Okay, I made a Spotify playlist (actually two--one for each side). Inspired by @dalek-in-heels and reading Wow, No Thank You and the need for activities that can be done with a half a brain but take up enough brain space to prevent doomscrolling or analog anxiety (see: crosswords, puzzles, coloring, many versions of Solitaire).
This mixtape is blend of perennial favorites and songs stumbled upon during this pandemic that became an elixir for the long days. They have been the accompaniment to morning runs in the middle of empty streets, periods of staring out the window at tree branches and my wealthy neighbor’s backyard oases, and making dinner for the umpteenth time. And it all brought me here, out of a lurk for a moment or perhaps to start a new habit of blogging.
See below for tracklist, song length (each side is just about 30 minutes to stay true to form), and a lyric I might have scribbled on the cover of a notebook in high school.
Side A
Immaterial - Sophie (3:52) Tell me, where do I exist?
Fool - Perfume Genius (3:55) I congratulate you, then I leave the room
Yeah Right - Joji (2:54) Yeah you dance so good and I think that’s kinda neat
All Over - Tiwa Savage (3:31) And it’s killing them all of course
Blind - Hercules & Love Affair (5:45) As a child I knew that the stars could only get brighter
Tell Them (3:28) - James Blake ft. Moses Sumney and Metro Boomin You can’t return the sacred time you steal
Pride - Kendrick Lamar (4:35) In another life I surely was there
Side B
Scenes from Bensonhurst - Eleanor Friedburger (4:33) I lay in bed and tempt myself with my screen, my screen, my screen
Lilacs - Waxahatchee (3:15) If I’m a broken record write it in the dust, babe
Movies - Weyes Blood (5:53) Some people watch until they explode
...And the Rain (2:46) - John Maus Somebody just tell me the truth
Better Than Me - Blood Orange ft. Carly Rae Jepsen (3:16) Ninety-nine percent, I know you’re not fine
I Found a Reason - The Velvet Underground (4:15) Oh I do believe you are what you perceive
Some Dream - Perfume Genius (4:18) All this for a song?
Oh no I’m back after a Long Lurk on Tumblr to rant about Game of Thrones. Forgive me.
I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said about GoT’s hard-on for Jon or the general disdain for women and people of color propagated by the way the story has been told.
But I will say: You know absolutely goddamned NOTHING, Jon Snow.
I’m not saying Jon could have stopped this (this being Dany’s rapid descent into madness, which I don’t believe based on the show’s portrayal of her for the past seven seasons). And honestly, he probably could have if he thought for a second about the political implications of telling people about his heritage which, for a guy who didn’t want to talk about his own resurrection, he seemed pretty eager to do. Still, you can’t talk to crazy and all that...BUT after pulling away from Dany’s embrace twice and hearing her say that she chose fear over love, why didn’t he say anything? Couldn’t he pull together some of those big-boy words he used to rouse motley armies and grieving masses?
For example, he could have said, “I’m not pulling away from you because I’m afraid of you, per se, I’m just feeling weird about this whole aunt/nephew thing because we don’t do that in the North.”
Or: “I feel confused about everything since finding out I’m the true heir to the Iron Throne. I’m just not feeling sexy right now.”
Instead, he says nothing. Because the writers truly couldn’t think of a response? Because they think it’s enough for him to go around saying, “She’s my queen,” which absolves him of being conniving but still allows him to be totally innocent when she torches a whole city. While I never bought their chemistry, he and Dany are supposed to have a close relationship that is obviously complicated by this new information but shouldn’t preclude him from talking to her one-on-one and use some of his Honorableness and Likability to influence how she will rule.
Basically, Jon is the worst boyfriend and there is little to suggest he’d be a good ruler. I guess Ned got his head chopped off for being honorable and Jon gets to see his girlfriend go Mad Queen like a few people said she would. A man’s ultimate mortal failure, trusting a lady who wants power (see also: Jaime Lannister).
I’m just saying it would have been a much more interesting story to explore the Targaryen madness not through Dany, who was exiled because of it and saw her brother’s brains literally melt out due to it and who consciously tried to be different from her father during the many opportunities she had to practice conquering and rule, but through Jon. If he doesn’t want to rule so much (all he ever talks about, amirite?) then wouldn’t the knowledge of his claim to the throne make him a little...mad? Nothing more maddening than finding out you are related to a mass murderer rather than good ol’ Ned! I’m too old and cranky to write this fanfic but I think it has potential.
Anyhow, I know this show never promised to do anything other than disappoint but the source material, acting, music, and production always held it up over its poor writing and now I am Sad and Mad that I have invested so much time in what is shaping up to be a boring and poorly developed outcome. Where’s a city to burn when a lady is feeling betrayed?
I have not written in here for a year. And what a year it’s been. That is exactly why I haven’t posted anything: This year I have felt (and continue to feel) acutely the chasm between personal happiness and political devastation. A year later, I still don’t know how to account for the distance between those two sentiments. I’ve written many things attempting to do so. Here are some of them, in an attempt to put some kind of marker on this year. Come for the photos of sunsets, and make of these out-of-context ramblings what you will. Know that I love you and am rooting for us all to make it through, stronger and kinder than we were before.
The Reckoning, 1.25.17
My balance is all out of whack. I can’t just blame the times: inaction has always been my default and my greatest fault. It is mostly innocuous: letting emails sit for weeks that could be answered in minutes, not completing a task that I just don’t feel like doing at work, staring at a cabinet but not finding it in me to pull out the ingredients for dinner. These are small challenges but sometimes it feels like everyone has an answer--or an app--to solve them. I just freeze.
Or I burst out all at once: a flurry of actions, zero parts reflection. I dash off emails unthinkingly, I retweet furiously, I drink excessively. I fall asleep curled like a comma letting white noise wash away the exclamations of the day.
I’ve learned not to be so hard on myself. I’ve learned to let unintended indiscretions roll off my back. So I pick up a book. I turn on Netflix. I cuddle up to the one I love. It’s important to take care of ourselves, so we can take care of each other. We’re all going to need some caring for at some point--many of us have already, just in these first days of what is rightfully called a regime.
