The Valley

I promised myself I wouldn't get all weepy and depressed this Thanksgiving, but a wave of grief has passed over me today. And I don't know where it is coming from because it isn't just Katie, or at least I don't think so. It started after my visit to GS. You never really know how much you miss someone until you see them again and are given another chance to taste what it was like before. And I started to regret change which is something I can't allow myself to do. I felt so wonderful all day, so overjoyed that I had those wonderful shivers of pleasure. I wouldn't have left, except that I knew that I needed to. And on the drive back I felt this dark sadness come over me like a big fat rain cloud. And for a moment I throught I was going to cry, got that tight feeling in my chest and the inability to swallow properly, but then it went away.
And then there is Katie...that knot in my stomach that forms without me even knowing whenever Thanksgiving rolls around, that rises without trigger or reason or purpose until it finds its way out. Here I am preoccupied with a million other things and yet she finds her way into my dreams. Last night was the first time I saw Katie alive in my dreams. I've dreamed her dead over and over again, laying in the casket looking not a thing like herself, but this time I saw her alive. We were at a party and I kept losing sight of her, and I followed her because I wanted to touch her one last time. I woke up with tears all over my pillow and had to reach for my inhaler. Because it was so real even though I knew that it was a dream while dreaming it, and when I woke up, I woke up to a world where Katie was dead.
I think to myself, it's been three years, and that's along time. But it will be forever and forever is so much longer. It's not some kind of horrible storm that with enough patience and courage you can just wait out. And then I realize that I can't remember the last time I saw her alive, and when someone says the name Katie, the second image that pops into my head is of Katie in the sitting on the opposite side of the table at the Mathcounts meet making fun of the woman giving instructions, because the first image was of the way her arms looked folded limp across her chest that night at the wake. And so Katie ceases to be someone alive who happened to die, but someone dead who was once alive. And that is a grief in itself.
So tonight I am trying to reconcile loss. HA! Easier said than done. I'm trying to accept that there is a whole universe of unknowns and all of time before and after our existence that we cannot name. And that if we don't push ourselves forward, time will do it for us, and it is much better for this passage to be consensual. That's my musing for the night.

The Silence After the Storm

I finished my Middle East paper last night at about two a.m. and had a massive headache going to bed, which I woke up with this morning. And mypaper is too long, and too scatterbrained, and just not terribly good. After every claim I made I said to myself (outloud): "Maura , you can't just say stuff like that." Or maybe it wouldn't have been so bad had i concluded it well, but after twelve pages I had exhausted any idea that I might have had and so I ended with a short rant on how unfair and contrary it was that Egypt didn't make it like Turkey did when they had the national unification that Turkey didn't. And Iran, I couldn't say much of anything there except to say that Iran was fighting a losing battle from day one and so it came as no surprise that it was bought and bullied and ignored after WWI. I don't know. I did use the phrase "the forceps of the West" so if the entire paper is ludicrous shit, then at least it will be written well. But I feel bad turning it in because I've spent every spare minute for an entire week working on it, outlining, making charts, taking notes, and what if I turn it in and she reads and says "Ah, this is one of those horrible night before it's due essay."
And the film paper, I don't even want to think about it. That was a three hour paper and it shows. But I don't care about that one. I may have mentioned it once or twice before but I HATE THAT CLASS! If I can just keep my B- I will be satisfied, especially if I can keep the As in the other ones. Pruitt doesn't have a clue and is just content to spit on me during the lectures. If you can't say FILM or CINEMA without spitting, then why the hell do you become a film history lecturerer. It's like that poor slam poet with the lisp. I mean, where were their career advisors?
At least Nerina knows my name. Hey Nerina even likes me. Whenever we are comparing Islamic fundamentalism and crazy rituals to Christian fundamentalism and crazy rituals, she says, "Where's Maura?" And I'm not arrogant, or at least not outright.
Just thought of a funny moment when I was in Montmartre and I went into a little cafe and asked for a box of water.

Why I haven't written

The Middle East becomes a much more complicated area of study after the end of WWI. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, three centers of authority--Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and Iran--controlled the region. To be sure, European powers exercized various degrees of influence within each of these centers, but Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran were the capital cities for most of the inhabitants of the Middle East. however, following the peace settlement and the establishment of the mandates, a new regional state system came into existence. Three central authorities expanded to ten, each with its own domestic and foreign policy. But the policies of most of these new states were determined by European occupiers, and so for most of the interwar period, Arab political activity was primarily devoted to acheiving independence from foreign control. Other considerations, such as land reform or social welfare, recieved little attention until after WWII and in the case of both Iran and Egypt it came in the form of socialism.....BLAH BLAH BLAH

Back to work I go...

