Too Much TopGear, Perhaps

Yesterday, I was teaching Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be Soliloquy, and I compared this parody by Prince Charles

Well, frankly, the problem as I see it at this moment in time is whether I should just lie down under all this hassle and let them walk all over me, or whether I should just say OK, I get the message, and do myself in. I mean, let's face it, I'm in a no-win situation, and quite honestly, I'm so stuffed up to here with the whole stupid mess that I can tell you I've just got a good mind to take the easy way out. That's the bottom line. The only problem is, what happens if I find, when I've bumped myself off, there's some kind of... ah, you know, all that mystical stuff about when you die, you might find you're still - know what I mean?

to the original

To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered. 

I'm rather afraid that after that, in discussion, when we were talking about the purpose of the Crown Prince using the cliche, euphemism, and so forth, I then proceeded to compare the first to a Volkswagen and the second to a Mercedes S-class.   I could feel the hot blood filling my cheeks.  The image of a little Beetle creeping along behind a string of prowling super cars had just filled my head.

Somewhere, Jeremy Clarkson is smiling.....

 

Tumblr Again

I've added the RSS Feed from my Tumblr, A Perpetual State of Wonder, to this blog.  Now you can get all your Wheaties in one quick one-stop shopping trip.  (Well, if you're exceptionally geekish, that is, or interested in books or Doctor Who or Star Wars or fountain pens or quotes or the Beatles or whatever else happens to be drifting through my Tumblr obsessions at the time....Caveat Emptor.  Don't say you weren't warned.)

Something You Should Always Remember....

"Humor is also a way of saying something serious." ~ T.S. Eliot

Musing

I should be grading.

Instead, I stopped a moment to check in on the electronic universe I'm addicted to fascinated with.  I think after the kind of day/week/month I've had lately, I can take five minutes, right?

I've got Sara Tavares playing in the background, and she always makes me ponder.  Her voice is just something beyond. I've blogged my fascination with her before.  You can search for the entry if you like.  If you haven't heard her, proceed to Grooveshark with all due speed and take a listen to Balance.  It's the one I've got spinning now (if things on iTunes can said to "spin"...my age is showing with my choice of verbs, I suspect). 

Anyway, this isn't what I'm musing over.  I was just looking at this odd mishmash of stuff I have here on the blog: fountain pens and pottery jesters; lunar insanity and crushing despair; road trips and tripping down stairs; flights of fantasy and random nightmares; and I wonder who in the world comes on these disjointed little rambles with me and why.

I know why I'm here.  I write this thing to clear the noise out of my head, to put all the broken pieces on the table and shuffle them around until a pattern appears.  It has always worked better for me; I've always been more faithful to this than to a paper-and-pen journal.  Of course, there are things I cannot say here, certain things I have to code or shield since I'm doing this little soft-shoe in front of a live studio audience....but maybe that's not a bad thing, either.  Maybe the presence of somebody in beyond the footlights keeps me more honest, more thoughtful about what's falling out of my keyboard than I might be otherwise.  Nobody likes to turn out a bad performance, after all, not in front of a paying crowd.....

The sea of essays calls to me.  My five minutes are up, and this particular little frolic has to come to an end.  I'm going to tuck up the corners of my curiosity, fold it neatly, and slide it back in the drawer until there's time for it again.  But as I pick up the pen and turn to the task at hand, I have to admit that on some level I'm still wondering.....

The New Old Pen

Saturday, while I was out looking for something to take a picture of, I went to an antique mall I like to poke around in sometimes.  I found a book about Faulkner I've never seen before, enjoyed looking at all the fascinating things, but I was getting ready to leave since I really didn't have much money.  I idly asked the guy behind the counter if they had any fountain pens, rather expecting the answer to be no.

To my surprise, he led me over to a case with a tray of restored pens of various brands, took them out, and left me to look them over while he waited on other customers.  Many of them were unremarkable, plain black resin in various states of repair, nothing striking or memorable.  In the end compartment of the fabric-lined tray, however, shining like a little jewel was a garnet-colored 1940s Chatham with a tag that said it had been restored. 

The color and the unusual basket-weave pattern of the resin caught my attention.  It is a piston-fill, and I don't have any of those, so I was reluctant to get something I would have to fill from the bottle, but the more I looked at it and handled it, the more it felt like something that was a part of me.  I finally decided to buy it.

Today, I inked it for the first time, remembering that it was in my purse and that my Levenger ink was in my school desk.  It writes divinely; the 60-year-old-nib is better than any other that I have.  The color continues to enchant, even more lovely in the light of day than it was in the dimness of the shop.  It pleases me tremendously to have this beautiful old object brought to life in my hands and working at its appointed task once more. 

Another Short Piece of Fiction

Another writing exercise, more's the pity.

____________

You somehow conjured yourself into a random dream the night the blood moon filled the sky, pulling back the shower curtain to climb inside the spray with me.  All things changed.  I could not breathe.  There was too much to see, too much to feel to waste time with such trivial matters as breathing -- the water running in tiny sacred rivers down your shoulders, tributaries branching across the plains of your chest, that nameless something in your eyes as they seek mine.  And then your hand slid through my hair, pulling me against you, erasing the unnecessary and unbearable space between us.  For a moment that hung like a falling star, your mouth remained apart from mine.  Hunger bared its teeth, sharpened its claws.   My trembling fingers slid up to your cheek, over your bottom lip, and with water running like tears down our faces, finally, a kiss….

Stress Is...

It's that hand in the strings of my soul, winding them casually around careless fingers, idle play that tightens and frays all the cords inside.

It's a four-year-old turned loose on a precise old instrument in a quiet room, pounding away with fists and abandoned glee as the tuning slowly disappears.

It's the feather-light caress of a breeze caused by the whisper-soft touch of paper against paper in a pile high as an elephant's knee and rising like a tide of three-hole-punched-white-and-blue-lined waves coming again and again, endless as any ocean.

It's looking at a calendar with filled with missed deadlines, with other people's urgencies, pencil in hand, trying to make space for what used to be me, what used to be important, and realizing that there is not one millimeter left in which that which was once mine can be wedged in.

It's the precise and deliberate cleaning tool, a subtle knife that trails with loving and careful strokes down me, pairing me away to the essentials, and then rasps those away, too.  I give it life, purpose.  I am its maker, its art.

It's walking across the thin-ice, running-cracked-glass arena floor upon which I perform daily and both praying that I don't slip and somehow desiring that today be the day that it all shatters out from under me and lets me just finally feel the relief of falling free at last, devil-take-the-hindmost and every-man-for-himself.

