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a journal |
 This book is intended as a place to blog about my life and things I'm interested in and answers to prompts from various blog prompt sites here on WDC, including "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  and "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" I'm not sure yet what it'll turn into, but I'm going to have fun figuring it out. |
| Prompt: Write about an eighth grade memory. When I was in eighth grade, we moved twice. The first move came because Dad was laid off his job. This was back in 1990-91 when defense contracting was going away and so a lot of engineers (specifically computer engineers) were out of work. I was thirteen and had three sisters and a brother at the time (the youngest was born when I was sixteen). The youngest sister was four—five by the time we left. My brother had just been held back at the end of first grade, so he repeated first grade in the new house while I was in eighth. Mom had started back to school, getting her Masters in Linguistics the previous year. When Dad was laid off, the first thing he did was look for work. There wasn’t anything where we were living (he was at the end of a long series of defense contracting layoffs in the area) but Mom wanted to finish her degree, so when he got a job down in Maryland, we (Mom and five kids) stayed in New York, but moved an hour west to be closer to the university. That meant new schools for all of us, a new church, new friends. Dad’s job was as a contractor, which meant he got some perks, which included flying up from Maryland to upstate New York every other weekend. He drove up on the odd weekends, so we saw a lot of him, but it was difficult. The house was small and crowded. One weekend, probably around spring break, we all drove down to visit him and stayed in the one bedroom basement apartment that he was renting and ate ramen with him cooked in the microwave (he didn’t have a stove). Crowded with the seven of us. I had one of the attic rooms, with a ceiling that came down in a slant over my bed. It was warm in the summer, but I had a room to myself, and I was glad of that. Mama kept a bag of candy in her dresser. I stole some of it, and then felt guilty and replaced the bag. I wonder if she knew it was me? Not much happened that year. I enjoyed the school, which challenged me more than most schools I went to. I was in choir, which was also fun, and spent a lot of time reading. That was the year (it was winter time, so I had just turned fourteen) that I got pneumonia. I don’t remember a lot about that. What happened was that I was ill and it was snowing, but I had to go to school that Friday because I had a test. I think I passed, but I took a turn for the worse, and ended up losing school anyway. I remember talking to Mama on the way to the doctor to get my chest x-rayed. I don’t know what we said. I remember feeling as though I were empty, hollowed out, like there wasn’t anything left of me except being sick. At the doctor, I was cold. My temperature was 95 F (equivalent to 35 C). I don’t remember, but sometime during the time when I was so ill, the police brought back my brother and sister (we’re talking the five year old sister and my only brother was seven) because they’d gone down five blocks or so to the corner store. By themselves. I was the responsible one, home sick in bed—we’re just lucky that they didn’t cite Mama for neglect or something. But they didn’t do that back then. That was the year of the first Bush’s Gulf War. My sister (the ten year old) came home frightened one day in January because Dad flew into the airport every other week, and apparently her teacher had been saying something that indicated to Rachel that airports might be a target in case of war. Mama soothed her fears, but didn’t tell her that when Dad flew out of BWI or Dulles near DC (which he did just as often as he flew into our little airport), those airports were bigger potential targets. Then she went to school and gave the teacher a piece of her mind for scaring the kids like that. The more I write about this, the more memories come. That little house that we rented for a year was home, until we moved down to Maryland because Dad got a job there (the contracting became permanent). But sometimes I miss it. The house was blue, and there was a tree in the backyard just perfect for sitting and reading or just thinking. |
| Prompt: What can be the source of relationship adversities and do you believe that relationship adversities (any kind of relationship: parent-child, lovers, husband-wife, teacher-student, etc.) can often spring from other earlier adversities or do they just happen on their own? From my point of view, the most common source of relationship difficulty is lack of communication. That’s at the source of a lot of the problems that people face in any relationship. One or both of the people in a relationship are not communicating in such a way that the other (or both) can understand what the problem is. There are other issues of course, but lack of clarity is difficult to overcome because sometimes we don’t understand why the other person can’t see something that feels obvious to us. The second question is more complicated because no one comes into a relationship without baggage. even the most fundamental relationship—a parent with a