A Rant on Behalf of Millennials, 2.19.17
And so it happened that the generation that came of political age during the Great Recession was somehow told they were entitled and lazy and uninterested in the world, though our parents and grandparents white-flighted their way into suburban enclaves and nodded off to the television while politicians signed away affordable college, affordable housing, and labor protections. We were told we were being pampered by being allowed to stay on our parents’ insurance until we were twenty-six, though for many it took that many years to find a job with a solid income because the older generation protected their own bonuses over sustainable hiring practices. We were given protection from immigration policies targeting the choices of our parents and were given a healthier economy than the one we graduated into and we were given access to the pills we needed to not drive ourselves and potential children into deep poverty. And we were called selfish; we who signed up for healthcare in our years of good health so that someday when we or someone else needed it, it would be there. And we were called underachieving; we who went through master’s and PhD programs to get jobs that used to be earned with a lesser, far less expensive degree. And we were called self-obsessed; we who embraced and demanded diversity in ways even our free-loving ancestors could not imagine.
We aren’t just waking up. Some of woke up during Ferguson or the Wall Street bailout or the Iraq War. We did not think everything was okay before. We did not think what we had been given would come without a price. We only thought that we could trust others to take care of us and our country’s future as we have taken care of each other. That’s where we were wrong.
Confession, Undated spring
The worst choices I’ve made, I’ve made sober. Those choices were made in an attempt to preserve normalcy. By doing that one absurd thing I could maintain everything else as is. By not doing that one thing, not asking that one question, I could maintain the peace. I think this is the realm in which most bad decisions occur. Not out of malice or misjudgment but out of the desire to ignore, to carry on. This desire to keep the status quo may be the most dangerous impulse in the human race.
Nightmares, 5.5.17
Couldn’t sleep last night. Had dreamed that I was testing to find if my eggs were viable. My eggs looked like cooked lentils. I’d watched The Handmaid’s Tale before bed, been left with images of a woman awoken from genital mutilation and another beaten for not being pregnant. Meanwhile, the House Republicans voted to repeal the ACA and replace it with a bill that takes healthcare from the poor and sick to give tax cuts to the rich. Which is the nightmare?
Grappling, 6.14.17
Complicity: A word now inextricably, and rightfully, tied to Ivanka, it is also perhaps most of our countrymen and women’s worst crime. We are slowly recognizing ourselves in bystanders of other eras and nationalities. We are understanding that we are here because we didn’t say more, do more before when it was just as bad except that we trusted those in power. And yet we are still pulled by its lure: in our personal and professional lives, we have to sit by and watch, just to get by.
FML, 7.4.17
What a time to be alive. North Korea testing intercontinental missiles and our Command-in-Chief throwing hissy fits and trolling on Twitter. Help us all.
After Charlottesville, 8.20.17
Oh but the world has turned upside down or, rather, exposed its ever-present ugly face to all of us (mainly, to us white people who didn’t want to believe it was that bad even as the evidence mounted in the form of police brutality and election of Trump, among other things). The pain cannot be pushed aside. The massive counter protest (against, of all things, Nazism and white supremacy) gives me hope; the way so many white children are growing up without a real sense of the justice being sought for their POC counterparts make me concerned.
Me too, 10.16.17
Me too, except this one time. Not that night but on so many others, not with him but with so many others:
Me too.
Rage List, 11.2.17
Boss’ casual racism
Apartment mates who mix garbage with recycling
The opioid crisis
This regime’s xenophobia
Billionaire shuttering two local news outlets and deleting the archives because writers unionized
My own complicity, i.e. enjoying life while the world burns
San Francisco, November 2016: Post-Election vacation. Expected celebration turned into temporary salvation. On the other side of America: not the flip side that’s somewhere in between the coasts but rather the semi-symmetrical sister of New York. Squat buildings, but if you squint your eyes, you’ll see the rent’s just as high. A little milder, in weather and level of hubbub. They tell you about the hills and the Victorians and the burritos but I’ll stay for the cocktails, the dewy mornings, and, yeah, the burritos. And just outside the city, trees older than my family’s collected memories and vineyards gifted by and evoking (someone’s) Old Country.
But even wine and bourbon and an ice cream sandwich the size of my face and views that steal the air from my chest don’t allow for forgetting the darkness that has seeped in, that was visible on every face and cloud that gray Wednesday in New York. Fog and vacation are ephemeral; the ugly reality before us is not, as we had hoped, a nightmare capable of dissipating. And yet neither are the strengths we have to combat it. Our first task is to believe that.
Oh, the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been traveling so long--L. Cohen
Sing, O Muse, of the raging obsession I have with the Summer Olympics.
I have nothing against the Winter Olympics. I’ll watch ski jumping and speed skating; I’ll pretend to know the difference between an axel and a lutz (how did I not know there was a gif guide for this? I’ll be better in 2018).
But the Summer Olympics are superior. First of all, its climate is more internationally relevant. In most climes, you can sooner spike a beach volleyball than you can slalom down a mountain. Second point: SWIMMING and GYMNASTICS. Let my screen glitter with Swarovskified-leotards and gleam with the gentle ripples of that chlorinated aquatic expanse! Honorable mentions to diving, track and field, soccer, and rugby, which I haven’t actually watched but I know it’s glorious.
Aside from those totally objective criteria, I love the Summer Olympics for another more personal reason. It’s the timing. For any student, teacher, or agrarian laborer, summer is the golden hour of possibility. It’s a time of year where you can sit back and enjoy all of your previous hard work and, especially as it rounds its way into August, when you begin to feel anticipation for the upcoming harvest (of knowledge and/or vegetation).
The Summer Olympics have provided the background for my back-to-school preparations; they have provided the foreground on which to pour the unspent emotions of my largely solitary days. Let’s take a look back at my Summer Olympics. (Obviously I remember watching the Magnificent Seven in ‘96 and was aware of Michael Phelps’ existence in 2000 but I could not tell you what else I was doing with my life in those moments. Probably playing with American Girls and listening to Blink 182, respectively.)