It's watching with fascination as the machinery is wound and wound and wound, unable for no reason that is understandable to stop turning the key despite knowing what will happen, and still marveling at the musical sound it all makes as gears jam, springs reach their final point of tension, and the unsteady and relentless ticking is finally stilled.

Made with My Own Hands

He's not fired yet, but here is my Jester.  You may have noticed that he is now my new blog icon.  It just felt appropriate.  This is a detail shot taken with Instagram (one of my very favorite iPhone apps; if you don't have it, you should get it) before he was put in the kiln for bisque firing. 

I still haven't decided on a color scheme, but I leaning toward either something very neutral with a brown/bronze hat and black mask for him or a red hat and parti-colored body as an alternative.  I think he'll look good either way, but I don't know which will be better.

Making him has been great fun, so I can't wait to finish him up completely.  When he's totally done, I'll put up another image.  I hope you can suffer through this pride of craft and indulge me in it just a bit longer.

Another by Neruda - Sonnet XVII

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Translated by Mark Eisner

Neruda- "Clenched Soul"

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

Translated by W.S. Merwin

There is so much beauty here that it actually causes a lovely little pain inside.  

Signs

I went out with my camera yesterday to try to take some pictures.  I couldn't find anywhere to turn my lens.  I drove all over four towns, and I took only four pictures. 

The driving of course was the important part.  Driving clears my head sometimes.  I drove and thought, drove and prayed, looking for a sign about what comes next.  I found myself lost in backstreets that led to unexpected but auspicious places.  I pulled up in parking lots and sat, looked at buildings.

I was looking for a sign.  Well, I guess literally and figuratively, something to photograph and something to guide me, both.  On my way out of one of the towns, I think I saw it.

When I got home, I sent an email to someone I have known for a long time.  I'll see what happens next.  Regardless of the outcome, a curious sense of lightness has come over me.

Optimized for the Mobile World

If you're on a mobile device and everything is suddenly stripped down and you're thinking, What the...yeah, you're in the right place.  Blogger now allows me to optimize this for mobile viewers.  Now you can view my sage ramblings on your iBerries with greater ease.  Or, if you like squinting at the dangerous sheep, you can click at the bottom and look at the regular web view instead....Everybody else, carry on.

Sign, Please

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later." ~ Mitch Hedberg

I have to make a decision about something.  I need a sign, something that will help me know that I'm choosing the right thing.  I wish making choices was easier.  I wish I were wiser, that I had more knowledge or sense, more courage or brains or whatever it is that I apparently am lacking....

Wouldn't it be great it life just came with a map or a manual?  I would settle for a "preview of coming attractions" at this moment.  I'm so scared of running away from something I'm supposed to stay with for the wrong reason.  Ridiculously, I'm also afraid that I'm stubbornly clinging to something I should let go of for reasons that are not sound, either.

So what's the answer?  I wish I knew.  Oh, how profoundly I wish that I knew.....

Run Like Hell

(with apologies to Floyd, the lyrics of whose song have almost nothing to do with this post)

If I could have contrived a way for the marble floors to have opened up and swallowed me, I would have made it happen today.  It started well; I like Thursdays.  I had danish for breakfast.  I had Diet Mountain Dew back in my pantry and fridge.  I was cheerful.  I was listening to the Beatles' blue album.  I got to talk to a friend who, although she's in the same building, I rarely see.

Then it went right straight to hell.

Less and less am I able to put all the pieces back together.  More and more do I believe the bad things.  There's a line in some movie (I have the horrible feeling I'm about to quote Pretty Woman, but I'm not quite sure...) that says something about how people can tell you something good but the bad things are easier to believe.  That's where I am lately.  The bad things keep coming, and even though I'm trying not to gripe and whine (believe it or not, I really am), they keep knocking me to my knees.  It's getting harder and harder to get up.

Today, I didn't even want to.  Staying down seemed both right and good.  If down is where they want me so badly, maybe down is where I am supposed to be. After all, if I get up to fight again, I'm just going to get hit again.  What's the point of that?  It hurts and the effort involved in dragging my bleeding self back to my unsteady feet isn't going to be appreciated by anybody but myself....

When it was over, I sat very still for awhile, just thinking.  A friend came in and we talked.  I gathered my things, and we left, she to her home, I to mine.  I just ran away.  Despite the mountains of things I needed to accomplish, I couldn't do another thing, soul-sick as I am right now.  I'm going to watch a movie, see if there's anything edible in the kitchen, and look for joy in the small things that surround me.  I do know I do have to get myself back up again.  I just don't know how I'm going to do it.

Jester

I'm building probably the best piece I've ever done in pottery right now.  I finished up the handbuild tonight; he is now drying.  Next week, I'll see if I can clean the greenware piece without doing damage.  I'll take a picture when I get it cleaned before it goes into the kiln.  I can't help but be proud of it.  It's worlds away from the little cat I have here on the shelf of my living room, yet they are related. 

I love hand building more every time I sit down to do it.  It is so satisfying to see the whimsies of my mind come to life by the effort of my hands. 

Now We Are 35

Maybe that quote doesn't really work when you're not 10 anymore....

I woke up feeling so cheerful and happy.  I don't know if it's just because it's my birthday or if it's something else altogether.  Whatever it is, I hope it lasts. 

I've had birthday greetings coming in via text and FaceBook since just before midnight last night.  It's meant so much to me that people have taken the time to drop me a note.  Some of my former students have said very sweet things, better really than any gift.  It's nice to know they remember me, that what I gave them is still something they value.

Today itself was a wonderful day.  I slept late, had lunch at Olive Garden with my parents (eggplant Parmesan...yay,yay,yay), and then my Mom and I went junkin'.  I found a beautiful wooden box for my handkerchiefs and a couple of other things as well.  Mom took a picture of me in a silly hat at the antique mall. It has been a thoroughly peaceful day. 

Tomorrow will be a return to "the real world."  I'm going to fight to hold on to this feeling though.  Maybe it's finally mine for keeps.

The Birthday Indulgences, 2011 Edition

In a few hours, I will be 35.  God.  How did that happen?

I'm sort of excited about this birthday.  It's weird.  Usually I get in a grim black funk about them or have a moment of introspection and move on, but for this one, I kind of want to go to a place that does the whole sombrero on the head thing and make them sing to me.  It's odd.

Thirty-five.  Half my life, realistically.  I should be in a navel-gazing cloud of despair over all I haven't done, over where I am now, blah-blah-blah, but instead, for no good reason, I'm sort of giggling and amused.  In four hours, I will quite officially "no longer be young," if ever I was.

