Final Installments of the Phoenix Series

he's there and here...

Where's Phoenix? Part II

This is his favorite sitting spot.

The "Where's Pheonix?" Series

Because I have been promising pictures of the house, I finally took some. Your job is to spot the dog (now a photographers helper) in each one.

Here's the kitchen:

It says I'm well balanced!

Can you believe that????

Take the "Are you a Yoga Snob Quiz?" to see if you are too. ((I think the fact that I took the quiz tells you that I'm not as balanced as they say I am)). he he he

I'm a Balanced Yogi!

A Balanced Yogi You love your friends unconditionally and accept them for who they are no matter what their yoga style preference, religious beliefs, or spending habits. You focus on the good in people and would never try to change them. Almost everyone feels comfortable in your presence. You live your yoga. You are an inspiration to yoga students everywhere!

Take the Yoga Journal Yoga Snob Quiz!

Her fingertips touching, hands in triangle

Hard to describe that particular position of the hands. Not in Namaste, but similar in height: across the chest. Instead of being in "prayer," they are open to form an empty cube between them.

It is a position I associate with pondering.

This is the pondering...

Went tonight to the independent movie theater within 1 minute (driving) of my house. Saw Evening. Not stellar, but sure was a lot better than mainstream movies. Claire Danes disappointed me. But it was nice to go to such a movie. I can "join" the theater (like one joins a museum) and go for $5. Cool.

I like my students. They are much like Auburn students. Much like myself. A little more religious, but at 18, so was I. Man, life is a trip.

I am looking at the boxes of time on my weekly calendar, and seeing that already the boxes are filling. I feel okay about that, but I am starting to feel cautious of any extra invitations or expectations. Maybe that is an important lesson that finally, after 37 years, I learn.

Distance is the real cause of my pondering. I have stepped back a moment to look at the possibilities. The two roads that Frost made cliche. I can see how one must make choices, efforts, even commitments to keep the distance from tearing everything apart.

At the end of the movie, Redgrave says, there are no mistakes in life. Just try to be happy.

I'd like to look back on my life and say that I did that.

At the end of day one...

I wish I could say that there was/is some earth moving difference in my life now compared to 24 hours ago. But there is not.

I can say that the first day was good. Had a nice lunch with A to make things even better.

Now I'm trying to make sure to follow through with all the toughness I projected today. HA.

I keep waiting for some profound thoughts. They are not coming.

So here's to the small stuff of life:

Phoenix got up about six times in the night because his little tummy is upset.

I couldn't eat breakfast because of those silly butterflies that come to meet me the first day of every semester.

This weekend I remembered one of the nice things about living apart from your spouse. "Make up time" is good.

I hope that if the hurricane hits Mexico, we don't pretend that it didn't hit "anyone."

Sometimes it doesn't hurt to keep my mouth shut.

whew

Well I'm one week in.

Some parts of me need to reserve any judgments until I have more information. But I will say that I have had both good and bad first impressions. Some things are really exciting, some scary. Like anything else, there will be positives and negatives.

But enough of that fair-mindedness. I took today off to relax and regain strength for next week -- which is the real test. Until I meet the students, I don't really know what my experience will be like.

So, from afar, all is well. My office is gorgeous and the people are extremely nice. I have finished my syllabi, and I am ready to show up Monday morning and work. I guess I will get used to the President being ordained and all of the prayer that precedes every meeting. It is VERY nice to live less than 3 minutes from work.

I still haven't taken photographs. But I will once the dust settles.

This post sucks. I'm just tired of thinking, I guess.

serendipity

I love that there is a new moon now.

So much of my life feels like it is on the cusp of newness.

As tonight rolls over to tomorrow, I start again.

Last post from the unemployed woman

I'm doing all of the string pulling I can muster to have someone stay at a college campus until 4:30 in the afternoon tomorrow (a Friday) to give me the keys to my new office.

My key ring is filling up. It seems that all the stuff that goes with keys is here. I cannot hide any more.

So, my days today and tomorrow are full of all the last minutes stuff that I could/should have done all summer and didn't.

One last weekend with C, which is no longer a nice getaway, has morphed into unpacking and showing the new house to in-laws.

Then I start Monday.

In these last few moments, standing somewhere between two places, I find myself looking back at all the stuff that brought me here. I don't have anything profound to say about that, but it is always nice to take inventory and compare notes since the last count.

The main thing I see is a completion. I like that.

So, the next post will probably come next week from an employed woman. I'll be talking about office paper, business cards, and before you know it, complaining about the laziness of students. It is all predictable.