2004
Where in the world were the Olympics: Athens, Greece
Where in the world was I watching the Olympics: Chicago suburbs, in my mom’s house
Where was I in my life’s journey: I was on the cusp of my senior year of high school so mostly fanfic-writing, sweater-selling, car-driving. I adored the wreaths they gave the medal winners, in a nod to the ancient Olympics. In a year’s time, I would be studying ancient history. But that summer, I had a composition notebook in which I scrapbooked the Olympics highlights that I cut from the newspaper. (!!!) I reveled in my nerdiness. My obsessions made me me. The time was ripe to let the Olympics become a permanent fixture in my fangirl life.
Who earned my Olympic crush: Ian Thorpe aka the Thorpedo of Australia
2008
Where in the world were the Olympics: Beijing, China
Where in the world was I watching Olympics: Washington D.C., in a sorority house
Where was I in my life’s journey: I’d arrived in D.C. from my radiant semester abroad in Israel and was staring down my senior year at Barnard. Beginning in Jerusalem and continuing with my internship at the State Department, I’d gained a sense of purpose and belonging that I’d waited for throughout college. But the summer was coming to an end. Internships finished, the city started emptying out of its temporary residents. I faced another week of work and my American University housing had run out. My bags packed again, I watched the Opening Ceremonies alone in the dorm’s common room. One of my former co-interns offered me her place in the sorority house room that she vacated. I watched gymnastics with sorority sisters I didn’t know. My mom called to tell me my car had died. Things were accelerating around me, but for the moment I was still in D.C. The Olympics were there with me.
Who earned my Olympic crush: Michael Phelps, I couldn’t fight it any more
(Interlude: The best thing about having a poster of Michael Phelps--shirtless and bedecked in gold medals--hanging over my bed in my last college dorm room was the reaction it invoked in men. Oh, I’m sorry, you feel inadequate in comparison to to this towering slice of masculinity? Boohoo, try being a woman in this world! And if you can’t handle my ridiculous obsessions, you can’t handle me. In the words of another ridiculous swimmer: JEAH.)
Silver skyline
2012
Where in the world were the Olympics: London, U.K.
Where in the world was I watching Olympics: Upper West Side, Manhattan, on my couch and curled up in my roommate’s bed that faced the living room TV
Where was I in my life’s journey: I was up, down, inside-out and upside-down, sobbing, celebrating, anticipating, reminiscing. Oh, Summer 2012, we’ve visited you before. You birthed this very Tumblr. Among other things, I was about to embark on one of the best experiences of my life, my year in Turkey. But that August, I was only looking for escape from my own head, and a reminder of the elemental truths. And right on cue, the Olympics.
Who earned my Olympic crush: Bob Costas, such a calming, comforting, and constant figure
2016
Where in the world are the Olympics: Rio, Brazil
Where in the world am I watching Olympics: Upper-est West Side, Manhattan, on my couch and through Twitter
Where am I in my life’s journey: WHO EVEN KNOWS? As of very recently, I am no longer a teacher about to start a new school year. I’m just a lady about to start a new something. It’s exciting, it’s terrifying, but mostly it’s just fine. I will find a job. I will emerge from uncertainty into something known and stable. I will find something to do besides eat, breathe, and tweet the Olympics. For now, though, I will enjoy not knowing where I’ll find myself in four years. And I will enjoy the hell out of this Olympics. Go USA and all underdogs--like the swimmer from Kazakhstan who just won the 200m breaststroke from lane 8, whuuut--and whoever designed Russia’s team uniforms. You guys, my birthday is coming up, and I think I need a new track jacket...
Olympic Crush: Nathan Adrian, a giant puppy which is exactly what I need in my life
Done with are another season of Game of Thrones, the school year, The Toast. My favorite pop culture obsession, my (former?!) job, and my internet haven. So which ending garnered perhaps the greatest attention and certainly the greatest response from me this week? (Answer: The one that was neatly packaged in a sixty-minute-plus episode, with explosions and revelations and causes for fist-pumping.) Of course I paid attention to the end of the school year, as it was my job to do so. But my reverent acknowledgment of its end was muted, lost in a whirl of immediate reactions: frustration, exhaustion, exhalation. And while much of my time on the Internet in the past three years has involved laughing and crying and snarking with The Toast, I didn’t even read it in its last few days. I will go back and savor, for sure. But I wasn’t really there when it ended. I was too busy with real life, which does, unassailably, go on.
Now I’ll take a breather from real life and honor these three endings. (If they can even be called that--one is only a hibernation until spring--er, winter, is it?--comes again; one a flying leap that will eventually land me on my feet in one place or another; one most certainly an ending but nothing dies on the internet, at least not until the inevitable collapse of all data/civilization. Speaking of which, who is ready for another season of Mr. Robot?!)
From the mouth of babes: I’m not proud of a lot of what came out my classroom this year, mainly because I was pulled in so many directions that my planning and delivery of instruction often suffered. The one thing I am proud of came out of both purposefulness and necessity: This year I ceded a whole lot of control to my students. I gave them space to think, speak, and reflect. And that’s when the good stuff happened. Like when I attempted to overcome my own grief and anger to teach about the Orlando massacre and students took over the discussion after a particularly brave girl announced, “Yo, if I were a lesbian, you know I’d be turnin’ it up in that club--is that a reason for me to die?” This spurred others to profess support and confess their past prejudices--and how they overcame them by the age of 11. Their words proved their refusal to back down in fear and their commitment to making the world a safer, more loving place. I left feeling lighter, hopeful about the future of our country. And that’s not the only time I witnessed the blossoming of original thoughts and defense of deeply held beliefs in my classroom. When children have the space to think and share ideas, they often come up with something better than the adults around them who are bogged down by bureaucracies, bad habits, and ingrained bigotry. It is a privilege to experience and nurture that.
For more on those wise-beyond-their-years, see also: Lyanna Mormont (above) absolutely slaying and also Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Sansa Stark, et al. trying to avoid the mistakes of their parents’ generation. I can’t really tie The Toast in here as it was a site for and by adult feminists but there was a lot of reverence for YA lit, loving chuckles at our elders, and reflection on all the ridiculous, infuriating, or wonderful moments in childhood that make us who we are today.