Since I instituted the "Week of Senseless Indulgences" a few years ago to fend off birthday blues, I have carefully plotted and planned to make sure I have neat things near my birthday.  This year, I think I outdid myself. Of course, I have my earrings which were my big gift to myself this year, but I also went to the Eudora Welty conference Friday, something I always enjoy, and that intellectual stimulation made me feel like a person with a brain again instead of a dead teacher minion.

After the conference, I went to Target and just wandered up and down the aisles, on nobody's timetable but my own.  I bought myself my favorite type of pencil, the gravity-feed Dr. Grip (if you don't have one, you need one and can get one or at least take a look at the specs on one by clicking on the helpful Amazon box at the left....they're a little hard to find....), and a Beatles t-shirt.  I got a new scented candle for my classroom.  Little things.  Little things.

I finally remembered to return two movies to NetFlix that I've had forever, and I took the time to watch two more that I've wanted to see for a long time.  It's been nice to have something not a rerun to watch in the evenings.  

Today, I went back to Jackson to see my best friend for the first time since school started.  We went to MugShots and had big, unhealthy burgers laden with blue cheese.  We roamed around Pier1 and the Craftsmen's Guild Center.  It was a good day.  More little things.

Tomorrow, on the actual day, I think Mom and Dad are going to take me out to eat, and we'll get to spend time together.  Mom said something about going junkin', and there's a show at the Riley Center I might try to pick up a ticket for if I feel like it and there are any left.

Little things.  Little things.

Maybe I shouldn't keep all these little things bottled up for just this time in February. Maybe I should focus on trying to have every week, every month be filled with Senseless Indulgences.  Life would certainly be a lot more pleasant if I did....  Something to think about as I start the second half of my life, perhaps.

Snow

We may or may not have snow tonight.  Some flakes are falling now, but after all the recent cries of Wolf, I am something of a skeptic.  I will believe in the whiteness when I see the whiteness. 

It would be nice to have.  We haven't had snow in a long time, not a real snowfall.  I'd love to get out and take snow pictures now that I have a good camera.  The last pictures I took were just with my iPhone.
 
I miss the snow from Indiana.  I have crazy memories of a huge mass of graduate students, a bunch of cheap sleds bought at KMart, and a big snowy hill....  Of course, I also have not-so-happy memories of creeping across campus trying not to be the obligatory student-on-his/her-backside on the ice-slicked sidewalks since no salt could be used on IU's campus...  It wasn't funny to see somebody's legs go flying out from under them after you had it happen to you once.

As I listen to the icy drops click against the window, I wonder what my world will look like tomorrow.  I wonder if I'll have to go to work.  I guess all the mysteries will be revealed soon enough.

Heard on the Radio

"Jesus loves you, so I'm gonna, too.  Here's a CD."  ~ DJ on Air1 in reference to the idea that this Valentine's Day we should attempt to focus on loving those around us who get on our nerves or who are generally "unloveable" and find real ways to show it. 

It made me smile.  Then it made me think.

Recipes

We were headed out of my great-aunt's funeral when my aunt asked me if I had my Granny's recipe box.  It's a small wooden card file that she kept handwritten and clipped recipes in.  I do.  It's the source of her homemade macaroni and cheese recipe and the rice pudding recipe I pull when I feel bad and want something not at all healthy but deeply comforting.  My uncle wanted a cake he remembered Granny making, an apricot nectar cake, and she asked me to look for the recipe. 

Today I got around to looking for it.  After a day of cleaning in an attempt to try to bring some order to the neverending landslide of chaos with which I seem to be surrounded at all times, I opened the cabinet, took out the little brown wood box , and sat down in a chair in the living room to look for the requested article.  There are probably more than a hundred recipes in the box, and there is some order, but not a great deal, to them.  Granny's neatly typed cards are in with irregularly sized pieces of yellowed newpaper clipped from the EMEPA newsletter or the local daily paper. 

As I flipped through them with the tips of my finger, I saw recipes from other members of my family, many of them gone now, from members of my community, the august ladies of the church, and I smiled as I thought of those women and those particular dishes.  They were famous for some of those dishes.  Whenever we had a churchwide fellowship or a family reunion, they could always be counted on to bring those specialties. 

I don't cook like that.  Few women of my generation do,  I think.  It's not that I can't cook; I have the skills.  It's that I rarely take the time needed to assemble the ingredients, use the machinery, do all the intermediary steps that produce the glorious final results.  Looking through the box made me sad, and not only for the lost ladies.  I always miss them.  It made me sad for the way I live.  Even though I choose it for its convenience in my hectic and tiring life, sometimes I can't help but think "modern convenience" has lost something in its microwave translation. 

I typed up the recipe for Apricot Nectar Cake, converting the old Underwood print to modern fonts and a Word document, but I also pulled three or four others and typed them up, too, one for the barbeque chicken I remember her making in her crockpot, one for the buttermilk pie I love and can't get anywhere else, and one for the self-crusting fruit cobblers which are the fastest and simplest of all the Southern desserts.  All of the recipes I chose are easy, all should mix up quick, and I think that all of them will yield leftovers for days and days.  I am going to try to blend in a little of what's in that little brown box and see if I can't take some of that pride those ladies had back into the preparation of meals.  It seems too important a thing to leave undone.

Luxuries

This morning, for the first time in more than a week, I feel good.  Really, really good. 

I still have on one of my favorite pair of snuggly flannel pajamas and am buried under a warm fuzzy red blanket on the couch.  Pearl, my big grey cat, is curled up on the back of the couch half-asleep.  TopGear is on TV, and the weather outside is cold and uninviting but the sun is trying to peek out. 

Unintentionally, I slept 12 hours last night.  I sort of dozed off watching TV sometime after nine and woke up about two, went to bed properly and slept until nine again.  I think I woke up around 5:45, just my mind checking to see if it was a school day, but I dozed back off.  Apparently, a feast of sleep is what my body needed. 

I suppose, too, it could have been the good meal I had last night, nothing microwaved or fast food.  Or the chocolate.  I got a box of Belgian chocolate at Tuesday Morning when I was there buying a suitcase yesterday, and it may be the best chocolate I've ever had.  I don't know why this particular batch is so good, but I had some last night, and it made me very happy. 

In a little while, I will get up, take a long hot shower, put on my favorite worn pair of jeans, a tshirt that makes me laugh, some Chucks, eat a chicken salad sandwich, grab my camera, and go junkin.   Or maybe I'll brave the crowds at Wal-Mart to get supplies.  Even that doesn't seem onerous today.

I know these little luxuries don't rate very high on anybody else's list, but they sure are going a long way toward making me feel good just now.

