Clara Wieland's Hidden Diary

"Land Is the Only Thing that Matters, Katie Scarlett"

2009-06-23T13:02:00.001-07:00

I have been recently reminded of the Robert Frost Poem "Mending Wall." The speaker and his taciturn neighbor meet for the purpose of mending the wall that divides their property. The old neighbor keeps repeating the phrase "good fences make good neighbors" while the poem's speaker wonders if that is truly the case.

Frost's question and my often affectionate feelings for small town life have recently been put to the test. The first test came with our new next-door-neighbors' moving boxes. The house had been on the market for over a year. Not a McMansion or a grand Victorian, the house is cute but small and our neighborhood is nice but hardly posh. Relief at seeing a quiet-looking elderly couple move next-door soon began to melt away a bit at the husband's revelation to Andy that their grandson, also named Andy, would be out of prison soon.

What worries Andy, however, is not his prison doppelganger, but the piles of junk accumulating in their backyard that includes tools, Christmas decorations, many lawn chairs and coolers of various sizes, a box of faucets, and a microwave oven. Some of this junk is covered in blue tarps, the rest is not, and it is all left in the yard, in the rain. My mother says that they are elderly, and it is probably just taking them a longer time than it would for us younger folks to get organized.

I didn't tell mom about the grandson with the prison record.

Then a week after they moved in, my husband calls me at work to tell me that the neighbors are cutting down a tree on our fence line, and he thinks they may have damaged the fence. "Our new neighbors?!" I ask. "You're kidding!"

"No not the new ones. Different neighbors," he tells me.

Seriously? What is this? An invasion?

"I heard the power saws and went out to the back of our lot and asked them what they were up to and this guy said to me, 'cutting down a damn tree!'"

That ended Andy's exchange.

When I came home we both went into the back portion of our property. No sound of power saws, but our back corner had been cleared, like little redneck elves had come and butchered the underbrush in the back corner. Granted it needed it; clearing the small triangle-shaped portion of our property was on our to-do list. In the meantime because this part of our yard is intersected by three other lots, the underbrush had been a privacy shield until we decided what to plant. None of this underbrush was on our neighbors' property, so it befuddled us why Tree-cutter Snopes & Company had A) been in our yard, and B) why they cut all this out . . . without asking us!

As we stood there amazed, checking out our bent fence, the Tree-Cutter returned, driving his red pick-up right to the fence line. Seeing us, and probably thinking we were less than pleased, he sat behind the wheel of his truck a good two minutes, staring at us and talking on his cell before getting out.

I asked Tree-Cutter if he lived at this house. I had to ask him twice. "Naw. I wuz hired to cut this tree," he finally said. "It wuz overhanging that there shed;" and he pointed to our other neighbor's yard behind us. "He wanted it cut down. So I did," he said with a fair amount of hostility.

Apparently we had not been part of the small town Klan meeting that made this decision. For reasons still unclear to us, while on his tree-cutting mission Snopes & Company crawled over our fence, into our yard, and whacked out the underbrush in the back corner of our property. "Why did you do that?" I asked. He threw at us the names of the people that lived in these surrounding houses, invoking local genealogy, "Well that's Mr. So-an-so's mother-in-law!"and other southern non sequiturs, but he never answered our questions. Finally he cocked his head and looked at us with a glare straight out of Deliverance and spat at us, " Where are y'all from?!"

"What does that matter?" my husband calmly replied. To wit, Snopes threw up his hands and walked away.

Snopes had played a Southern card. The translation of his question was "Where are you from, you crazy Yankee liberals?" (To which ironically he was have only been about a quarter right.)

Once Andy and I had both cooled off, he pointed out that in England there were no private property laws; people could freely cross each others' land. Of course if we lived in England, I'd be happy and wouldn't care.

