Grenade, or, WTF Were You Thinking When You Wrote That?

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya

I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for you, baby
But you won't do the same

"Grenade"  -  Bruno Mars

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I just heard this song again while I was driving home, and I was struck anew with how much it annoys me.  It was popular as a new song when I went to San Francisco, and I remember standing on Pier 39 in the rain listening to it booming through the outdoor speakers thinking how totally asinine the lyrics are.  I try not to be overly judgmental about songs.  I mean everybody likes different things, and I try to respect that.  There's an audience out there for everything, and I know that my own tastes aren't bread-and-butter for all people.  That being said, there's just something about this song that pushes all my buttons one after the other.

I think it's the over-the-top-ness of it.  It's a bit of the old "the lady doth protest too much" for me. I am all for profound expressions of love, for deep and heartfelt commitment, but despite the intention to express that here, somehow, it doesn't come through.  Instead, what I hear is something petulant and immature.  I get Romeo and Juliet love instead, all extreme, all impulse. I hear, "Hey!  I'm showing how wonderful I am!  Aren't you watching?"  There is nothing here that is about endurance or survival.  Instead, this is all about sort of a glorious blowout finale that is supposed to serve as proof of love.  

What about proving that you love someone by sticking out the bad times?  What about proving that you love someone by simply picking up the phone and making a call when you know they need to hear your voice?  By going to the grocery store when they're sick?  By taking care of the daily grind instead of elevating the drama or waiting for the disaster movie?  Is this guy going to be there for that?  I think not.  I don't think he's got the stones for it, personally.  That is the real test of a man, and the point at which all too many fall away, unable to have real courage.

So, really, I guess, I don't want to hear any more of these "romance" songs with swords waving.  I think, gentlemen, that if a woman is asking you to "throw [your] hand on a blade for [her]," you might want to check that out a little more closely before you make a long-term commitment, too, but you know, hey, whatever works for you, personally.  Not my business.  I'm still on the lookout for somebody with that true daily courage myself, not courage to die like a drama queen, but the courage to live like a real man.

Corner

I felt ridiculously good today.  Like...Damon-Salvatore-kissed-me-good.   (ha.  I made a stupid funny.  like that.)  I don't know why, but I've been grinning all day long.  I've had a mental playlist clicking through good songs in my head when I haven't actually had music that I like playing in my room.  I've been more like my old self than I've been in, well, longer than I can remember.

It was great.  I'm very conscious that I am not exactly that person anymore because that old person would have reacted very differently to a couple of situations I faced today, would have gotten angry when faced with two or three things, would have been distressed by others.  The person that I have am at the present has sort of decided that I can't fix every stupid broken thing, looked those issues directly in the eyes and called them what they were (stupid and broken), made the sign of the cross over them, and let them go.  I am proud of this.  It made me a better person for the rest of the day.  I am not going to keep destroying myself over things I cannot control.  It betters nothing and no one.  I cannot help myself or others in that situation.  I may yet chose to throw myself on the pyre someday if it's necessary, but by God, I'm not doing it for nothing.  I am going to pick my battles better.  I don't have to bleed every day.

I also had moments of pure laughter today with my classes like I haven't had in a long time.  One class got off on a brief tangent and I wound up with a "stripper name."  It didn't offend me; you have to work really hard to offend me, and they weren't trying.  They were kidding around, and it was a random comment that just made me laugh.  I'm afraid my new name wasn't fancy or salacious at all.  Just the idea of me in that role humored me endlessly.  Yeeeeah.  Talk about Things That Will Not Happen.  I mean, come on....  I'm hardly anybody's idea of that, I think.

I got work done.  I put up my Christmas lights in my room and all my little decorations, including my Santa Elvis  bear who sings "Blue Christmas" and dances.  I stuck the small Santa hat on Shakespeare.  I rigged an old Yankee Candle I love so I could use part of it in my Scentsy warmer, and now my room smells like Christmas, too.  Every small thing I did made me just a little happier.

I don't know if it's just getting all the rest over Thanksgiving, finally getting that huge thing out of the way with the doctor or other things, but whatever it is, oh how I hope it lasts.  The only thing that could actually make it better is getting to see some of the people I love who are so busy and far away, and I think some of that will happen this weekend.  That will be great, and I can't wait.  I've been looking forward to it for a long time now.

Well, that and if Damon Salvatore actually shows up, obviously, because, well, I mean, DAMN.  (don't judge me, okay? he's...he's... pretty....and....and....just don't judge, you....)

okay.  no more Damon ridiculousness.
probably.  but.... O_O

The Curse

Long ago in the ship she asked, "Why pyramids?"
He said, "Think of them as an immense invitation"

~ "The Curse" - Josh Ritter
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Josh Ritter's "The Curse" is playing on a playlist of some of my favorite songs on iTunes right now. Every time I hear it, I fall a little more in love with it. It's just an impossible little jewel of music, perfect in every conceivable way. I don't think I know of another one like it.

Of course, I was bound to love it, I suppose, because it has Egypt in it.  Since the first time I opened the first illustrated book about Tutankhamen in the tiny cramped library behind the fire department here in Podunk, I have been in love with Ancient Egypt, with the mummies and the beast-headed gods... The pyramids then for me have always been an immense invitation.  They are on my "life list," such as it is, of things I must see with my own eyes, go to, be at, lay my hands against the ancient surface of.  One day I must stand before them, inside at least one of them before I die so I can say that I have no regrets. 

As children, I remember L. and me learning to write messages in hieroglyphics, reading Budge's translations of the tales of the gods and The Book of the Dead.  There was a time when I wanted more than anything to be like the woman in this story, spend my days digging in the shifting sands looking for the past.  

That phase passed as childhood "careers" do, but my love for Egypt didn't.  I guess I've read or watched dozens of variations on this same story....Anne Rice's lush novel The Mummy, the Boris Karloff Universal Horror classic of the same title, the modern film trilogy that takes the same theme and spins it again and again eternally around.  Of them all, though, even though at its heart there is still the same supernatural predator, there is still something undeniably poignant and somehow more delicate in this version.  

And that, of course, is coming from Josh Ritter.  That's his hand at the wheel.  He's taking something that has been told as a horror story, as a blockbuster action film, and he's making it somehow as sweet as an old-fashioned waltz.  I don't think anyone but he could have done that, and even if I had never heard him before, I would have loved him for that one song.  It has everything, longing, imagination, musical magical realism.

The video is fantastic, too, perfectly in keeping with the feel of the song and the story as a whole, sweet and sad.  If you haven't seen it, take the time to watch.  It's well worth it.

Sharp Edges

After church tonight, I went out driving.  Ostensibly, it was to get the only food that sounded good, a bacon cheeseburger from Wendy's, or at least the fry portion thereof.  Right now, if it sounds good, I try to go find it....  Really, though, what I wanted most was the dark, wet two-lane highway unfolding in front of me and very loud music playing.  Sometimes, as one of my students is so fond of saying, "it just be that way."

Tonight, I am not in a folksy mood.  Tonight I need loud bass and a dance beat.  Tonight I wish I had my hands in somebody's back pockets and vice versa on a dance floor.  It's just as well I don't live where that's possible or likely.  I have sharp edges tonight.  Anybody trying to handle me would just come away with blood on his hands.  I am not sure I know of anyone even strong enough to try.

