Jiminy Cricket

There's a line in one of Bright Eyes' new songs, the one we discussed a few days ago, "The Brakeman":

Got a cricket for a conscience
always looks the other way

Because songs rattle around in my head, I find myself thinking about and saying things that are connected to the music I listen to (and I know that many of you are the same way). So ol' Jiminy has been hanging around for a few weeks now.

When was the last time you saw Pinocchio? If you haven't seen it as an adult, I recommend a re-watching. Made in 1940, it really reveals how we as a culture have changed our strategies with children. The morals in the movie are hard hitting and quite judgemental, and there is no attempt to "live and let live." Right and wrong are clearly delineated. It also makes a nice comparison for the movie AI which is a more disturbing version (contemporary, post-modern) of the same story. Note especially the blue fairy. But that is not my point.

I want to talk a little about Jiminy. Before those lines (above) hit my consciousness, they must have been roaming around in my subconscious because within days I told my therapist that I didn't have a cricket for a conscience, but a big, mean brute. She didn't even know what I was talking about. She said, "a cricket?" I reminded her of Pinocchio, but she still had not remembered Jiminy Cricket as Pinocchio's conscience. I found that interesting because it is what I remember most about the story. That glorious song:

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

When you heart is in your dreams
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
as dreamers do...

I guess I still cling to that. Me, with my brute conscience, which unlike Oberst's conscience NEVER turns away, I'm the dreamer, still hopeful that passion can move mountains.

No request is too extreme.

Today is my beloved's birthday, and for all the ups and downs, for all the growing pains, I still believe in wishing. I still believe that we can make stuff happen. But I don't think that right and wrong are easily defined. Sometimes we can live our entire lives looking long and hard at the blue fairy.

So, happy birthday C. I am wishing on my star. May all of our holiday weekends be full of dreams.

Not depressed?

It is strange, but after about a week of being on the verge of tears at every second and sleeping too much, yesterday I found I could post my No Babies post and I could get out of bed and I could talk about things with C. I am not depressed.

And I do have Bright Eyes on loop, and I do feel pissed off about American politics (even the Democrats are weak and unable to stand up to Bush and his administration), and I do want to have a baby while I am choosing not to.

Feels strange really. But thank you all for your comments and your advise and, most of all, your love.

Here is what I know:

• I have to try this job because I worked many many years to get to a place where someone would offer me said job, and now they did. So, I will go.
• My husband is not capable or ready to leave his job because he has worked many many years to get to a place where he holds a certain position, has job security, and makes enough money that he can retire at 65 with an amount of money that he feels will make him comfortable.
• I do not want to raise a child while trying to hold a long distance marriage together.
• I will give up (or at least postpone) having a child.
• I will deal with (for better or worse) my feelings of abandonment and loss.
• I will takes steps toward independence (mostly financially) so as to feel safe again.

The last two are at my therapist's suggestion, and have been expressed to C. While they are ugly, they are very real and must be acknowledged. The irony is that C.'s attempts to feel secure have made me feel insecure.

But, as Jebbo notes, it is a matter of perspective. This is supposed to be a time of celebration in my life. I am one of the 40% that got a tenure-track job. Celebrate. I will be working for a liberal arts college where English is not the ugly stepchild. Celebrate. I will be able to continue my work with the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. Celebrate. I now have a Ph.D. Celebrate. I'm going to buy a new house. Celebrate.

But there are costs. The world is still an ugly, hate-filled place. Little girls in China are still abandoned for being little girls. Couples in New York are (or might be) slave owners. My government wants to gather all the power and control for themselves, my civil rights be damned. Some of my favorite loved ones are still denied the right to marry because they love the "wrong" people. I must choose either career or family.

My therapist says that most people don't think about the choice to have children; they don't take it as seriously as I do. There are things I just can't do to a child: mainly those things are the things that I found painful in my own childhood. The cost of this kind of thinking about costs is childlessness. But childlessness hurts less than passing on pain.

It really seems strange that I'm not depressed, but I am not. I am sad. But there is a difference.

