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Ethnographic Research Project Proposal

In the coming weeks I would like to observe and interact with the culture of the elderly in full-time care nursing homes. I have several facilities that I am looking into: 1) Northern Dutchess RHCF Inc. in Rhinebeck, a non profit, government funded facility catering to the needs of Medicaid/Medicare patients whose families might not be able otherwise to afford a nursing home. 2) Golden Hill Health Care Center in Kingston, a government run and government funded facility 3) The Mountain View Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in New Paltz, a high cost, for-profit facility 4) The Victory Lake Nursing Center, a non-profit, but non affiliated facility in Hyde Park. More than likely I will pick only one center to do my research in based on how willing the management is in letting me do my research there and the environment itself.
For the purposes of this project I think I will focus less on the inner workings of the nursing home itself, but more on the individual physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of the completely dependent senior. In formulating my discussions and interviews with my informants, I will keep in mind these basic questions: How satisfied are the members of this community with themselves? their community dynamic? their relationship with family? their status in the outside community? How do they relate or feel attached to their personal history? Do they cherish and glorify the past, or resent it? In general do the informants view the nursing home community conducive to aging with grace or do they feel that it imprisons them

Standing on the sand as if it were stone

Here's my version of the debates tonight. For your information, i did not cry with anger and/or despair:

Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not. Freedom, enemy.
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, and if'n I done that is no matter. You change your mind all the time
Kerry: Bush did this.
Bush: I did not, freedom, enemy, alliances, Sept. 10th, what kind of message.
Kerry: You sleazy lying sonofabitch, why don't you just go back to Texas and shove a fencepost up your butt. (okay, that was just wishful thinking).

But on a happier note. My dreams have now come true. Do you remember hearing those stories about the make-a-wish foundations where terminally ill children got to meet celebrities? Well, I always knew that if I were ever terminally ill and got any wish in the world, it would be to meet barbara kingsolver. Okay, so really I didn't meet her. I saw John Sayles too, and although I love his work and his spirit, it was nothing like seeing Barbara. Afterwards, I stood not three feet from her. our hands might have even touched. She signed my Small Wonder. I also gave her a letter that I spent the better part of two days writing (when I should have been writing my paper). it's a good thing I had the letter, because I forgot how to speak English when a actually went to talk to her. I think the words "this" "note" and "thank you" came out sounding a bit like my native tongue. She smile and said thank you back, and then she waved as I packed up all my stuff and headed out the door.
The talk itself was fine, but not really informative in that anything new was expressed that had not been expressed in their work. I just couldn't take my eyes off her. She glowed. Don't get me for blasphemy here: But imagine Jesus walking across a stage and sitting down in a chair and staying there for two hours, it wouldn't really matter what he was saying...it's jesus, and he's sitting in a chair ten feet away. Barbara Kingsolver isn't jesus (although i do count her as one of my own personal deities in my scewed version of Pagan-Christianity where you can have a big God and smaller earthly ones), but you can imagine my reaction.
And also I feel very proud of myself having mastered the city enough to be able to find my way from Lexington and 42nd to Park on 34th all on my very own...and at night too. Plus I didn't get mugged, and I didn't get murdered, and that is always a good thing. Cities confuse me, and they make irritable, and they scare me, and they give me a headache, but other than that, I really like going to NY. If I were more confident I might could function better and be happier in NY. I would never want to live there though, or at least I can't see myself living there. I've been thinking of places to settle down one day, if I decide to remain an American. And I like the northeast, but something still doesn't feel right to me. The west doesn't feel right, although perhaps if I live in a city center and not in suburbia it would feel different, and more an more, I see myself moving back down south, and for the first time the idea doesn't repulse me. I read this article in Glamour or somthing called "Where's my village?" and I want my children to have a village. I want my children to know their grandparents and really truly consider them second parents. I want them to grow up around trees and mountains and unpolluted water. You can't swim in any of the lakes or streams around here because they are polluted, and they make you feel greasy. More and more, I keep thinking about Asheville.
Must go catch the shuttle more later....

I was just a little girl when your hand brushed by my, and I will be an old woman happy to have spent my whole life with one man

One man, one town is all I need. I wrote a sappy love song last night that you may hear very soon on the country music radio.

It's called We Made


Verse 1
They’ve built a shopping mall
On the hill where once we parked,
Spinning dreams into the stars
And stealing kisses in the dark.
I know the way the dirt felt
Under the mark of our bare feet,
As we danced around your truck
Without a word to speak
And that mall, it pays the bills,
And that mall, it keeps us still,
But it won’t ever be enough to bring us back to that hill

Chorus
Where we found a new little soul,
Where we found a new pair of wings,
Where I knew I’d spend my whole life
Harboring this little precious thing
We made

Verse 2
You didn’t have a dime
And my folks didn’t approve,
As we strode up to that alter,
And swore we’d never move.
So you took a job in milltown
And I went to sewing clothes
Then meet back in our little house
And this life that we chose
And this house, it’s made of stone
And this house, it’s made of bone
And of all the tears and love it took to make this house a home

Chorus

Verse 3
Fifteen years go by,
And this one will be our last.
You hold my hand and pray
That we are still up to the task.
She’s got my big brown eyes,
Like all our children do,
But her grin we’ve never seen before
And she’s looking at you.
And this babe, is all we need
And this love, is all we seed
And in her eyes we see our own and all the ways they’ve seen