Two Thoughts about History

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~ Voltaire

"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." ~ Edward Gibbon

Cause and effect?

Waxwings

I was grading during my planning period when my colleague from across the hall stuck her head in and told me to open my blinds and look at the tree just outside my window.  She said, "I know you'll want to see them.  They're like Christmas ornaments...."  The cedar waxwings were making their annual stopover in the cherry tree that marks the changing seasons in stately grace within touching distance from my classroom windows.

There were probably more than a hundred of them.  They were busily stripping the tiny berries from the tree, twittering in that squeaky, rusty hinge noise they have, hopping and gliding, and largely taking no notice of anyone, especially me behind my pane of glass.  I stood and watched them for a long time.  I love all birds, but their particular beauty caught me today, their feisty little crest, their charming black mask, the sulfur yellow dipped tip of their long graceful tails, in such sharp contrast to the tranquil colors of their bodies, and there, just at the tip of their wings, a tiny shocking splash of scarlet, almost like random drops from a trailing paintbrush. 

A couple of them seemed to be watching me watch them, tiny heads turning in bemused curiosity as I tried to get my iPhone to focus on them.  I had started to take the Nikon to school this morning as I need to take a photo or two of the National Honor Society for the yearbook, but since the weather was despicable, I decided not to take it out into all that nasty slush.  I was kicking myself for not obeying that impulse as I watched the tiny feathery clowns preen and pose in the water-draped branches of the tree.  Everywhere I looked, there was a picture. 

I will take my camera Monday even though I know they probably will already be gone on their way.  Who knows what else might appear that I will regret not being able to save and share?  At least I have the waxwings in my memory.  I can save them there if nowhere else.

Good Things

School was dismissed about 1:00 because of foul weather. Because the students left early, I got to eat lunch by myself in the privacy of my own room.  I didn't have to go through the ordeal of sitting through the Hell of 3rd Lunch as I've come to think of it counting the minutes until I could run away to freedom.  I turned on some Ella Fitzgerald on iTunes, ate my chicken salad sandwich, and read an article on MentalFloss.com.  It was surprisingly sweet.

After a slickish drive home, I checked the mail early, but there was nothing there.  I waited until near dark, went out to put my car under the shed, and took the opportunity to surreptitiously drive back down to the mailbox.  I had to take my MagLight and use it like a club to break open the rime of ice that was sealing the box shut, but inside was the newsletter from my power company and the package holding my diamond earrings made by Artifactum.

They're lovely.  Really, really lovely.  The diamonds in them may not be worth a lot (or they may, what the hell do I know?), but I love the way they look.  They are the perfect size, and they will easily go with things that are simple or fancy.  I am extremely happy with them.

My fountain pen is here, too.  It came the day of the massive migraine, so I haven't written about it yet.  I've been cheering myself up with it for the past two days.  It's a gorgeous thing, cream with deep purple and hints of chocolate swirling through it.  I find myself just sort of picking it up and absently running it through my fingers, watching the light play on the resin.  It's ridiculously lovely.  Beautiful, well-made, practical things that one can use everyday; there really are not enough of these items in the world.

My other good thing is not an object at all, but rather a long-hoped-for opportunity.  I found out that I'm going to be able to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and while I won't talk much about it here right now, it represents a professional step forward for me as well.  It makes me feel valued and valuable, maybe a little bit like the rough diamonds in my ears.

Maybe tonight, then, I won't have nightmares.  I can only think of one thing that would be better than the things I've put here now, and that, unfortunately, is not possible in any way at all.  I will settle for the happinesses I have been blessed with.  They are bountiful enough right now.

Disquiet

I woke up to the sound of strong winds at two a.m from bad dreams.  My grandmother was in the hospital again, and so was I.  Granny was trying to tell me something important, and we kept being wheeled down those horrible anonymous and endless hospital corridors.  I do not remember what it was we said; as always with this dream, I keep thinking that I should remember, that it was important. 

This is probably just the product of my stupid brain trying to cope mixed with the death of my great-aunt, one of Granny's sisters, last Friday.  I don't know.  All I know is that I'm tired. 

Migraine and Rain

It started out as stressful Tuesday.  Everything blew up, got lost, ran out, shut down, and wasn't ready this morning.  My head started hurting before school started, but because it was a low-grade pain, I ignored it thinking that it would loosen up as the day went on. You really would think I'd know better by now, wouldn't you?

A missed planning period kept the pressure twisting, and outside, the weather patterns were shifting into something horrible.  By the time we got to the end of third period, the pain was intense.  I tried using acupressure points, lowering the temperature, and so forth, but nothing did any good. Fourth period came in, got settled, and I took a Maxalt. 

Usually Maxalt will stop migraines for me.  It has been very effective.  Today, however, it did nothing.  It could have been peppermint for all the good it did me.  I was doubled over and crying by the middle of the period.  I've never had that happen in class.  The students in that tiny little class cut the lights off, and I sent one to go get my administrator.  I called somebody to come get me, and I started packing up.  I had to leave.

My advisory class came in and it was terrible.  The lights were cut back on.  One of the kids actually said that he was glad I had a headache so they didn't have to write an essay today.  I know they're young, but really, how insensitive can a person be?  There I was with pain so bad I couldn't see, and then there was that...

I wound up being sort of half-carried downstairs by the nurse and security to sit in the nurse's office and wait for my ride.  I napped until he could get there, and then I finally got home.  I took a phenergan and slept for six hours.  Now I'm up to eat dinner, etc. The pain is finally gone. 

My doctor is finally going to refer me out to another neurologist.  I don't know that there is anything that can be done, really, but after seeing the non-existent thing on the floor last month and this now, I think I need to get the gray matter checked out.  That probably means a wonderful trip into the claustrophobia-inducing MRI hellbox, but I'm just not going to think about that right now.  They can just drug me well and do what they need to.

Landmark

The Fool's Cap Map of the World

This is my one-thousand-and-first post.  The landmark event slipped up on me without my realizing it.  I feel that I should have done something to mark the occasion, swept up the dust in the corners, polished the brass a bit, should have put on my dress motley and my good cap at least.  For six years and a thousand posts now, I've been using this little corner of the electronic universe as a safeguard for my admittedly dubious sanity.  For everyone who comes along on this wild and whirling tour, even if it's only to see what happens when all the wheels finally do come off, I can but say thank you.  It's been a good place to dance.

Buy Your Own Diamonds

When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.  ~Peter Marshall

I approach thirty-five on dainty winged feet.  

Actually, I just wanted to write that.  I don't do anything on dainty winged feet.  I stumble toward thirty-five like somebody running an endurance race who, in full stride, hung a toe on a root they should have seen and avoided....


