I Know It's Silly, But....

....I cry at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Every time.  When Darth Vader picks up the Emperor and throws him down that endless shaft, and then in the scene afterwards between Luke and his father where the two of them make their final peace, I tear up every single time.  I think this probably qualifies me for a special kind of geek award somewhere.

I am thinking about this because I wound up watching the first two and a half movies of the "new" trilogy today.  They were on TV, and I sort of got sucked in.  I am not such a big fan of those prequels.  To me, while they did a beautiful job of filling in the backstory that was always hinted at and imagined, they lacked something of the power the originals did.  I don't know why.  Some people have said that it's because of the actor that played Anakin in the prequels. As I rewatched today, I revised my opinion of him.  When I first saw those films, I disliked him because I thought he was hollow, an actor with something missing.  Now, though, I think he was reflecting (or at least I hope he was reflecting) that thing inside Anakin/Vader that was uncertain, hollow and missing that leads him to the darkness that eventually destroys him.  All in all, I am much more comfortable with that performance than I used to be.

After seeing those, however, I had a great desire to see the entire saga end, so after I did other things, I broke out the set I do have on DVD, the original trilogy, and popped Return of the Jedi in.  I was startled by how many plot lines end there.  The entire series is so tightly woven together.  The universe and mythos is so well-developed.

Also well-developed to me are two messages:  it is always possible to change, and family, while both vital and undeniable, does not define your future.  I won't wax overly philosophical here.  I think it's pretty easy to see how these two things are developed in the film, and certainly other things exist there.  I'm sure some enterprising soul has at some point pitched a Master's thesis on the trilogy (oh, to have been a fly on that wall...), but whether you consider the series high art or roll your eyes every time someone mentions "the Force," I don't think the quality of the storyline can be argued with.  It is, after all, basically lifted from classical mythology....

Maybe that's why it has the power to move me so much at the end.  Maybe its ties to those great stories at the base of our culture are what allow it to resonate so deeply with so many.  Somebody somewhere wiser than I will have to work out the psychology of it.  All I know is that when Luke can stand up at the end, deny the trap laid for him by the Emperor, and say, "I am a Jedi...like my father before me," I feel those bright proud tears start welling up.  And you can call me whatever you want to.  That's just fine.

Silly Hats and Other Necessities

I went shopping with a old friend yesterday, a girls' day out.  We rarely get to do this.  Our lives are too frantic, too overscheduled with the obligations of family, career, and all the other things that pile up in addition.  Yesterday, though, she found a sitter, and we both were off for the holiday, so we took a chance to go out to a Japanese restaurant we both like and catch up. 

After we ate, we went junkin'.  For those of you not familiar with that ancient Southern tradition, junkin' involves going into a large building full of all kinds of stuff, some of it valuable, some of valuable only to you.  This is known as a "Flea Market."   These can be easily identified by the presence outside of clawfoot tubs, metal wagonwheels, iron bedsteads, and racks and racks of bottles.  You should not, of course, expect to see fleas at the flea market once you arrive.  If you do, you should probably leave post-haste...  Once you are there, you amuse yourself by marveling at the grand diversity of what people have kept in their homes over the past seventy years or so and by pouncing on whatever of those items, be it milk glass, NASCAR memorabilia, blue bottles, real and faux McCoy, costume jewelry, or repainted furniture that catches your own particular fancy.  Then begins the delicate and polite haggling of the South....

I love junkin'.  I love to see all the stuff.  Like almost everybody else I know, I collect a few things.  Well, okay, more than a few things.  Well, okay.  American Pickers would have an absolute freakin' field day, need to bring two vans and a back-up team to load stuff at my house.(If I chose to sell those darling boys anything, that is...)  I have grown up in a family of collectors, and I live in an ancient house full of those collections.  I use everything I collect, all the little planters become desk supply holders, sorter bins.  All the hankies are actually cleaned and put back into use.  If I buy a dish, it's used.  As for the forties and fifties luncheonette tablecloths I so rarely find, they are the glorious crowning touch to my holiday tables.  It makes me happy to see these old things brought back to purpose, makes me feel connected to the past, to history when I use these things.

