The Big Game
It's official - this is bravery week. I sometimes face situations that make my stomach do the lambada. Swimming in public. Playing sports. Talking in class. Talking to my professors (in or out of class). These fears have grown from teensy affirmations of failure, such as the boyfriend in college who announced mid-whiffle tennis game that he hoped my children wouldn't take after my athletic abilities. Or the time I forgot my monologue at a speech tournament in high school. Or when I "um"ed an entire class presentation two weeks ago. Or when I struck out in Little League when I was 13 (that wasn't an isolated incident - it was fairly consistent.)
This week, I decided to stop being such a pansy. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a pansy. Some of my best friends are pansies!*)
Last Friday, I went to a lit colloquium. That's when there's cheese and fruit and 2 liters at the back of the room and a speaker at the front who reads a paper for anywhere from twenty minutes to two hundred minutes, and then the audience rips the speaker's arms and legs off and sits back smugly. I spend the whole time looking studious while feverishly mapping out a new life plan. Heads - Carolina. Tails - California. The key? Take notes, avoid eye contact, and look pensive.
But if there's one thing I fear more than giving a paper in front of the faculty, it's attempting casual conversation with them. And there was a reception that evening.
I called my friend and pulled the "I kind of don't want to go but I kind of do so if you want me to go, I'll go." He did. My stomach got knottier the closer we got.
We walked the perimeter of the house before settling on the front door. (We were stalling?) But I was greeted by The Coolest FSU Teacher Ever. She took my chocolate pound cake and pointed me to the wine, but it was guarded by the (mangled) speaker from that morning. He said he saw me at the speech and I managed a "uh-huh. it was interesting" and grabbed a plate. I skirted the margins with the other two grad students (who looked much more comfortable in their skin).
Gradually, the night improved. Even though I cringed at the slop that came out of my mouth when they pop quizzed me on what I want to study, I realized that I could be (almost) normal around them. I listened to anecdotes and complaints, and I walked out of the house thinking maybe I wouldn't become a full-time quibbler in Cubicleville just yet. I decided to stop trying to see myself through their eyes and hear myself through their ears.
My second act of bravery was this past Monday night. (See previous post.) I tried to call and say I wasn't coming to the volleyball game. I wasn't even going to make up an excuse - just say that I was too scared. No one answered. I was nauseated.
I got to the gym an hour early and did a preliminary peek into the gym. It was three courts deep with people of all skill levels and very few kneepads. I changed clothes for twenty minutes before I went walked into gym to the girl smacking her gum at the really big folding table. There were eight sheets with team names and blank spaces and I didn't have a clue what my team name was.
"Um, I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. Like, ever. I'm scared."
She reassured me that it would be fine and went through several lists until she found my team name - the Martin Van Burens. I put my information in the first space and sat down halfway down the bleachers to watch and pray that no one else would come. It felt just like high school.
One by one, the friendly faces from my department joined me on the bleachers. We had natural athletes and people who had never touched a volleyball before. I felt a little better.
By the time we were playing, I silenced my personal internal soccer mom and enjoyed the feel of running hard to meet a crazy ball and sending it smoothly back into play. It didn't always happen that well and I didn't get the nerve to dust the mothballs off of my overhand serve, but I played well enough to enjoy myself. I'm slowly learning to forget my performance and play the game.
*It's probably time to retire this as my favorite joke. Hang up its jersey. It's too old for the game now and just keeps embarrassing itself with trying.
Fake Modesty or Genuine Ignorance?
I've decided that more frequent updates would keep me from being too overwhelmed to write my life, so I'm attempting a qvickie post. I'm really avoiding composing the scripts for the Packaging Demonstration Video for all assessment coordinators. Riveting. My few creative suggestions were praised by one editor, and "mm-hmm"ed by the other, so I'm hoping to find a middle ground. Because this is my first solo project, I want to take this seriously, but I also don't feel good turning in something as melba-toast-y as the test administration instructions. (
in a Fran Drescher voice: "Please read these instructions to yourself as I read them alooooooud." Fran will
not be the voice for my directorial debut. I hope.)