Got that picture of grace in your head now?  Good, good....


A few years ago, I got tired of waiting for marriage to bring me a KitchenAid mixer, and, so, when February rolled around, I took myself and my pitiful bank account to a local mercantile and I brought home the lovely bright red beast that gleams quietly on my kitchen cabinet, maker of pound cake batter thick enough to use as a mortar for brick.  

That was the same birthday I got tired of waiting for Fiestaware, the dishes I had always wanted, and so I began to collect sets of them on each payday.  I now eat my breakfasts, rare lunches at home, and dinners off the same type of dishes my Nana had, cheerful, sturdy, bright pops of color.  Just opening the cabinet or emptying the dishwasher makes me happy.


This year, I stop waiting for diamonds.


This year, thirty-four fades into thirty-five.  There are no beaux lining up and pining away at my door.  I've watched girls who were literally infants when I was in high school get married recently, and I'm done waiting for the bolt from the blue to strike here.  For whatever reason, although I am blessed with many other good things, that good thing is not going to be mine.  Therefore, I'm buying my own damned diamonds.  


Not a ring.  I don't want that.  It would be a little too much insult added to injury, if you follow the logic there.  There will never be a diamond ring on these hands apparently.  I have, however, always wanted a pair of diamond studs.  You can read my previous post about the ones that Artifactum makes on Etsy, made from uncut diamonds, unusual and lovely.  That is what I've bought myself.  


They are my way of making peace with thirty-five.  If nobody else will give them to me, then I love me enough to give them to myself. 

Absolutely an Exercise in Fiction

Testing out my fiction skills.  Please don't take this to be anything other than a writing exercise.  Obviously, if it were, there would be other bloggage to accompany it....

The sky is a cerulean vault overhead, and we’re inside a paperweight, a snowglobe filled with verdure.  You look like you belong here, but then again, you look like you belong everywhere.  There is no place I cannot imagine you fitting perfectly, no place I can imagine you looking wrong or unnatural.  Just now, you’re here in this green kingdom, though, listening to the wind sing high and soft in the trees, listening to the distant argument of certain raucous crows. You lie on this soft old white feedsack quilt in the middle of a summer-green field, one tanned arm behind your head.  That old t-shirt shows just a little of your stomach, enough to make ripples but not enough actually to incite action; your feet are bare at the end of strong legs, toes curling and uncurling.   We don’t talk.  I don’t need or even want words right now.  I need to watch you watching the world for a little while, absorbing it, breathing it in.  I need to watch the sun run its warm golden fingertips over your face, watch you turn into its touch, see those clever eyes close as you savor the sensation.  

You shift and stir, making a small noise of contentment.  Then you look at me.  All pretense of hiding behind my book is gone, and you know me well enough to know that even though the paperback is open in my hands, the only thing I’ve been reading for quite some time now is the changing expression on your face.  That little smile, the one that comes on slowly and is somehow something feline, curls your lips and your eyes turn a little amused, a little bold.  I return my gaze to my book, try to ignore the way that grin makes my pulse do outrageous things.  Your head tilts, and you idly trace the tip of one finger across the long scar on my foot, move up to the ones on my knee.  Touch.  Touch.  Touch.  Again, again, a message in tactile Morse until I finally lower the book again.  The amusement in your gaze is gone, and when our eyes meet, your hand closes gently on my leg.  I look away, taking my time, slip the little bronze bookmark onto the page, close it, lay it aside, and sink into green, gold, white, and blue.

Happy, D--n It.

If you want to be happy, be.  ~Leo Tolstoy

Yesterday, I decided that I was just going to be happy.  Come hell or high water, I was NOT going to allow the despairing blackness that has been sucking at my soul these past days and weeks to continue to pull me down.   I got up after a good night's rest, had a very decent breakfast courtesy of my trip to Sam's the night before, donned my Kentucky Shakespeare Festival sweatshirt, and went to school.


I listened to the Beatles on the way to school.  It's just about impossible to be upset when you listen to the Beatles.  I had music on at school, too, until class started.  Music always helps.  I made some clear-cut lists to get stuff processed, took care of as many little tasks as I could before school actually got started, and even graded entire classes of multiple choice tests during the class periods they were taken in.  


Most importantly, every time something stupid happened, I reminded myself to get perspective.  Reminded myself about what I am and am not responsible for.  What is and is not my fault, is and is not under my personal control.  I took a step back to consider what was worth the surge of emotion involved in feeling bad or angry, in allowing something to control me through that chain jerk of response.  


By the time late evening arrived, I was listening to the Rolling Stones and finishing up piles of work.  I left with a satisfied feeling.  The day was good because I grabbed it from the teeth of ridiculousness and ran away with it.  I'm going to have to keep doing that, I suppose, if I want any sort of peace at all.

Blackberries

I bought blackberries at Sam's.  I couldn't resist them.  They were little fragments of summer in their plastic box, and I desperately needed some summer right now to combat the cold and grey January days I've been having lately.

Blackberries grow wild in bramble thickets at our place in the country.  The past two years, I've missed them, either because of my knee or the AP reading, but usually, I can walk down the path to our shack and get my fill of them. The flavor of them is amazing.  They're tiny, but tart and sweet, perfection.  I can pick handfuls of them, and they stain everything when they're ripe, my hands, my mouth, the tails of summer t-shirts I use as makeshift collection baskets.  I eat them all and then try to suck the incriminating purple off my fingertips.

These storebought berries don't exactly have the same zing to them, but they're a welcome fruit diversion.  As I was waiting for my rice to cook tonight, I opened the little box and just ate them straight from the container with only a light rinse as a garnish.  Their taste was like a little memory, a reminiscence of the summer I yearn for.  I'm going to keep eating berries and daydreaming about summer days on the porch of my shack with a book and a camera and nothing but a golden afternoon with the sound of wind in the trees and the tall grass rippling before me.  Maybe Time will be merciful, move quickly, and those days will be back here again soon.

Bottom

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.  ~William Shakespeare, Othello

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.  ~Orson Scott Card

Yesterday, I hit the hard, rocky bottom.  All my optimism died.  All my hope, all my ability to see good in the situations, all of the deep wells I pull from to keep going dried up on me and left me with nothing.  

It happens sometimes despite my best efforts to the contrary.  I can't always juggle, can't always shuffle step, can't always pretend away all that's making me sad or crazy or tired isn't there.  