I'll post more on small things a little later today-- attempting to be the American Doll Posse (which I don't have -- is it good?) to my own Cassadega. (for those who don't know the music, I'll say, to be the "Talladega Nights" to my own "Requiem for a Dream"). Maybe those aren't exactly equal. Help me out here.

No Babies

Lots of things are changing in my life. One of the things that I am trying to come to terms with is that C and I have decided not to adopt or to have children.

[breathing long and hard]

Neither of us are willing to live apart from a child, and neither of us are interested in giving up our careers. In our reasoning, that means no children. Officially, we have not taken our names off of the list, but there is paperwork that needs to be renewed, and we are not going to do that. As soon as we are capable of really facing facts, we will take our names off of the list.

This is the consequence of our choices. And we are 1) trying to sleep in the bed we made, 2) trying to eat the pie we baked, 3) pretending that we will be fine with this decision.

I am less fine than C.

On the bright side: I can buy a house anywhere I want and not worry about the school systems. I can travel to Rome on a moment's notice or have sex on the kitchen floor without worrying about someone walking in on me. [But remember the next line in that movie??? I am haunted by it: "But the thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."]

In the mean time, I am house hunting, furniture shopping, and doing lots of yoga.

I'm also in the early stages planning a long road trip in July that will include going to see many of my friends. Next week I go to NC to see M and ME. Want me to come see you? :)

Life: it is never easy.

small things, part two

Well, today I want to complain about road signs. That's right.

Since I grew up in what was once rural Alabama (but is now a commercial haven just like every other growing part of America), I remember roads with no (or very few) signs. I lived almost two miles down a road which we called Buzbee because it ended at a large plot of land owned by people of that name, but nowhere was this road marked by a sign that labeled it. There was one sign at the turn off from the highway that marked it as a county road number, but no Buzbee Road signs existed.

When giving people directions to my childhood home, we started with the county road sign, and then every other instruction was based on landmarks: take the first left, go around the big curve, or 3rd mailbox on the right.

Yesterday, as I returned home from yoga, I noticed that our roads are now littered with signs. I know that we need speed limit, street names, and maybe even some of the directional advice (turn right for Cumming, turn left for Alpharetta). But that's not even the half of it. Every traffic signal is marked by a caution sign telling you that the traffic signal is coming up. There are signs to warn us that the road is about to turn left or right, go up or down. Signs tell us who is picking up the trash on that particular mile of roadway. Signs to let us know which animals cross that road, that rocks fall onto the road sometimes, or that fog sometimes floats across the road. Signs warn us of road work, tell us when the road work ended, and advise us that road work will begin next week (or next month). Signs tell us how many dollars are being spent working on this road and who pays for it.

But it is even more crazy than that. In my neighborhood, we have signs congratulating the graduates of 2007 (thank you very much). Signs in yards advertising children as valedictorian, yard of the month, honor roll students, landscaping improvements by XXX company, and even this house was for sale but we (company ZZZ) sold it.

Interstate signs now tell us which restaurants operate at which exits. Large signs in Atlanta let drivers know when wrecks, traffic, or crime is occurring. Alternate routes are sometimes suggested. I won't even go into billboards.

Here's what caught my attention: In an effort to see what I might be able to sell my house for, I did an online search for houses in my neighborhood which are on the market . I found that the house next to me is for sale, and they DON'T have a sign in their yard. I was shocked. I thought, "How could you sell your house without a for sale sign?" Then I realized: even without the sign, the house could be bought and sold. Even without the signs, streets have names, directions exist, traffic signals work, and construction is performed.

Why have we littered our landscapes with all of these signs?

The signs, after all, are only markers. And, I think, they are unattractive and, at this point, too numerous.

Small Things, Part One

I've spent the past month or so really thinking about the larger patterns in my life. At this point, I'm depressed and sick of myself. So, this morning I want to think about something smaller. In fact, I am hoping that I can blog about some small thing every day for the rest of the summer.

Don't hold me to that.

Today's small thing is: deodorant



Now, that may be funny (or at least strange), but deodorant is (at least a small) part of all of our lives. Recently, I bought a stick with a scent called "Vanilla Chai," and it smells like wedding cake. What a weird thing for your husband to say, "You smell edible." And you to answer, "It is my deodorant."