Come join me in my mini-pickle.
I was honored with this assignment because 1) no one else wanted to do it, and 2) I'm young and "good with technology." They think my "no,
really I'm not very good with this stuff" is fake modesty. Then my 40 year old co-worker had to give me a quick tutorial on "How to Use PowerPoint." Their golden child may be losing her Midas-touch for something a little less savory. Like mashed potatoes.
I can't complain because My S0-Called Job has the best characters. My Big Boss and my Equivalent are both no-nonsense and hard-nosed with a perfect balance of softness. On Friday, Big Boss came to tell me about how she got so angry that morning, she threw a testing manual against the wall and almost broke her porcelain cat. It's the only time, in all of these years, she has lost her temper. My Equivalent (I must come up with another name for her!) has helped me keep my perspective amid the tension and quick-change tempers. My priorities must exist outside of my cubicle on the fourth floor.
I have work this afternoon and class this evening before I, once again, prove that I have been overestimated. At the Department picnic last week, where I showcased my chocolate eclair and performed doughnuts-in-a-canoe, I became a bit overzealous and gave a "sure, why not!" to the intramural volleyball team.
"Hey, Tara, have you ever played volleyball?" asked my uber-athletic classmate.
I had, but both years of my high school volleyball career consisted of me discovering hip-hop during our warm-ups and getting good at cheering and getting mad at myself for my lack of coordination. I prayed that the coach wouldn't put me in and I'd have all eyes on me. More of me was interally shaking my head in the stands than in the game focusing on moving. I worked really hard and I was okay, but never great.
Tonight, I don my knee pads and step into formation one more time. ("NO! BACK, Tara, FALL BACK!!!" Fall back on my
bottom is more like it.)
Stay tuned for more tales of great adventure in the near future. (and less food imagery. I just had some Amish pancakes - made with real Amish - so I'm not sure why it keeps sneaking in there. "If ya get tired, pull over. If ya get hungry, eat something.")
Ciao!
As promised, I have included info from my old blog. Is that weird?
If you're new to the neighborhood, pull up a pineapple and enjoy.
Sunday, July 10, 2005 right here i am!
Current mood: hurricane dennis-y my sole sporadic blog reader gets my subject title, but for the rest of you figments-of-my-imagination...it references a game i used to play with my three year old cousin. in the middle of talking to her, i would act like she had just disappeared. i'd say, "hm, i wonder if she's hiding in this lampshade. or under this cookie..." she'd yank my arm or grab onto my waist to get my attention and scream, "RIGHT HERE I AM! TAAARAA!! I'M RIIIGHT HEEEERE!" when i could tell she was thoroughly fusstrated (ha), i'd suddenly "see" her again.
thanks to me, she's sure to need therapy.
and after a small break, "right here i am!!" not that you were looking, but it's nice to think it...so* i rationalized paying rent on two apartments for one month by saying that i could leisurely move box-at-a-time into my new place. i could organize my life and simplify to the bare minimum, finding various charities and women's shelters to donate my still-in-good-shape-but-not-cute-on-me-anymore clothes. perhaps i'd even sip some iced tea, listen to soothing music, and make a few resolutions...
when my mom surprised me on wednesday and told me she'd be here the next day, i retuned my reverie. i added some decorating mags, fabric swashes, and our old Singer. we could throw my furniture into the back of her car and tastefully arrange it in my new place, with iced tea still in one hand. we'd remember stories and laugh and hug - perhaps even learn something new about each other.
fast forward to friday - i got the car part right. somehow, my furniture had bred and gained weight and glared at me through a dusty haze. my mom grabbed the heaviest boxes and, when i tried to help her, she informed me that she wasn't an invalid(!!!!!) originally, i had only wanted to move the heavy, awkward pieces that couldn't fit in the back of a friend's truck. i had wanted to stay in my old place to not deal with unpacking a new place mid-semester. but my mom, a self-proclaimed "woman of action", insisted that everything be moved before she drove out of tallahassee. more friends came and helped. they were wonderful, but i didn't like to make people wade through my junk. it was my beautiful mess to suffer through. by last night, i was grumpy and sweaty and dusty and disappointed that my old apartment had vomited all over the living room of the new. but my "picked acorn" room (imagine a khaki-chocolate) is cozy and somewhat decorated. we got the internet hooked up in the new place and i'm hoping that leaving my clothes and food in the old will give me some more time with my old roommate before she leaves (and get me out of the hair of the new one while she gets used to me...) maybe i'll even lose a few pounds from my lazy aversion to walking all the way around the corner to eat. (even the word "aversion" is too active to fully express my laziness in this matter.)
