21st Century Self-Fashioning

What if the rift between who we are to the rest of the world and who we are when we're, say, home alone suddenly collapsed?  Ever wonder what might happen if anyone else in the world could see the inside of your brain, to listen in the perpetual, several dialogues and/or narratives that move endlessly every moment of our lives?  Do you ever think about the fact that the person sitting next to you at school, the one who drives you mad with her ridiculous blue hair and bright pink lipstick and jaw that doesn't move, could actually be a neurotic, emotional disaster zone who thinks secretly about the manner in which she might kill her husband/boyfriend/significant other?  What if when she's alone, she actually moves her jaw to talk, and what comes out is baby-babble to her cat about what a cute little pookie-baby she is?

I have to wonder about these things at times because it prevents me from being entirely cynical and so consumed by my sense of ennui that I cannot like anyone or anything.  This does not prevent me from generally rolling my eyes at the overblown hipster affect of such people, however.  

Since my freakout entry about the reunion website, which I'm still unnerved by, I have been thinking more and more about what it is that I find uncanny about the whole matter.  It's this: we are only ever who we are at any given moment.  That sounds simple, of course, and it is, but when I'm home alone it looks something like this: I'm wearing a Grand Canyon tee shirt with various stains on the sleeves, peach and white striped pajama crop pants that are too big and have to be tied at the waist, ratty blue slippers from Old Navy with my hair in a million little clips to keep it out of my eyes, wearing old glasses, no makeup (or worse, remnants of yesterday's makeup smeared about), eating Special K cereal, and talking to my dog to the tune of "Bubbie-boo, how are you?  Should we go outside for a potty?" (<--note here that this is also done in a bizarre and unflattering baby-talk voice) and "who's the cutest bubbie in the whole wide world?  It's you.  It's you."  (<--this one's actually a little song that I find revolting even as I type it.  Is this who I am when I'm Professor Chris?  No.  Professor me (at least at Metro) is reasonably put-together, has applied the What-Not-To-Wear rules of straight-leg trousers or a-line skirt, tailored tops and structured jackets, has applied hair product en masse, makeup, jewelry, and has things organized in folders and copied handouts and a class plan.  This person uses words like "juxtaposition" and "discourse" as if I speak this way at all times.  In fact, I often wonder who my students think I am when I'm not with them.  

Student Chris is sarcastic, cynical, often unpleasant to all except those who merit being on the short list of people I won't kill when the high-powered-rifle-from-the-clocktower moment arrives.  Student Chris is harried, frazzled, often unkempt, regularly burdened with a heavy bag, lack of energy, and the general inability to suffer fools, which looks something like doodling in a notebook and taking account of every stupid thing I hear other people say.  It does not occur to Student Chris to note nor consider that she may in fact be a perpetrator of stupid things said.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that we all quite consciously do this - we are different people at different times, and as we get older, I think we learn how to quite literally fashion ourselves into what we think we should be, or what we hope we are perhaps.  I think about this in relation to my previous entry, and how the one thing I fear most is that the artifice will somehow be exposed - that who I really am is a badly dressed mom who baby-talks to her dog and longs to run away to Europe and consume nothing but wine and good chocolate forever. 

Let's see how far we've come

I saw Meridith for coffee this afternoon with bubbaloo Jack (gimme a break, willya?  He's cute as hell and baby talk is rather in order, I think), and among the many things we talked about, she mentioned that there is a website for our high school's graduating class rounding up folks for a 20 year reunion.  It goes without saying that I am shocked and horrified that said anniversary is less than a year away, but more disturbing still was my visit to this website.

For at least the last half an hour, I've been utterly speechless.  Without words.  

Despite the fact that in my adulthood, I've opted to live in Northglenn again, a mile from my parents' house, and I can see the high school I went to and graduated from whilst standing quite literally in my front yard, I never process this in any real way.  I walk my dog around the baseball field and can hear the drum line of the marching band practice in August and up through October.  My daughter attended the same schools that my siblings did, and will go to this high school next year.  I admit that it's cool that I have such a sense of place in the world at this point in my life and I find the aforementioned comforting in an abstract sort of way.  I still have friends from those teenage years (in fact, people like Charly go back to the 8th grade; Meridith, 10th), it feels like an entirely other life that I have to force myself to remember and most times cannot.  Said website has my senior picture, and when placed next to my current one, like the one on this very site, it is impossible that these two are or have ever been the same person.  The revelation is that they aren't the same person; not by a long-shot.

I read others' accounts of "life in the last 19 years" and I have no idea how to account for this kind of time passage; furthermore, I'm not sure I want to.  In high school, my internal world was so consumed with self-loathing that I don't even know that I was entirely aware of until more recently.  The inside of my head told me I was fat, ugly, unimportant, foolish, naive, etc. and I remember being so utterly shy that I couldn't speak in class, and when called on I often fumbled and once I even cried of embarrassment.  I always felt certain that I was at best average and at worst destined for total failure; I never considered myself intelligent or funny or particularly good at anything.  I so desperately wanted to be liked I tended to mimic others and do my best to blend in.  So much of what powered my life in my twenties was an extension of this lack of self-worth, and I suspect now that this happens to us all, but there are defining moments in our lives that we can never forget - things that so often drive our existences for too long and shouldn't but do.

Mine is fourth grade in Morgantown, West Virginia, when a new school was built and the two small elementary schools were funneled into the new one.  Kids on "my side" of town were normal, lower or middle class, and the kids from the other side were doctors' and university professors' kids and they had money and spoils that I never knew about until that moment.  Up to that point, I didn't know that it wasn't cool to get clothes at the second-hand store, or that Trapper Keepers were necessary, or that Nike tennis shoes and Izod shirts would be all the rage.  Up to that point, I had been reasonably happy and never considered my status in the world.  Then I met Kelly England.  That's her real name.  She was pretty and fashionable for the time, lived in a huge house and her parents had expensive jewelry and nice cars; I know this sounds like a freakin' John Hughes movie and it basically was, but the fourth grade version.  She pretended to be my friend because we had the same folder - I remember vividly that it was shiny and had a watermelon on it - and the next day at recess asked me to play with her.

Just so she and her stupid friends could put caterpillars down the back of my shirt.  Yes, that was a plural caterpillars.  I cried, and when I asked her why she did that, she replied, "because you're fat and stupid and I would never be your friend."  I admit that as an adult a part of me hopes that she grew up to be a fat, drunk, moo-moo wearing woman who lives in a shitty trailer in the middle of nowhere with 18 kids and an abusive husband who spends her time playing lotto and bingo and smokes two packs of generic cigarettes each day.  But I've never thought about it.  Really.  Kelly proceeded to make my life a living, daily hell in just such a manner for the following three school years, the pinnacle of which was in seventh grade when we had to change clothes for gym class and she made it a point to make cattle sounds every time I shed an article of clothing in the locker room.  Ah, good times.

But how that statement haunted me - still haunts me.  It doesn't matter how many good friends I had after that, because all I ever heard was that I was fat and stupid.  I know it affects me still because no matter how many years I teach and how many students I've affected positively, and no matter how off-the-charts my student evaluations are on a regular basis, it only takes that one student who hates me to say it, and I'm spiraled down into a pit of "what's wrong with me?"  But my skin is getting thicker; I no longer read those stupid things and there are at least two years' worth of unopened evals in my desk drawer as we speak.  Ever heard, what you don't know can't hurt you?  There's something to that statement.

But I digress.  I hate who I was in high school in a nutshell.  I am in no way still that person; so much so that I think I've repressed a great deal of the experience.  So much so that I don't want to bother explaining to any of these people (except for those who already know, of course) who I am now.  I don't want to reminisce or relive any part of it, not even the good stuff.  Even looking at the website, I feel that fat and stupid girl with the bad hair gasping for air under the heavy pile I've buried her in.  And all this while I thought she was dead.

Sending out an SOS

What is it with The Police anyway?  Everywhere I go lately, every place I find myself sitting or running or driving I can't escape their music.  Don't misunderstand me; I like this band, always have, but come ON, how many times can we hear these same damn songs over and again?  Here's an example: Laura and I were at Starbucks, and we heard "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and I mentioned that I can't stand this song because it finds its way into the feedback loop of my brain and refuses to give up until I feel I'm going perfectly mad.  She said hers was "Message in a Bottle" and less than an hour later, there it was, playing at the gym.  There are many songs like this of course, and my most recent nemesis is "Unwritten" from the Pantene commercials.  I don't know who sings this song and I don't care because I've never liked it, but it gets into my head and won't stop.  