Chorus

Bridge
In the handicapped space
On that ground where once we kissed
I take your hand and cry
For this place, our genesis

Chorus

Ha! I think I am just very premenstrual. Today at nursery school I had to leave the room when Jacob's mom had to leave. She said goodbye and he started screaming and I started crying. I mean, geez! Poor Jane didn't know what to think. I always do that when I'm about to start my period. I cry at the commercials on TV with puppies. Like yesterday in the campus center i saw a national tudoring service comercial, and this boy's parents get him tutored, and low and behold a few months later he hands his mom his report card and she puts her hand on her heart and smiles proudly at him, and I just burst out into tears.
Alright...I'm off to get mouse traps, and later tonight I'm going to a old-time music jam.

Love is a Tanglewood Tree

Hmmm. Before I forget about it....I had two very disturbing dreams last night. I dreamed that I was back home for a holiday and Mama and Daddy were in the final stages of a divorce, but I didn't understand it because they were acting completely normal, and yet I knew that they didn't love eachother anymore. In my dream I cried and cried, just completely heartbroken, and Leah was there telling me that I should be happy for them, but I told her that she didn't understand. And I cried more, and I kicked and screamed and threw things but no one would listen and no one would talk to me. And as I cried for my parents I realized, in the dream, that I was actually crying for Anna because I would never see her again. And then I woke up. It was about 4 am. Then I had another dream in the early morning which came from this really violent movie I saw yesterday called Leon which was about the mob in NY. It was a game, and there were two sides and we were fighting eachother...really fighting. We lined up, and everyone had guns and knives, and then I realized that I didn't have a knife, and I was captured by this boy I knew, and I begged him to let me get my gun to make things fair, and he said "no way, not after the way you treated my people. I will show no mercy." So then I asked if I could go to the bathroom, because I remembered that there was a butcher knife in the bathroom. He lets me into the bathroom, but it really isn't a bathroom just a toilet and he watches me, and somehow I sneak the knife into my hand, and then I stand up and stab him. And in my dream, I could feel the knife in him. And I was so scared because he started laughing and said, ooo that doesn't hurt, and so I stabbed him again, and he fell. And I started crying because I had killed someone, but then I stopped crying because I wasn't sad that he was dead, but I knew I would have time to be ashamed later. But I kept thinking about it as people got killed left and right around me, and the dream ended with me alone in a room with two of the enemy around the corner, and I knew that I was going to die because they had guns and all I had was a knife. And then the dream ended with me thinking that I had a mouse in my hair. Or maybe there really was a mouse in my hair, but I think it was just my fan, blowing my hair around.

Speaking of the mouse, I'm sorry, but he's gonna have to go. I think part of my nightmare was fighting with my conscience over deciding to take action against that mouse. But I am firm in my resolve. I cannot cohabit with mice. I'm going to get some no-see traps at the hardware store on Wed. What if someone wanted to kill me, just because I was small and dirty and hungry and scuttly? Then again what if someone wanted to kill me just because I tasted good?

Eeek!

There is a mouse in my room. He keeps making himself seen, which I would rather him not do. If he's going to be there, better he just scuttle around under the floorboards. What's worse is that he is actually quite sweet looking. So I hate to do this, but I'm going to go get some mousetraps, preferably those little black box kinds. Or maybe I'll just lock the cats in my room until they have had ample time to dispose of the mice. I'm just not about to share my living space with anyone...mice or otherwise.
In other news, the coldness has come. I did finally get my window shut, so I can stop worrying about dying of pneumonia with icicles coming out my nose come December.
I had a good music week. Maggie is going to start playing banjo with us. She follows really well, and it gives us a really nice sound. She's abig Gillian Welch, and Dave Carter/Tracy Grammar, Lucinda Williams Fan, so we can jam on a lot of my favorites. I'm thinking in a few Sundays we can take ourselves to the Black Swan and blow them away.
Alright, time for a nap before a night out.

From a Walking Point of View

I'm so unbelievably tired, and I haven't even gotten to the paper writing part of the semester. From 3pm to 1am with a fifteen minute creak for instant mashed potatoes and green beans, I read 300 pages of an super dense novel (which turned out to be worth the strife) and 100 pages of a history called The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. If you think the title is impressive, try reading the damn thing. So many foreign names, so many battles, so many deaths, so much reading. It is my own fault in ways. I have penciled in too much time for my social life and not enough time for my reading life. I have, however, managed to barely complete my reading assignments for Cultural Anth. and US Lit 3, as well as writing a decent song under very odd circumstances. I am resigned to my songwriting class, although I admit the desire to rush right to the registrar and drop it as soon as I heard that all songs were cowritten. But I have succomb to the idea that maybe my professor is trying to teach me something about the process of songwriting that I didn't know before. My American Folk music and dance class, on the other hand, is the highlight of my week. Bill is a real character with little direction but much heart. He ate dinner with Leah and me last week, and I actually had a real substintave conversation with him about my work with Michele Dominy (speaking of Michele Dominy--seems as if she isn't terribly well liked by a mafority of the faculty here) where I actually had to stand up on the spot for why I thought New Zealand post-colonialism had a lesson to teach us that couldn't be found elsewhere. Mostly the conversation made me realize that I have yet to discover that reason in a pure form.
Suffice to say that I am yet again challenged and happy (despite my complaints) for my exhaustion. Better to be run ragged, than not run at all.
News on kittens....we have two now. Cassidy and DePuis. Cassidy is the most enjoyable, while DePuis (having only one eye) is a bit of a mental case.

