4 of 31: giving (myself a break)

I have never in all my life been so excited about spring break.  

Never.  

I'm pretty sure we all felt the same way in class tonight with the windows open to filter in the optimism of changing weather.  There were a number of laugh-till-we-cried moments, specifically during a sloppy reenactment of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  

Thursdays nights were marked for gut-busting episodes last Fall and sadly they don't occur nearly as much as of late.  It was refreshing, though, to feel young and loopy and to laugh and laugh without reserve...at jokes that only us English nerds find funny.

It's been a while since I've felt entitled to double over, silly with joy, glad to just be alive.  My skin and my bones are voracious with a craving for sunshine and breezes that don't make your limbs scream with pain before going numb.  

It isn't all in the air.  I'm also glad to feel grateful again for a good man and a community of army wives ready to stand-in for my backbone when I don't have the wherewithal to hold a steady posture.  I feel like this week's low spot, while it was dim, allowed me to get to know a few ladies better.  I'm grateful to be building stronger relationships with The Staff Sergeant's family, as we are all stretched by the sacrifices he has to make for his convictions.  But there is something to be said for the bleak outlook cast by dreary Winter, and the new vision that is brightened by Spring.  

lost and insecure [you found me]

I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of life, much less this blog.  Like others, I'm torn between living and recording the motions.  There's a time and place for sharing and sometimes life's momentum just gets to whirring and buzzing and humming all at once and you're swept along in the swiftness of it.  This has mostly been attributed to the end of the semester.  In a few words, grad school is a hell of a lot more than I ever expected.  It not only engulfed me in its currents, but it held me under turbulent waves for much of the latter half of 16 weeks.  There are a dozen other trials that have kept my stress levels at maximum capacity, but it's probably better not to air it all right now for reasons of op-sec and patience.  

Though the blog halted, life goes on.  I'm waiting on my grades and anticipating A's.  I surprised myself and a handful of professors.  I made a new family of fellow english grad students and made a homey little nest out of our one, lone conference room.  I know Louise Erdrich better than she may know herself.  I know the Cult of True Womanhood to degrees of nauseam.  I fell in love with the ideals of the Expressivist movement led by Elbow and Murray.  I wrote my first short story and again surprised myself.  I did a number of seemingly unconquerable tasks and crushed them beneath my tiny feet.  

I keep thinking about that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  I believe that idea alone sums up the year.  I finally graduated college.  I survived months and months of army induced separation and survived.  I somehow defied all notions of feasibility by getting into this masters program on such short notice, and beyond that, I have excelled.  Those are the hills that I've climbed, leaving the horizon speckled with far-off flags bearing my crest -- pink and flowery, for sure.  The mountains, however, await, standing rugged, impossibly tall and taunting. 

 Next year is coming all too strong and quickly, like a train whose force makes the earth tremble long before arriving.  This is my life now.  There is no turning back.  It's ironic how badly I want it and also how fiercely I dread it.  I have to keep looking back on the achievements, on the things I never thought I could actually pull off until I landed on the other side of Trying and the ride was over and I was still intact.  Love and wanting are tangled in some powerful magic, and perhaps I am a little stronger than I thought.  But I won't admit it often, for it isn't often that I feel it might be true.

6030

A new day and a workless week! It would only be a better Monday if I were caught up on my reading, which is why I cashed in a couple days of remaining paid vacation.  Now I'm trying to make myself move on the active need to love hundred-year-old literature.  I've got my pomegranate enviga close and my Damien Rice love song, but I really have no interest in writing a response to Harper's Iola Leroy no matter how I might try to manipulate my indifference with creature comforts.  

What I would really rather be doing, and what I have had to pry myself away from, is grocery shopping Plumgood's website and thinking over little details for next summer's travel writing road trip.  It doesn't take much to distract me especially when I want nothing more than to be completely distracted.  But at the end of a few hours of procrastination there is defeat and panic and pull-my-hair-out-stress.  So even though I cannot stand another dose of 19th century literature, I must push onward.  Life is unfair and I'm pretty sure that most things are meant to be trying.

hump-day musings

Time has become ever illusive. I mean, it never felt like a low cloud hovering aimlessly, but now, now it's a hurried wind. I keep meaning to come here, to rekindle a dedication to writing, though it seems that I'm only tapping on my keyboard when everything else feels so dire and fragile that I have no other choice than to relieve my mind [here].

I'm making a point this morning to be different.

I'm taking a break from Tracks [which absolutely HAS to be finished today] to write something more attached to sanity than the last post. That conflict has yet to be resolved, but at least we are searching for a direction. Both of us are pulling out our compasses and watching the dials spin over personal capabilities and the ecstasies and trials of love. Beyond my ungluing over love in the time of army-ness, school pushes me onward.

