Briefly

...because I am not supposed to be doing this right now.  I'm supposed to be getting dressed to go somewhere,  but I stopped long enough to check in on the electronic universe and got pulled in....

Isn't it funny how something you look forward to becomes something that falls a little flat?  How something that should be a cause for happiness becomes sharp around the edges unexpectedly?  I had that experience yesterday, and I'm still feeling the aftereffects of it today.  I feel like I accidentally let somebody down, like if I'd only done this or that, then everybody would have been happy and....I don't know....there would have been dancing glitter unicorns or something.

It's dangerous to second-guess.  It's dangerous to look back.  I know that.  That's how people get turned into pillars of salt.

I can't stop myself, though.  And I'm having all the pleasure and success with the endeavour that's to be expected.

I'm getting out of the house soon, anyway.  Maybe that will help some.

Last Flight

On July 8, the space shuttle Atlantis will take off for its very last flight.  I wish so much that I could be there to see it go.  I came of age during the age of the shuttle program, and its victories and tragedies are little landmarks in my own personal history.  To see it ending for good now is poignant.

I remember desperately wanting to be an astronaut when I was little, seeing the first launches of the shuttles on TV like everyone else.  We were also taken on field trips from church and school to the Huntsville Space Center to see the technology that had led up to those huge white ships that did what seemed so impossible in those days, took men and women into space, let them walk in the weightlessness there, allowed them to see the world from that perfect vantage point that suddenly put everything in its right perspective.  We came home from those field trips with stickers for the Apollo missions, rubber balls shaped like moon rocks, little white plastic model shuttles, and flyers for Space Camp.

Then came the summer I visited with my great uncle and aunt in Cocoa Beach.  My great uncle, like so many others who live in that part of Florida, used to work at Kennedy, and in addition to my family's trip to the Disneys, we went to see the Space Center as well.  I don't really know which made the stronger impression on me, the costumed cartoon characters or the towering rockets.  I still have the tiny silver charm of the orbiter on my charm bracelet, still remember eating the dehydrated ice cream we inevitably bought in the gift shop, still remember sitting in one of the command capsules.

I remember, too, how excited my mother was when Christa McAuliffe was going to be a part of the 1986 Challenger mission, how excited everyone was, really. There were posters and tote bags sent out to teachers everywhere by NASA.  It seemed to be a new age of Space, a time when suddenly, it was no longer the sole province of science, when it could belong to everyone who loved it.  And then came the tragedy, the horror of the loss. I can still remember watching it on TV, seeing the bright proud bird disappear....

When the first shuttle went up after Challenger, I remember being so afraid.  I can remember that everyone waited anxiously to see if it would survive.  When it blazed its way safely into the heavens, that, too was a moment of emotion, of rejoicing.

Now, the experts say it's time for the shuttles to rest, for something new to take their place.  Only, I'm not sure what exactly that's going to be.  Space doesn't seem to be the passion it once was for us.  It seems to be more of an afterthought.  I wonder now what the next generation of children will watch wide-eyed and dream over.  Even though I understand that the technology on those big white vehicles is not state-of-the-art anymore and may be too costly to maintain, there is still just something about them that catches the imagination.  I hope that doesn't fade away with them, that the majesty of them transfers to whatever takes their place.  If nothing comes next to fill that void even if something does come to get satellites into orbit, it would be a real loss, indeed.

Dreams

You're walking in my dreams again.  Every time I close my eyes, there you are waiting for me.

The first time, I dreamed that I was a child again, running and playing in some golden woods.  My cousins were there, and in the way of dreams, we were looking for something, some grand pretend adventure we'd devised.  I no longer remember what.  I suppose it doesn't matter.  The light came through the trees in that greenish dappling, and, suddenly you were there, too.  Suddenly, you always had been.  You were one of us, one of the scruffy gang of explorers there among the trees.  You grabbed my hand and we pulled each other along as we ran.  That time, when I woke up, I smiled.  I felt happy.  It was a silly, sunny sort of dream, and it didn't feel wrong for you to be there.

Since then, though, when I drop into the world of dreams, you're always there waiting.  Last night, I dreamed I was simply walking through the house, taking care of some chore.  You came and knocked on the front door.  I stood there astonished as you rocked back on your heels slightly, looking over your shoulder at something that had caught your attention, waiting for me to open it.  It took me a long moment to decide whether I was going to or not, and you turned around and studied me quite seriously.  Both of us were much more serious than the opening of a front door warranted.  Then a group of my best friends appeared, and the situation passed.  I let everyone in.

I wish I knew what you were doing hanging out in my dreams.  I'm almost sure you have a million better places to be.  I'd sleep much better if you weren't doing guest appearances, too.  This is strange.  Hopefully it will stop soon.

Fireworks

It's almost the Fourth, and I just read an article on Mental Floss about fireworks and how they've changed through the years.  That got me thinking about family picnics and memories from the past.

My uncle would always go out and buy about an extravagant amount of fireworks, usually several hundred dollars' worth, every Fourth of July.  He loved them.  We'd gather at my Nana's house, have a big meal that invariably involved some of PeePaw's five million watermelons (every year he had enough that we couldn't give them all away fast enough), and we'd wait for dusk to fall and the heat to taper off some.

It always started with sparklers, with writing our names in the gloaming, tracing shapes, pretending they were fairy wands, fascinated by them and just a little afraid of them as they hissed and spit for their brief moments.  Then there were the other "little" amusements, cardboard tanks that spat tiny colored balls of flame as they rolled, paper tubes that shot parachuting soldiers along with their bursts of sound and light into the sky, bottle rockets that screamed across the yard from their makeshift launching pads.  When it got really dark, we'd all be handed Roman Candles, helped to hold them as they kicked slightly.