The Cat Came Back!

I'm getting a kitten! I have requested a girl, but they haven't been sexed yet. We may have two kittens if Shana gets one two, but I think that is better anyway because then they can keep eachother company and get into mischeif together. If I happen to get a boy, I'll name him Atticus. Names on my list for a girl kitty: Polly, Sidda, Mavis, Pearl, Lusa, Adah, Halia, May, Iris, Muriel, or Edith. The kitten won't be ready until mid-October. She will be an expert mice killer.
In other news:
1) I have started classes. My independent study is kicking my ass already. I don't think Michele knows that I do in fact have other classes. Michele fascinates me as a person, and I respect her so much as an anthropologist. She had the courage to take sides with Pakeha New Zealanders in a land renewal act between the Ngai Tahu and the pastoral Pakeha of the South Island Highlands, which is an incredibly unpopular stance to take in New Zealand in the post-colonial world. What's more, not only did she write polemic after polemic on this issue, but she appeared as an expert witness in front of the Waitangi Tribunal hearings. She was, of course, slammed in the US and Europe for her stance, and I don't understand why. Liberals don't even think twice about their judgement on Palestine. The year is 1946. Who has more claim to the promised land? The jewish people claim it on the grounds of spiritual identity, something they claim to have been denied in Europe. The Palestinians claim it on the grounds that they have been living and raising families in it for the past 500 years, so that it has become their national identity. Liberals aggree upon the latter. The year is 1946. Who has more claim to the South Island High Country? Maori's who have never inhabited this unfarmable land, but claim it as a part of their spiritual mahinga kai. Or white pastoral stationmen, indigenous New Zealanders, who have been raising sheep there for the last 300 years. Anyway, something to think about.

A hundred million bombs

So why, when I have a million other things to be doing right now, do I pause to indulge in an entry. Because if I don't then I will never remember how it felt to be so tired and exhausted that I just wanted to hit things. I almost threw my brand new computer against the wall today? Why? Because the internet was slow. We are all toddlers essentially...go go go go until we can't go any more and we start to get grumpy, red cheeked, and aggressive when all we really need is our moms to pin us down kicking and screaming on their laps and rock us to sleep.
I'm so tired that I couldn't hear anything in class. It takes me five minutes to write a coherent sentence, But I'm afraid if i take a nap now, I'll never wake up again.

The State of the Union

Someone I love very much was hurt in a horrible, unimaginable way. And I didn't even know about until it was old news. There are so many things that I wish...but mostly I wish that I could turn back time a few years to when things were simpler and less dangerous, a time and place where we could be whoever we wanted to be and have that be okay, where friendship was as easy as laughing.
And I wish I could eradicate fear...the fear that makes people hate anything that is different, hate so deep that it would make a person crazy enough to slit a knife through the stomach of a baby. I don't even want to be a mother anymore, because I would risk sending a precious person into a world where such horrible things can happen. I have to wonder why any of us dare to have children...how reckless it is. Is it because somewhere deep inside we understand that despite everything to the contrary, there is good. I know that. I think. But is it worth the damage? Sometimes it comes as second nature...love beats hate into the ground every time. But sometimes I just don't know.

love languages

Tonight I was sitting in the computer lab trying to write my story and this guy came in and sat down at the computer beside me and asked if I could tell him how to type a letter on the computer. So I pulled up Word on his computer and told him to type it in the white area and then push the print button when he was done. He had the letter written down neatly on paper beside him but was having the hardest time typing it. He asked me several more questions like how to start a new paragraph and how to capitalize letters and how to erase, and after a while he was getting so frustrated and only had one line of his letter. So I asked if he'd like it if he dictated it to me and I typed it. At first he said no no I won't bother you. So I thought he just didn't want me to hear the letter, which was perfectly understandable. I told him it wouldn't be a problem, and he siad "well the thing is my daughter wrote me a letter on the computer and I'd just like to send her one back on the computer."
And so I typed up his letter to his 18 year old daughter. I gathered that he hadn't seen her in a long long time and that she didn't really have much to with him. He wrote about how he hoped that she was getting in to all the colleges she wanted to go to. He told her about his new job and how he was learning how to work machines. He said that he thought about her all the time and wished that he could be there for her. He talked about how wonderful her letter had made him feel. It was so tender and raw and beautiful though, and I completely got this feeling that however different I am from everyone around me, it seems like we're all just trying to get by the best we can and love the people that we need to love even if we don't get it right. Everybody has a story. And we are all just fathers trying to learn how to talk to our daughters. I don't know. I was just incredibly moved, and I keep thinking that this is the story that I need to write, the one about that father...or maybe about that daughter, instead of this one.....