either way, you're sure to hear from me more now that my life in tallahassee has significantly changed. my favorite distraction has moved and i'm taking half the classes of last session. perhaps i'll even learn to play that guitar sitting over there by Mt. Rubbermaid.
but let's not get carried away...
*i know this is an awful transition, but i feel like it gives the impression that my comment either is an extension of an earlier comment, or that it connects in some other way. so i use it too much. "he who is without sin, cast the first stone." i'm not a stone-thrower in the house of good grammar.
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Sunday, July 31, 2005 junk drawers and a guitar...
Current mood: curious An honest friend (and dern good musician) was sitting in my living room the other day and remarked on the stupidity of my perfectly good guitar sitting against the wall - unplayed. I stammered a few excuses about how busy I am all of the time, but I replayed our conversation as I went to bed that night. Now, it sits firmly lodged in my ongoing, muddled discourse on pleasure and reason – play and work. This blog is part of that discourse. The reasons I have for not posting have to do with always having something more pressing that needs to get done. I blame my childhood – a pet scapegoat. We were to maximize our time with productive endeavors. I remember my parents coming behind me in my chores – pointing out places where my diligence waned and left the dust collecting on the hard-to-reach, never-seen shelves. Or did they? Has my insecurity created an overbearing sense of inadequacy quietly closed into my junk drawer? I’m always afraid of someone opening it and seeing me in the mess. And because productivity is the prerequisite for any activity to make it into my schedule, those things that have no work value are shuffled to the bottom of the list. Such as learning the guitar. Or watching movies or reading fun books. Or writing. Or creating. Obviously, something in me births these activities. It’s why the guitar was on the top of my Christmas list four years ago; it’s why one bookcase is packed tight with unopened texts. But some now-innate Protestant work ethic has forbidden these activities. Rule #1: Play happens only when work has been exhausted. Rule #2: Play must be the development of an activity that fits under “hobbies” on an application or some skill that makes you impressive. But why? I’m not promoting an entirely hedonistic existence. I’m not condoning our dangerous propensity towards instant gratification. But something about spontaneous, unregulated play keeps you sane. Another (almost) connected story – yesterday, I finally saw Almost Famous. (A good movie is when I want to look up memorable quotes on imdb while I’m still halfway through the plot.) At one point, a semi-famous musician goes on a quest for something real* and ends up at a party in the middle of Ohio(??). While he feels like his proximity to a normal party is realness, his reputation has preceded him and dictates his treatment. Every word he speaks is gospel truth because he is Russell, lead-guitarist for Stillwater. Maybe it’s more dangerous to think we’re in the midst of something real while disregarding the underlying systems that govern our interactions? His search for something “real” has him mired in the muck of illusions? But I really dig this scene because that quest is familiar. I want something more than my productive interactions that feel more political than genuine. Maybe the only way I’m going to get there is to leave my junk drawers hanging open – to not glorify the perfectly disciplined and even-keeled OR the undisciplined rebels of structure. Somewhere in-between those two, I have to dig the distinct-therefore-beautiful qualities each person possesses – even their neurotic tendencies borne out of past hurts. And maybe it’s time to dig those things about myself, too. Absolute play lets those aspects of ourselves emerge because no one else is regulating. My resolve, a la Bridgette Jones: to stop half-@$ e-mailing or calling people out of guilt, but to be real in my interactions. Not hedonistic, but also not puritanical. And I’ll start by not feeling guilty over the Restoration Lit text I put down to write this entry. Hey - sometimes, you just gotta. I’m burning the rule-book. *A teacher once told me that we read our desires into the text. While I realize there may be many other readings of this scene, this is what I want to get from it. Indulge me, please.