Then it was time for the children to sit down and the "big kids" to take over.  My uncle was never happier than when he was setting up the huge fireworks and setting them off.  One after the other, they'd go up shimmering in the dark Mississippi night.  Green, gold, red, blue, fountains of color and big cannons of sound echoing over the empty pasture and the little pond.  We were a rapt audience sitting on blankets watching with murmurs and excited cries until the very last ember faded from the sky.

I miss those times.  I miss the family togetherness of them and the sense of wonder there in the darkness.  I miss watching my uncle and my dad in those moments of pure happiness as they lit the fuses and ran back laughing.  While I still love fireworks, still love to watch those flowers unfold in the heavens, something is always missing even at the most elaborate of the professional shows.  I suspect it's probably a mixture of too much watermelon and too much family.  Maybe someday I will be able to find it again in my own back yard.

Tumblr

I just realized that I've had my Tumblr for a little more than six months now.  I was looking back through my archive and noticing certain trends.  I really like the archive feature of it for that, for a way to notice how my interest in some things comes and goes, how my interest in many things stays constant, what a massive freaking geek I am.  I'm posting a link to the archive here if you'd like to go take a look at it, too, even though the most recent posts are always streaming along the side of this blog.  I know you're just "eat up" with care, but, hey, there are pictures, moving images, and MUSIC over on Tumblr..... (just sayin')

Waverly

I first saw Waverly on a Governor's School field trip during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.  I took two classes there, but the class that took me to Waverly was Architectural History.  I still remember the first time I stood in the center of the house and looked up at the huge plaster medallion with its acanthus leaves three floors above me, felt the somehow cool air in the midst of a Mississippi summer being pulled through the house up through the cantilevered balconies to the windows in the cupola, a perfectly designed system of ventilation, a house that breathed.

Everything about Waverly is perfect, really.  The aforementioned cantilevered balconies?  There are three of them, octagonal and perfectly supported by the weight of the house, not one single column needed  to hold them up as they soar like sheltering wings over the main hall.  The house is an architectural masterpiece.  I remember studying that portion of its building during Governor's School, how far ahead of its time the design was.  The house was designed also to have gas that was made onsite to light it, a two-story ice house outback to preserve its foods, and it has its own river landing close at hand.  It is in every way well-thought and self-sufficient.

And then there is the story, the story of the house that was abandoned for fifty years after squabbling heirs walked away, the house inhabited by bats, goats, and bales of hay.  The house used by drunken frat pledges, hunting parties, and God knows how many young lovers trysting.  It became the "spook house," the house of ghosts, the abandoned house in a jungle of brush with the huge magnolia out front waiting, waiting, patient for its resurrection, for the people who would be brave enough to find it and love it and remove the last of the baby squirrels from its light fixtures, who would stand on ladders and scrape off the dirt dobber nests from the dental moldings, who would plaster and paint over the limericks and love songs of those who had written on her walls, who would live without plumbing and without electricity until such time as their restoration efforts permitted it....  It's like a fairy tale, really.   I've been in love with the story of Waverly for years, with the story of the house who waited and the people who gave up everything to be her family.

Seeing Waverly again today, time folded in on itself in an odd fashion.  So much of it was exactly as I remembered.  As with anything that is from the long past, I had forgotten many things.  Too, there were things that had changed and fallen into disrepair.  The maintenance on an old house of any size is a constant chore.  My house needs diligent care and more money than I have at all times.  How much more then does something like a plantation house demand?

As I walked up the drive, the first thing that struck me was how tattered her exterior looked.  I've seen this before in historic homes, especially the white ones for some reason, and indeed, as we sat on the back porch during a portion of the tour, Ms. Snow, one of the owners talked about the incredible cost of repainting.  The painting cost alone is almost equal to what I still owe on my small mortgage.  Then there will be the cost for a new roof in the new future as well...

The great houses of the cotton plantations were built lavishly because there was lavish wealth to maintain them.  Cotton was King, and it was always going to keep coming in.  They were the mansions of millionaires.  They were built with the most modern technology and engineering of their time, in some cases to experiment, in some cases to show off, but in every case to give a bastion of comfort and culture to their families in a place where those things were decidedly lacking, little castles on the frontier. Could their owners ever have looked down through the corridors of time to see a period when they would be museums as well as houses, when they would be not the self-sufficient suns of their own tiny cosmoses, but tiny minor satellites with erratic orbits that no longer see the solar rays often at all?  Could they have foreseen a time when trying to keep the plaster-walled palaces upright would be an ongoing challenge?

Mississippi is full of historic houses, most of them private residences, that are facing these challenges.  Many of them have been restored as ongoing labors of love, couples reclaiming them and pulling them back from the brink of doom slowly over the years, polishing away years of neglect until they shine again.  Some of the houses are owned by charitable foundations.  There are two such houses near me, and they make me terribly sad.  They are in desperate need of serious care.  I think it's better when somebody actually lives in the house, actually invests in it that way, sort of draws that line in the sand and says, "I'm digging in, for better or for worse.  This is where we stand or fall."  When people can lock the door and walk away from it, maybe it's easier to tell yourself that something can wait another day....

Waverly is lucky.  She will shine again.  It made me sad to see her so faded, but I know "her people" will take care of her.  I want to go back and see her when she is repainted, see her be that jewel once more.  But still, I worry.  As money gets tighter and tighter for everyone everywhere, not every place like her will be as fortunate.  And, of course, one always hopes that her own luck, that grace that has kept her and sheltered her through the years of emptiness and goats, the years of pledges and parties, will not run out.....