Even Ian didn’t know the girl’s name until she spelled it out to him when she applied for a post office account at the West Barnes Bureau de Post and Convenience Shoppe, even though she had passed by almost every morning and afternoon for three weeks. The Biddles most likely knew her name but they never used it, and he didn’t dare ask it, knowing that the Biddles would have all of East Lothian County thinking that he fancied the American over their girls.
The first time he had seen her was on a long rainy afternoon in late May. By then the rumor had circulated that Graham Bell’s au pair had arrived after great anticipation, and so he knew it was her when he saw the two Bell children, Hamish and Lucy, walking along each side of her. She had just picked them up from school, he presumed, and crossed the street in his direction. He felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to busy himself with something, or to crawl into the government issued mail bins and hide. So he slid slowly into that Postal Service half of the store where he could stand behind the glass, excused from being sociable, permitted to speak formally when spoken to through the steel vent in the glass. Truth is, he was and never had been good at talking to people. He felt that whenever he opened his mouth, he was trying to prove himself. It was only the Biddles that he spoke to with any ease, and only because he knew that they weren’t really concerned with anything he had to say.
He heard her footsteps on asphalt outside the door and he started arranging papers and found some sticky notes and began to scribble on them and stick them on various items on the counter: the stapler, the telephone that rarely rang, the corresponding phonebook that he never needed to use, and his Absalom, Absalom that he read during the long breaks between customers and mail pickups.
When she came in he looked up and acknowledged her presence giving a little nod. Hamish and Lucy headed for the sweeties counter, and although normally he would have told them something silly like “look, don’t touch,” he could not imagine doing so in her presence. After all, it was her job to keep them out of trouble, not his.
“Can I help you there?” he asked from behind the glass. The girl looked up and smiled a little.
“Do you have any postcards here?” she replied, looking around as if she had just arrived in a train station and was trying to orient herself. Her accent, the way she pulled out the word hear into two complete syllables, made him uncomfortable because he could not recognize it from any of the movies he had seen or the Simpsons or Friends. Postcards, he thought to himself, why would I have postcards? Who the hell wants to send postcards from the middle of a cow pasture.
“Afraid not,” he said. He waited for her to say “thanks anyway” and take the kids and leave, but she just stood there. Reluctantly, he moved into the shop half, noticing that she had no letter to mail.
“Hamish, Lucy, don’t touch the candy, please!” she said, picking up the Lothian Gazette, which she must have been getting for Graham, for it was made up mainly of classifieds for old fishing boats and livestock and not much else. The sound of the word “candy” made him cringe. Candy was the name of the neighbor hood slut in his mother’s daytime drama shows.
“Can we get a sweetie? Dad always gets us a sweetie.” Lucy said, swinging her school pack over her shoulder, knocking a box of chewing gum from the counter. The girl quickle went to pick up the gum, apologizing, flushing. Lucy looked for a minute as if she would cry, but then decided against it. Hamish went to the girl’s side and clung to her trousers leg and stuck his thumb in his mouth so as to disassociate himself with the actions of his sister. She put the paper on the counter and fished in her pocket for a pound. Ian smiled at Hamish
Ian like Hamish Bell more than he liked any of the other kids that he saw on a regular basis. Although Hamish was older than Lucy by over two years, it wasn’t evident, partly because of Lucy’s five going on thirty complex, but mainly because Hamish was what they called “delayed” which made him seem much younger. Antithesis of the perfectly clear and articulate Lucy, he also had a severe speech impediment that made him practically incomprehensible. When he was younger, when Graham and Stella were still together, before the need for au pairs, he would babble along not noticing that no one, with the exception of his mother, could understand him. But since he had started school, Hamish had become aware of the wall between him and others and stopped speaking in public. Ian noticed these things. Hamish and Ian were but two of the same breed.
“No,” she said, taking Hamish’s thumb out of his mouth.
“Why not?” Lucy asked, poking out her lip a little.
“Because I said so.” Ian laughed inside because this was the sort of thing you say without thinking and then realize that you have unconsciously become your parents.
“That’s not a proper reason.”
“Seems proper enough for me,” she said, as Ian handed her the change for the paper. She looked at him again and leaned on the counter, casually. “So, you know where I could find some postcards?” Again Ian didn’t know how to take her accent. It was like a slow waltz, rhythmical, sharp at times, and incredibly patient, as if nothing was or would ever be urgent.
“At the Dunbar Post,” he said, “Or at the Tourism Office down there. They get plenty of folks down from Edinburgh. Its just we don’t have visitors in West Barnes.
“You got one now,” she said, pulling the kids towards the door.
“Guess so,” he said. She opened the door and walked out and Ian just stood there relieved and watched as she disappeared down the cobblestone sidewalk towards Hedderwick Hill Farm, her head, sporting a jet black pixie cut, bobbing up and down with her dance-like stride. She had Hamish by the hand and he practically ran to keep up with her long stride. Evidently still pouting about the sweeties, Lucy lagged behind, stopping completely at times, and then running ahead when they other two got to far ahead for her comfort.
Ian had seen lives pass in front of him before in this manner. He had been sitting behind that counter for more than a decade, longer if you counted the long years of his childhood playing in the mailroom while his father worked with all the fervor that Ian himself would never be able to bring to the job. He had started working part time in the place when he was fifteen and his father was first diagnosed with lung cancer. He went to school in Glasgow for a year but came home when his father passed and took over as postmaster. Since that time he had watched babies turn into teenagers from behind that counter.
And he had seen American girls before, of course, when he was at university and sometimes when he would meet exchange students in the pubs in Edinburgh that his best friend, Kieran had introduced him to. But in the last few years, the night out in the city had grown few and far between. Kieran had, in the course of only three years, settle down in a small blue house in Portobello, gotten married to a Frenchwoman named Danielle, and had two babies, two girls, Olivia and Estelle, whose pictures Ian had pinned to his refrigerator. He was almost thirty now, and he wanted pictures of his own kids, or if not, he at least wanted a life that would convince him that settling down and making a family was undesirable.
He couldn’t comprehend the girl though, couldn’t even think of a way to ask her what her name was, couldn’t understand the way she made him feel unsettled and anxious to be someone different. He knew that their story, if there was to be one at all, would not be a love story for more reasons than he could tell.

