October Light

It's a Friday in October, and I'm sitting in my car.  I just got home, but as is usually the case, I need just a minute to transition from "work responsibilities" to "home responsibilities." 

The light is this special shade of gold that only ever happens in October.  I don't know why it should be so, but October afternoon light has captivated me since childhood.  It makes me feel like I should be getting ready to go to a carnival or something.  Just seeing it shimmering through the leaves lifts my tired heart.

This gold light is the color of the sky in the dreams I remember, the dreams that speak to me.  Maybe it's the color of the sky in some other world altogether that is only revealed on October afternoons and behind closed eyes.

Or maybe I just need to get out of the car and go in now....

That Moment When....

...this wonderfully odd little song comes up in my Spotify playlist, and my very first thought is, "Gotta share that with ____."  Only we don't do that anymore, so I can't.

Bit of crap, that......

Insomnia and Facebook Hate

(Strong language is contained herein.  If that bothers you, go elsewhere.)

I wasn't going to write anything anywhere about recent events. It didn't seem that there was anything I could add to the discussion that hadn't been said better by other people.  My Facebook feed is largely split into two camps of people, neither of which seems to be able to understand the other at all.  One camp posts nothing but "strike down all cops" and "all white people are evil" while the other is nothing but "it's mostly your fault."  Both are wearing me slam-damn out, to be honest.  Today, I have started to see a new variation saying, "If you don't post anything (about the shootings by the police), then you must be a racist, and we know it, and we're going to unfriend you now."

Imma call bullshit on all of this.

I haven't written anything because I am numb.  For three days, I have been walking around in a daze wondering what happened to this country.  Last night, I was struggling to get my mind to calm down enough to get some rest when the BBC and CNN apps on my phone started notifying me about Dallas.  After that, I just cried.  There didn't seem to be anything else left possible to do.  Around 1:30, I took some Zzzquil and fell into a nightmare-haunted sleep that made me sicker than no sleep at all would have done.

No matter what might have been going on behind the scenes, I don't think it is possible to say that the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were in any conceivable way legitimate responses to the situations.  Did the two men behave absolutely textbook perfectly when the police showed up?  I don't know.  I haven't watched the videos and will not because I can't carry that around in my head without it destroying me.  I doubt it.  I doubt it was possible.  It sure as hell wouldn't have been for me.  I got stopped for a traffic violation and was shaking like a leaf when the patrolman came up to the car with his hand on his sidearm.  Even though I am a white woman (the opposite demographic from those slain recently), I kept worrying that I wasn't being still enough, that I would do the wrong thing.  When we get scared, we sometimes don't remember the drills we were taught, the advice to keep our hands on the steering wheel, fingers spread.  I will say this, though.  Unless those men took out a gun and pointed it at one of the officers, I cannot see that the officer response was the right one. There had to have been some other path.

My social media feed is filled with posts from former students who are angry and scared.  I think that feeling is totally legitimate.  Every time I think about that little girl watching her father be shot and killed, I want to scream.  That my students have to worry about this, have to read posts on social media, have to listen to elitists who diminish their concerns and say, in essence, the modern version of "well,  you know how it is with *those* people" as if someone's skin color diminishes their value as a human being or their protections under American law, breaks my heart.  One of my precious formers posted simply, "My life matters.  My life matters.  My life matters."  That anyone as bright, capable, charming, and full of potential to do great good things as he is has to say this to himself should break everybody's heart.

This is not my country.  This cannot be my country.  We have to be better than this.

And then there are the police.  Most of the people I know who are a part of law enforcement genuinely want to make people safe and protect them from harm.  Their job is increasingly terrifying.  Heavy weaponry is everywhere.  The most fundamental concept of civilization, an agreement to abide by certain concepts for the safety of everyone, is crumbling as everybody focuses on whatever they can grab for themselves instead.  I can't imagine being police or highway patrol and knowing that I was going to be putting my life in danger every day.  I deeply respect their dedication to protecting us.

That being said, not everybody who is behind a badge is flawless, and we are going to have to accept that and deal with it somehow before all the wheels come off this thing altogether. I have grown up personally acquainted with the idea that law enforcement can be quite a mixed bag of things due to issues of corruption locally.  Every profession has those in it who fail to live up to its demands.  There are teachers who are terminated for varying kinds of misconduct all the time, doctors who lose licenses for addiction or malpractice. Becoming a member of law enforcement does not magically confer perfection any more than becoming a member of any other profession, and while I support them and am grateful beyond belief for the sacrifices they make, I really think we are all going to have to realize that there are problems that must be resolved before the entire system collapses.

And maybe this is the thing that both of these camps on social media are missing.  They are lumping huge swaths of humanity into big, stereotypical groups.  That which is Other is by definition both Wrong and Evil when it is approached this way.  When we start dealing with people on the macro level, we lose the detail that allows us to appreciate each other. It becomes easy to pick up that first stone and fling it at a mass of anonymous faces instead of having to step up to that one individual separately, look him or her in the eye, and take aim. Stop saying "all you people" whether you are pointing a finger at the cops or those who have been shot.  In fact, any time you find yourself thinking something like, "Well, *they're* all...(WHATEVER)," some kind of mental alarm needs to go off.  No group is universally any one thing or another.

Instead, why don't we try, just as an experiment maybe, to say, "If I were in that situation, how would I feel?  What would my reaction be?"  Don't get up on your high-horse saying, "Oh, but that would *never* be me."  Instead, do the cliche and see if you can't walk in those shoes in some degree even for the smallest amount of time. Recover the basic human quality of empathy for another.

Is power being abused?  By some in many places.  Is fear slowly killing us all?  Every damn day.  Certain media outlets stir it up to get ratings.  Politicians use it as a sharpened goad to drive us hither, thither, and yon.   I don't know what the answer is.  People far wiser than I have pondered this for longer than I have been alive, and you see the state we're in. These are upsetting times.  It's okay to be afraid.  It's natural to be upset.  That being said, we cannot keep letting it make us savage toward each other. Appreciate the value of the fragile and irreplaceable humanity around you.  Quit being sure you know what's what.  For the love of the tiny baby Jesus, quit making blanket statements about entire sections of the nation, be it a profession or an ethnicity.

I guess I am going to fall back on an old personal axiom, then.  I've had it up in my classroom for a long time, "Be Nice or Leave."  I'm not going to throw stones or post hostile statuses.  I'm just going to sit over here, grieve for our hurting nation, and pray for some change.  Anyone who might want to join in with that is always welcome.

Istanbul

Three summers ago, I had the chance of a lifetime to go to Turkey for three weeks.  We were studying the Ottoman Empire, and we traveled all over the country looking at historically significant buildings, cities, and tombs.  We explored traditions that still exist and things that had passed on since the Ottoman Empire dissolved.  It was a truly amazing trip.

While the whole thing was unforgettable, parts of it stand out to me in perfect detail.  One was eating at this truck stop on the side of a highway.  The entire place was surrounded by a seemingly endless field of sunflowers in full bloom.  It was like something out of a fairy tale.  I wanted to just run out into the middle of it and take in the wonder of it.  I settled for a ton of photos instead.

The second was standing under the dome of Selimiye in Edirne.  We also saw Suleymaniye in Istanbul, and it was indeed lovely, but its older sister took my breath away.  Sinan was a genius, and when left to his own devices, a creator of perfect grace and symmetry.

The most unforgettable place was much, much older.  I had wanted to see Hagia Sophia for as long as I can remember knowing about it. I have loved the name since I learned what it means, Holy Wisdom.  When I stood under that golden dome on floors over a thousand years old, it completely stole not my breath but my heart.  I went back again on my own when we had a free day just so I could sit down on the cool stone and stare up into that glory.  The beauty of that place, its sense of sacredness, was like a physical thing.  I have only ever been one other place that came close, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.

