Saturday night and I ain't got nobody. I don't like it cause I got paid. All I need is someone to talk to. I'm in a awful way. I wonder who will know the tune as they read that.
Time to get back to this. I'm home on a Saturday night. I'm drinking gin and tonic, half-heartedly. Many things come to mind as to what I could be doing tonight, like: going to the Lupus General Store concert where a relatively local guitarist (Kansas), who clearly is an "eye candy" sort, is playing his own tunes. I would have had to go by myself, however, and that's not a bad thing. I just couldn't get the emotional kick I need to think I'm doing something different and fun, so I didn't go to that. Besides, I don't know how to tell men of my crushes, and I have a crush on the owner of the Lupus General Store. In fact, I wonder how women actually let men know whatever it is women want men to know. Some women are Men Magnets. I watch them without seeing anything noticeable. What are they doing exactly? What are they thinking? Are they thinking? Or are they just reacting according to . . . well, according to what? I believe I answered my own question. A Man Magnet is not self conscious. They just are.
Another thing I could be doing is having a friend over for dinner. There must be someone who is available tonight. But I wouldn't know because I didn't ask anyone.
Another thing I could be doing is going to the local, public, inexpensive gym and working out and walking and swimming. I just don't seem to DO that. I think about it everyday, so when I just don't DO it I can get into a real, consistent downer, due to a growing lack of good self image. I'm a failure as a person because I didn't do something I thought I SHOULD do. So, I conjure up my own picture of my own lack.
The only thing to do about this self-conjured picture is to not think of all things possible, all things I am not doing. If I really wanted to do one of them, perhaps I would have. . . . to not say to self, "well, you should be going to the gym. You should be strengthening your growing-old muscles. You should be exercising for weight loss. You should be doing ab strengthening. You should be walking for aerobic health. You should be swimming because you say you love it, and it's one of the best ways to feel good. You should be going out to any place you think you would enjoy instead of staying at home. etc. etc,. etc,
If I stopped saying those things, I probably would be perfectly fine just doing whatever I'm doing, like sitting at home on a Saturday night painting, or watching TV, or reading, or finishing laundry, or cleaning the kitchen . . . WAIT, I've gone too far! The kitchen will not be cleaned on a Saturday night, nor will my student's grades be set in order, nor will their revisions be read. I don't think so anyway.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
So, I’m 68 today. Imagine, 68. My sister died three years
ago at 68. Seems like less than yesterday. I so miss her being the first one to
call me on my birthday, so early in the morning, always worried that she’d not
be the first—like who else would beat her to it! And she’d yell into the phone,
raspy and off tune, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YUOOOOOO, HAP py BIRTH day TO YAWOUUUUUU,
and so on. I can hear her now. We laughed to tears, every year for over 20.
Last night in contemplation for this day, I woke up before 5
AM and my cat, Byrdy was spooning with me on the bed. We had a long talk. I
told her about being 68, alone, and fat, and she listened intently, quietly for
a change—Byrdy talks in sentences I’m sure, constantly. Neither one of us knew
what the other was thinking since she only understands Cat, and I wouldn’t even
try to read the depths of those green—often black, always beautiful—eyes. She
cared that I knew where to scratch and pet her—on her cheeks under the ears. I
cared that someone listened without condition. I’m not sure what all I said, and Byrdy doesn’t
remember, but it was a good talk. Both of us got what we needed.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Rainer Marie Wilke LIVE THE QUESTIONS
Marie Rainer Rilke, the truly brilliant thinker, lover (can one be a "brilliant" lover? but he was such a successful woman's man--reminds me of someone I know), poet, and heart renderer, from his Letters to a Young Poet
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions
themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the
answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of
experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without
even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. ”
I just posted that on Facebook. Too many characters, so I think I put it into a "note." I've carried the message around with me for many years. It just recently disappeared from my wallet, the dollar bill section because it was an 8x11, folded up, rather faded and decrepit sheet of one-time white paper that met its demise legitimately. Rilke is a phenomenon that all readers should read and ponder and feel UN-comfortable with. This particular paragraph is a bunch of words put together that make both mystery and total sense. If you leave your gut to do the work and don't think so hard, you gain extra-ordinary (as in unearthly as we know it, unexplainable but unquestionably real) answers.