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Friday, August 05, 2005 "Tucson, HERE WE COME!!"
Current mood: travel-y (a la romy & michelle's.)
the mom and i are packing up the minivan for our journey north today!! we'll hit richmond and baltimore today. we're in baltimore for the weekend, and then to nyc ("moo york city??") next week.
this blog post is boring. i'll work on one when we're en route and listening to books on tape from the cracker barrel. and planning my brother's rehearsal dinner. and i'm sleeping off the exhaustion from only having eight hours of sleep total the past three nights combined.
this should be some kind of wonderful.
and how!!
_________________________________________________________ Wednesday, August 10, 2005 these vagabond shoes...
Current mood: new york-y All day, I thought about the fact that I really wanted to post this blog today. Otherwise it gets like that chunk of time between conversations with a friend when too much has happened to ever get caught up…I’m not even sure where to start because I’ve been launched on another insane tour of quickies. (“I’ve been launched.” Like it’s not completely my own doing. Puh-lease.) Once upon a time, I began my journey with a six hour drive to Charleston at midnight last Thursday. I spent four hours napping and five hours writing before finally sending my paper off to my professor at 9am on Friday. I showered, packed, and my mom and I took off for supreme-o family bonding via I-95. We were Maryland-bound with a slight detour a little bit South of the NC Border. I bought beautiful junk. I’m sure you’ve seen the signs and have turned up your pretty little nose at Pedro’s wares. Well, shame on you. That just leaves more backscratchers and thermometer magnets for the rest of us. We stopped off in Richmond and visited my friends Matt and Amber and their adorable daughter. (When Amber was pregnant, I used my powers to pick out which toy her daughter would love best. She called me a few weeks ago to tell me that her daughter spotted the toy on the shelf, asked for it, and hasn’t put it down since. Yeesssssss.) We hit traffic and a monsoon in DC and, no thanks to mapquest, finally found my aunt’s house just outside of Baltimore. C and Dan picked me up for a few days of city living. I fell in love with the rooftop decks and the warehouses-turned-apartments-or-restaurants. And lots of track-lighting. I read books with Edes in the park, dined at chic eateries, and drank from a hubcap. I love this city and the people in it. People talk to each other here. Crazy stores (with even crazier owners) sell unique and irresistible knick-knacks. I’m in*. Monday morning, mom drove us up to Reading (Red-ding), PA to see my relatives. We had a life or death experience. And then we had a big talk about turn signals. Then we had some silence. I started on Phillip Yancey’s Soul Survivor and wanted to scrawl all over my borrowed copy of the text. Dude is a respected Christian author AND he’s a bad Christian, just like me. But this trip has been too roller-coaster-y. I’m overwhelmed with optimism and then overwhelmed with hopelessness. Mostly optimism. Many of the themes from my studies are converging right in front of me! It’s simultaneously exciting and oppressive. (the arbitrary markers of race and ethnicity, physical abnormalities both glorified and ostracized, sympathy, and the social function of charity. And this all hit a climax on my NYC trip. keep reading.) Back to Reading (Red-ding) – my cousin is a cameraman for the local community television shows and I got to watch him in action. The first show was a diversity program that lacked diversity in its panel. I got so worked up about the “we must weed out all of the bad seeds of the community” combined with “our community needs to unite now”, that I almost called from the back of the room! They all thought I was a reporter anyway because I sat and nodded and took notes. We went from impassioned community world-changers to Jim’s Auto-motion show about transmissions. Then to The Insurance Guys – who sat fat-cat happy and sold church insurance. But I’ve started thinking of a plan to change the world. I’ll keep you posted. This morning, my mom, my aunt, and I arrived in NYC via Greyhound from my aunt’s house in Reading. (Note: Our car - with the fruits of my first Ikea experience – is sitting on a street in Reading, PA. My aunt’s car was “borrowed” off of this street last Friday. They found it today sans backseat, but with a year’s supply of grease.) Just so you know, train stations don’t have lockers for your luggage.