I'll try to remember to take some photos to spice things up.

on the second reading of HP

SPOILER ALERT

Okay, so I just finished my second reading of The Deathly Hallows. Some things make more sense now:

* Neville is protected by Harry's sacrifice, not his mother's.
* It was Harry's goodness in his willingness to sacrifice himself -- just like his mother's -- that keeps him alive. That and that Voldemort took his blood. Goodness itself defeats Evil itself.
* It is quite a Christian story -- which makes all of the Christian uproar over the magic/witchcraft wonderfully ironic.
* I still think that he dies -- but, I can see the other argument too. It really depends on whether you read death metaphorically (like I do) or physically.
* I love Dumbledore's little speech about power and the hallows. Only one person in a million can have power without greed. This, I think, is one of the best lessons in the series.



Still: I don't see how Neville gets the sword unless we are to believe that wizards do have more right to it than goblins.

:)
Okay -- I think I'm done now. But I'm going back to book one.

Identity

I've started to write several posts over the last few days, but nothing sounded like anything more than whining.

I'm tired of whines.

So today I'm thinking about what it is that makes me me. When I strip away my house, my routine, my job, my friends, what is left?

This was initiated by a documentary (and not a good one) called Unknown White Male. The film follows a man who loses his memories -- all of them. During his search for his own identity, he becomes reacquainted with his friends and family. The most interesting part of the film is that all his friends/family know him as a new and "different" person. Yet, he is himself. So, wiping away memory changes identity.

So,wouldn't moving do the same -- even it is to a lesser extent?

I have things to hang onto: spouse, pets, education, family. Yet, in many ways I can re-invent myself if I want to.

Should be interesting.

Down to the wire

I spent a day with L and A and then went to Montgomery to deliver another load of stuff and take care of a few things.

Reality is no longer on the sidelines.

Picked up my text books. Got an email from the Dean. He wants a meeting next week.

My summer is officially ending.

Looking at this face to face has my stomach lurching. Spending a little time with everyone's two favorite children really makes me wonder what the hell I/we am/are giving up.

I want to stay in bed all day today. Not a good sign. Luckily I've committed myself to a few other fun activities.

Sometimes I think I'm completely insane.

American: looking for a common history

One of the things that I find uncomfortable about my life (and the list is long: I suppose that is due to all my over-thinking and over-analyzing) is the history of my culture.

Okay, maybe it is not the history exactly but the lack thereof.

See, I envy older cultures where a mythology and system of beliefs has been built and changed over time. I look at Chinese or even British culture and I wish I could claim those myths. But nothing fits us. I mean, yes, we have unbridled optimism that certain types of governments work, and we have Thanksgiving...but those are hard to build a world view from.

I think if you have an old culture, you can forgive the mistakes because there are other things to balance them out. I've always felt that my culture is a hodge-podge of European cultures as a foundation and then that foundation was bred with genocide, enslavement, and a thirst for capital. If you're looking for riches, it is a nice recipe. But I have a hard time with the ethical legacy. And that doesn't even add in the Christian mythology that preaches the destruction of all other mythologies.

So, when I watch a film, say like the Last Samurai or Pavilion of Women, I am both jealous of the "other" culture, and sickened by the implication that the Americanization of the world is a wonderful thing. I find it particularly offensive when the story is couched in a love story between a Caucasian man and an Asian woman.

But all of those feelings really stem from my own discomfort. I feel lost, like that part of my human-ness (a long cultural history) has been denied. But there is a long cultural history, I know. It is just that we live in a country where we don't have a SHARED cultural history. We come from all over and we came here by many different means. My background is privileged, even if not rich. I am descended from slave owners in one of my blood lines. Many of us are. Many others of us are descended from the enslaved people. Still others came here to escape genocide or are all that is left of the genocide of their Native American ancestors. Some come here to make better lives, to escape starvation, to educate themselves, to give their children that all powerful American dream: willing to sacrifice their history for a new one.

Two hundred and fifty years just isn't long enough. And if I go back further, the paths are tangled so that I don't really know what history is my own. Maybe this is a product of my more recent (relatively) desire to escape my immediate family: to cast off the immediate history and replace it with my own. Isn't that precisely the American dream?

But what happens when we do that successfully, and then find that our history was important after all: that cutting it out was like cutting out a vital organ we didn't know we needed? It might be more than just discomfort I am feeling.

I guess I'm just wondering how we manage all this. Our shared mythology in America tells us that we can let go of our past mythology to join the capitalism of our dreams. So, we give up our families and our histories, and we move to where our jobs are. We postpone children until the bank accounts reach certain numbers and our educations are complete. We remove our grandparents from our children's lives so that we can live in big houses and wear nice clothes.

But what stories will I tell my children if I ever have them? What mythologies do I want to pass on?

What here is worth giving?