Planning

I am trying to design a tattoo.  I don't know how you, gentle reader, feel about tattoos.  I have wanted one for a very, very long time, and I think I am going to get one before the end of the summer.  I have the design narrowed down to three things, but I need help choosing.  I wish you could come sit down and talk with me about this.  I would be so great to have your input.  I could offer you something to drink (as long as you like coffee, Diet Mt. Dew, Raspberry Lemonade, or Diet A&W Root Beer, that is), and you could help me figure this out.  I like all three.  They're going to need to be cleaned up professionally before anything can be done with them, and all three have symbolism to me.  That is what makes it so hard.

Maybe I can describe them to you...

The first is basically my inkan from Japan, the circular name seal designed for me by my friend T.  (Keep score.  This is not my Evil Ex, T.  That's another Japanese T.)  It's a circle that is cut by an S to look like the yinyang sign.  In the upper part, it has the kanji for "god" since my first name means "God's gracious gift" (I'm not making that up, I promise...) and the bottom half it has a kanji symbol that is a direct translation for my last name.  I really like this option because T. designed it for me, so it is a totally unique design.  I also like it because it ties me back to my beloved Japan.  It is also, well, me.

The second option would be a very stylized raven.  Ravens have a special symbolism for me.  In mythology they range from keepers of the sum total of all knowledge to the messengers between the world of the living and the world of the dead to the actual creators of the world.  They also represent the Celtic triple goddess Morrigan.  In real life, they're among the smartest birds, able to use tools, communicate information to each other, remember things and even, apparently plan "revenge" on those who do them injury.

The third option would be one detailed feather.  This is to remind me that I always have wings, even when I don't feel like it.  It would be my permanent, uncrushable "wing feather."  One of my favorite songs is an old, old hymn, "Ecstasy," and in part it says, "Oh, had I wings, I would fly away and be at rest...."  When things are terrible, when the world is weighing down on me, then I can remember that I DO have wings to get myself out of the situation.

Okay.  That's the three.  Thoughts?  Feedback would be so lovely...

Silent Muse

I'm not writing.  Not anything.  Not even bad things.  The stories I have begun are all waiting for work.  The few fragments of ideas I have for poetry waste away like fruit that came too early to the vine, received too little rain to grow.  I feel hollowed out.

I keep telling myself that it's a season, that it's just the remnants of an incredibly stressful school year lingering, but what if it's not?  What if there is nothing left to say?  What if my little vein of talent, never great at the best of times, is tapped out and gone for good?  What if the Muse has folded her wings over her face and turned away?

Last year was so MUCH.  There was so much turmoil, so much pain, so many days where I came home and quite literally fell down on my couch unable to do more than take in some form of food before I became unconscious.  There were so many tears, angry ones, frustrated ones, desperate ones, futile ones....  Maybe I burned something vital inside me out, blew a fuse of some kind that I need now.

I'm so afraid that I know what part of the problem is.  I only write really well when I'm in love.  It doesn't have to be love with a person; I can be in love with the place I'm travelling through, in love with the thing I'm doing, in love with the new thing I'm seeing or experiencing.  I write best, I think, when there is also that great engine of love for somebody driving me, but right now, that is so frustratingly not possible.  Instead, there are only the things that I do not want under any circumstances, the things that I know I cannot have, and the things that mock me from the past.  Instead, there is only this vast unbroken winter that continues to expand inside me, everything still, everything cold and waiting.

And I hate it.  I was not made for cold.  I was not made for winter.  I was not made for this emptiness.  I was made to pour my love and wonder through a pen, though the keys before me, to try to share what the glory of the world looks like to me, even if I don't do it very well, just as a way of offering gratitude for the gift of the vision.  This perverse dullness, this sense of beauty that hovers at the edge of my vision but disappears when I go searching for it, makes me feel like I've been exiled because of an offense.  I have my fingers wrapped around the gate, peering in, but I somehow lost the key for the lock....

If running out and jumping into some stupid fling was the cure, I guess I would try it, but I know myself well enough to know that shallow does not work for me.  I am not one who "flings" although, I suppose, I have been "flung" once unintentionally on my own part....  I lack the temperament to run out and just "fall in love" for the hell of it.  I can't set up some unsuspecting guy to be my own personal "Laura" and sonnet him to death.  Either I really have to feel it, or it can't be forced or forged.  I wish I could lie to myself, comfort myself by putting a clever mask on something that I knew was lacking, temporary, and flawed, and dancing it around for awhile just for the sake of having some relief, a little Spring, but I've never been able to pull that particular Fool's Dance off.

Maybe if I can just get out on some trips, some of the ice inside me will start to break up.  Maybe I'll see things through the lens that will inspire the nib.  I'm starting to be afraid, so very, very afraid, that it is permanent.  I don't know what to do with myself if I become that frozen ice floe version of myself.  I don't think I can stand that.  And I know there won't be any help forthcoming from outside sources to help me attack the encroaching ice, so this is yet another problem that I'll have to deal with myself.

A Dark Turn of Mind

Take me and love me if you want me
But don't ever treat me unkind
Cause I had trouble already
And it left me with a dark turn of mind
~ "A Dark Turn of Mind"  - Gillian Welch

I often hear songs that make me feel a bit wistful, that are full of lyrics I wish somebody would sing to me.  Josh Ritter's "Long Shadows" springs instantly to my mind.  There's a man in that song who knows that life is full of darkness, of things that come howling after you.  He knows, too, that some of the night lives inside, that those shadows fall "across the heart."  He doesn't promise to make it all sweetness and light. I don't want somebody who does that.  Those would be very pretty words, I guess, but in all honesty, words that would be exceedingly difficult to live up to.  Instead of empty vows, the speaker in the song makes a promise he can keep; he simply swears not to run away, to be there when he's reached for, not to be afraid of that dark in whatever form it comes.  I think that is all a person can really ask for, somebody who is strong enough to take it.  They're fewer and farther between than can possibly be imagined.

