Tuesday, December 31, 2013

New Year's Eve and Cookies

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm celebrating with my usual flair.  I have lit the candles that will take me into the new year, and everything I could be in charge of as far as cleaning (which isn't much, actually) is done.  The house hasn't been scrubbed and polished to the nth-degree as I usually do on New Year's Eve, but I did sweep today (bad luck to do it tomorrow), and I washed all the pans and bowls I used during today's manic baking spree.  They're quietly drying in the new little stainless steel drainer in my sink.

Usually at this time of the year, I'm full of introspection, full of thoughts of the past and worries about the future, but not this year.  I'm watching Criminal Minds in my comfy pajamas, and there is an absolute minimum of navel gazing.

And that, of course, is because I made oatmeal raisin cookies today.

This seems like a total non-sequitur, I know, but bear with me.  I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.

I remember when I had my myomectomy while I was still in Indiana. There was a period after that when all things in my life sort of fell into focus.  I stopped caring about a bunch of things (and one notable person) who I'd allowed to cause me absolute woe.  I started doing things I had always wanted to do instead of smiling wistfully and saying, "Someday."  To use a phrase that is endlessly new-agey and trite, I found myself.  Rather, I found a new version of myself.  I really liked that person.  (Of course, one of the things that happened during that time was going to a meeting of the kendo club, and so the evil T came into my life and things sort of took a hard left for the worse....)

I feel that clarity of purpose again now.  I've been sick for...  God. I don't even know.  Between the migraines and the Topamax and this other, I've been sick for years and years.  I'd say that in just the past calendar year, I've had less than two weeks a month where I felt like doing anything other than surviving.  Now, though, even with the limitations currently on me with recovery, I am finding that other person I lost again.

There were so many things I'd lost along with that other me.  Many of them wouldn't mean a thing to anyone but me, but I guess that's what life is made of, the things we endow with importance for ourselves.  From the time I was in high school, I used to make a batch of sourdough bread every week.  I started it with the idea of giving a loaf (or so) to my grandparents.  That ritual got even more important to me when my Granny got sick.  She couldn't eat a lot of things, but she could eat my sourdough.  I had starter that I kept religiously fed for years.  It died when I went to Japan, clearly, but when I came back, I tried repeatedly to get my routine back again.  As my health declined, so did my resolution.  I just mixed up batch two of the bread today.  Every step of the process made me feel good.

It wasn't just the bread.  The cast iron skillets that are the legacy of both my grandmothers came to me shiny and well-conditioned.  Yesterday, I decided to make cornbread from my Granny's recipe for the first time in what I guess is probably three years, and when I took it out, even though I'd taken pains to store it properly, it was in need of care.

That was one of the moments (and I've had several lately) when how much I'd let go and how much of myself I'd lost really hit home.  My life before the surgery had become about the quickest possible solution, the easy path to finish the necessary before I fell down.  Now it doesn't have to be.  Oh, there's nothing particularly complicated about the foods I'm making.  My grandmother's cornbread is fabulous, but cornbread isn't a recipe requiring Cordon Bleu training.  The aforementioned oatmeal cookies I put together today weren't complex, either. The thing is, I CAN make them now. I don't have to run for the couch and collapse.  Pain and weakness aren't pinning me down. I have the energy and the will again to do something that I enjoy because it connects me to my past and allows me to share with my family.  Somehow, oddly, ironically, by losing something, I have managed to become more whole.

It's not just the cooking.  My house has been full of projects that I was "going to get around to" but never have.  I have been systematically fixing, changing, and moving.  I've been making things I pinned on Pinterest for someday happen now.  It's not perfect, but I'm making progress.  I have two great piles left to tackle, but as I look around my living room now, this house reflects me again.  (And maybe those two great piles are representative of me, too, heh....)  It feels like home.

So I'm back to the salad days.  Maybe it's the baking days for me.  Whichever.  I can't say that there aren't moments of difficulty and sadness, and I'm not such a sunshine-dazzled fool that I believe everything is always going to be fabulous, but right now, I have to say, things are pretty good.  That's a nice place to be as I get ready to leave 2013 and head into 2014.

And now, I'm going to have a cookie.  Happy New Year to you wherever you are.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

A Hopeful Song

"I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" lyrics
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

----
I've heard this song and played this song a million times.  It is only this year that it finally sank in.  Isn't it funny how you can suddenly encounter something for what feels like the first time even after having it underfoot for a lifetime?

The third and fourth verses are the ones that moved me.  Despair is all around.  Darkness encroaches.  Every day our news is full of violence and hate, greed and self-interest.  The song doesn't end there, though.  Even the bells know the antidote, "God is not dead nor doth he sleep."  No matter how bad things get, there is cause for joy and hope in that. Someday, "the wrong shall fail, the right prevail" and we will have that peace and goodwill we so desperately need.

Merry Christmas to you one and all.

A Christmas Carol

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
― Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

I haven't felt very Christmassy this year.  Music is the best of Christmas for me, but this year, the songs make me cry.  Family gatherings are also usually a great joy.  This year, nothing but anxiety fills me.  It's okay.  I'm moving through something, and it is going to take time.

Even though there's all this stuff going on, though, some parts of Christmas shine through.  I'm watching the Patrick Stewart version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  I watch one version or another almost every year.  Of all the Christmas movies and feel-good stories out there, this one is the ultimate for me.  This version is one of my favorites because it is so well done.

I always feel so for Scrooge.  He is a person who built walls between himself and others because...because it seemed right at the time.  Because it seemed the way to get what he thought was the most important thing in life.  Because he was hurt and knew no other way to deal with the pain.  Somewhere along the way, those walls started to grow on their own, and by the time we meet Scrooge, he's blocked off from every human feeling.  A gentle nudge won't do.  Walls only come down with the brute force of a sledgehammer.  And when those walls do start to come down, he begins to understand what is and is not worth the price of life.  What does and does not enrich and redeem the time that is given.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is an example of this.  He hides the ragged and pitiful beings he calls the children of men, ignorance and want, beneath his rich gown.  Dickens is not subtle.  He wants us to remember that Christmas has to be about more than the frills and the bows, the gifts and the decorations. Advertising bombards us on every side telling us that if we buy the right piece of jewelry or get the latest gaming system then our lives will be somehow complete, that we just need a special thing to fill the hole in our hearts.  When we live like that, when all we strive for is the top layer of Christmas and shut out the lessons that it teaches, when we forget the love, the almighty love that ought to be the best and most glorious part of Christmas, then we wind up like Scrooge, headed for that horrible end and yawning, unmourned grave.

I love to watch him change.  I love to think that no matter how poor and blind we may be, there is always a chance that our eyes can open and we can be redeemed.   When someone turns away, there is always another option, another path.  There is such tremendous hope in A Christmas Carol.  It's such a tiny work, but it has lasted because of that hope, that ability to bring an ice-axe into our hearts and break up the frozen chunks the world creates. And if my eyes are filled with tears again as I watch it, they're not tears of despair.  They are tears of remembering and gratefulness.  They are my own version of Scrooge's Christmas miracle.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Tale

I've thought many times about coming back here and saying something, but to be honest, nothing I have been able to come up with has seemed to be sufficient.

I guess I need to go back and tell the tale.

I showed up at the hospital, and things moved very quickly at first.  I was shown to the little pre-surgery room, put on the dreaded paper gown, was moved to the holding area where my IV was put in and all the many people who were going to be involved in my surgery came in and talked with me, checked on me, and asked me my name and date of birth so many times that I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and put it on a dry erase board that I could have just held up.  There was a delay because my doctor was assisting with another surgery, and then it was my turn.  As with everything that relates to me or my family, once the procedure began, the situation got more complicated than my doctor anticipated.  There were more problems than they'd previously been able to detect due to the three other abdominal surgeries I've had in the past.  A general surgeon had to be called in to deal with part of it.  It took three hours to take me apart and then put me back together again.

Blessedly, I remember none of that.  The last thing I recall was the surgery team coming to collect me and asking if I was ready, to which I replied by telling the nurse anesthetist that I didn't want to know anything about any of it past that point, not the roll down the hall, not the color of the operating room (which I know for a fact was blue because they are ALWAYS BLUE and cold), nothing.  He grinned, injected something into my IV, and told me that would no problem at all.  The world spun hard to the right, my gurney moved, and the next thing I recall was a brusque nurse in recovery continually telling me that I had to breathe, BREATHE, to which I finally managed to mumble that it HURT to breathe and I wanted her to leave me alone.  I think she laughed.

I remember nothing of the rest of Monday.

The big events of Tuesday included a clean gown, staggering horrible trips to the bathroom, a couple of family visitors, and a migraine as big as the universe.  Apparently, the morphine in the pain pump triggered some kind of rebound headache.  And, since I had the morphine in my system, I couldn't have any of the medicines I would usually take for a migraine.  I decided to stop using the pain pump so they would unhook it and also so the backlash from it would hopefully stop.  I wanted to scream, but it would have hurt too much.  Early Wednesday morning, they finally came in with a solution, a combination of drugs that wouldn't react with the morphine.

