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.

Ce que vous dites...

et ce que vous faites me montre ce que vous etes...
So I haven't written anything in a while. I've been writing essays, one after another after another after another, including one a finished this afternoon (A big ol 15 pager) and now i am sick of writing papers. Leah went back early with Jared today and I was sad to see her go. I will miss her and Benjamin and Reanna the most. I've been very lucky, I think, with my friends, and who knows what next semester will bring. I am imagining finding romance in my writing workshop (wishful thinking right?).
I got my blood tested again today and I am up to 9.8 which is much much better and despite everything, I feel less tired. Hopefully I have been building up strong red blood cells because I am really afraid of getting the flu. I got the shot, but that doesn't mean anything this year. I just got my asthma under control again from the weather change and I'm afraid it will all be useless if I get the flu. It takes my lungs so long to recover even after a cold and every little thing triggers my asthma, so I don't even want to think about the flu.
Anyway, my week is almost over. I have an exam tomorrow at three and then I am finished and can go pack. I think I will sleep the entire way home. It is supposed to snow on Sunday, so maybe Nicholas can see some real snow. The weather has been icky here. Cold rain over the last snow making everything slippery and wet. I had my first fall yesterday...my poor wounded pride and a sizable bruise on my thigh. There is a mini lake from the flooding in front of Kline and I wish I had some ice skates so I could go fall on my butt properly.
I made a 76 on my film exam which makes me mad at myself and furious at spitting John Pruitt. Get this, on one of the short answers he took away the full ten points it was worth. Albeit that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but damn it, I made a valiant effort and should have gotten some credit for it. I did get a B+ on my last essay. Which gives me a B, B+, C, and C+ in the class which should add up to a B- of sorts, not that I care. I'm going to get an A in my Islam class which makes me exceedingly proud because I am the only one getting an A in the class. Enlightenment is up in the air. I've made mostly B+s on all the papers. I can't for the life of me make an A on her papers. I had an A- at the midterm. Puritans is also up in the air. I've made an A and B on the Papers, so everything depends on my term paper which is 50 percent of my grade. It would be nice to make an A in my first lit class, but I also realize that I was way too ambitious in my term paper and not as focused as I could have been.
Not that any of it matters now. It's over. I don't even know why I am thinking about it. I'll just be glad to be home. I'm a bit worried though. I've done no Christmas shopping. I even set aside my last paycheck for it. I was going to go to this junkshop in Woodstock, but my ride went back to Maine early. Oh well. Bedtime.

"So I let the weeds grow up/ called them flowers of the common man." Dar Williams Stop Smoking