Making something right in at least one corner of this vast house of wrongs

Okay, so I was going to write about how much I want to assasinate Lindsey Graham, but now I have decided that he is not worth my addressing his idiocy.
So instead I am going to talk about how Maine has just recently signed into law this nations' first universal state health plan. Within the next five years, Dirigo Health Program, will enroll 190,000 uninsured Maine citizens, funded by the State Treasury of Maine as well as changing Maine Care (medicaid) standards to include more poverty line families that did not qualify before. And this makes me very happy, because if Maine can do it, then maybe others will follow and we'll see how nice it is not to have to worry about how we are going to afford to take our kids to the doctor when they get sick.
On another note, one of my friends told me, without having to think about it, that she was very satisfied with the fact that because she could afford better insurance than the person in line ahead of her in the emergency room that was on Medicaid, she would be seen first. It made me so horribly sad because she honestly thought that this system where superior health care is given to those who can afford it was better and more just than a system where everyone had fair and equal coverage. Because in the latter type of system, all patients being equal, you might actually have to wait your turn to have your gall bladder removed, where as it is now, your money and good insurance could get you bumped up in the line. Now this friend is not a bad person. But I have seen what my culture has done to her, feeding her line after line about the value of a bought and sold world, that money equals happiness, that hardwork and determination equals money, the laziness and ignorance equals poverty, that life is a race in which everyone is the enemy and no one is our friend. And that's no way to live, or at least I can't see how it is. My mother has good state employee insurance, and it's hard to pay those pharmacy bills yes, but if my little brother comes down with a bad ear infection, she doesn't have to think twice about taking him to the doctor and getting him put on antibiotics. But I had to stop going to my pulmanologist for my asthma when they stopped taking our insurance. But when push comes to shove, my family doesn't have to worry about not being able to keep themselves in good health. So my culture tells me that I should feel proud and happy that once a year I go into a nice smelling office to get my 300 dollar gynological exam where the nurses make me feel welcome, and the art on the wall's not half bad, and I don't have to pay but twenty percent of that price. Should I just shut up and thank my lucky stars that I wasn't born in a trailer park to parents who worked sixty hours a week and got an expensive HMO plan only if they were really lucky. So easily I could have been, at no fault of my own.
These are the embarrassments of privilege, I refuse, as so many of the lucky ones do, to embrace them. I will not wear these chains with pride, but I will shake them as loud as I can on the streets so that if nothing else, we start looking up from our cafe lattes and trying to find out what all the noise is about.

Bobby Lee, Bobby Lee, I don't think I can breathe, and the walls get closer every single day

I was riding my bike to work yesterday at 7:30 in the morning when it seemed as if the entire world was still asleep. It was overcast and about thirty degrees and the wind was blowing in steady from the river (I assume that's where it came from) and I had a moment while walking by bike across the street. I don't know exactly how to describe it, except that it was completely still and completely silent except for the low moaning of the wind (a lower sound than the high pitched Bronte novel howling in Scotland) that blew the leaves off the ground in spiral formations. It felt like something from a movie and there I was walking down the middle of the street, not a car in sight. I felt like there should have been some sort of soft gentle voice over that comes at the end of a movie when the main character is walking away into the sunrise. And I feel like such a miserable writer, or maybe i'm just tired, but i can't verbally put my finger on what was so moving about that kind of solitude, only that I had to stop and catch my breath.

Small Moves

This may not seem much of a triumph, but I have completely eliminated the word "like" from my intelligent conversation. This is to say that I no longer use it when I am talking in class. Talking with my friends informally is still fair game right now, although I am working really hard to stop it. The downside is I can hardly bear listening to my classmates in class anymore, because we really are the "like" culture, and it just isn't intelligent sounding. Now that I have eliminated it, when i hear other people use it, the word screams. I am forever indebted to my professor Marina who has forbidden "like" from her classroom, and I would encourage all teachers to do the same.
So I'm working on the likes in my normal conversation, but i find it particularly hard to do when i am telling a story with dialogue. Instead of saying "He said such and such" I say "he was like such and such" but no! he wasn't like anything!b