They were from hell.  I'd never had one of the two, and the new one spiked my blood pressure and heart rate so high my room was a festival of flashing lights and shrieking monitors.  My body locked up and shuddered, my teeth chattered, and I couldn't breathe.  For a short time, it was so bad that I honestly thought I was going to die right there with my mother holding my hand.  Again, I was continually told to BREATHE, which seemed to be the motto of my whole experience, and when I didn't do it deeply enough to keep them happy with the O2 level in my blood, they put me back on that horrible little oxygen tube-nose thing.  I was told later that the first attack like that lasted about twenty minutes before that effect passed.  There were two or three episodes like that before everything calmed down and all the beeping and flashing quit. So Tuesday passed into Wednesday.

After that, things got better. I got to take a shower and put on real people clothing that didn't bare my backside.  I put on my bright blue TARDIS robe, leaned on Mom and the rails around the hospital ward walls, and staggered unsteadily up and down, up and down the brightly lit hallways.  I ate some solid food.  I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Egg Bowl from my bed after the doctor making the rounds decided I needed one more day in the hospital.  The following day, I carefully pressed the little red PillowPet dragon my mother had decided to call Surge (short for Surgery, apparently) over my aching belly, and the nurse rolled me downstairs and out into the cold, bright world.

Since then, I've been getting better daily.  I have been able to drive a little, and Sunday I went out to eat with my family.  Tonight, I went to a Christmas party for the choir, and I tottered down the hall to the organ in the sanctuary to play for a little while because I look forward to playing Christmas music all year long.  I am a little sore and a lot tired, but each new thing I manage to do is a victory.  Based on everything I've read, I'm moving through this slow process like I'm supposed to.

Things are different now, though.

There are the physical differences.  I've lost about twenty pounds, and weight continues to slip off me.  I don't hurt inside all the time.  Even though I don't have tons of energy, I still feel better than I did before the surgery.  I have had a couple of headaches, but they've been negligible.

Then there are the other differences.  It seems dramatic to say it, but the version of me who rolled into that operating room died there.  This version of me who rolled out is someone else.  I'd been living in silent and growing fear of this surgery for over ten years.  I hadn't realized how much it had accumulated or how heavy a burden it was until it lifted.  Certain dreams I have had, certain hopes for what my future holds are also gone now.  Other things are going to have to take the place of those dreams, and I'm not exactly sure what those will be.  On the other hand, certain restrictions my condition has caused for me are also gone now, and despite the uncertainty, I can't help but feel oddly liberated because of that.

So now I'm on the other side of this milestone I've been running from for so very, very long.  I'm tottering around and regaining my strength.  I'm re-evaluating, re-organizing, removing, even redecorating.  I'm making plans....slowly.  It's enough.  I have to believe that the worst is past, and now it's time to move on to whatever is next.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day. I've cleaned as much as I would if company were coming. I still have a few things to do. I don't know if it will be enough to let me sleep. 

I'm so nervous. At least it's supposed to be early tomorrow so I don't have that gruesome wait in the hospital. 

I'm just going to watch a little more Doctor Who and try my best to sleep. Hard to believe how much my life is about to change.....

Monday, November 18, 2013

Countdown

7 days.

Mom came to school today and shadowed me.  She got to see how our school day works and all the moving pieces of my specific classes.  It's one of the last things I have to do before the big day.

I keep going back and forth between a sort of gnawing sadness and a need for relief.  I've been exhausted.  I've been hurting.  Yesterday, I had a hard time drawing a deep breath.  Physically, I need this to be over.  Emotionally....  Well.  You can't have everything, right?

On a different note, I just ordered a bright blue TARDIS bathrobe from ThinkGeek.  It's a "happy" from my parents.  I added a pair of matching house shoes myself, so I guess I will be shuffling down the halls in style.  I probably won't care, but at least I'll look geektastic.

Sigh.

7 days.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Up and Down

I have my surgery date.  Let's just say the week of Thanksgiving won't be much fun for me.

I am going up and down with this.  Mostly, I just stay as busy as possible.  That's easy to do with as much as there is to get done before the surgery.  There are school things.  House things.  Shopping things.  Pet things.  Every time I sit down and look at one of my "to do" lists, it seems I'm adding as much as I'm crossing out. I'm hoping that I'll hit a tipping point with it soon.

But what if I do?  Then I'll have time to...think....

Since the doctor ruled out cancer, some of the worst of my nightmares have abated, but I am still an emotional mess if I don't run myself ragged and fall down at the end of it.  Stupid commercials make me cry.  Facebook statuses make me cry.  Yesterday, a freaking doughnut made me cry.

If you don't know me, you might not understand the depths of my hatred for this lack of control.  I always keep it locked down.  Always.  Lately, I just can't.

I keep thinking about life post-surgery.  There's dread for the whole process of having to learn how to walk upright - AGAIN.  There's that nauseous anticipation of the day of with the needles and the waking up after in pain and sick from the anesthesia.  There's all that time out of class.

And then there are the things I can't write about, can't talk about, don't even want to think about, all the things that...won't be.

(turning away from that path right now)

Tonight, though, it's still ahead of me.  I had some awesomely spicy turkey chili, and my Dad brought me a doughnut (which did not make me cry this time).  My dear old cat Yoda is curled up behind me in her little purple sweater, and I'm curled up under the afghan my grandmother made so long ago.  I'm almost warm for the first time today since I woke up, and in just a short time, I'll go let unconsciousness sweep over me.

Tomorrow, I will get up running, fortify myself with coffee, shield myself with busyness, and do what has to be done.

What else is there?

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Thoughts Right Before Sleep

If I'm honest, this could just be the bone-shattering fatigue or the total sugar crash or too much or not enough caffeine or the sad, scary day or a random flutter of a dozen other things. That qualifier in place, it must be said that I miss you. 

I don't know how this happened. 

Well.... That's probably a lie. 

I was actually waiting for it to happen, but I was hoping to be proven wrong just once. 

I'm too tired to do much navel-gazing. I'll strip it down to the bones. You're gone, and I wish you weren't. 

The End. 

Again. 

Monday, November 04, 2013

Waiting

I took my Xanax and rolled up into the scary machine Thursday.  It wasn't as bad as last time.  Since they were doing the MRI on my abdomen, they used the "short bore" machine, and as tall as I am, my head was mostly out the other end of the machine.  I could see light, anyway, and between that and the super-pill, I was okay even when they put the IV in for the dye contrast.

Now I'm waiting.  If I don't hear from them tomorrow, I'll call.  I need to know a date.  The C word, we just won't mention.

Anyway, while I'm waiting, I have all this ridiculous energy, and I've been cleaning like a fiend.  This weekend alone, I washed all my slipcovers, bought new sheets, washed them and put them on, folded about three weeks' worth of laundry and put it away, bought new towels and reorganized my bathroom cabinets, took down my Halloween decorations and put up the few things I use for Thanksgiving, bought major groceries, and vacuumed up about three large white dogs from my carpets.  At least things are getting done.

Today, I was out for an appointment with another doctor, a theme I could live without, and tomorrow I'll be back in my classroom.  I am sure enough work waits for me there to keep me occupied with no effort at all.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Philosophising Early in the Morning

Ideas will come in the shower it seems.  Maybe it's all that stimulation of the scalp when one is washing the hair....

In any case, I was thinking about what's coming and about the last few weeks or so of my life.  There's been the obvious crap, but there have also been some unexpected revelations and refocusing.  Call it a readjustment of perspective, perhaps.

Since all this has begun, I've realized that some things are not as important as I was making them out to be.  The world will keep spinning whether these things are okay or not.  They're externals.  I won't go so far as to say they're trivial, but they aren't the heart of who I am or what I have to have to go on.  It's been a great relief to realize this, to be able to open my hand and let them go.

The same thing can be said of people.  Maybe this is one thing that times of hardship are supposed to do, make us re-evaluate the great tide of individuals with whom we tend to surround ourselves and really look, really look, at our relationships with them.  I think I am guilty of self-deception sometimes as to what that relationship really is.  Maybe we all are.

All I can say with certainty is this:  I am grateful beyond all I can express for my friends and family who have "stepped up" to help hold me up.  It might have been a phone call or an instant message.  It might have been a goofy story, a pin on Pinterest, or something geeky on FB that made me laugh.  It might have been one sentence, truly meant, telling me they're praying.  It might just have been distracting me from this gristmill of scariness grinding away in my head all the time.  Whatever it was, those people are helping me carry this thing, whether it turns out to be the worst-case scenario or just the lesser horror I already know is coming.

As for the rest...

Well...