Adding to my odd mood is the fact that I've already produced something like forty pages  of writing the last three days of this week, two complete pieces, and that feels righteously good.  One thing is more a less a throwaway, something I cut my teeth on again because I hadn't written anything in so long, a flexing of the muscles that I like less and less the more I look at it, but the other wasn't too terrible.  Both are finished, and I won't lie to you and tell you it didn't feel good to pull it out of my head, shape it by force of my will, and watch it come together.  It's more than a little like a form of magic. It's more than a little addictive.

Neither of those was the one I want to be working on.  They were just random bits that bothered me, and so I made them, put them where I knew they'd be appreciated.  Someday soon, I am going to start the real thing, the story I used to tell L. about when we were kids.  It's been sitting up there waiting for all these years, and I think I'm almost done with my journeyman phase.  I'm sure it won't be as easy as this other playing I've been doing, but more and more, I think that I want to try my hand at it.

Tomorrow, I will go back into the regular world.  It feels like so much more than a week has gone by.  I feel like I've been gone from there for a hundred years, like I've somehow slipped through one of those "rites of passage" and wasn't paying attention.  I don't know.  As I came home watching the headlights of oncoming traffic dance over the wet pavement, I thought about how I felt before I got out for the holiday and how I feel now.  Somehow, so much has changed.  It's strange.  It's as though I was stuck in a place of total stasis before last Tuesday.

Now, I would have to say that is not the case.  I still have some serious questions about some things, but last Tuesday was... a log-jam destroying moment, for lack of a better term.  Everything is now in a state of change.  What remains to be seen is what happens next.

Sweeping Up

I've come here several times in the past few days thinking that I would have something to say, that if I opened a new post, something witty or clever or even trivial would appear to fill this little blank box, satisfy the demand of the blinking cursor, but each time, I've closed the entry and gone to other things, to Tumblr where I can express myself through images and quotations, to work on a writing project (because, good God, I'm actually producing again...I guess the words just will come out of me somewhere), to read the words of others, because my capacity to put anything here has been as limited as my current appetite for food.

In other words, it seems that I want nothing.

The drive that used to call me here almost compulsively to share my thoughts is empty at the moment.  What shall I tell you?  What would you have me give?  What is there to say that has not already been said?  I feel like the janitorial staff coming out at the end of a major production to find that a member of the audience has not departed but is still sitting front row center waiting for another act to unfold.  I am standing on stage with my broom, the house lights are all up, and I'm forced to lean across the footlights and whisper to you, "What else is it you expect to see here tonight?  Go home.  Go home to the people who love you.  To the people you love.  The show is over.  There are no more shocks or horrors left here.  All the performers are gone now.  All their mysteries are done."

And maybe that, too, would be a kind of performance after all if somebody paid attention, the action of a trouper who had to do double-duty, who had to clean up after her turn in the revels was over.  But I'm still a little off-kilter right now, still trying to figure out what to do with what I've learned this week, and while I know that it really doesn't matter to anybody else but me (and maybe to a few precious ones of you who I am more thankful for than I can say), I'm not really up to resuming my little performances here, I suppose.

For those of you to whom I am just an interesting curiosity, just a thing of clockwork and puzzlement, click back in a few days or weeks as your whimsy leads you.  I am sure your usual service of loud-sounding nothings, of sound and fury, will resume.  For those of you who worry, well... Patience.  Patience.  As the heart-rendingly beautiful Marco once told me in Florence, "These things, they happen."

It's Never What You Think It Will Be

(be warned.  this is not a happy place.  there is broken glass on the ground here.  if you are looking for safety, sun, or sugar, go play somewhere else, child.)

As I type this, I am so tired.  I'd really just like to climb into my bed, pull the covers around me, curl into a ball, and let the grey half-light of this long afternoon fade away, be in a warm and still and quiet place where nothing is or was for an unspecified length of time.

But as I've already told one person today on another topic, that's too much like a defeat for me, and I don't do those so much.  I just keep getting up off the damn floor and fighting, even when I should lay down.

It all went quickly.  Once I got there, all my fear dropped away despite the gown and the table. The appointment as a whole really didn't go down the paths I expected, but that shouldn't really be a surprise, I guess.  Nothing ever does....  I expected to hear that tests were coming and procedures were urgently needed.  I expected him to talk about time limits and endings.  That came up, but very gently and briefly only.  The physical situation stays hanging in its ridiculous knife-edge balance, apparently.  One more year of grace has been, quite pointlessly considering my life and my situation, given.

I also talked to him about the hellish mood swings I've been having lately though, and things went crazy from there.  It might be the Topamax.  It might be more of the fun my body likes to dish out in little doses for me.  I have to call my neurologist and talk to him about the Topamax now since it's gotten scary-ish.  I have to have some relief from the roller coaster.  This conversation, the one I'm glossing so lightly, that I'm touching with such dainty fingers here, was excruciating.  It involved being told that perhaps I was trying to do too much, take too many problems on myself.  At one point, I was told that what I was trying to do was like trying to right a wrecked bus all by myself.

This isn't the first time I've been told this.  This isn't the second, the third.  Hell, I don't even know anymore how many times or how many people now have told me, doctors, coworkers, friends....  What I don't know is what to do about it.  That's the part that keeps getting left out.  That's the part I need somebody to help me with.  That's the part nobody seems to know.  There is only the "not this,"  never the "this instead."  (Although if I am fair, he did have a "this might help while you're looking for the this instead.")

And maybe others can't help find the "this instead."  Maybe that's asking too much.  Maybe I just am so totally screwed up that I don't have any idea about what I want for myself.  Maybe it all sounds equally good or equally dull.  Or maybe....maybe...

Maybe I do know what I really want and know that I cannot get it, not even in my wildest daydreams, so this is just as good as any other pointless substitute.

I'm so tired.  So very, very tired.  I warned you about the broken glass when you showed up.  If you got cut, well, I love you, and I'm sorry, but it's nobody's fault but your own.  I think I'm going to get in that bed now.

Not Running

This is me NOT running.  This is me scared as scared and NOT running.  Nervous energy.  Lalalala.  What time I am afraid I will....

Not run.  That's for sure.

Will not get in the car, head it west, crank the stereo, and pretend I can outdrive, outpass, outaccelerate the afraid.  Will not "accidentally" miss the appointment (oh SHOOT!  That was today?  Can we reschedule?  Like for the fifth of NEVER?).

Will not shake.  Will not cry.  Will not betray my image as the great cold queen in the red brick halls.  Will not keep turning worst-case scenarios over and over in my head because this doctor, unlike that other one, would never blind-side me with "So, your whole life is over today.  When would you like to schedule the surgery, honey?" lightly coated over in slick honey phrased as, "Do you have any children?... No?...I'm so sorry..."

And even if this is the beginning of that end, I will not fall into despair.  Okay.  That is a lie.  But I will try very hard not to go into it in despair, try very hard not to make monsters where there just might not be any, and I will try very hard to remember that for every single stupid hellish thing that has ever happened to me in my life, there has been a reason or at least some kind of thing I could take and use to help somebody else along the way.  If this is to come into my life now, even though it will seem like an ending, I have to remember that there has to be some purpose to it.

If I can hold on to that, maybe I can manage not to break into so many pieces that I cannot recover myself.  Maybe I can manage not to run so far that I cannot make it back.

Distracting Myself

You know this thing I have about blue eyes?
So...Yeah....