I had an idea for a story today, and let me tell you, those are hard to come by these days. I hope I get into that fiction class, but it's looking unlikely since we register tomorrow and I still haven't gotten a yes or no from the writing department. Maybe they don't send out rejections. Anyway, I had this idea about a character, a really really old man who used to, as a kid, rhave a job reading the titles in silent movies for the people who couldn't read who now, in his old age, narrarates whatever is going on around him.
I finished my film class today, with an exam that I didn't know about until last night. This is what happens when you don't go to class, but there's no use in yelling at myself now. I don't think, however that I did that badly. I might even scrape by with a B. An A is out of the question, and a C is likely, but I'm hoping for a B.
I am sleeping again which is good, and whenever I have those panicky little moments, I stop and concentrate and make them go away. I won't break. I feel a little bit better, a little stronger, not so tired all the time--a combination of getting more sleep and taking my vitamins. I'm drinking more water too. Hazel has a filter thing and it makes the tap water drinkable. I can't afford bottled water and bottled water always seemed really wasteful to me, all that plastic. I miss the water back home.
The snow is starting to melt and I haven't fallen and broken anything on the ice...as of yet. Snow is really kind of disgusting when it is muddy, and you notice the litter more. I get really bitter about the crap all over campus. Is it so much to ask for you to throw away your trash? And god forbid we put our cigarette butts in the ash trays.
What is it about cigarettes? I just have a really hard time seeing the humanity and intelligence in smokers my age. I mean, okay, so our parents may not have really truly known how horrible smoking was for you, but we have had slideshow presentations and lectures all through our entire lifetimes about how dangerous and unhealthy smoking is. We know this as well as we know the alphabet and yet these people do it anyway. No one gets addicted off the first cigarette. The thing is, these people say, "it took me a while to get used to the taste." which means this was a calculated decision that had to be "gotten used to." My film class smells like an ashtray. I can hardly breathe. My professor asked one day how many people smoked and almost everybody raised their hands, further proving their idiocy (which I knew about long before).
And what makes me even angrier is when "socially conscious people" who dread their hair and wear anti-capitalism/republican/government buttons are the ones smoking, when everybody who knows anything about the corrupt corporate world knows that Tobacco Companies are the worst of the worst. These people won't drink Pepsi or wear Abercrombie and Fitch but they'll throw practically every penny they make (or their parents give them) at these monsters.
And what annoys me more is the people who roll their own cigarettes, make a big production about their nastiness and further announce that they are cooler than all the other smokers. Okay, so they're not supporting RJ. Reynolds. Good for them. They're just coating their lungs with better quality, slightly less addictive, unfiltered SHIT. Shit is shit, people.
Since I was four years old, I haven't been able to rely on my lungs. Sometimes they give out. Sometimes when I am sitting at my desk I realize that my tubes are closing up and breathing becomes a concious, careful movement. Twice a day, in order to be able to walk from class and back without have to use my inhaler, I have to take a low dose of steroids that leave a bitter, powdery taste on my tongue to remind me that breathing is not a given for me. It has taken me a while to come to terms with my own illness, accept that this is how I will have to live for the rest of my life...carefully. So, I guess it is really hard for me to understand people with perfectly healthy lungs who take them for granted. Breathing is freedom. Breathing is a gift. And I guess smoking, to me, is like baptising a beautiful little baby, fingers curled delicately around his little pink lips, with hot chemical waste.

I know it's just a ride on the wheel

I'm cold. I've never been this cold in all my life, not Amsterdam, not Washington, not anywhere. When I walk outside my face stings and my eyes burn, and my lips are so chapped that I've used up half a stick of chapstick since I have been back. I can't wait to go home where I can walk outside and not be in pain. They make fun of me, but they don't know how cold it is. My Canadian immigration seems less and less likely, unless Canada plans to colonize some nice island off the coast of Florida. Maybe I can marry a Canadian and get dual cititizenship and live the warm season in Canada and the winter in the South.
Do you want to know how superficial I am? I've been really worried about my Ally McBeal tapes. Isn't that silly. Ally McBeal was my only real passion in late middle school, early high school years. I don't think I ever missed an episode, until, of course, I missed the entire final season. So stupid to have an emotional attachment to a TV show, but I miss it. And I wish I had been more systematic in taping them. I think that I taped (or had taped) every single episode that ever was, and they are all scattered on a million different tapes, and now they are currently lost forever.
See, I can't even write about anything important. I've got to go write a paper.

truckin'

Back at school. Nothing exciting. I think I'm gonna move out and move downstairs with Hazel. This wasn't my idea, but I think I am okay with it. Hazel and her roommate are not happy together and Catherine wants to room with Tanzina so that they can pray together or something. I'm skeptical. I've got some fundamental issues with Hazel as a person, but our sleeping patterns match and I feel like I can be much more honest with Hazel about my needs because I am much more comfortable with her. I think we could make it work. I wouldn't have thought so earlier this year, but I am desperate for more sleep and less food smells. Plus I would be right beside Leah and Ling which will be nice. So I think I am going to do it. I hope it's the right thing to do. I'll just have to tell Hazel to keep it down. I like Hazel, I really do. She's a Republican disguised as a Democrat and she's a rich white girl in all senses of the word, but we get along okay because she is really nice. I don't know. Hey, she is from California so she has as much junk as me!

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."