Maybe it's time to clear the game board of them.  It's not that they're not wonderful in their own way, but life sometimes needs to be stripped back to the essentials.  I think somehow I cluttered mine up with things that were shiny on the outside but completely hollow within. Maybe they started out real and living, and it's time and the way we all change that has robbed the relationship of its connection.  Reality checks like this are hard to swallow; I can't deny it.  Better to wake up finally, though, and acknowledge something is broken and used up, to get rid of it for something meaningful before I put my hand out expecting support and fall right through the saw-dust illusion of it instead.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Random Bits

Today, BBC America had lots of Doctor Who with Ten in it on.  I sort of got sucked into that, and once again, I was astonished by just how good David Tennant was in that role.  Sure, there were moments that were WAAAAAY over-the-top.  The remote-controlled spinning Christmas trees of death come immediately to mind.  Even those were lots of fun, though.    The show swung back and forth between humor and absolute heartbreak.  I can't watch those last episodes, really starting with The Waters of Mars.  They are so terribly sad....  

I've spent the weekend holed up, reading mostly, watching tv, sleeping.  I finished a reread of Wicked, and I remember now why I never bothered to read the rest of those books.  I think it is one of the most depressing books I have ever read.  The Broadway show is such a perky, cheerful, and heart-lifting thing.  I cannot see how they ever drew it out of the original, to be honest.  I kept telling myself I was going to stop reading it, but I hate to abandon a book.  There's a certain feeling of accomplishment that comes from finishing something, especially something that becomes an endurance race.

I'm trying to get mentally ready for the week to come.  Friday was...a tough day.  I had to give more than I had in me.  There were several times when I just wanted to go down the hall to our little breakroom and lock the door behind me.  

Obviously, I didn't, but the thought was there.  I don't much like that.

So, I'll keep distracting myself with random bits.  Right now, it's Sherlock reruns.  Soon, it will be bedtime.  Then tomorrow will be on me full-force.  Maybe all the random bits will be enough to help me through it.


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Shaky

I guess I'll take a minute to update the 1.5 individuals who read this on my life.  My surgery hasn't been scheduled yet.  To determine whether or not it will be done by my doctor or the GYN oncologist (there needs to be an acronym just for this, I think), I will have an MRI next Thursday.  After that, the final question should be answered.

And I need that.  I desperately need all the little slivers of hell to fall into an orderly procession.  Why it is better if I know when things are happening is a mystery.  Actually, it probably has to do with the illusion of control.  Being able to put it into my iPhone calendar makes me feel like I'm doing something as opposed to something happening to me, I guess.

Stupid, isn't it?

I'm not doing well with this.  I'm shaky.  I drive in to work, hear a song on the radio, and I'm in tears.  I hate that.  I hate not being able to maintain.  It feels like failure.  Every day that I'm able to get in my classroom and get teaching done, I feel like I've accomplished something major.

I suppose I should just be grateful that I the rest of this year has been what it has been... Venice.  Istanbul.  Good things and places that I can retreat to in my mind while my body goes through whatever winds up being next.  I don't know what else to do.  There's no running away anymore.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

And Then There Were None

It's been a long day, and I'm not going to belabour this.  I'm not up to it.

I will have a hysterectomy, probably sometime around Thanksgiving.  They're still not sure about endometrial cancer; other tests will have to be done.

The other shoe, the one that's been hanging in the air since I first walked into the student health center at IU so long ago, has finally dropped.

And I just can't talk about it anymore.

Monday, October 14, 2013

And Then There Was One

Tomorrow's the day.

There is such a tremendous relief in being able to say that.  If nothing else good can be said about it, at least tomorrow the waiting ends.

I don't know if I'll know anything more than I know right now, but at least I'll be moving forward again.

All this stress is making me react badly to everything.  For example, right now, I:
  • have a migraine trying to attack me
  • want to get in my car and drive to Jackson for Target
  • have found myself shopping for a pair of vegan-friendly Doc Martens
  • simultaneously crave salt-and-vinegar chips, Greek food, Thai curry, and another lime popsicle
  • teared up at a commercial that wasn't sad
Maybe some part of my poor, stupid, confused, lost mind will come back when this is done.

Monday, October 07, 2013

The Day That Was Instead

Today was supposed to be the day I had both procedures.  If you have been paying attention, you know that got screwed up. Instead of hospital gowns and invasive procedures, I had a different day.

I slept fairly late and took the dogs outside for their morning walk still wearing my pajamas.  The air was incredible.  Fall is here, at least for a few days, and it was chilly enough that I was wishing for a jacket or my flannel pj bottoms.

I came in, started some laundry, took a long hot shower, opened up all the windows, turned on the attic fan, and sat down with some of the Krispy Kremes my wonderful Mom got me the other day.  I spent the day lazing around, tinkering with bits of things online and watching TV.  There were lime popsicles and Shin Ramyun for lunch.

It was wonderful.

The dogs are thrilled.  Roux has been stuck to me all day, and Chewie and Yelldo have been out and around playing in the cool air and sunshine.  I was able to put clothes out on the line.  It's hard to believe that only yesterday there was rain.

I am currently avoiding sleep because I don't want to fight the dreams.  TopGear is working admirably for this.  Tomorrow will be full of meetings and work.   I'm glad to have had this brief moment.  Maybe it can take me through to the day that will be.

Friday, October 04, 2013

Lime Popsicles

I've been holding it together with the idea that Monday would be the end of it.  Wouldn't it be nice if just for once these things went as planned?

I got a call this morning saying that one of the two things happening Monday has to be rescheduled.  I'll have to take a day.  I'll have to reset that horrible little countdown.  

I'm going to go eat another lime popsicle.  Right now, the lime popsicles are all that's keeping me going.

11 days......

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

5 Days

Five days left, and I can't stop thinking about it.

I dream about it.  My brain may not be much up to creative endeavour lately, but oh great God, is it ever still up for the nightly horror movie show.  I need peace and flight and places with dark woods and that blue-eyed boy who shows up every so often but instead, I get hospital corridors, people who are long gone, ashes, dust, and no-win situations.

Five days left, and all I want to be able to do is sing along with Lana Del Ray, want to say that "nothing scares me anymore" and mean it.  But I can't.  Because it does.  It scares the ever-living crap out of me.  Instead, I'm so much more stuck in a place where the best lyric of hers for me is "don't make me sad/ don't make me cry/ sometimes life is not enough and the road gets rough / I don't know why...."

I swear I'm trying.  I don't want to be weak or silly or hypochondriacal.  (Is that a word?  I think that's a word....)  Instead I'm striving for beatific stillness, but to be honest some part of me, some little non-productive part of me, is pulling a Heinlein.  You know what I mean.  When in panic or in doubt....

I have had both of these procedures before.  Neither of them is something a person just goes into joyfully.   One of them hurts like a son-of-a-....  You fill in with a word you like.   It's some of the worst pain I've had from something medical without a person actually cutting me open and me having to heal from that.  That includes having my knee rebuilt.  I think it was better not knowing what was coming last time.  Now, I keep thinking about how much it's going to hurt, how there's not really anything I can do about that pain, and sometimes I can't turn that stupid voice off.  It makes me want to roll into a ball underneath my bed and not come out.  It makes me wish I really could go live in a shoebox under my beautiful pianist's grand the way I always joked that I would and let the music wash over me until everything is okay.

On top of all of this, I have to go about my day-to-day life like a normal person. I have to teach and deal with the needs and behaviors of my students and the demands of my job and pretend that I'm fine.  I have to tell people that I'm just tired.  What I want to do is scream and run, scream and run, because there is some strange comfort in movement as long as it doesn't stop.  Instead, I am trying to focus on turning fear into kindness, into concern for other people.  Maybe if I can do that, I can do some good instead of just running in endless circles like Mom and Dad's kitten chasing her long fluffy tail.

It's been on the tip of my tongue, the tip of my fingers so many times to tell a couple of people special to me, but I can't do it.  It all, after all, may be nothing.  Even though it looms before me like the Reaper raising a bony beckoning hand, it may all be nothing.  I couldn't stand it if I worried them for nothing.  I couldn't stand it if they saw me be so weak and afraid if it turns out there are only shadows, no monsters at all.

I have to pretend everything is fine, that I'm like someone who didn't find herself walking off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote.  You know what I admire most about him right now?  The fact that he's always able to keep going, even when he's on nothing but thin air, as long as he doesn't look down.  Maybe that's the secret.  Maybe if you keep moving and don't look down everything is always going to be okay.

And I know I'm babbling in print.  I know what it looks like, sounds like, fingers moving across keys too quickly, images as frantic and random as the inside of my head is right now.  It's a little release of the tension that gave me a crucifying disorienting migraine three days ago.  If it bothers you, you can merry well quit reading, after all. You can walk away from it.  Again, maybe that perpetual motion will keep you safe from it as well.  In the meantime, I'm just going to go to bed and try not to have nightmares.  Five more days.  Five.  More.  Days.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Yeah, So Maybe It's Not Going As Well As I'd Planned

Today as I was standing bus duty, my principal came up to me and told me that I looked unhappy.  He was checking in, concerned about me.  I was startled.  I wasn't particularly aware of feeling bad, but I guess maybe I'm not hiding things as well as I thought I was.