Tomorrow is the dreaded day.  I can't think of anything else when I stop to think, so I'm not thinking.  I am distracting myself. To that end, I have immersed myself in more TV.  I found The Vampire Diaries on Roku, and it's seriously fun fluffage.  It's what Twilight could have been and missed.  None of the vampires sparkle, some of them are really dangerous, people actually die, the heroine has a spine, one of the male leads (Ian Somerhalder) is gorgeous enough to burn all your houses right down to the ground and sassy to boot, and the storyline holds together beautifully. I can't believe that this thing is actually written this well.  It's not as neatly put-together as something by Whedon or Moffatt, but it's not what I thought it was going to be, vapid teenertainment.  There's solidity to it.  (Plus...have you seen his eyes?  I mean...O_o)  I'm in the middle of season 2 right now.  I think maybe there are three seasons out so far, so I have a lot more to enjoy.

I'm not exactly sleeping right now, didn't go to bed until 4:30 am Friday night, was up until 2:30 last night, so I am glad to have something to fill my hours.  After tomorrow, maybe I can get my brain out of this chasing-its-own-tail cycle of uselessness and do something other than mark time.  Because even as nicely as I'm being distracted (oh, and btw, I know what I want for Christmas now people...), this stasis is not what I want to be about right now.

Good Things

Great, good, simple things:

• Croissants, sharp cheddar, and green tea for dinner
• The feel of loud, deep bass through car seats
• Clean white dogs snoring
• The feeling of being clean right after a hot shower
• A yard covered in a blanket of gold ginkgo leaves
• Knowing that a whole week off waits ahead of me

Things of Nothing

I've done an astonishing amount of nothing today.  Vast quantities of it.  Heaping piles of it.  It has been a happy blend of dogs, couches, crocheted afghans, and televised costume melodrama.

Crazy, brilliant, blue-eyed, deeply-tormented, and carrying a sword.  Yeah.  You know that sounds like something I'd like..  O_o

Mostly, I've been immersed in the Roku.  I watched most of a series called Borgia and now I'm getting into Camelot.  What can I tell you?  I'm a sucker for a period drama.  Blame it on the pretty people.   No, really, though.  The guy playing Cesare in the Borgias was sort of...hypnotically gorgeous.  You can see him over to the right (or wherever the photo actually appears for you) as he finishes up a season-long bout of soul torturing and sort of says forget it, kills a bunch of people, and has a bit of what I call an "I AM BEOWULF" moment in the middle of the papal audience chamber.  He's quite mad and quite lovely.  I have to say that like Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon in The Tudors, a great deal of the reason I kept watching was for the pretty smart man with the blue eyes....  Tragically, I am almost always drawn to the monsters and the psychos.  Sigh. (Well, Brandon wasn't one.  Don't look so grumpy pretty Charles.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.)

Pretty man is puzzled by his own prettiness....

Anyway, I needed the rest and pure facetiousness of today.  It's been a real backside-kicker of a week, and I just wanted some distraction.  So far, so good, I guess.  In the absence of any sort of actual international travel, it's as much escapism as I'm going to get.

My Children

Today, apropos of nothing, one of my students said, "Ms. _____, you need to have a baby."  This alone was almost like someone sliding a piece of redhot wire into me slowly, but I knew there was a logic in that statement somewhere.  It was not intended to cause me pain, and there was no way she could know.  I dragged up a smile from somewhere, and said, "Umm-hmm.  Um.  Why?"

"Because you'd make a good mama.  Your kid would be interesting.  You would make sure they would read and learn stuff.  They'd be really smart."

I grinned. (I was dying a little inside. God, how can something be so funny and painful and sweet all at the same time?  One soul should not be asked to bend in that many directions at one time.  It hurts.)

"I think you're overestimating me..."

"No.  I'd want her to, like, be my friend."

"Okay.  Fine by me."

"Can I give her a name?"

"Sure."

"I'm going to call her Sarah.  She's my imaginary friend.  We'd hang out and stuff.  We'd be friends."

Stab.  Stab.  Stab.  My heart has so many damn wounds these days, it's almost all scar tissue.

They ask me all the time why I don't have kids, tell me that I need children.  God.  Soon, I might have that most definitive of all the answers for them for that question, and then what am I going to do with myself?  I feel like I'm ready to be balled up and thrown away.....

Didn't I, My Dear

But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?

~"Little Lion Man" - Mumford & Sons

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I'm afraid that I've hurt some people I care about, and I don't know how to undo it.  I think I took something the wrong way yesterday and made a major assumption about something that may not be true at all.  I have not been able to be good or kind, sweet or gentle in the past few days.  Yesterday was bad.  Very.   And when I am bad, I make all the devils in hell look like amateurs.....

Regardless of what the original intention of the other person was, what came out of me next should not have.  And today was just as bad.  I could not put it all aside. I should have. I needed to.  I wanted to, badly.  I was going to.  But then, suddenly, when the moment came, everything inside me somehow froze up, and I couldn't.  The smile that was needed to crack the ice wouldn't come.  The one gesture that would have made it all good had to be made at the right time, and today, just right now, there is something inside me so bruised and bloody and tired.  It could not get up and do the right thing.  It simply lay there with hopeless eyes and powerless limbs as the chance to fix the situation died.

And I'm so sorry for it.  I'm sure it bothers me much more than it bothers anybody else involved in the situation... 

I'm sure tomorrow is another day and all that, but I'm growing afraid of tomorrows.  They are not always better.  I am not always better.  Sometimes, I am so much worse.  Sometimes, I don't like who I am at all in my tomorrows....

Four Days Left

And I want to shut out the whole world.  I wish I could fast-forward time just to get it over with.  I think I'm losing my mind with the waiting.  All I can think about is four days from now, even though I know that it may come to nothing or may only be the start of a longer process.  First, physical weakness earlier in the week, and now, the inescapable jackboots of this thing I've been avoiding stomping ever-closer.  If you want to know why I'm not writing, you'd do better to ask how I'm still standing at all.

Invocation

Today, I'd give quite a lot to see you.  I've been a little sick, and just now, just this moment with rain spitting from a sullen sky, I'm a little sad.  In a perfect world, I'd look up and you'd be there like an antidote to all the badness that slowly creeps through my veins.  If I had any magic in me, any power to call forth, I would be tempted to use it.  But that's a selfishness, I suppose, an indulgence.  I'm sure you're hip-deep in your own battles.  Still, I can't help but glance toward the door once in awhile and wish....

I Cannot Brain Today....

"I cannot brain today...I has the dumb."  ~ hashtag seen on Tumblr post
_________________________

This says it all.  I have been fighting stupidity and ick all day.  It feels like a migraine, but the pain won't come down.  I staggered through a day, came home at 4:00, and I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow, I'll take another turn on the big merry-go-round, I guess....

Wide-Eyed Blind

The prelude was fine.  I played "In the Garden" fine.  I felt a little flutter when the music director wasn't out on time, but that's nothing new, really.  He's usually in the back working on one last run through on something, and so I take it around one more time, glance at the little clock I keep on the organ console to see if I need to stretch the piece I'm playing or if I have enough time to shift to a different one.  Nothing prepared me for the sheer nightmare that was coming.

It happened during the first congregational hymn which was always going to be tricky anyway since it was one we hadn't done in a long, long time.  The music just...went away.  The notes were there on the page, but they were practically meaningless, especially those for my right hand.  I could only stare in them in panic, reach for bass chords.  I felt my face flush, my fair complexion betraying my distress.