"No one does after 9/11" is what the huffy train information lady told me. Huffy people shouldn't be allowed to work in customer service.
We heaved our way over to the TKS booth and discovered that it doesn’t sell matinee shows today. Strike 2. Finally, we dropped off our luggage at the hotel/castle and started exploring the city. I’m not sure if our failed sense of direction makes the tour of the city better or worse, but it definitely adds stress. We were trying to find the Metro station on Canal Street until my mom got us off course with an excursion into Little Italy. They got mad at me when we couldn’t find the Canal Street metro anymore in Little Italy. It forgot to make the turn with us, I suppose. Bad metro station!
I’m going to play hard-to-get with the rest of today’s story. And if you know me at all, then you know it means that it will probably be told tomorrow. (that qualifies as “sorta-challenging-to-get”, I think). It’s not that I’m working on my outdated dating strategies, but rather that I just nodded off while I was typing and hit the keyboard with my hands. And that’s always when I know it’s time… Until then… XOXO. Carmen sandiego *I reserve the right to retract this statement or to change its meaning with an addendum. (Example: “I’m in…love with Quizno’s chicken carbonara flatbread sandwiches.” Or something like that.) ___________________________________________________________
Friday, August 12, 2005 homeward bound... I'm on a bus of crazy somewhere between New York City and Reading, PA. It's almost ten p.m. and I dont know if I've ever been this tired. The bus driver just told us the rules of the bus: 1) no alcohol 2) no cell phone ringers. If you can't put it on vibrate, then turn it off. 3) no loud conversations when you do answer your cell phone Thirty seconds into our journey, a cell phone rang. The lady in the row next to me couldn't quite figure out how to answer it. After three rings, she answered. Loudly. And proceeded to you-dont-talk-to-me-like-that-young-lady her daughter and make her explain, in detail, what was wrong with the car and what she was going to do about it.
I almost can't take it. But, back to my journeys...
I've discovered that most things I've heard about New York are a lie. I was in the city for three days and didn't meet a single rude person (more than I can say for my Charleston.) Everyone was friendly and cheery and polite. We had to do all of the New York-y things to make the trip authentic food, shopping, and shows. We went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, up and down Fifth avenue, through Chinatown and Little Italy, and all through Soho (twice!). We ate at a Hungarian pastry shop, an Ethiopian restaurant, and a fantastic Chinese restaurant. I finally relived the magic of a NYCity hot dog (hah-t doig) with brown mustard and sauerkraut on our way to the show. I took pictures. I wanted to see Rent, but I didn't think my mom and aunt were ready for that, so we settled on The Producers. We didn't do any research but I figured it was mainstream enough and popular enough that it wouldn't be wildly offensive.
Wrong answer.
The girls wanted to leave at halftime and I wanted to cry. I never notice half of the sexual innuendos in something until I'm sitting with someone like my mom. They weren't laughing at the jokes; it made me nervous. They were offended by its treatment of women, anyone who is not American, and their insensitivity towards Hitler and Nazi Germany. Once we figured out that it was satirical, they enjoyed the show. I was tense the entire trip because I wanted them to be happy but I was also disappointed about being in New York City and not being able to do everything I had always wanted to do. Maybe I had all the wrong dreams. We also walked through the Met and several old churches. I had a flighty respect for Jackson Pollack before I sat before his Autumn and could feel the energy of creating a piece that size. I respect a person who can be that brave that big. I had also forgotten how much I love Rodin and the emotion and movement of his cold marble sculptures. I took pictures. I mean, I know its incredibly crass and wrong, but everybody else was doing it. I saw a museum guide tell someone "hey! No flash!" so I assumed that meant that non-flash photography is okay? I was very sneaky about it. I held my little digital camera in front of my bag and made a barely audible click. Digital cameras are the devil, by the way. I took over 400 digital pictures in three days. I had a hard time leaving Ellis Island and Coney Island. (Both played into the interesting-only-to-me research I'm doing right now.) Coney Island has the class of south Myrtle Beach meets South of the Border. I loved it. I won't bore you with a sales pitch for my latest soapbox, but it involved me talking to a sideshow performer for almost a half hour after his show. He told me about the weirdos he meets and the type of, um, recreational activities they assume he enjoys. He plays off the fact that the moment someone meets him, they jump to conclusions. ("you see, it's a mat with all of these conclusions you can jump to...") He always proves them wrong and makes them rethink their assumptions. He writes for hours every day and is going back to school after twenty-three years. He seems kind and shy a direct contrast with his geek onstage persona. I got his information and an ice cream cone for dinner and hopped back on the Subway. The city was a good kind of crazy and now I'm exhausted. A friend found a place for us to stay in a seminary just north of Central Park. It was beautiful and quiet and it was nice to see a familiar face every day. Now I just want to be home in Charleston, or home in Tallahassee. We'll leave tomorrow morning for the long trip home. For now, we're just reading and lounging around the house in Reading.