I know my patience isn't at its highest point.  I've made an effort to avoid things that might stretch it past its snapping point.  In short, I'm doing the best I can.

I think it may not be quite enough.  I had a dream last night that I just didn't go somewhere I was supposed to.  I started out to go there, but suddenly I noticed a huge rip in the leg of my pants, so I turned around and came home.  From there, the dream flashed to a junktique where I was shopping for something about Abraham Lincoln.

Maybe it's not stress.  Maybe like Scrooge I had something that disagreed with me for dinner....

11 more days.....

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Wordless

I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing here.  I stopped awhile back, and I'm not sure exactly why.  All the places and types of things I used to like to write just shut down.  It's like the flow of words I have always relied on just dried up.

I suspect I know why.  Before the semi-cataclysmic events of last Wednesday, I had reached a place of such worry and such stress that I basically shut down every system that wasn't essential.  Does a person do that?  Is that possible?  It feels possible.  Nothing was resolved Wednesday.  In fact, a great many things might get very much worse now.  However, two of the biggest issues in my life came to a moment of crisis, and at least now I'm not running from them.  Sometimes I think I was using up all my energy and effort with the running.  Maybe there's a mercy in the dropping of some of the old juggling balls after all....

There's also the fact that during the most fruitful period of this blog, I was writing with the idea that someone out there was reading it, someone specific.  I won't go into all that, but it's not the same now, and I've found it hard to come back here when I know that one-sided conversation is at an end.  That's just stupid of me.  It never should have been about a single person other than myself.  Knowing that it was stupid has also prevented me from coming back.  Will I fall into those same old patterns?

I miss the writing, though.  At certain times in Turkey, I saw something, and a fragment of a poem or an essay would start to form, and then it's like a hand swept away a cloud of incense, leaving me with the frustrating feeling of having glimpsed the finished work while being totally unable to capture it.  I found something  in a random notebook I  had tried to write about the Hagia Sofia, and I was astonished by how really terrible an effort it was.

I took out my book of poems the other day, the ones I have typed up and mostly in a final form, and it seemed as though another person had written them.  Maybe there's truth to that.  We do grow and change constantly, or at least we're supposed to.  It's not supposed to be a bad thing.  I just can't stand the thought that this new person, this current incarnation of me, is wordless.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Sufis

For some reason, just tonight, that evening in Istanbul when we saw the Sufi performance is stuck in my head.  It's almost like I'm there in that domelike converted bath chamber seeing and hearing it again.

I remember seeing all of them, being interested in the diversity of ages and expressions on the men as they stepped into the circle for the performance.  One looked so young and somehow nervous.  One was stately and older.  One had the face of an angel.

I remember the way their dance began, the way their arms slowly unfurled to their dancing positions as though it were something as natural as a plant's leaves slowly growing under the sun.  I remember the way they seemed to switch off the act of leading until everyone had started the pattern.  It was soothing and compelling.  It made me wonder what it would be like to be one of them, to spin and spin and accept and let go at the same time....

Once I knew the symbolism of what they were doing, something I found out later, it was even more powerful, and it continues to be even now that they are spinning only in my mind.  I'm stealing this from Wikipedia because it's faster than my telling it all myself.  Semazen is another word for sufi:

In the symbolism of the Sema ritual, the semazen's camel's hair hat (sikke) represents the tombstone of the ego; his wide, white skirt (tennure) represents the ego's shroud. By removing his black cloak (hırka), he is spiritually reborn to the truth. At the beginning of the Sema, by holding his arms crosswise, the semazen appears to represent the number one, thus testifying to God's unity. While whirling, his arms are open: his right arm is directed to the sky, ready to receive God's beneficence; his left hand, upon which his eyes are fastened, is turned toward the earth. The semazen conveys God's spiritual gift to those who are witnessing the Sema. Revolving from right to left around the heart, the semazen embraces all humanity with love. The human being has been created with love in order to love. Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi says, "All loves are a bridge to Divine love. Yet, those who have not had a taste of it do not know!"

The Sufis have been turned into big-time tourist capital by Turkey.  Almost any product you can imagine can be found with their image on it. Every country has something like that, some symbol from their past they've turned into a cultural shorthand for commercial endeavours.  I sort of think it's a shame that this really deeply personal thing has been used for that.

On the other hand, maybe it's all good.  Maybe the symbolism and the beauty of it can reach out through all the tshirts and spinning glass dolls somehow.  Maybe when people use the Iznik trivet with the brightly painted dancers on its surface, some of the original intention is passed along.  I am not wise enough to know.  All I can say with any certainty is that, along with the Hagia Sophia's golden dome, the slow wheel of Sufis rests permanently in my mind.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Big C (again)

I put it off for a year.  My first inclination when dealing with things that distress me, for better or for worse, is flight.  When the thing you fear is actually something you carry around with you, getting away is more than a little hard.

My doctor tells me that some of the symptoms I've been having lately could be indicators of cancer.  He's the sweetest person in the world, and the very last to wave a panic flag.  However, I have known for some time that my condition was changing and not for the better.  It wasn't exactly a surprise that something bad might be lurking.

It's an odd thought, though.  It's like my own body has turned enemy.  Why is that even possible?  Shouldn't all the bits and pieces play together nicely?

Now begins the long run of tests, scans, and procedures.  And the waiting.  The glorious, terrible, soul-eating waiting.

There will be waiting in doctors' offices.  There will be waiting in labs for needles which will withdraw vials of blood.  There will be waiting on padded tables covered with crinkly paper.  There will be waiting in loosely-tied, mostly too-small cotton gowns, feeling that terrible mix of being exposed and being vulnerable.  There will be waiting for procedures.  There will be waiting for test results.

Even though I know all of this is ahead of me and that there's a chance that much worse may follow, I am calm, maybe calmer than I've been in a long time.  Maybe that's because I'm not running from it anymore.  There is a peace that has come from turning to face the demon.  I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned in that, one that I may need in the days to come.

Saturday, September 07, 2013

Thoughts on Women

I needed some quotes for something I'm writing, so I headed over to my best resource for that, QuoteGarden.com.  I love them, have been using them for years for research and general entertainment since I love quotes.

Tonight, I was looking for something interesting about strong women for a story I'm doing, and, while these aren't quite ones that fit the thing I'm working on, they are good ones nonetheless.

There is no such thing as an ugly woman.  ~Vincent Van Gogh
Oh, Vincent.  Just one more reason to love, love, love you.  As if I needed another....

Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.  ~Marianne Williamson, "A Woman's Worth"
Exactly.  I don't think that needs commentary from me other than that.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.  ~Author Unknown
Hmm.  Maybe.  Definitely the last part is true.  I am not sure about the first.  I have brains but no beauty (although Vincent thinks otherwise), and I don't think I'd trade.

Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
I have this one on my desk.  I've always thought that guys who don't like girls with brains are really just looking for a mirror or a toy....

They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.  ~Oliver Goldsmith
Oh, Goldsmith.  You old flirt.  I like the idea that he liked the idea of a woman being modest.  That quality certainly doesn't seem to be in high appreciation today.

That's probably enough.  I do have something else I'm doing, after all.  

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Not Kyoto

- Written while listening to the soundtrack Suleyman the Magnificent, which you can find here.

For years, when the deepest longing to be somewhere else has struck me, Kyoto or Nara has always been the destination.  The little place in my heart that stores up treasures would tune its shamisen and play me memories of Todaiji, of the Philosopher's Path.

Tonight, I'm longing for the other end of the Silk Road, and it's not the crowded, graceful, grey-tiled roofs and reserved buddha-gazes of those ancient places that I want.  Another imperial city calls to me instead.

Ah, God, to be in Istanbul with the light fading from the sky, to see the Bosphorus changing from blue-green to watered silver silk under the light of a waxing moon.  To be able to look up and see the minarets piercing the growing night like needles occupied with stitching the heavens to the earth.  To be able to hear the muezzins of Sultanahmet and Ayasofya calling the azan, that incredible moment when the accidental harmonies inevitably occur, stopping the breath and the heart with only sound.

To stumble over rough cobblestones in cool air to a place where a meal as simple or as complicated as the palate can stand is waiting.  To be with friends who complement, contrast, embrace without questions, even if you've only known them for days that have somehow become lifetimes.

To feel History (very much with a capital H) surround you like an embroidered garment of many silken layers that flutter in the wind, showing now this embellishment, now this flaw in the pattern.  To be surrounded constantly by faded empires, to see the still-glorious monuments of world-rulers now returned to dust.