This is a superfluous and nilly rant, of course, but the popular music canon is one that irritates me almost endlessly.  As I mentioned, I like The Police, and I don't mind Sting most of the time, but I simply cannot fathom how they are considered one of the greatest bands in rock history.  Their songs sound all vaguely the same; they're simple and reggae-ish, and obviously catchy - but does this make them part of the elite?  The answer to this calls into question larger issues of this distinction, like why Led Zeppelin gets the honor of being the greatest band ever when I cannot suffer even two minutes of any single one of their songs.  Robert Plant is screechy and incoherent, and I simply don't get it.  I've tried, but I don't.  I also don't get the status of a band like Nirvana either, now that I'm on the subject.  Of course I like them and always have, but theirs, like the other aforementioned bands, are never on my top ten playlist, or even my top 100.  Their place in the rock and roll canon baffles me; I understand that bands such as these are groundbreakers and changed the music scene in some key ways, but just because they did it doesn't create legendary status in its own right except for this fact.  I can think of a dozen bands that came after Nirvana that I like considerably more and just because Nirvana may or may not have paved the way doesn't make them inferior any more than it makes Nirvana kings of the hill.

The same argument can be (and has been) made about The Beatles.  I grew up on this music, love it, appreciate it, but even my adoration for these records does not permit me to think of them as the greatest band in the history of music.  Maybe most influential, but we can't ignore the fact that a reasonable percentage of the Beatles' library of tunes is just plain weird or even terrible.  

But it makes me smile anyway when I hear my daughter going about her daily life humming "Dear Prudence" or "Across the Universe" like they are her own.

You're playing you now

I suspect that my writing in this space will increase exponentially as my to do list becomes more daunting this term.  Case and point is the fact that I've completed four entries since school started only two days ago, and here I am again.  It's easy to find something to write about when no one is grading it, when there isn't a deadline, and no one expects you to be smart.

Today is a grouchy day; not rage-filled, but simply testy.  As usual, there is too much to do and not enough time to do it, and the only difference now for me - and what will keep me sane until summer - is that when it comes down to what doesn't get done, I'm starting with school stuff.  I've learned one thing in the last six months or so, and that is not to neglect myself first every time the going gets tough.  Things are certainly in a different perspective now, and in case I need an instance later to which I can refer, here it is:

Monday, the first day of the new quarter at DU brought with it the usual first-day business of meeting the class, talking about the initial readings, and what have you.  I went into my advanced seminar in Fiction and Theory (sounds thrilling, eh?) with some trepidation because of several previously traumatic factors: (1) the last time I took an "advanced" seminar, it was my first term at DU and with a professor who is simply mad as a hatter and even less pleasant to deal with.  At the time, I felt intimidated not only by her, but by the program itself, as I am one of those people who regularly feels like a fraud - as if at any moment, I will be discovered as being unworthy of a position in a Ph.D. program, the mistake in accepting me will be realized, and I will be run out of the department on a rail.  I never said these thoughts were rational.  (2) The "theory" thing always makes me bristle because I hate it, don't believe in it, generally shun it, and in a room with a bunch of folk who wield it like sword pulled from the stone, I never feel like I have anything to say; and (3) modernism and postmodernism are not my forte by any stretch - talk to me about 16th and 17th century literature and we're money; Henry James and I, on the other hand, are but stilted acquaintances from long ago.

Upon my entrance, however, I noted that the other ten people in the room were comprised of first- and second-year grads, most of whom I do not know even their names, and something happened to me at that moment.  I realized in looking at most of their faces that THEY were intimidated, still posturing as if they knew everything, pretending to be pretentious so they could fit in, and I had to give myself a quick giggle and mutter "amateurs" under my breath.  And not in a mean way, either, but simply with the acknowledgment that I am no longer there - no longer in fear of sounding stupid, of not fitting in, of being liked or validated in any way, etc.  I simply don't care because I've developed the kind of hard outer layer that deflects the tiny cuts of being a newbie in this kind of environment.  Damn; that feels pretty good too.  

When we began talking, I noted that every time Eric (the prof) looked around the table for answers to his queries, most of them looked down, pretending to be busy taking notes (I know this because Tyler knows this, haha), and I ended up being one of only two people in the room who had the slightest clue what we were doing in there.  I even enjoyed the class, enjoyed being the one who spoke up, who understood the theory and how to apply it, and hell, I even surprised myself that I had become this person and didn't even know it.  I am not afraid to sound stupid, to have the wrong answer, or to admit to that which I do not know (which is plenty, frankly), and that is strangely freeing rather than limiting.  Facades are hard work and pretension even harder and who the hell has time for it anymore?  These folks I speak of here will discover this, I presume, and will one day sit in this room under similar circumstances with the same epiphanic moment.  I hope.

Oops, I did it again

I've watched South Park off and on since the beginning of the show, and while it still makes me laugh out loud, I find it to be hit-or-miss in the larger scope.  Episodes like "Cow Days" and "Critter Christmas" still top the list for me as being enormously funny, but lately it seems that the guys who write this show can't quite figure out if the show is ultimately extreme biting satire or shocking for the sake of shock value.  Perhaps they mean to do both, but again, sometimes this works for me and sometimes it just doesn't.  Often I find myself scratching my head and wondering why I'm still watching it fifteen minutes in.

However, two episodes I've watched recently stand out to me as being distinctly different from the often self-indulgent gross jokes and over-the-top lampooning of popular culture.  "Scott Tenorman Must Die" is one such episode that the average viewer might disregard as simply disturbing and not terribly funny but simply terrible.  Even I didn't realize it at the moment I watched it, but it is clearly a modern interpretation of Titus Andronicus.  This is no revelation, of course, and lots of people are aware of this, but I have to wonder what in the world Trey Parker and Matt Stone are doing invoking Shakespeare on a show whose primary demographic - if the commercial spots sold during the prime time premieres of new episodes suggest this - is a bunch of 18-22 year-old guys who drink too much cheap beer, watch ultimate fighting championships, and think the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is the greatest achievement in a good laugh they've ever seen and have "Git 'R Dun" on bumper stickers plastered on their lifted Ford trucks.  The simple response to this is the fact that Parker and Stone, despite their penchant for toilet humor and a preoccupation with anal cavities, appear by all accounts to be quite bright and certainly capable of such literary allusion.  I have, in fact, incorporated this episode into my regular classes when I teach Titus, to the delight of most students, and - I'm certain - the horror of the English department powers that be.

In any case, whilst watching the show two nights ago, I saw an episode about the great Ms. Britney Spears, in which she appears in South Park under "Britney Watch" a la TMZ and the boys try to get her photo by telling the security officers that they were her kids.  Britney is dazed, vapid, confused, and her performance on MTV in which she was criticized for "phoning it in" and being "fat," appear in the episode after the cartoon Britney blows her head off and becomes a wandering, babbling, headless Britney incapable of speech.  Of course it was South Park-style, completely overblown and taken to the extreme, as if the Britney debacle/spectacle could be taken any further.  Not only is the episode a stinging social commentary, but by the end, it also accomplishes something entirely more literary.  Here, at the locus of shocking television and even more shocking reality of a fallen pop star, the final part of the show reveals its brilliance.  

Rene Girard wrote in Violence and the Sacred that in sacrificial cultures (which can be applied subsequently to acts of this in literature), that a "purifying violence" (51) is necessary "to protect the entire community from its own violence" (8).  Thus, by choosing a pure, beautiful specimen to sacrifice, it vicariously purifies the desire for violence in the larger community - a kind of losing one to save the many kind of idea.  At the end of the Britney episode of South Park, it is discovered that everyone involved with her - agents, promoters, the public, and even the citizens of South Park itself - have "chosen" Britney for a sacrifice for the harvest time.  Since it's "uncivilized" to continue the public spectacle of the murder, they have decided that the sacrificial person should kill herself and this is accomplished by driving her to madness.  While this is clearly hilarious and socially relevant, it's also critical on a much higher order than one might expect from the likes of South Park.  It's downright impressive.

And who says I'm no fun to watch television and films with?  

Pretty much everyone...

All the salt in the world couldn't melt that ice

As I begin yet another quarter at DU, I am faced with a particular bitterness that I cannot overcome, despite my general improvement in mood.  I'm sick of taking classes and with all I'm doing this term, I have no idea when I'm going to have any time to work on my dissertation or anything else for that matter.  So far my classes seem doable; I have one I'm excited about but not excited about the prospect of working in a room of undergraduates - it's just plain awkward at this point because the space between us is not only age but education and I never know how to negotiate that territory.  Oh, and one of my students is in this course, which I also don't know what I should do about - it seems like conflict of interest but I can't say for certain.  I've also been a teacher for so long now that being in a room of - literally - kids makes me want to be in charge and I have to resist that urge.  Strange.  The other course seems better perhaps because it's at least a graduate seminar and it's something I haven't studied, but again there's the issue of disconnect for me.  I've been on student sabbatical (research hours) so far this year and now I'm back in a room full of people I don't know and honestly don't really care to at this point.  I look around the room and there is only one person from my year with whom I've ever only had a cool relationship, and the rest are mostly first-years.  I'm disappointed that so many of them appear to be thus far the same old pretentious stand-bys that I'm accustomed to.  I had hopes after my own year of people that such a tide was waning but perhaps not.  Sigh.