"It's just this song," I kept telling myself.  "Pull it together.  Chord it.  Get through, and the next one will be better."  I hit the ending notes, sometimes the only ones that matter because if you can at least end on the right notes at least it doesn't sound horrible at the end, and I took a deep breath during the prayer.  It had to be better during the next song.  I knew that one.

But it wasn't.  It really wasn't.

The third, the offertory, was an old favorite, and by that point I was actually shaking.  Fortunately, my musical ear and my brain just bypassed my dead eyes at that point and took over.  I played it with minimal error, and it sounded like I knew what I was doing.  But I can guarantee you whatever I was doing and however it was being done, whatever mechanism was active, ghostly possession by Ms. Sarah, my music teacher who passed away while I was in college; innate rote repetition of that song; divine mercy; whatever, it wasn't sight reading.

I was up for the offertory solo tonight, my pianist friend and I rotating that duty week-to-week.  I wanted to laugh, cry, or run away during the prayer beforehand, but I stayed on the bench, set the stops on the organ, slid the music onto the stand, and tried to remember what chords those stupid little blotches represented.  I have been playing the piano since I was seven, the organ since I was ten.  The piece I was playing was not an elaborate variation.  It was an old hymn in the key of C major.  It was like I was suddenly made so illiterate that I could not read a child's storybook.  I honestly had a moment where I thought I would not be able to play it at all, and then that automatic something went click and my hands moved for me and music came out...more or less.

After the sermon came the invitational, a song I've played probably a million times.  It went better, but I could feel the first twinges of a migraine beginning.  It's still rumbling like distant thunder on the horizon.  I am trying to get all my work done so if it does come down like I think it is planning to, I can take a phenergan and make myself unconscious.

This....this scares me.  When it does things like this to me, I don't know if it is the Topamax, the migraines, or something else.  Why am I like this?  It doesn't make any sense.  And why does it take the music?  It takes my spoken words, too, sometimes, but as I look at this page, I can read every single line.  Will it one day take this from me, too?  It's a terrible thing to be afraid of your own mind.  I wish I understood what was happening to me better.  It makes me feel like I'm trapped in a room with Boo Radley.  I never know from day to day if he's going to save me or stab me in the leg with that damn pair of scissors.

"To Darkness"

"To Darkness / Kripa"

Take my eye

and my whole heart

in your hands

in your hands

and board the yacht

as it departs

leave me on the shore

but I will hunt no more

Hold my sin above my head

and take me home instead

take me home instead

I will not speak of your sin

there is a way out for him

the mirror shows that

your values are ocean

The door, my heart was floored

I knew my weakness, oh hold,

my hand can sign me not to darkness

You know, my heart was floored

I knew my weakness, oh hold,

my hand can sign me not to darkness

~ Mumford and Sons, on Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, and the Dharohar Project

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So I was cruising through Amazon this morning, and this album came up in my recommendations.  I was intrigued by the fact that it was a blend of Indian music (which makes me happy) and Mumford & Sons (which I like because of the lyrics).  There are only four songs in this collaboration, and I instantly loved two of them, "To Darkness" and "Mehendi Rachi."   The latter has lyrics like "Perhaps I'll be a bird one day/ if I'm good enough," which you know speaks right to my feathered soul.  It's great.  

This one, though, I am almost positive that this one is sneaking Faustus in.  It feels Fausty.  It may well be that I have just finished teaching the play and watching the downfall and everything feels Fausty right now, but somebody else take a look at this and tell me if the allusion works for you, too.  I know M&S do the whole literary thing, and I think there's a mirror that's important in the Gounod opera (or perhaps even in the Goethe version) of the story.  


(I've searched everywhere to make sure I've got the right lyrics here.  There are several alternate versions of them floating about.  Some of them are clearly wrong.  There are still a couple of words here I'm not quite sure about....  The words "can sign" could just as easily be "consign" ...)

Or maybe I'm just seeing Mephistopheles in every corner now....  That's probably not good, is it?  I'm going to be super-thrilled if I've found this gem tucked into a corner, though.

Pride Blind

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them." ~ Robertson Davies

True enough, I guess.  This directly relates to a conversation I had with someone the other day.  Maybe he needs this quote.

40

(No.  Not me.  Not yet....  That particular milestone is still a few years down the road.)

This week Led Zeppelin's IV turned 40.  I guess I heard a clip on the radio about it when I was on my morning high speed  interstate rally  drive to work.  I don't know why it hit me like it did.  I mean I did know the album is older than I am, right?  Even when I was in high school and everyone was dividing into the two or three musical camps all teenagers seem to wind up in as they are exploring their musical tastes, those of us who leaned toward stuff with the guitars did know that Zep was older.  It is just weird somehow to hear a number put on it, I guess, because to me this is music that should exist without them.

Some music dates achingly fast.  It's the stuff that the DJ pulls out at a high school reunion, some of it novelty songs from the your school years, some of it just not very good. You laugh with your friends over it like the old snapshots of you and your friends in bad hairdos or ridiculous clothing trends, and you sort of shudder and think, "My GOD.  What were they thinking when they came up with that crap?"  Other music never, ever sounds like it belongs to any particular age.  It is always good, always fresh.  It is an archetype.  It sets the pattern, is the mold that everything else tries to follow.   It's like an empire-waist gown, I suppose, always in fashion.  (And you can tell my mind is rambly this morning because I suspect I've just compared Led Zeppelin to an empire-waist gown... HA!  I will leave that there, too, because it makes me laugh....)

This entire album is special to me for another reason as well.  This music is my dad's music.  So much of my taste in music is his.  His album collection would make a classic rock vinyl collector tremble.  He's the reason I listen to the Stones, the Beatles, Zep, CCR, and so many others.  Riding around with him in his truck to basketball practices, to visit my relatives, or whathaveyou, he'd tell me about this group or that one.  There were always stories related to his life that went with them or that started because of them, and so I grew to love the music we were listening to.  He would give me his old cassette tapes of them or I would buy them myself.  That's how it started.

All these years later, I am still in the process of replacing all my old analog copies with digital ones.  "Stairway to Heaven," the most heavily-publicized song on IV (although probably not my favorite song on the album) is rolling through my iTunes right now.  I guess as formats change that is going to be a lifelong process of keeping a current library of my favorites.  I have to say, though, when I consider how much more than just mere music this is, it's worth it.

Art

The White Orchard

I am a bit too distracted tonight to read.  My mind just won't focus enough to allow me to buckle down for serious homework or grading.  I am bored with TV and movies.  I am restless, restless, longing to be elsewhere or doing something meaningful or frivolous with somebody who matters.  Maybe it's the moon hiding up there behind that layer of clouds....

In my random search for something to do that would not involve getting in my car and roaming the night-dark countryside aimlessly or spending cash I don't have, I glanced over the icons on my Chrome dash.  No.  Not Twitter.  Not up to paring my thoughts down to 140 tonight.  Also don't want to sort through the clutter of the streaming feeds which are bound to be full of the stupidity and depressing non-choice of politics.  Not a mind-killing game like Angry Birds, either.

What to do?  The trip out to the car and the unrolling dirt roads and dodging of poaching rednecks is starting to sound better and better....