Stones and glass houses: Okay, I just want an excuse to talk about Sansa Stark. I love Sansa Stark for many reasons, one of them being that people’s opinions about Sansa Stark tells you everything you need to know about their politics, their view of human nature/efficacy, and their level of misogyny. If you don’t like Sansa Stark, you’re not wrong per se; we just don’t need to be friends.
Sansa has grown more than any other character on the show (not just in height, though I love that she towers over all the lowly men). She has grown from someone being acted upon, in the cruelest sense, to the one acting upon others. Yes, she’s getting her hand dirty in political machinations, but if her power this season has allowed some to forget that last season she was brutalized and raped, then that’s on them because she has not forgotten. She has been upfront about how she has suffered with both her attackers and her sympathizers. She has not made perfect choices but she’s made necessary ones and she’s apologized when it’s due. And some people want to crucify her because she’s making tactical decisions now?! I’m sorry, is this an anarchy? Shall we just let the White Walkers waltz in and zombify us all? Do we not require people to make political decisions for us, which sometimes include forging alliances and choosing what is most effective over what is most morally appealing? Why would we not want someone as experienced and connected as her to be the one doing it?! Oh wait, I forgot I was talking about Westeros for a moment...But the point still stands. Long live Sansa Stark.
(Siderant: One of the most infuriating things I’ve heard leveled at Sansa was in that in the King of the North scene when she catches Littlefinger’s eye, she’s like the popular girl in school who is secretly in love with the bad boy and that she is sending him supportive vibes across the room?!?!?! Yes, this was said by a man. Yes, I rewatched the scene and that is NOT what is happening when she looks at Littlefinger. Yes, I would not put it past the creators to go there next season but it will be 1000% out of character with everything she did this season. I am raging that there are people who will spend the next nine months thinking Sansa is ready to overthrow Jon with Littlefinger and that that’s an okay thing to think based on that scene. NO.)
For other references to living imperfectly but now with conviction: We don’t always make the right choices but we can strive to make our own choices and that’s something we can live with. We can choose to not give a damn because for so long, we haven’t been allowed that choice without horrific consequences. And as a teacher, my decisions were rarely clear cut: am I protecting or punishing or both? Are my scaffolds a support or a crutch? Should I stay or should I go? If there were easy answers, there wouldn’t be a question. Sometimes living with your answer is the answer.
Teamwork makes the dream work: I’m not going to add onto the thinkpieces that have already been written about the significance of The Toast on this tangled web of ours. I have already and will continue to link to many of the individual pieces of writing that made it so great a blog. But the real beauty of it was in the collaboration of its two creators/editors, Mallory and Nicole, as well as its later editors and contributors. Reading Mallory produced stomachaches from belly-rumbling laughter and from the moment in between the laughter when I realized that she’d revealed some horrible, painful truth about the world. Reading Nicole didn’t provide easier-to-swallow truths but her delivery was one of validation, maternal soothing, and all-encompassing love. Having those voices side-by-side was necessary. I will miss that synergy.
What I will take with me, as I take to the sea, is the memory of feeling heard by another person’s words. I will try to apply that to my own writing, when I’m not so busy writing about my own scattered thoughts...so maybe not today.
Re: being stronger together: This year, I had the privilege of working with the most talented, dedicated, competent team ever. I will miss them dearly on a professional level and hope to continue seeing many of them socially. I hope I get to work in such a collaborative environment again. And let’s not forget our fictional collaborations: Dany and Tyrion, Sansa and Jon, Dany and Yara. Winter is here, so let’s face it together.
Final thoughts: Valar morghulis. School’s out forever. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.
Utah, Spring 2016: A land of puppies and proselytization; it’s a home where the buffalo roam (away from me). Friendships that began in a desert country, reunion-touring at the far end of our own country. Pictured Utah as a desert but felt its rain, its snow, its hail, its waterfalls, and its mist. Glad I packed the wool socks and forwent the bathing suit. Glad I saw friends and another corner of this vast and gorgeous country. Glad for a mental (and olfactory) break from the city, and glad to be back home.
Utah, Spring 2016: We hiked up a cliffside in darkness, to find the sunrise. The path was unknown to us and unseen in the cloud-shrouded moon. Would there be others on the trail--human or animal, which would be worse to encounter? I picked up a rock to scare off the mountain lions. (The answer: There aren’t such easy ways to scare off men.) We made it to the top, with a little help from our British friends. We waited. The sky lightened. We readied our cameras for that perfect, like-soliciting shot. It didn’t appear on our screens. I put down my screen and sat on a rock, high above the world. This wasn’t what I came for. And yet, it was exactly what I came for: if we found every sunrise we sought, we’d have no to reason to venture out again. That it’s an off-chance is what keeps us moving. Up cliffs, in the dark, rocks in hand: the sun is rising somewhere in the world. Come look with me.
Hello, friends. I’ve been away for awhile, though I’ve been here all along. Here is sleeping on the fifteenth floor of an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, teaching at a school several more stops uptown, and testing and treating and trying to love this imperfect body. Here is also the liminal space my mind has been stuck in: knowing a move is approaching, sensing a change coming, and wondering where it would all take me.
Now, I’m back here at this keyboard and also in motion. The move is unfolding, box-by-box, before me. I’m not going far away. Just a few blocks north. But I’m getting out of this cold but spacious, outmoded-in-design but ideal-in-location apartment where I’ve lived since 2010 (excepting that Turkish place marker of a year). My worst fear is that, despite weeks of soul-and-apartment-searching, nothing will change save the number of zeroes in my bank account. You know what they say: The more things change…
But I’m not at the change yet, I’m at the moment just before. And with little time/ability to write or sleep, I’ve been depending on books to provide me with clarity while I’m stuck in this in-between. Not yet time for a tale of moving; this is a tale of sitting here with book(s) in hand. A tale of two tales, one new-to-me (The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison) and one an old favorite (Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman) and what they told me about myself.
I heard Leslie Jamison speak before I read her writing. I heard her interview the author of a book on the neo-pagan movement in America, but I was drawn more to the interviewer than her subject. If you interest me more than witches, I hold you in high esteem. I knew I’d like Jamison’s writing.