Killing the White Man's Indian

I love American Indian Fiction. Finally we are getting to some in my class. Until this point we were reading dime store crap fiction from the 1800s, including (sob) this absolutely bitter, racist, monstrous Mark Twain piece called "Huck and Tom among the Indians." Mark Twain just can't be my hero anymore, this blemish on his record is too big for me to just glance over. Of course we read Last of the Mohicans which was nice and dull. We read some Willa Cather which I thought was really interesting, so much that I wrote a long paper on it in conjuction with a Phillip Deloria article on the formation of the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. In the early 20th century there was this identity crisis in America and for a time culture turned towards the indian who was our "authentic" Other-- the man that was in touch with nature, lived simply, and sustained himself with his hands-- at a time when all the real indians had been stripped of any power and herded onto poverty striken reservations. You know the phrase, the only good indian is a dead indian, well, this turned out to be true on many different levels. Anyway, I love it. And I love Geoff Sanborn. No really, I LOVE Geoff Sanborn....a lot. He gets a 9.98. Okay, so he doesn't make me blush like Eric does (and still does), but he's really great anyway.

I'm doing something really special tomorrow. I'm going house-looking. At 1:30 tomorrow. All I know is that it is a blue house with lots of bushes and trees in the front. Trees!!! It's really close to the Black Swan where I play. I'm really excited about the prospect of living in a real community, and more importantly away from the "i'm finally free so I'm gonna be an idiot all the time" thing at Bard. Thinking about it makes me feel more independent, like I'm taking charge of my life, like driving alone on the highway with a destination in mind, or better yet, no destination at all. Of course maybe it will be a shithole and I'll have to keep on looking, but that's okay too. The price is right too. 500 a month rent makes living off campus still cheaper than Bard, but 400 makes a marked difference.
I'm worried about losing my Stafford Loan. I don't what I'll do. That's 5000 dollars a year that I'll have to borrow from someplace else and have to start paying interest immediately. Hopefully that won't happen, but if it does, then I don't know what.
I'm worried about the Double G. I know that you can't expect your grandparents to live forever, but there is something incredibly painful about thinking that those people at the the head of your extended family no longer holding it together. That breaking point where the children become grandparents. Of course, no one in my family is having babies anytime soon unless Shosha's got something up her sleeve, but that's not the point. Mama said over break that I needed to hold on to my time with my grandparents and it made me shut up about not wanting to go over there and visit, but it is true. We think that they will be there forever and that's not how it works, and if we don't realize that now, then it will be too late later on down the road. And those people are more important than we think. Who they are is a part of who we are, because they shaped our parents. And I grieve at the prospect of loss more for my parents. My grandparents are still once removed from me, but Gan-Gan is my mother's mother. Her mother. I don't even want to think about it.

The rain has washed away where my shoes have been

and it does matter. It does. This is not liberating, not at all. I knew I should have gotten that Glow-in-the-Dark Plastic Angel at the nields concert, and I could have put it on my computer, and it wouldn't have crashed. It crashed because I didn't buy that angel even though deep down I knew I needed it. The loss is not as bad as it could have been. Most of the fiction I have in some unedited form somewhere else. THe academic essays are gone. A lot of the essays from Nonfiction class at GS are gone, although if I looked hard enough I might could find early hard copies in my files at home. Most of the poetry was shitty anyway so i don't really care if it got eaten up by cyber space. But there are letters, drafts of emails that were difficult to write. I started a sequence of letters to my daughter when I was 15 where I told her about how it felt to be a teenager, how it felt to be insecure, how it felt to love so much it hurt, how it felt to hurt someone, how it felt to be free. These were the most honest things I had ever put down on paper, so honest that I was afraid to print them out. Maybe I'll never have a daughter, and so it won't be such a loss. And there are other things, self indulgent fiction that I can scarcely mention on this blog much less ever save or print out, things that I worked on with more pleasure than my more serious pieces, silly things with no literary merit, novels that I began when I was 14 where everyone eventually finds true happiness, so much of my fantasy world that is harnessed in my real fiction. I have old drafts on some of these, but a draft is not anything like what it becomes when you've worked on in word by word for years.
So what is to be done? There is still hope, I suppose. I've contacted some computer people. Maybe they can salvage my C-drive or at least the my documents folder. But maybe they can't and I just have to pick myself up off the floor and move on. And maybe it won't matter five years down the line what was lost. Maybe when i start from the drafts it will be ten times better on the second try. But it matters now. And I've gone to my computer several times today and tried again, hoping that maybe the results will be different, and they never are and I just end up crying in frustration. If they somehow manage to save my files then I can get closure and just throw the damn thing against a brick wall and smash it with a sledge hammer...nothing would give me more pleasure, but if it they can't, then those files will just be stuck there, and I'll never be able to take my mind off it. I'll be able to look at my computer and say, there they are, and it will be so frustrating to not be able to reach them.