"I love puttering days", my aunt said just now as she got up from her nap.
As much as I love old faces and new places, puttering sounds like a nice place to be right now.
I thought I knew my cousins from occasional meetings at Christmas over the past twenty years. I'm off to meet them all over again. __________________________________________________________
Tuesday, August 16, 2005 bittersweet symphony a la The Verve
Current mood: stressed i think the air in my car becomes dangerously thin when i'm on these long trips. i fall into optimistic fits. i make grand resolutions. yesterday, i planned to run more, be a better friend, do whatever it takes to get into a ph.d program in nyc, give away everything i don't need, stop caring what other people think, and to act according to what i want to happen, despite how grim the circumstances may appear. (wasn't that nice and vague?)
as i got closer to my destination, these resolutions slowly dissipated until one disappointing phone call and one call that never happened made me bummed to be approaching tally again. i wanted to be back navigating the subway all by myself. or back having a food fight in cracker barrel with my mom. or back with an old friend and an orange julius in the mall. or back at home with my brother, planning the rest of our lives. but i can't keep looking back if i want to enjoy right now.
the best bit of yesterday was when i saw a storm approaching as i drove down interestate. (you can tell it's a storm because the distinction between the clouds and the sky becomes obscured by the rain.) florida storms don't mess around. they come out of nowhere, hit so hard you can't see to drive, then disappear and leave the concrete steaming. and they come like clockwork every late afternoon. when i saw the storm, i went from knee-steering to ten-and-two, kicked off the cruise, turned up the acoustic cd of a favorite gardner-webb professor, and drove a little faster.
if you can't avoid the big storms, you bear down and enjoy the ride. ____________________________________________________________
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 decisions, decisions...
Current mood: hungry post a lengthy and descriptive entry, or head to mcd's for an egg and cheese mcgriddle??
my apologies to you and to my waistband. sometimes, you just gotta. and we have no milk. ____________________________________________________________
This good song would be better IF ONLY we could get a country singer to cover it...
Current mood: listless Indulge me in a mini-rant: I heard gary allan sing vertical horizon’s “the best I ever had” on cmt. (it’s one of the three channels that our super-saver cable package provides.) I’m still searching for a reason behind this brazen robbery. Does country music really believe that their audience is too loyal to not notice that it is the same song with a little extra twang? Are the country artists station-surfing and come across these songs and think to themselves, “pshaw! I could do THAT”!?
I’m perplexed and perturbed.
And now for some good things…I started my new job. It feels like a real job, complete with cubicles and eavesdropping on conversations and a lot of people whose names can easily be found in personalized mini-license plates at a souvenir shop. We had salads in a big conference room, discussed smoking habits, movies, and plans to veg over the weekend.
One co-worker showed me her bling-bling frog that sings “it’s yo birfday” and bobs his head. Today, in our over-the-cubicle conversation, I discovered that she and her husband lived in my neighborhood when I was ten years old! (Bust out your lederhosen, ‘cause it is a small world.) She talked about her brother-in-law fixing up his blue nova. I knew that nova. The Blue Nova lived at the yellow house at The Corner. I was only allowed to roam as far as the house with the golden retrievers right before The Corner. The grease-shiny Boys would fix their cars and rev their engines. I’d lay in bed, terrified of their bass as they spent all night leaving black tire streaks on the street outside of my house. They shot bottle-rockets at the nursing home and spray-painted the bridge with numbers and pictures I didn’t understand. They fascinated me. And even though it’s years later and I now understand most of the graffiti, it still earns my new office-mate some major cool points.