Then there are the songs that I sort of think that one day I might hesitantly offer to somebody I love.  Chris Thile's "I Am Yours If You Want Me" is the ultimate example, full of the mix of doubt and desire, of worship and fear that always accompany any serious affection for me.  The song says that "I'm scared of your body/ I'm scared of your soul/ but I'd rather be a letdown/ than let being with you go."  Since I tend to be a pedestal builder even though it always seems the feet of my beloved wind up being made of materials baser even than clay, I know exactly what he means.  I've talked about Thile's song before, so I won't belabor this point, but when he says, "I don't care about my future/ I don't care about your past/ those things come from and lead to right now/ so they can get the hell out fast," he is also summing up a philosophy that I have.  What went before doesn't matter.  What comes next, well, I'll figure that out.  I think this actually goes back to an Emerson quote about living in the moment.  Or maybe it was Doctor Seuss...

Today, though, I heard Gillian Welch's "A Dark Turn of Mind" for the first time, and I had the oddest feeling of hearing myself defined in song.  Somebody might have been looking over my past when they wrote it.  Every word was perfect.  It's as though whoever wrote it simply traced a pen over all the scars in my past and took the shape of song from that.   "Leave me if I'm feeling too lonely/ full as the fruit on the vine/ You know some girls are bright as the morning/ And some have a dark turn of mind."  That's me.  I am all too often in need of being left alone because I am too lonely, unbearable and bad company.

And I've never been one of those "bright as the morning" girls, although I have several good friends who are.  Their lives have always seemed so much easier to me as they sort of glide in that golden fall of light like some sort of Renaissance Madonna.  It has followed them their whole lives....to summer camp where every boy fought for the right to fall in love with them....across the floor of the high school dance...down the aisle of the church on their fathers' arm to their waiting husbands...into sedate maternity cradling multiple children close...  I know that some of that is an illusion and every life has its issues and struggles, and I don't mean to say that they have no problems, but I've been the one walking with my face to the storm, a little offbeat, a little mistrustful, and always somehow alone.  I don't sparkle or shine like they do with that golden light.  I've never really defined that difference between us, but this song manages to do that.  It's not that one is better or worse; we were just shaped by different events.

The last line says, "...And some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind."  I had to roll that around in my head for a few minutes.  It's not always comfortable to be this way if you want to know the truth.  Sometimes I wish I was one of those bright as the morning girls.  If I were, I would probably already be married.  I would probably already have children.  In all likelihood, I will probably never have either of those things in my life.  That's the price of having this darkness inside.  And yet, I cannot say there is nothing good that comes from it.  It has given me a certain freedom.  I've been able to go places and do things that would not have been possible otherwise.  There is also a certain insight to be gained from anything that hurts, so I guess that is a part of the "blessedness" of it, too.

The more I hear the song, the more it fits me.  Maybe the most comforting part of it is that there is somebody else who knows what it's like to be this way, too, who knows that curious mixture of pleasure and pain that comes from standing in the shadows.  "But oh, ain't the nighttime so lovely to see/ Don't all the night birds sing sweetly/ You'll never know how happy I'll be/ when the sun's goin' down..."

Small Victories

When I went to pick up my car at the body shop from its being wrecked at the repair shop, it was running.  They said the battery had been pulled down while they were working on it and just needed to charge some, and so that was why they had the engine going.  I accepted that explanation, transferred the money from the other driver's insurance company to the body shop, and pulled around to the repair shop to take care of the bill for the original repair it had gone in for so long ago before some lovely person tried to drive over with his truck and trailer, and when I got back in to crank it and go, it did not want to start.  I finally got it to crank and was pulling away, but I thought better of leaving with a problem still present, changed gears, drove back into the parking space and went back inside.

This is the part that would ultimately make me lose the gentle patience I usually use with most people.  (Don't you laugh.  Don't you dare laugh.  It's my story.  I will craft it as I see fit.)

I asked the guys behind the service counter to check the battery.  That had, after all, been a part of the original problem since the fog lights had been coming on by themselves and pulling the system down.  The whole battery had been stone dead at least four times, and I don't know how long it had been sitting in the dealership lot waiting on adjusters and so forth with the drain pulling on it.  I told them I was perfectly willing to get a new battery if it needed it.  One of the guys came out, got it to crank, basically verbally patted me on the head and told me it would be fine if I just drove it some, told me "to have my husband" put it on the charger, and that was the end of it.  It was the classic Southern male thing that always makes my blood boil and makes me feel like I am about fifteen years old again.

The car proceeded to die in the Lowe's parking lot.  And then in my parent's yard.  And then at my house.  Multiple times.  And then at the AutoZone I took it to in Newton to get a new battery where I was told that basically nobody BUT the dealership can change it in my car because of the silly placement of that part in my make and model.  And then at the gas station on the way back to the dealership Monday morning....  The Cuchulain red haze of frothing battle madness was descending.

Add to this that I found in the parking lot of Lowe's, my first stop after the dealership, that my driver's side door no longer locked and unlocked with anything except direct application of key in lock and I think you can understand why I was on my way back to them at 7:15 yesterday.  After I jumped it off at the gas station (and folks, if you don't own a jump box, I can wholeheartedly endorse your purchasing one), I was ready to destroy any living creature who got patronizing with me.  I had spent a great deal of the drive in telling myself to be firm but not rude, because, of course, there is no situation that really warrants rudeness.