Even though we were on the road for a solid week, the rest of our time was spent based in the Sultanahmet district near the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, Topkapi, the Grand Bazaar, and the Basilica Cistern.  We learned, we met people, we explored, and I came to love that city.  We never met anyone who wasn't willing to help us.  Everywhere people were kind and friendly.  Part of me very much wanted to stay there and know it better.

So now, when I see that the rabid violence of suicide bombing has attacked it again, has blown up the very airport we came into and out of, I grieve for the lost and the injured, but I also grieve for Istanbul.  That city, that ancient lovely place, deserves to be cherished and protected. It is a unique thing that spans centuries, cultures, empires, languages, even continents.  The true goal of the terrorists is, of course, to make people afraid.  Afraid to go to places like Istanbul or Paris, these important places where it's possible to see both the ancient past and maybe the future side by side.  Afraid to go to places away from home.  Afraid of "others."

I've had the "it's not safe to go" conversation already today.  I'll hear it increasingly.  I've thought it myself.  I have to keep telling myself, though, that it's not safe anywhere.  Psychopaths walk into our schools and universities, our night clubs, our office buildings, every day with evil intent and heavy weaponry.  Even here in this tiny rural place I live, child abductions are attempted, homes are invaded when predators think those inside are elderly or weak.  Whatever safety we used to think we had has somehow disappeared, and national borders don't seem to have a lot to do with it. Why then should we allow them to cage us in a corner?

Hamlet tells us that "the readiness is all."  We cannot know when our time is coming.  We cannot live our whole lives looking for the shadow to fall, listening for Death's soft footfalls coming up behind us.  I think we live in a world where it is easy to be afraid all the time, where we certainly have cause for fear.  If we give in to it, though, all those horrible, rabid, twisted bastards win.  I think we have to keep going places, embracing each other, learning about each other.  If this plague of hate is ever going to be defeated, it has to come from its opposite, unity instead of isolation.

Reasons Why I Love Marvel Films

(an open letter of appreciation to everyone involved with the MCU that will never get read but that I want to write anyway)

I've been on a major Marvel movie kick lately, and I've been thinking about why they are so enjoyable.  Here's what I've come up with so far.

1)  A legitimate effort at fun has been made - Every day, it seems like the news is full of new horrors. People are killing each other for no legitimate reason.  Things are disappearing or being used up. Both America and the world seem to be increasingly divided.  People are just plain hateful to each other based on differences which make no difference.  Our political landscape is filled with a wide array of non-choices we'll have to pick from in a few month.

One of the greatest uses of entertainment is being able to escape all that, even for 120 minutes, and Marvel films do that so well.  The interplay between the characters is always a delight.  The snark between Hawkeye and Quicksilver in Age of Ultron. Tony Stark bating...pick a character.  Anyone.  Everyone, really.  Ant Man in Iron Man's wiring or in Sam's Falcon suit. Ant Man getting punched in the face by Hope.  Happy getting taken down by the Widow.  Spiderman and Bucky.  (Spiderman and everybody.) The entire Bucky/Sam dynamic.  One of my favorite scenes of all time was in Civil War when all those huge, ridiculously powerful guys are crammed into that old Volkswagen and Bucky asks Falcon to move his seat but Sam refuses.  It was short, little compared to the huge drama going on, but it was perfect.  My immediate thought was, "Actual Crap Guys Do."  I still snicker thinking about it.

And don't even get me started on Deadpool.  That entire film is just a gift.

2)  A legitimate effort at more than just escapism has also been made - Because they're not just fluff.  Even when we laugh at the one-liners, we can come away from the films thinking seriously about important concepts.  Loyalty (and who deserves it), purpose, self-definition, coping with situations that we can't control, the need for second chances, who gets to write history and tell stories, the effects of conflict and violence on the macro and micro level, it's all in there.  If you don't believe me, go to Tumblr for about five minutes and look at the way that talking about Marvel films is allowing people to talk about the very same real-world issues they help people escape for a minute, too.

It's a little like Shakespeare to me.  (I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.  Don't throw things or pass out.)  He used these fabulous characters and riveting stories to present important ideas.  Mercutio is fabulous, so sparkly he almost steals the entire play from that other moody teen, but what we need to learn from him is that his excess destroys him and that friends can get caught up in our drama whether we intend them to or not.  Hamlet, with all his intelligence and sublime skill with language, teaches us it is possible to wait too long and that everybody suffers from it.  Macbeth shows us what happens when ambition subsumes loyalty and character.  And on and on.  This is a whole separate blog post from me, so I'll stop here.  What I'm saying is that the MCU films do a lot of this same kind of thing.  There's something deeper at the core of them that makes them more than blockbuster entertainment.

3) Even though it can't be easy to be an actor for these films, they always look like they like each other and like what they do - I know that being a part of something like the MCU has got to be a big choice for an actor for a lot of reasons.  I assume they are physically rigorous films, especially since many of the actors seem to be doing as many of their own stunts as they can.  They also seem to require long commitments to the franchise.  I don't know if that's a bad thing or not, but I'm assuming it limits what actors are allowed to do otherwise even though most of the MCU films do well at the box office.

I also figure that being a part of something like MCU denies those actors a great deal of the pleasure of being an anonymous person.  I'm just a lowly school teacher, nothing so public and glorified as a film actor, but I actually love to go hang out with my friends who live in other cities just for the sheer pleasure of not having to worry about who I'm going to see that might know me. I'll never forget the time I got one of my ear piercings redone and came to school the next day to be told, "We saw you getting your ears done."  I hadn't seen them, and the entire thing was paranoia-inducing.  Where were they?  Why did they care?  Was I floating around out there in a Snapchat getting my ears repierced?  Jesus....  If it's like that for me as a public school teacher, can you even imagine what it is like to be one of the actors in these films?  Is there anywhere they can enjoy being just them and not Cap or Nat, Bucky or Tony Stark?  I hope so.  Everybody deserves a place to be simply themselves.

The biggest thing I guess I'm talking about is the apparently endless parade of interviews and convention panels.  Because I have a board on Pinterest called Geekery that I add stuff to from Doctor Who, Star Wars, MCU films, etc., I see a bajillion interview pins (again, probably mostly assembled from things from Tumblr, that frothing bastion of fandom, God bless it).  It has to get old.  I wonder how many thousand times they get asked the same questions.  Some of the things I see they've been asked are things I wouldn't be able to respond to well, but they always seem to stay classy (reasons they're actors and I'm not, probably).

In spite of all these things that would be drawbacks to me, they also always look like they like each other and are having a lot of fun. They support each other, defend each other from the really brainless, tactless, and crass questions.  I really hope that's true.  I hope that they look forward to making these movies and mess around on set and during those ridiculous interviews and are basically just happy.  Maybe they don't all hang out at one of the hundred-and-eighty-seven-guys-named-Chris's houses on the weekend, but while they're there, it seems like they're having a blast. It increases the enjoyment of the films to me to think that it's in some way an effort of friends.

4) The female characters kick ass - The women are as interesting and strong as the men and nobody acts like that's anything other than the way it should be.  I have loved Wonder Woman since I was a little girl small enough to fit into Underoos, and I have always, always wanted to see a film in which she was not a cameo or just done wrong.  Marvel doesn't seem to have that issue. They aren't afraid of women who can hold their own. I can't wait to see Hope Pym as the Wasp.  When the Scarlet Witch blasted Vision through the floor in Civil War, I (silently) cheered.  Kick that ass, girl.  I'm still catching up on the Daredevil series, but Electra is so very well done, deadly and complicated.  And yes.  Like the rest of America, I do want an entire Black Widow movie.  She deserves it. (And throw some Red Room Bucky up in that, too.)