I yearn for Byzantium, for Constantinople, for Istanbul. Tonight I will sleep and walk there again, feel the cold marble of Ayasofya trail beneath my dreaming fingers, watch the crowds surge like the steady tides.  No distance can keep all of it from me.  One tiny corner I have managed to carry away for myself for the times - like now - when I have the most need.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

The Gap

Have you ever been somewhere you just don't fit?  Maybe it used to be a place that made sense for you or maybe you used to be different.  Now, though, just the thought of having to be there makes you uneasy.

I have one of those places, and the dread of encountering it on a regular basis gets worse as time goes by.

When I'm at work or when I'm with my friends, I'm comfortable.  I feel like the people I am around know me on at least some type of basic functional level.  I am an individual with some sort of value.  Maybe they love me.  Maybe they hate my guts.  Whatever it is, they are basing those decisions on current knowledge of me as a person, not the offspring of so-and-so, not the assumption that all people everywhere do the same things in the same ways.

When I'm at this other place, I feel like people neither know who I really am nor very much care.  They know I'm not like them, and that's good enough.  I haven't followed the paths they have.  For a lot of reasons, I have wound up doing some fundamentally different things from most of them.   I didn't go to school here.  I don't work around here.  I am not married.  I'm not dating.  I don't have small children.  I like to travel mostly alone to places most of them consider bizarre, and I would love to live in most of those places as well.  I'm not passing any kind of value judgement here, that my way or their way is better.  I'm just saying they're not the same, and it causes problems.  Sometimes, I think maybe they might not know what to say to me.  And I suppose that's fair enough, since mostly I can say that's true from my side, too.  There is no commonality, and they're content to watch me from the corners of their eyes.

For my part, I endure and run.

It's all well and good to say, "Well, if it makes you that uncomfortable, why don't you stop going there?"  Reality tends to be a great deal less clear-cut and precise.  There are ties that bind, ties that become bonds in the strongest sense of that word.  I don't know how to get out of them.  I just know that every time I am there, I want to be away a little more and a little faster.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Variation on a Theme

In the past two days, I have found myself enthusing over Chris Thile's new Bach album (more about that later) and the YouTube video series Thug Notes.  My first reaction to these in juxtaposition was that they were very different things.  After a little thought, though, I'm not so sure.

What I appreciate about both of them is that they're taking things I traditionally enjoy (Bach, literature) and putting a distinctive personal touch on them (mandolin, thugness).  You have to be very clever and very good at what you do to pull reinterpretation of a masterwork off correctly.  You can take do pale imitations all day long, but to make a genuine new version of something already great means you have to understand the work in question thoroughly.

I think of it like Picasso's art.  Everyone associates him with Cubism and abstraction.  How many people remember that before he found his own new style that he made sure he was a master of traditional techniques?  He admonished people to "[l]earn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist."  It's not that he couldn't paint in the more traditional way; it's that he had mastered and surpassed it.

Even though it may seem odd to put a YouTube series in the same category with Thile and maybe both of them with Picasso to some people, I can't help but see their relationship to one another.  True interpretation leads to a new invention all of its own.

Monday, July 08, 2013

The Great Game

It's been a long time since I was in a country where I could use my haggling skills.  I know some people hate it, but I sort of love it.  It's a game.  How low can I get you to go?  The price you receive depends directly on the skills you bring.  It's like competitive shopping.

I always come armed to the teeth.  One thing about growing up in the Deep South, I know how to manipulate the male ego.  It's not something I do often.  I find it almost distatefully easy when it doesn't matter to me.  It's not something we're taught.  It's something we sort of absorb, I suppose.

Like all fine arts, there is a procedure for it.  I find something I want and ask its price.  Then I get all sweet and Southern.  I smile a lot. My accent becomes a little more pronounced.  I start my end of the game at half of whatever the asked me for in the first place.  Every Southern man knows that underneath that little butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile is a straight razor.  These guys know it, too, I'm sure.  Maybe all men recognize that steel under the sweet.  God help them if they don't.  After all, it's all a part of the game.  Whether they see it or not, I must say that the straight razor never seems to bother them....

I got a marriage proposal today.  I wanted a scarf, and I could have come away with a husband.  This is another part of the game.  "You're so beautiful.  You're so fascinating.  Won't you give me a little more money if I tell you this?"  Perhaps this is their version of the straight-razor.

Again, Southern woman training comes in handy for that.  We grow up surrounded by gallant men who are so full of crap that hip boots are commonly required.  I know how to smile and say, "Aw.  Thank you, honey," and walk off to the next challenge.

And really, everybody is happy at the end of it.   Somehow the items I get this way mean more to me.  I have a ring I got in Costa Rica that was my best ever haggle. I paid less than half of his asking price. Every time I put it on, I think about it and smile to myself.  That was a good day.

Today was, too. Today I was sweetheart, darling, and I think even precious one time.  That's fine.  I got good prices on everything I purchased, and I felt like I won a State Championship.  They got what was undoubtedly a good profit on me, since that is the way of these things, and they also got to feel all manly and stuff.  Win-win.  Totally win-win.  I wish we did this back home.  I would probably shop more if we did.

Friday, July 05, 2013

Getting Ready

Tomorrow my journey to Turkey begins.  I've been waiting for it so long that it hardly seems possible that I will finally get on a plane and start the long, long process of getting there.

Today was dedicated to packing.  I got out my new bag and loaded it.  I love that thing.  It was some of the best money I've ever spent.  While I was trying not to have to carry a rolling carry-on, I still have one for my camera gear and so forth.  Everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING else fit inside that new back and I'm almost ten pounds under the weight limit.  It's surreal.

Every trip is the beginning of a new way of looking at the world.  Every journey opens up a new perspective.  I feel as if this one is going to truly momentous, though.  Maybe it's because of how long it is.  Maybe it's the distance I'm going.  I don't know.  It just feels like I'm on the edge of a big cliff waiting for the courage to leap.  How thrilling.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

That Was Unexpected

I went on a trip recently.  I wasn't expecting much from it.  In fact, I had totally negative expectations.  I was grumpy.  I stomped my feet.  I did not want to go.

Shows what I know.

I had a great trip.  Unexpectedly, I found myself with lots of people whose company I really enjoyed.  Some of them were old friends rediscovered.  Some of them were brand new acquaintances I hope to know better.  We had meals, saw the sights, talked together, and it was refreshing in a way I really needed.

Additionally, we got lots of new information and ideas to bring back to our school.  We had conversations with administration at the school and district level.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  I feel more positive about the upcoming school year than I have in a long, long time.

The most unexpected thing was meeting someone who caught my attention.  He's cute.  He's smart.  He's interesting.  Of course, I did what I always do in such prime situations.  I ran like hell, couldn't even talk much to him, he unnerved me so much.  (Sigh.)  I don't know if I'll see him again, but it's likely.  We're both "local," so I imagine we'll run into each other at some point.  Another chance to run away on another day....

Despite my general lack of sense and courage, the trip I was dreading turned into something quite refreshing.  It's nice when that happens.  Hopeful, sort of....

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Preparing for Travel

I have a couple of trips coming up, and although I like to travel once I'm on the road, the process leading up to that moment is always mixed for me.  There is such a mixture of anticipation and dread that comes with heading out the door.

I think part of it is the million things that have to be taken care of before I can leave.  There's the laundry, the cleaning, the shopping, the packing.  Just the packing itself is enough to be discouraging.  There are money matters and last-minute crises.  It gets overwhelming.

There's also the leaving of the animals.  Yoda especially has been through this enough with me to know that when suitcases are spotted, separation is imminent.  She hates my suitcases and goes back and forth between packing herself inside them, refusing to get out or be removed and clawing the outside with those discrete sabers she keeps at the ends of her paws.

A strange immobility engulfs me.  There are things I know I need to do.  Minutes click away, and still I wait.  Since this action (or inaction) actually causes more stress and last-minute problems, I can't for the life of me figure out why I do it.  But I do.  Every single time.

Even this blog is just a form of it.  Soon the trip will be on, and I will be involved in it.  I just have to find a way to start the ball rolling to begin with.


Thursday, June 27, 2013

Things I'd Rather Not Consider

Today, my mother came down to go through the storage building behind my house.  There's not much space in it, so only one person can fit between the stacks of stuff at a time.  She was going through to weed out things she knew were old and of no use.  Later on, I'll go through and purge my own stuff.

Most of what was thrown out today goes all the way back to my grandmother and grandfather.  We threw out old empty boxes, broken items, and all those other types of debris that collects in storage spaces.  One of the last things I helped with was pulling down a huge box of my grandmother's clothes that had been put there when I first came to live here and cleaned out the closets.

It's been there for years.  When I moved in, my mother was not able to handle going through all the stuff, so we just boxed and stored it.  Today, she sorted, and although I could tell that she was remembering Granny, she was able to get through it.