I added that I supposed they did do us a service for free. "The cops here might think us nuts if we reported him," I said. But I felt that my own "southernness" had been violated. After all, "Land is the only thing that matters, Katie Scarlett O'Hara!" I thought. But this Snopes had the look of a man who would burn barns, so we had wisely backed off. Crazy is the trump card any day, no matter where you are.

It doesn't, however, change the facts that we are now further exposed to another neighbor's lawn equipment and a huge shaggy horse-sized dog who has a clear view of our yard and our cats. I heard his stomach rumbling as he stared at Byron winding around my legs.

My mother said that the shrubs we recently planted will grow quickly, unfortunately not, however, over-night. In the meantime I struggle to "love my neighbor" . . . in a distant and abstract manner, all the while dreaming of fences!

Damascus Discoveries

2009-04-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend the baby finches that were nesting on our front porch took flight. I hadn't noticed their mother building the nest or when they took flight, only that she was there one day on her nest, suddenly she had babies, and then they were gone.

Life has been like that recently: beautiful surprises in unexpected places. Maybe it began with the transformation of our lean-to into a garden. A major step on this newly trodden path occurred this past weekend.

I went to a conference for graduate students in English. I was speaking on a panel about the profession. I was the weird one. I said it's OK to stop at the Masters degree and that maybe they should consider if they really want to commit to the academic life before going into a PhD program. I said that maybe they don't have to take every job interview if they can't see themselves living in a certain place and they have other options. I said teaching first-year students wasn't that bad. For what it was worth, ultimately they had to turn inward and know and trust themselves.

But then a high-level administrator from another college said, "interview everywhere," lie if you have to, or at least stretch the truth about how you fit into the job exactly. Along with him was a non-tenure instructor, a full-time well-published professor, and the head of a writing-tutoring program, all talking, and most complaining, while the job-hungry grad students hung on every word.

When I left the session, I realized this: my job is a good one, and my stresses are not that monumental, if I only shift my perspective in viewing them. I may not have planned to be where I am, but what a wonderful place it is, even beyond the job.

Way beyond the job.

Conversations online and over coffee, the way the sunsets paint the skyline of our otherwise unexceptional little Georgia town, a sermon that quietly surprises by building on a tiny verse, new visitations and discoveries of things I just have not been able to notice, all of these are wonders and signs. Through trust, slowing down, and really looking for and listening to the still small voice, I am re-discovering a world of beauty.

For the world online and in the news, Susan Boyle has become the embodiment of surprise, beauty in unexpected places but why? What do we expect to hear when she walks out on stage? How does she change for us and how does she change us?

At work and in life, stress and societal expectations blind us. I know they have me. It is only by stopping and connecting with what is beautiful and outsides of ourselves that the scales can fall from our eyes, and we can truly see.

Our Walden Experiment

2009-03-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

"You will get very little from Walden if you read it hunting for contradictions, if you make a great fuss over the fact that he had dinner in town with friends sometimes. There is much to dispute with Thoreau, but the useful disagreements lie in the essentials, not the details."
--- Bill McKibben, from an annotation for Walden.

In the opening chapter of Walden, Economy, Henry David Thoreau writes about buying an old cabin from James Collins and tearing it down, salvaging the pieces, and re-using them to build his house. Preservation and recycling, I tell my students that these ideas for many people in the twenty-first century are radial. Imagine what people thought of Thoreau in the nineteenth century!

My husband and I, while hardly card-carrying members of the Simplicity movement like several of our much-greener, less-materialistic friends, [See Striving for Happiness], The Cult of Home Ownership demands constant sacrifice, so we are trying to do more with less as the cliche and our checkbooks demand. Hence a flower and vegetable garden, beauty and function.

As I am currently teaching Thoreau, I see that we had followed his path in reclaiming something old for our new purpose.

The previous owners of our late-fifties/early sixties ranch house were definitely good, but apparently eccentric people who did wonderful things like knocking down interior walls to open up space, and weird things like trying to seal pipes of different materials with concrete (!) and producing a fuse box that is in a mysterious code.