5) They are not afraid of brokenness - All of the MCU heroes have big, huge faultlines running right up the middle of them.  Serious things have happened to them, things they couldn't control.  They've made choices the best they could or had all their choices taken from them.  Accidents have happened.  They lost things.  They lost people they loved.  They've lost part or all of themselves.

Bucky is the poster boy for this and one of my very favorite characters in the entire MCU. Each time we see him in the films, he is picking the pieces of his life up and sorting through them. Even though he has been as destroyed as a person can be, with the help of his friends, he is trying to put those pieces back in place. Sebastian Stan does an amazing job showing this process.  Bucky can't be easy to play.

This is what real life does.  All that ugliness I mentioned at the top that surrounds us every day is doing this stuff to us, and we have to pick ourselves up and deal with whatever remains.  I think the MCU heroes do an excellent job of giving hope that it is possible to stand up and keep trying.  Sure, we're never going to be kidnapped by HYDRA, twisted by the Red Room, recreated by the mind stone, but we are going to get knocked down, hurt in hearts, minds, and bodies, and there's a lot to be said for seeing survival of the worst in fiction.  It's important to have stories that show us people can overcome.

6) The villains are complicated - As a million little Loki fangirls will attest, even Marvel's bad guys aren't simple.  Maybe it's the richness of the decades of source material and all the incarnations they've gone through as different writers shaped the characters, but instead of just big powerful evil, there's always a reason. There's always a backstory.  They aren't Iagos; they're Claudiuses. (And I promise, that's my last Shakey reference.) The Marvel villains are the flip side of the hero's brokenness.  They show us what happens when you choose NOT to get up.  When you choose to hold on the the darkness instead of finding some way to purge it or leave it behind.  They are as important in that dynamic as the heroes are.

My favorite of them is almost inevitably Wilson Fisk.  D'Onofrio always amazes me with the depth he brings to anything he plays, and his portrayal of the many, many layers behind Kingpin is one of the main reasons I like Daredevil so much.  The character is absolutely terrifying, utterly ruthless, but as the details of his becoming are revealed, it becomes possible to have compassion for him.  Then he decapitates somebody with a car door, and you are not quite sure how to feel.  That's the way a good villain is supposed to function.

7)  The characters grow and change - Captain America has undergone this beautiful and complex transformation, but all of them evolve.  The Tony Stark we saw in Civil War wasn't the same guy from Iron Man.  All the characters in Daredevil are shifting, and it's impressive to watch.  Even fairly newly-introduced characters like the Scarlet Witch and the Black Panther have changed dramatically from who they were when we first met them.  Others are poised on the edges of that kind of change, especially Bucky, and I hope we get to see it happen. Real life leaves marks.  When characters don't change due to what they encounter, they're allegories, and while allegories are interesting, I don't think we learn as much about survival from them as we do from more dynamic characters.

And I could probably go on, but I'll stop here.  It may seem kind of an odd thing for me to write about, but it's what was on my mind today.  Gotta go watch a movie.

Thoughts on the Day of Muhammad Ali's Funeral

When we registered yesterday, we were warned to take the Skyway (or, as I like to call it, the Habitrail) to and from the convention center today because of the crowds expected to be lining the street for Muhammad Ali's funeral.  Everyone standing in line everywhere was abuzz with the list of people who were going to be in attendance.

This morning, we left to go grade papers in the cool of the dawn, and there was nobody out yet.  By the time we went into the large open area outside the grading room for our morning break, streets had been blocked off and official vehicles could be seen over at the YUM! Center.  It had begun.

We couldn't see any of the actual procession, but we saw bunches of people standing around waiting for it.  Some of the readers looked up the live stream on their phones, and so groups of two or three stood there at the windows watching slow moving progress on the tiny screens and trying to figure out if it would get to our location before we had to go back inside again.

At lunch, I needed to get out and walk around a minute, and I took the opportunity to walk to a souvenir shop/information center right across the street from the convention center.  There was a huge line of people, and they were all clamoring to buy orange shirts commemorating the day.

After the day's grading, I went to grab a sandwich, and everywhere, there were things related to Ali, signs on the side of city buses, a big electric billboard showing images from this life, people walking by in shirts.  After I got my food, I walked back to the hotel.  When I got to the street the YUM! Center is on, it was lined with makeshift booths fabricated from crates, folding tables, tarps.  People were hawking $10 shirts for two city blocks' worth of space.  It was a little surreal.

The thought that kept coming to me over and over again was how his family felt about this, how he would have felt about this.  I guess to me grief is just such a private thing that I hate the thought of sharing it with anyone.  Maybe it is different for them since he was such a world-famous icon.  They'd been sharing him with everyone everywhere for so long that it has to be different, I suppose.

 It bothered me that people were lined up and selling shirts for the same reason. It always seems so unbearably crass and, to be honest, cruel when I see what looks like someone trying to make money of someone else's tragedy.  Maybe they were out there with them to honor a hero.  Maybe it was a tribute somehow.

Then there are those who were buying the shirts. Did the people who bought them do so to honor him?  Or was it sort of a "been there, done that" trophy?  We wound up being here by the greatest accident of timing.  Thousands of others made the journey specifically for this funeral.  Why did they come?  It's a question I would especially like to ask of the "dignitaries" who have kept the skies and the police force busy.  Some of them had meaningful ties to Ali and his family.  It made sense that they would come to honor that.  How many others showed up because it was the place where all the cameras were running right now?

None of it is really my business.  I just hope that it was all the way he would have wanted it, the way his family felt comfortable with.  In the end, that is the only thing that could possibly have mattered today.  No matter what he was to the rest of the world the rest of the time, he was their husband, father, family member, friend, and now he is gone.  Their grief deserves respect.  I hope they feel that it was given.

Laughter

Monday, I went to my slightly delayed six-month checkup with my neurologist.  The nurse took my blood pressure, and when she told me what it was, I felt myself grin.  I couldn't stop it.  I asked her what it had been the last time I came in, and she checked the chart, told me.

The grin got bigger.

In six months, I've gone from running numbers so high my doctors wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine and/or some kind of anti-anxiety medicine to textbook normal or better.  That's worth grinning over, I think.

When I'd gone to see them in January, I was having at least two debilitating (i.e. - medicine required to stop them, somebody had to come get me from school because I was too sick to stay, too sick to drive) migraines a week.  I felt horrible all the time.

In the last month, I have had only two migraines at all, and both of those were during that last horrible, horrible week at my old job when so many bad things happened.

Last time, the consultation I had with the neuro nurse took a long time.  It was fairly solemn as we discussed the possibility of daily maintenance medicine to stop the headaches again, all the old terrible things like Topamax - which steals my words and my personality - and newer variations - some that would spike blood pressure, some that might make me lose both weight and hair, others that would definitely increase my appetite.  This time, I spent more time laughing and chatting with the nurse practitioner than we did discussing my treatment options.

My God, what a difference a change can make.

I can even give you the date things started to change.  I have a picture taken that day.  I was in a new Shakespeare First Folio scarf that I'd bought for the 400th anniversary celebration.  That was the day I decided to go take a chance and talk to the administrators at what would become my new/old school.  That was the day I finally admitted to myself after that conversation that change was possible.  I remember driving home down familiar roads talking to my mother.  I can remember feeling the first tiny tendrils of hope stir.

It's grown since then. Once I made the official decision to leave my old school, I found the number of migraines I was having dropped off sharply.  Other alterations followed.

I laugh again now.  I noticed it the other day.  I was walking Stella around the yard on one of her many daily jaunts, and she did something ridiculous, clown that she is, and I started laughing.  It felt a little strange, and I realized why.  I am not sure when it stopped, but I haven't laughed at things in a long time.

Now, I snicker at Stella and Tybalt's semi-stealthy stalking of one another.  I chortle at stupid puns on FB.  I laugh sometimes until I cry at geeky pins on Pinterest.  I get amused with myself and the guys I play with on Sunday nights when I can't get my crap together with the bass.  There's humor in the world again, and it feels so good.