newborn—the parent is the sum total of his or her experiences and from the moment the child is born, starts imprinting the child with his or her own experiences. Because of that, any adversities that we suffer earlier are going to affect our present day relationships for good or for bad. We are not simply a relationship. We bring baggage, carry it with us wherever we are and use that to color the world and our perceptions of people around us. It’s like medicine—doctors sometimes act as though the body were a series of organs. This person is a heart which is separate from the skin which is separate from the pancreas and the liver and the kidneys and the brain and the bones and the circulatory system and the stomach . . . treating each individual organ as though the rest of the body isn’t going to be affected by changes in the one being treated. There are no discrete systems in the body. I notice that with T1—which is a disease of the endocrine system (and so is treated most often by an endocrinologist), but also affects circulation and nerves which affects digestion and kidneys. Not only that, the hormone imbalance caused by lack of insulin can affect other hormones—leading to depression among other things. You can’t simply treat the one thing and not expect the rest of the body to become out of balance as it tries to adjust to a new normal. Well, we try to do the same thing in relationships. We see the person—the friend, the lover—and how they interact with us, but we can never assume that’s the only part of them. In a different setting, they’re going to behave differently—with their mother, with their best friend they’ve known forever, with their sister, with their brother. And if this is an important relationship, one that is going to last, we need to be able to accept more facets of the person than the one we get to see. Which means (to get back to the question) adversity comes also from the meshing of two separate people with two separate backgrounds and personalities and experiences and friendships into one relationship. But those frictions can be healthy. After all, if I met someone who was exactly like me, I’m not sure what I’d be able to talk to them about. |
| Prompt: Elizabeth Strout says she listens in others’ conversations a lot, and in one of her books, she lets one of her characters say, “People are always telling you who they are” even when they are talking about other things. Do you agree? Do you favor this method of seeing into people, then using it in your writing? I agree that people tell you who they are no matter what they are talking about, but I would like to add that they tell even more about who they are by what they do, which sometimes is at odds with what they say. Everything that a person is manifests itself in how they behave, especially when they are interacting with other people. And I try to make that manifest in my writing. I mean, for goodness sake, I wouldn’t believe a character who said: I’m an honest man of about twenty-seven years old who loves his mother and works as an accountant while building model trains in my spare time. I don't know what he's lying about, but he would have to be lying about something. For one thing, people don’t talk like that unless they are in the middle of a getting to know you game. For another, someone who is truly honest is likely to be anxious about it because it's too important to them to be flippant about. On the other hand, everything in the statement may be true, but I would prefer to have a character who showed his age by how he dressed or what music he listened to, who revealed his occupation and interests as he was in conversation with another character. So, yes, I use what a character says to help create his character, and I prefer it if he or she is talking about other things instead of trying to convince the audience about who they are. |
| Prompt: What has Spring sprung into? I see the marks of spring all around me. Today, the dogwoods were in full bloom and the azaleas were starting to show pink petals through the green of their leaves. We are finished with yellow daffodils in our yard. All the remaining daffodils are white with a touch of yellow at the top of their cups. And it’s cold. I can feel the chill in my bedroom where I’m typing, and last night I wore thicker pajamas because I was cold. Of course, cold is a natural condition for me. But I felt it in a way I didn’t want to last night. The trees are showing green, not the faint touches that are the harbinger of spring, but the stronger green that proves that spring is here. The magnolias are blooming. Not the evergreen magnolias that will send out their blossoms later, but the ones that have been bare before and now are full. And we have cherry blossoms. Here, spring is ups and downs and a flooding river and thunderstorms and gentle rain that lasts for a week and green. So green. Our front lawn is full of a crop of purple headed weeds because there hasn’t been a day that it was dry enough to mow. Or if there was, it was a busy day. Too soon, I’ll be braving the damp heat of summer, the humidity that makes it hard to breathe, but now, it is cool and pollen is on every breeze so that cars are coated in green and the trees are green and the flowers are blooming in pinks and whites and yellows and the lawn is purple green, and it is spring. |