The "lean-to" connected to our backyard storage shed was typical of the aesthetic and work ethic of the previous owners. By the time we got the house and a year more had passed, the lean-to had become a structure that looked tentative at best from the front, and actually looked more like an assertively shabby crack den from the side.

A few weeks ago we finally tore the lean-to down. When I say, we, I mean my husband and a fellow writer friend. His wife and I enjoyed directing. [Hey they wouldn't let us play. They were having waaay too much fun in hard hats destroying!] Oh but what is more attractive than academic men with sledge-hammers and power tools?

Once the lean-to was demolished and most of the leavings were hauled away (I had raised a post-feminist hand and stepped in to the sweaty labor), we were left with usable bricks, several good wood beams, and a "patio" shaped like one of those not-so-square-shaped Midwestern states. Odd but useful things.

In the not-so-useful category, we also dug up wire, glass, concrete blocks, metal pieces of some lost functions, and batteries, to name just a few of our "treasures." Andy said that turning this spot into a garden had become for him a humanitarian project. I, in turn, quoting Star Wars, alternated in calling it our "mercy mission" and "a damned fool idealistic crusade" in which we were armed with only gardening books, a debit card, and enthusiasm with which to fight.

Our "mission" was to use as much of the leavings from the lean-to that we could to incorporate into our garden--our little Walden. We cleaned off the patio, Andy lined it with bricks, set down the wood ties; we planted flowers and put in small-to-start beds--herbs in the front bed, vegetables in the back.

As you can see I think it turned out to be a quite beautiful little spot. At the end of the day when we admired our work arm-and-arm, I thought, this is what life is about: making something beautiful with someone you love that you have faith will last.

A Serenity Prayer

2009-02-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

On my way to work this morning, running late, I was backing out of my driveway, trying not to hit my husband's car parked behind me when I destroyed our St. Francis icon in our garden. Considering my morning (OK my year), it is more than ironic that the icon had The Serenity Prayer written on the back:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. "

While my car is untouched, the icon, is in pieces on my driveway. What a weird synchronicity, a tangle of metaphors for the way my life has been the last few weeks.

As you can see, Dear Reader, from my more recent post(s), my faith has, of late, been dinked up a bit.

As I said in my previous post, so much is out of our control--the economy, the college budget, others' attitudes, all things I have let affect my faith. I have been running through my mental habitrail of worst case scenarios: what if we lose our jobs, get cancer, my friends abandon us, our parents get sick, does that mean God does not care? What does it mean that God never gives us more than we can handle? Job certainly got it heaped upon him. If I had an eighteenth of what he experienced, I'd probably be somewhere in a corner, in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, counting down ten minutes to Wapner.

Driving home from dinner Friday, I told my husband about a friend I had lunch with that day who seemed, unlike me, strangely unworried about the changes at work and in the economy. She has a real possibility that her position could be cut as a result of the pressing re-structuring going on in our college. She didn't say, "God will provide," but I know her well as a sincere person of strong faith, so I know that is the source of her ongoing strength.

"Is she crazy?" I wondered, while feeling this nagging tickle that maybe she wasn't. I told him I felt ashamed that I lacked her calm, her faith. He said, "Well, God is not supposed to give us more than we can handle."

Now let me be clear than my rational husband is no bible-thumper, yet I wanted to protest with a litany of terrible examples, some real, some hypothetical. He then added that he didn't think that meant we'd be sheltered from all harm.

Well duh, I thought.

"It means God helps us to be strong during the hard times," he said.

Oh.

Right.

Faith--what I've been lacking.

Well then what is faith?

Is it, as Thomas Paine argues in "The Age of Reason," hooey, a belief in hearsay.

Is it as Joel Olstein thinks, if we have faith, God will give us a house, a Hummer, and happiness? (http://emotter.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/22/)

Is it Job-like resolve, in the face of cosmic horrible, that we can still hold fast to God?

Is it the ability to delude ourselves?