There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Todd Hayne’s Velvet Goldmine, where the teenaged Arthur Stewart (“Martha Stewart”) is watching his favorite male pop star admit to being bisexual, to liking boys. The closeted youngster sits in front of the television, his buttoned-up parents behind him, and he warily looks back for their reaction. Then suddenly he is up, pointing and screaming, “That’s me, that’s me!” Even watching it dozens of times, I still sometimes forget how the scene ends: Arthur’s sitting on the floor, his reaction almost as stony as his parents’. He’d only fantasized about getting up and declaring his true self. He hadn’t uttered a word.
Reading much of The Empathy Exams but especially its final--very personal, very political--chapter on female pain in all its expressions, I felt like bolting up and yelling, “That’s me! That’s me!” Instead, I quietly turned the page and started drafting this confessional.
Jamison writes about being a cutter in her youth and the shame she felt years after for having done it. She explains, “Cutting was a query and a response all at once. I cut because my unhappiness felt nebulous and elusive and I thought it could perhaps hold the shape of a line across my ankle...I cut because need very badly to ratify a shaky self, and embodied unhappiness felt like an architectural plan.”
I was never a cutter. But I wrote about a cutter for the majority of my teenaged years. She was the protagonist of a story I was writing (am still writing and rewriting, it won’t let me go). Most of my other writing was about male band members making out with each other. But she was the one girl I wrote about, and she was a cutter. As I got older, I scoffed at the idea that she began as a cipher for me. We’re nothing alike, I thought, haughtily typing her pain onto the page. I’m not a cutter.
It wasn’t until I went to therapy that I finally pieced together how she was me. I was never a cutter. But I am deeply familiar with nebulous unhappiness that demands to be shaped into physical evidence. I have hurt myself to make emotional pain manifest. I have worn the resulting scars as both a badge and a hair shirt. Until very recently, I could not see that impetus for it was, neither enlightened nor shameful, but what Jamison describes as an “experiment and demonstration, excavation, interior turned out...it manifests yearning, a desire to testify, and it makes me wonder if we could come to a place where proof wasn’t necessary at all.” Until we give people (especially women) a way to express pain of the psyche in a way that gives it as much validity as pain of the body, some of us will still seek out that proof, with whatever forms our weapons of self-harm may take.
Now I see: The story I wrote isn’t about a girl who is a cutter. The story was about a girl who is in pain and is sometimes ashamed of that pain and sometimes wants to wear it for all to see. The story was about me, after all.
I wrote several more paragraphs on how I connected Jamison’s book but, pardon the phrasing, they cut a little too close to publish on the internet. In this way, I am like Arthur Stewart, jumping up and shouting, “That’s me! That’s me!” while still stuck to my spot on the floor, unblinking and unrevealing. For now.
Now, on a lighter note, let’s look to a YA classic. I’ve probably read Catherine, Called Birdy a dozen times since I was a kid. It’s certainly one of the reasons I was a pre-modern history major. Birdy is a young woman from a minor noble family in England who is writing a diary in the year 1290, just as she turns thirteen and is told she must marry soon.
In her diary, Birdy dreams big, if a bit anachronistically. She wants to run off with the Crusaders or with the Jews forced from England. She wants to be a nun or a pampered lady on a larger manor or a goat boy. But she will do nor be none of these things because she must be married to a man her father deems financially worthy. She will live the life of the majority of women who have lived on this planet. Some YA authors would get her out of it but this book is faithful to its setting, and Cushman does not allow her young protagonist to escape her fate.
I thought I said this was less depressing than The Empathy Exams? There’s a lot of scatological humor and ye olden curses (”Corpus bones!”) and anecdotes on saints’ gruesome paths to martyrdom. WHAT COULD BE MORE FUN? Birdy’s spirit keeps the narrative afloat and transcends the “dark ages” she lives in (scare quotes for my thesis advisor who would have us know that all ages are dark ones, the early part of the last millennium no more so than this day and age).
And of course, Birdy learns a pretty important lesson. Dreams are easy to come by but learning to live with one’s fate, and live well, is a true challenge. For most of the book, Birdy is not up to it. She’s kicking and biting and screaming. She accepts being slapped and locked up if it means she will not go quietly to her undesirable fate. But she cares too much about others to continue her isolated rebellion and finds a way to accept her destiny without losing herself. As long as she has people she loves, access to art and forms of self-expression, and the respect she’s due, she knows she’ll be alright.
Classic YA novel lesson but something about the framing of this book has always resonated with me. (Because I think I was born in the wrong era? Except I would totally be dead if I lived in the year 1290, no life-saving intestinal surgery for me!) Birdy sees examples of people who broke free from society’s expectations but knows she can’t quite be them. No to the nunnery. No to martyrdom. No to dressing as a man and concealing her identity.
And that’s how most of us will live our lives--not too far outside of the ordinary. I am feeling that right now: I’ve spent so long aching for a change, and now a change is coming but it’s minor, nearly impalpable. Which means that if I want real change, it must be driven by my attitude and through a deeper knowledge of myself rather than dictated by my circumstances. I don’t have to make a bold life change--move to the Middle East! live on a feminist commune! run ultramarathons!--to boldly be myself. Birdy got this. I think I will too.
...The more things stay the same.
If I know myself as well as Birdy knows herself--accepting even the ugliest parts of myself, in the way Leslie Jamison has come to do for herself--then the end of that proverb is not so groan-worthy. In fact, turned one way, it might say exactly what I hope to hear: that a change of surroundings, no matter how slight, reveals the truest self, the parts that cannot be boxed away or left behind. A new window to gaze out, a new floor to stretch upon, a new walk to the train, these are small things that could add up to a whole lot of self-discovery.
And there will be a new cranny in which to read books, maybe some more of which will reveal all the things I already knew but didn’t know how to say about myself.
I have only two emotions: careful fear and dead devotion.
My mom’s friend has a Christmastime tradition in which she and her family members share their best and worst moments of the year. My family participated in a more lighthearted exercise over Christmas dinner; my five-year-old cousin conducted a poll with questions such as “What’s your favorite breakfast food?” and “What’s your favorite name?” And it wasn’t always easy to think of answers to those questions! Ranking all the year’s moments seemed even more daunting.