I feel bitter when I see certain people around the halls who have made my life of late quite nightmarish where the program is concerned and I feel like I need a serious attitude adjustment or I need to drop out.  I refuse to be that person who hates everything - you know the one - and yet I feel like rolling my eyes at nearly every classroom comment that isn't mine.  One of the tenets of Palahniuk's Lullaby is that "people still think that knowledge is power" and I have to say this resonates with me today; I also have a good friend who once warned me that the more you know about your world - the more education you receive - the unhappier you are in it.  I never believed this and I guess on a larger level I still don't, but damn; there are days like today when I wish so desperately that I could be a soccer mom who didn't go to college, has a man who pays for everything, cleans house, and organizes PTAs and play dates.  I don't demean anyone, by the way, who lives this life nor do I condemn them as being less intelligent, but days like these I hate that I know I'm too smart and too hyperactive to ever find that life fulfilling in any meaningful way.  I hate that I know I have to finish this degree or I'll never get where I want to be in my own life; I hate that I can speak the entire "to be or not to be" passage of Hamlet, all of the "tomorrow" speech in Macbeth, that I have millions of words in my head that need stories and essays to live in, and most of all I hate that I know all of these things.  Whoever said ignorance is bliss had the right idea.

Happy Zombie Jesus Day

Half a lifetime - or at least until I was old enough to actively protest - of going to church every Sunday and Wednesday certainly evokes a particular kind of guilt that can only result from programming.  But I thought that Meridith's posting to my MySpace page (the title of this entry should explain it all) was hilarious despite the "I'm going to hell" laughter it creates.  I never thought of the story of Jesus rising from the dead as being akin to my beloved zombie narratives but it quite clearly falls into this category.  Formerly dead guy with the strength to move a boulder proceeds henceforth to create a following of fellow zombies who sing songs in a building twice a week and - while they don't physically consume your brain - they certainly attempt to do so in other ways.  Very subtle, these zombies.  The knock on doors with sweet smiles and threaten you with hell and damnation, etc.  In all honesty, though, if heaven is populated with this bunch, what's the incentive to get there anyway?

I say this with some facetiousness, of course, so don't write to me to tell me you're offended.  For the third time in two weeks, however, I've had visitors at my door in the name of Easter.  Saturday it was the elderly churchies who meet at my neighbor's house twice per week and they're Jehovah's Crackpots, which I won't even pretend to understand.  A polite woman stood at my door to offer me literature and an invitation to her church because "Easter is such an important occasion we must all acknowledge and celebrate."  She said it like some kind of mantra, and all I could think about was "His name is Robert Paulson.  His name is Robert Paulson."  I'm sure this group aims at us because the neighbor knows that my hubby and I are "living in sin" (can you imagine - we have different last names, according to the postal carrier; this was apparently quite the scandal upon our arrival to the 'hood) and have occasional low-key parties but have tattooed, liquor-swilling, hot-rod driving, smoking attendees at said parties.  They don't even wave when they're out in the yard, and we're generally friendly with the others around us, even though the retired guy who smokes two packs a day and talks in a raspy, cliched New Jersey accent thinks Jamison is the worst guy in the world because I shovel our driveway when it snows.  Truth is, I like it and it's exercise, but New Jersey always hollers across the street to ask "where my husband is" and to tell him that "he can borrow my snow blower if he wants" - I can't borrow it, but my husband can.  I wonder if he thinks I should be in the kitchen and barefoot instead.  Ha.

Nevertheless, I don't celebrate Easter even in the pagan sense; vernal equinoxes are of no import to my aura, don't affect my chi energies, and since I don't generally believe in Christianity either, I can't see the point in being false about the whole matter.  My mother still goes to church regularly, and berates my father into attendance, and they asked us over for Easter dinner.  Dinner I can do; bunnies and eggs and Zombie Jesus I can do without.  Mom gave up quite some time ago in the quest to get me to attend church.  She still offers from time to time or tries to lure me with musical events or guilt me into how she has trouble going it alone (she has MS and walks with a cane), but I've noticed a significant drop in her discussions.  But last evening over dinner, we were talking politics, which I often try to do with my parents because they are woefully uninformed and grew up in 1950's America when the flag meant something and Republican did not equal being in bed with Satan and Saudi Arabia.  When I tell her I like Obama, she asks, "but doesn't it bother you that he was raised Muslim?"

I spit my drink back into my cup and looked at her wide-eyed; my response was, I couldn't possibly care less.  I told her that having leaders of this country who call themselves "Christian" sure as hell haven't done us any favors, so I don't see how that counts for shit.  Furthermore, I reminded her politely that the Koran was written centuries before the Bible and that in the grand scheme of religions in the world, Christianity is just a toddler when the rest of them are collecting social security.  And this is from a person with whom I share genetics.  What should bother us all far more is that despite the tenets of our beloved country that we have separation of church and state, we have never truly had such separation.  I want someone to explain to me why the leader of our country cannot worship in any way he/she sees fit?  Or not at all?  This does not alter this person's ability to be a good leader and international citizen.  In fact, a lack of religious ideals in the White House might actually help our global situation.  Normally these things don't bother me but W - Mr. Uber-Christian, Mr. Moral Values - wields these things like weapons.  He's actively participated in the stigma of Muslim, even though most muslims are peaceful people and what we should be afraid of are the fundamentalists.  My mother is evidence; she doesn't like W and votes democrat, but the poison of this point of view has still reached her fairly naive ears and registered.  I suspect she also gets some of this vitriol - of saying "muslim" like it's a dirty word - from her churchies, but it's out there and guess who actively promotes this belief?  But W doesn't tout that we should be afraid of fundamentalist anything - Christians, Mormons, whatever.  He won an election by pulling out beliefs on gay marriage at the 11th hour because, after all, "God hates fags" and this is an easy sell.  How people who claim any religious belief in the bible can regularly speak for God without fear of being turned to salt pillars escapes my logic.  If the bible I read is the same one - which it supposedly is, being God's Word and all, even though there's a store in Ft. Collins called the Bible Superstore that has so many different bibles that I have to wonder how anyone divines what God's Word may be at this point - then what I get is that God doesn't hate anyone.  IF and that's a big IF, being gay is a sin, and all sins are the same, then aren't we all truly in the same boat?  My favorite commandment is "thou shalt not kill" because we mete out capital punishment in the name of this one, but I think even in the original language, there is no specificity there.  The commandment doesn't say "don't kill other people"; it simply reads not to kill in general - wouldn't that include then anything that lives?  Plants, animals, spiders, bugs, the earth's atmosphere, our natural resources, etc?  We're all killers of something, and at the genocidal level.

Woof.  That was a tangent.  Don't even remember where I started.  It's Monday morning, the coffee is mud - can you tell by the intense verbosity of this entry - and it's the first day of a new term at DU.  I don't want to go; having the whole place out of my system this last week has provided many deep breaths and some great sleep.  I guess it's back to anxious tossing and turning again.

Yes I've been black, but when I get back, you'll know, know, know

One of my good friends is Korean and has her degrees in clinical psychology; she once explained to me that in counseling southeast Asian groups in particular, one of the concepts she must engage is the widespread belief in luck.  If things are not going well for you in any kind of sequence, then you are having a "bad luck year" and this is likely to shift after the lunar new year.  This belief, as I understand it, has nothing at all to do with religion the way someone can believe in both fate and free will at the same time - but that's another matter for another inquiring moment.  Nevertheless, I always found it amusing that one of her responses to her patients, the largest group of whom she counseled post-trauma, was to debunk this belief by telling them, "you're in America now, and in America, we make our own luck."  But in the very same breath, she might advise me - after my recent series of traumatic events - to just be patient until the coming of the new year.  It struck me this afternoon at the gym that I am feeling better, and it's been since the new year (Tet, not 1 January)...

My last lunar new year began with a nervous breakdown from the overwhelming stress of school and work.  I feel terrible trying to explain what is so stressful about what I do because unless you've been there yourself, it's impossible to believe that such a thing can send one off the deep end.  I know three people who've been divorced in grad school, and I know several more who never even finished programs.  Jamison is always accommodating, but I'm sure he must be tired of hearing "right now, I just need..." from me and no matter how that phrase gets finished, it results in his eating dinner alone, or going out alone, or listening to one more day of the weeping mess that has often been me of late.  Time to do something really great for the man, I think.

But things didn't improve much after the breakdown and the implementation of medications; even though some pretty great things happened last year to be sure - Disneyland, London, various lovely moments with family and friends - I don't think I realized how much I had been generally suffering until it all came to a head this past January (see varied psychotic-rage driven entries prior).  Comps exams took a major toll on my health and my well-being; the emergency surgery and ruptured gall bladder at Thanksgiving time threw me a major curve ball too.  I had never so much as had my tonsils out, let alone major surgery I didn't even get a chance to think about it before it happened.  Again, it was one of those things no one else could see - my scars were healing but I wasn't and I didn't know it.  I went through Christmas in a haze of worry and insomnia at Sami's impending spinal surgery and I have to say that I was so completely unprepared for what followed that I still don't think I can process it in any real way.  The rest I've chronicled in this blog, and as I return to reading them months after the fact, I completely understand why my doctor insisted I see a therapist; I understand why people were afraid of and for me; and I understand the bad luck year phenomenon in a whole new light.