I turned in my first graduate paper yesterday and as I slid it under my pedagogy prof's door I was nearly trembling. I think this must be what it feels like to be a little fish. These papers aren't about business content anymore. Not only am I submitting them to the grammar sticklers but also to the English scholars, which I might remind you, I am most certainly not. I'm in Composition Theory and Pedagogy because once upon a time I started a MySpace blog that a couple of people gave a thumbs-up. I may never feel like I truly earned my spot at the conference table where our classes are held. So frankly, I may have a stroke writing the 10-page essay due on Wednesday. I can't recall ever feeling intimidated by a professor like I do in my 20th C. American Lit. course. I am accustomed to research papers, where a number of secondary sources are required. No question. And cited throughout. This particular assignment is to be 8-12 pages made up 75% of content I pull out of a pool of three novels. Ok, it looks easy. It even looks easy to me, just now, reading over the previous sentence. I'm just not sure how to summon my own opinion on some parallel that worms through all three books and then how to support it with only fictional text.

I'm thinking that something church inspired would be interesting and relatively easy. The symbolism in Erdrich's characters strikes me, a possible other direction. There is also the socio-cultural nature of Erdrich's white characters compared with her Native American Indians. The white characters are always weak and mad and petty. Pauline and Sita and Karl all lose their minds in various ways; Lynette is pretty well straight trash, and the nuns tend to be corrupted. I suppose an answer will come to me.

Back to the books.

new beginning?

This is like running into an old friend on the street, after a huge [or trivial] episode has sullied a thick-as-theives connection. I'm not sure what to say. My face probably projects an awkward confusion. I'm the [mostly] nice girl, so I want to be kind. And maybe I miss her, truly, because she once held my hand through something rough. It certainly breaks my heart to remember that she was once as necessary as favorite jeans and the right color of foundation. I would keep gentle eyes and afford her a muted, though sincere warmth, and possibly ask about men and work. The performance of discomfort is inevitable and its moves are forced and foolish, yet you play the part knowing that the chance of rediscovery is worth more than feeling caught off guard.

So I'm here, unsure of what to say, how to lead myself through the rhythm of writing without deletion. My fingers ache. They twitch and jump with the desire to make words into phrases, into sentences and on into something complete [enough]. I feel awkward now because I let some things get under my skin, and I felt so bound to censorship by the boundaries of security and judging eyes. And there's also the circus tent of grad school that keeps me currently contained. This kind of school is more than I ever imagined it would be, but I love it. It is partially responsible for my leaving [the lonely sound] and partially responsible for an attempt to continue what was started. I must begin writing again to prevent rusty wheels and rusty gears and rusty eloquence. I need a place to empty after all of the ice has melted.

I'm going to try this again, but I can't help feel that something should be different. I'm contemplating a new idea altogether or actually breathing life into that wordpress address I claimed months ago for just-in-cases. Until I can get the ball rolling, know that all is well[ish] in English and Creative Writing and that the Staff Sergeant is spoiling me rotten. There's so much more to tell but Margaret Fuller is begging to be read and this stuffy head-cold needs another round of lemon tea.

detour

After talking for almost two years about graduate school, I've scrapped the lukewarm chatter. Last week I succumbed to impulse and applied for the Fall 2008 semester. Surprisingly, I got in! Mentally ready or not, I begin the newest new chapter in about two weeks and I can't wait! Soon I will be embarking upon an MA journey in English creative writing.

Oh the times, they are a' changin'

It seems that life happens at a rate too fast for recording these days. I know I'm slacking here, and in personal journaling, and worst of all, I am very aware of the toll it takes for me not to be writing every day. Words become more difficult to use, and cobwebs blanket my inner vocabulary pool. I stutter a lot in my head...SOOO, I'm going to put forth more effort here, both for the therapeutic benefit and for the mental exercise it provides. I have to. I really feel that it is vital for whatever the next chapter holds.

I've been juggling this last semester with much more agility than I have in the past few, and I'm being more prudent with my study habits as the burning desire to get into graduate school for journalism has been re-lit...and there might be some futuristic talk, albeit still quite ambiguous, of relationships/careers/higher education and location and where it all could lead. All that to say that this is my current inexcusable excuse for slacking in the blog commitment. I'm sorry. I will do better.

This is turning into a kludge of a post, but I'll at least leave you with a teaser or two of things on my mind [that will hopefully be soon revisited in the form of substance].

On current reading lust:
I have noticed [as has The Staff Sergeant] that my palette has lessened an appetite for the heroine novels to which I was once drawn. I'm not talking about damsels in distress or worse yet, to be confused with drug use. No, the average, garden variety Oprah books [circa, beginning of the book club]...White Oleander, The Lovely Bones, Feast of Love, East of Eden. You know, where the women show resounding resilience and overcome obstacles to find themselves empowered in their new sense of self. blah, blah, blah. Ok, I did just receive the newest Sebold novel, but even she likes the dark side. Wow, a tangent has ensued! The point, and there is one, is to note the drastic turn from "warm and fuzzy" to war and destruction. To give you an idea, a list of my last 10 literary purchases:

1. What is the What
2. The Sandbox
3. The Graves are Not Yet Full
4. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
5. The Blog of War
6. War Reporting for Cowards
7. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
8. Journalista's
9. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
10. Highways to a War

What to make of this?