Is it faith in other people to act as God's angels?

Whatever it is, unlike Job, most people (of faith and otherwise) lead pretty mundane lives, with the day-to-day trivialities, to paraphrase Chekhov, making us crazy, testing our faith.

Most of us don't face off juntas. Rather we run through our own little mental habitrails convinced that every turn is a plot against us by some cosmic force, or worse other people.

Maybe that's why we are in need of Lent, a time to sacrifice, give up those habits that, whether they feel good or bad, are comfortable because they are what we know.

So this year I'm going to try to give up and live for 40-days free from negativity, cynicism, stress, and judgment. Those are the things I'm at least trying to give up.

That and vehicular manslaughter of saints.

My Star Wars Nerdness Epiphany, #42

2009-02-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

This past weekend while waiting for a meeting to begin, my husband and I were sitting in the lobby continuing a conversation that had begun in the car--what drives us crazy about the latest movie installments in the Star Wars franchise.

This is a reoccurring conversation we have. This particular one, began on the way back from breakfast--Mace Windu: Lamest Jedi of All--and became a discussion of why Lucas has a fetish for cutting off his characters' hands.

OK, I know: the dangerous possibility of the dehumanization of the Jedi, the breakdown of the barriers between Man and Machine. Alright. Um, so Anakin? I get it. Luke, I get it; Darth Again, I get it, "symphonic motifs" (as Lucas likes to say). But how exactly does this motif fit with Mace or Dooku (who BTW has one of the *worst* names in the franchise)?

"Is it that Lucas had just run out of ideas?" I said.

Exasperatedly said, I might add, for Star Wars was the religion of my childhood. So much so that at 30, I kept trying to convince myself that The Phantom Menace was a good movie by seeing it many times, even though my father kept saying, "Wow. Lucas sure did shit in his nest with that one."

"Lucas can't be that . . . lame, Andy."

He laughed. "How is it that it just never gets old talking about why these later films are such a disappointment?"

"But isn't it sad we aren't talking about what makes these movies great?"

We sat in the lobby in silence. Perhaps both of us thinking about our action-figure populated childhoods, and how Lucas betrayed those childhood storylines we both wished for while playing with our x-wings and Darth Vaders. Yet he is George Lucas! He did give the world the Star Wars universe. Isn't that enough to warrant a little continued respect?

Then out of my sadness for what Lucas did came forth my epiphany in the lobby, one I had to share:

"I love that I can talk with you about how much I hate these last three movies and you understand. . . . It's just one more reason why I love you."

This morning on PostSecrets someone's Valentine postcard of regret had a message scrawled across a picture postcard of young Luke: "I broke up with my Star Wars nerd boyfriend 9 years ago. I still miss him, love him. . ." I thought about how unfortunate she was to let her love, as Leia would say, "slip through her fingers." I am sad for her, but happy for me and all my nerd friends who held on. Tightly.

Happy Belated Nerd Valentine's Day!

The Nerds' Secret

2009-01-18T19:23:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if this above PostSecret post is pathetic or touching. I lean to the latter.

I too played D&D in high school, college, graduate school, and still do, but the D & D party that formed my senior year and stretched through college had some of my favorite characters and moments—our medieval characters traveling through portals to hell or Manhattan, our wizard ripping apart time-and-space, at least twice, our Barbarian warrior beheading almost everyone she met, our assassin becoming a Princess in Hell only to be redeemed as a holy cleric, our Drow thief, an outcast, becoming a Baroness and a Pirate Queen, and me, assassin-turned-guildmaster-back-stabbing a dragon & killing him . . . while we were in flight . . . several hundred feet in the air—these were some of the best gaming campaigns for their camaraderie, creativity, and their weird parallels with and their escapes from the Real World.

Perhaps the narratives and worlds were not as complex as they later became; that fact doesn't change the social magic of senior year when the Cosmic Game Master of Unknown Forces (looking probably much like John Hughes) brought me together, over dice, with three who became my high school best friends: two sorority girls, one brainy (the Cleric & Drow), one a social jock (the Barbarian), and Genius Holden Caulfield-in-the-closet (our Wizard).