The reason I bring all of this up today is because I finally feel the fog lifting and it's glorious and illuminating at the same time.  The collection of all these things - even if they don't sound like much in the grand scheme of suffering in the world, perhaps - created an existential crisis of astronomical proportions.  I feel older somehow, or at least my age, which I haven't ever felt before.  And it's not bad.  Nice to know my good luck year has started.

Don't stop 'til you get enough

Since my own child has vehemently insisted that I never, ever, under any circumstances, put photos of her on my blog (because, oh god, Mom, I would DIE of embarrassment"), I have opted for the moment to respect her wish and dote some more on the baby in my life. Here she is once more with her birthday cupcake, which was quickly devoured, and after that, was metabolized in the form of hyperactive dancing (she swings her arms wildly and bounces when you sing or hum to her, giggling all the while).


Jamison (the hubby) arrived to the party a little late and sat on the stairs, where Natalie quickly greeted him: Hello, friend, she would say (if she could talk):


Here, she would say "hey, I don't have to wear this party hat to be the birthday girl!"


This child is so cute it actually causes me physical pain. Look how tiny she is, especially compared to J-mo, who is a rather large fella, but still. She's still just a little boo-boo, even for a one-year-old.


Babies are amazing things - I know I've expounded upon my wonder on this topic many times, but it's still mind-blowing to look across the living room at my daughter and think, "you came out of my body? Really? How is this possible?" How is it conceivable that she is now taller than I am, has bigger feet, and a mind and self that I cannot know - a space completely outside and away from me. She pretends that she has no interest in anything I like, but we share a love of Disneyland, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings and dozens of other things even in her teenage, eye-rolling, hand-on-hip, and tongue-clucking phase. When she came home with a D in English, I asked her "how can you shame me this way?" in jest, of course, but I know that this is her own form of independence - to reject what is important to me and excel in areas that are not. She gets A's in science for example, when I learned nothing I can now recall in any of those classes.

But here's a great story: I drive the morning carpool of my daughter and her two friends each day, and last spring the Shakespeare Festival folks from Boulder performed scenes from various plays for the students in an assembly; exasperated drama queen #1 (henceforth EDQ1), whom Sami has known since kindergarten, plopped into the back seat with EDQ2 and complained: "what was that stupid assembly about yesterday. It was so dumb and boring [imagine a whiny 13-year-old girl voice, exaggerated by pre-coffee annoyance of this parent]. What was the thing about witches?"

My daughter turns around to the back seat, and in a matched super-snotty 13-year-old retort says, "Uh, you mean MACBETH? Duh." I could reveal nothing at this moment, of course; if Sami knew that I thought her gleaning of anything Shakespeare potentially came from living with me, or that I applaud her defense of the theatre, or that she was willing to look smart in front of her friends, or... you get the idea. I just did a little happy dance in my head. That's my girl.

Politics Schmolitics

I'm sure you couldn't escape the news yesterday that it marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S. campaign in Iraq.  Even our illustrious leader, George W. Jackass, graced us with a speech that I tried to ignore but couldn't.  I won't belabor the point that the term 'anniversary,' while generally used to denote the passage of time, also has largely positive and celebratory connotations.  The news media cannot possibly be credited highly enough to understand the kind of rhetoric they employ because it's not their rhetoric; it's what they've gleaned from those in the president's vicinity who do understand rhetoric and know how to make a great sell.  Have you seen the film Thank You for Smoking?  If you haven't, I recommend it.

In any case, one thing I can say about W is in some strange way I admire his ability to continue to tow the line of his own bullshit in the face of constant criticism.  Hell, if you're going to be oblivious to history and outright wrong on your facts, you may as well stick to the hard line since you've already lost credibility with anyone who has a brain, and those who still support you tend to fall into the camp of others like you who believe what they're told.  These are the same folks who belt out "God Bless America" and tear up during the National Anthem because they believe we're out in the world spreading democracy akin to what our founding fathers gained for this country.  I admire also these people who can still love their country when it's manned by a fool, who pledge their allegiance to a flag that simultaneously represents racism, sexism, a complete lack of separation of church and state, and those who will vote for a president because he's against abortion and gay marriage - like these are the major concerns of running a country in these complicated political times.  I frankly couldn't care less if Frank and Joe next door are married because this has no bearing on my life whatsoever; I do, however, care that my other neighbors from India are persecuted with signs in their yard after 9/11 like "go back to your country, sand nigger" when they are American citizens, Christian, and come from fucking INDIA, but their skin is brown and they LOOK muslim, so they must be.  Yes, that actually happened in a quiet, upper middle-class suburb in a fairly liberal state of our blessed union.

I didn't used to be outwardly political, and while I'm a staunch democratic liberal voter, I am typically quite content to shut up about it, but the recent Obama/pastor thing has got me steamed.  While I also admit I watch too much television during the day to the tune of "Inside Edition" and its ilk, I am incensed at the kind of coverage we get from all angles.  The news that Obama has "taken a hit" in the polls from "white voters" makes me crazy.  I'm not so naive to think that any politician is free of scandal or dishonesty, but I do believe we have to choose the lesser of evils, and for once, it's nice to hear someone (Obama) speak with his own words, with decent ideas, the promise of a younger, fresh-faced approach to leading this country, and frankly, some intelligence that isn't laced with a ridiculous southern accent and the absolute incapacity to pronounce the word "nuclear."  I also think that it's high time we had someone in the White House who isn't white and hip-deep in oil money and ties to Saudi Arabia.  Or whose father incited a civil war in Iraq in the first place and then left them to fend for themselves.

I'm with Ted (coffeecrush.blogspot.com) here insofar as the potential for a third-term Bush administration in the form of John McCain frankly keeps me up at night and forces me into being a more outspoken political individual.  I simply cannot abide another term of dumping cash and bodies into a war that doesn't directly concern us when people are losing their houses, the dollar is plummeting, children go hungry, and the damn corporations and fat cats are worried about their continued tax breaks.  I'm insulted that our the "relief" for the recession comes in the form of a paltry amount of money to middle and working class Americans in the hopes they will spend it foolishly and boost our economy again, rather than encouraging them to put food on their tables and gas in their cars, or hell, pay down some debt.  I actually heard an economic analyst COMPLAIN that he worries that Americans will spend the money wisely and it will have no effect at all on our economy.  If you want any kind of proof that our current administration is quite happy to keep us all just where we are - living paycheck to paycheck if that, buried to the eyeballs in debt and working our asses off for little money and no healthcare, there you are.

God Bless [the] America [we could be]!  Vive Obama!

Jesus loves you; everyone else thinks you're an asshole

A couple have come to the Dr. Phil show today because they are having "trouble" in their marriage.  The "trouble" is that the woman is a psycho control freak and the man is persistently abusive physically and emotionally.  She claims to fear him, but gets up into his face and dares him to hurt her while she slings a blue-streak of profane insults at him, so he throws her up against the wall until she loses consciousness.  They look normal; they're middle class, white, seemingly educated, and the best part of it all is the husband claims in one breath that he's "seen the light" and "turned his life over to Jesus," but then will admit to saying that he was going to kill his wife and prostitute his daughter out to spite her.  He prays every day; he goes to the whole bizarre Promise Keepers kind of thing.  Why have these people been allowed to breed?  I'm so disgusted as I watch this show by the histrionics that people undergo to the degree that it lands them on the freakin' Dr. Phil show, and that they don't care one whit for their child.  The third time this man insisted he'd put it into the hands of God, I hoped only that if there is a God, and he has hands, that they would burst forth from the sky and strangle this fool on national television. 

I saw a bumper sticker this afternoon on the highway that read, "Aren't you glad your mother was pro-life?"  AUGH.  Wouldn't you know it was belly-up to a Bush/Cheney sticker.  Why would I wish my mother was pro-life, so she could have me out of guilt or obligation or - whatever?  I wanted to run this idiot off the road and inform him that my mother was in fact pro-choice and I'm much more thankful for that fact because it means she had me because she wanted to.  I was a welcome and wanted addition to her life.  Anyone who has a child under circumstances any less than this out of some bizarre moral obligation only dooms said child to a life of misery; before anyone can retort with my favorite stand-by argument about adoption, it only works if people do it, and it's only a useful solution if the child is healthy.  Typical adoptive parents don't want meth-addicted underweight babies with a life of costly and emotionally draining health issues in front of them.  

Sorry for the rant, but this same person had another bumper sticker praising Jesus or some such thing, and I can't help but respond negatively to this stimulus, particularly given my previous discussions about my jaded view of organized religion.  

