Happy Halloween

Charles carved the face of this beauty. What a smile, eh?

I will be sad when Halloween is over because I like looking at the pumpkin as it scares away all of the evil spirits in our yuppie neighborhood. Compared to most pumpkins on our block (most are plastic and contain an electric light), this guy is pretty scary. What a great holiday. There are large bowls of candy sitting around the house waiting to be given to some lucky children in costume.

Halloween does for me what I imagine Christmas does for most people: it makes me want to either have or be a child. This year I must settle for being one.

Hope you all have a happy, and frightening, Halloween. Anyone dressing up?

The Problem with My Brain, or at least one of them

The problem with having a brain like mine is that if I don't find some way to keep a valve open, the stuff inside just builds up like a pool. Somehow, it is only the important little things (like where I put my keys, or that third thing I needed from the grocery store) that slip away. The big stuff just sits there stewing.

So, the most recent stew looks something like this:

I want to find a center within myself: a non-conditional committment to guide me through my days and nights.

I've been listening to this class from Berkeley on Existentialism and Film and watching the films. The professor has a nice set up for the course where he describes the philosophical tradition (starting with the Greeks) which values a universal ethic -- a Truth -- that should be true for all humans. On the other hand, we also have the Judeo-Christian tradition which found/finds value in the personal experience, in the committment to a single idea which overshadows any universal ethic. In our culture, we attempt to follow both traditions -- and this leaves us completely confused.

Existential thinkers attempt to either join the two traditions or overthrow one with the other (typically it is the Greeks that are thrown out).

Feminist theory, too, has trouble with the Greeks tradition (especially with the way philosophers like Descartes play it).

And here I am teaching in the academy: the most prominent of the Greek relics.

What is my defining committment? Ethics? Ha! Yet, when I look closely, I'm unsure what shapes my choices. What makes me act?

I might be living a life of "lower immediacy" (the life of an immature, childlike person, always ruled by my base needs), but I don't think so. Maybe teaching is it, but the academy is still a philosophical institution.

Today, I find myself wondering what makes me tick. This is the stagnant pool I live with. If I don't know what makes me tick, who the hell does?

Batch One out there

Well, I've sent my first batch of applications: 10 brown envelopes somewhere in the postal system waiting to reach someone who may or may not read all of my hard work. I'd like to say I'm relieved, but I still have at least that many more to do (with a week or so before the next deadline), and now I have a strange sense of anxiety about having them out there -- like I'm up for display and the powers that be will be judging me -- harshly. I guess the real core of the anxiety is that 58% of new Ph.D.s don't get tenure-track jobs their first year. And I feel certain that it won't be the graduates from Yale and Harvard that are jobless.

Sigh.

I wish I had something nice to say. I've been thinking lately how life seems to me to be much like a swing through the jungle on vines. I move from one problem to another, hanging on for dear life, when in all probability I could just walk along fine without all those vines. I don't seem to be much good at that kind of traveling.

Tonight I'm going to a poetry reading in town. That should be fun. I need some poetic encouragement.

I notice all of your blogs are silent. Are ya'll swinging on vines too?

F it

(to be read in a perfect, unaffected Alabama accent)

So I am thinking to myself: self, you have work to do. But as I look into my hazy reflection in the laptop screen (the only mirror I know most of the day), I find that self doesn’t want to.

Self wants to say hello because some days, a bit of word play is all I have. Some days I all I can do is carve the crazy world into letters and marvel at the way things turn out.

So, here I sit, trying to figure how I’ll get everything done before the Black Crows concert that I’m going to see tonight, I’m trying to figure just how it is that I have turned my husband into a domestic god (all that blogging and discussion flipped the cleaning responsibilities in this household), and I’m trying to get a grasp on how another set of holidays are beating at my door: Halloween is looking us in face, my fellow goblins.

Meanwhile, the letters need to be printed, and I’d give a large chunk of my flesh for a good long nap.