Thought of the day

I am blessed

Nobody gets a lifetime rehearsal

There is something spiritual about two voices a perfect third apart...especially when it really matters. Like the Indigo Girls (or the Indigo Boys as George once called them...that lovable ass), the kind of harmony they do is as close to pure love and devotion as anything I've seen or heard, because it is the product of complete and equal dependence and skilled listening and compromise. In order to sing the kind of close harmonies like that, you're minds have to be in the same place. the emotion has to swell and fall together. It's so beautiful. The closest as I have come to that kind of musical relationship is when I have done harmonies with Shosha. It's magical really.
And thinking about this makes me think of all the times that Shosha and Mama and I used to sit on the floor playing "Kid Fears" and "Prince of Darkness". It was always the same. Me on the melody, Mama on the low harmony, and Shosha on the counter-melody. "My place is of the sun and your place is of the dark..." I stole 1200 Curfews from Benjamin yesterday and I'm trying to burn it but I can't get my CD drive to open. I've got to go to bed now.

A Tear in My Beer

So I had a gig tonight, the premiere of "Waitin' for Marriage" at the Black Swan Irish pub. Sang myself hoarse, strummed a blister into my thumb, and stomped a hole in the floor. A fun time was had by all .
I even tried out some solo work in the middle there. I did "Top of the World" and "My Love Will Follow You" and "You Were Mine" and...uh....oh, and "Disgusted". I am so proud of Disgusted, my one blues song, because when I did the guitar solo, it sounded really good and that made me feel really great. I still haven't figured out the lyrics to it though. I've listened to the Lucinda version over and over again and made educated guesses but it's a real coin toss. I wish I could get ahold of the 1934 Lil' Son Jackson version. I know it's out there but i don't know how to find it. But if I just sing it like Lucinda, it doesn't matter really if you have no idea what "what man like a woman whip a sassy child" is refering to or what's the other stumper "I can go Chicago with the man over rare." But anyway...
We closed with "Case of You" which we did so passionately that I cried afterwards. Benjamin plays the guitar part perfectly and Leah's violin just cried right along with it, and I did my best at the dark, resonate Joni Mitchell voice. I felt good about it though, because I was singing Joni Mitchell's notes, not really varying at all from her version, but the quality of the sound, the heart in the voice, that was mine. That made me feel really good too. I really like it when I don't have to play the guitar, when I can just hang on to that stool and concentrate completely on my voice and the words and the mood, making sure that I don't push to hard (because i tend to go a little flat when i do that) and that I don't swallow words up.
But anyway, after that I felt a gush of sadness and homesickness and sorrow in general. The line "But be prepared to bleed" really stuck with me. And I thought about how bleeding makes us human and that feeling lonely and scared was just another way of bleeding a little. I don't know why I felt so lonely tonight because I wasn't really. I felt so good and so comfortable about the people I was with. I have never been so completely in sync intellectually and emotionally with a friend than I am with Leah, someone who is so genuine and aware of what goes on around her. But nevertheless i felt a little alone tonight (or should I say lonesome in honor of bluegrass music). It will be good to be home.

Taking it back home

Uncle Kneel bought four of Miss Delia Harbinger’s hanging plants down at the Saturday Flea Market every two weeks, rain or shine. Two weeks was the amount of time, give or take a few days, that it took for the hanging plants that he bought the previous time to die. It became the obsession of my grandmother, who we called Ziggy, to find out why this was. She sat on her porch whenever she could, just so she could look across the street and spy on Uncle Kneel. Of course it wasn’t really spying. He could see her plain as day looking over at him, and it wasn’t in Ziggy’s nature to be discrete about anything. He did his best to ignore her. Which is something I could relate to. Ziggy was his older sister, just like Annelle was my older sister, and I made it a point throughout my life to disregard every word that came out of her mouth.
But to understand this, you also have to understand that if you were born a Foster, you didn’t stray far from Foster Drive, and you certainly didn’t wander out of Seven Mile, Tennessee, or if you did, you’d better have a real good reason. Like Ziggy’s youngest son, my uncle Winston, who had aspirations to be a country singer and moved to Nashville. Nobody could understand that when there was already a perfectly presentable band right there in Seven Mile that needed a new lead singer after Harlan Foster Thomas, who was in some way related to me, lost his wife to cancer. But Winston said he wasn't up to singing "Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown" at tent revivals. And my cousin Billy had gone to college in New York, and he might as well have fallen off the face of the earth for all that my aunt Yolanda heard from him. When he came home for Christmases everybody acted real proud of him, but none of them could understand what had been wrong with UT. And then there was my mother’s cousin, Jacinda, who moved to Asheville, North Carolina with her good friend Alice. And nobody talked about her, and when I asked Ziggy why, she said it was because Jacinda was a Lebanese.
But all that is just beside the point. The point is Uncle Kneel didn't water those plants because he liked to watch them die and said so to me one hot afternoon the July I had just turned twelve. Ziggy had never thought to ask him straight out what his intentions were with those plants, in fact all summer she had it in her head that he and Miss Delia were in a secret love affair. But no, that afternoon he peered over his newspaper at those plants, already starting to brown at the edges, and then at me, and he said, "I reckon I like to watch them trying."