I'm agnostic, I suppose, with leanings toward belief in God, but you don't see me wandering about the world enforcing my beliefs or lack thereof on others, do you?  When was the last time I publicly berated someone (or many) with my bumper stickers?  I hate that people get away with this kind of shit, when the case is if I put a sticker on my car that says something like "too bad your mother wasn't pro-choice" - do you think the person driving that car would take kindly to that?  Would that guy have thought, I wonder what Jesus would do?  One of the funniest things in the world to me is the people who wield this question as if it were a weapon against the rest of the heathen world, putting the initials on bracelets, and yet I've never encountered a single person wearing some version of that on a car or a shirt who behaved in any way comparable to what - based on my own reading of the Bible - the character of Jesus would in fact do.  I'm never sure what Bible these folks have read, but the one I read and was force-fed my whole life portrayed a character who was kind and peaceful and non-judgmental.  Would Jesus lecture other people on how to live their lives, or knock on their doors with literature and free Books of Mormon, or put stupid bumper stickers on his car about being pro-life?  

Yesterday afternoon, a kindly looking senior citizen knocked upon my front door, greeted me kindly, and then offered me some religious tract and wanted to know if he could "minister" to me.  The Mormons were last week.  Apparently Easter is a big deal, one of the money-making days for churches; time to get butts in seats.  No one around here seems to care about my immortal soul any other time of the  year.  

Don't misunderstand me; I am across the board pro-choice.  Vote how you see fit; go to church or don't but be honest about it; have premarital sex or don't, but be informed and smart about your decisions; drink or don't; take drugs or don't; wear your seatbelt or don't.  The decisions each of us make create our realities, not words in books, but if that comforts you - if reading the Bible and going to church gives you peace and happiness, then rock on.  Sometimes I wish it did the same for me but it doesn't.  People should believe what they want, do what's best for them, and make choices according to their own consciences.  If it's possible for you to believe that a man named Joseph Smith found gold tablets with the word of God on them sometime in the nineteenth century and God told him to have several wives and live in Utah, then go for it.  If you believe in praying to saints, knock yourself out.  If you dance naked in circles with your wiccan friends and chant and wear crystals, by all means continue to do so.  

Just leave me the hell out of it.

Waking up at the start of the end of the world

I dreamt about London this morning just before I got out of bed. I remembered it only tonight while I found myself musing over my coffee. Don't get me wrong; I love my life and all of the people in it, my house, my family, my dog, my job, my friends, and hell, even Northglenn isn't all bad despite its whitewashed middle-class oatmeal-ness. But I long to have a different life sometimes, or maybe I'm invoking a past life, or a parallel life - but I want to be in London, smelling the damp air in the morning, having afternoon tea, wandering through free museums, and traveling by Tube. Look at this photo: I stood there at the Tower and encountered a ghost - it brushed past while I snapped this picture, not once but twice. I was alone on this parapet and I didn't imagine it. I long to travel for the weekend; I want to say "Saturday? Oh, sorry I can't - I'm off to Paris for the weekend to read my book in a cafe on Montmartre." I want to be free of lawn services and car payments. I want to drink pints in pubs that are older than the country I now live in; high doorknobs; red phone booths; the Thames and South Bank; clotted cream on my scone; cobbled streets; charming gardens; chocolates from Harrod's; Kensington Gardens; I want real theatre; fresh sushi; foggy cool and the chiming of Big Ben; I want to stroll across the campuses of Oxford, walk the halls at Cambridge.

I spent my birthday last year in Hampstead with Jennie. She and I shopped for inexpensive jewelry and trinkets from the street vendors, perused old books in a used bookshop straight out of a Dickens novel. Side lanes twinkled like Diagon Alley, and I knew then that Harry Potter could only come from a place like this. America has its own beauty but nothing compares for me to the sense of real history in Europe. We strolled the heath and fed ducks, pet happy dogs, and drank our take-away coffees (from Starbucks, of course) until half-three in the afternoon when it was tea time. We sipped English Breakfast and Darjeeling in real china cups served on saucers by sweet old English ladies in the shop that took up the front half of their house probably built a century or more ago. We ate delicate rich handmade sweets with fresh berries and dark chocolate; ate real butter on our crumpets; watched the sun set over the lone cathedral church in the center of town. I returned to the city where two other friends picked me up and toured me through Whitechapel and treated me to cheap beer and the most excellent Indian food I've ever had. I can say without reservation that this was the best birthday I've ever had and only the absence of my family would I change.

I'm at Starbucks again. I'm supposed to be teaching a fiction course tonight, but alas, I couldn't make it fly. One student told me last week that he had to go to Texas and attend to a father in a nursing home, one was puking today, another had a migraine. That was three down out of a class of only seven, so I gathered myself up and decided I'd take the remaining four for coffee (on me) and we'd discuss our novel for tonight. Two of the four showed up and we decided amongst ourselves that they'd rather finish reading the novel than attempt a conversation having only read the first few chapters. Since they were the solitary two who showed, was I really going to punish them? I could have gone back home but instead opted for coffee anyway. I thought I could grade papers, maybe get some work done that won't get done at home whilst the television blares American Idol (which sucks me in every time), but I'm screwing around even here. Even with caffeine.

I've opted for a new experiment; I'm going to leave this pile of student papers sitting out, with a nice pen atop the stack, and see how long it takes for them to grade themselves. It's cool; I can wait. For this, I have the patience of a saint. When my students ask me on Friday where the fruits of labor are, I will simply explain the absence of them is all in the name of research (it is a course in research and rhetoric, after all). Perhaps the university may even fund this effort. Heaven knows they spend more on less each and every day.

News Flash: Chris Catches onto 20th Century (the 21st is still on the wishlist)

From the spot where I plant my butt each morning to drink coffee, watch the morning news, check my email, and otherwise waste away the first hour of every morning provided this view today. Normally I don't open the blinds until afternoon, but this one was never closed last evening - I went to bed and was fast asleep by 9:45 - and thus I caught the first rays of the day hitting the back fence. I looked to my left and discovered the digital camera; thus I have this moment captured.

Speaking of captured moments, it occurs to me this morning that blogs, MySpace pages, and now Facebook and a dozen others I have yet to learn about - these things are all about trying to capture something fleeting. If I think too hard about this, I would do nothing else but chronicle every second in every way possible. Perhaps this is why I don't spend much time on the internet itself; sure, I e-mail and blog, and occasionally get a giggle out of Happy Tree Friends or Angry Alien, but generally, it always feels overwhelming. Meridith mentioned somewhere on something I read today that she spends more time on Facebook than MySpace. I learned about this Facebook thing in London, when all of the DU study abroad students were chattering endlessly one day on the Tube. I signed up for it so I could look at their pages as requested, but I haven't looked at it or thought about it since. For fun, I looked into it this morning and it turns out every person I seem to know in the world is on it - I had a dozen "friend requests" from people I know and have known a long time. How did I not know this section of the world existed? I immediately navigated back to my little blog where I can breathe deeply in my decade-old environment where I cannot "throw" something at someone - what this means I can't imagine but I'm sure it's silly fun but I don't have time to figure it out. It would be just one more thing to distract me.

Which reminds me. I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby yet again because I'm teaching it this week in my fiction course. One of the things he perseverates upon in this one is the obsession we have with noise and distraction - he talks about how Orwell got it all wrong: it isn't that Big Brother is watching us constantly; he's filling our time and our consciousness with endless chatter noise to keep us so distracted we don't care. Chuckie may have a point there.

Whilst watching the sun rise in my back yard, I am drinking my coffee from a Gloria Jean's coffee mug, sans milk because we're out. I haven't had black coffee in so long and while I prefer my coffee au lait, it does remind me of my previous lives. Gloria Jeans. Sigh. I never worked there but it was round the corner from Prints Plus in the Westminster Mall and it was sadly all we had when starting work at 9:30 in the morning seemed early. The job of framing cheap posters in plastic composite frames for minimum wage in a mall full of mall-public during the winter holidays probably doesn't sound fun to most, but most of the time I loved working there. I always liked the idea of creating something out of nothing and giving it to someone who would appreciate it; I liked that the job required none of my thinking to be done and thus my mind was my own at all times. I miss that; I love teaching and I love school in general, but it's perfectly exhausting to use your brain all day, to be expected to be always "on" and to say intelligent or insightful things. To be responsible for thinking for everyone else too. It's more tiring than any physically demanding job I've ever held to be sure. If it hadn't been for that print-framing job, I'd never have met Jamison. That silly little mall store changed my life, and sipping out of a Gloria Jean's mug reminds me of it quite fondly. I cried the day we shut the gate forever and emptied the store, but Jamison came by to kiss me in the spot where we met.

