much. If you don't mind I'm gonna stand over here and half-listen for awhile because to listen wholly means I'm really in for some pain. Your pain plus mine plus the pain of the unidentified suffering humans in far-off regions of the earth is too much for me to handle. I've got my husband. I've got my buggies. I love you, I do, but it's a good thing you're over there, where I can get away with only half-listening. Right here's plenty full.
* * * * *
For that first searing pain, though, I really listened: it was me and Brock inside my Toyota Echo after a trip to the casino in 2004, a date before we officially started counting dates. That night we won $250 on slots and drank $50 worth of free Beam. Brock said the win was inevitable because I was with him--my presence was that powerful--and the greatest beauty of it all was that I didn't know it. This was before casinos were scary and depressing, back when I could laugh while inside them. Back then, I only saw was Brock's face, the vagueness of light and his halo of cigarette smoke. A Camel Light first in his mouth, then in mine.
There was no sexy way to hold a cigarette, nor did I need to find one, I realized. All I wanted was to fold this person into me and protect and love him, and he loved that--though he was far from trusting it. You love me, he thought, but don't touch me. Well, you can touch me there, but not here.
Later that casino night I dropped him off at his apartment. I was not sleeping over, I was independent and had very important things to do the next day. Neither of us wanted him to get out of my car and go inside. The Toyota Echo's speakers whispered Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, and when "You're a Big Girl Now" began to play, Brock wept without tears. This, and many other things, he showed me was possible. I leaned over to the passenger's side, and held and stroked and held, and didn't say anything, not even after he told me, "It hurts." Back then I was dumb to it, but Bob Dylan knew, because on top of Brock's quiet sadness he sang another kind:
Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence,
He's singin' his song for me at his own expense.
And I'm just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin' just for you.
I hope that you can hear,
Hear me singin' through these tears.
Dangerous women in Ohio brought Brock to Louisiana, and I was so even and boring I could never be dangerous. Back then, that night in my car, this was my biggest fear. "You're the most dangerous kind," he told me later, "because you are caring and everyone can love you and you can love everyone back." Even King, too cool for most of Brock's folks, loved me a lot. With his paws on my shoulders he licked circles around my face every time I stepped in their door. Dangerous women bored him, and when they became enraged he balanced his hind legs in the corner of the room and slowly sunk down on his belly, paw over paw, a resting place for his chin.
That night at the casino was the last time I remember Brock and I smoking alone together, without the company of smoker-friends. We simply stopped buying packs. Who needs this? we thought. Whiskey is good without cigarettes, so long as you're listening to me.
Years later, and only after working my way through this blog, I'm not sure I completely listened to that first pain, or if I did, it was only halfway. The first pain Brock shared with me bore my first real one. Yes, I'd had boyfriends before, and some punched and spit and ignored and cursed me, but in retrospect they were funny because they were all so small. If they'd made me cry I couldn't remember it. Brock was as enormous as his sadness, and from here on out my tears would be infinite.
It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way.
There's guilt here, though, because my first reaction to loving the saddest man in the world was to consider my newly-born pain. I asked myself as I held and stroked and held: how do I get him out of this? What woman can I kill? What memories can I stab away with kisses? The proliferation of Is is only pronounced now in the white space I'm writing in. Only now I wonder where Brock resided in my insides as he rested his head on my shoulder. Did I let him in right here, or did I hold him away, just let him touch over there?
After Courtney and Greg leave this morning, Brock marvels over Courtney's gifts, and though he doesn't say it I know what we're both thinking: I'm not the best gift-giver in the world. He says we need to get her something really nice before we see her again, and I agree. Surely there's a CD, book, or movie with her name on it. She's easily inspired, for which we're grateful.
Brock's not thinking this but I am: years after that first hurt I'm not even so good at listening. I should be thinking of a present, really brainstorming it, but it's just the memory of Brock on my shoulder and a heart that was halfway empty. For a minute I consider my lack of concentration could be the lack of cigarettes. I can still bum from Amy. Maybe Courtney's Chantix won't work.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thirty
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.
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.
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.
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