Late this afternoon, she called me from home to talk about something, and the stuff in storage came up as a topic.  I was talking about things I plan to move into the empty space that is slowly emerging, and she laughed.  "I don't know who's going to clean all that stuff out when you're gone," she said.  I made some kind of non-committal noise to which she replied, "I guess that's not really your problem at that point, though, is it?"

It's one of two things that hit me hard today.  The other, stupidly enough, was a set of Star Wars onesies from ThinkGeek.  Both of them revolve around the same thing.  I am getting too old to have someone to clean up after me when I'm gone. I'm getting too old to find someone to grow old with.  I'm just getting too old.

Yesterday, in my course readings for Turkey, I read about Evliya Chelebi, a travel writer in the late 17th century.  He considered his life dedicated to wanderlust, wanting to see and record every possible thing.  He deliberately chose not to pursue marriage and a family so he would have every possible opportunity to go.  There are certainly significant benefits to being single and childless - I can pick up and go wherever I wish, whenever I wish, stay as long as I wish (or at least as long as I can afford) - but I'm not sure I really believe that these outweigh the drawbacks.  Who is there to share it all with?  Who can I leave any of it to?

Most of the time, I'm happy.  Most of the time, I'm okay.  (And before I start sounding too much like a Bob Dylan song, I'll quit that.) Just sometimes, just today, though, I'm not.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Travel Companion

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
~ Alice and the Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
____________

For a long time, I have wanted to have something to take pictures with on my travels.  I suspect this started when I saw Amalie.  I (and the rest of the entire universe) loved it when she sent her father's gnome travelling.

As a part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I met people who had been doing this for years.  One of them has a sock monkey who actually has his own Facebook page.  Another has a laminated cut out of her high school's mascot.  I started thinking about it again when I saw theirs, but I couldn't find anything that was small enough not to be a nuisance.  I know enough about myself as a traveler to know that if it's a hassle, I'm not going to fool with it.  I considered several items - a small beanie of our school mascot, an exceedingly tiny and grumpy sock monkey, a small blue owl someone gave me - but none of them seemed right.

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher buddy of mine started putting up pictures of a tiny finger puppet of Vincent Van Gogh she'd gotten at a museum.  I had a forehead-smacking moment when I saw it.  I actually have the William Shakespeare from that same series.  I bought it at the Frazier Museum in Louisville the first year I read for the AP test.  It's been guarding my Diet Mt. Dew in my classroom since that summer.

However, I didn't want to travel with Will.  I have so many things that are Shakespeare.  I love him.  I just didn't want to travel with him.  I looked over the line of the puppets from the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild for another option. They're all so cute and funny that the kid in me wanted all of them.  The adult in charge of the checkbook managed to limit that other aspect to purchasing two:  the Cheshire Cat and Emily Dickinson.

I got Chessy today.  I am pretty positive that he will be the one I travel with.  The quote at the top is most of the reason why, but there are other quotes that fit every long journey I've ever been on.  The one that springs to mind is the famous:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here."

As anybody who has ever traveled knows, there comes a point (maybe the exact moment you break out the suitcases) that this quote becomes painfully true....

I also like Chessy because he's a cat. That fits in with many things, the real-life furry beasts sleeping on my furniture that I miss when I'm travelling, the mankei neko I collected in Japan, the mascot of my school.  Cats are also good travel buddies because they remind you to be curious, to dress simply but with elegance, to enjoy any and all luxuries that come your way, and to sniff at unfamiliar things (possibly also while smacking them lightly with your paw) before accepting them.

It's a silly little thing, but I am looking forward to taking Chessie with me to Turkey.  If I can get a picture of him inside the Hagia Sofia, then that's going to be a very good thing.


Saturday, June 22, 2013

Gifts from Furry Children

Yesterday, I had a migraine of the "hammer of God" variety that is always such fun.  I don't really know what caused it, but I suspect it has something to do with the upcoming "supermoon" we're expecting tonight.  My headaches seem tied to the phases of the moon as well as the phases of my body and the vagaries of the weather.  Since there was no supermegastorm destroying the world yesterday, I am guessing it was lunar pull.  Me and the ocean, I guess. The headache hit me hard and early, I took a Maxalt, and the rest of the day melted away into a hazy blur.

My cats and dogs hovered around me all day.  I suppose it was their way of checking on me.  I'm pretty sure they know when I'm sick.  Chewie spent most of his day sprawled out next to the couch.  Dillon, my little cat, stayed on me or beside me all day and on into the night.  It was nice to feel loved.

Other contributions from members of my furry family were less appreciated.  I got up this morning and stumbled for the shower without turning the light on.  The day after a migraine that bad my eyes tend to be fairly light sensitive.  I got clean and returned to my bedroom to dress, and when I finally turned the light on, the last of the critters' kindnesses was neatly laid across the foot of my bed:  a dead mouse.

It was bloodless and quite still.  This undoubtedly means that in the night while I was sleeping, either Dillon or Pearl brought me a mouse.  I know it wasn't Yoda; her Imperial Majesty doesn't lower herself to pursue food unless it's the canned kind.  Probably it was my big grey fluffy lioncat, Pearl.  She is the household huntress.  I keep thinking about her thought processes.  I imagine it went something like this.  "Mama has been sick all day.  There has been an absence of patting and love for me, even though I am furry and gorgeous.  Food will make her better.  I will bring her food.  I will provide.  She will be happy again, and patting and love will fall from the skies."  And voila, mouse.

This isn't the first time this has happened.  Despite all the efforts of me and my pest control guy, the occasional little brown field mouse finds its way in the house.  I saw Pearl stalking one last night in the laundry area.  I can always tell when she's scented something. She stares into odd nooks and crannies. She has a specific noise she makes when the is on the hunt, and her level of complete dedication to it is a little frightening.  There has been at least one other time when I woke up to find a mouse-present at the foot of my bed.

My grandmother's Siamese, Sammy, used to do that all the time.  He was twenty-something pounds of muscle, and when he was young, he'd go hunting in the field behind their house and bring her big field rats.  He'd lay them neatly on the back door mat, and since Nana hated all forms of mice, every time she'd look out the back door and see it, she'd scream.  I suppose Sammy thought she was screaming in joy.  He probably thought, "Yes.  I have made my human loudly happy.  Success."

As for my mouse gift, I removed and disposed of it.  The comforter is even now in the washer.  While I would really like not to wake up to another gift of this kind, I will take it in the feline spirit in which it was given.  It's nice to have something love you enough that it wishes to care for you, I suppose, even if it does come in the form of a dead rodent.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Coming Apart at the Seams

Today, during the process of getting my daily dose of stomach acid reading about Turkey, I came across an article about Brazil.  I suppose the news service I use just decided to lump all the protests together.  The whole damn world is falling apart and the governments thereof are sitting in a corner covering their eyes and ears and pretending it's all okay.

I was in Brazil last summer at this very time.  It is surreal for me to think back over the oddly empty and quiet government buildings that we toured in Brasilia as now being the center of a protest movement.  I look at the pictures of the senate building, all clean lines and Niemeyer angles, and I'm trying to imagine that people overran it and are standing on top of it, that the government ran away.  It's either pure insanity or the beginning of hope.  God knows I'm not wise enough to know which.  Maybe it's both.  Maybe change is made of both.

Some of the protests that have happened lately are very specific.  People have a clear message for their government.  You're spending too much of our money.  You're stealing a bunch of our resources and running away.  You're sticking your fingers into our privacy, our choices.   You're destroying our freedom. We don't like it.  You should quit.

Some of them are not.  People are just generally pissed and gathered.  There is an unnamed sense of unhappiness that spreads or a small thing that touches off a deep-seated pocket of explosive issues.

What's happening to us all?  I used to think that it was just our government here in the States that was fairly out of touch with its constituents.  We always have some scandal or ridiculous sneaky crap going on.  If the people running our nation used half as much passionate ingenuity in solving problems and bettering their country as they do trying to line their own pockets, accrue power, clandestinely pursue illegal activities, and sink the "other guy," we'd probably all live in solid-platinum houses on Mars.  (I'm just saying.)   It's probably been that way since 1776.  Maybe there were times when it abated, but maybe it's always there when governments are more worried about their own power than they are about the good of the people they represent.  Right now seems to be one of those moments where everyone everywhere is just tired of it.

What will happen to us all?  What's coming next?  As always, that old Yeats poem is sneaking around in the back of my head.  Clearly, the center is not holding.  What now?  I'm afraid we are living in what that ancient Chinese proverb calls "interesting times," and you know all about that.....

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Turkey Again

I am keeping up with the news on Turkey daily.  What I see makes me more and more concerned.  Something that started as a protest over a public space has turned into an issue big enough to rend a nation.

I do not really feel qualified to comment much on the events I see there.  I am at best an interested outsider.  I can't understand some of the things I see, though, and feel compelled to ask a question.  How do leaders get so out of touch that they refuse to hear the voices of those who put them in power?  If unrest suddenly breaks out in large sections of a nation, I'm not sure I think an elected official should use threats and force to keep themselves in power.