But, then again, it’s pretty easy to think in extremes. Here we go.
The Worst of 2015: Blood, Death, Panic
It won’t serve anyone for me to actually detail my worst moment of 2015 so I’ll describe it in five words: blood, panic, cry, doctors, regret. Alright, then.
That was almost a year ago. I definitely got off to a rough start with 2015. Last January, I was injured, cold, and (mostly by choice) cut-off from a lot of social comforts. But even as the weather warmed and I started running and going out and figuring out things again, everything wasn’t coming up roses or even dandelions. Because even when I’m having fun and enjoying life, my brain likes to conspire against me to tell me that everything is wrong or is about to be very soon.
A very truncated list of things that I anxiously obsessed over this year*: asbestos, food poisoning, terrorism (the homegrown kind because of my job and the international kind because of my city), antibiotic-resistant staph infections, being trapped in enclosed spaces, debilitating STIs, botulism (not even 100% certain what that is but I can’t read an article or internet comment about a disease without convincing myself that I will get it), elevator accidents, losing/damaging expensive technology, stalkers, and the ever-present fears of cancer (especially the kinds that can be prevented and would therefore be my own fault for contracting), fire, and bedbugs. It’s a wonder I ever leave my apartment and interact with living things.
*Note: Most of these things never actually afflicted me and the ones that did left no permanent damage.
Let’s just hide under the covers a little while longer...
And worrying about these things--while doing nothing for my ability to sleep and prohibiting me from ever staving off calamities with a positive mindset--has nothing on the actual horror that so many people are living through right now. Ancient ruins, concert halls, health offices, playgrounds...nowhere is safe, no life is sacred. I know there is nothing particularly unique about human destruction of human life but there is something new about the constant bombardment of information about it. It’s a wonder any of us ever want to interact with one another...
The Best of 2015: #blessed, #travel, #therapy works
Of course, given that none of my worst fears came to fruition and that I’m truly blessed (not just hashtag-blessed but maybe also that) in so many ways, there was a lot of good in this year.
Best moment? Sitting seaside in Positano, Italy, with incredible food, drinks, and friendship. BOOM.
And there are lots of runners-up moments from that trip and others--see basically any photo entry I posted this year. I also had positive new experiences with taking a writing class and coaching cross country. I strengthened bonds with old friends and made some new ones. Plus, I met my dog-sister, Tandy!
Besides those stand-out moments, there was a lot of hard work that went into this year that wasn’t necessarily fun but was necessary. I got rid of a lot of obsessive habits and expectations! Yes, I still have some obsessive thoughts (see above) but I also beat myself up less for having them.
So while it may be that time again--The Winter Solstice, the end of the calendar year, a time for reflecting and closing, a time for purging--I don’t want to! Maybe it’s the mild weather. Maybe it’s the number of mass purgings of human life that have been depicted and discussed on every screen for weeks. And maybe it’s that I’ve been purging all year. Bad habits, bad mindsets, bad company. None of that work is finished, of course. But right now I don’t feel the need to burn all the crops and sacrifice the livestock. Right now, I’m ready to open up and let new things in.
Affirmation, meditation, recollection, and speculation.
It’s not a horoscope; it’s an affirmation:
Virgo: Sometimes your sweet feelings aren’t enough to get you through your days, and that’s okay. Sometimes you need something stronger, something harder, something weirder. There are places inside you as cold and sparkling as ice. There are places inside you that burn like volcanos, that burn like the sun. This month, remember how much you carry inside yourself, how many colors, how many secrets, how many songs. You’re alive, and you’re bigger and stranger and stronger than you even know.
It’s not an affirmation; it’s my memoir, written by a kind stranger.
Yesterday I tried traditional meditation for the first time. It didn’t go ideally. It’s hard to mediate over the cacophony of construction; it’s hard to mediate through the agony of an appendage that’s fallen asleep; it’s hard to mediate with Sia stuck in your head (like a rubber band, until you pull too hard). But I suppose that’s the point. Somehow, as I pushed away thought after thought, half an hour passed. It passed more quickly than normal. It passed much slower, too.
I would like to try meditation again.
I can’t remember the things I want, when I want. I was reading a book about memory but couldn’t remember the title. My mind is full of frivolities (capable of answering trivia questions on reggaeton and Roman geography) and fruitless thoughts (what happens when she goes home, how did I not see that coming, why do I like carefully--no, barely--reconstructed disasters). I push rewind and eject too often.
I can’t remember who I am until the moment after that one I’m trying to be in.
How has she become one of those people who wears yoga pants all day? She used to make fun of those people. With their happiness maps and their gratitude journals and their bags made out of recycled tire treads. But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.
-Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
With this year’s birthday, I’m old enough to know that’s true and young enough to still be laughing.
In a change of pace for me, I’m participating in a Tumblr meme (is that even what we call them? Hashtag old). As I often post my own photos, this time I did some Google image searches that were relevant to my interests. And there you have it: my #aesthetic.
Rejected titles for this entry: Nothing New in My Passport and Nothing New to Say; Thought about Making Major Life Changes and Then Watched Game of Thrones Instead: A Story of the Past Three Months; You Know You’re in a Rut When Your Bank Suspects Illegal Activity That One Time You Stayed in Brooklyn (Subtitle: Is it Me or East Flatbush?).
It’s true, little has changed since we last left our heroine. Another school year ended, another one on the horizon, and a largely unplanned summer in between. Despite landing in a familiar place, I’ve explored new territory and been quite busy with all the starts and stops along the way. And yes, I’ve been watching Game of Thrones--and reading recaps, listening to podcasts, and delving into detailed synopses of the books. So here are a few synopses from the past few months and almost no GoT commentary (just one thing: why’d they go and play Dorne like that? A waste and disgrace!).