On the news there was some spot about Starbucks, and while I want desperately to hate this company, I don't. Living in the burbs offers no coffee coolness and I admit that it's lovely to have a Starbucks within a stone's throw in any direction where I can sit in a comfy chair, grade papers, and drink my Earl Grey and milk in the afternoon and pretend I'm in London and not Northglenn. I also love that they spend their corporate money on ventures and causes I believe in, and that they have decent policies and benefits for their employees. I could even possibly work there if it wasn't so standardized. Making coffee drinks is its own kind of personal art and I cannot abide the precisely timed (not personally evaluated) espresso shots and the burnt coffee beans. Having said that, though, when I'm abroad and feeling a little out of sorts - which I do despite my joy at being abroad - I find Starbucks enormously comforting the same way I find The Simpsons on at supper time comforting. It reminds me that I haven't left the planet and that some rituals can be maintained no matter where I am in the world. Technology will never do this for me; I guess I'm slipping out of modernity. At least I'm in step with the 20th century, I suppose.

The Luck O'the Irish

Funny that people use this term positively; my understanding of the Irish is that they've no luck at all.  Because a large portion of my family is of Irish descent, it seems reasonable to share one of the shorter Irish jokes today:

----------------------------------

Two Irishmen are stranded in a life boat at sea after their ship sank.  They're floating along helpless with no land in sight when one of them spies a bottle in the water.  He grabs it, opens it, and out pops a genie, who is about to go through his spiel about three wishes when he looks at the two men:

"Ugh.  You're Irishmen.  I know for fact you've no luck at all, so I'm only gonna give you one wish, and you'd better make it quick."

The one man sputters out "I want the whole ocean to be nothin' but Guinness."  And POOF! the genie is gone, and as far as they both can see the ocean is frothy Guinness goodness.  

The other Irishman punches the man who made the wish.  "You idiot!  Now we have to piss in the boat."

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It cracks me up how morning news coverage is all about St. Patrick's Day, wearing green, drinking of course, but do any of these folks know what St. Patrick's Day is about, really?  I suppose this happens with all so-called holidays in that we tend to ignore their purpose and meaning in the larger scope for the sake of capitalistic endeavors.  Nothing new.  The Christians stole much of Christmas from the pagans, but just try to get one of those "keep the Christ in Christmas" folk to admit such a thing.

I'm on a very short break from DU this week, and it feels good to not have to go there for a while.  It gives me space and time and the distance provides some perspective.  One of the sweet undergrads who works in the Metro English department office came to me on Friday to ask about the DU program because one of the senior faculty told her I was going there.  Sadly, when she asked me I simply rolled my eyes and groaned, mumbling something about how it was not a good time to ask because of my current state of loathing and regret with regard to this.  I feel bad in retrospect and I did turn it round, telling her that if she wanted to come down some day, I'd introduce her around to people I know and give her a bit of a tour.  Just because I'm growing jaded and bitter doesn't mean I shouldn't be encouraging to others to follow their hearts - that would make me as bad as the rest of them I don't like currently.  I'm also calmer in knowing that there are people in this department who share my views and stand on my side and I'm not alone.  One new face to this group is one of the creative writing faculty with whom I'm taking a writing workshop this coming term, as I've mentioned.  I'm quite looking forward to the experience of writing (gasp) what I want to write for a while and also to spending time with this professor.  I had lunch with Jennie about a week ago, and she said, "I can't figure out why DU hired her [this person I'm talking about].  She's way too smart, nice, and well-adjusted for the likes of these people."  Amen to that, but I'm glad that she and others are here in any case, even though their lives must be a circle of hell in this department.  I even told my adviser outright the other day that if he hadn't been here, I'd have quit a long time ago.  I'm hoping that my new approach when I go back to school is about being thankful for those I have - these few shining people among the evil - instead of giving energy and power to those who don't deserve either.  One can hope.

Better late than never

Wee Natalie finally got to celebrate her first birthday yesterday afternoon! Here she is in her pretty party dress, being sweet and charming to all, even when she got tired. She devoured her cupcake with delightful destruction. I love this little one...

Shameless plugging for even more of your attention

I started a secondary blog on this space about dieting.  I know that's lame, by the way, but I wanted a separate place for this large compartment of my life to live.  If you're interested, I want to track my progress, tell what I've learned so far, offer up what works for me, and recipes to real food that I love.  If you're not interested, you can of course now ignore this part of my daily life and read on.  Thanks to all of those who are here.

http://chrisdietjournal.blogspot.com

I said I wasn't going to, but here it is

Evidence of Chris' manic mood swings, version 2.3:

I meant what I said in the former entry about positivity, but injustice is injustice and I'm sick of it.  I am aware that the complaints and tortures of being a graduate student are, at best, marginal in the grand scope of things that are unjust and corrupt in the world.  I am quite fortunate to have been born to a good family (despite the usual dysfunctional middle-class shit) in a country that doesn't prohibit the use of my brain and in a world that is generally prosperous and not for want of essentials and more.  Granted, I could have been born to a family in say, southern Sudan, living in a hut, on the run from a hateful muslim government that wants to exterminate me, starving, and being married off to the highest bidder to be one of several wives somewhere in a desert.  But I'm not, and this is my plight, and if I can't shamelessly dump my feelings into a faceless digital environment that doesn't scorn my selfishness, then where can I?

The DU English Department.  Sigh.  All someone ever had to say to any one of the 11 people left in my year of the program was:

"we're going through some big changes, we have no bloody idea what we're doing, we can agree on nothing - not even what the program you're entering is all about - and we plan to put you through several circles of hell whilst twisting our hands maniacally and choreographing complex mixed messages to keep you all from banding together to rebel before you graduate in a confused fog of what you may or may not have gained from your experience here"

That's all.  Why can't they just have told us this?  I probably still would have signed the acceptance sheet, but at least I would have been prepared for battle.  I would have dusted off the armor and sharpened my blades.  Instead, I find myself wandering in the desert and fighting the sand.  Sorry for the mixed metaphor/botched symbolism but I'm pissed and not thinking clearly.  It was enough that we came into a department that openly used us; in the past, the bottom line is that the doctoral students taught comp the first year, and program courses in our second and third.  In order to do this, first year grads had to take a year-long teaching practicum, which proved utterly useless, particularly if you've ever taught in a college classroom and many of us have for a long time now.  Then, in our second year, they said, 

"hey, we're ditching that program and instituting a new one that makes very little practical sense and instead of letting you teach courses you should teach based on your education level, we're going to offer you Business Technical writing through Daniels Business School.  When you're not doing this, you can be a TA for a senior faculty member."

Of course, being a TA when you've been teaching at another university for many years is ludicrous at best, and the person I TA'ed for actually had less classroom experience than I did - in fact, she regularly asked me pedagogical questions.  That was educational, and the experience was similar for the rest of us.  Teaching a business writing course - particularly when I know absolutely nothing about business - was a waste of good time on the part of myself and the students, who were all set to graduate and far more versed in what they were doing than I could ever be.  I taught them some grammar and persuasive writing techniques.  Woo hoo.  

Then, the illustrious Department told us that in our third year we were "being offered the opportunity to teach in the New Writing Program" headed up by some rock star rhetoric guy whose name is apparently just below Christ and Buddha in the universe of all things, and we should be honored to do this.  For those of you not in this loop, composition teaching is fucking composition teaching, and you can call it whatever you like but it doesn't change a thing.  You're still instructing unwilling undergraduates to write in complete sentences, to not plagiarize, use their freakin' spellcheckers, and if you're lucky, to have some kind of sense of the rhetorical situation - that is, an argument.  Not rocket science, people.  I could teach every single person out there how to do all of these things if you didn't already intuit it for yourself.  As a class, we all revolted at this idea, because we both need and want to teach courses that will - I don't know - HELP US TO GET JOBS at the end of this, and anyone, anywhere, can teach a composition course.  Hell, there are people right now teaching at Metro who haven't the slightest clue or proper education to be teaching someone to cross the street, let alone how to compose a research paper, so no one can convince me that teaching freshman comp at DU is somehow better because it's got real money flowing into it.  We won and got to teach program courses this year.

Now it's being demanded of us that - as we near our DOCTORAL degrees, that we enroll in said rhetorical rock star's course in order to "get" to teach comp classes in our fourth year so we can finish our dissertations.  A revolt is under way, and while I'd like to be the one lighting the torches and antagonizing an angry mob to action with outrageous rhetoric about how certain professors are to blame for our lot, I sit at home and blog about it.  I like that 'blog' has become a verb.  

Nevertheless, after all of this - and believe me, that's the Reader's Digest version - today I am informed by the same powers that be in this department that, one week before classes are to begin and I've juggled an unholy schedule at two campuses to make it work, I am being told that I cannot take one of the classes I want because some undergraduate students complained that they couldn't get into the class and they have to graduate soon.  I don't normally call it out this plainly, but I'm taking that fucking class, and I'd like to see any one of those fuckers just TRY to stop me.  My line is drawn in the sand.  It ends here.  I shall be pushed no further and I no longer care whose feelings get hurt or who hates my guts after this.