Now I am only close with one of my gaming friends from high school. The Drow-and-Cleric is now a college professor, like me, and has become my More-than-Sister.

The others? I don't know where they are. Holden, the Wizard, lives somewhere in California, a brilliant free-lance writer and a Buddhist priest, and Helen, the Barbarian, is dead.

However, I imagine them both as they were in our minds, in-game: Holden, gray robes blowing in the wind, spell book in hand, and Helen, barbarian ax glinting in the fires of hell, besting those demons that killed her in the Real World.

And me? I still sometimes think like an assassin in committee meetings, while my More-than-Sister certainly continues to support and heal those around her, as her cleric would.

So seeing this PostSecret card tonight, I am reminded that in high school we may have defied the gaming-nerd stereotypes by outside social camouflaging, but we were more kindred to those with thick glasses and short pants than we would’ve admitted. We shared the nerds’ secret: In-game we could be who we were on the inside, and who we wanted to be on the outside.

Now how is that really different from what most thoughtful people want?

"In our Fast-paced Modern Society Today,"

2008-12-10T12:59:00.001-08:00

So sayeth many a freshman & sophomore! While the cliché about Today's Society (as opposed to last Tuesday's?) causes Composition teachers all over the planet to groan and roll their eyes, there is a savant-like truth in this essay-filler phrase. I'm just not sure our texting students actually believe this notion; it's simply what they know.

I remember a friend who could not cut off his cell phone when we went out, always worried he'd "miss something," unable to focus on the experience of the moment, always with one foot poised to dash to the next social interaction. His excuse was he was just part of his ADD Generation.

We all live, however, in a culture of ADD. I find myself not focusing on one task or experience but multiple tasks & possible future-tense experiences. While I have argued with my husband that this may be an inherently female trait, (to wit he accuses me humorously of post-feminist sexism) at this moment in Our Society Today the ability to multi-task has become a human trait, one needed to survive the pace of both our work and play.

I may teach online, blog, and check news, weather, & email on my Blackberry; I may have married into XM, OnStar, and the I-phone; I may have discovered the difference between Blu-ray & HD DVDs, what LiveJournal is and where to find slash, what a WIKI is, where LOTR players meet, and the joys of MP3s, but I am breathless at the moment.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."

With all the shiny objects and glib n' ironic conversations surrounding me, with the demands placed upon being plugged in 24/7, I find it difficult to walk one path or keep a sustained thought. I feel like I am only treading water on the surface of a postmodern sea.

I leave you Dear Reader with this below video, and the question of whether or not this pace is progress or a downward spiral. Just don't view this while drinking coffee like I did! Heart palpitations may ensue!

Is it a Confession if You Tell Everyone . . . ,

2008-12-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

but no one knows who you are?

Certainly that may be the fun in blogging.
In fact the Internet is a weird mixture of exhibitionism and anonymity.

I have been thinking about levels of intimacy lately. Like the Internet I am a weird Myers-Briggs case. I may appear to those who meet me in town, know me at work, or are second or third-tier friends as an Extroverted sort. I have, however, a shadow Introvert who few see.

My Extrovert came out to play yesterday at the garage when I realized that the mechanic and I had both just attended the same funerall. I'm just chatting him up about his loss in a Mayberry Way while my sensible husband is having a Larry-Davidesque (as he later described it) reaction over this mixture of business and social.

I told him later over subs that encounters like that are why I love living in a small town. I have moved my entire life, and now I enjoy the social dance of at least pretending that my life is more entangled than it really is with the bank teller who goes to the Methodist church or the bag boy who is a former student.

I don't really think these people are going to invite me into their homes. This is The South. I was born in the region but not raised in this town, and I work at The College and so does my husband. They do not know my Momma nor my Husband's Daddy. I'm not a Carpet Bagger because of my accent, but I am a Forever Foreigner.