Yesterday, as we went in, in the very first stall I saw a hat... 

Now, I am a hat fan.  A person either loves hats or hates them.  People are not indifferent towards hats.  I have several, but I don't always wear them because until I got my hair cut recently, they would flatten it out.  Now, with my hair cut so short, my hair is much sleeker, so it's not a problem.  Enter the hat.

This hat is the end-all, be-all of hats.  My friend described it as "Mrs. Napoleon on Her Way to Church."  It is black and white with a huge bow, dangly crystals, the whole nine-yards.  I fell hopelessly in love.  I grabbed it and stuck it on my head.  My friend burst into laughter and grabbed her iPhone.  The resulting pictures are now my FB and Twitter pics, the first time on Twitter that my actual face has ever been seen there, ending all those comments from the obnoxious asses who still think it's funny to do the whole, "Will the real you PLEASE STAND UP..." tweet. 

We walked around the flea market, and my friend and I made plans surrounding the hat.  We were going to find her one, match these elaborate chapeaus with something gown-like (I have a black spaghetti-strap floor-length velvet gown that would work with mine, I think), and since we both play on Sunday nights, we were just going to show up right before it was time to play, walk in and sit down at the organ and the piano with the utmost dignity and begin and see if anybody noticed. The reaction would have been priceless, especially since we almost always play in jeans.....

Can I wear this hat out shopping to Wal-Mart? (pauses to consider....still thinking about it....)  Well....no.  Probably not.  Well, I mean, I could, but.... No.  Okay.  NO. I won't.  It would be fun, and I would enjoy it tremendously, but I won't do that.  But by the same token, could I leave that marvelous confection of imagination and wonder there hanging so forlorn in that flea market stall?  No.  It was like something from Carnival, regal in its way, and it made me laugh.  That's enough for me.

Hand Made

As I write this, I am fighting the urge to go back to the kitchen and go get another piece of sourdough.  This is a battle that I will almost certainly lose...

For last week, I had to make something to take to a school "bake off."  I was not especially thrilled; I don't cook much.  It's not that I don't like to cook.  It's more that the trouble is too much to go to just for me.  I begrudgingly broke out the KitchenAid and set to making my go-to cake recipe, a sour cream pound cake in which I can proudly tell you there is not one thing that is healthy.  I think that's when this current trend started.

Saturday, I woke up with the urge to keep making stuff.  I decided to focus all that energy on a small project, one I could actually get to since my larger craft stuff is mostly covered in clutter in my office/craft space.  I embroidered a hankie with my initial and a crown, using some satin stitches to do it all.  I thought of my Nana the whole time I was doing it, of her teaching me how to do satin stitches, leaf stitches, french knots.  I thought of my Granny who taught me to hem by hand, who first started me making handkerchiefs, who cut these very squares of good strong white cotton I'm working now.  There was great satisfaction in both the work and the connection.

I also decided to start another batch of sourdough starter Friday when I made the cake.  I haven't had any sourdough starter in my house in over a year, maybe closer to two now.  I used to make bread every single week.  Suddenly, I just came to a place where I didn't want to do it anymore.  I let the starter die.  I've often thought of getting more going, but I haven't taken the time to do it.  I don't know if it was the "domestic glow" of using the KitchenAid or what, but Friday just seemed like the day for it.  I mixed it and let it start fermenting.  Now, I have three (well, more like two and half now, really) lovely golden loaves of bread again.  It's wonderful.

Today, I went early to my pottery class to have a whole day of work.  I had a couple of pieces in my head, and I managed to make them today.  I made a dish shaped like a giant leaf, and the piece I'm proudest of, a rather cheerful giraffe with wings.  I also threw on the wheel today, which went about like you'd expect for my second first time on it (bad), and managed to get one bowl that didn't suck too badly off it.  I need LOTS more work there.

I'm enjoying making things with my hands.  It's satisfying to get to the end, to look at the results and say, "I did that.  It's the fruit of my labor."  For so long, I haven't been doing anything but surviving.  Lately, I have had some kind of weather change, though.  I have decided that I am going to have things I love and do things I enjoy.  Life is too short for me to work myself into an even earlier grave in misery and woe.  I am going to find a way to enjoy doing these things again.  I have a few more projects that I plan to do here in the next few days.  It's good to use these hands again for something other than grading.