Remember the phrase, "suspend disbelief"? I believe that "suspend disblief" means do not think your way through these particular kinds of phrases. They were meant for you to give over to feeling--a task so, so difficult in this day of bits and bites "instruction." Everyone wants to instruct someone on the T-rue way of things, on the R-eal, on the H-onest, and on the P-ath to follow. That kind of thinking has sometimes, perhaps, saved the world. But I think that kind of thinking is clearly and provocatively bringing the "world" to its end, What would happen if we truly lived with the questions? We would probably not be starting so many, many wars and killing so many, many innocents. Who is "we"? Has anyone noticed how, barely out of a recession, and owing so much "money" to Germany and China we somewhow find the necessary "money" to be first respondents to the UN "no fly zone" vote over Libya? And we reply so readily, effectively and heroically? Yay, another "war." We must truly become able to live with the questions because maybe that will make us actually well . . . . . .ask.
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions
themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the
answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of
experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without
even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. ”
I just posted that on Facebook. Too many characters, so I think I put it into a "note." I've carried the message around with me for many years. It just recently disappeared from my wallet, the dollar bill section because it was an 8x11, folded up, rather faded and decrepit sheet of one-time white paper that met its demise legitimately. Rilke is a phenomenon that all readers should read and ponder and feel UN-comfortable with. This particular paragraph is a bunch of words put together that make both mystery and total sense. If you leave your gut to do the work and don't think so hard, you gain extra-ordinary (as in unearthly as we know it, unexplainable but unquestionably real) answers.
Remember the phrase, "suspend disbelief"? I believe that "suspend disblief" means do not think your way through these particular kinds of phrases. They were meant for you to give over to feeling--a task so, so difficult in this day of bits and bites "instruction." Everyone wants to instruct someone on the T-rue way of things, on the R-eal, on the H-onest, and on the P-ath to follow. That kind of thinking has sometimes, perhaps, saved the world. But I think that kind of thinking is clearly and provocatively bringing the "world" to its end, What would happen if we truly lived with the questions? We would probably not be starting so many, many wars and killing so many, many innocents. Who is "we"? Has anyone noticed how, barely out of a recession, and owing so much "money" to Germany and China we somewhow find the necessary "money" to be first respondents to the UN "no fly zone" vote over Libya? And we reply so readily, effectively and heroically? Yay, another "war." We must truly become able to live with the questions because maybe that will make us actually well . . . . . .ask.
Monday, March 14, 2011
My Grandmother was a Bitch
I just assigned my writing students "argument" or "controversial" topics, one being "Food in America" (Michael Pollen et al). They have come up with many of the problematic aspects of the general topic--from fast food/ obesity to the cultural effects of families who don't sit down to a meal together any more (so what?). But since I don't eat fast foods so much, and thus can't get a real energetic hate up for McDonald's (et al), when I think of writing about food, I think of my grandmother's famous chicken and noodles.
My grandmother, Mary Caylor ala Mary Fischer, was a bitch. I have no memory of her smiling, ever. I have no memory of her offering a kind word, to any of the multitude of grandchildren she had to endure every Sunday. And, of course, I have no memory of hugs or kisses. I'm not saying they didn't happen, but as a sensitive little girl always aiming to please, I do remember her absence in my life--while she was there, right in front of me, within touching, huggin' distance. Because my mother and aunts would not broach any conversation about their mother that was the truth as I saw it, I not only could never share my opinions about my grandmother, but I could also never bring those opinions fully to consciousness. As an adult, however, I became liberated when I found that my sister thought the same--had always thought the same--about Mary.
Of course, it didn't help that I had to ride out to her farm every blasted Sunday in a stuffy, 1954 Pontiac with two parents smoking cigarettes in the front seat. I was so often carsick, short and little with my nose on the same level as that felt-like fabric filled with tiny bits of smoke-strong lint. Unless I puked out the window, no one really noticed. It was a 20 mile eternity which today would be like a short spurt to a local mall in those small Upper Peninsula towns. Just for a noon-day dinner of chicken and noodles and green beans cooked with pork.
And hey! It was worth it. The bitch, the puking? All worth it!
I'm just saying, the chicken and noodles? to die for. I remember Grandma Mary's ability with an axe. Chop off the chicken's head, blood running all over, dipping the whole chicken in boiling water, plucking all those feathers off? You think a wet dog smells foul. Well, the smell of a newly dead chicken in boiling water with its feathers still intact--for a little while at least--stops you dead. If you can breath while all this is happening you probably can't breathe.
Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of feathers plucked off this dead chicken, until its featherless, range-fed fat and meat was dunked and left in the stewing water till the meat fell off the bones. By now the smell in the kitchen cannot be described. To try would be like trying to describe the smell of coffee without saying, "it smells like coffee." Good true chicken broth, concentrated and flavored like only Mary could. Often this broth would be put into an icebox or outside if it was winter, and the fat rose to the top of the pot, congealed and hardened. After scraping off the fat chunks, we had pure, thick, rich chicken broth that would turn jello-soft when cooled again for left overs.
Then the noodles. Rolled out egg-dough, cut in strips and distributed all over the house on any clean surface to dry like crackling, grocery store pasta. I even learned to do this as a mom, used to have egg-noodles drying everywhere when my girls were growing.
To reflect on experiencing Mary and her coldness along with reflecting on the way she cooked for eight children, all their spouses and their own children, at a Sunday noon dinner inspires me, an awe I did not feel in my youth. I wish I could go back and meet Mary now. In truth, her children loved her without compunction (where did that word come from?!), especially her daughters. Perhaps that was because they knew that she chose to endure an extremely lazy but charming husband--their father--who played the fiddle and showed up with his hand open for my mother's paycheck when she grew old enough to be a domestic. I don't know. I do know that legend has it Mary once stood down a team of horses harnessed and broken loose while still totting the buggy they were hooked to. She stood her ground, right out in front of these massive animals barreling down on her, and all I know is she lived--a long time--to tell about it, well, to have her daughters tell about it. Mary didn't talk very much.
My grandmother, Mary Caylor ala Mary Fischer, was a bitch. I have no memory of her smiling, ever. I have no memory of her offering a kind word, to any of the multitude of grandchildren she had to endure every Sunday. And, of course, I have no memory of hugs or kisses. I'm not saying they didn't happen, but as a sensitive little girl always aiming to please, I do remember her absence in my life--while she was there, right in front of me, within touching, huggin' distance. Because my mother and aunts would not broach any conversation about their mother that was the truth as I saw it, I not only could never share my opinions about my grandmother, but I could also never bring those opinions fully to consciousness. As an adult, however, I became liberated when I found that my sister thought the same--had always thought the same--about Mary.
Of course, it didn't help that I had to ride out to her farm every blasted Sunday in a stuffy, 1954 Pontiac with two parents smoking cigarettes in the front seat. I was so often carsick, short and little with my nose on the same level as that felt-like fabric filled with tiny bits of smoke-strong lint. Unless I puked out the window, no one really noticed. It was a 20 mile eternity which today would be like a short spurt to a local mall in those small Upper Peninsula towns. Just for a noon-day dinner of chicken and noodles and green beans cooked with pork.
And hey! It was worth it. The bitch, the puking? All worth it!
I'm just saying, the chicken and noodles? to die for. I remember Grandma Mary's ability with an axe. Chop off the chicken's head, blood running all over, dipping the whole chicken in boiling water, plucking all those feathers off? You think a wet dog smells foul. Well, the smell of a newly dead chicken in boiling water with its feathers still intact--for a little while at least--stops you dead. If you can breath while all this is happening you probably can't breathe.
Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of feathers plucked off this dead chicken, until its featherless, range-fed fat and meat was dunked and left in the stewing water till the meat fell off the bones. By now the smell in the kitchen cannot be described. To try would be like trying to describe the smell of coffee without saying, "it smells like coffee." Good true chicken broth, concentrated and flavored like only Mary could. Often this broth would be put into an icebox or outside if it was winter, and the fat rose to the top of the pot, congealed and hardened. After scraping off the fat chunks, we had pure, thick, rich chicken broth that would turn jello-soft when cooled again for left overs.
Then the noodles. Rolled out egg-dough, cut in strips and distributed all over the house on any clean surface to dry like crackling, grocery store pasta. I even learned to do this as a mom, used to have egg-noodles drying everywhere when my girls were growing.
To reflect on experiencing Mary and her coldness along with reflecting on the way she cooked for eight children, all their spouses and their own children, at a Sunday noon dinner inspires me, an awe I did not feel in my youth. I wish I could go back and meet Mary now. In truth, her children loved her without compunction (where did that word come from?!), especially her daughters. Perhaps that was because they knew that she chose to endure an extremely lazy but charming husband--their father--who played the fiddle and showed up with his hand open for my mother's paycheck when she grew old enough to be a domestic. I don't know. I do know that legend has it Mary once stood down a team of horses harnessed and broken loose while still totting the buggy they were hooked to. She stood her ground, right out in front of these massive animals barreling down on her, and all I know is she lived--a long time--to tell about it, well, to have her daughters tell about it. Mary didn't talk very much.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
techno-ish
When my youngest daughter was around 6-8 yrs old, we'll say 7 ish, I asked her to be home from a friend's house by 5 ish. She asked, "Mom, which side of the 5 is the "ish" on?" Of course, I cracked up while at the same time seeing this as evidence that she was a true linguistic genius, as are all my daughters. I've never forgotten her return because through the years it has become plain that the suffix--if we can call it that officially--"ish" can be considered a true language phenomenon.