Before those of us who were leaving got out of  my old school, there were some hateful comments made regarding the fact that I'm changing schools.  Much of it was just the usual backstabbing crap that went on constantly, but some of them were bold enough to say it to our faces.  Certain people were quick to tell me and the others who left to go where I'm going that nothing good awaited us because "you know how they are out there."

I really don't.  Not anymore.  Even though I graduated from the school to which I am returning, I haven't had anything to do with it for more than twenty years, so, no.  I don't know how they are. That whole statement infuriated me.  Some of the very same people who were so fast to judge based on a stereotype would follow up in the same breath with some complaint about how our school received criticism based on stereotypes, too.

Nothing is ever what we think it is from the outside.  I am certain there are differences.  The population makeup is different in percentage of ethic group, in balance of socio-economics, in setting (rural v. urban), and most importantly, in size (my new school will be about half the size of my old one).  What I refuse to believe is that people who do not live there, who do not have children attending that school, who do not teach at that school or know anyone who does, who likely have never seen the campus except for the sporting fields, are reliable sources of information about it.  This holds true for every place in the world.  We don't know unless we go to see it for ourselves.  If humanity could just hold on to that one idea and practice it, I wonder just how much ridiculousness and cruelty we could end?

I am sure there are going to be challenges, sources of frustration, things I would want to change.  As I've told people before, though, "There is crap everywhere.  You just have to figure out what of it you can deal with and what of it you need to get away from."  I figured out the last bit the hard way.

And, to be honest, even if the naysayers turn out to be right (which I do not anticipate happening), I still needed to go through the process of making this change.  I feel better, more hopeful, more at peace with myself right now than I have in....longer than I can remember.  I sing with the radio.  I write stuff.  I take care of my house, my self.  I cook dinner for myself, for my family.

I laugh.

If nothing else is ever gained from this change, by God, I laugh again.  That is enough.

Changes

Set me free, why dontcha babe?
Get out my life, why dontcha babe?
Cause you don’t really need me
You just keep me hangin’ on

~ “Keep Me Hangin’ On” by the Supremes or Kim Wilde (depending on your personal preference)
_______________________________________________________________

This is a season of change for me. I finally found the strength to open my hands and let go of the shards of something in my professional life that was cutting me up. The transition has been hard, but it showed me some important things.

First it showed me that I had more people who cared about me than I ever imagined. I am going to hold tight to them, and I refuse to allow a change in location to result in losing them.

Second, the tremendous sense of relief that I feel now that first big change is complete has shown me that there is a time to cut losses when the person or place just keeps hurting me. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try or how much I want it, there is nothing I am going to be able to do to make a situation better. I need to apply the "Put up with it, and you will get more of it" measuring stick to many areas of my life. If I don't want more of the effect, I should stay away from the cause to start with.

That brings me to the third. Any relationship that is totally one-sided is probably one that should be trimmed away. If a person I consider a friend cannot bring him/herself to rejoice with me - even superficially - or extend sympathy - even in the form of a “sad” emoji -, then is there really a relationship at all? If they miss *all* the big stuff *all* the time, what even is this?

We all get busy. We all have time periods where we can’t be as connected to those we value as we would wish. I personally go through periods of social hibernation, time where the most I can manage is clicking like on a FB status. However, when it is important to another person I love, I really do try to make sure I try to make it important to me, too, even if all I can do is something small.

When there is no effort from the other side, I suspect that it’s time to call the time-of-death and go on. Currently, I have a relationship like this. I guess I was holding on because the relationship had been so important to me, at one time active and joyful and vital. Maybe it was because there was never a sense of ending, just a horrible uncertain drifting where I wondered if I should be the one to reach out again, if it were welcome, if it mattered at all, or if it were just another irritation.

For quite a long time now, I have been feeling like an inconvenience, a relic, or as Josh Ritter might have put it, “just one more rag he was dragging behind him,” and be straight damned if I’m going to put up with that. I’m nobody’s remnant.

That's the thought I'm going to keep in my mind as I try to lay this particular thing to rest. It's time to take the shears, clip what threads remain (if I can), and move away even if it hurts.

Vicksburg

I needed to get out of the house today.  I had wanted to go to Clarksdale, but it is simply too far away for a pleasant day trip.  I decided to go back to Vicksburg and go to the Military Park.

It has been two or three years since I was last there, and I always forget the size of the place.  Every time I think I am about to turn the last corner, a new segment of the park opens up instead.  It is huge.

It is also the oddest mixture of solemnity and celebration.  From the very first moment one passes through the entrance, memorials to the dead soldiers and leaders of the Union line the sides of the road.  Separate granite monuments honor the contributions of every state; one can find Ohio, Indiana, even tiny Rhode Island.  Blue and Red cast-iron markers show where the troops on both sides dug trenches, positioned cannon, mined to capture the enemy.  Preserved cannon perch on ridge tops.  Huge constructions of bronze and stone tower over the landscape in grandiose mourning and tribute.

At the same time, tourists are snapping selfies on the steps of the Illinois Monument.  Small children slide down the 47-step-a-step-for-every-day-of-the-siege staircase's banister and whistle and sing inside the Pantheon-imitating dome so they can hear the echoes bounce. Brave fit young things scurry down steep hills and fight their way back up again shouting insults and encouragement to one another. A motorcycle club picnics next to the remains of a restored ironclad ship.  A father and daughter look around and think they are unobserved, then suddenly race up the steps of Wisconsin's monument and do the Rocky bounce, arms held high and laughing, when they reach the top.  A little boy runs up to an array of cannon and immediately starts yelling, "Boom!"

I feel like I'm seeing double.  On the one hand, this is a place of sadness and mourning.  So many people died here.  So many lives changed or ended.  A city was brought to collapse and destruction after a blockade and siege of more than a month and a half.  Now, though, this is a tourist destination, a place where grandparents follow faster-moving grandchildren up grassy hills, a place where competition bicyclists push up the steep grades for training,  a place where families bring their dogs for exercise.

Could those serious men locked in battle so long ago have possibly ever dreamed of this place as it is now, green and verdant, spring blooming flowers and wisteria scenting the air?  Could they have imagined the steady stream of vehicles with tags from every state in the nation come to touch history for themselves?  What would they have thought?  Would a glimpse into a place that for them had to be full of grim determination, fear, and death instead 150 years in the future being a place of tranquility, recreation, and communion please them?

I was thinking all these things as I drove slowly through the park.  At the center of the spiral is the National Cemetery, rows and rows of graves for those who laid down their lives on one side or the other, small, tidy stones like grey teeth protruding from the early spring grass.  Families were hiking among them, pausing to look at something that caught their attention, perhaps a name, perhaps an identification of place of origin.  I hope that those people would all find something hopeful in what their resting place has become.  Something beautiful grew in that place of great loss and ugliness.

Mammogram

Phoebe: (About waxing) This happens to be a pain no man will ever experience.

Chandler: I don't think you can make that statement until you've been kicked in an area God only meant to be treated nicely.

~ Friends, "The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break"
_______________________________________

I had my very first mammogram today, and I can't stop laughing.

I realize this is quite likely not a normal reaction to this process, so I will try to explain.

When I visited my OB/GYN for my annual checkup in January, he looked at my chart and said, "You're turning 40 this year?  It's time for your first mammogram."

My immediate sarcastic mental reaction was, "Well, yay!  More fun for me! Forty keeps getting better and better. Whoo-hoo!" Outwardly, I just smiled the little Noh smile I use when I'm trying to keep that inner voice from coming out of my mouth and into situations where it isn't appropriate.

Since it was my very first appointment, my doctor's office booked it for me.  As with everything from kindergartens to hair dressers, there is a "right" place or doctor that everyone wants to belong to, and so getting in is tricky.  I was sent a time, I filled out my sub paperwork accordingly, and I showed up this morning.