Missing Hamish

the way he used to wrap his scrawny little arms around my neck press his cheek against mine so that I could feel his long eyelashes brushing the surface of my skin, the way the furrowed his brow when he was trying to concentrate and pressed his lips together in a broad, tight line, the way he used to play with my earlobes at bedtime while I was reading.

What I have seen (Methinks!)

There is so much ugliness in the world, so much to hide from. Yes... But also so much to embrace. And I used to believe that the world had learned to simply balance all these things out, the almost unbearable burdens of the darkness, and the quiet grace of the light, and create its own form of justice. And it does, I suppose, but what would be the purpose if it did just that and nothing more, equal good and equal bad. I've been reading the great French thinkers Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal (and I'll throw Voltaire in there too even though I haven't actually been reading him) and I was particularly distraught with Pascal. Why can't we be both happy and lucid? Can't there be a middle ground? I think that perhaps Montaigne and Voltaire are the closest to understanding the freedom of knowing that we must find an active philosophy that can be both lived as well as contemplated. Descartes realizes this to a certain extent in his personal maxims (his temporary residence whilst he destroys his previous dwelling). But then Pascal is the only one that demands certainty or at least the illusion of certainty. I mean, take the Wager, the essence of it is that we develop absolute faith, not necessarily as a genuine act, but as a confident bet with the knowledge that it is low risk. What kind of faith is that? He distrusts both the intircate methodology of science and reason, as well the innovation and imagination of the mind and the ability of the self to be anything but wretched. He hates both method and the lack of it, and that frustrates me. I prefer Montaigne who says that the world is a perpetual see-saw. "I do not portray man's being. I portray his passage" (or something like that. And why does Pascal so despise Montaigne's acceptence and indeed optomistic outlook on his own wretchedness. My favorite quote of Montaigne is "come what may, I am glad that the world will know the height from which I will have fallen. Because Montaigne's wager is of a different kind, recognizing both the joys and pleasures of a humanistic life AND the possiblilty of the kingdom of God on earth while we are still a part of it.
I understand pessimism. I really do. I even allow that it can be constructive, forcing us to look inward and face our vanity and selffishness, revealing our hypocricy and shortcomings, and we would hope that these revalations would bring about change.
But when does this same pessimism become counter-productive? I think that Pascal's stance on certainty and truth and faith is not freedom at all, but a bondage of the worst kind--within the self. I am much more keen on Montaigne's living by learning or even Descartes living by questioning. Those seem like much more genuine faiths when put against Pasl's faith in based on an arguement that essentially says, "Being the a useless wretch no matter what, what have I to lose."

This is my faith...where I find my place of honest living...the way I have a chance and trascending the equilibrium of good and evil.

Unmistakable joy...

I have seen the morning sun creep up from behind the pine trees when no one else was watching. I have heard the sounds of laughter so many times that I could categorize them like buttons. I have felt the cool hand of my mother on my forehead when the rest of me was boiling. I have cut the three-veined cord of a baby, and watched her open her eyes for the first time.

Chronicle of A Sleepless Night Foretold

i'm in an odd mood tonight. I want to meet Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Of all the things in the world, that is what i want most of all. And I would touch his eyebrows and ask him if he had found his sea.

My Name is Red

Memory is a complicated thing, relative to truth, but not its twin ~Barbara Kingsolver

Truth: My mother, her hands folded in her lap. They are bleeding all over her white dress. What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and grief to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. His car’s not in the parking lot. We’ve called his house. There are tiny bruises up and down my arms. I am afraid they will see. Maura, do you know where he is? No. Do you? No. Your mother is dying, Maura, now tell us the truth. I don’t know. But where is the preacher? He said he was coming

Dream: My mother kicked a hole in the wall. A shoe-sized hole, like when our dog Jambo tried to eat the spaghetti off the wall and chewed off a chunk of wall along with spaghetti. I laughed. Why? Because she smashed her finger with a hammer while trying to nail a bookshelf into her wall. Goddamn-good-for-nothing-son-of-a-bitch. Why did I laugh? Because my mother’s shoes were the orangy red color of greasy tomato sauce and the wall was white.