Then I saw the unassuming icon for the Google Art Project.  Yes.  This.  I clicked it, and I was taken to an image of a painting from the National Gallery in London called The Ambassadors.  It was from the time of Henry VIII and was by Holbein.  I looked at it,  pulled up its history, read about it, and moved on to other works that gallery had put online.  I could feel that thing that howls inside me demanding that I take it out of here, show it something other, let it out to dance and learn and frolic start to grumble less and pay attention more.

I moved from gallery to gallery, ending up as I have before in the Van Gogh Museum.  The image above is one of my favorites they have of his.  There is something about these trees that makes me think of Their Eyes Were Watching God and springtime and lying under the cherry blossoms in Japan on a day when it is still just a little too cool to be outside but everything is so full of glory that your heart wants to explode with it.

Soon, I guess I'll try to go to bed.  I don't sleep well on moon-sodden nights; I never have and I have no idea why.  Maybe there's something inside me that needs to be out dancing in it (ha).  For a little while, anyway, I have managed to make the unquiet thing peaceful by feeding it art.  No small accomplishment.

(if you are running Chrome, I highly recommend the Art Project app.  if you are not running Chrome....why the heck not?)

Foiled Again

I'm too poor right now actually to go anywhere, so despite having gotten up with Gypsy Feet itching, I am having an at-home day.  It's just as well, probably.  Last week was rough.

Thank God for the internet.  I've played on Tumblr for an extended period, something I haven't done much of lately.  I love all the things I find there.  There are a couple of amazing teachers on Tumblr, and they are constantly showing me new and amusing education things.  In fact, I found out about TGC on Tumblr.  There are also so many other interesting odds and ends tailored to my interests, book geekery, music, and so on.  I can get lost there for happy hours.

I'm now watching the last part of the miniseries Tin Man on the Roku.  If you haven't seen Tin Man and you like the Wizard of Oz (either the whole shiny Hollywood epic or the original book), I highly recommend this SyFy (or however they're spelling it these days) retell.  It's dark and they've steampunked it up just a bit, but I like what they've added to they original storyline.  The actors are some of my favorites (Alan Cummings is always grand), and I think you won't be disappointed.

Books, music, Etsy...I need to go to Wal-Mart, but I probably won't...laundry, a little light decrapifying of the house, homework...this is what I see my afternoon becoming.  It's not a grand adventure with the camera, but at least it's peaceful life.

Puppy Life

This picture is old, but I love it.  He's LOTS bigger now.

Chewie, my Great Pyrenees puppy, is a challenge.  I love him, but some days I sort of want to drop-kick him. That sort of challenge.  Case in point:  I just had to stop writing to yell, "What the hell have you got," run over and take something plastic/electronic and inappropriate away from him.  He's now barking at one of the cats again, a habit I'm breaking him of with the use of an aluminum pie pan.  (Just.  Don't.  Ask.)

This is Puppy Life.  It's been so long since I've had a puppy or even a young dog around that I have forgotten what it's like.  It's a constant circus of clean up, run around, take away, hide, and throw out because it's destroyed.  Even more so than with a normal puppy with him because he's so freaking SMART.  It's not like he's a dumb animal; he's a terribly, terribly clever one.  If he sees something he wants, you can't even hide it from him.  He watches, notes where you put it, and then goes and gets it for himself later when you're out of the picture with a song in his heart and a cheerful, toothy little grin on his snow-white face.

There's also the fact that he is physically large.  He's only about five months old right now, and he's already about thirty pounds.  He's almost as tall as my pit bull.  He's on his way to being three feet tall and one hundred pounds when he hits maturity.  He's built like a football player, all shoulders and chest, lean muscle.  His favorite tactic is to walk up to things and smack them with his giant feet, objects, doors, other dogs, my cats (who loathe him), me...  He thinks this game is AWESOME.  The things he paw-punches, usually not so much.  Even Roux, my pit, sort of looks at him with a thinning patience sometimes, and she's the queen of Rock and Roll playing.

It's good that she's here, though, because the two of them do throw each other on the floor with such violence that stuff rattles on the shelves.  There's a neverending stream of snarling nonsense when they get going.  The cats sit on the backs of chairs and couches and watch, and I keep thinking that for them, this must be some form of modern day feline gladiatorial game.  I am almost certain they're silently saying, "One of you just KILL, KILL, KILL."  They always look disappointed when there's no bloodshed....

Chewie can be exceptionally sweet, though.  He follows me from room to room.  I can't decide whether he is herding me or protecting me, but I'll take it either way.  His breed is known for its guarding traits, and where I live and since I live alone, that's kind of nice.  Even when we're outside and all the other dogs have abandoned me, Chewie stays.  I'm hoping with continued instruction, his intelligence and sweetness will be the things that outlive this puppy phase.  I do not think I can handle one hundred pounds of frothing white insanity knocking me down every morning and then grinning at the resultant chaos, and I'm almost sure that the feline ninja association will take matters into their hands to prevent that as well.

Music Is a Moral Law

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
~ Plato

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This rolled through my Tumblr this morning, and I'm taking just a second to post it before I go to school because it's fantastic.  Music is the thing that keeps me moving most days.  Whether I am playing it or listening to it, it is the clockwork keeping the machine going.  When I feel terrible, it either helps me work through it or lifts me out of it.  When I am rejoicing, it celebrates with me.  When I grieve, it pulls the sorrow out of me. I have seen many other quotes about music, and I have some other good ones tucked back, but this one is seems to wrap it all up so well.   

Holding On

Less than four hours of sleep, and I'm clinging to functionality by sheer stubbornness.  I'm shaking like a leaf inside.  I feel like there's an electric current running under my skin.  It's horrible.  If everybody wouldn't think I was a basketcase (which, basically, I guess I am, but in my foolish pride I don't want them to think it), I would sit in the floor and cry.  My heart feels like it is about to pound right out of my chest, and I'm so cold, like I won't ever be warm again.

This is the side of Topamax that they don't tell you about when you go in to take it for the first time:  it's a demanding taskmaster.  If you don't manage the dose and your sleep schedule exactly right, it will beat you into a whimpering and useless mass.  I knew today would be like this when I looked at the clock last night and it was past 12:30 when I was going to bed.  I should have called in for a sub today.  The only way I've been able to manage is to stay constantly moving.  This and the fact that the students are taking tests, meaning that I don't have to be mentally on top of my game, are the only things that are letting me get through.  If I can just get to the end of the day...  If... If...

I am sure this period in my life is serving a purpose other than just pointless misery.  I just wish I knew what the hell it is.

And It Just Doesn't WORK

I'm trying for about the eleventh time to get a video converted from wmv to mp4 so I can (perhaps) upload it to the finicky BlackBoard system.  I hate this.  HATE THIS.  Nobody told me there was a size limit for uploads on BlackBoard.  I'm sure this was supposed to be a part of "learning by experience" ho-ho-ho.  Instead, what it is doing is PISSING ME OFF.  The video will not convert (I'm using VLC, and it is, for the first time ever, failing me.) The only version I've been able to extract is choppy video with no sound.  If I try to get better quality than that, it pretends to make it but doesn't.  I'm exhausted and I need to sleep, but I have to turn this assignment in.  I was so pleased with the video I'd made.  Now I just want to throw the laptop across the room because I can't turn it in.  I'm borderline migraine. I do not need this from something that is not even a job.

