Where to go from here

I boast. I'm not as modest as I'd like to be. Sometimes, well ok most times, it is only after a conversation that I question myself. Should I have said that? Too much? Too long? I could rehearse for hours what I said.

Mainly, listening is so boring. I don't mean it to demean anyone, because I know this is an admirable attribute. But honestly why does one listen? Kris listens to investigate, to find out what a person is like. I just kind of get all that without the listening bit.

I just realize some days how young I am.

Addiction and Intervention

A&E has a show called Intervention.

I watch it because I want to feel something real, something moving. That something is never pretty. It is raw, damaged, and on the verge of dying. The addict and the love a person has for an addict. How could someone love an addict? It seems ridiculous, a mistake. I assure you it is easier than you think.

There are times when I watch this show and imagine. I imagine this family whose daughter/son/mother/father is addicted to a serious substance might have imagined their life differently. They may have thought over the beds of their sleeping children about the big dreams and great wonders this child is capable of. Doesn't every parent? And one could blame the parenting of a child to their probability to having a drug issue, but I don't buy it. It is a cop out.

Outside people who see a son or daughter kill themselves, their lives, and their dreams over an addiction see the psychology behind it. Every since Freud, there is an analysis of the childhood of a killer, an addict, or any kind of deviant, looking for clues of what lead to this travesty. I think the problem lies with searching for the explanation of deviancy, which people use to reassure THEMSELVES that a) this could not happen to them b) they havn't done anything deviant as a sign of following the same wrong path c) they convince themselves they are untouchable.

Phrases like "And he was such a good kid." Or "That could never happen to her or him." There is still a problem in our culture where we shy away from what is tough. I watch these gut wrenching episodes of real life and realize how good I have it, how hard it is for others, and that there are real moments in life you can't manufacture in a studio. What is real? Well...

There are moments when a father says to his daughter words he rarely says, words she needs to hear. They embrace and the microphones pick up on their crying, sniffing, sobbing. They desperately cling to each other, burying their pain and tears in the shoulder or chest of the warm body of a person who loves them thick and thin. The scene catches that moment when your heart leaps into your throat, your eyes overflow, and it is hard to breath because you are so overwhelmed with emotion. The person you are hugging knows you, feels your pain, forgives you for the pain you cause them. It is a beautiful moment. A sad moment. But a real moment.

There are times when the addict is so self destructive that they refuse the help being offered to them. They are so removed from that love, they take it for granted, and they self sabotage their own survival. These people feel, but they don't respect that feeling and repeat the damage they inflict.

There are moments when you see the addict struggle. They hate themselves. They hate their family for caring. They find reasons. You see them hesitate to go to treatment, knowing very well they may end up back where they are.

I think there are oh so few moments in life that have not been bastardized, manufactured, exploited, and changed, particularly when it comes to television. There are moments which are ugly and beautiful. I think people are afraid they aren't strong enough to bare the pain of it, let alone watch it. I think they are wrong. Wrong that they couldn't have it happen to them. That they couldn't survive it. or that they can't watch it. I think being aware helps. Hiding these issues in our society perpetuates a lack of sympathy, a lack of identification. Judgment prevails over the real and authentic. I crave the real and authentic because the world can smother that sense of sympathy in me. How about you?

I Claim My Darkness

I can't explain it in words exactly. Just days ago, I was enveloped in a crisis of titanic proportions and much like Whitman's says, it didn't go out with a bang, rather only a whisper. Now that's where the fatalism ends though. My last three days have been possibly the most exciting of my academic career so far. Not because of the material I was learning, but rather the people, the way of thinking about history, and well, then I'm at a loss for words.

Epiphany- ah ha! That's it. Where before the cold dark fog was suffocating me, now I feel like it is only right. I feel like I can't see into my own future. Just like driving home, the dark fog that weighed on me kept me sane, excited, and constant. I saw the lines. I have a good pair of head lights. I think I'll be ok. More than ok.

When I play a Tracy Chapman cd and lines from every song inspire me and tell the very feelings that I feel at that moment, I have to be under some kind of spell. The fog and the enchanting music? All the face swirled and all the names forgotten, but still I felt like these people were my family. How ridiculous- I know. But they made me feel welcome, smart, valued, and well like a long lost friend. So many things happened in 2008. My god I should write a book about it, because it has been like a roller coaster but by far the best year of my life- ever. More on what the hell i'm talking about later. For now, musings and trappings. Conundrums are always numerous and I just don't see them as a challenge, yet.

Funny video

Now, it wasn't my idea to send the video in. In fact, I'm morally and ethically against it. It was taken out of context. Can't anything be taken out of context really? I once had a professor who gave use fortune cookies at the end of the term. She was wonderful and colorful professor, an old lady with a great smile, curly short hair, and great fashion sense. She is a lesbian, and I found this out and liked her even more. Is that wrong? Eh, well she was and is a fantastic person. She was funny and articulate and scholarly. I want to be just like her. Well, she gives out fortune cookies for a reason. It is a college class, so this isn't an obvious common practice.

You need to realize that the fortune is a text, a recorded thought or piece of culture. To truly enjoy that piece of culture, it is only complete with the shell, the surrounding context. The influences, histories, and background makes the text truly juicy and truly tasty. But without the text, the context is meaningless and flat. They support each other. They don't support the truth. There are many ways around that and that silly truth is so flimsy anyways, who will really notice.