And so I just told the guy when he asked, innocently, what he could do for me that bright morning.  I wasn't hateful, but I laid it out.  I guess I probably sounded like I would have with a student who had crossed that last line with me.  And when he told me that the battery was no problem but that he'd have to schedule an appointment for me to see about the door, I felt my head do that sideways tilt thing that any student of mine could have told you meant "serious ish" was about to go down.  I told him that I needed my car as soon as possible since the problems that I had come to address were NOT problems that it had rolled onto that lot with, not problems that it had had BEFORE it was wrecked sitting there minding its own business and that I wanted it dealt with.  And then, then, I went and sat down in the waiting area, called Mom on the phone and told her to come get me out of there NOW.

I was so mad.  SO MAD.  I had to vent off some of it by just jiggling my foot for about ten minutes.  I guess I need to pack a squeezy ball or something on trips like that.  I felt a migraine try to start up, but that double dosage of Topamax choked that off nicely, and it abated.  About fifteen minutes after I left the back, I saw a mechanic go out, try to open the door (he had to use the key.  HA.), try to crank it (and it wouldn't start.  Double HA.), go back and get their jump box and pull it into the shop.  I was a little surprised to see them already working on it but pleased.  Mom arrived not long after that, and we left.  We ran some errands and got home about forty minutes later.

I had just enough time to let the dogs out, put my iPod on charge, and get my laptop open when my phone rang.  They had the car done.  Did I want to pick it up?  I almost fell off the couch.  Mom came back down, and I loaded back up and went back to town.

When I walked into the service center, the little guy was talking to somebody else, so I stood patiently for a few minutes waiting.  I was dreading hassling with the bill.  I did not want to pay for the door thing.  I didn't think it was fair for me to have to pay for something that had been working when I came in and was magically NOT working when I left, but I was afraid it was going to be a mess to convince them of that.  When he finished with the other customer, he saw me and greeted me.  He picked up my bill and looked at it and said, "Ah yes.  That's going to be eight hundred dollars."  And then I guess he saw my face.  "Kidding.  I'm kidding.  Please don't hit me.  I'm a bleeder.  Oompa Loompas like me are bleeders...." (He only came up to my shoulder.)

He handed me the bill.  It took me a minute to make sense of what I was seeing.  The total was $212.00, but then it was zeroed out.  I asked him about the bit with the door wiring.  "I don't have to pay for this?"

He said, "You don't have to pay for any of it.  It's taken care of."  And he grinned.

They'd done the whole thing gratis.  Suddenly all the numbers managed to resolve themselves into something that made sense.  Suddenly I managed to be able to smile, too, for the first time since I had heard my vehicle had been hit.  I thanked them and went out to where Mom was parked near my car.  I got in and Mom rolled her windows down.  "Check EVERYTHING before we leave," she said.

She needn't have worried.  That was already in my plans.  I did, and it was all working.  I can't tell you how good it felt to roll off that lot in my little car and know that it was sound again.  I can't tell you how nice it was to have them not stick me, to have them take care of it in the right way.  So few places do what is right anymore, and I appreciate more than I can say that they bothered to do it.  It saved them a customer.  I can absolutely tell you that.

I also felt good that I had stuck up for myself.  I made it known that I wasn't happy.  I didn't tuck that feeling inside and sit on it, didn't pretend it didn't matter, didn't meekly accept whatever was handed to me, didn't wait for the "appointment to fix my door" when that would have been a type of injustice.  I wasn't rude, didn't rage, wasn't unChristian or one of those people who you have to be embarrassed to be near in a public location because they're sort of off their rocker.  I had a situation in which I had a genuine right to be displeased with something, and I had handled it appropriately.  I had gotten results that were better than I actually had even bothered to hope for.  That was a victory to me.

When it was all done, I went to run a necessary errand (cat food.  Yoda would have smacked me around had I not gone), and when I switched the car off in the Wal-Mart parking lot, I waited a moment and then recranked it.  There was not one moment's hesitation or pause.  It was a flawless and instant ignition.  Funny how you come to take that for granted....until it stops happening.  Funny how when it stops happening for long enough it can become a small victory all of its own when you get it back again.

The Pace of Life

I just saw a commercial whose tagline says, "Tired Sucks."  It's for some energy shot drink.  Its premise is that so many of us are running out of energy in the middle of the day that we need some sort of megaboost from the outside to crank us up to get through our days.  I know I am basically a massive accumulation of caffeine molecules holding hands and dancing to the music of the celestial spheres during the school year.  If I don't have my Diet Mt. Dew, bad, bad things happen in my own personal universe.

Even with that midafternoon boost, though, a pervasive sense of fatigue is something I think I have just sort of come to accept in my day-to-day life.  In fact, I think most people I know have.  Why?  Why are we living in such a way that we have to be slightly miserable at all times?  What are we all doing all the time that is so vital that we can't take the time to take care of one of the body's most basic needs?  I constantly see studies released suggesting that not only is sleep a key factor in our basic health, but that we actually need much more of it that researchers used to believe we did.

It makes sense to me.  Sleep is the body's time to take care of all maintenance tasks without interruption, whether that is heavy physical replacement or simple mental filing.  When we constantly short it on time to get those things done, why are we shocked when the end product is somewhat lacking?

I wish we could re-evaluate what we're doing that is taking the place of all that lost rest time.  And yes, I do know that at least part of mine disappears here into the magic box.  However, I'm thinking more of demands placed on us by a society that is constantly telling us that we must "do more."  It reminds me of this little wooden toy my Granny got somewhere in one of her trips with my grandfather.  You turn the handle and the wooden pieces inside move furiously around and around....but that's all that happens.  She said it was called a "Do Nothing."  That's what I feel like so many of the activities we cram into our lives are, furious motion with no real meaning, just something to fill up the time, something to keep our hands busy, and fritter time away.  In the end, all we've done is burn up moments that might better be spent more productively on something else, moments that perhaps we should have spent on nothing at all.