Sharp Edges

A list.  I'm tired and this is what you get when I'm tired.  I'd like the following, please:

• People to be nice or get the hell out.  I'm tired of hate and hatefulness.  It seems like that's all I hear from every mouth right now....cut downs, mockery, verbal abuse, spite, outright malice, fake smiles that try to hide daggers and fail miserably, actual rejoicing in the pain of others, indifference, intolerance, jokes that carry a coating of crushed glass on them looking for the tender belly to slice.  Doesn't anyone care about the other person at all?  Isn't there any recognition that that being across from you has feelings any more?  I feel a little sick, a little nauseous, a little bruised.  Look around you, for the love of God.  See what your actions cause.  Everything matters.  Everything.  There are no throwaway moments.
• Thought instead of blind obedience.  Doesn't anybody think anymore?  I'm so disappointed.
• Clarity, the path made visible.  Actually, I'd like the path lit up like an airport runway and a brass band playing at the end.  I'd like a guy standing at the door with a sign with my name on it saying, "Ma'am?  Right this way."  I'd like flashing neon and air-raid sirens.  I would like there to be no other turning possible.

I'm sure there is more I have to say, but sleep is slamming an iron fist against the door, and I am going to have to comply.  I'm exhausted.

Something Simple

I was walking the dogs tonight when I got home since Roux is still quite sick and cannot be let out to run free.  The weather was cool but not cold, and the sky was the most gorgeous shade of cobalt as the last of the day faded.  The almost-full moon was already up and the first few stars were out, just enough of a handful to wish on.  A single gauzy ribbon of cloud threaded all the way across the sky.  Around my yard, the little glass orbs of my solar lights were glowing softly like earth-bound baby moons echoing the larger satellite above.  It was lovely, really lovely.  Even though I was tired from the day and ready to be in and off my feet, it was a good place to be.  Something simple, something good.  These pockets of beauty that hide quite literally in the back yard are something for which I never cease to be grateful.

"You Thought I Was That Type" - Anna Akhmatova

You thought I was that type:

That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

__________________________

I found this in an anthology of poems I have, and I thought I'd share it here.  I like the sentiment.  It's a good "break-up" poem if you should happen to be in need of one.  

Bold Advances, Bob Dylan, and Bad Ideas

edited because of a massive non-sequitur I left in it earlier and some font messiness.

Close your eyes, close your door
You don't have to worry any more
I'll be your baby tonight.

Shut the light, shut the shade
You don't have to be afraid
I'll be your baby tonight.

Well, that mockingbird's gonna sail away
We're gonna forget it
That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon
But we're gonna let it
You won't regret it.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear
Bring that bottle over here
I'll be your baby tonight.

~ "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" - Bob Dylan
________________________________

This song makes me grin. It's just bold as brass, isn't it? It isn't really promising anything except the obvious. There is no commitment, no hearts or flowers, no long-term in it. Perhaps it's really the sort of thing any self-respecting woman should roll her eyes at and say, "Boy, please. Get out." I guess I should be after rings, vows, and things.

And yet.

I have this sort of weakness for these very honest statements of intent. "Kathleen" by Josh Ritter is this way, too. I was once trying to explain that to somebody, and I think I did it badly. The person on the other end of the conversation paused and asked something like, "You do know he's trying to seduce her, right?" Yeah. I'm not stupid. I know. But he's not hiding it at all. It's totally out in the open. There is no game, none of those insulting attempts at stealth to it. For some reason, I always find that amusing, charming, and interesting. Everybody's cards are on the table and choices can be made.

Is it always a good idea to go with these bold advances? That, I can't tell you. After all, at the end of "Kathleen," they're both left with that bittersweet secret. What will the two of the lovers in the song above feel when the night is over? Even relationships that start out this way sometimes break. My relationship with T. began with a bit of fearless samurai-ism on his part (his approach to relationships matched his approach to handling the blade, you see, and fool that I am, I admired both), and it ended oh so VERY badly. I fervently wish I'd taken one of T's bokken and beaten him black and blue just once, when it was done. I can't say it was all bad in honesty, but did it go so wrong because it started with such directness? Do these forward charges ever end in something that isn't broken and temporary? That's the question that sort of haunts me as I continue to smile softly to myself even when I hear the words, "I know you are waiting and I know it is not for me/But I'm here and I'm ready and I've saved you the passenger seat...." Is it ever right to rush in? Does it ever begin something that isn't just the start of "a new kind of hell"?

I don't know, and I am unsure exactly why, knowing what I do about how it usually ends, I continue to find these so appealing. I guess the strength in me is responding to the strength it indicates. It does, after all, take a strong and confident man to step out and declare his intent in this way. I may never find anyone to stand beside me on this path I'm walking, but I know that if I do, he by God better have a spine of steel. I could never respect anyone who did not have a strong sense of who he was, know what he wanted, and was not willing to reach out his hand and, with honesty, try to have it in whatever arena. Ultimately, I think that's what makes me a fan of these songs. Maybe someday, I'll find a man to match the music.

Chick With a Camera Makes a Request

Dear Sir and/or Madam and/or All Four Hundred and Eighty Seven of your Progeny:

I am absolutely delighted that you have come out to enjoy this festival/museum/cultural showcase today and/or tonight.  Isn't it a grand spectacle of what humanity is capable of when everyone works together?  Yes, indeed. That being said, I did have one or two little things I'd like to request of you:

1)  Might it be possible for you NOT to slam into me/roll over me with your oversized purse/stroller/child-in-arms/purchases?  I'd love to go home today without bruises.  Injury should never be a part of anyone's weekend plans.

2)  It does require a bit of distance to photograph most objects.  I am trying to be as respectful of everyone's desire to see everything as I possibly can.  Heaven forfend that I become a nuisance.  Could I gently ask that you not dart in front of me two or three times AFTER YOU LOOK AT ME when I have the camera raised to my eye to take the photograph?  This will make me want to do you bodily violence much less.

3)  Just a general rule in all public situations, do you think you could possibly make sure your children aren't running loose and, oh, say climbing the stairs into forbidden and dangerous machinery past the clearly-marked off boundaries in a second-floor shop in an old factory while you are deeply involved in discussion of such world-shattering matters as the upcoming football game?  I really feel that it should be beyond my responsibilities to reclaim toddlers from the gaping maw of death.  Well, at least on a weekend.

4)  I am perfectly willing to wait for you to finish up your exploration of today's exhibitions as I wish to be as unobtrusive with my hobby as possible.  I might just gently ask, though, that you don't congregate in front of major objects of interest in order to use your cellphone, eat, talk about the upcoming football game/weather/your last surgery/Mamaw/etc., admire your offspring or the offspring of others, or plan further stops on your excursion, or all of the above.  One or two tiny steps to the side as a courtesy are much appreciated.

5)  Everyone knows that parking at a major event is a stressful hassle, especially if you don't wish to walk very far.  However, one should never be in such a total frothing panic to claim a space that one is willing to BACK OVER a pedestrian, especially when one has LOOKED AT said pedestrian for thirty seconds or so before putting the vehicle in reverse.  And no, kind sir, your age does not excuse you.

Thank you for your generous consideration.  A little more courtesy will keep us all harmonious and happy (and me from having to wreck on you in public in such a way that would make my students all proud).

Sincerely,
The Chick with the Camera

Soule Live Steam Festival 2011

I got up this morning and walked the dogs aware of the brisk chill in the air.  The weather meant it would be a perfect morning to catch the steam coming off the engines at a festival I'd been waiting for since I left it last year.  The Live Steam Festival would start in a few hours.