But despite my love of starting conversations with the woman who takes my payment at Georgia Power, in reality I have a strong introverted streak that few recognize or understand when they see glimpses.

I have good social camouflage, and I think this liminal distribution between extrovert and introvert makes me a bit Deanna Troi-like (save the Spandex and lip-liner).

Being an empathy sponge at work and in relationships can, however, make me sometimes too soaked.

Lately with work challenges, my best friend living 64 miles away (which I know is great in academia but still), and the ever-shifting sands of socializing, especially as a newly-married, I find I am detaching and observing the interactions of others. Despite my Troi-ness and my extroverted-ness, there is sometimes a significant disconnect between what I am comfortable in doing or sharing from what another friend may share with me (and anyone else within earshot). Other times I imagine a much closer relationship then I realize the other person is just waiting for his or her turn to speak.

My BFF once said there should be grad-school-to-work programs. So much time in The Academic Bubble World often makes it difficult for people to cope in the so-called Real World. Add to the complication that I work in Academia and the social expectations and interactions have shades of grad school intensity and that even when I am aware of this I too fall into those intense expectations of others.

Can we really ever know another person? OK before I get all Sartre-y on you Dear Reader, I think we can come close with a spouse, best friend, parent, or sibling. Perhaps it's commitment, DNA, past shared experiences; no Single-serving Friends are needed. Real intimacy is part time and part trust.

And to get this, I must know you and you must know me.
So I leave you with a strange phenomenon, what sparked this post.
Post Secret:
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Fascinating, but is even a portion of these anonymous confessions real, and even if they are all real, isn't it just a double helix of voyeurism and exhibitionism? This site, like much of what I have recently observed and myself done, perhaps these are all parts of the Post-Postmodern world of surface where most do not hear you; they are just waiting for their turn to talk.

Voting

2008-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

I voted (again) today. December 2, less than a month since November 4, with The Election Shiny worn off The Process for many, Georgia had run-off elections. But I'm not here to proselytize a particular candidate or party.

I'm here to praise the experience.

I love voting. I love going to the polls and seeing the senior citizens and college students working the polls, checking off names, filling out forms, handing out yellow plastic cards for the voting booths. I love seeing old retired black men who may still remember when voting was a dangerous privilege, and young pregnant white girls who may be wondering about their futures and those of their children, and even, yes, rich society golfer types who may be worrying about tax hikes and plunging stocks, all standing in line, all standing in a unified act of great faith.

I am proud to stand with them all.

The Big Turkey Day!

2008-11-30T18:47:00.000-08:00

Despite what the above blurry cell phone photo might suggest, the feast was a success! So the Legendary Dressing was so epic that it didn’t quite fit in the stove! Nothing an inventive husband, merry family, and good Chardonnay can’t cure!

Better, no Botulism Bird and all Parental Units had a fine time, as did the Offspring.

“Better than Cats!”

Five stars, (or should I say bananas, Jean Louis?)

Holiday Perversions!

2008-11-24T12:01:00.001-08:00

As we get closer to the arrival of the Parental Units, and I listen to friends plan (and moan) about their upcoming holiday plans, we continue to plan our Big Meal, which has inevitably lead to self-analysis and loved-one analysis about what is sacred and what is not at Thanksgiving.

While not a purist like some about specifics, there are those well-known dishes that make it That Special Day, mainly turkey, dressing, and cranberry jelly. I really don't like to mess with those standards. To quote Frasier’s dad when his son insisted on a fancy fresh-cranberry side dish and not getting canned cranberry sauce (with the "ridges from the can"), when people go off the reservation and into fancy cuisine on that one day, I wonder, “Is it that you can’t learn, or you won’t learn?!”

Don’t mess with the canned jelly goodness and pass the pumpkin pie!