I'm not endorsing laziness.  I'm just saying that as the pace of life picks up, I am not sure the quality of life is increasing with it.  That's something I think we all as individuals need to think about for ourselves.  If we're not getting something truly wonderful out of all that pain and we feel like crap all the time, maybe it's time to have fewer five-hour energy shots and more power naps.

A Thing That Makes Me Happy

I am looking at the most beautiful picture on the almighty FaceBook.  One of the sweetest guys I knew in high school is holding his new baby daughter in his arms grinning.  It is just making me grin right back at the screen, and I have tears in my eyes.  I haven't seen him...well...God...not since we graduated.  He was extraordinary, gifted in so many ways.  He was so smart, could draw fantastically well, and he played the guitar with passion, true talent, and skill.  It is the music that finally called to him, that he now both teaches and performs, and that makes me happy to know, too, because for years, I didn't know where he was or what was going on with him.  It is somehow a deeply satisfying and hopeful thing to see somebody as good as he is holding that little girl.  I can't think of better hands for her to be in.  I love it when sometimes, just sometimes, there are happy endings.

Family History

I finally had a chance to talk with my Dad about my family's history some tonight.  I told him I had read The Grapes of Wrath, and that led to a conversation about Steinbeck and then into about Dad's father and his family.   PeePaw, Dad's dad, grew up during the Great Depression in Oklahoma, and actually lived through the Dust Bowl there.  My great-grandmother raised eight children in Delhi.  Some of my questions got answered.  My family did not leave.  They found a way to survive.  I can't even imagine it.  Dad said PeePaw told stories about going out to get the sand off the cotton.  He said that PeePaw often talked about the difficulty of the work they did when he was growing up but that he never talked about his family going hungry.  I wish I knew more.  I wish I had been paying attention enough to have asked him about it myself before that opportunity was gone forever.

I also learned that my great-grandmother rode into the opening of Oklahoma in the back of a Conestoga wagon.  Dad said she was somewhere between 12 and 14 when the Oklahoma Land Rush happened.  Their first home was a sod house.  How did I not know these things?  There is so much history that I don't have.  It's amazing, like a lap full of jewels somebody has unexpectedly poured out for me.  I hope I can keep finding out more.  I also want to go and see these places more urgently than ever before to see where my family comes from and what forged them.

Good Show (Gaiman and Ritter on WTIS)

I started today on the couch catching up on the world through the internet as I usually do.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Neil Gaiman had put up a link to his WTIS appearance on Wits.  I had been grumbling to myself that I was never, ever going to be able to see him on tour since he but rarely comes near me (he was in Tuscaloosa, but I didn't know it until long after all the tickets were gone and he was done), and on this tour, none of the dates are even remotely within driving distance since this is "the big one" for American Gods' 10th Anniversary.

I watched the entire two hour-ish taping of the show courtesy of streaming video.  The internet is a gorgeous thing.  It was the first time I've ever seen Gaiman live.  He's just as delightful as I thought he would probably be.  He read one of my (well, okay, and everybody's) favorite passages from AG, the "I Believe" passage.  He played games with the hosts and the other guests including "What Type of Monster Was ___?" where ___ was either a famous historical figure or a person from a song (Emily Dickinson, it seems, was really Cthulu).  He sang about why Joan of Arc might not be as much fun to hang out with as you would think.  He answered questions.  He made Doctor Who references and explained why a couch will protect you from a Dalek.

As wonderful as as Neil Gaiman was, he was only half the goodness.  The musical guest was Josh Ritter (somebody else who will never, ever, ever come here).  I have come to like his music recently, so I was interested to see what he would do live(ish).  He was really sweet and good.  The first song he did, "The Curse," had me going to Amazon to download an album.  I didn't have that one by him, and it was an instant favorite.  It had it all, Egypt, mummies coming to life, love(ish), sly, wicked little phrases.  Very good stuff, indeed.   I'm listening to it right now, in fact.  As much as I liked it live, I think I prefer the album version for the little bit of old-fashioned organ tinge to it.  It feels like an old black-and-white movie.  I swear I can see Boris Karloff....

Josh played the games, too.  He seemed like he was a little freaked out to be sitting next to Neil Gaiman sometimes.  For all I know, he was.  He did well, though.  I loved his answer about what sort of creature Thomas Jefferson was. And the thing with Kelsey Grammar.....   I also loved that after all the radio taping was done, he was asked to sing one more song and he chose to do "Galahad."  He was capoed to play something else, started something else, and then he changed his mind, adjusted his guitar. He grinned like the devil himself when he got about halfway through, paused, and he said something like, "They can't play this song on the radio,"  he gave himself a nice long go around, and he sang it anyway.  He made me laugh.  He has a book coming out later this month, and it's already on my Kindle Wish List for payday.  The premise looks pretty interesting. We'll see if he can make the transition from songs to novels.

In addition to the two main acts, the phone guests were also unexpected bonuses.  Wil Wheaton is always clever.  His Twitter feed is a good one.  He was on briefly, and of course, he and Neil Gaiman are two of the great gods of the Twitterverse.  They had Adam Savage from MythBusters on, too, and he sang "I Will Survive" in a Gollum voice, and I almost fell off the couch I was laughing so hard.  I wish I could have seen him while he was doing it, because I am certain there were some interesting faces and body movements that accompanied it.

The show was just a delight.  I would have loved to have actually been there, but at least with the gift of technology, I was able to share in it somehow.  I'm grateful for that.  Even if I live in this place where so little of what I love comes to me, I can drag it to me through the phone lines.  That is a miracle I hope I never stop appreciating.