Can't Save Them All

I drove over the last big bridge on the way home last night in tears.  It was already dark if not very late.  It had taken me a long time to shut down my classroom for the holidays.  A week away is almost as hard to prepare for as a sub day.  Plants have to be watered thoroughly, all the electronics have to be unplugged, the minifridge has to be opened and a pan placed in to catch the run-off as the tiny freezer space defrosts.  Papers have to be gathered so they can sit in the big bag in the corner and be a source of guilt all week long.  Stuff has to be locked away in case somebody breaks in.  I finished it up about 5:30, packed myself up like a shuffling beast of burden, and made my way through the darkened and echoing halls to my car for that drive.

The day itself was what days before holidays always are, limited exercises in futility.  Schedules changed, emergencies arose, absenteeism was moderate.  None of that was what kept haunting me, eating at me.  The thing that kept driving steel talons into my soul was that one student in the middle of my day, the one who begged me with eyes so serious, so tired, and so adult not to make him write that day.  He promised to do it when we got back, but he'd taken his vocabulary quiz, and he was at the end of what he could do that day.

He struggles.  He does the very best for me he can, but he struggles with everything we do.  He breaks my heart.  I work with him, but sometimes I feel like I'm tracing my finger in a running stream, writing words in the water.  What can I do for him that will last? 

How can I give him something that will keep the world from grinding him into dust beneath its brutal, uncaring wheels?  What protection is there for the gentle ones, the ones who struggle, like him?

I have so many who can do it so well.  It comes completely naturally to them, so easily that they never think about it, never even think about valuing it or being grateful for the fact that they were born with this native gift, never push themselves to develop it because they can get by on what they have just fine.  The path of least resistance is plenty for them, will take them into the land of riches and comfort one day.

Then I have my precious little ones who strive and strive until they are just tired with so very little to show for it.   They will be the ones who have to fight for survival, if survival is permitted, and I wish, I wish I knew how to give them something, anything that could help them.  It seems that everything I have is not enough, that nothing could ever be, and it makes me grieve. 

Two Faces

I hate it when people say one thing to one group of people and turn around and say another to me.  I know that such posturing and politico-schmoozing is the grease that keeps the wheels of industry, etc. turning, but it enrages me when someone pretends to be an ally or a friend and turns around and goes on the attack. 

Do they think these things don't come out?  Do they think people don't eventually compare notes and discover the discrepancies?  Maybe they just don't care.

More respect is gained if somebody will just be their honest self.  I mean, come on, love me, hate me, but don't pretend.  I hate that crap.  There's nothing genuine in all that.

I do understand the need for politesse and diplomacy.  However, as far as I'm concerned, diplomacy does not involve saying things that are totally opposite just because you happen to be with somebody else.  I guess I'm never going to understand this phenomenon, and I should probably just file it in my "to ignore" basket, but it's wearing on me greatly right now.

Who I Am

A bulleted list of randomness I'm working into a poem:


I am that woman who
carries her pen like a sword
to cut down the monsters
she cannot fight on any other field
who believes in the power
of the well-chosen word
to slay the enemy
with never a drop of blood shed.

I'm the one who drowns in
the blue of his eyes
and welcomes the rush and burn
of that azure even as it destroys me
who is always a Romantic
even though she has to be classified
as a hopeless one

I'm the one who carries
an antique pocket handkerchief
a brand-new Kindle
and prescription migraine medicine
everywhere she goes
like a sack full of religious talismans
to ward off all potential ills

The one who
stands in the bookstore
and chooses the forty-dollar collection
of works by the poet laureates
instead of mircowaveable lunches
for the next two weeks

I'm the one who
isn't afraid to
walk alone in the dark
in Rome
or Bangkok
or Nagoya
or San Jose
but who wishes
in the deepest places of my heart
that she didn't always have to sometimes