Sensible people run, but I'm holding out my tongue

Today it snowed, and I almost cried. It shocked me, looking out the window and not seeing the ground again. It was supposed to stay nice forever...But then, I said to myself, "This snow is good for making snow things" and so I made a gathering of snowmen. I started a story today in my Indian Fictions class (HATE HATE HATE) and I'm gonna see if I can try to work on it some tomorrow if I have time. It's in the third person...about a girl named Valerie who finds herself in Scotland one summer scooping shit out of chicken coops and taking care of these two kids, and her relationship with the slightly odd postmaster at the local post office. That idea just came out of the blue...what do I know about scooping shit out of chicken coops and falling in love with postmen? I'm excited. Happy Snow Day....

I will not write about my roommate

So, I'm going to write about something kind and caring...or not

I wrote another song today, and Leah says that it is the best yet, but something is just not speaking to it. It's called Groundswell. In one of the first classes I ever took with Jan, she talked about the concept of the groundswell. A groundswell is that moment when you first realize that you are alive and part of something bigger than yourself. I tried writing a poem about it in that class and it didn't come out right, and so I started writing a song, which has less pressure. And then I realized that I couldn't narrow down to just one groundswell, so I did three. First, I did my first memory of playing on my father's grandmother's walker, then I did singing with Shosha, and finally a moment in Scotland where I realized that I didn't have to redefine myself with every move, that who I am travels with me.
This last one is of particular interest. Something happened to me in Scotland that changed my whole life. I found myself taken out of context and I wasn't really comfortable enough with myself for that not to cause outrageous panic. Who are we when everyone we love, everything we care for, and everything that has changed us and molded us, is across the world? And so I thought of this line that I remembered writing in my journal in Scotland after I came to the answer to this question. "Love knows no nation". I found some teeny bit of truth one day walking up the Coastal Trail, that you make your home inside yourself and you fill it with all the events and people in your life that have brought you comfort and joy, and you take it with you like a turtle. Problem is, I forget that all the time, and I have to sit back and remind myself of that, and work at making it become more real. And now that I think about it, its really not a good idea to harbor bad feelings in my home, so I need to make them go away, let go of bad feelings towards my superficial, inconsiderate, inwardly hostile roommate who happens to go to bed at 12 which is the only reason I live with her instead of sweet, slightly troubled, but kind hearted Tanzina (see! this is easier said than done!), and also let go of the complete hatred I feel towards George Bush and Crew. Hating them does not change anything, and it only makes me feel icky, like there's mold growing under my floorboards.
There are three kinds of people in Buddhism (they have proper names but I can't remember them): Selfish, Dark, and Diluted. The selfish one internalizes everything around them. She panics and worries and fixes things all the time. The Dark one wears lots of black, thinks that nothing is right in the world, has bad feelings towards the character of people, and generally is annoyed with the world around her. The Diluted doesn't know where she is, and doesn't really care. She is generally the happiest of the three. Supposedly everyone can be catogorized into one of these types. I'm afraid I'm spread out in all three, although (OBVIOUSLY!!!!!) I think I'm more a Selfish than anything else.
Speaking of selfish....I set viggo by the hall window so he can wait for me to come back from class and some asshole came upstairs and TOOK HIM! Just took him, as if he was theirs. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE!!!! (that's my dark side coming out). Fortunately, Hazel saw him in another dorm and took him back. So now, he's not leaving my room. This is why I sometimes feel like Bard is a real shithole (this is the Vulgar coming out in me) because people destroy your igloo and take your Viggos. Just yesterday, I was out by the window playing Twang (that's her name now) and somebody threw a big piece of ice at the window and cracked it. They were drunk or stoned or both and in a big group. It wasn't even somebody I knew. And I wonder, were these people raised by wolves? WHere the hell were their mothers at that crucial stage in life where you learn that you aren't supposed to throw things at windows, or when you learn to not take what isn't yours, or to respect other people's work. My God...

Okay, enough of that. Boots for Maggie (that's us by the way) has a gig on Sunday. BReak a leg us!

I made this thing pink manually

Troubleshoot

You gave me this ring, but you said it wasn't gold,
but by the green on my finger, you think I need to be told
that a love like cheap metal leaves its mark on everything,
on my carpet and my clothes and on this semi-precious ring,

But I'd rather be alone tonight
than out here with you waiting for the fight
cuz you don't really love me,
you just think I'm kinda cute
and my computer's in the corner flashing you better troubleshoot

CHORUS
Troubleshoot, Troubleshoot, Troubleshoot (2X)
If you want the truth, you gotta
Troubleshoot etc

It's the middle of winter and we're kissing on the beach
and that big old sun's looking like a big old peach
and you say long distance works, but only if I'll try
and you'll pay for my ticket and I can just enjoy the ride

But I'd rather be alone tonight
than on this beach with you getting ready for the fight
cuz you don't really love me
you just think I'm kinda cute
and that sun's in the corner flashing you'd better troubleshoot

CHORUS

Well that train to Northampton just ain't worth what it cost
so I can sit and here you tell me about all the things you've lost
so I call up my sister, so she can tell me what to do
and she says baby leavings never easy but you gotta learn to...