If you'd like to watch the show for yourself, here's the link to Neil Gaiman's page.  You can get to it from there.  There are a few notes about what begins where and so forth.

Things I Can Do

As I was driving home from jumping off my car....yet again....after picking it up from the repair shop only an hour earlier....I started composing this list in my head.  Granted, I had been sitting in 100-degree-plus heat for quite some time, but it seemed the sort of thing that would make a good blog entry.  It also felt good to remember that there are some things that I am capable of completing, on occasion, without too many problems. Without further ado, I give you a list (non-comprehensive) of Things I Can Do:

• Jump  a Dead Vehicle Off
• Change a Flat Tire
• Check Levels for and Put in Engine Oil, Brake Fluid, Windshield Wiper Solution. Etc.
• Design and Build a Stained Glass Window
• Design and Free-hand a Calligraphic Work
• Play the Piano and Organ
• Bake a Damn Good Carrot Cake, Granny's Corn Bread, and a Sour Cream Pound Cake That Will Make You Sell Your Soul for More
• Fry Chicken/Tomatoes (what the hell...anything) in a Cast Iron Skillet
• Cross Stitch/Embroider/Machine Sew Simple Things
• Make Pottery Things (Handbuilt)
• Give a Dog a Pill
• Write Poetry
• Assemble Things with Power Tools
• Take Adequate Pictures with the Nikon If Not Rushed
• Analyze Literature
• Travel Well Alone
• Hook up Electronics
• Do Basic Troubleshooting
• Make Sourdough Bread from Scratch
• Fold Origami Cranes

Well, Okay Then....FML

(Not A Happy Post So Run Away Now)

Why does it so often seem that my best efforts aren't enough?  Why does it seem like I can get in the trenches, push until I have nothing left, lay down the blood sacrifice to the last drop of heartsblood, and still something more is required?  What do I do when all I have is not going to fill the gap or make it right?  What is the answer when all that I am, when it is all laid out, is just so pitifully inadequate to the task at hand?

In my mind I know I can't fix everything, but when I commit to something, say, "This is mine, this I will do," and it goes down under my feet with my hands on the wheel, it makes something inside me die.  And maybe for a time, I can keep rekindling that thing that is injured, resuscitate it, get up off the floor and go back into the battle, wipe the blood out of my eyes with the back of my hand and pick up my sword again.  But if it gets hit again and again, well....

That's the place I am right now. My wings are crushed and there is no flying away from this. I'm sitting here in this mire of mud and failure, of blood and shit and brokenness.  I want to get up.  I am telling myself to pick up my sword and get back into the fight, but I feel every cut, every wound right now.   And I don't feel like I am doing one damn bit of good in this struggle, anyway.  Maybe I never knew what I was doing in the first place. Maybe I need to just quit altogether.

This and That

All-day meeting today and the obligatory migraine that seems to accompany those.  The sudden and violent rainstorm that blew in might have helped to trigger it, too, but it knocked me for a loop.  The migraine was one of the mostly painless ones, taking me instead to that horrible disconnected separate place behind the thick glass wall from which I can only watch but not participate fully.  I lost some words, spoke with a delay, and hated lights.  Even the neon-colored copy paper, the "brights" shades of yellow, pink, and orange, hurt my eyes and made me feel a little nauseous.  I took the cool pastels for myself instead. 

I could sort of somehow feel my eyes reacting. They almost felt like they do after I have been crying for a long time, that same kind of sensitive tingly tightness. I wonder if they changed color.  My eyes are hazel, and they do shift from green to a light brown depending on what's going on, and I would be curious to know if they had.  They're still greenish right now, or were when I passed by a mirror earlier in the evening.  It caught my attention.  The things these damn headaches do to me are so strange.  I wish I understood what was going on in my own body.  I feel like a house that wasn't wired right. 

I managed to get home and sort of accidentally fell asleep on the couch while I was waiting for my rice to cook.  When I woke up, though, I felt much better, so it worked out.  Tuna and good white rice and tomatoes for supper helped, too.  I am still extremely tired, but I managed to get through the episode without taking a Maxalt, so victory to me.  Maybe a good long night's rest will clear away the last of the cobwebs, and tomorrow, the world will make as much sense as it ever does.

In other news, during the day, I also talked to the repair shop.  The car was being painted today, but they're waiting on a part.  The bottom line is that it might possibly be ready tomorrow afternoon but more realistically we're looking at Friday morning.  Yeah.  How ever did I know it?  And you know what?  I'm just beyond even being surprised.  But I do so want my little car back.  So very, very much.  I miss it.  It's silly and so ridiculously American, but I don't feel like me not driving it.  I am really lucky that I have anything to drive at all with my car in the shop, but I hate driving the truck.  I miss the familiarity, the personality, the feel of my vehicle.  I'm so very spoiled.  

Tomorrow, I'll finally be able to get this fuzzy mess on top of my head cut.  I was supposed to do that today, but the meeting caused me to have to reschedule.  I'm long overdue because of Louisville, and so I'm very ready to get it cut.  I think I'll go by the school afterwards and take care of a few things, too, get stuff in my room, check on a few things with the office.  Maybe it will be a different kind of day tomorrow, one that won't make my head pound.  

Tornadoes in KY

There are tornadoes in Louisville.  I'm watching the news reports roll through my Twitter feed.  There's been a touchdown near U of Louisville, debris near Churchill Downs.  It's strange to me because I was there less than a week ago walking through that very place with a distracted tour guide dodging the Porsches of incoming jockeys arriving for night racing.

Now although it looks as though the Downs themselves have escaped damage, the area around them is getting pounded.  Roofs are being ripped off, power lines are down.  The storms that were boiling at the end of my time there apparently stuck around.  I'm sure those skies are green.  I remember that color all too well from my time in Bloomington.