In the spirit of my desire to be slightly perverse about this good day, however, without ruining the menu, I offer two Alternative Thanksgiving tidbits.

The origin of this holiday is, of course, in the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, recorded by William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. Sidestepping any politically-correct revisionist questions about the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving and their relationship with the Native Americans, I would like to share a later Turkey Tale as related by Bradford.

Dissatisfied with the secularization of the Pilgrims years after their 1620 settlement, Bradford relates a story that can only be summarized as A) “These teenagers today are out of control,” and B) “All of ya’ll are all going to hell in that proverbial hand basket!”

“Ther was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbery, being aboute 16 or 17 years of age. (His father and mother lived at the same time at Sityate.) He was this year detected of buggery (and indicted for the same) with a mare, a cowe, tow goats, five sheep, 2 calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the historie requires it.”

I can imagine poor Thomas busted for bestiality and dragged in front of the elders. Knowing he would be executed for this crime against biblical law and nature, he confessed: “Ye Gods! I did do it,” going on to list a litany of possibly fictional farm animals, and culminating "with a Turkey too! So there!”

Of course, Granger isn’t the only one to abuse the turkey. PETA’s protests & my cooking aside, I just overheard a colleague talking about his new-found holiday tradition, something I had not seen since moving from South of I-10 in Louisiana. Turducken!

For those of you outside Louisiana and parts of Canada who are unfamiliar with this culinary abuse of the turkey, allow me to quote my students’ favorite source of all wisdom, Wikipedia: “A Turducken is a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The thoracic cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.”

Kinda like a Russian nesting-doll concept. Often credited as a culinary invention of Paul Prudhomme, I see it as a Culinary James-Dickey-Deliverance Special!

Mmm. Mmm.

Check out the picture if you need further convincing for or against such a dish:

http://fematrailer.blogspot.com/2007/11/happy-turducken-day.html

Perversions aside, I do love Thanksgiving. Still relatively-commercial free, it’s nice to have a day set aside to pig out and piously reflect on one’s blessings. What a wonderful American Tradition!

Before I start to get all Oprah-cheesy, here is a recent poem about giving thanks aired on Prairie Home Companion this past weekend:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=phc/2008/11/22/phc_20081122_64&starttime=01:50:24.0&endtime=01:52:03.0

In the meantime dear friends and love ones, know that I count you among my most precious blessings.

(OK back to holiday snarkiness!)

Notes from the Holiday Homefront

2008-11-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

We are now beginning the countdown to Thanksgiving, our first big Married Couple hosting event. My husband thinks I am making too big a deal about this; he's right on a certain level. For example, I am not a cook, and I am afraid I will kill everyone with Botulism Bird. Rationally I know my husband won't let this happen because he is a cook, and my best friend (also a cook) says she will be on speed-dial, adding that my kitchen safety-related worries are over-rated, facilitated by animal rights groups and the Internet. Notice, however, cooks are telling me not to worry. They probably only suspect a portion of what are my kitchen-anxieties, deeply-rooted in Career Woman Who Never Learned to Cook syndrome. What makes it worse is the best cooks I know are career women & men.
Thank goodness I will not be left alone in the kitchen.

I had jokingly offered Tofurkey as a menu alternative, to wit my husband responded, "Murder is Delicious." (How would Morrissey respond?)
While I am Friend to the Animal Kingdom, I have to admit that I love leather shoes and holiday turkey; it's the other accompanying anxieties of holiday entertaining. I love my family; don't get me wrong. In fact it's because I love them so much, I want everything to be perfect.
It won't be.
I know this, but I am a perfectionist in recovery.
Off to the grocery store!
Wish me luck!

Words, Words, Words . . .

2008-07-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

As we enter the less-than-one week countdown to the wedding, we finally picked our last poem today to be read at our ceremony. It’s surprising how much I dislike most poetry about love when it’s love of another person. Poetry is good when it’s about God, loss, sex, regret, death, irony, writing, or the family pet. But finding another poem about love after we had already found one? How the second had eluded us, words of love without the tang of saccharine, the ring of the facile and obvious. Until today.