I was a little nervous as I think most people are when they're having anything new done at a hospital.  I had talked about the experience with my mother, so I had some idea about what was coming.  I couldn't get too stressed out about it, however, because of all the other far more invasive and painful procedures I've endured.  I was pretty sure there would be no needle, speculum, or heavy pain medication involved in what was ahead of me this time.

My radiologist was wonderful.  She explained everything to me in advance and made me feel as comfortable as any person in a paper gown open up the back can feel.

Next, I was bestickered.  To make sure certain reference points were clear for the doctor who would read the results, small adhesive markers were applied to me.  I kept thinking, "These things could at least be sparkly or have a Wonder Woman insignia on them or something."   I stepped up to the large ecru machine and the fun began.

Adjustments had to be made to the machine itself.  For those of you who don't know me IRL, I am absurdly tall.  Most of the time, I don't notice this at all.  I've never been short, so it's just normal life for me.  Sometimes, though, the reality of my height sneaks up on me in unexpected ways.  Today was one of them.  To be on the right level to scan the area in question, the machine had to be raised probably 18" from where it was previously.  The radiologist was petite.  This meant that once the machine was in the right position, she had to stand on her toes to get everything arranged properly.

Getting all the angles to make sure a full scan was completed involved having to tilt the scanner and reach around it in different ways.The process of having a mammogram struck me a little like getting a mugshot always seems to be in police shows, "Turn to your right.  Turn to your left.  Face the front." While I wasn't holding a placard with my name and id number in front of me, I had to do a bit of moving to make sure a comprehensive baseline of my breast tissue could be established.    As I was standing there with my cheek pressed against the machine, my arm wrapped around the side, eyes focused on its Fuji logo and breath held to prevent movement that might spoil the exposure, I couldn't help but think to myself, "I bet there is no test any man has to go through where they repeatedly have to hug a piece of medical equipment and then have delicate portions of their anatomy mashed flat."

The whole thing was much less painful than I had feared and fairly brief, too, as medical moments go.  I was putting my t-shirt back on and walking through the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital's imaging center much more quickly that I had expected.  I thanked my radiologist for an experience that was, if not exactly something I want to do on a daily basis, actually as comforting and well done as any such moment in life can be.  Then it was out into the sunshine of a blooming spring morning and back into my car to drive home.

As I hit the interstate, I started laughing.  It hurt.  Portions of my body that were, as Chandler says above, only intended by God to be treated nicely had been squeezed and compressed between two hard layers, after all.  I came back to the thought I'd had earlier about the differences in health care issues for men and women.  I wonder if there is anything men go through every year that even compares.  I don't know who'd I'd ask, but I'm curious. Through the "compressions," the held breaths, the gentle whirring of the machine in its processes, all I had been able to think of was that this is what it means to be a mature woman.  We find ourselves in moments of vulnerability, discomfort, and absurdity.

It's not a complaint exactly.  I am fairly sure that the twin processes women go through to ensure the various portions of their reproductive system are not trying to kill them, as unfun as these examinations are, actually create in us a kind of perspective.  Whether our feet are up in stirrups or we're hugging the mammogram scanner, maybe these moments center us and strip away trivialities.  They make us own these physical incarnations of ourselves whether we are comfortable with them or not, whether we've been taking good care of them or not, whether we find them a source for rejoicing, a source of dread, or a curious mixture in between.  We have to be totally honest about ourselves and with whatever healthcare provided is present, at least until we can put our clothing back on, pass through the heavy doors that always seem to separate the land of the waiting room from the land of the procedure, and re-enter whatever our lives outside that place may be.

I guess I could be sad about being older, about being of an age where routine screenings become required.  Instead, I found laughter in that radiology room, a sense of gratitude that issues from my past were settled now, a sense of comfort that I have medical professionals looking after me who will help me take care of any new ones that arise.

The Price

I read an article from a teacher blogger I follow about how she was rediscovering all these things she loved to do now that she has moved from what she called a "low-performance, low-support school" to what is apparently its opposite.  She's about 3/4 of the way through her first year there, and it's like she's coming back to life again.  The particular thing she was talking about was cooking, specifically baking.

I had such a mixed reaction about that article.  Part of me was felt happy that she was able to recover.  Part of me was more than a little jealous that she could.  Part of me was absolutely and completely numb, so tired and stressed and dead that I don't think it ever will be able to come back to life at all.

That last part is growing.

It made me look at my own life.  There are lots of things I used to love to do.  I liked to go work out, to swim and go to the gym.  I loved to cook, to have friends over and make food for them, to bake and take those things to other people and places.  I loved to fool around with plants, to do calligraphy and stained glass, to write.  I loved to research things, go around and get in trouble taking photographs, travel, have silly conversations online with people who were interested in the same things I am.

I do so little of any of that anymore.  I go to school.  I teach.  I come home.  I sleep.  Rinse.  Repeat.

It's not that I don't love what I do.  It's just that I am coming to believe that the price for it is a lot higher than I ever realized.  I also don't know what to do about it.  I still feel that I am where I am supposed to be.  What do I do if it uses me all the way up?  Is there something I should be doing to stop it from using me up?  Is there really anything I can do to prevent that?

Is this what life is supposed to be?

I feel very confused.  Well, at least part of me does.  The other part, that part of me that has turned to stone and that is slowly, slowly getting larger, can't quite work up the energy one way or the other....

The Tree

Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I always have problems around this time of the year getting into the Christmas spirit.  Part of it is that everywhere I look, it's a family time.  There are young couples wrapped up in each other, families out with all the generations together shopping or touring light displays.  And simply everywhere, everywhere are the children.  It makes me feel so very alone.

Additionally, there is the pressure that comes with my job.  The end of the semester is an endurance race full of deadlines, papers to be graded, last-minute emergencies, and altered schedules.  It leaves me too exhausted to feel very festive.

I had decided not to get a tree this year because of Stella.  She's still such a puppy.  I have had to put up baby gates to keep her out of parts of the house, and visions of my antique Shiny Brites in little shards kept dancing in my head.

Friends of mine on Facebook suggested several alternatives, including a rosemary tree, and I even went to Lowe's and got one.  It smells lovely, but it just didn't feel like Christmas.  In fact, looking at the tiny tree-shaped rosemary draped in colored lights felt exactly the opposite.

Today after lunch with Mom and Dad, I drove the short distance to Lazy Acres for a real tree.  When I got there, the "sleigh" that takes people around to the various parts of the farm was slowly filling with little kids holding their parents' hands.  The very last seat had already been commandeered by a young couple who, despite the unseasonable heat, were twined together in that way that only the newly-married seem to indulge in.  I had a giant case of the "nopes," but I also didn't feel like walking over the property on foot to find a tree.

We've been getting trees from Lazy Acres since I was about ten.  That's almost thirty years of trees for me from there.  Every year, either my family and I or just I alone have hiked out, inspected different types of trees, waited for that National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation moment of light from above, cut it down ourselves, and dragged it out to the sleigh.  This year, I just couldn't stand the thought of it.  So much of the joy of it had always come from it being a family thing, from the silly jokes we always told every year, from teasing each other over our annual tree-getting behaviors.  Without that, every part of the experience just felt like a chore.

While I was debating whether or not to suck it up and get on the sleigh, I saw the assortment of pre-cut trees they have near the checkout area.  I suppose they've always had them there; I've never really even looked at them, though.  There were some huge ones and some petite examples, too.  Since I had decided to get one small enough to put on a table to keep it out of Stella-range, I decided it couldn't hurt to look at them.  After all, it would keep me off that kid-filled wagon....

There was a perfect one toward the back.  I tore off the tag, paid, and had it tied to the top of my car in under thirty minutes.  It was back at my house, up in its stand, and covered in lights in under a full hour.