I think I used to be better at it than I am now, though.  And that worries me, frankly.  My students see that I'm sad or tired, and they comment on it sometimes.  I don't want them to know it.  I want to hide it better than I am or not be so stressed all the time for them.  Being that person for them is just wrong.  I need to do better, be better for them.  Their mood so often comes from mine, and I have to be very careful about what I'm putting out there.


So I'm trying to pick myself up off the floor.  I got my hair cut.  I bought a silly shirt with Yoda on it at Wal-Mart.  I bought food, real food.  I left school early the last two days rather than stay until the darkness wrapped the building in its fist and crushed it.  I'm watching Firefly, some of my favorite episodes.


I have to get up.  I have to stumble to my feet.  If I don't, then I'm no use to anybody, not to my students, not to myself. 

 

Mud Heals

My pottery class started back tonight.  I'm now in Ceramics II, which means, presumably, that I know what I'm doing.  (Ha.)

I put my new nifty noiseblocking earbuds in (bought because, quite frankly, I didn't know where in the world my regular set had gotten off to this afternoon), set my iPod to shuffle some Beatles, and started handbuilding 30 minutes before class was actually set to begin.  I had a design in mind that came to me sometime early this morning when I was getting dressed.  I have a necklace with a smiling moon face on it and quote from Lennon's lyrics, "And we all shine on/like the moon and the stars/and the sun..." on it.  I started kicking around the idea of an intricate moon face then, and it grew from there.

I got the piece built.  It took me about two and a half hours, and the time I spent lost in the application and addition of bits of clay to the circle base I started with was sheer bliss.  The face itself is the best one I've done yet; if it doesn't crack and if it survives the kiln, I think it will be nice.  A lot is going to depend on the glaze, and I can't make up my mind on how to approach it yet -- brights, underglazes, subtle, sparing, total, gloss overglaze....the options bewilder me.  Maybe looking at it again next week will help bring clarity.

It's amazing how good I feel when I'm working in clay.  There is no stress (unless I'm trying to keep something from killing itself and other people on the wheel), only the satisfaction and challenge of trying to make what's in my hands match what's in my head.  I honestly think I could do it all day long.  Maybe I have what Mr. G. calls "mud in the blood."  I kind of like the thought of that.

Dreams

Normally, I wouldn't write before school, but I'm just feeling weird, and maybe putting it here will make some of the bits and pieces fall into place so I can identify the cause and I can get on with it all today. I went to bed reading E.E. Cummings, feeling fairly peaceful or at least no more stress than usual on a day before the work week begins. I woke up with a head full of dreams and a stomach full of acid, neither of which is conducive to a good Monday.

The Topamax, amongst its other lovely characteristics, almost always keeps me from remembering my dreams most of the time.  I've always been a vivid dreamer; my cousin L. used to tell me if he could somehow hook something up to record what I dreamed, he'd be rich, presumably from stuff in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genres of fiction.  I recognize that mostly my dreams are my brain's way of "filing" the day away, but sometimes... sometimes...

I have some that repeat.  They're usually bad.  I have the one where deceased members of my family appear to tell me that something bad is going to happen.  I have the one where I'm on a big ship, something Titanic-esque, that sinks and one of those propellers comes down smack-dab on top of me.  And last night, I added a lesser disturbing one, not a wake-up breathless or crying, but wake up sick one, the "I have to get somewhere and can't" dream. 

I was late for an international flight.  Everything was going wrong.  I was trying to get back to the place where I was going to be living and working....the destination kept changing...sometimes I think maybe it was Costa Rica...and nobody around me was concerned.  Despite the fact that I had planned carefully, my group would not leave the hotel. Things broke down.  Bags tore or just disappeared.  My passport tried to lose itself.  The concourses literally lengthened as I was running down them in an airport that looked like a cross between Atlanta and the one in Bangkok. 

My cat woke me up before I ever found out whether or nor I got where I was supposed to be going despite all the obstacles, but since I think the next thing in the arsenal of delay was probably going to be an army of clowns pouring out of the floor grating, I'm not sorry she did.  Where does this stuff come from?  I feel ill.....

Fragile

I just sat with one of my friends in the CCU waiting room.  Her dad, my pastor, is in.  He's bleeding internally, and they can't find the source to stop it.  He's hemorrhaging so fast that they've given him four pints of blood so far, and that's still not enough.  He's stable right now, but they have to scope him again tomorrow to try to find the hole and finally stop the bleeding for good. 

My friend has been through some terrifying moments since last night when her father collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance, but she's holding up.   That's what you do in these situations.  You "hold up."  You sit in various rooms you don't really see, consume food you don't really taste, say things you don't really remember, and wait for the next update. Your heart stops with every ring of the CCU phone, and you pray, pray, pray that your doctor does not walk in the door unless you are looking for him/her. 

I did what I could do, sat with her, talked, relived silly stories to take her mind off it, all things she's done for me when I've been the one on those low-backed and supremely comfortless couches in that self-same room.  I stayed for a little more than an hour, I think, would have stayed longer, but I'd ridden in with my father, and he was ready to go home.  I know what happens when the distraction disappears.  The possibilities close in again.  Your brain cuts on again, and you wait.  And wait.  And wait. And think.

It's the worst part of any crisis, really.  Those moments when all the frantic action is done and there is absolutely nothing you can do to help or harm, when all your intelligence, all your skill, all that you are, personally, is useless to help somebody you love.  If you're a Type-A, hands-on, leadership type (and she and I are much from the same mold), you long to be able to do something, anything, roll a bandage, hold a bedpan....something....anything...so you don't feel so helpless.  So you don't feel like the whole thing is just spiraling completely out of control. 

And you know that it is.  Your higher mind knows that the situation is totally beyond you, maybe even beyond the people in the white coats and scrubs who surround you, beyond anybody but the hands of God Almighty.  But that action would help, would give you at least the illusion of something like control....  It's hard to be reminded of how fragile we are, how little we can really do when the chips are down and the situation is at its worst.  I will never forget that grey shadow on my own father's face as we raced in to the emergency room on that June afternoon.  I know my friend is never going to forget holding her own father waiting for the ambulance to arrive, wondering....  

Once you've had that brush with the horrible, terrible, shattering fragility of somebody you love and survived it, you just can't look at things the same way again.  Priorities change.  Humility comes.  Your own place in the universe shifts.  You both hold them closer and learn to let them go a little.  You learn that you're not in control of everything even if you try to be, and that sometimes things can come out okay even if you can't do a damn thing about any of it. 

And if loss comes, there are lessons to be learned from that, too.  Lessons about endings and pain and how we can pick the bits and pieces of ourselves up, how to maintain, how to remember, how to keep, how to let go....