CHORUS

And I'd rather be alone tonight
than on this train to you, getting ready for the fight
cuz you don't really love me
you just think I'm kinda cute
and those wheels on the tracks are screaming you better troubleshoot

CHORUS lots of times

Tonight I grew up a little

For some reason, I've never been able to play for strangers unless it is a paid gig. I've never played at an open mic before, because it scared me so much. It meant that I thought that my music had enough worth that I could share it with people not for their enjoyment per ce, but as an exibihition of who I am. I didn't play my own songs, that would have been too scary for the first time. I played Angel Band with Leah, then I am not at War, which everybody loved, and some girl yelled out "Who was that last one by?" and I said, with so much pride, I could have burst..."My sister." And she said, "aw, honey, that was great" and I said "I love her" and I meant it sincerely because I can't mean to be funny when I'm that nervous, but they all laughed anyway. And then I played "When I Was a Boy." I made Benjamin and Leah promise me that they would tell me if I was off-tune, and they said I wasn't and maybe they were telling the truth. I think I sounded like Joan Baez though, because my voice was shaking so bad. I feel shaky still, but I feel good, like I've gotten over a hill, like the next time it will be easier.

I have great friends here. Tonight, my dorm threw me a surprise birthday party. They all pitched in and bought me a life-size stand-up cardboard thing of Viggo. I've never been so thrilled in all my life. They blindfolded me and stuck him in front of me. It was amazing. Then I went to contradancing which was sooooo much fun and really really hard. I danced for three songs and then I played with the band for the rest. I learned so much in just a few hours. I learned how to play jigs, reels, and waltzes. Reanna, Leah, and I all played tonight and it was so great. I can't even put to words what it felt like.

That's all for now. I'm off to bed to have happy dreams.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!

I sing so much better when I'm not playing the guitar, which is strange. I've always been such a good multi-tasker. But it's true. My voice is boring when I sing while playing and half the time it's off key just a little. It sounds forced and unhappy and I don't like that. So, what is the solution...of course...a cappella music or a guitar player. IfI was a decent guitar player than I wouldn't care so much about how my voice sounded, but when all you have going for you is your voice, then you need to pay attention to the voice. So what would be the best of all possible worlds....a really great guitar player and a microphone.

I'm in the process of writing my first love story subplot...funny isn't it? What do I know about love stories that end well...oh wait, there's Viggo who is completely and utterly without reservation devoted to me. He sits on my bed all day with his big sword waiting for my return. We make love so much that I can hardly get my work done and I have to plead with him to stop looking at me with those dark, intent eyes...I have to read!! Maybe I'll write a song called "Falling In Love with the Poster Above MY Bed" and it would be a sad sad song and very silly.

Speaking of songs, I'm off to the contradancing musicians workshop with Leah soon. We are to be playing for the next one, but we have to learn about things like what kind of song to play during what kind of dance.

But I digress, I was talking about my love subplot. Okay, so this girl (and she is a girl still...21) starts a teaching job in the middle of nowhere Georgia and during her first teachers meeting on her first day, all they can do is stare at her and pronounce her last name wrong and then really slowly..Luh-pay-hee. Anyway, she's scared shitless and is regretting her decision to have eaten that morning. Anyway she rushes to bathroom in the librarian's office, behind the circulation desk and to the right next to the books on tape and overhead bulbs, and pukes her brains out. And then the slightly odd looking, awkward Media Specialist (HA!) goes in to check on her and....LOVE....wow, writing about makes me see how lame it sounds. Well, good. Oh, and you know what else, Novalee Nation was in love with the town Librarian Forney wasn't she. But I can't have him be another teacher. That's too Boston Public. He can't be the custodian. That's too Good Will Hunting (or Goodwill Hunting as Kayla and I call it). But he has to be there. He's got to become a part of her journey later on. But I have got a character that I really like named Daisy who is kinda a cross between LouAnn in the Bean Trees, Kayla, and this teacher I had in sixth grade who wore way too much makeup and was a little insane. She's fun.

Growing Up Tall

I never thought, not in a million years, that I would be nineteen...or grown up. I thought I would always be nine, and here I am, sitting here, finally understanding that I will never be nine again. "And they tell him take your time, it won't be long now till you drag your feet to slow the cirles down." I have exactly eleven hours left of being eighteen. My friends are throwing a little party for me, and asked me very nicely if they could use my birthday as an excuse to get drunk and I said..."Yeah, I guess," and I suppose that I should get drunk with them or else it will annoy me to see them being careless and unconcerned. This will be my drinking day of the semester (I've given myself one per semester 1, because I can't afford alcohol, and 2, because I refuse to become those idiots who knocked over our igloo).