The one who hates
willful ignorace
more than any other thing
and truly believes that knowledge
can save the world
can save your soul
if it's the right kind

I'm the one who
gets up in the morning
and puts a bandaid on
wounds that need sutures
puts the mask of Comedy
over the tracks of tears
and goes out onto stage
with all the bells of my cap ajingle
and my motley
hiding the worst of the damage

I'm the one who
can turn away no soul in need
except for myself
Can see beauty in everything
except for the glass in the bathroom
Can forgive almost anything
except my own transgressions

It's a work in progress.  I don't know if I'll do anything with it.  I may just leave it here.  It's still a random collection of thoughts.  I might take a couple of these and develop them or just abandon the whole shebang.

Jenga!

When did I become the person people lean on?  And, man oh man, but don't they know how dangerous that is?  I mean, I am practically the human equivalent of a Jenga game.  At any given time, my own base of stability may be questionable.  My bottom bricks may have been gently (or not so gently) removed by probing fingers experimenting with "redesign" of this, that, or the other, and my entire being may be trying to cope with the grand balancing act that results from it.  I may be actually wobbling back and forth with each gentle touch of the hand of Fate, waiting for the careless gesture that's going to send all my little building blocks into a tumbled heap needing patient reconstruction.

Maybe this doesn't show.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one.  Whichever it is, I do find it to be patently amazing.  I figured I had a big red flashing sign over my head saying "Disaster Area."  Apparently, though, I do not.  I get asked all kinds of questions, told all kinds of secrets.  I have no wisdom to give people.  I'm quiet a lot, or at least I try to be.  Maybe that quiet is deceptive?  Maybe the wisest thing you can do sometimes is just shut up and let people talk?  Maybe that's what you're doing right now?

....

Um... Yeah....

Wow.

Didn't my washer just quit?  Better go move that laundry from point A to point B, probably....

Jumble Box

Foolishness is missing things I can't have and that were never really mine anyway.  Foolishness is yearning for feathers to fly away, worse yet, for that little tilt of his lips that meant things were about to get interesting. Foolishness is sitting still when every instinct is screaming at me to run, to move, to do something, anything, else.....

I'm lost in the maze of memory, lost in those pieces of the past I rarely pull out anymore.  They don't have the sharp edges that they used to; my heart doesn't bleed to look at them now.  There are so many things I wish I'd done though....

I wish I'd never settled for his friendship.  I wish I'd never said that would be enough because, really, it never was.  I wish I'd just cut my losses and moved on since he never felt the same way about me.  Even though it would have cost me all those days, all those nights, all those memories, all those car rides, all those songs, all those hugs, I think I also missed some important things along the way while I was waiting for something I knew was never going to happen.  I wish, one late night when he came over to the apartment to sit too close on the couch and stare too long, I'd just told him that I couldn't do it anymore. 

I wish I'd had the skill to gut the other one with my shinai. I wish we'd come from sonkyo to face each other, and once, just once, I'd tagged his men hard enough to snap his head back, brutality and lack of control in the strike or no.  I wish I'd walked away from him that night I sat on the stairs after practice like some latter-day Juliet while he stood below and we talked.  No matter what connection sizzled when I first saw him.  I know what it is to be a fool; I earned every bell on my jingling hat with him.  I like to think I learned something from all of that, learned not to trust that sudden rush of the heart.  It's wonderful for poetry, but absolute hell on the soul.

There are other things, chances I didn't take, conversations I almost had.  Mostly, I feel as though somehow all the chances are gone, that all the sand has fallen into the bottom of my hourglass without my realizing that it was passing.  I wish that I could look up tomorrow and feel that stir of emotions, of hope and hopefulness again, of potential.  It's hard here.  I know I make it harder on myself.  I don't trust easily, am suspicious and look for the hidden knife when probably there is none, and my interests are not compatible with most people's apparently.

It would just be nice to have some bright good thing to put in this box instead of these shadowy broken-cornered regrets.  I think it's going to take someone very, very determined and patient to help me get out of this, and I don't know if that person even exists.  It may be too much to ask of anyone.