I am praying for my friend and her father.  I will do whatever I can to help her out during this time.  I hope he's well again soon.  I would have wished for her that this time had never come, but now that it's here, I hope that all the things that come from it are good things, unexpected blessings, and that none of the more painful things that come from these brushes with fragility have to come now.

I Like This....

ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter....
~Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr., "kidnap poem"

Pen Lust

This is Levenger's new Plumpster in Pearl.  I want it.  I need it.  It will be mine.  Look at the colors, the swirls of grey and purple....  It is simply gorgeous.  If I met it walking down the street, I would pin it to the wall and kiss it senseless.....


"But," you're saying to yourself (just a little nervously or with that tolerant eye roll that you save just for me), "it's just a pen.  Calm down, please, before I have to get the authorities to give you more 'happy pills.'  I don't get it.  What's the big deal?"

First, have you ever heard of hyperbole?  And second, no.  It's not "just a pen." 

It's a work of art. It's a tribute to the importance of writing as something that should take thought, have value, be done with an instrument, not a disposable stick.   It's a vessel that can be filled and filled again, ink flowing in with inspiration. It says that the act of writing is important enough to have something permanent dedicated to it, something that is cherished and maintained instead of casually cast off. It's the choice of someone who writes things that matter, even if the items themselves are ephemeral.

It's a testament to the fact that even putting a signature on a document should be an act done with deliberation, and yes, can even be a celebration if what's in the hand is not something mundane and joyless to start with.  I've seen it a million times.  Take up one of these pens, and you will enjoy writing more.  It is inevitable.  There is something about them that enchants, that demands that writing become a little luxury instead of a chore.

It's a minuscule weapon, a tiny sword, forged to fight one's way through the thousand soul-killing tasks that assail a person during the day.  Looking down at the beauty of the materials whether they are metals, resins, or woods, feeling the weight in the fingertips, unscrewing the cap, and moving the nib across the page makes even a grocery list a ritual, a pleasure.  There is no paperwork so onerous that it cannot be lightened by the use of a lovely pen. 

So no, this isn't just a pen.  It's not just an inkstick; after all, any fire-blackened stick can scratch letters on a surface.  These are elegant aids for thinking; they are weapons against the trivialities of the day; they are devices of reclamation and revelation of the soul.  

All of those things considered, and all of them true, or at least granting that they are true for me, maybe there wasn't quite as much hyperbole at the beginning as you thought, then, was there?

Duh

Just took down a post, so if you're looking for it, you're not nuts.  I am.  I reposted a poem I had already put up back in October.  How silly of me.  I can't believe the mental gearings are so stripped out that I can't even remember what I've already put here and haven't. 

Well. 

Yeah, actually, maybe I can. Crap.  My brain is turning into mush.

Anyway, the poem definitely wasn't good enough to be up twice despite the fact that there were some significant revisions to it.  I won't inflict it on my "readership" (and yeah, I'm lacing that with heavy irony, would you rather I call you a captive audience or a mercy mission?) more than once.  Sorry, world.  I will strive to be more interesting.  Only....My motley is a little faded and worn just now, and I think most of the bells have fallen off my cap while I was busy with other stuff.....

Worn

I've started to dread certain things, certain conversations.  I've started to dread certain places, certain people for the repetitive nature of the references that wear on me.  I never expected to fall out of the world so quickly, to find myself stranded by what I suppose is some sort of generation gap so fast.

I find that frequently I care nothing for the topics under discussion, for the endless review of TV shows that apparently fascinate and obsess most of the others.  It does not matter to me what happens on American Idol or Gray's Anatomy.  Really.  And I get very tired of hearing how "daring" some people are when they head out for an evening at the most generic and poorly-staffed of chain restaurants and a dish they've never had before.  Is this what an exciting life is?  I've never thought so.  And yet, lately, this is what I'm surrounded by. 

It all just makes me feel so damn old.  Or strange.  Or both.  Does nobody talk about the things I do anymore?  Isn't there anyone who wants or views or does the things that I enjoy?  Am I passe or just horribly out of place?  I don't introduce topics of conversation anymore because I got tired long ago of the blank stares and the long, painful, awkward pauses before the return to the over-bright trivialities.  I don't talk about books or "odd cuisine" or even really ideas anymore in those places because it seems like everything has devolved to what Orwell's character Syme called "duckspeak."  (And yes, right now everything is 1984-ese because I'm rereading it for the umpty-umpth time...) I don't know how to resolve it. I just know that it makes me feel left out and worn down.

Don't get me wrong.  I have friends who "get me."  I do have people I can talk to about things and who don't make me feel like a reject and an oddity.  But they're getting fewer and farther between.  I hate this.

Reading Fool

I found this, and it just struck me as perfect for me.  My personal ex libris is a reading fool, more ornate than this one, sitting in a library with his shoes off and his feet up enjoying a moment away from his duties entertaining the rest of the world with a book.  I love the detail and the color of this little guy, too.  I might make him the new icon for the blog, but I would sort of hate to lose the picture of the Black Fool from King Lear at the top.....

Success

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.  (Attributed to Emerson, but not his.)

I had a weird day.  The first day back after a holiday is always hectic and full of nonsense. I was trying to get about fifteen things done today, obligations fulfilled, clubs organized and running smoothly, fundraisers organized and off the ground, and my stupid rolling chair that I've had for seven years now broke.  One of the metal legs that support the wheels just shattered.  I've never seen anything like it.  It didn't break in any of the expected places; instead it broke in one of the places it shouldn't have been able to break....

I felt like I'd lost a friend.  That chair and I have logged a great many hours....grading...sitting and listening to the woes of friends, peers, students, sharing joys and lunches with people who are no longer there, supporting me as a teaching platform when my knee had to be rebuilt.  I know it's silly, but I felt like I lost a part of my teaching history when I had to carry it out like a piece of trash.  I don't know why I attach so much meaning to inanimate things.  Too much imagination, I guess.

Later in the day, I found that I'd gotten nominated for an award at school.  I'm very honored that the people who nominated me thought that I was worthy of it.  I don't think I'll win; the other people in the running are certainly more qualified and deserving than I, but it's nice to be considered. 

The last thing I did was fight with a class that was largely apathetic about the subject matter.  It was depressing and made me feel useless and terrible.  When the bell rang, I went out to bus duty sad and tired.

After school, I decided to leave fairly early and go get a new chair since the wooden one I had subbed for my destroyed roller was a real literal pain to sit in for very long.  I got the task done quickly and on sale at the local Office Thing, got everything loaded (in the rain, of course), and was heading home. 