I can't form absolute opinions about Turkey's current situation because everything I'm getting about it is from a few sources, and, of course, both sides are accusing each other of editing for greatest political currency.  As I scroll through images of tear gas, emergency hospitals, water cannons, and the like, though, I wonder if it looks the same to us on the outside as it does to the people affected.  I throw my mind back to the Occupy Wall Street protests, and I remember how divided my own nation was about that.  All I guess I can say with any certainty is that it looks an awful lot like a situation that will end in many more people being wounded or killed.

In addition to thinking about the situation in general, I am also concerned about my upcoming trip. I don't mean to be selfish.  Surely the events that are unfolding are so much more important than just one trip for one group of foreign tourists.  However, I have been excited about this trip for a long time now, and as I have come to know more about this country, so too has my eagerness to see and experience it all increased. I can't help but wonder if we will even get to go at all, if all this will just wind up being a place I yearn to see and never have access to.  I also have to say that I sometimes wonder if we do go if we'll wind up caught in the riptide of this particular moment in history.  I wonder if, once again, being an American will be an uncomfortable thing abroad.

Mostly, though, I am just wondering if Turkey will manage to find a middle way or if it will collapse into the same sort of partisan turmoil that devours the land to its south.  I can only hope that the different groups can come together and somehow find peace.


Saturday, June 15, 2013

Flying Roadtrip

Thursday, my best friend and I took a flying roadtrip west.  We started in Port Gibson to see the giant golden hand on the top of First Presbyterian.  From there, we went on the back road that never ends to see Windsor Ruins.  Finally, we finished up in Natchez where we ate at Mammy's Cupboard and toured Longwood before we had to turn back home.

I'd been on mostly this same trip last year and shot a ton of pictures.  It was so different having my friend along.  We talked in that way that people who have known each other forever can do as we traveled, and it wasn't necessarily that anything earthshattering was said.  It was just nice to have someone to say something to.

For both of us, this was sort of an abbreviated version of a long trip we took in 5th grade, the Mississippi Trip.  Both of us remember bits and pieces of that tour of our state.  My friend had a Polaroid camera, and she took pictures everywhere we went.  On this trip, she had her husband's good Nikon instead.  There was a gentle echo of that other trip so long ago as we traveled.

The sites themselves were much as I saw them last time.  Windsor didn't have a carload of thugs napping under the shade trees this time, and part of the single-strand wire fence built to keep people out of the structure was down, but everything else was just like it was before.  The big gold hand in Port Gibson was still large and golden.  Longwood was still frozen in time, silent, majestic, dreaming.

Of them all, Longwood always moves me most.  I don't know why I keep going back there.  There's something about the innovation and the forethought that Haller Nutt put into the design of that house that makes the unfinished part so much more poignant. The potential for wonder that is revealed in all the existing details is tantalizing and somehow saddening as well.  What would it have been if it could have been finished?  Would it still stand today, or would it have been torn down, burned up, forgotten and discarded?

Every tour I've had through the house has been a bit different depending on the docent.   The only thing I don't like about any of these tours is that the guides don't give you enough time inside simply to absorb the history and the feeling of the place.  It deserves a moment of quiet contemplation, of silence, of listening to the wind through the oaks outside.  It deserves a moment for the mind to paint the red brick walls with lustrous plaster, to create the missing statues in the domed niches, to remove the planks that hide the interior or the onion dome and add the mirrors that would have lit the whole house with their reflection.  Instead, there is sort of a brief patter, a quick "run-through," and next thing you know, you're being ushered politely, gently out the graceful front doors and into the nuclear heat of a Mississippi summer where, quite frankly, it is not possible to imagine much of anything that doesn't involve glacial cold.

It feels like there are a million untold stories in Longwood.  I am sure this is true of every house, past and present.  There is just something lingering in the air and the objects there, though, that invites imagination to embroider details.  There are paintings of those who lived there through time, and there are the very beds and books they used and loved.  The hand-drawn plans of what was to be created line the walls.  Tools and packing crates with hand-written address labels sit as though workers will return to tidy up soon.  Objects picked with care to provide comfort and beauty remain.  It feels like a place that lives in a half-life, wanting to be more but knowing that somnolent state is all that it will ever know.

Today is the 149th anniversary of Haller Nutt's death.  Heartbroken by the way his fates fell during the Civil War, he contracted pneumonia and succumbed.  I can't help but think that when he died, he must have been so worried about everything, his failing fortunes, his family and what would become of them after he was gone, the treatment he'd received at the hands of a government he had not defied.  He was a brilliant man by all accounts, and that shattered half-finished magnificent experiment of a house is terribly, terribly sad.  I wondered how often he stood in the center of that main floor or roamed the upper levels forbidden to modern tourists, worrying and hoping about the future, seeking some way, any way to bring some level of control and sanity back to his world.

I don't know if I'll make this same trip again, and if I do, I don't know that I will  go back to Longwood.  Likely, at some point, I will travel that way again.  There is so much in Natchez to see that I wouldn't have to go there to have something to do.  I am pretty sure I will make my way up that curving and treelined drive again, though.  The sad majesty of what awaits at the end seems to demand it.

Alif the Unseen

“A girl he loved had decided she did not love him--at least, not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books and computer surveillance and recourse to the jinn.” 
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen
_____________________

I saw this book mentioned on Twitter or Facebook by one of the NPR book bloggers, and I was curious enough based upon what they said to go find it on Amazon.  Once I read the full premise, I got a sample on my Kindle.  From that point I was pretty much hooked.

I've never read anything like Alif.  It's the story of a young man of Indian-Arab heritage who lives in an unnamed totalitarian Gulf emirate.  He has created a separate online life for himself.  He works as a programmer/hacker whose programs serve any organization fighting the restrictions of the government.

He has fallen in love with a beautiful, intelligent woman from a rich family.  When that relationship falls apart, he decides to use his computing skills to grant her last request of him, that she should never see him again.  What comes of his fit of anger and sadness is unexpected.  It will lead him into the world of the jinn, a world that has always lain side by side with his everyday world without his knowledge.

Alif is part political protest, part fairy tale.  Some of the events feel very current since it seems that hardly a week goes by without mention of some government who is seeking to control their people by controlling their access to the Internet.  The world of the jinn creeps up on the reader in the same way it creeps up on Alif and his companions.  By the time he's immersed in the deepest part of it, their city and way of living seems entirely possible.  Different, but possible.

I guess this book fits most neatly into the category of fantasy with a side-order of sci-fi.  That label is a bit misleading, though.  It spans other genres; bildungsroman, political theory, and philosophy are all there, too. There is a muted but still moving love story.  Issues of gender and cross-cultural communication are explored.

Then there's the hero himself.  Alif, like most of us, thinks his actions and his motivations are fairly good ones.    Even though he is selfish, careless with those who care for him, and self-isolated from the world around him, he thinks the way he's chosen to live is the right path. What he discovers is that reality has a way of stripping away illusion, even the ones we keep about ourselves.  This, then, is a story of a person becoming attuned to the real told through the profoundly imaginary.  It's lovely.

One of the most important things this book addresses is what it means to be free.  How can we keep ourselves free?  What should we do with freedom when we have it?  What is the price of freedom?  While this may seem trite, the way Alif deals with it is thought-provoking, especially in a time in which government surveillance of our online lives has been confirmed.  (Hi, PRISM.  Scan me.  Go ahead.  Scan me.)

This book is probably the best thing I've read this summer.  In fact, it's one of the best books I've read in quite awhile, period.  I would love to see some kind of sequel with more of the world of the jinn in it.  I think the possibility for that exists in a couple of ways.  I don't know if Ms. Wilson will pursue this storyline or not. What I do know is that as it stands, Alif the Unseen was a profoundly original work in a sea of copycat fiction.  It is very much worth your time.

First Blackberrying of the Year

After walking the dogs this afternoon, I walked over to the blackberry bramble at the edge of my pasture and looked over the current crop.  I picked a few, just a small handful, and came back inside.  Chewie, being Chewie, watched me pick the berries and eat them, and he started nibbling them off the bushes.  I laughed at him, and he stopped long enough to give me a giant toothy grin before returning to his efforts.  He's a strange dog, but he's all mine.

After dinner, I kept thinking about the blackberries. I decided that I would go up to our country place tomorrow and see if the brambles there were bearing yet.  Then I looked up some recipes on Pinterest.  This led to combing through my Granny's recipe box looking for her cobbler recipe.  I realized that I had to have more and that I didn't want to wait.