But there is more to it than that. I am, by nature, not comfortable speaking in front of people. It just so happens that I love what I do, which is to teach (and therefore speaking in front of people is necessary for me to do what I love to do). The paradoxes in my life just astound me. Anyway, when I teach, I sweat. And I don't mean a little perspiration, I mean my underarms pour water like a leaky faucet.

Secret (one of the many many brands of deodorant that I use) put a new "prescription strength" deodorant/antiperspirant out on the market. Rather than just putting it on after your shower in the morning, you apply it the night before and it "soaks in" overnight. For those of us with more serious sweating problems, (oh, and I should note that this is not a stink problem, but a sweat one -- the deodorant part seems to work fine) you reapply it after the shower in the morning too.

I tried it. It did not keep me from sweating when I teach.

So what I have been thinking is two fold. First, is this a problem that many people have? Is sweating, while embarrassing when you are standing in front of people talking, such a bad thing? (I mean I pay lots of money to work out in a heated room to make myself sweat profusely). But second, and more seriously, why is it that I enjoy doing something while my body reacts this way? I mean, the number of ways that I find myself to be masochistic is quickly lengthening to a point that I am concerned for myself. Is it simply that we all enjoy overcoming difficulty, or am I really attracted to the side of life that is painful, miserable, and maybe even harmful?

I mean, in her wonderful workout video, Cindy Crawford says, "pain is a sign to stop."

When I am so uncomfortable that I sweat through two layers of "clinical" strength antiperspirant, what am I doing? And why do I like it?

Bright Eyes Concert

I don't know that any of you are fans like I am, but even C (who likes them, but doesn't love them) said it was an incredible concert. Talent, talent, talent. But Conor has that "it" thing on top of it. C said he had the whole crowd in his hands.

I could go on and on...really I could. My suggestion: see if they are coming anywhere near you...and GO.

Want a taste: watch aol sessions.

Vacation

While this vacation was not as great overall as the one to Jackson Hole, Utah and Zion National Park are gorgeous. For more pictures, see my Flickr account. There are also a few graduation pictures there.

Some decisions have now been made. They are tough ones, but at least I can know focus on how to deal with the problems at hand instead of worrying about what I am going to do. The vacation was good for me; my head is clearer than it has been in years. Maybe the graduation is part of that as well.

So, now I can blog about other things.

Tonight I am going to see Bright Eyes at the Fox. I'll let you know how that goes. Next week, I promise to attempt to write about something meaningful. Well, maybe...

Back to the soundtrack

I am inspired by blogs that continue to uphold political discussions day after day. My favorite two are Tiny Cat Pants and A Little Distracted. Debates about immigration, the limits (or lack of) on the executive branch of our government, or even abortion.

As of late, I would call my intellectual vigor "puny" at best. There is no excuse for it.

On that note, I'm stuck in a new collection of songs (once called an album).

So I have become the Middleman
The gray areas are mine
The in-between, the absentee
Is a beautiful disguise

I feel in-between a lot of things lately. Anyway, if you haven't heard Cassadaga, Bright Eye's newest release. I recommend it. You can listen to a track or two here.

The World and Other places

There are incredibly good and bad things happening in the world (and other places too, I'm sure).

I will graduate on Thursday. Unbelievable.

Jebbo pointed out the depth of the corruption in our government. Unbelievable.

And this weekend I watched two interesting movies.

Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and part of The Short films of David Lynch.

The human condition is a strange/horrible/beautiful thing. We are capable of murder and torture. We are capable of love and nurture.

For me, the lens tends to focus on the worst parts. I see pain and suffering; I feel shame and sympathy. That glass is always nearing empty.

So, when good things happen, I tend to see the cloud approaching: the stress of a gathering of family members, the horror of walking across a stage in front of 10,000 people, the ripping away of my favorite yoga routine while I leave town for a few days.

Today, I want to spend one moment thinking: Those people are actually going to hand me that piece of paper. I am going to Utah to hike. Good things.

The rest will have its time to envelope me, to drown me soon enough.