If you're still reading, bless you for putting up with it.

Want Justice?

I'm addicted to watching Judge Judy, and while I admit some shame associated with this fact, at the same time, it's gratifying to watch this woman scream at idiots and for people to get what they deserve - good or bad - in any sense.  Every bit as entertaining as the show are the commercials, which clearly reveal the supposed demographic of this program.  Endless ads for ambulance-chasing lawyers, laundry detergent, Stanley Steamer, and new programs coming out soon starring Flavor Flav - who, by the way, has enjoyed a remarkable career of late by being simply vile and incoherent, and this is a complete mystery to me.  I often wonder who the audience might be for any show with this individual on it, but there obviously is one since he keeps popping up on a host of networks.  Like I have room to complain when I'm watching Judge Judy, but still.  

My favorite commercials are the ones for prescription medications; the most recent amusing one is for Detrol, which claims to help with bladder control.  The little stick figure on the ladies' room door leaps off the front and counsels the poor woman who is embarrassed by her sudden, frequent urges and is "afraid her friends will find out."  The stick figure also offers to give her some literature from Detrol on "how to talk to her doctor about bladder issues."  Seriously?  Are there ANY women out there in the world who don't discuss every single personal somatic complaint with any other women who will listen?  I talk to my girlfriends about periods, bowel movements, post-childbirth unpleasantries, hemorrhoids, yeast infections - you name it.  Women never shut up about these things, and I consider that a positive side effect of female friendships.  We should be able to talk about everything, and what's embarrassing about a bladder control problem in the first place?  I should be in marketing; whoever writes this shit doesn't know anything about how women operate.

This observational babbling is not in vain.  I'm pissed off to the Nth degree with DU again - and a certain chair of the department from hell - and instead of venting it all here AGAIN, I thought I would offset my rubbish mood with a positive affirmation.  The aforementioned commercial made me think about the kinds of conversations I've had with girlfriends, and then it occurred to me that my life has never included very many close women friends, but the few I have I feel incredibly blessed to know.  I love Jamison like no one else, and I adore my child and dote on my dog, but relationships between women are of a particularly special breed, I think, and compare to nothing else.  

My sister feels like an actual extension of my person; without her I do not exist as a whole and no one knows my mind like she does.  I never have to speak my mind, but when I do she listens patiently as if she doesn't know what I'm going to say already; when I'm upset or hurting or needing I never have to say it, and only hearing her voice makes everything better.  When it came time for her to have her beautiful daughter, it was my pleasure and joy to be with her when she pushed, and to coach her when the epidural wore off - twice.  Her husband is a wonderful man but when she cried out with each increasing contraction, I knew that it was me who should hold her hand and talk her through it.  Only women can do this for one another - it's inexplicable and the most perfect man in the world cannot genuinely know it.  That's not derogatory, either.

Meridith is my soul sister; our lives have changed and no longer intersect in terms of space and perhaps even notions about the universe or world-view, but I can always sit with her comfortably and talk about anything at all and whether it's been ten minutes or two years, time never seems to pass in between.  There are few people in the world that I share a natural comfort with - comfort to be entirely myself, that is - and there is no one else who knows me the way she does.  She knew me when I was awkward and shy, when I was coming of age, when I lost my virginity, when I was hurtful, when I screwed up, when I excelled, when I behaved abominably in the course of finding out who I was and wanted to be - both to her and others - and when I was at my absolute worst and when I hit my stride.  

While there are others I have not mentioned here, I cannot end this list without mention of Laura.  I love that we can talk about absolutely anything, that we share a common trauma of graduate school, and yet our friendship transcends our commiseration.  This bond has a special value to me because I don't have many girlfriends and I don't form these relationships easily or frequently.  I don't trust many people with ~me~.  

Jennie, Sarah, Pam - these are special women too, and I'm sure I'm being conservative, forgetful even, but rather than recount my anger and trauma today, I choose to be blessed instead.  

And I am.

In defense of so-called Chubbies

Ever since the day I lost my cool in front of a class regarding the Anti-Gym ads, I have been troubled not only by said loss of cool, but the reasons for it.  I have ranted and raved and complained and whined ever since.  I simply cannot let this go; I was online and found a blog written by someone who defends this man and his message.  Her bottom line is: if you're offended by this, it's because you're fat and lazy.  If you think you're not, you're just in denial and she feels sorry for you.  Any contestation of her claim, such as "what about people who can't help it?" are met with accusations of making excuses for being fat.  Part of what continually steams me about this is that the argument is similar to the uber-religious or brainwashed sales people - their beliefs are incontrovertible because they have calculated responses for every possible angle you might take against them.  In the same way it is impossible to convince a KKK member that his beliefs are composed out of faulty logic, this is a fight not worth fighting.  One cannot battle blind and ignorant followers of false prophets.  

One can, however, tout one's own philosophy and put a positive message out into the world.  Here's mine:

Sometimes I eat whole pints of Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra and then proceed to sit on my fat ass in front of the TV, lamenting the number on the scale despite the aforementioned two facts.  My belly fat sometimes scrunches up over the top of my jeans quite uncomfortably - once I was heavy enough that my belly fat touched my breasts when I sat down.  My thighs rub together when I walk and there was a time when I wore holes into the inner legs of my jeans because of it.  I have overeaten enough junk food to make myself sick, and more than once.  I have eaten enough Taco Bell to feed a small country in my lifetime.  I have opted to eat chocolate cake swimming in heavy cream rather than go to the gym.  It took me until the age of 36 to be able to do any number of pushups.  Despite my recent weight loss of more than 45 pounds, people who encounter me for the first time, I assume, still think I'm fat.  I don't own a bathing suit.  I have workout videos that have inches of dust on them.

And clearly I'm not alone.  Even though we supposedly understand more than ever about how our bodies work, more people than ever are overweight, myself included.  Perhaps I do make excuses about all of the things listed above and more, but I'm sick to death of hearing people who have never had to worry about it lecture me on how simple it is to be healthy.  Some folks are genetically predisposed to be tiny and thin and small-breasted and others simply aren't.  I don't think that anyone should defend being fat - if you're fat you should own it and the reasons for it, which I do believe are related to a host of factors - genetics, food choices, emotional health, self-esteem, medications, and exercise levels.  We shouldn't be fat, and some people who eat nothing but fast food and sit on their asses all the time should be ashamed of themselves, but it's not my job to tell them that - I'm sure they know it and feel far worse about it than I could make them feel if I was so inclined.  But I'm sure as shit not going to pretend that just because I've changed some of my ways that I'm perfect, or that I don't engage in such behaviors, and I won't for one second claim that I have any answers for anyone.  I only know what works for me, and it's a complicated picture.  

I'm amazed at how many hours per day I spend thinking about the scale, what I'm eating or not eating, trying to burn calories, etc., and then I have to be confronted with this asshole on TV who would call me fat and throw Twinkies at me.  Weight loss is exhausting, expensive, and time-consuming.  I think it's worth it, but that's me.  Anyone who wants to know my secrets, I'll tell you; if you want support, you've got it.  If you're struggling with your weight, you're not alone; if you hate yourself, DON'T.  If you're happy just the way you are, then amen.

A point of note

Apparently the big news today is the resignation of the governor of New York after his involvement with a prostitution ring has been made public.  I cannot help but laugh at his speech, during which he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that he demands that people in power own up to their mistakes and take responsibility for them.  He would expect no less from himself, he says.  So, does anyone out there believe for one second that had some investigation left his indiscretion in the dark, he would have "accepted responsibility" and stepped down of his own accord?  Ha.

Pulls her hair back as she screams, "I don't really want to be the queen"

Chris gets nothing of note accomplished today, Take Two:

I am vexed.  All I want is to get some things done - simple things, really - small things that will propel me forward simply by virtue of them being removed from a daunting to-do list.  Such is the case with the dissertation prospectus.  I really must come up with a pseudonym as even typing it only adds to my vexation, but anyway.  In order to "get permission" to write said dissertation and thus graduate, I have to have the proposal approved, and the chair of my committee says "just do it" so it's done, and my second reader, as always "has reservations" about it.  The chair came by my office a few minutes ago to head my rage off at the pass (he catches on quickly to how to deal with Chris issues, apparently) by telling me to just acquiesce.  At that moment I hadn't seen her email, but I feel quite glad that he came by before I did to prevent a violent outburst and various death threats against certain individuals.  It's funny that I have always considered myself a pretty balanced person in terms of anger - that is, I anger quickly but it often fades as quickly and I forget it - this year, however, I feel like I'm always just at the edge of losing my temper to an alarming degree.  Every time I think it's under control and I've exhausted my rage, it bubbles just under the surface of my skin one more time like an encore-hungry rock star.  Ah well.  She signed off on the project, but gave me a laundry list of complaints to go with it.  I took the high road; I acquiesced.  I want to like this woman; I respect her scholarship and personally I think she's nice.  I just don't know how to fight the alpha female fight - either to win or lose, frankly, and I don't care which side I'm on as long as this fucking thing gets written and I graduate and go on to have a life of my own.