***
While this fall and winter I was consumed with the minutiae of maintaining a healthy mind and body, I expanded my ambitions with the lengthening days and blooming backdrop of spring. Namely, I started to think about where I want my career to go. This took the form of informational interviews and, in one case, almost applying for a new job. Though I’ll be returning to teaching next fall, I had a lot of interesting conversations with powerful and inspiring people and met a few characters that may yet have an impact on my arc, though they won’t be making an appearance next season.
One woman made a particular impression on me, as she represents an ideal I once had for myself and the inversion of who I believe myself to be right now. She’s a marathoner, in every sense of the word. When I met her for brunch, she came straight from running a 10K in the park--which she did after working until four that same morning. Her race number was still safety-pinned to her shorts when she sat down to order a coffee, no food. As she spoke, she struck me as direct, relentless, hardened against the pressures of criticism and chaos. (Me, lately: reserved, hesitant, likely to crumble at the slightest disruption.) She spoke of a job that could be anything I wanted. I tried to imagine what that would be. I reached for my third cup of coffee and came up empty. For awhile, I considered following her into the trenches, but I felt exhausted just following her conversation.
I’ll stay in the trenches I’m used to, for now. And, more importantly, I can accept my reasons for doing so. That’s progress.
***
April (or was it May? or possibly even June?) showers.
How do we avoid each other
in the same hood
?
Like it feels impossible
but we do it
It actually doesn’t feel that impossible to me that, among the 200,000 people who live in a three mile span, two people could (unintentionally) avoid each other. Especially people with opposite schedules and commutes. What does feel impossible to me is how time seems to move haltingly, and then, all of a sudden, rushes on with great fervor. That six months can pass and one can reasonably assume that I’m still in the same place (same apartment, same singleness) and be right. All that time, and nothing to show for it. And--this felt like an earth-shattering realization one morning before coffee and it stuck with me--I am going to spend the entirety of my post-college twenties as a teacher. Like it feels impossible, but it’s already mostly happened.
And then I see on Facebook, which I check very infrequently now, making the sight of it even more momentous: two of my former students got married. They weren’t even dating when I taught them. They’ve lived a lifetime in this time I’ve been teaching. Or maybe it’s they who’ve stayed in the same place, only pivoting, while I’ve taken a series of leaps, falls and all, that may land me somewhere else entirely. Only time will tell. Feels impossible, but it will.
***
I’ve considered this hypothesis for awhile now, both out of momentary desire and to steel myself for future possibility: I can live alone and be okay. Evidence I’ve collected in support: I enjoyed the times I travelled alone in Turkey; I am an only child who invented The Nothing Game to demand alone-time. Evidence I’ve collected to disprove the hypothesis: I don’t even like spending the night alone in my apartment; spending time with other people--often the ones I live with--has brought me out of some of my darkest moods this year; I am an only child who invented The Nothing Game to demand alone-time (how few steps would it take to reach full-on hermitage!).
This week, I actually got to test the hypothesis when I stayed in my friend’s house while her family was on vacation. (Sidenote: I was not entirely alone, as I had a furry friend to watch out for me, while I watched out for him. But obviously, if I ever actually live alone, I will have a dog.) And what observations of my own behaviors and thoughts have I made that could bring me closer to a conclusion?
Well, the data is conflicting. I have felt both crazier and calmer. The former might not be as relevant in an apartment in a more densely populated area; the latter may be a result of this feeling like a vacation rather than a permanent living situation. So could I do it, if I had to? Of course, humans can adapt to anything and forget that they lived in any other way. But do I want to right now? Nope. Can’t wait to have the roommates to hang out with and to commiserate with or to talk me down from spirals of anxious thinking. Oh, and everything is better with a dog, of course. Even if said dog is NO help against creepy crawlers in the bathroom or insomnia. He’s still fuzzy and all-adoring.
Two is better than...actually, zero roads would be better.
***
So you see, we’re right back where we started. Except now it’s time to watch Orange is the New Black instead of Game of Thrones. Incremental change; it’s happening.
As you may deduce from these photos, I ate extremely well and in great excess in Italy. Not a bad meal. Many great meals. It pandered to my adult tastes (seafood, fresh veggies, wine wine wine) and brought me back to my roots (pasta, pizza, red meats). Simple and elegant, everything. And oh, the gelato. The gelato. Grazie, Italia.
It’s everything you expect, and more. It’s the best meal of your life and reminders of every other great meal you’ve ever had. It’s standing in the presence of a masterpiece and understanding the drive, if not the mechanics, behind it. It’s forgetting yourself for a bit, in a glass of wine or work of art, and coming back to yourself, on a train ride or overlooking a city made of marble and stone. It’s indulging like a tourist and blending in with the locals, until you open your mouth. It’s time to rest, to search, to try out, to savor. Some of these things occur on all trips; all of these occurred, multiple times, on this trip. Italy is a gem. Can’t wait to go back.
This is what happens between international vacations, while real life happens, pretty happily, and I have lots of time--commutes, Sunday mornings in the kitchen, chugging away on the elliptical or, sometimes, slowly, the treadmill--to listen to podcasts.
This is a tale of two podcasts, and the thoughts they made me think.
***
One of the best This American Life episodes in recent history, “Three Miles” tackles the achievement gap by profiling three former NYC public school students and their journeys beyond high school.
There’s a lot of heartbreak in the episode; students with so much promise in high school dropping out and ending up stuck in careers and lives they didn’t want for themselves. But for me, the most heartbreaking part came during the one success story. The narrator describes Raquel, the student who made it out of the Bronx, went to a good college, and now is a teacher:
Raquel has to not look at the mountain of evidence that what she's working toward will not be possible and instead has to repeat to herself, you do deserve this. You deserve this. You do deserve this.
You do deserve this: The “mountain of evidence” against this self-affirmation includes the failure of her friends to make it out of high school, through college, and into stable, let alone fulfilling, careers. That’s the achievement gap, something that gets talked about a lot among public school educators. We don’t talk much about what happens on the other end, to the ones like Raquel who have leapt over the abyss. We talk about, but barely understand, why so many students we thought would make it across the gap end up dropping out of college or not even bothering to apply.
You deserve this: Raquel made it. But she feels like the bottom could fall out at any moment and drop her into the depths of the gap where (she fears) she belongs.