Shifting language

The thing I like best about language, and poetic language in particular, is its changing nature. Dictionaries become obsolete because words change, meanings change, usage changes.

Yet it is this precise characteristic that allows the survival of many of the ugly things about human beings.

Namely, in this case, bigotry and racism.

When we began looking to buy a house in the Atlanta suburbs, our real estate agent continuously steered us away from the areas I was most interested in living. His way of doing this was to talk about the school systems. Forsyth county, he claimed, had great schools. It was not until we were about to buy our house that I finally "heard" what he was saying to us. In a final discussion about living closer to the city, the agent said, "Well, it is just more [pause] diverse there." My immediate thought was, GREAT. Then I realized, he meant "diverse" as a euphemism for not-all-white and, therefore, undesirable for us white folk.

So, we bought a house where we were told. When a child became a real possibility for us, I started researching the schools. What I found astounded me. In every measurable way, the schools in this "more diverse" area are better. The test score are much higher; more students from those schools go to colleges; the colleges they go to are higher ranked than the schools the graduates here go to. What, I asked myself, could be the basis for all the talk about better schools? For, now that we've been here a few years, I hear the rhetoric everywhere: the gym, the yoga studio, and with coworkers. So, I started looking at the racial make up of the schools.

There it was. Forsyth county is 99% white. North Fulton county schools are only 60-75% white. One person even told me, "if you want to know about a school, go sit in the parking lot at 3:00 and watch the kids leave. That will tell you everything you need to know."

Really?

Now that I'm moving again, I'm finding the same to be true elsewhere. White people in Montgomery claim that they send their children to private schools because the pubic schools are unsafe. When I start looking at racial statistics, I have suspicions that this conversation is not about safety, but about segregation. You see, Montgomery public schools are 23% white. I've read blogs and online discussions that talk about weapons in elementary schools and sub-standard teaching. Maybe there are such things, but I have my suspicions otherwise.

My point?

Well, I have been operating under the assumption that things are progressing. That with every year that passes, we are more tolerant, more integrated, more equal. But what I see is a shifting in the politics, a shifting of language, that just masks the same old racism in new language.

I have a wise friend who teaches special education in Seattle. She says that until white people like me quit sending our kids to the private schools, nothing will change.

This time I will buy a house where I want to be. And I'll send my child to school right there. I won't live in the homogenized suburbs, and I will hope that my child, no matter what his/her color turns out to be, will see that the world is full of colors.

tired and cranky

Tonight I give my last final. After I grade them, I will be completely school free (as both a student and teacher) for the first time in quite a while. Weird.

Just when I should be celebrating, after all, they will hood me one week from today, I find myself tired and cranky. REALLY cranky.

I tried retail therapy yesterday. It didn't work. But I brought home some cute clothes that fit me.

Yoga was a HUGE struggle this morning. I pulled myself together enough to get home, eat, and make up a final. No clear head.

Even my sleep is plagued with dreams of walking Phoenix across logs with a leash that chokes him to death when he falls off and I try to pull him back up.

Is it the change itself? Is it an angst over the coming move and job? Am I coming down with something?

Maybe the political world has finally beaten me down.

All I know is that as I re-read Ginsberg's Howl to teach tonight, I find myself identifying...

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, startving hysterical naked..."

and then I think of his poem, "America"

"America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?"

I never know what is personal and what is political. Somehow the universe never lets me make such distinctions. Ginsberg goes on:

"I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again."

I am talking to myself again.

When will you/when will I/when will we be angelic?

I am howling...yes, the moon is full, but she is not to blame this time.

Not that you've been holding your breath...

but we've made a decision.

C will stay in Cumming. I will move to Montgomery.

It is really a postponing of a more central decision. I guess we'll be making that decision next year.

For the first time in nearly eight months, the waiting time for the adoption has actually gone down. We are now eleven and a half months (subject to change and probably will) from referral. Typically, travel is around 6-8 weeks from referral. That means -- if all stays on course -- we will travel next summer.

Then we will have to make this tough decision. Who's career gets trumped?

Until then, we are to live in two different cities...again.

OH:

Happy Birthday A!!!!