Somewhere I heard the phrase "a successful" something, maybe on the radio.  I can't remember if they said "successful doctor" or "successful lawyer" or some such, but it got me thinking of my day as a whole and my career as a whole.  In all the time I've been dealing with education (read: since I was old enough to know what my mother did for a living), I have never heard anybody called a "successful teacher."  It hit me hard enough to make me laugh. 

I'm sure it is mostly because we don't make a bajillion dollars a year.  We do, for the most part, live lives of semi-poverty.  It probably seems to most to be the fool's path to go to school as long as we do and then get so horribly little for our pains.  Some days, to be perfectly honest, it seems so to me as well.  I can't even imagine what it would be like to be in one of those other professions where people are paid on a level commensurate with their education.  I can't even imagine, most days, what it would be like to be paid on a level that would allow me to pay all my bills every month....

So can we be "successful"?  And if so, how?  I think we can be.  I think we can be successes if our students feel better about themselves when they walk out than when they walked in because they know more about themselves.  I think that if our students know more about the world and about their place in it, then we're successes.  I think we're successful if our students can take the knowledge we give them and stand strong on their own feet.  I hope I'm turning out this kind of student.  After today and days like today, I'm not so sure.  But hopefully, even if nobody ever says it to me in life, even if it's never written up in a trade journal or remarked on during a radio show, maybe they can use it as my epitaph. 

"Successful Teacher."  It would be nice to be remembered that way.

Reflections on the Tudors

And doesn't this sound like something you want to read?  No, really....

I've been watching The Tudors on BBCAmerica for the past two days.  They're running the series now (much sanitized, I'm sure, since it originally aired on Showtime), and it was inevitable that I would be snared by anything to do with Henry VIII and his messed-up life.  I know this is a soap-opera, so they've taken what was already "soapy" enough and amped it, but I find some of their slants and character portrayals interesting.

Anne Boleyn always comes off as a scheming temptress.  I'm not sure she wasn't, but I find her in this series sort of particularly horrible.  Selfish, grasping, deliberately cruel....I think the viewer is supposed to think this so when her inevitable fall comes, we'll be happy about it.

She got me thinking about how bad relationships with manipulative partners can mangle the people they're involved with.  Henry never sees Anne for what she is.  All his friends, people he's known and trusted for years and years, people he grew up with, prized for telling him the truth disapprove, and he refuses to listen.  I've seen that happen again and again with people I know personally right before the entire thing goes up in flames or violence. 

I know the great cliche is that love is blind, but why do lovers always assume that all their friends are wrong?  If everyone you love and trust tells you that your current amor is stepping out on you, playing games with your mind, being abusive to you, making you into some other person than you used to be (and not in a good way which you, let's face it, probably needed), then isn't there the slightest possibility they might be right?

I guess what Earl Derr Biggers says is true, "Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools shoes."  It would just be encouraging to me if people didn't keep going back to that same shop for this season's latest style of that same old fad.

Look What I Found

I got the good news that I'm going back to the AP Reading again this year, and I'm looking forward to it very much.  I found a list I made from last year's reading on a small notebook I carry with me, and I laughed at some of my observations.  "Acorn" is what I called myself because first-year readers had an acorn emblem on their badges last year to indicate that we were newbies.

Top Things I've Learned as an Acorn

• Always bring a sweatshirt 
• I almost froze.  Lots.  I finally bought one.I still almost froze.  This year, I'm taking Polarfleece.  And a hat. 
• The surprising number of things you can do with a  yellow Post-It
• Oh-so-much more than the makers originally intended....
• People will cut you if there's no ice cream on Saturday afternoon.
• Apparently, this is a sacrosanct tradition.  God help Food Service if they alter it....
• Get to the convention center Starbucks EARLY.
• It IS possible to hurt yourself badly enough to need medical aid while grading papers.
• How to get "calibrated."
• Cold Diet Mountain Dew, hard liquor, medical supplies, nail polish, batteries, office supplies (and all other things) can be purchased at CVS.
• (really probably a codicil to the last) If you can't find somebody, they're at CVS.
• The park where the Shakespeare Festival performs is TOO FAR away to walk to.  Really.

There were other little memories in there related to jokes from the actual table, but I won't put them here. I can't wait to go back this year.  Sigh.

More Giraffes

I just got this for my bedroom.  It fits in with the theme elsewhere in the house (vintage advertising posters), including the old Waterman pen poster I already have up in there. It will also tie the giraffe sheets to the dark green comforter in a convincing way, I think.  Or at least these were my excuses for getting it... 

Look, it makes me happy.  Does it hurt you?  Leave me alone.... (grumble, mutter)

Serendipitous Quote

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." ~ Oscar Wilde

You know, it's really scary sometimes...this quote was sitting right there on my page in the widget as I was reading over the finished post.  Serendipity strikes again....

Insensitivity

The irony of what I'm about to write does not escape me....

I am having to sort of avoid someone I know because that person's judgmental attitude is starting to make me really irritated all the time.  I've decided that it's better to run away than to be rude.  I don't know, ultimately, if that's right or not....

It started with a little racial comment.  It was sort of tossed out there casually, thoughtlessly, with that assurance that "everybody was going to agree with it" that I find so prevalent in this particular neck of the woods.  It was just a reinforcement of a stereotype, but really, coming from this particular individual, it was disappointing, discouraging, and tiring.  It was one of those "scales falling from my eyes" moments, and I haven't been able to deal with this person the same way since.  (And that, of course, is where the irony mentioned earlier comes in, so you may now point your fingers if you like.)  Since then there have been other things, obligations left unfulfilled, other comments made that make me think this person can't see the world in any other terms except the rather narrow ones this individual has taken as a personal philosophy. 

I run around with a fairly diverse group of people who have made a variety of choices with their lives.  I have my own deeply-held beliefs about what I want, what I believe to be right and good.  I would never for a minute, though, think that I had the right to take my beliefs and shove them down somebody else's throat.  I'm happy to talk about what I believe.  I just don't ever want to give the impression that the choices that somebody makes somehow makes that person of less worth as a human being.  Just because I wouldn't do it that way doesn't mean it's wrong.  If it's not illegal, if it's not stupid and hurting that person or somebody else, why would I try to regulate somebody else's choices?  I have enough to do to keep my own little life in order without looking down my nose at someone else. Different does not have to equal bad.  What happened to infinite diversity in infinite combinations?

For that matter, what ever happened to compassion?  What ever happened to taking people as you find them?  Do we all have to be like this person to be "good people" in that individual's estimation?  I'm fairly sure I don't measure up, then.  But you know what?  I can be okay with that.  There are some seals of approval I probably don't need, especially when the price is as high as it is.