Drifting Thoughts

Today was a crazy day for me.  Last week and this one have centered around this afternoon at 4:30.  I had an appointment that was important to me, so important that nobody even knew I was going to it except for my Mom and my Dad since they tend to know everything about my life.  I was supposed to have had it last Friday, but it got canceled and rescheduled.

I have a tendency not to tell anybody about things that really matter.  It's almost a superstitious thing, as though talking about it too much might tempt the Fates to intervene and destroy it.  I've been that way about one other thing before.  It was a brief moment of happiness, a meal with a friend that I didn't want to have to answer a bunch of questions about or have to endure too many needlessly hopeful glances from all those people who still expect me to "bag a husband" any day now. 

The thing worked out sort of so-so, and is in a bit of a holding pattern, but I feel better for having done it. I think having done it is the valuable thing.  No matter which side the coin finally lands on, heads or tails, at least I was brave enough to take the action.

Stream of (un)Consciousness

Stress hit me 6th period in the form of an email, and with it, the vise grip of a migraine.  I delayed taking a pill too long, waiting until after school to get to the Maxalt, and by that time, the pain had dug in tenacious talons.  It literally felt as though someone was sliding a burning hot instrument into my brain, very quickly, over and over.  I put my head on my desk and screamed.  No masks, no pretenses of higher functioning were possible.  I just laid there and cried. 

Mom came and got me.  I don't know what I'd do without her.  The Maxalt eventually got ahead of the pain, but I'm weak, loopy, saying stupid things.  I remember saying something as I left the building about the sky in the view out the big window on the stairs looking like El Greco's View of Toledo.  And, well, yeah, it did, but who the hell says stuff like that?  Me on Maxalt, apparently...  Apparently, all my inner monologue comes falling right out of my mouth in this situation as if it isn't already bad enough to have to have somebody come help me get home like an invalid.

I'm wiped out.  I'm just waiting now for them to get my vehicle back here, then I'm going to bed.  God grant tomorrow is better.

Want....

This....this is a thing of beauty.  This is a Pelikan Duo 205 Demonstrator that has been made into a Highlighter.  Yum.  I didn't know such a creature existed, but leave it to Levenger to have such a gorgeous, tempting delicacy.  I must have this.  I like highlighters, but I always need to write notes, so I rarely use them when I annotate.  This neatly solves the problem, and it's so....pretty.  I just want to pick up and turn it over and over in my fingers.  Doesn't it tempt you?

Fountain pens are a particular weakness of mine, elegant tools of the written word that they are.  I always say that even the crappiest paperwork becomes more tolerable if you can do it with something lovely in your hand.  Being the veteran of many a pile of horrid and obligatory paperwork, you can trust me on this....  There are times when ballpoint pens are necessary or even preferable - triplicate forms being the perfect example, perhaps.  However, for the rest, it's nice to take out something that is not disposable, not transient, unscrew its cap, feel its weight in your hand, and get started.  A fountain pen in the hand is a weapon, a small sword to carve one's way through the daily grind.

I will eventually add this one to my arsenal.  I'll probably need to save a month or so first.  The price is not exorbitant, but I am on teacher wages.  It might be a part of my Christmas list.  Sooner or later, though I look forward to using it.  As much of this kind of writing as I do, it should make all that time much more pleasant.

Witch-Wife by Millay

I love this poem.  It may well wind up on the wall next to the Graves one. Witch-Wife
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
She is neither pink nor pale,     And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,     And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs;     In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads,     Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can,     And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man,     And she never will be all mine.

Soule Live Steam Festival

(Photograph by me.  I just wanted you to know that.  Be impressed.  Be very impressed.  Ha.....)

Aaaanyyway...

I went to the 2010 Soule Live Steam Festival today.  I've been meaning to go for the past two years, but I have always forgotten about it or something else has been going on, and I've missed it.  It's really something to see.  The festival is held in the Soule Steam Feed works, a factory that made steam engines and other parts for generations before it shut down.  Now it houses the Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum, and every November, the doors roll open, the boilers are relit, and the belts spin across the ceiling again.  People from all over the country come down with their restored steam engines, both large and small, to show them off.