Dream: Easter Sunday. Red Dress, puffed sleeves, white socks. Shosha’s is blue, the light blue of a robin’s egg. I had wanted blue. Don’t touch my dress. Your dress is ugly. Why would I want to touch that old thing? My skin between my mother’s fingers, the back of my arm. Shh. But she started it. One more word and you’ll be sorry, do you hear me? Yes, ma’am. I hear.

Dream: Third grade. Waiting outside Mrs. Porter’s classroom on the cold linoleum. My father has forgotten to pick me up and there is no one inside the school except Mrs. Porter with the blue hair that used to be red, the red of hair that isn’t really red at all, and the janitor who was said to be eight feet tall. I cannot stop crying. It’s okay, Maura. He says he’s on his way. He’ll be here in five minutes so you can stop crying now. She says MOR-uh instead of MAR-uh, and I know that she does not understand.

Dream: Sunday School, sucking on my bottom lip. In the corner by the window where I can see the parking lot. Old Ford pickups and clean white Buick LaSabers. On my knees, thinking about what I have done. Driving the nails deeper into the open hands of Christ. I am pretending that I have been locked in a closet like the little orphans in Annie before they find the vent. Or do they find the vent? This is what happens when we lie. We turn red and hang our heads in shame.

Nursery School and the West Bank

Last night I went to the first US Screening of a documentary by Ilan Ziv called The Junction about the families of three young men that were killed around the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000. I can't even begin to express how moved I was by this film, but my stomach was in knots all last night and I kept bursting out into tears at random moments. Netzarat was a Palestinian village that was vacated and plowed down to the ground and replaced by two enormous apartment complexes and a military base, a Israeli settlement. They changed the name to Netzarim and relocated all the Palestinian inhabitants right across the road to the Netzarat Refugee Camp. But that really wasn't what the film was about. The film was about three families and the huge gaping holes left in their lives by the death of their sons. They were all 18 years old. My age. And for the first time I didn't scoff and think about how many more Palestinian mothers had grieved the death of children than the Israeli mothers, because who gives a shit, that's not the point. The two main young men David and Rasfid lost their lives. One was a drafted Israeli soldier who in high school had done anti-occupation ads but whose skewed 17year old sense of duty had led him to choose a combat unit in Netzarim, sacrificed for ideas that he did not understand. I think of the Rembrandt painting of Abraham knife poised on the top of the mountain, and of Isaacs terrified eyes, his long, scared, boyish neck...So vulnerable. The other was a poor Palestinian boy who had thrown "stones at the tanks rolling over his home" as my sister so elegantly put it, who looked out the window of his plaster home and seen two towers of wealth where his home used to be. His father had left his mother and sister and him when he was twelve and at 18 he was their sole source. His mother said with tears in her eyes that Rasfid's dream was to be a martyr and that he had gotten his wish. The day after Sharon's visit to the Gaza, the second intifada broke out and Rasfid went with all the young men of Netzarat to throw stones at the military base and the apartment buildings. After twelve hours of riots, the Israeli Army sent helicopters and fired at the crowd from the sky and dropped missiles into the refugee camp. Rasfid was shot in the head seven times.

But that's not what the film was about either. It was about Rasfid's mother telling us that their used to be orange groves and she would watch her son and daughter climb the trees and throw oranges at each other. It was about a father watching home videos and cracking his knuckles. After the film I asked the director where David's mother was (they only interviewed his father) and he said that she had backed out at the last minute. He said that David's mother during the interviews was intellectually incomprehensible, but emotionally she said everything. He said to me "You couldn't understand a word that came out of her mouth, and yet you could understand everything." I immediately felt so stupid. How could you talk to a video camera when you could hardly bring yourself to get out of bed in the morning?
And Rasfid's mother, averted her grief in other ways, speaking of holy trascendence and of martyrs sitting to the right of the Prophet. And I am thinking, what is it like to have no present, either grieving past evils and loss and horror, angry and frustrated, or obsessing over the future, your place in heaven, the reward for your diligent suffering on earth? What is it like to never be able to just live? What is like when the only weapon you have against your Goliath strength enemy is that you are willing to die? Rasfid was my age. I thought honestly and carefully about it and found that I can think of no cause that I would be willing to die for.
This isn't terribly coherent at all. But how many children must die before it stops mattering who started it or whose holy text gives them right to a piece of land. Ilan Viz said that it would be a movement of mothers and fathers who are tired of losing their children and not a movement of the children themselves.