| “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” - Audre Lorde Do you agree or disagree? Have you seen situations where women have hesitated speaking about a topic even though they are very knowledgeable but feared their opinion wouldn't be welcome? Well, this is an interesting sentiment. I personally don’t have much trouble making myself heard. I don’t feel silenced or that my opinions or words would be unwelcome. When I am silent it is generally because I don’t have something to say. But ultimately, I agree. It’s better to speak. As long as there is something to say, and we’re not speaking just because we’re afraid of not being heard. I do wonder why the prompt talks specifically about women, because I think that this is more a human problem. I’ve known men who express opinions, not because they have something to say, but because they’re afraid of being unnoticed if they don’t speak. Which is not quite the same thing, but I think it is similar. The thing is, I’ve been in higher education for most of my adult life in one capacity or another, and there is the tendency in higher education to give everyone a voice, as long as the professor gets the last and loudest one. I know, that’s a generality, and so I could argue the other side of it if I tried. I have seen students who have hesitated speaking about a topic that they knew about, but I don’t think it was because they feared their opinion would be unwelcome. Certainly, I hope that was never the case in my classrooms. As a student, I remember being infuriated with one teacher who said that I should not ask questions in a class, because I knew more than some of the other students who didn’t know as much. I lost a lot of respect for that teacher, because I felt that because I knew the questions to ask, it was probably better for those who were less comfortable in the subject. Which leads me to a tangent—when my sister was in college she took a Math class. She was a transfer student, and had taken the same class with the same textbook in her previous college, but because the credit hadn’t transferred in, she was stuck in this class. And so, she sat in the back, not saying anything most of the time, but when she spotted the poor Graduate Student who was the teacher making a mistake, she would raise her hand and ask, “I’m sorry, could you explain that again?” The teacher would turn to the board, catch himself, correct the error, and go on. By midterms, Joy had him trained that as soon as she raised her hand, he’d turn around and look for the error. That’s the kind of help that a knowledgeable student adds to a classroom, and if they aren’t willing to speak up, the class suffers. I know that the ideal atmosphere of dignity and respect doesn’t always exist in conversation, but I can’t think of a situation where I would hesitate to speak up, if it was in my area of expertise. And yes, I’ve seen women (and men) hesitating to speak up, maybe out of fear, but also because of respect to whoever is talking or a desire to keep the conversation on topic—and that is a perfectly valid thing as well. Silence doesn’t equal fear. And probably, the original quote didn’t mean it quite that way. But it feels as though it is condemning silence. And sometimes silence is better than what would be said to break it. if that makes sense. It probably doesn’t. I’ll have to think about this some more. |
| Write a poem, story or just share something in your blog using these words: April, life, love and law. it’s April, and the laws of spring dictate rain, and new lovers singing and dancing as new life unfolds, blind and young and perfect. |
| Prompt: Write a Spring Bucket List. Where I live, spring has flowers and rain in nearly equal measures. I saw the blooms of a dogwood tree, today, and took a picture that included late daffodils, wilting under the white blossoms. I saw a bush covered in fuchsia, which is a color I never thought occurred in nature until I lived here. I have since learned that it was named for a flower. It’s like when I finally saw something in real life that glowed neon pink (or close enough that it didn’t matter). But I don’t have anything that I will specifically do this spring. I’ve gone to the zoo, which is more fun now than in a month, when it will be more crowded and hot enough to fry a brain. I have seen the flowers. I have started my allergy season with itchy eyes and a nose that threatens to run. I have seen the rain fall and the river rise and I believe that it might happen again as the snow keeps falling up north even though spring is here. I don’t have exams this spring. I don’t have a thesis to write or essays to grade. That is uncomfortable, and I find myself looking for something to write. Not just the poems, but something that requires thought. I am reading. I am knitting. I am spending time watching the flowers and the people passing. I am going to the library. I’ve eaten Easter candy and bought new sandals and started wearing short sleeves under my jacket. I’ve been writing poetry, and some of that poetry has spring in it because it’s all around me, in my thoughts and through my fingers. I’m not sure if that’s a bucket list—which is a series of goals. I don’t have specifically spring time goals. Except the same ones I’ve had all year—get a job. Write. Get out of the house. Read. Knit. Smell flowers. Listen to rain. Sleep. Write. |