Otherwise, it’s a good gig. It’s grey and office-y and I love it. And, my swingline stapler is on order. “dang it feels good to be a gangsta.” Saving the world one comma splice at a time.
On our next episode, I’ll detail more of my recent adventures in the City and with my compadres (including jotah!)
“If you get tired, pull over. If you get hungry, eat something.”
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Monday, August 22, 2005 WANTED: Punctuation Marks Please note: for some reason, many of my punctuation marks aren't carrying over from my Word document to the blog. so it's not that i'm getting my m.a. in English and I don't understand apostrophes...it's that they disappeared on me. (and no one's perfect. let's be honest!)
and only a truly dorky person would even make such a comment.
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Monday, August 29, 2005 Goodwill and Linda Ronstadt
Current mood: determined Maybe I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be because of the beautiful sense of expectation in even my sad moments. There’s something annoyingly refreshing about doing what you know you’re supposed to do, despite what might make you happy for the moment. I want to capture some of the good things from the past few weeks before they slip away. I went out and danced like no one was watching (“unknown” would be so proud) with some girls from the department. Bamboo ceiling. Red, green, and yellow lights. Water running down the windows. A few carefree souls didn’t set the bar very high for dancing skills so I lost my (few) inhibitions. That’s a moment I’d like to keep. I also got caught in a downpour a few days ago. I gave up on staying dry, rolled up my pants, and walked slowly into the next store. Even the gloomy weather is perfect.
Walker Percy has been tainting everything for me. (I’m like Ahmad Rashad promoting this book.) It captures where I am and where I’d like to be. “But things have suddenly changed. My peaceful existence in Gentilly has been complicated. This morning, for the first time in years, there occurred to me the possibility of a search… …there awoke in me an immense curiosity. I was onto something. I vowed that if I ever got out of this fix, I would pursue the search. Naturally, as soon as I recovered and got home, I forgot all about it… …The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn’t miss a trick. To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair” (16,18 The Moviegoer). “What is a repetition? A repetition is re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. Last week, for example, I experienced an accidental repetition. I picked up a German-language weekly in the library. In it I noticed an advertisement for Nivea Crème, showing a woman with a grainy face turned up to the sun. Then I remembered that twenty years ago I saw the same advertisement in a magazine on my father’s desk, the same woman, the same grainy face, the same Nivea Crème. The events of the intervening twenty years were neutralized, the thirty million deaths, the countless torturings, uprootings and wanderings to and fro. Nothing of consequences could have happened because Nivea Crème was exactly as it was before. There remained only time itself, like a yard of smooth peanut brittle” (68).
But right now, the greatness I’m enjoying involves an old Toshiba stereo with only one working speaker. I picked it up for $20 and started playing the hits from “The Wall of Greatness” (see profile photos). Right now, I’m sitting on the abandoned 1920s chair we dressed up in leather, and I’m listening to Linda Ronstadt’s heart break through the scratchy beauty of the record player. It’s a good way to start the new semester – fresh with the sense of something bigger than myself. (And a full box of Lucky Charms.)
“What a discovery! One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail – and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and be good enough for me and that I had something better, I was free...And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life, twenty-five years old, healthy as a horse, rich as cream, and with the world before me” (95).
It's not that I haven't been writing any posts; it's that I can't seem to finish them.
I think I have low-grade narcolepsy. (not that there's anything wrong with that! i mean, some of my best friends have narcolepsy.)
But in college, I would insist on taking a textbook to bed with me so I'd capitalize on every minute until I passed out. One time when I was napping, C came in the room and saw me passed out, my eyes closed, turning the pages of a book. That's what it was like to type these posts - I took my laptop to bed and started to type. (BAD idea, by the way. one time i fell asleep and sent it flying into the wall.) But I'd fall asleep mid-sentence and leave everything hanging.