I look at this man and think wow, I have a face for a name. I read his book for a class. He is a professor of history and an eminent scholar, and all I can think about is a Neil Gaiman story of an Anthropology conference full of clandestine sexual encounters, drinking, and not a lot of Anthropology really. Would this man, who I see is married because he wears a ring, participate in such scandalous and tawdry affairs? He is clean, young, maybe in his early 40's. He is fit, a nice dress, but not too nice as in he would be gay. I once heard that gay men don't keep things in their pockets because they want to look good in their jeans. They don't want there to be any bulges to take away from the most important bulge of them all. I don't know what this may mean, but my husband has more in his pockets than I do in my purse. I wish I were joking, but I couldn't make this up. A leatherman, a mini flash light, a multi-tool, pens, pencils, key chains, USB thumb drive, wallet, inhaler, phone, and well, maybe an allan wrench set. No, I'm not joking. He looks like "Awnold" and like he pumped iron, literally into his thighs. On the surface this may seem super non-gay, but he doesn't keep things in he back pockets, so his nice hiney is unadulterated.

Again, what is this man like. I may idolize him a little because of my own dreams of prestige in the scholarly world. I realize this. Maybe this man is just, well a man. He fights with his kids about dirty dishes, he has bad morning breathe, he vacuums and folds laundry, he fucks his wife when they get the time. Normal. But is he really normal like I think. What if his normal is traveling for his work, sleeping in hotel beds, traveling around the world to research for books, meeting young women, and ambitious students who may be attracted by his power or prestige. Maybe he meets a young blonde or red head or coppery dark skinned girl with a nice smile, a mind of her own, and no scruples or qualms about casual sex. She's not getting a grade, so it makes you wonder. He is attractive. He has a nice smile and great smell, but maybe he is a nice guy. A guy who worships his wife, honors his marriage, and acts as a sage both to his children and students. His students trust him and like him and think him very entertaining. Maybe he doesn't have time to get bored of the tedium or sad with the loneliness of books and committees and conferences.

The movie they let leak was funny, but I know what happened before and after, and I'm not laughing. Maybe I hated that he could be pure and clean and such a good man. I wanted to bring him down just a little, but not publicly. It was never meant to be public. Our encounter was brief and totally by chance. My age never a deterrent, because I carry myself with an ageless maturity and an unmistakable sense that I will make the work give me everything I want and need. I wasn't staying in the hotel. He was. I had met him and hadn't thought of him in any particular way or pine to know about him. Again, it was chance set of situations which occurred to set up my clandestine meeting with this young and brilliant man. He paused awkwardly. I stepped in at an uncomfortable distance. This kind of space which is warm and crackling with tension, the promise of rejection almost as certain as Schrodinger's cat. Of course he knew, and I could smell stale mint on his breathe and I wondered if he lotioned his baby smooth face. I imagined where that face could be and I blushed and looked away.

Could it be that I want to be a scholar or a scholar that sleeps around with other scholars. I couldn't tell after he left, or after he called, or after I met him yet again. It was meaningless sex. It wasn't even the best I'd every had. I have that feeling that I do for television characters I have crushes on, but he is real and I slept with him. It is never like the movies and it is always much more messy, grueling, and prefectible that television would have you believe. Sex with a character, not a start. It's so impossible. Maybe I like the theory and not the practice, but my conundrum is: you don't know if you don't like to practice if you don't practice.

I thought girls sleeping with professors was just in the movies, but it is never like the movies when I'm not a movie star by any means.

Wet cold darkness

When I set out in the morning in the winter, it is wet and cold and dark. There are days were it is much wetter. Some days the darkness is from storm clouds, and it feels entirely different if the darkness is because of a dense fog. The wetter days seem to be, well wetter, but in a way that you feel wet and muggy all over. I personally think a truly "wet" day is when even with layers and all the appropriate winter attire, a small insignificant drop of rain or water finds the only exposed skin (usually around the neck or head). Why is this "wet"? Sure it seems arbitrary or insignificant, but there are days full of rain where I could walk from here to there and feel free and less constricted by he turgid humid air and can escape those torpedo like dew drops that can chill you to the bone. They are frustratingly wet really, and it is when the rain encroaches on my world that I notice, "Wow, it's wet today."
The coldness one experience's in Oregon, according to my Midwestern family, is the worst. I fear the hellish winters and snow storms of Montana and South Dakota, but when my family came in March for my wedding, the rain chilled them to the bone as if they were stranded in an arctic dessert. "I can never get warm, the coldness go straight to my bones and I just can't get warm again." I'm used to this of course, and it never really gets below freezing where I'm at. It makes me wonder. Maybe the foreigner is gripped with the ailment: feeling the cold. Maybe I'm immune to it like a disease and can no longer contract it. Maybe I'm immune to Oregon cold alone, and when I visit somewhere else the cold will be like a disease. It affects the body, so then why not? It grips the body, makes it hard to sleep, makes one lose their appetite, and has the nasty habit of making you very very grubby. It's like the "wet" rain. It is the kind that wakes you up and says, "Hey! I'm rain and you better darn well listen to me. I've been around, but I haven't been paid enough attention." The cold may do the same thing, but I don't know. Maybe it isn't as sloppy as rain. Maybe it is more persistent, the cold, a wearing down without movement. Like pressure, you can't see it, but you can feel it consistently all over your body equally. If you increased the pressure carefully and ever so slowly, it could happen without you really knowing it.
I stood under cover at a bus depot waiting for my bus. It was much later than I usually head home, and everyone else similarly sought out shelter. I had an undershirt, a knit sweater, a wool jacket, jeans, boots, and a scarf, and a little drip drop crept down my chest. The knit cap I wore was little protection and it served to just keep my head warm. I was both burning up warm and freezing, and the muggy air just made me want to strip down into my underwear and let the cool breeze chill my skin and wick away the muggy sweat. It is only 5:30 pm but it is easily darker than any night of the summer, and it is much darker than the dark I left home in that very morning. My mood had gone south for a period possibly because of this weird brand of winter, but something changed today. Even in the depression wet and dark cramped depot, I could not stop smiling.