I hope everything will be okay and that nobody will be hurt.  This is an incredible reminder of how fast things change, of how quickly something can disappear.  Sometimes it can change in less than seven days.

The Grapes of Wrath

I'm stubborn about some things.  It's genetic.  I come by it honestly, get it from both sides of my family, or so I've always been told.  If people tell me and tell me that I must do a thing, I generally won't do it just for that reason.  Silly, isn't it?  Not everything people tell you to do is bad....

I am not quite sure how or why The Grapes of Wrath wound up in this category.  Somewhere along the way, it did, though.  Oh, there were people who told me that I should read it.  It's been on every "Books to Read" list I've ever been given since middle school.  My father loves Steinbeck.  Part of his growing up across various places in the west was in California, so you can understand that, sort of like Mississippi kids and reading and studying Faulkner, I guess.  My mother used it in her classes, so she obviously thinks it is good.  I've found copies of Steinbeck are here and there in my grandfather's books, so I guess he liked him, too.  Most recently, another friend of mine read it, although I sort of think it might have frustrated him at bit here and there (oh, and btw, Faustus, if you should ever happen to read this, we should talk about the book sometime).

Maybe at some point I misunderstood what it was about or I heard too many people tell me that it was a book "everybody had to read."  I don't know.  All I do know is that I never had any real interest in it until I started reading essays on it during the AP Reading this past week.  The more essays I read on it, the more intrigued I became. I realized that my natural hardheadedness and my misunderstanding were apparently keeping me from something that I might enjoy given my love of history and the bits of the plot I was picking up from the writing I was evaluating.

I finished the book I was working on, Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Tuesday afternoon, and I downloaded The Grapes of Wrath.  It pulled me in almost immediately.  I read it every chance I got.  I had my Kindle out, cramming bits of the novel in spurts during breakfasts, lunches, and dinner breaks, over hamburgers at the Hard Rock, in the few hours before I went to bed at night, in the ten minute breaks we took during the reading, and I finished it Saturday afternoon.  I think it is one of the best books I've ever read.

Every part of it compelled me.  The characters were a fantastic blend of nobility and reality.  None of them were perfect.  Steinbeck did such an exquisite job of creating people who were flawed but striving for the best they could be in situations that were unimaginable, of people who maintained their humanity when every single thing around them conspired to rip it away from them, even other people.  Not all of them were perfect.  There were times when I wanted to reach out and beat Ruthie, but that was understandable and appropriate for her age.  Same thing with Uncle John.

Best of all, though, was the way the family dynamic worked together.  There was never any sense of saccharine sweetness to it.  Even though they didn't always agree and even though things frequently fell apart, at the core of the family there was strength.  I kept comparing Steinbeck's family core with Faulkner's in As I Lay Dying.  I couldn't stop drawing parallels between the two traveling families.

And I saw so much of my grandparents, especially my Granddaddy, in that book.  The feel of it, the hardness of that life, reminded me of things that happened to him in his life.  I think I loved it even more for that.  I also know that I have relatives all over Texas and Oklahoma, but I don't know that much about that side of my family.  Were some of them at some point "tractored" off their land?  Did they have to head west?  What choices did they have to make?

Steinbeck's style of writing was also beautiful to me.  I enjoyed the way he would interrupt the narrative to give chapters that were almost cinematic to me in their description.  The chapters that described the sellers of cars, the turtle crossing the road, the life in the government camp, were lovely in the way that they sort of panned across the entire range of a topic before settling on little vignettes of it with monologues, skipping around the way a film camera might if someone were doing a documentary about it.

This book yields so much for analysis.  There are so many levels to it, the allusions, the characterizations, the themes, the symbolism....  It is rich in ways to which many other books can only hope to aspire.  I know I'm going to read more Steinbeck.  I'm taking a short break to reread Lord of the Flies, but then I'll probably do Cannery Row.  I hope I will continue to enjoy him as much with this other work as well.

Dogs, Etc.

Woke up this morning and took Roux to the vet.  When I came home Saturday, her skin allergy had flared up, and the poor darling was miserable.  I had to drive the white truck, so I was a little...off...in it.  It always feels strange to me.  Roux is sleeping now with two shots and some antibiotics in her.  Later, I'll give her a bath with some skin-soothing shampoo.  That will undoubtedly be fun for all of us....

I'm still tired today.  I'm having a physically-weak day.  It will pass.  Tomorrow I should be right as rain.  I'm just slacking on the couch until it passes.  At least it didn't hit me until I was home.  I can be thankful for that, I guess.  I had a headache early this morning, but I went back to sleep for a little while, and it is mostly gone.  I haven't had to take anything for it, anyway.

I have to go to a workshop Wednesday, and I want to take some of the four hundred and eighty-seven things that have accumulated for school to my room, so I think I'm going to try to go to my classroom after if I can.  I hope the building will be open.  I have to get Bubo settled in to his new home, after all.

I'm trying to figure out what to read next.  I am trying to decide among the Edwidge Danticat I have waiting, a Christopher Moore excursion in humor, Kafka on the Shore by Murakami, and Cannery Row.  I have sort of fallen in love with Steinbeck, so I'm leaning heavily toward Cannery Row, but today, I don't know if I'm going to read anything.  Sleep might be more appropriate and less likely to produce a migraine.

Eventually, I want to write about what I thought about The Grapes of Wrath, but I'm not up to it right now.  What an incredible book.  Maybe I will be able to get enough energy together to do that post later.  I think I'm going to see if I can scratch up something for lunch right now.  Ugh.  Tomorrow really needs to be a better day.