Today I wanted to roll around in the grass back home. Marina has this amazing black lab, Toliver, and he makes me want to get down on my knees and rub my face in some mud. But it's too cold here, and I'm really beginning to understand what Dar meant when she said "February was so long that it lasted until March." I'm really homesick right now. I was starting to be homesick a few weeks ago and then I went to see Nerissa and Katryna Nields (actually I didn't have to go anywhere...they came to Bard!!) and the songs on this new album feel really domestic, about the ties of family , finding yourself, and learning to accept what can and cannot be fixed in life, and it all made me dreadfully homesick in a sad, wonderful way. And I started thinking about where I am and where i want to go.

This is the life that I want right? To be free and independent, doing something new every time an opportunity comes around, becoming a nomad, doing all the things that I never thought I'd do, going to all those places that i never thought I would see? Then why does it feel wrong sometimes. Shosha said that we should go where our hearts feel like spring. My heart's feeling like February in New York. My heart wants to be up at Carl Sandburg's in April or sitting on the porch with Daddy talking about Damn Republicans with Cocoa on my lap, but mostly my heart wants to be sitting in the backseat of the van drawing pictures of orphans on steno pads with Shosha singing our voices out to Late Night Grande Hotel while Nicholas pees in a Gatorade bottle. And yet I'm never happy for long at home which makes me think that maybe my problem is not so much place as it is company.

(Later) But what is this? Okay. Stop. I'm hereby giving up bemoaning my life for Lent...or at least for this entry.

Why, because right now I smell good. I just dragged my cd player and The Metaphysics of Morals into the bathroom and took a long hot bath. Also, I have decided to give myself the day off tomorrow to play music and write. I work with the babies tomorrow until 1 and then the afternoon will be all mine to do as I please with it. Maybe I will paint too. Nineteen will be the year that I take extremely good care of myself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I've been going to the gym four times a week now for the past month and a half and feel much better and am fending off the winter ick. I'm also going to start drinking more water, especially since I am going to be singing much more. I am writing and listening to good music and making my own and reading for pleasure and crying and laughing and watching good movies and building silly things in the snow. And spiritually, well I haven't quite figured that out yet. I think I may have a go at meditation. I got a good book in the library about Buddhism for beginners. I think Jesus and Buddha get on very well and so I'm thinking of just mixing the two and finding a good place.

That's all for now...I'm also trying to do some lucid dreaming which is very fun when it works.

I woke up this morning craving an eye for an eye

I saw Lumumba tonight, and I was once again struck speechless at the credits, tears streaming down my face wondering how in the world I was going to justify leaving that movie theatre and going back to my room where everything around me lies superfulous and rank, and continue in a life where the most pressing delema I have to overcome on any given day is how I get all my reading done and still get to bed by midnight. How do I justify living so untouched and fearless in a world filled with injustice akin to not even our most horrific nightmares. My stomach hurts for the legacy that comes with the color of my skin and with the money in my pocket. I didn't kill Lumumba. But I did, I do, and I will. I didn't sit back and say nothing when my country excercized its "inaliable right" to regime changes whenever it saw fit. But I did, I do, and I will. I haven't and will never buy a diamond, but I will have bought one by belonging to a culture where all my peers will wear them with pride.
But all this is pointless, and it just makes me feel shitty, and I'm of no use to anyone that way. So what do I do? "What then must we do?" We can't just go back to the way we were, and we can't go around angry and counterproductive. And who can we hold accountable? I could kill my roommate right now. She comes in from one of her mall shopping sprees and says "How was your movie?" but doesn't wait for me to reply, and launches in detail into the exciting story of her shopping excursion. I'm not going to bother. Anyway, last time I tried to talk to her about terrible injustices and tragedy, she smiled and said, in this sweet little baby voice, "Yeah, that's so sad." But that's beside the point. Because of her background, she is about as likely of reaching a state of true concern about anyone but herself as a little boy in the Congo is of growing up to be a film major at Bard College, or a beetle becoming an elephant. I digress. It's unfair of me to say that. I don't know her soul.
Right now I'm just holding my baby doll and trying to reconcile things in my head. It's nice to have something to hold on to. It's times like these when I wish I could lay down in bed next to my mother and say nothing, but know that I was understood. But my baby doll, Adah Ruby, will have to do.
But then again, another really special thing happened tonight. I realized that for the first time in my life, I had a friend my age who connected with me on the most fundamental of levels. I've loved all my friends without restraint or conditions, but never did I think that I could ever explain to them what my heart was like and have them more or less understand it. Tonight I was having a hard time getting in touch with my emotions (I've been on meds for about three weeks now, so maybe that is the reason) which is probably a good thing or I would have embarrased myself. But I looked over at Leah, and it seemed as if she was feeling and expressing everything that I, at the moment, could not. And afterwards, she leaned over and held on to me while we watched the credits and felt something unnamable and unspeakable, two people trying to figure out how to live with themselves and finding comfort in the fact that they are not alone. As we were leaving the theatre and she said something to the effect of "how am I supposed to go home now?" I just wanted to turn around and tell her how lucky I was to be able to connect with someone on that level.
Ha! Now I just need to find someone who possesses these qualities and who I am sexually attracted to, and I'll be well on my way to a soulmate.
Another good part of the day was this: Leah and I put up an Igloo. Or rather the first half of the igloo--that is it has no roof yet. It has the startings of a roof. We've gradually worked our way inwards, but it's still in progress (I'm being optimistic here...It'll most likely collapse).
Okay, I'm drained. I'm gonna go sing.