| Pick 3 random items that all have something in common and write a creative piece about that 'something'. I thought a long time about the definition of random and of common and finally decided that the blog might get into essay length if I went there, and I didn’t have time for that today. I mean, how can I, who lives inside my head, choose three random items, when because I’m in my head, they have some thread linking them together in a row in my mind. Otherwise I wouldn’t think of them, one after the other. And that commonality may only exist for me, but that is yet another commonality. These are things I think of when I think of random things. So, after doing my head in for a while on that count, I concluded that I would just have to wing it. I chose three things (random or not): laundry, unpacking, and beads. I know that unpacking is an action, but it’s also a chore, and so it is a thing. Laundry because I’ve been doing that all day, and finally have clothes fit for tomorrow. Unpacking because I unpacked five book boxes while reading all evening. I’m looking for a specific book that I haven’t found yet, but I still have at least two more boxes of paperbacks left to go. Beads because they’re evil, just like unpacking and laundry. They’re not quite as evil as glitter, but close, because you open them and they jump from your fingers and land on the other side of the room in some crack in the floor that they’ll remain in until you go barefoot across that place, at which time, they’ll hurt. And then, there are beading needles. And they’re tedious. But shiny. And that’s what connects them, now that I’ve thought it out. They’re all tedious things that are repetitive and I want to avoid for as long as possible, but there is always a reward at the end. Clean clothes, and books and shiny objects on my cross-stitching that makes the picture glow. And so, the something in common would be the reward of tedious labor. Which brings me to a poem (because it’s April and I’m in a poem-ish mood): it must grow tedious, the flying out and back, with a twig, a blade of grass, a scrap of thread pulled from the knee of red overalls hanging on a line, a shining bit of glass found in the dirt by curious eyes, a long strand of hair, a beak full of mud, a mass of packing fluff— but when they’re done, they’ve built home, and they sing their triumph before the first egg is laid. |
| There's mirror on the dresser where I have my laptop set up. When I look up from writing, I can see myself. It feels surreal, sometimes, to see my face, when I don't remember myself looking that way. Something about memory makes my face change inside my head. I remember different lines, different angles, a mouth that is smiling, skin that is bluer, eyebrows that are less like slashes across my face. I don't remember the scar if I'm not looking at it, not when I try to picture me. And my hair is longer, or shorter--greyer or browner, but not like it is. I live so much of my life inside my head. Part of it is the fact that I spend a lot of time reading, and in the books, all pictures are made by words. In my memory, things get left out, like words on a page, leaving edges to look through and wonder about. I wonder how to find those gaps, sometimes. I think it must be interesting to peer through them and find the reality behind--or the unrealithy. Mirrors lie, don't they. They show the world reversed. In tarot, that would make the portents sinister. Which is another way of saying left handed. |
| I've been knitting today. That's not really unusual--I've been working on several big knitting projects that have taken up time and space in my head recently. I did get the double knit project done in time to post it on a ravelry board where I will probably not be drawn for a free design by the designer. I wouldn't mind winning. I like her designs, but on the other hand, I have a scarf and a blanket that I'm still working on by her, so I should really focus there instead of wandering into odd paths. So, today I've been thinking about lace and lace weight yarn, which is an exercise in faith. It's hard to take out, so I have to have faith in my skill that I will get it right the first time and not have to frog. For those of you who don't know, frogging is when you take a piece of knitting and rip it out (one row at a time) rip it, rip it . . . thus, frog. This particular yarn is delicate. But I'm enjoying the project. I like working with lace weight and I enjoy lace, which is all about the spaces between the lines. Which reminded me of poetry. Tomorrow is April, and poetry month will begin, and I'm really tempted by two separate prompt based challenges, but I don't really want to write two poems a day . . . I'll just have to see what happens. Lots of poetry. Lots of finding a job. Lots of knitting. Lots of volunteering as a receptionist twice a week for the foreseeable future. It shouldn't be that bad, and maybe a real job will come out of it. I have a headache. Not that that has anything to do with anything else, but I'm stream of conscious-ing here, and so it happened. Which probably means I should go back and knit some more. Only I'm almost at the end of this month's pattern and the new one doesn't come until tomorrow. And I'll start something else instead. I haven't figured out what yet. Ah well. Hope everyone else had a good March. |
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