You do deserve this: It’s a refrain I’ve chanted to myself while struggling to negotiate my own success and fulfillment with the evidence of suffering and failure I sense all around me. Still working on believing it.
Listening to Raquel’s story, I realized I’ve never told my kids they deserve success. I’ve told them they’re capable of it, they should court it, that it’s within their reach if they just work hard enough. But I haven’t told them what to believe when they look around and see the crumbling school building, the college dropout rates, the black boys and girls being shot by the police with little condemnation and even less consequence. We expect children to ignore or overcome these “distractions” but these things build up over time. Altogether, they form the mountains of evidence against which our words of encouragement mean little. How should they negotiate all that with the fleeting pride from an A on an exam? I don’t know that I could.
And that’s why Raquel’s story cut so deep. I did not go through half as much as she did to get to a similar place, yet I’m plagued by the same self-abasing thoughts. I obviously don’t know Raquel from her fifteen minutes on national public radio, but I imagine she’s like me in that she’s compassionate and discerning. When a compassionate person sees others suffering, she hurts for them. When a discerning person sees others suffering, she thinks that she should hurt too. And so we must constantly coo I deserve this to ourselves even when we don’t believe it.
Success is out there, somewhere...right?
Right now it’s in vogue to teach grit, the ability to stick out tough situations and persevere through challenges. Students like Raquel exhibit the highest levels of grit because they overcame tremendous difficulties to end up in the same place as many pampered, well-to-do children. It’s those pampered, well-to-do children who lack grit because they’ve never really been challenged or had to question their ability to succeed. So they crumble the first time they experience failure, a C on a paper or a job rejection. Some perceive these failures as an unjust affront to their unquestionable right to succeed (oh, I’ll talk about those assholes later). But for many, they suffer in the same way as Raquel: silently, still going through the motions of a happy and successful life, but not believing they deserve any part of it. Showing grit and sticking out challenges might lead to success but it doesn’t prepare you for how to deal with its aftermath.
What students need to be taught alongside the allure of success and their capability to achieve it is the ability to block out all the universe’s noise that says this is not for you, if you can even get it. We must help them replace the universe’s ceaseless taunting with something worth believing in: You deserve this despite your failures. You deserve this because of your failures.You deserve this because you are human, and all humans deserve the chance to pursue happiness.
Because all of us (who are not assholes) need a refresher on that.
***
Onto On Being, a podcast about spirituality in its myriad forms. In the episode “Forgiving the Body” the now-deceased Bob Kramer recounted his experience of living with ALS. He described how living with a fatal disease taught him how to live better. His message wasn’t the cliched “live every moment like it’s your last” but one of opening up to see life in a way that wasn’t possible before his illness. One thing he noticed upon his diagnosis was how our society treats people with disabilities: with avoidance, “looking through” the disability but not seeing. He claimed that we view disability as a punishment, as something people must deserve. Krista Tippet, the show’s host, bristled at this but I think I see a bit of what he means. If asked, no one would say that person with a cane or a wheelchair deserves to not be able-bodied. However, when we are only looking at them and only seeing ourselves, we often think: I deserve to walk up this staircase faster; they are holding me back from my potential. In thinking this, we are forced to accept a dichotomy in which others who lack our abilities must not deserve them.
And yet, even the most able-bodied among us will be betrayed by our bodies if we think we deserve their health and abilities. The only thing about our physical existence we deserve or are entitled is, of course, death. That is not to say that we can’t derive pride or joy from the accomplishments that our physical body brings: runner’s high, peace from yoga, elation at making it into the subway car just before the doors close. But it is dangerous to feel that we are owed something by our body (I put in all this time and effort, I deserve to run a marathon; I put all of myself into my work and I’m tired, I deserve to make it home faster than all of these slow-walking cane-grabbers will allow). That way of thinking only leads to disappointment.
Here’s a generalization for which I could provide anecdotal evidence for days: women tend to manage this disappointment internally and men tend to manage this disappointment externally. Women punish themselves further (if the universe is telling her she don’t deserve one thing, then she must not deserve anything at all); men punish others. A man is disappointed because his physical and mental health will prevent him from having the job he deserves? Crash a plane full of passengers. A man is disappointed because women haven’t given him the attention he deserves? Murder everyone walking on the quad. A man is disappointed he doesn’t have the economic standing and control over his destiny he deserves? Time to join ISIS.
What does this have to do with wheelchairs and walkers? Asshole men won’t give people with disabilities the time of day because they won’t give anyone who isn’t stroking their ego the time of day, unless to scream at them or blow their brains out. But compassionate, discerning people (of any gender, okay, fine) don’t want to really see people with disabilities because it reminds us of our body’s potential failure and all the pain (we fear) we truly deserve.
***
No one deserves all this deliciousness but we should all be so lucky to enjoy it!
So where does all this leave us? On one hand, we need everyone, most especially people marginalized by society, to understand that they deserve happiness and success as much as anyone else. On the other hand, as individuals we have to let go of this idea that we deserve something based on the confines of our physical existence because that turns into entitlement, which then leads us to ignore others, punish ourselves, or lash out violently against others for not meeting the standards we have determined must be met in order to secure our own happiness.
To achieve this, we have to redefine what we get to think we deserve. Monetary success, popularity, physical prowess--all that has to go. What we’re left with are those unlimited resources of humanity: love, education, freedom to pursue happiness when that pursuit does not impede on the pursuit of others. And then we have to make sure that the systems in our society do not undermine people’s belief in their right to those things. Ahem, education system. Ahem, ahem, police forces. Capitalism, we’ll get to you eventually. Finally, on an individual level, we have to instruct each other on how one’s worth is not in contrast to another’s lack so that we don’t stomp on others when we’re feeling our best or our worst.
But how? Still working that one out. The first two will require systemic overhauls but they can start with the work of individuals who can influence how easy it is for others to access love, education, and happiness (teachers, police officers, politicians, etc.). The last one can only come through knowing each other and knowing each others’ struggles, and that can only start with knowing one’s self and acknowledging one’s own struggle and being open enough to share that with others so that they might understand. I hope, somewhere in here, I’ve done a bit of that.