I think for a moment about poetry. But that thought runs whimpering into the bushes. This is no time for a luxury like poetry.

Still, the look on the face of the reflection before me says defiantly that time must be taken, that a shout out to my peeps as we move into the weekend is worth a ten minute break.

You are worth it. Hello peeps.

Some days are good days to die. Today is a good day to say hello.

Miss you.

scarcity

As I am short on resources (time and energy), my posts may be few and far between for the next two weeks. Applications for most of the academic jobs are due at the end of the month, and I'm trying to keep all other balls in the air while also getting these applications done. For more on the way I feel as I do them, see the letter posted a while back.

Between now and then, I'll do the best I can to post when I can.

Sorry to leave you out there hangin'.

changing leaves

I wanted to soak in the red and yellow; I wanted to come back with a sense of renewal. But autumn is not really about renewal: it is about the closing of the old.

I am growing older. I feel it in the crack of my ankles in the morning, in the number of doughnuts I can eat without feeling sick, in the amount of time I can spend behind the wheel of a car. Yet I am not old. I am not living in a nursing home or with a loved one who is becoming more and more burdoned by my existence. As America ages, we have more and more ethical questions to face: how do we age with dignity, without the interference of government or the beliefs of others, and within a time frame that we can accept? When is death appropriate?

While people my age botox, nip, tuck, suck, and implant, many other people are working to control their bladders, to find food that doesn't send their bodies into frenzies, and to keep their minds working for as long as possible. I don't mean to minimize the people my own age; I just think that maybe we worry too much about wrinkle creams. In the mean time, a person that I love dearly is dying.

She is not on her deathbed, mind you. But the inevitability of the end of life is more real to me than ever. The leaves are glowing: but they are yellow now.

This did not help my depression, of course. But I can say that my focus has shifted. I'm not so interested in myself right now. I seem unimportant. It never seemed more important to me that I stop and look around: to look outside of me.

depression

When you live day in and day out with mental illness (whatever that means), depression is sometimes expected. Yet sometimes when it comes, I don't know what to do with it.

Yesterday and today it sits with me like a silent younger sibling watching and waiting for the moment she can take over the conversations, take over the activities, and/or just plain take over. I let my class go 30 minutes early today because I just didn't have the will to teach. I keep looking at the dirty counter thinking I should clean it up. I think the bed feels pretty darn good and that I should stay here for a while.

It could be that I drank more than I usually do this weekend; as I get older drinking does tend to depress me. It could be that these two days are sandwiched between having friends here for the weekend and going to Asheville tomorrow. It could be that the moon is waning. It could be that depression is part of the life cycle and I should stop trying to attribute it to some cause.

Whatever the reason, I don't much feel like a happy girl today. I don't much like much of my life, many of my life choices, or most of my habits. One positive? Yes, I've lived long enough to know that I'll feel better soon.

Concert, weekend, and what is next

Indigo Girls were, as always, really great. It was the first time I've seen them with a full band in a really long time, and I enjoyed the change. We were close enough to see the spit flying, and that always makes a concert even more fun. Thanks to A & H for the ticket and the great company!

The weekend, despite the results of the football game, was really fun. It is nice to have people I like around, and I talked A & H into trying hot yoga on Saturday as well. This helped us deal with the game and gave us an excuse to eat lots of food that evening. This means that I've now exposed three of my family members to Bikram, any other takers? :)

I'm headed to Asheville on Wednesday to see M & ME for a few days. Should be back Friday. I'll try to take a picture or two (I forgot to take any this weekend).

So, if the blog is stagnant for a few days, you'll know why. (But I may surprise myself).

Despite our differences

Well, tomorrow night is the Indigo Girls concert with A & H; I am looking forward to it.

Been listening to their new album, Despite our Differences, and marveling over how I've grown up with them and how they are still relevant to me...that somehow my life runs parallel to their lives.