I've decided to include some of these fragments for your enjoyment. (or, not.)
Fragment 1:The problem with keeping this thing is that, when i want to write, i want to say everything. but i must pick and choose and half of it's more for my amusement anyway. (One friend compares my stories to lawn darts. Another says that I'm the only person she knows that gets bored and stops her own story. Sad, but true.)
long ago, i promised more stories about new york city and baltimore and richmond and pennslyvania and everywhere else carmen sandiego has been. (and, of course, jotah.)
i'll just catch you up on right now. this semester, i'm taking pop culture studies, multi-ethnic lit, and editing and publishing. i had really hoped that as i got older, i might get a bit cooler. but all of a sudden i'm a kid again, and mrs. robinson, mrs. blakeney, ms. barker and mr. wheat are my favorite people in the world. i want to make them happy and do all of my work and
i decided to pretend i was responsible and confident and to be the pioneer in class presentations instead of waiting until the very last day of class, as is usually my trend. big mistake.
Fragment 2:
One funny little tidbit before I begin – my mom was cleaning my dad’s office and she found one of my old spiral notebooks. It was the start of my great novel. I called it “Flerting” and broke the plot down into fifteen chapter headings that covered my marriage to my second grade crush (referred to as a “hunk” at one point) until I grew old and wobbly. Of course and fortunately, I only got as far as the table of contents.
I never thought I’d be so happy to meet the weekend. It feels like the past two weeks have been a steady sprint. Between work in the Gray Cubicle
The two best bits of advice I received this week are as follows:
1) RELAX
2) Get your head out of your… (@$$)
I was so tired but so busy that any potential unwinding time would only give me time to contemplate everything else, so
Back to the Present:
The past two weeks beat me and left me with an obstacle course of dirty clothes and ambitious half-starts. My work ethic isn't enough sometimes. (And, if I'm honest, sometimes it isn't at all.) Yesterday, I left my house at 7:30am and came home at 11:30 pm. I had conferences with my students from 8:15 to 11:00, then I ran to Publix to get food for the movie. I worked from noon until 5:00, then showed up for class at 5:15. (It was a day with lots of hand-wringings.) I put together the spinach & artichoke dip in a bread bowl for the class movie that ran from 7-9:40. I showed up almost an hour late to the grad student bible study. It was my first time. We talked until almost 11, and then I went home to crash. Enough whining for now. I just wanted to provide an explanation to all (both?) of you out there who wonder if one of the following is true:
a) I'm dead and bleeding somewhere,
b) I don't like you
c) I finally picked up my keys and walked out of my life
The answer is:
d) none of the above. but, seriously, you're starting to sound like me with your second answer. time to pull your head out of your...
...which brings me back to my earlier fragment. I have funny aversions to commitment in some areas. My thesis is no exception. I sent up a little rendezvous with my impressive/intimidating/supernice major professor to give me a deadline for making some decisions. I said, "Can we meet in two weeks?" He said, "Meet me on Thursday."
I panicked. Every class I've taken has given me a new potential thesis. If I put them all together, I could write a brilliant paper about the socialfunctionofthesideshow-
visualrhetoricofhumanitarianorganizations-
sympathyandthepoliticsofidentity-K.Dunn'streatmentofthebodyinGeekLove-
ellisislandandissuesofidentity.
But I have to pick one. I could never choose between the stuffed animals on my bed, so they all slept with me. And I can't take all of these topics to bed with me.
I already felt like an idiot because I had managed to completely blank out during a presentation, submit an "eh" analysis for the whole class to read, and in that analysis, I said "levi-strauss" as "lee-vi strowse." FYI, that's wrong. I felt like an idiot and unworthy of grad school and a ph.d. One of my friends finally told me to get my head out of my @$$. And I did. (Or, at least, I tried to.)
The next day, I came to the big guy with three possible ideas. He ran with the first one. (drumroll) My thesis will center around Ellis Island and the role it played in issues of identity formation up to the present.
I'm sure there's a more thorough explanation, but for now, I keep falling asleep mid-sentence. It's ime to give in to my narcoleptic vice.