I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind

Tuesday morning at DU and I came into my office to work.  As it may be obvious thus far, little work is being accomplished, but certainly more is getting done here than at home, where I'd certainly already be deep into a Judge Judy episode and still in pajamas.  

On the news this morning - if one can call what we watch in this regard "news" - there were two stories I found worth commenting upon:

(1) People in Boulder are suing a woman who dyed her poodle pink with organic beet juice in the name of animal rights.  (<--is that a misplaced modifier or what?  I mean to say, that the people in Boulder are suing in the name of animal rights because she dyed her poodle pink.  Sheesh.)  She did it to create awareness of breast cancer issues, and others are calling it animal abuse.  It's in court today.  

It probably goes without saying that this is not only ridiculous at every conceivable level, but what's worse is that it made the news.  Someone from News 2 was actually on scene at the courthouse for this, and there were protesters outside the building.  I'm frankly shocked and appalled that this many people can take time out of their lives to defend a dog that is in no way being hurt when W, with his good-ole-boy bonehead politics is running our country with fingers in his ears humming "lalalalalala - I can't hear you" thus creating the shitty economy, $3 a gallon gas prices, and thousands slaughtered daily in the middle east and several countries in Africa.  He touts his policy of reducing our dependency on foreign oil when his entire family holds monetary interests in oil; John McCain has been allowed to become the republican candidate for president (which, ultimately works in the democrats' favor, but still); students graduate high school uneducated; teachers are grossly underpaid; people are starving just around the corner.  These things are worth talking about and holding signs for and signing petitions and hauling people into court.  Pink dogs are not.  Fucking Americans; always right on task with the most mundane and utterly ignorant of the big picture.

(2) Madonna and John Mellencamp were just inducted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.  Up to this point, all such inductees were before my generation, so to speak, or at least popular when I was young enough to consider them before my time.  But Madonna?  Good lord, I've gone and gotten old all of a sudden.  There are multiple things wrong with Madonna sharing honors with, say, The Beatles, but I won't go there - namely, I'm alarmed about the fact that these things from my conscious youthful years are now old and although I knew it before, there it was this morning, staring me in the face.  It was particularly striking because I watched Across the Universe last night with my daughter (a very good and interesting film if you can ignore the over-insistence on its Beatles-related quasi-cleverness), and I had to explain to her that ALL of the songs and references in the film were written by or related to the Beatles.  This began, of course, when I could sing along to all of the lyrics in the film, and heard her humming "Dear Prudence" over dinner the night before.  "Wow," she said.  "How many songs did these guys write, anyway?"  Guh.  

So here I am, in my office, still not working.  I've managed to kill 45 minutes of my day and all I have to show for it is some Earl Grey tea and a journal entry.  It could be worse.  Koo koo kachoo.

The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought

So I'm feeling anxious about the change of term at DU, which happens in only a couple of weeks.  For starters, I cannot get used to ten week quarters because I'm ingrained and programmed to 16 week semesters, and it feels like I never finish anything.  The feeling is accurate because I never finish anything, because by the time I realize what needs to be finished, I've started another round of ten weeks of not accomplishing anything.  Guh.  The spring term is particularly grueling due to its one week off between terms and this makes it all worse.  I've been on the student's version of sabbatical this year, using my research hours in large quantities because of other demands, and thus I have to take 12 credit hours for spring to make up for it.  In case you're out of this loop, the average for a graduate student is more like six, even though DU likes you to take 10 hours.  At any rate, it's a lot to do and I'm certainly not up for it.  I already know this.  I'm even venturing into new territory by taking a fiction workshop, and while I'm excited about this, I am also nervous.  I feel confident in my fiction writing skill, but I'm fairly conventional about it all and I was raised on pre-postmodernists so I still believe in things like plot.  Haha.  But seriously, I often appreciate the writing of my peers in the program, but I often don't get it; I love the idea of a single sentence on a page as a chapter, but don't know how to make that work and not sure I want to.  Mostly, it's the pressure of creative writing undertones in our department in general that dictates we stay in our respective camps and shut up about it.  I've never been one to do such things; I was the kid who bought Ice-T's Body Count CD because it had the song "Cop Killer" on it.

I've been reading like crazy lately, which is something new for me since the onset of The Program at DU.  I read all the time of course, but never for enjoyment; my latest foray into contemporary fiction (of which I must admit to being woefully out of the loop) is Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which my sister requested as a birthday present and turned up on a reading list for said upcoming school term.  I didn't even mean to read it right now, but I picked it up and read the first page...the next thing I knew I was sobbing only a few hours later and closing the completed book, turning it over in my hands, reading the back, hoping there was one more little bit I could read.  It was staggering, sublime, unflinching, merciless, and powerfully human.  I admit that I adore tales about the strength of the human spirit - as cheesy and overplayed as the sentiment is - and ones that are done well are rare.  What is it about us that allows us to endure atrocity?  To endure at all?  Perhaps this is why I love Hamlet so much; he asked the same question and we have yet to answer except that "conscience does make cowards of us all."

I wanted to swallow this novel whole, consume it, absorb it, and let it live inside me forever.  I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about it.  

It's funny how life turns out, the odds of fate in the face of doubt

I have never been a conventional parent, and I'd like to think I'm a fairly honest one.  Somewhere in our human existence, we (and I mean the royal we) decided that pregnancy and childbirth and parenthood - particularly for women - is joyful and wonderful and romantic.  In some ways it is and I find that my experience of parenthood on the whole has been positive and of course I simply adore my child like no one else in the world.  There are moments I will remember for the rest of my life and hopefully beyond as perfect, like when she first saw the City and County building lit up for Christmas when she was about 2 and a half and dubbed it "the charming castle," or when she woke up from surgery a few months ago and asked in drugged haze for me to hold her and give her her nee-nee.  But there are drawbacks, too, like being powerless to relieve pain or prevent bad decisions, or when you feel like a slave for months or even years until they gain some independence, and resent having to wait on them hand and foot for months more twelve years later after a difficult surgery.  And I am sick of the implication that admitting to these feelings makes one a bad parent.  I don't even think we should express guilt about them.  Mothers are supposed to grin and bear it and never admit that sometimes being a parent isn't fun, and no one likes to forced to sacrifice one's self interests to another, no matter how much you love them or whether they emerged into the world from your body.  To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.  There have been many, many moments in the last thirteen years that I questioned my choice to have a child at all, and many more moments in which I did not like being a parent, did not want to be a parent, and found the constant call of "mommy" irritating.  Sometimes I beg her to call me anything but Mom - I say, "how about George; call me George.  But if you say 'mom' one more time I might do something rash."  That was yesterday.  Some things never change.

What made me think of this was when I sat at my daughter's orchestra concert this evening, listening to cranky babies, and suffering other people's unruly toddlers - including one such urchin who repeatedly kneed me in the back and fell upon me without so much as one correction from either parent - and observing the postures of early teenage awkwardness in its various forms of rebellion and acne.  Quite funny, that last part.  I realized that as parents we are supposed to get all warm and fuzzy as we feign enthusiasm for such events as recitals and plays and various forms of artistic expressions of our children.  Of course I get excited to see my daughter playing Bach, but the others, well, I could do without them.  These things are always excruciating and long, and listening to a choir that can't sing absolutely slaughter the world's worst version of "My Heart Will Go On" from the Titanic movie, or a badly tuned concert band for nearly an hour before the orchestra is about all I can stand.  It occurred to me that I have endured many such events - I would never not attend something my daughter was involved in simply because I am ever her cheerleader - but I simply cannot wait until the burden of attendance has passed and I am free to never have to do this again.  There; I said it.  

My sister keeps hinting to me that I might change my mind about having another child, a wink and a nudge when I'm doting on Natalie, but no; not a chance.  I'd just as soon voluntarily remove one of my limbs, and that doesn't make me a bad person.  What I realized at said concert tonight was that I'll be glad when I no longer have to pretend that this element of parenthood is fun; when I no longer have to contend with the soccer moms who think that (a) I'm much younger than I am because I don't look like they do and translate this into me being a trashy teen mom rather than simply older than I look; (b) I'm somehow less because I don't wear a wedding ring, which also translates into some kind of moral shortcoming; and (c) I grade papers or edit my Chuck Palahniuk paper whilst their children are slaughtering movie tunes and pounding cymbals against the tempo.  Some woman wearing high-waisted jeans and an eighties hair style with curled-under bangs clucked her tongue in my general direction a couple of times because I was editing my reading for tomorrow while her precious angel was doing something she called singing.  Oi.

Don't get me wrong; I love children in the general sense and I am completely in love with my own, and those who are immediately in my life - my niece, my friends' little ones - but I look forward to the day when these are the only ones with whom I have to deal, and on my own terms.