While I worked, I listened to my all-time favorite Christmas vinyl, a recording of carols and Christmas songs played on antique music boxes.  I've loved it since I was a child.  It makes me remember my earliest Christmases as a child with the big Sylvania turntable loaded with all our albums - Elvis, the music boxes, those Firestone Christmas compliations.  The music box one is so different and so lovely from all the others.  I always felt like Christmas was really here when I heard it. I played it through twice as I nestled lights into the boughs of the little tree.

So now my tree is up.  It's different than I usually have, elevated as it is.  There are no ornaments on it yet.  I'll hold off on that until I'm sure that Stella's current indifference is her real reaction to it.  She sniffed it twice, looked at me as if to say, "Sure.  If it makes you happy.  Whatever," and walked off.  She has been chewing on various toys ever since.

Despite the differences, just looking over the top of my computer screen at it makes me happier.  I'm glad I did it.  Maybe if I put enough little things together, then some of that magic I used to feel can return.

After Paris

I wonder if this is what it felt like living in the last days before World War I and World War II, this sense of things spinning out of control, this basic disrespect for the value of human life.  Even though we’re in the Centennial of WWI, I can’t help but feel we’re also living in the shadow of the next “war to end all wars.” 

The level of hatred I see displayed on Facebook on a routine basis is horrifying.  While I know there are tons of “trolls” who find some perverse amusement in stirring the hornet’s nest, I am not sure all these people are professing opinions for the shock value.  Everybody is afraid and angry, totally committed to demanding his/her own best even if it means cutting the other guy’s throat.  And then there are the people who actively search for a chance for that cutting to begin….

People online are arguing over whose tragedy is worse, who the cameras should be focused on.  It’s almost like some kind of hellish competition.  All over every social media outlet I use, this sort of faux superiority is pervasive, “Oh, you are posting in support of Paris?  Humph.  Well, I am CLEARLY a more developed and wonderful human than you.  I post about Beirut.”  “Oh, YOU’RE talking about BEIRUT? Racist! The only thing the news should be focused on is Mizzou.”  And it's endless.  The place names change, but the sense of vicious righteousness does not.  Where did this one-upmanship come from?  What do people think it’s going to accomplish?

Then there are those who use these horrible things for their own political grandstanding.  I have unfollowed five people on Facebook in the past two days and am within inches of disabling my account for a while because of all the finger pointing, fear mongering, and out-and-out lies. So few people seem to be trying to do anything about any of what’s happening other than use it as a club to bash their political opponent with.

And I’m the first to admit I don’t have answers.  I just wish people would use their brains and their hearts a little more, all people, and maybe together we could find some workable solution. 

I’m terribly afraid we’re past the point where that’s possible and only violence can follow.

Really, Really

I had to run up to Mom and Dad's for a quick pickup, and rather than putting Stella back in her crate, I decided I would take her with me.

She danced out the door in her new neckerchief and on her leash, but when I opened the car door, she totally wilted.  I told her to "load up," my all-time command to dogs to get in the car, and she pulled backwards, ears flat, eyes huge.  It took a minute, but then I realized what was happening.

Stella is a rescue.  As a tiny baby, she came into the system when the person who had her first tossed her and her sister out of a moving vehicle in front of a vet's office.  Fortunately, other than scrapes and scratches, she wasn't physically damaged.  Psychologically, though...  Does "even an animal" (a phrase I am not sure I trust very much) ever forget being treated like that totally?

Also fortunately, after that she was taken in by a rescue group in Madison that is wonderful.  She's had love, vet care, doggie companions, but she's never had a "forever home."  She's been taken to lots of events looking for the people who would keep her, and I suppose some of that was what she was reliving tonight.  Even though I know I'm reading it in to her behavior, I could almost hear her saying, "But you told me this was my HOME!"

I picked her up and placed her in the driver's seat.  Every other dog I've ever had automatically moved over to the passenger side.  She just sat trying to make herself as small as possible.  I finally got her to budge, and she was shaking as I cranked up.  I smoothed my hands over her, rubbed her, and talked to her.   Off we went.

The trip was brief.  Mom came out to hand off the items, and she put her hand through the partially open window.  Stella sniffed and licked, perking up just a little, but she was still clearly waiting for the moment when the door would open and her life would change again.  I started the car again, and we were headed back down the road.

She was puzzled but curious.

When we pulled up next to the house and I cut off the engine, she peered out the window.  When the scent of home hit her, she started wagging her tail.  I didn't have to fight her at all this time.  She unloaded, bounce mostly returned, and by the time we got on the porch, she was grinning and sassy again.  She pawed at the door with both front feet, chastising me for being too slow with the keys.  When I got the door open, she flew in and body slammed/hugged Chewie before racing around the living room.

I had a feeling she would be nervous when she got in the car.  I knew it might be a stressful moment.  We will probably have another one when I take her to the vet for the first time.  It's really important to me that she has good car experiences.  I want her to know that she's always coming back home.  This isn't another wayside station in her journey.  This is the place where the arms are open.  This is the forever home.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.  

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. 

- Flannery O'Connor

Listen to Bessie while you read this.  She's never, ever a bad idea...

Tonight, I taught Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."  Although I've read it several times before, this was my first time using it in instruction, and as is always the case, I learned an incredible amount about it through the process.  Sometimes I think I get more out of teaching the stories than my classes do from being taught.

Tonight, the moment of transformation that takes place for the grandmother really struck me.  The whole way through the story, she is obsessed with things that are surface or things that are gone.  She romanticizes the Old South where every old homestead was a plantation, where every plantation had hidden silver waiting in the walls,  and where "gracious living" with dress codes and manners marks the worthy.  She believes she can tell a "good man" based on what he looks like, what his speech patterns are, who his "people" are.  She believes herself to be a good woman, a Christian person.

And then reality comes crashing in, quite literally.  

When she is staring down the barrel of the gun, for the very first time in her life, all the externals she has used to insulate herself from real application of the religion she gives lipservice to are stripped away.  There is no protection to be found in her white gloves and navy straw hat.  There is no grace given because she has manners and respect for the place she's from.  Her comfortable life which has allowed those moments before where she's been snide, snobby, or indifferent to the suffering of others is on the verge of ending.  Only in that moment does she understand the reality of the world, the reality of her faith.

She reaches out, and in her sudden and total acceptance of someone who is going to reject it, in her compassion for someone who is going to take her very life, she connects to the core of Christianity.  The same woman who callously ignored the needs of the little child on the roadside is reaching out to the Misfit, and when her hand touches him, something far more significant occurs.  She becomes the thing she's only been pretending to be.  She becomes a good person.

And it's dangerous to be genuinely good in a world that prefers superficiality.  It's costly.  At the end of the story, though, even after she's paid that price, she still smiles.  Something that the Misfits of the world cannot take away even through violence remains.

I need to read more O'Connor.  She's portraying something she calls Christian realism, and the combination of those two concepts intrigues me.  I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.  

The Cure

I have been feeling really bad today.  It started this morning at church.  I subbed on the organ for the morning service, and they had baby dedication.  Then there was a presentation from a summer missionary full of all these beautiful children in need of families.  Also appearing were various announcements for all the weddings and showers that everybody seems to be having.  Every single button that I have that can be pushed was being ballroom danced across.

So I loaded myself in my little white car and drove to Walmart to buy pet food and Diet MD since I was totally out of both.  And I cried.  Embarrassing ugly crying.  Thank God I was in my car where nobody could see or hear me.

Usually, I'm okay.  Most days, I'm fine.  I stay busy, and my life is a good one.  I love what I do; I love my home; I love my friends and family.  I do not stay in a woe-is-me mindset. (And here's I'm going to have a slight Bob Dylan interlude because of reasons.)  I can honestly say that...

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind....

Most of the time.  Today was not most of the time.