Well, The Staff Sergeant has painted a picture including me in [insert war-torn country] running around in an over-sized Kevlar helmet as mortars go off around me, toting a notebook and/or satellite driven laptop. I, however, just want to get into Journalism School and to continue to feed the ravenous beast [guilty pleasure] of my own curiosity and impassioned heart. We'll see where it takes me :)

Buckle down, my friends...

Free time = volumes of posts.

...and your cups runneth over, I'm sure.

Quickly, then I'm off to bed, for I failed to mention my disoriented, sleep deprived mind. A friend told me about the personal, political, and provocative Sun Magazine [did I mention, ad-free?]

No, no kick-backs.

It's a writing 'zine about...well, lots of stuff, I think. I haven't been able to run one down or dedicate time enough to really scope it out online, but there is a reader's writing section based on monthly prompts. January's is, understandably, "now or never."

...and I'm stumped. I've got a whole lot of nothing. I can write for days about a haircut or muffins, but give me something substantial and broad and I choke. I've always been that way.

now or never

now or never

now or never...

Story Time

Macbeth and I enjoy one last lazy afternoon of summer before classes resume on Wednesday.

I See Johnny

Sometimes words get stuck in my head - much like songs. This weekend it has been a short story that I read Wednesday afternoon in the floor of Borders. The Virginia Quarterly Review caught my attention on the magazine rack, and in an effort to satiate an ever-restless mind, I plopped down in the middle of the aisle. The idea of literary magazines is just recently beginning to captivate me - not passionately, but my interest has been piqued.

I randomly flipped open the pages in search of something profound - "I see Johnny." The first thing that captures me is the 1960's setting and Miss Betsy's coral coat. She waits for the El in the chill of a Chicago winter season (having missed the "summer of love"). Miss Betsy is the host of a children's show, but awaiting the train, we interrupt the recollection of her first sexual escapades at 16 with an older boy, Johnny. She remembers telling herself that she doesn't love him, yet when the Korean war takes him - by means of a shot to the head - she realizes the flaw in her nay-saying mantras, for years later she is still plagued with thoughts of him. Standing on the platform in the opening paragraph, in her coral coat of course, she thinks of the grease trapped beneath his fingernails. She loved him, you see. Love is a tricky thing.

Her life is monotonous. I imagined her as a bit of a prude, a straight-line perfectionist. She probably wears pearls, probably dresses like Jackie. As a part of Miss Betsy's character, she carries a hand mirror lacking the reflective center. It's used on the show as an interactive prop allowing her to peer into the viewing world and "see" her audience. She sends salutations through the t.v. screen, and likewise carries one in her purse for those occasions in public when children ask her to perform the bit.

One morning for reasons undisclosed, Claire, the show's make-up artist, invites Miss Betsy to a party. The host notes a significant age difference, and also that she has no idea why she opts to attend the event. Nevertheless, Miss Betsy obliges Claire's request. Between a marijuana joint and several pills, Miss Betsy finds herself locked in the bathroom and for the first time, irrefutably high. She reaches for her mirror frame and peers deep into it's emptiness. It offers an image of Johnny, a painfully disturbing image only produced by the torment of lost love...and hallucinogens.

Her behavior deteriorates, she increases her drug use and attends more parties with Claire, with whom she falls in love. At the height of their interaction Claire disappears - again Miss Betsy is abandoned. She begins seeking any social event that might result in a reunion with Claire, but never finds a trace of her. The climax of the tale brings us to one last psychedelic occasion. Miss Betsy, having stumbled on an unusual invite, knocks on the unfamiliar door of a sketchy neighborhood (foreshadowing at its finest). The door opens, she drops acid upon entry, and quite literally runs into Claire - screwing a mutual friend in the bathroom. I wouldn't usually use such casual descriptors, but it's just that casual of a scene. Miss Betsy has spent countless hours pining, and when they are again face-to-face, Claire gives nothing more than a careless and blaze greeting.

This is the tipping point as emotional trauma and a "bad trip" begin to mix. Miss Betsy bumps into the children of one of the party goers in the hall. She locks the young girl in a closet, and attempts to kidnap the small boy, whom she has convinced herself is the childhood embodiment of Johnny. Before getting far on foot, Miss Betsy is stopped and the child returned. She loses her job, moves back in with her mother, and refuses to speak. She begins to feel that speech is overrated, and no matter how hard her mother coaxes, she shuts down. Oh, and Claire becomes the show's next host...a daily mockery.

I had a point, an idea of why this bizarre piece of literature has lingered in my head. I am ashamed to admit my ignorance to the actuality of this war, to military culture, and the previous luxury of maintaining a faceless image of our soldiers. I arrived on Thursday for our coffee date, mine and the staff sergeant's. Only then, I knew him as an "out of work writer." Although a bit put-off by the initial lack of profession, it seems that the struggling artist persona would at least foster worry on another, less intense level. But such is life, and I was captivated by the conversation. Date number 2 ensued, and again I was intrigued. Over the course of the last few days I have learned a bit more about the Army, a bit more about the culture and the expectations...and the tours. He has suggested not to take up News watching, has mentioned a friend of a friend who didn't make it home and the reality that event provided.

So, Miss Betsy and her mirror...perhaps the link is apparent.