For instance, some people have an enormous amount of technological prowess. How did Facebook ever come to be? Who accomplishes that wondrous hacking into emails and private databases of world reknown corporations, individual government agencies, and for that matter, individual computer systems? How do they do that? Julian Assange should be carried into the city upon a royal palanquin as a hero (just an aside). And really, how did it come to be that untold hundreds of millions of "bits" of information can be saved on the tiniest of little square pieces that fit into the tiniest of computer bodies and be available in seconds with the tap of a finger. Well, those people and those kinds of technological knowledges do not qualify for "ishes."
Who does qualify are we who think of technology as something useful to our daily lives and who know more about it than we give ourselves credit for--this lack of self credit being mainly because the people who flaunt technically-supreme knowledge and spit-fire skill leave us cowering in a corner, or try to. Yes, so many of us can be called "techno-ish" because we merely use technology. We can flitter (not twitter) through Microsoft Word--manuevering mundane thoughts into sheer brillancy by being masters of the delete, paste, cut, and copy functions. Or we have found many of the nuances built into email formats and internet searches and google books and google scholar and blogspot and news sources and . . . . . We also are more respectful of the not-so-obvious technology, i.e., that having to do with the history of modern day--before computers. How could life have progressed beyond the cave without wheels, scissors, knives, paper clips, and zippers! Yes, we techno-ishes have our feet on the ground and are not embarrassed that we don't know--or care--about coding for the internet or the mysteries of spending hours and days learning how to save time. It's all in the "ish."
For instance, some people have an enormous amount of technological prowess. How did Facebook ever come to be? Who accomplishes that wondrous hacking into emails and private databases of world reknown corporations, individual government agencies, and for that matter, individual computer systems? How do they do that? Julian Assange should be carried into the city upon a royal palanquin as a hero (just an aside). And really, how did it come to be that untold hundreds of millions of "bits" of information can be saved on the tiniest of little square pieces that fit into the tiniest of computer bodies and be available in seconds with the tap of a finger. Well, those people and those kinds of technological knowledges do not qualify for "ishes."
Who does qualify are we who think of technology as something useful to our daily lives and who know more about it than we give ourselves credit for--this lack of self credit being mainly because the people who flaunt technically-supreme knowledge and spit-fire skill leave us cowering in a corner, or try to. Yes, so many of us can be called "techno-ish" because we merely use technology. We can flitter (not twitter) through Microsoft Word--manuevering mundane thoughts into sheer brillancy by being masters of the delete, paste, cut, and copy functions. Or we have found many of the nuances built into email formats and internet searches and google books and google scholar and blogspot and news sources and . . . . . We also are more respectful of the not-so-obvious technology, i.e., that having to do with the history of modern day--before computers. How could life have progressed beyond the cave without wheels, scissors, knives, paper clips, and zippers! Yes, we techno-ishes have our feet on the ground and are not embarrassed that we don't know--or care--about coding for the internet or the mysteries of spending hours and days learning how to save time. It's all in the "ish."
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The myth of the library
OK, so I just took one hour out of my life to talk to Laura at Dish Network who connected me to Chris, my own true love at this particular time, who guided me through approximately one hundred and fifty-two thousand feet of black cords and in whose name (he is named after St. Christopher even though he's Spanish and I'm sure very handsome) I now declare "what in hell is this one loose cord supposed to hook up to??" Technician arrives between 1 & 5 this afternoon. Too bad it can't be Chris, my own true love.
Technology and I have a love hate affair going on that is familiar to many. I believe, however, that things will come around full circle if the world is not blown off its axis first. For instance, I just took my English 1000 students for a Library instructional period during which Wayne a friendly and smart librarian demonstrated all kinds of technological reasons why people needn't darken the door of a real library, ever again. All one needs is a good internet connection and off she goes. Did you know that Google now has digitalized hundreds of thousands of books?! I'm talking from 5 to 95 % of the text of these books is free and open to everyone. We can print them out, these pages of text. We can also find anything about any topic for research papers in approximately five minutes--after practicing on the computer with a library's multiple database opportunities.