I did what I could to try to pull myself out of it.  I made a skillet of faux tacos.  I watched the last three episodes of season three of Orphan Black.  I took a little bitty nap with a purring cat.

None of it worked. The overly-chirpy alarm on my phone went off, and I felt like hurling it into the wall.  Seeing those horrible technicolor rainbows around the lights and feeling for all the world like my head was about to crank up with a migraine, I pulled myself into a decent pair of jeans, loaded my red Peavy Foundation into its case, and reluctantly headed back to the church.

Only a few of us were there for our evening jam session since several of the people who usually show up were gone this weekend, but those of us who were there worked on a fun little song for the night service, and I found myself starting to feel a little better.  I tried to work on a few walks for it, and to be honest, they didn't go so well because of how badly I was feeling, but just having the instrument in my hands was somehow comforting.

The hymns for tonight were full of accidentals, and by the time we got to the specials, all I wanted was to crawl under the pew and sleep awhile.  Our music director announced the song, and I trudged up to the front, picking my bass up along the way.  We started to play, and the congregation started to sing.  The song had some silly lyrics to it, and we sang it over and over again.  Every time we went around, I found myself feeling a little better.  By the end of it, I was smiling.

The music is somehow a cure.  I don't know how it should be that this is true, but for me, it is.  Sometimes the relief comes in just listening to it, to a song that reminds me that I am not alone and that there is still hope.  Sometimes the words are the most important part. Tonight though, it came from shutting out everything except my fingers on the finger board and strings of that old bass keeping a steady rhythm.  There was comfort in every part of it, in the pull of the strap around my neck, in the weight of the body in my lap, in the smooth glide of the polished maple against my hand, in the press of the strings against my fingertips, in the mathematical and logical patterns of notes that were creating the music.

Part of me wishes I could have sat there on that front pew and kept playing forever.  That's not the way the world works, though.  Sooner or later, the music has to end.

The trick is to find a way to keep the good inside even when the instrument is back in its case.  I have to admit I'm still working on it.

When It's Too Late

After a busy day, I checked my messages.  I had a text from my mother.  My uncle had died.

He was the last of my father's brothers, the one we hadn't had anything to do with for years and years.  The estrangement began when my grandmother passed away.  His wife and her child put on quite the show.  After that, years passed.  The last time we saw each other was about fifteen years ago when he was doing coast-to-coast trips driving an eighteen wheeler and stopped in Bloomington to see me.  I remember that visit being a good one, and I had hope that maybe my family would pull itself together. Then my grandfather died, and insanity on a level not even Hollywood could imagine occurred.

My feelings are in conflict.  On one hand, a member of my family is gone.  I feel that I should feel something profound.  On the other, so much ugliness and sheer crazy resulted from almost every encounter with his wife and stepchildren that absence was not just the best policy, it was the only rational one.  I didn't have the overwhelming sorrow I had when Dad's other brother, the middle son, passed away.  Instead, this strange confusion came in.

I always thought there would come a time somehow when the two brothers would pull together again.  I don't know exactly how I imagined it happening or why I thought it would after so long a time of separation.  Deep down, I guess I believed that one day something would heal the rift.  Isn't that the way families are supposed to work?

Maybe some wounds don't heal.  Maybe sometimes, no matter what the beginning connection, actions sever the ties clean.  Cause and effect.  Karma.  Something....

Or maybe the chance is always there until the time runs out.  I wonder, although I am not going to ask the question, if my father ever thought they would reconcile.  Was it ever in the back of his mind?  Was it in the back of my uncle's?  

His family continues their ridiculous behavior even after his death.  They deliberately left out his two brothers in the obituary.  They listed everyone else down to the family pets and the military branch in which he served, but they refused to acknowledge that he had not one but two brothers.  As my students would say, "Just petty."

And maybe that's fine.  It is now in every way too late for mending fences, after all.

Literary Epiphanies

I went to the annual Eudora Welty teacher workshop Friday.

Getting there was nightmarish.  Ice had gridlocked the entire city of Jackson.  All roads in and all roads within were obstructed by wrecks.  The dreaded "stack" where I-20 and I-59 go their separate ways was completely closed.  Insanity reigned supreme with selfish motorists refusing to move out of the way of incoming emergency services.  I personally sat about five miles outside of Brandon for 45 minutes, engine off, waiting for some accident I never saw any trace of to be cleared.

When I finally got to Welty House, I was late.  I scurried in and took up a seat in the back.  The two stories we were to have read before arriving were already under discussion.  I quickly got my pen out and started filling pages of notes.

These moment where I get to be a student again are precious.  I love to learn, feed on it just as much as I get nourishment from any kind of food.  I don't know how people function who never take in new knowledge somehow.  I always feel like my brain is like a pool, and if no new material is added, I swear I can feel it getting stagnant and brackish.

The two stories we were contrasting were "The Wanderers" by Welty and "The Dead" by Joyce.  I've been on something of a Joyce kick lately (the Moderns in general, but Joyce particularly).  F. got me started on the Joyce, an author I had avoided for years because of all the pretentious blather he gets in my field.  I can't think of another author who has more of what I have always thought of as the "Emperor's New Clothing Syndrome" attached to his name than Joyce, by which I have heard people who quite obviously had no more idea than the man in the moon what was going on in his works loudly discussing him like they were going to get some kind of celestial brownie points for doing so.  In any case, at F's urging, I decided to see what the fuss was about.

(Side note about that:  He sort of had to prod me a lot, and I was fairly grumpy and grudging with my acceptance. You would think by now I would just accept what F. said and go on.  He is the one who got me to listen to Dylan and at least a couple of other things I had decided that I was not going to fool with because of all the loud-sounding nothing that surrounds them.  He is right about things I will like to a degree that I do not understand.  I haven't reached the point of just going along with it, though.  I am aware that it is a character flaw.  If you try to push me toward something, you can be pretty sure I'm going to move it to the bottom of my list of priorities or refuse it altogether.  I know this behaviour is hardheaded and almost certainly unwise.  Can't seem to fix it, though.)

I was surprised when I liked what I was reading.  There was none of the deliberately abstruse stuff I'd always heard of.  The stories were engaging.  I finished Dubliners quickly and moved on to Ulysses.   I got about halfway through it before the semester started jumping up and down on me with its great black jackboots, so I am still plowing my way through it in doses.  It requires more concentration than Dubliners, more than most works I've read in my time studying literature, and while I like that about it tremendously, at the end of a long day, I don't always have that to give.

In any case, when the conference rolled around this year and I saw the pairing of Welty and Joyce, I was pretty excited about it.  I had never really thought of them together, but when I saw the titles, putting them together seemed perfectly logical.  Both are acutely interested in place and how it shapes culture and the characters they present.  I expected to learn a great deal and maybe figure out how to put both stories into the course syllabus I'm always in the middle of tearing apart and putting together, a little like faithful Penelope and her permanently unfinished weaving.

What I did not expect was a sharp and personal revelation.

Both stories have at their heart a trapped wanderer who has to lose what is precious to become free.  There are two different reactions reflecting the drastically different world views of the two different authors behind them.

Both Welty and Joyce were themselves wanderers.  Welty left Jackson for a long time for school and travel, but she had that permanent and inexplicable need to return that seems to be something we take in with the waters here in Mississippi.  She came home to take care of her family when they needed her.

Joyce left Dublin, that big city that felt so small, and refused all aspects and claims of its culture and practices.  He refused even to kneel at his mother's deathbed.  He was constantly seeking something somewhere else, yet his writing stays eternally tied to Dublin, picking it apart piece by piece in his works. For him, there is a paralysis that settles over life in Ireland, something caused by politics, religion, family.  All of it was a crushing weight that froze an individual in place, and in his stories some who are trying to escape come to a realization that they are not what they thought they were, become "sadder and wiser" because of it.