As I walked down from my parking place, I could hear the full-throated scream of the whistles mounted on the roof of the old factory, the rhythmic thumping of the big steam engines, and a new sound added to the mix this year, the merry singing of multiple carousel organs scattered throughout.  Plumes of white smoke and steam curled up into the sky and a pleasant smell burning wood hung in the air.

I saw many of the same engines there this year as last, and I focused on trying to capture them in new ways.  I used my new Diana lens to get some different angles on them, and then I went inside.  The Industrial Heritage Museum folks have done massive amounts of work on their buildings, cleaning out and building new structures inside.  It is wonderful how nice the place looks.  They have added little "shops" inside one of the buildings to showcase crafts like broom making, pottery, weaving, and have also taken all the materials from the print shop that so fascinated me before and set up a working printing press from the factory's belt drive.

A gentleman was printing Marks-Rothenberg ads today as a demonstration, and I talked with him just a bit about the process and took a couple of pictures.  He let me have one of the printed pieces.  It tickled me to no end.  Marks-Rothenberg is one of my special places and always will be whether it is the department store of memory in which I rode the elevator with that wonderful lady who was kind enough to put up with me when I was an overly-inquisitive child who asked too many questions while my mother shopped or whether it is the MSU Riley Center of today where I can go and see wonderful performances like Macbeth the other night.

I walked over and looked at the trains at the depot this year, and I sort of wish I hadn't for two reasons.  First, I saw what is left of the New Orleans and Crescent.  It was a tattered and fading exhibition with peeling paint and shattered glass.  It made me feel sad.  It feels too much like so many other things in town, a glorious and proud past that is disappearing.  Second, it struck me that "Whistlestop" part of the weekend could have been so much more.  Aren't there train groups out there that could bring in something fabulous the way the other groups involved have done?  It needed a little more work.  Amtrak had an engine on the tracks, but that was all.

One thing that was new and really fabulous was all the carousel organs.  They were just frilly and fantastic.  Everywhere you went in a two block radius and inside the building proper itself, they were sitting on corners and in open spaces filling the air with their glorious sound.  Some were hand-cranked and small enough to roll.  Some were so giant that they were an entire vehicle themselves.  Some were very old.  Some were made in the last twenty years or so in some guy's garage.  All of them made me smile in delight.  I love the sound of a carousel organ.  I have fervently wished the one in our local Dentzel were restored.  The recordings they have on CD are, I'm sure, very convenient, but it's just not the same as hearing the real thing.

I hope they continue to have the Carousel Organ Association come down and be a part of the Live Steam weekend.  It seems that they are a natural offshoot to me. It would be grand, in fact, if more things related to steampower wound up being centered on this festival.  Going back to what I said about the trains, I'd love to see some of the gorgeous steam engines come into Meridian somehow.  To me, it would be a resurrection of what Meridian used to be when she was at her best.  I don't know what kind of finagling that would involve, but maybe, someday, it could be possible.

More News

Roux's not poisoned.  The vet checked her, and she is exhausted and run-down.  They kept her for observation, but as far as I know right now, she is okay.  The relief was a physical thing, almost like being released from a big vise grip somebody had been twisting up.

My doctor's appointment got moved.  I have longer to wait now for whatever my sentence outcome will be.  I know realistically that this is only going to be the start of something; it always only ever is with this process, but I had mentally prepared myself to wait until Thursday of next week.  I had prepared myself to be strong only so much longer.  Now I have to gear myself up for more waiting.  I have to convince myself I can jump this next hurdle, too, when what I want is to lay down and just look at it with tired sad eyes.

I'm reminded of the old quote about us never being tested more than we can bear.  Immediately after that come Mother Teresa's anecdotal words, "Then I wish God didn't trust me so much."  Absolutely freakin' ditto, Sister.

Scared Now

Roux came in last night about 11:30.  She was dragging and once I actually saw her, she was shaking like a leaf.  She is covered in little scratches and her skin is red.  I got her fed and on the couch, and she continued to shake.  She slept immediately and hard.  This morning, she's still shaking slightly.  I'm going to take her to the vet, but I'm so scared she's eaten or been given something toxic.  I keep thinking about Rufus, the neighbor's Rottie who died.  I can't stand it.

Misunderstanding

Apparently one of my classes thinks I got mad at them yesterday.  I was very sick yesterday, and I know I wasn't at my best.  Possibly (okay, likely) my patience wasn't good.  When I have an active migraine, I have one of two things going on.  I am either screaming in the floor wishing I were dead or I am fighting the effects of medicine and the stupidity going on inside my head to pretend that I am a "real girl" like everyone else and not whatever simulacrum somebody cobbled together and turned out to fend for itself instead.  Yesterday was sort of horrible.  I spent the time between every class leaning against the comforting cool support of the red brick wall outside my classroom praying for support to get through the next class period.  I ran my fingertips over and over the mortar lines behind me, and I remember thinking how comforting it was that the building was strong, stable, and old since I felt like I was going to come rattling apart into a million pieces at any moment.

I have very fuzzy memories of most of my classes yesterday.  It's likely that my words were sharper than usual.  When I feel as bad as I did yesterday, when I'm struggling to stay upright and functional, I don't have a lot left to put on a mask of sugar over the top.   My emotions come more readily to the surface.  I don't remember saying anything that could have been taken as outright anger, though.  I did warn each class when they came in that I had a migraine and that I wasn't doing well so they were going to have to bear with me.  Apparently, whatever happened in this one wasn't covered by that disclaimer.

It bothers me.  A lot.

They're precious, I love them, and that they think I was angry is distressing.  I don't get angry with my students easily.  Upset, yes, sometimes.  Irritated, frequently.  Both of those are different from anger. They're fleeting, like a rain squall.  If they had ever really seen me truly angry, they would know the difference immediately.  God, I pray they never, ever see me angry.  There are darknesses inside me that never need to be revealed.....

We talked about it a little today after somebody said something about me being mad.  I explained, but they still have a bit of that spanked-puppy look, and now I feel terrible.  This is happening too much this year.  I haven't ever had this problem before.  They are so exceptionally sensitive to every nuance of every word and gesture, maybe more than any class I've ever had before.  I am trying very hard to make sure there is no miscommunication between us, but I am notoriously non-demonstrative with my emotions at all times (ask any guy I've ever done the relationship dance with) making me prone to react to people I like most the least (don't ask.  it's screwed up and I know it.  you see that I am still single, don't you?) and as a teacher worried about being accused of playing any kind of favorite which makes the problem worse.

I don't want them to think I treat any of them any differently than any of the rest of them.  I'd like us to come in, have class, respect each other, get along, and all go out feeling good at the end.  I just don't understand how all these wires keep getting crossed.  I guess I will just keep working to soothe ruffled feathers and be more clear.  I can't really change who I am personality-wise.  I am who I am. (no Popeye jokes please)  To try to be other than that is a falsehood, and I'm not doing that to myself for any reason.

"Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
                                                          a trashy lot

I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

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The story of Icarus, like the story of Faustus, is one of my perennial favorites.  This, the song of a woman who loves him, caught my eye for the first time today as I was looking through a potential new anthology for AP, and it was instant love.  Wow.  Holy freaking wow.  Magnificent.  I couldn't wait to share it.