When I arrived, the entire grassy area outside Soule was covered with various large engines that looked like something out of a steampunk or Dickens novel.  It was fantastic.  They were all kicking clouds of vapor into the cool morning air.  Whistles were sounding at various intervals, gears were turning, and a pleasant smell of mingled wood smoke and lubricating oil permeated everything. There was a man with a gas-powered portable saw-mill slowly planing a cedar log, showing how the old saw mills worked.  He was giving away cedar chips. 

The crowd was a curious mixture of very old and very young at first.  It seemed that the grandparents had all brought their grandkids out for a day with the big machines.  I liked that idea very much.  It was the sort of thing my own grandparents would have done. They used to load us up and take us places like the Ag Museum and Williamsville.  I remember those as wonderful trips.  As time went on, more couples and younger people began to show up. The older people seemed to know exactly what they were looking at, and I had the feeling that many of them had worked on or with these impressive things in the past.  Most of the younger people were like me, curious and learning.  I hope the organizers had a big day of it.  They were asking people to sign in, saying something about getting a government grant.  

The machines themselves are beautiful and awesome in the sense of the word that means inspiring respect and wonder.  Most of them had been beautifully restored and brightly painted.  They hulk, they tower, they gleam, they stutter, sputter, puff, whir, purr, and grumble.  Since I like to take photos of details of things, they were perfect for that.  I loved their precision and their relentless motion.  I loved that they were "old tech," yet they were perfectly content, continuing to split logs, saw timber, run whistles, power factories, provide electricity.  They didn't know they'd been replaced.  There was something admirable about those steam engines, something somehow independent and noble about them as they issued their streamers of white into the perfect November morning.

As is always the case at these small festivals, everyone there was happy to be there.  I love that.  People come out because they have a genuine love of the craft, the item, the culture surrounding it.  Even though I don't really know anything more about the steam engine than what I read off the placards today, I want to know more now thanks to those people, and of course, any day I can take a bunch of photos and find something to be curious about qualifies as a good day.

I walked and looked at everything; I bought the requisite t-shirt, as much to support the festival as out of a need of another one; I strolled through the food stands outside and resisted the urge to consume.  Around the corner, I stood and listened to the sweet sound of something I'd been thinking of, oddly enough, only this morning, a massive steam-driven calliope.  I left with a smile on my face, a scarf I picked up in the craft fair outside around my neck, and that calliope's song in my heart.  Not bad for a Saturday powered by live steam.

New

I've been reinventing everything this week.  I hit one of those points where I looked around and was sick of everything, my house, myself, everything.  It all had to go.

I got all my hair cut off, back to a haircut that skims my chin, one I wore in Bloomington, one that makes my mother sort of wince, and I love it.  I can style it in five minutes and I don't have to pull it up to get it out of my face.  It's never in my face unless I want it to be, and then it's in my face in a way that I like, not in a way that's irritating.

My bedroom also got a makeover.  I started that a couple of weeks ago with a new dark green comforter.  The sheets I had needed to be replaced, so I went to Tuesday Morning to see what they had.  They had GIRAFFE.  PRINT.  SHEETS.  400 hundred thread count, no less. I dithered.  I picked them up and put them down.  I walked away.  I considered a sober solid brown sateen.  I looked at them out of the corner of my eye.  And I said to myself, "What the hell?  Nobody ever sees them but you.  You'll smile like an idiot every time you get in that bed, make it up, or even walk past it.  Get the freakin' sheets."  I scooped them into my arms and proceeded with all due speed to the checkout.  I was right, too.  I grin every time I see those sheet....

My payday splurge was a pair of red Chucks.  They, too, make me exceptionally happy.  I have always wanted a pair of red Converse sneakers, but I never could find them anywhere.  Enter the beauty of the Internet.  I just went to the Converse website and ordered them straight from the factory.  They fit like a dream, shine more beautifully than anything Dorothy ever clicked together three times on her heels, and allow me to scurry all over my huge campus with ease.  Good deal, I think.

These little reinventions make me feel good.  Ultimately, I think it's not the Devil that is in the details; it's life.  Right now, anyway, it's survival.  At least, it's that way for me.....