Welty, too, feels the power of place over her characters.  Family ties and cultural expectations reach out and twine around her wanderers, too.  She has a gently satirical eye for all the human frailty and foolishness that is a part of every community.  Unlike Joyce, though, I think Welty can see that there is good mixed in with all that stuff, too.  Her Wanderer, Virgie, has gone out and come back.  She has given up years of her life trying to fulfill the requirements of family and cultural duty.  As the oldest daughter, it's her job to take care of her mother.  At the end, when all the ties of family and property and obligation fall away from her, unlike with Gabriel in "The Dead," a sense that she is going to be okay now comes.  She has been changed, shaped, by all her experiences and decisions, but there is hope at the end.

And that is a critical thing.  That is the thing that I kept missing in Joyce.  I enjoy his stuff, but at the end of the day, I miss that glimmer of hope.  Maybe it's a Mississippi thing.  I see the same difference when I compare Faulkner and Hemingway.  I love them both, but there is usually a comfort at the end of Faulkner that I cannot always find from Hemingway.

I have to believe that this possibility of hope and comfort *is* present if we will look for it.  I think Welty gives it to us maybe in part because she comes back to a place that is probably not exactly where she wanted to be but she lives in it and makes something of it.  Instead of it becoming a stagnation that destroys, for her, it becomes an exercise in seeking the good, finding it wherever it appears, the garden, her friends, the ridiculous, the beautiful, the everyday miraculous.

I want to be more like Welty.  I, too, feel completely trapped here.  I am a wanderer who came home, and I can feel the weight of obligations and cultural issues sitting on me like bricks on bird wings.  Sometimes, it almost feels like there's not enough air to breathe.  I don't want to be like Joyce, though, and just lump the baby and bathwater together as I toss it all out the window.  There *is* the possibility of hope and comfort.  There are lessons to be learned if I persist.

Hamlet (you knew he was showing up sooner or later, right?) says that "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."  I have been so focused on all the things I do not like about being home that I am forgetting there are a great many good things here, too.  I think it's time to adjust my focus.  Lincoln famously said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Time to pick Welty's Wanderer instead.

Oyster Crackers

When I was young, I went on a vacation with C., my best friend.  For some reason, we chose to stay in the room while my parents went out to eat.  We were tired or sunburned or something.  We had been on a semi-disasterous innertube rafting trip on a river in Tennessee, and we were likely exhausted.  I seem to remember a great deal of portage and falling off innertubes.  In any case, it seemed a good idea at the time. 

Only we got hungry.  And it went on so long.

The hotel was near nothing, so walking to a place to eat was impossible.  We looked through the room, but there was nothing and no vending machines.  All we had to eat was a bag of oyster crackers we'd bought to throw at the ducks in the nearby river.  So we'd eat them one at a time, laughing hysterically because there was nothing else to do.  We had no transport, no options.  We just waited, trusting that sooner or later, food would come because we'd been told that it would.

Many hours later, my parents returned, and they'd had quite a lot of trouble finding us (and themselves) food.  In the non-touristy place we were staying, apparently the sidewalks rolled up quite early.  We wound up with a couple of very nasty hamburgers in styrofoam takeaway containers. 

At some point in your life, I am pretty sure most of you, gentle readers, have had this hamburger.  It is the ultimate disappointment.  Dry-hard bun, pitiful cold patty, rubbery technicolor orange cheese, frightning tiny pickles, limp lettuce, and no condiments to speak of.  We ate them because we had no other options.  They weren't what we'd wanted (that restaurant had not been open), but they were what we had, so we made do.

Certain things have happened to me in the last two days that have impressed upon me the notion that I'm still sitting around waiting for things that were promised that just aren't going to come.  I'm still trying to tell myself that I can be content with something that is less than what I really wanted or expected.  I am tired of it.  It's time to do something about it.

I don't know what, and I don't know how yet, but it has been impressed upon me that I must start looking, or all I'm ever going to have are things that do not satisfy me.  Stop-gap has become my whole life.  I'm sure it was a gradual thing, something silent and stealthy slipping up like some form of comfortable quicksand, but this is enough.

I'm putting you on notice, world.  I am done with oyster crackers and piss-poor hamburgers.  I refuse to believe that's all there is.  I refuse to believe that's all I'm worth.  If that's all you can offer me, it's time for you to get to steppin'. 

Graceland

 After years of being curious, I finally got to go to Graceland last Wednesday.  My best friend and I got up, ate a hotel buffet breakfast, and braved cross-town traffic to arrive in an nearly-empty parking lot.

We paid our fee, passed through a queue and an unexpected photo stop, were handed the headphone set/audio guide that has become de rigeur at tourist attractions, and loaded onto a small shuttle bus which rolled across Elvis Presley Boulevard, through open gates, and up a small hill.
And there it was.

I am not sure what I was expecting.  This wasn't it.

Maybe I just expected the sort of excess that one sees in the homes of Hollywood elite today, flash, excess, too much of everything to be a truly livable space.  Instead, what was there was a home.  Large, spacious, elegant, but still a home.

Our little headphoned herd passed through the large front door and on either side of us were the home's public spaces.  There was a formal parlor, furnished in white, gold, and blue, on the right, and to the left, there was a formal dining room, the height of elegance for the time period in which it had been decorated.

We looked into a couple of bedrooms tucked down a small hall, and then we went around a corner to the kitchen.  It was here that the contrast of the two parts of the house really struck me.  The kitchen was described as the heart of Elvis's home, and I could tell the difference automatically.  It looked like a place real people could cook and eat and sneak down to raid the fridge in the middle of the night.   In fact, there was a stairwell that would allow just that. It looked like real people had at one time had real lives there, not just a set for photo ops or a display of conspicuous consumption.  

The downstairs rooms and even the famous Jungle Room felt the same way.  The private spaces of Graceland were comfortable and functional, full of expensive things, perhaps, but not a museum, not a slick spread in a magazine.  People used and enjoyed those rooms.

I liked it quite a lot.

The divisions he'd created, the idea of a public formal space in which he could meet those who perhaps were not close to him, is a very Southern thing.  The formal front parlor has been around for a long time.  I found it interesting that he had continued that tradition in his home.  He had enough money to have created anything he wanted, but what he created was a home.

Of course, the house itself is only a small part of the tour.  The outbuildings that have been converted or added are storehouses of memorabilia, costumes, personal items, and above all, gold and platinum records.  Trophies of all kinds were everywhere.

We finished up in the memory garden where the graves are.  People were snapping image after image of the graves, and to me, it felt a little odd.  To me, the graves were a private place, and the neverending parade of tourists, myself included, seemed a little inappropriate.  I admit that I've toured cathedrals of Europe, and I certainly took pictures of Dante's monument in Santa Croce and Shakespeare's in Holy Trinity, but this hit me differently.  I felt like I'd crawled over a fence and invaded someone's privacy.

We loaded back up, were carted across the road, and got off in the miniature theme park where we'd started.  We dutifully toured the automobile collection, browsed in shops, had our photo made with Elvis through the magic of Photoshop, got pressed pennies, bought the obligatory t-shirts.

We took a break and ate a hamburger and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with some of the best fries I've ever had in one of the two restaurants on the Graceland property, and the 50s diner decor included the obligatory beautiful Wurlitzer filled with Elvis's music.  We listened, ate, and took a minute to refuel. The whole time, though I couldn't stop thinking about what Elvis himself might have thought about this whole thing.  He had tried to make a home, a refuge for himself and those he loved.  He hadn't built a palace to excess, although he certainly had the financial means to do so.  This means that he treasured that space and what it represented.

So would he have been okay with what it has become?  Would he have seen it as just another part of the business, or would it have bothered him that we were traipsing through his kitchen, snapping photos of his formal parlor?

The question continued to resonate with me all the way back out to the now-filled parking lot and all the way down I-55 to my own refuge.  It lingers still.