Fiction from a Song

I think I did promise this.  It is, of course, inspired by Waits's "Kiss Me."  If you have it, you might want to spin it while you read for full effect (ha.  I just know you will, too.).   It's as pure as pure, folks.  (Some of you will be vastly disappointed.  Sorry.)  As always, this is just a writing exercise.  If it weren't, I sure as heck wouldn't be blogging right now, let me tell you.  Sue me.  I have to take my fairy tales where I can find them these days.

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We’ve known each other a long time, more than well enough for you to make free with everything in the house when you’re here, books, TV, music…. For some reason, tonight you’ve picked a playlist full of slow yearning, and as we’re sitting and talking, I’ve been wishing you’d gone for any other group of songs. This one has Thile promising “I Am Yours If You Want Me” and LaMontagne’s anguished “Burn” while you’re there so close. I lose the thread of the conversation as I ponder the special hells I get stuck in and what I must have been like in a previous life to have deserved them. I hope it was fun….

It’s when “Kiss Me” comes on that it happens. I make some random comment about it being a song made for slow dancing when you take my hand and try to pull me to my feet. My immediate reaction is resistance and wariness, which of course makes you laugh. I’m still looking at you to see what the joke is. You just keep holding on to my hand, and even though I know better, I can’t resist that grin.  I grudgingly follow your lead. The next thing I know, we’re leaving the light cast by the lamp, sliding into the semidarkness of the room beyond, and the notes of the song resonate through me.

You’re holding me properly for the dance, but all the humor evaporates. Even in these shadows, I avoid your gaze. Whatever has been hiding there all evening is clearly revealed. It’s too much, and I’m too unsure. It makes me want things that I usually can’t have, so I’m in the long habit of not reaching for them, of slapping my hungry hands away from them. Our eyes meet only a little on this strange ersatz ballroom floor, and each time I look away. This song, it’s going on forever….

But I’m not imagining it, the hand on my back that moves to press me closer to you, the thumb circling my palm. I’m not imagining the way you’ve turned your cheek against mine, moved suddenly so we’re only that one breath-I-can’t-quite-take apart.

“…I want you to kiss me…like a stranger…once again…”

And then you do it. As if it is something you’re trying out. A theory you’ve been working on that you’re not quite sure of. Your hand releases mine to cup my cheek. You brush your thumb over my bottom lip. And then…

“I won’t believe our love’s a mystery….I won’t believe our love’s a sin…”

You pull back and look at me for just a second, and the honest truth is that I think we’re both just a tiny bit shocked. Then something just a little hungry but completely sure passes through your expression before you lean back to me as last of the song fills the room. It will be some time before either of us notices there is no music.

Past Comfort

It's amazing how fast personal demons can jump out of the sewer gratings to batten at the ankles, isn't it?  I'm trying to do a favor for somebody, and it's pushing me way beyond my personal levels of comfort.  I'm going to finish this because I said that I would, but it is hard, so very hard when things like this happen.  I want to throw it as far as I can from me and not touch it again, but I can't do that because I gave my word.  Today really has been a day made of pure fecal material from waking up and realizing that I'd been incoherent in email in my sleep to getting to school late because of dealing with dog problems to the migraine that crucified me through midmorning and the resultant fight with pain and medicine right up to this delicate torment.  I wish I could have some big, good thing to offset it all.  Maybe that's selfish, though.  I guess I just have to do what Harry on 3rd Rock from the Sun says, "When life gives you lemons, just shut up and eat the damn lemons!"  I'm getting awfully tired of sour, though.  Where is my sweet?

Wives and Lovers

Bear with me, I'm processing through Maxalt lag, but I really want to write this.  It's been bugging me for two days...

Every year, I teach the Wife of Bath's tale.  Every year, the Knight rapes the maiden.  Every year, he gets his sentence, goes on his journey, seeks his answer, comes home, winds up married, and has his little temper tantrum (I can't call it anything else).  Every year, he is offered his choice, gives up the power to his wife and gets, to his surprise, everything he ever wanted.

Can I just tell you that this bothers me a little?

I love Chaucer for what he's trying to show.  I believe in what he's saying.  He believes in the power of repentance, the power of people to change and become something new if they will take the presented wisdom and opportunity to change.  If they will turn from the path of destruction (unlike the assorted idiots in the Pardoner's Tale), they don't have to die.  They can be forgiven, reclaimed, renewed and transformed.

He also perfectly shows the three types of power relationships that can be had between men and women: man with all the power and abusive (Knight rapes maiden) = destruction; Woman with all the power and dominance (Queen sentences Knight to death if he can't fulfill her requirements) = destruction; Mutual yielding (Knight gives up power of control, "Old Woman" gives up power of control of her form to make him happy) = happily ever after.  I totally and completely believe this.  If anybody in a relationship is trying to have the whip hand, then it's all going to fall down.  God bless Chaucer for getting that in 1400.  Wouldn't it be nice if more people in 2011 could?

What I guess I can't quite get over is the fact that this is a rapist getting a happily ever after.  And maybe that his "transformation" seems to come so fast, consist of so little.  I keep thinking about him with his now-nubile wife marching (or whatever the bedroom equivalent of that is since that's where we see them last) merrily off into a golden sunset....while that poor broken girl from the beginning of the story is somewhere in a cold grey convent cell with her head in her hands wondering what her life might have been like before he rode by that day.

You know, in a perfect world, she becomes like Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, and a convent becomes her perfect freedom and refuge, not a consolation prize at all.  Her mind and her soul open, and she grows to think of the moment she first saw that Knight not as an ending but as a strange kind of rebirth.  She doesn't have nightmares.  She doesn't have scars.  She doesn't mourn.  There is peace.  She has her own happily ever after.

In a perfect world.

I wish Chaucer would have given her one, too.  Maybe someday, I will write one for her, give her wings.  It bothers me that this writer who is so much about redemption and second chances that he can reclaim a rapist and make him a hero would leave her cast aside like a footnote, like a broken-winged bird.

Business

Controlling the things I can control.  Back in that old habit as I'm waiting for Nov. 16.  I did yeoman's service at school, got there early, set up one of my favorite lessons ("Walking in Spoon River Cemetery"), changed out my homecoming lights for my Halloween ones, put grades in the computer during my first off period, made prizes for the Literary Pumpkins, taught my classes, went to a publisher's rep meeting during 7th period, and decided to come home fairly early after school.

I did a day's worth of housework when I got here, vacuuming, running the steam cleaner over floors desperately in need of it, "big" laundry (dog blankets, towels), dishwasher loaded and run, fixtures, picked up some of the debris that gathers so effortlessly around here and threw it out or put it away (how many freaking coats do I have, anyway?).  It was nice to see things be neat and orderly, graceful and clean again, or at least as is much as is possible here anyway.  At least my environment is not beyond my ability to affect.

I had a lot of energy for working until I finally sat down on the couch to eat what passed for supper.  My appetite isn't very good; the Topamax is still shredding the weight off me.  I ate, and the tiredness I suppose was just sort of waiting in the wings descended.  I had watched an episode of Being Human, appropriately Halloweenish, and was reading and listening to some good music, when my Kindle tumbled from my sleepy hands.  Blinking blearily across the dim living room, I saw Roux and Chewie were sacked out on the couch and floor.  They seemed to have the right idea even if it wasn't very late and I had classwork I still really needed to do.

There will, after all, need to be distractions for today.  Business and Busyness are always at hand.  If I can just stay moving, I won't have to think.