The beauty of summer is that the days linger gloriously.  Even though it was fairly late, the tops of the trees were still golden. Grabbing a leash and Chewie, I headed out to our place in the country and the tons and tons of blackberries that grow there. Chewie loves it there.  I had the windows down, and as soon as we came around the last curve before the gate to the property, he sniffed the air and started woofing softly.  We made our way down to the brambles, and I picked until it got too dark to ensure I wasn't about to step in the middle of a snake. Chewie and I found our way back to the car in the last blue-purple light of sunset and the dim glow of a fingernail moon.

Blackberries are tricky and imperious little devils.  They are not a "something for nothing" fruit.  There is nothing docile or generous about them.  They're primadonnas.    If you go to pick what they have produced, they are going to take from you as well.  Usually I get hung on one of the vines and cut my arm or hand open. I have always thought of it as the "blood sacrifice" required to complete the picking. Today, as I carefully reached around the thorns and plucked the ripe berries, I felt the waving tendrils of green grab at my shorts, tenaciously hook my tshirt, and finally one reached out and snagged a handful of my hair. It was surprisingly strong, and it required a little careful finesse to free myself.  If you flail once a bramble captures you, it's kind of like that plant Devil's Snare from Harry Potter - more and more of them grab hold making the situation worse. Once I managed to extricate myself, I apparently had paid my tithe.  Nothing else attacked me.

Chewie watched the whole thing from a safe distance.  He ran careful circles around the reach of the brambles, caused a large wild turkey to explode upwards into the treetops with a sound like a localized hurricane, rolled rapturously in the tall grass, and wore his nose off chasing scents.  Eventually, he flopped down and watched me, moving only when I went to another section of the bramble.  I offered him a berry I'd picked, but he apparently had his fill earlier.  He sniffed it, mouthed it, and spit it out before looking up at me with a hopeful wagging tail.  Apparently, he's decided he'd rather have his bacon treats instead.

In a fairly short time, I managed to fill a quarter of the gallon-sized ziplock bag I'd taken with me.  I brought the berries home, washed them, and put them in the refrigerator.  I don't know what I'll do with them.  I might indulge in one of the recipes I found.  I might make a mini-cobbler.  Probably, though, I'll just nibble them whole and savor that special taste of summer and home and deep woods pasture land.  That is probably special enough a recipe all on its own.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

My Name Is Red

I've been working on My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk for about a week now in my continuing effort to learn more about the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in general.  Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winner, was recommended by one of the leaders of our trip, and My Name is Red in particular was specified as a good starting place for his work.  I got it on Kindle and headed into it.

I wasn't prepared for the journey that awaited me.  For general information, you can click through to the Wikipedia page. The novel deals with a community of artists in 16th century Istanbul, the miniaturists.  Each chapter is told by a different voice, but the main characters repeat throughout.  This reminded me a lot of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  (I know.  I see links where there probably are none, the the similarities are remarkable.)  The chapters are short and intricate, like the very miniatures the characters are commissioned with creating.  At first, I had no idea what was going on and who was involved.  It starts very much in medias res, and the first voice you hear is actually the voice of a dead man.  Once I got used to the flow of the novel and started to figure out who was linked to whom, it was charming.

The work has so much to enjoy.  First of all, there is all the historical research that must have been involved.  The time period is described so clearly.  That, however, pales when compared to the technical aspect of its creation. I cannot imagine the difficulty of maintaining no fewer than twelve narrative voices, one of which is actually the "split personality" of another.  Each character has a distinct and realistic voice and view on the world. It's an amazing accomplishment to see the world through so many eyes.

Woven into the plot of murder and intrigue is a healthy dose of folklore, custom, and even costuming.  It was a perfect choice for me to read just now because it perfectly accompanied the course text and readings we had.  So many of the things the text described were humanized and made accessible through the story.  Stories about famous characters from folk tales, poetry, songs, patterns of behavior, even architecture is presented in such glorious detail.  Every chapter really was a little picture.

I have another book by Pamuk, his Istanbul, which is quite different, a set of memoirs of the city he grew up in and still lives in today.  I have a few other things I want to read first, but it's in my near future.  It will be interesting to see how he continues to reveal this place I am becoming increasingly more and more fascinated with.

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Lightning (Bug and Other)

As I came home tonight, the sky was full of stars.  Suddenly, though, everything flickered.  The sky itself was green for seconds, parts of seconds, and then it plunged back into the deepest blue.  Lightning from the oncoming storm had ripped away the illusion of calm.

We're still too far away from whatever is coming to hear the thunder, but everything has that horrible stillness that happens right before a big rain, and the last two days, I've been sick in the bed with a migraine, so I am guessing that something epic is marching towards us.

I took the dogs out for a late evening stroll, and as we made our way through the pasture, thousands of little tiny flashes of light filled the low tree limbs and the underbrush.  The lightning bugs, usually to be found at the tops of the trees, were low because of the atmospheric pressure.  It looked like the edges of the woods had been strung with countless fairy lights, but even that beauty managed to be ominous because of the reason for its presence.

There are so many other things that rumble in the distance, flash and then are gone, before sweeping over us.  Of course, I've been reading about the protests in Turkey almost ceaselessly.  It started with a flash, a sudden moment of the people together, and now it has escalated into something widespread and lasting, a storm of some duration.  It's amazing.  I pray that it won't turn any bloodier than it already is.

I am so impressed by the way the protesters are behaving.  The news articles I've read say that everything is kept clean by the protesters themselves even though there are massive (and growing) numbers of them present, that they are sharing supplies and protection with each other, that they have the support of the people in the shops and in the police to the point that stores are opening to them for places of refuge and police are not reporting to work because they refuse to be a part of confronting them.  Even while the Prime Minister calls these protests "undemocratic," even his vice secretary is apologizing for the way they protests have been handled.  It seems that everyone except one is on the same side.  I've never seen anything like it.

The more I read and study of the past, the more fascinated I am with this present.  I pray that we still get to go.  I have to see this remarkable place and these remarkable people for myself.

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Not Politics. Just Hope.

I've been watching the news on Turkey carefully the past couple of days.  I also follow some people on Instagram who are there in the protests, and I see things on Tumblr from them, too.  The images have been both profoundly distressing, police in riot gear, water cannons, clouds of tear gas,  people being carried away on stretchers, blood streaming down faces. The situation, something that began over saving a public park from allegedly corrupt development, has acted as a spark to an apparently vast powder keg of other issues and has spread all over the country.  The seams are coming apart in Turkey.

And yet, there have been other images that somehow give a kind of hope in the grimness, pictures of peaceful protesters holding up books to the police who stand behind them in riot gear, groups that normally do not have much to do with each other standing shoulder to shoulder.  These immediately pulled me back to what I've been reading in my course texts.  The great strength of the Ottoman Empire was in its tolerance and acceptance of "the other," according to the book we have been required to read.  Unlike most of the rest of medieval Europe, at its height, the Empire based worth on what you could do as much as where you were from or whom you worshipped.  Different did not have to mean evil or marked for destruction under their rule.  Instead, "different" mean exactly that, not the same, but not unworthy.  Even the "big three" religions managed to find a way to coexist there in what, when compared to the rest of the world at that time, can be considered to be mostly peaceful.  Not total equality or total freedom, but mostly peacful. It was not any sort of democratic or Utopian paradise, but it was something beyond the Inquisition and the pogroms.

That same idea of tolerance and unity seems to be showing up in these protesters.  One news article I read talked about how people from different ethnic groups, people from different regions, even people from rival soccer teams are coming together in these protests against the increasing strictness of the current government.  Even though the violence and the injuries that are accompanying them are terrible, there is something remarkable about that unification of differences.

As the readings for this course have made me more aware of the history of the Ottoman Empire, I have realized suddenly just how much the lands it used to control are still in flux, still searching for themselves in the wake of its decline.  Surely most of us probably think of nations as something permanent, something always there, even those of us living in a nation as new as this one.  The truth of it is that the people of Turkey (and everywhere else that the Ottomans once governed) are less than ninety years out of the rule of a government that held some of them, for better or for worse, for more than six centuries.  The powers of the West that carved the dead empire up into pieces and parcels for themselves after its demise have only prolonged the process of growth, of a necessary forging of identity.  Therefore, even though they are standing on ancient foundations, they are new construction, and probably we should not be surprised that they change as that process continues.

I very much hope that the protests in Turkey come to some form of peaceful and...well...right...resolution.  That may sound very naive.  It may actually be so.  I do not pretend to be wise enough to know what "right" is in this case.  It's not my land; they aren't my issues, even though one of the sources of unrest is the NATO presence on the Syrian border.  However, Turkey has been making great strides economically and a time of seemingly slow renaissance for its place in the world has started.  I think it would be terrible if that forward motion and self-definition were damaged by the usual suspects:  selfishness, powermongering, and pride.  Again, I will say that I don't know who is right and who needs to change in this moment.   I hope that, even as controversial as it might be, the legacy of that seven-hundred-year old empire can give all that was good and wise of unity and coexistence to its children and allow its darkness and bloodshed to fall away.