BUT, I predict that sitting in front of a computer screen either to read the stuff or to find it will become warying and that the social aspect of being human will just naturally take over--sometime in the future--I'll probably be dead. People will once again want to go sit quietly in a library, fall asleep while reading--in the library, the greatest place for naps in the world, and/or whisper their way through a conversation rather than take it outside. Libraries play lots of roles in our lives and the role of "book depository" is just one. Perhaps the fact that people (students --who are people, really) don't HAVE to go to a library anymore, will work ironically in favor of --well--going to the library. No pressure. Just nice quiet, sometimes musty smelling--sometimes sweet--rooms with hundred foot high windows and ancient lattice work and solid oak and real brass and nowadays that rich coffee smell that noone can really describe with words. Yes, people will be back to libraries and I hope libraries will stay around long enough to be there for all the returnees.
Technology and I have a love hate affair going on that is familiar to many. I believe, however, that things will come around full circle if the world is not blown off its axis first. For instance, I just took my English 1000 students for a Library instructional period during which Wayne a friendly and smart librarian demonstrated all kinds of technological reasons why people needn't darken the door of a real library, ever again. All one needs is a good internet connection and off she goes. Did you know that Google now has digitalized hundreds of thousands of books?! I'm talking from 5 to 95 % of the text of these books is free and open to everyone. We can print them out, these pages of text. We can also find anything about any topic for research papers in approximately five minutes--after practicing on the computer with a library's multiple database opportunities.
BUT, I predict that sitting in front of a computer screen either to read the stuff or to find it will become warying and that the social aspect of being human will just naturally take over--sometime in the future--I'll probably be dead. People will once again want to go sit quietly in a library, fall asleep while reading--in the library, the greatest place for naps in the world, and/or whisper their way through a conversation rather than take it outside. Libraries play lots of roles in our lives and the role of "book depository" is just one. Perhaps the fact that people (students --who are people, really) don't HAVE to go to a library anymore, will work ironically in favor of --well--going to the library. No pressure. Just nice quiet, sometimes musty smelling--sometimes sweet--rooms with hundred foot high windows and ancient lattice work and solid oak and real brass and nowadays that rich coffee smell that noone can really describe with words. Yes, people will be back to libraries and I hope libraries will stay around long enough to be there for all the returnees.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
speaking of a woman's age
Having received my Ph.D. during my fifth decade, I seem not to realize that I'm old. I'm having real trouble in this area and am positively enraged at the agism in this country, well in the world actually. Some of us are really behind the times. I don't even have arthritis, cancer, dementia, aching joints (well, some), or the need for a walker or oxygen. I can't figure it out. But you know what? A lot of old people are just like me. Why is retirement pushed at us all the time? I know several people who have no plans to retire because, guess what, they love what they're doing. They haven't as yet worked 30 years at some job just to get retirement pay. They actually can think and act and produce and create and run and walk up stairs and have skin that isn't sagging (too much) off their arms and bellies. It's a wonder. From the general attitude of the general public, it seems that anyone over 59 should be sitting at home watching TV commercials to see what medication they really should be taking, researching supplemental health care, and reading brochures on nursing homes--not that there aren't some smashingly gorgeous nursing homes out there! Just like grand spas but Oh so expensive.
One day, I was keeping a doctor's appointment for help with yet another bladder infection. The lady came in and started to tell me about the two main reasons for women getting these horrible nuisances, 1) having sex 2) being dry as older women tend to be. She almost lost her sari when I said, "Well, I know I keep getting these because of so much sex" and I meant it. It was a clear case of being an age where others dictate to you what and who you are. At 60 something, we are all sick, crippled, and in need of a multitude of medications or we'd be dead. Sometimes these constant reminders of how old I am just makes me feel old.
One day, I was keeping a doctor's appointment for help with yet another bladder infection. The lady came in and started to tell me about the two main reasons for women getting these horrible nuisances, 1) having sex 2) being dry as older women tend to be. She almost lost her sari when I said, "Well, I know I keep getting these because of so much sex" and I meant it. It was a clear case of being an age where others dictate to you what and who you are. At 60 something, we are all sick, crippled, and in need of a multitude of medications or we'd be dead. Sometimes these constant reminders of how old I am just makes me feel old.
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