Some scattered things I've been thinking:

I continue to have, use, eat, and buy more than I need. I live in overwhelming abundance and find myself unhappy for it.

Amy Ray writes:

How much do we really need?
a question, if you have to ask
just means what it means-
the question that says everything.
---"Money Made You Mean"

While I've spent most of my life longing to live in the city, wishing to escape rural landscapes, when given the chance, I bought a house in a subdivision in the suburbs. Again, I find myself unhappy about my choices. Maybe most unhappy because it was my choice. The suburbs are destructive to both the land and the cultural harmonies that we need to be building instead of running away from each other.

Again, Ray writes:

It's been you and me on this fronteir
trying not to be suburban pioneers.
Fighting off the pavers
and the associations,
and the covenants against the trailers.

...
Once you told me what,
what I'll miss the most
is just being the only ones-
with our dirt road and our dead ends.
-----"Dirt and Dead Ends"

So, from my abundant suburban hell, I think about myself listening to Indigo Girls for the first time 17 years ago in the car of a guy I no longer remember with two other women who sang along (words by Emily Sailers):

My place is of the sun
and this place is of the dark
and I do not feel the romance
I do not catch the spark.

I don't know when I noticed life was life at my expense
the words of my heart lined up like prisoners on a fence.
The dreams came in like needy children, tugging at my sleeve,
I said I have no way of feeding you, so leave.
---"Prince of Darkness" 1989

still powerful to me now
-- and there are so many songs with so many memories. This post could go on forever. Instead, I'll end it here:

Clearing webs from the hovel
a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel
I've been digging too deep, I always do.
------"Hammer and a Nail" Emily Sailers, 1990

What I'm really saying

As I write letters of application for jobs all over this country, I am amused by what it is that I am really saying beneath the rigidly correct and overly self-selling language. Here is what a letter that said what it meant would say:

Dear person in a job I would kill to have:

I am writing to plead for a position in your school. It is a position I read about in an advertisement in that snooty little magazine we are all required to read. While I have never really wanted to live in your state, you seem to have a job that I qualify for and beggars can't be choosers. I have all the required degrees and have earned all the obligatory awards so that you will want to hire me, but other than the few dollars those awards brought, they have been little use in my life.

My research work up to this point is still on the student level. I want to become like you: published, respected, and well paid, but I'm still a peon in this world. Please take pity on me; please see my potential; please note that I will work really hard.

I do have some experience teaching the basic courses, but I hope you can see that my success with those courses will make me successful teaching more advanced courses as well. I really need you to see how much I love working, because I do. Nothing in the world is more fulfilling than teaching students, not even the money I am giving up to stay in academics.

I have also spent much time and energy working for free so that you will want to hire me. I've read all the horrible poetry sent to literary magazines and have sent the writers rejection letters; I've served on do-nothing committees and committees that kept me from watching my favorite TV programs. I've gone to conferences, been a student go-for, and generally prostrated myself to the academic world so that when I sat down to write this letter, you would be impressed. Please be impressed.

I am now thanking you for your time, but I want more of it. I want you to call me as soon as you read this letter to schedule an interview with me so that I can tell you more wonderful things about me. The truth is, I am desperate. Please hire me. I know you are reading this letter after reading 200 others, but I REALLY need this job.

Please. please.

Have mercy.

Gender Genie

Well, this is not new to me, but I rediscovered it the other day. You can cut and paste any text into and a computer program with tell you if it is written by a male or female writer:

http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

Here's the kicker (for me). When I cut and pasted my academic work in there, it said I was male (not a big surprise). But when I cut and pasted a few of my longer blog entries in there, those also came up male (surprise!). Even MORE interesting, I cut and pasted a few entries from Miss in there too. It turns out when I write fiction, I am actually a female.

It is particularly interesting (at least to me), to see what words it thinks are male or female.

Do your own experiments. Let me know what you find. This blog, by the way, came up male (but just barely).