So in a moment today at the Nursery School I understood the dilemma that is faced in Palestine in a new light.

We teach the three and four year olds at the nursery school to use words when they are angry and we reward that kind of rational behavior by listening and evaluating the situation listening to both side and then by trying to change it. For example, today. Emma and Abby are playing together in the playhouse and Abby decides that she wants to play alone and so she shoves Emma out. Emma cries and in turn shoves Abby. At this point I intervene and ask screaming Emma to stop kicking things and use her words. "But she pushed me FIRST," Emma wails over and over again. Me: "Can you use your words to tell Abby why you are upset." She gulps and says through tears to the halfway oblivious Abby "I didn't like it when you pushed me out of the playhouse. It hurt my feelings." I feel a twinge of pride because I feel like I have become a part of something really good and lasting. So then we have a short conversation about the advantages of sharing and apologies are said and a reminder given that hitting and shoving is not an unacceptable way of dealing with anger and that in the future we (and there is a chorus) "USE OUR WORDS!!" This is why I love kids.
We teach our children to express their anger through words if they want to change a situation and we all agree that words are more effective than hitting people and throwing temper tantrums. Agreed? But what happens when the teacher asks the child to use words and he does but the teacher isn't really interested at all in listening to those words and only cares about putting a stop to the violent action and doesn't really address the actual issue that sparked the action in the first place?
We ask why the Palestinians resort to violence over and over again (note to add that Palestinian violence is called terrorism while Israeli violence is called action), and I can only ask What else are they to do when their words have been ignored, when their voices have no standing, appreciation, or real consideration to those they are in conflict with? So you don't know what else to do but to throw stones, and then you grow up and realize that your stones barely scratch the surface of ANYTHING and so you use the only weapon that you have, a willingness to give up your life, and you strap a bomb to yourself, say a prayer, and you walk into a government building.
Okay, I'm done for now. I have to go read about the fiery pit of hell (Jonathan Edwards).

On Wretchedness and an odd dream about God

Well, damn it, even my own mother has one of these, so I guess it is about time I get one. Not that anyone should care, but sometimes we have to humor ourselves. I've always kept a miserable diary, no discipline, no discipline, no discipline. I start out well, it's true--long, thoughtful entries of inner searching and discovery--for about three days. If you were only to see the piles of journals and notebooks that have all of ten pages filled out, then you would know what an undisciplined wretch I am. And I'm supposed to be the aspiring writer? So maybe I must just accept that I am a modern nit-wit who is so lost in the age of affluence and technology that I must keep a diary online. It hurts me to say that...it really does. But who knows, most likely my innability to keep a journal is a inpenatrable flaw that cannot be cured, and so I will not be suprised if my own blog site becomes static in a few days.
So what...lets talk about God. Last night I dreamed that God called me up on the telephone and told me he had hit a deer out on 123 and needed me to come down and shoot it and put it out of it's misery. And I said "God, I'm all the way up here in New York, call my parents. They'll come help." So God says, "What you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto me." Well, what can I say to that. So I catch a plane from Albany to Greenville and drive a rental car all the way to the Issaqueena Trail Exit where a green Dodge Ram is pulled over and in the bed there is this dead deer. So then I go to the drivers side, scared out of my mind, because, hey, it isn't every day you get to talk to God. But as I get closer, God looks more and more like my Uncle Tommy (I won't even go into the perfect IRONY there). So here's Uncle Tommy God looking at me and he says "Maura, where's your gun?" and I say, "Where in God's name am I supposed to get a gun?" and he says "Everybody has a gun" and I say "No they don't," and we argue for a while over that, and I'm just saying a little prayer to myself so that he doesn't bring up Palestine, because I hate talking about Palestine with religious nuts. But then I realize that we don't need a gun because the deer is obviously dead already, but just to make sure I go back and check and the truck is piled high with deer carcasses (just like the Roofers' white truck that I once saw carrying dead deer on our street as a child). And then I get into the truck with God who I am absolutely sure is my uncle Tommy and I tell him that he needs to take me to my voice lessons, except I am lying because he's really taking me to therapy because I know that Tommy would disapprove of therapy. And I wake up because I have to go to Film class (which I hate).

Starting off on the right foot--a foot not my own

I'll start with a poem. Not mine because I hate writing poetry.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Let me remember today that I don't have to be good, to forget about "supposed to" and remember "be."