Then this afternoon, we met with the minister to discuss, among other things, our ceremony. It became a discussion of context and language: scripture to be read or not read in full or not at all, lines we wanted taken out of the service, all in light of "the cultural milieu" (the minister’s phrase not mine), and our own consideration for our own integrity and all those dearly beloveds who will witness our happy day.

All this wrestling with language made me realize tonight that I had not written much in the last two months.

I had turned outward to direct experience and inward, not willing to share in writing what I had been feeling (sorry Gentle Reader), but happy to let others do the writing.

Two days ago I started writing again. A new friend told me about a writing exercise where you handwrite 4 pages every morning without stopping. Supposedly it's to "unblock" your Inner (Read: Nasty) Editor. So I started writing. Only few interesting insights have appeared on the pages in the midst of mostly boring stuff.

Yet I will keep writing.

This past weekend as my Husband-to-Be coped with his Wife-to-Be's pack rat ways (see above photo of former home office as Exhibit A), what emerged from The Merging of Things were characters in folders of unfinished stories and one pretty room, a room of my own, a room where the writing will once again occur.

My Love has given me many gifts but what a gift this new room is. A quiet clean place for words.

Proof

2008-05-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.
That I shall love always,
offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.
This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.

- Emily Dickinson

. . . found another orphan . . .

2008-05-09T22:24:00.001-07:00

"It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search
after her missing children, only found another orphan."--Herman Melville

The lights in the sky / have finally arrived / I'm staying right beside you . . .

Wedding Announcements

2008-05-05T22:09:00.001-07:00

I'm convinced.

"Steal It!"

2008-04-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Trent gets sober and unlike Sid & Nancy, he is able to promote "healthy anarchy!"

From "Our World in Words"
October 8, 2007

"Even if you aren’t a Nine Inch Nails fan you have to respect Trent Reznor’s (NIN frontman) move to take the band independent. Reznor has been calling out against big labels in an attempt to separate music and big-business. This is important because NIN will now pave the way for other bands (both big-name and indy) to remain or become unaffiliated with a label. This means that there is less control over their music and they (the band) will reap much more profit for the product they created. The next ten years will be very interesting for music fans as more music moves out of brick-and-mortar or DRM’d sources (iTunes) and becomes available through E-music or directly through the band. This is ultimately a great service to fans and will make the music more accessible. NIN- 1, Evil Music Labels- 0."

-JEStacey
http://offedit.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/nin-and-reznor-label-free/

Maybe this is the call to arms I needed that will get me off my ass and into the new millennium.

Ghosts I-IV certain does much more than just rock, and Trent? --The Genius Still.

Is an I-phone in my future?

Will my I-pod replace my CD player?

Stay tuned to this same Bat Channel!

Mansinthe!

2008-04-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

What every discerning Uber-Matrix-Kewl-Goth who is steadily on the tenure track or who has that tech job finally sewn up needs!

While living in Louisiana I once tried to order a bottle of wine for my parents and have it shipped to another southern state. http://wine.com/ informed me that was illegal. Yet again I am tempted to try and have something worse-than-wine shipped way down to Dixie, this time for personal gifting. After all, Manson provides a handy-dandy link (via http://www.marilynmanson.com/) to http://www.absinthe.de where for 36 euros, I can be Man-tastically smashed on the Green Fairy, just like my fave Shock Rocker (TM).

Since the company site gives us such useful facts like:
"This fine spirit is also enjoyed by the most discerning connoisseurs without sugar.
Do not:
- drink Absinthe pure
- light your Absinthe on fire
- think, Absinthe will make you hallucinate - it won’t!
Drink responsibly and with moderation!" (Did you get that memo, Mr. Manson?)

I will also provide Two Random Facts About Absinthe from My Life:

I have had my share of faux "Absinthe" in New Orleans. Pre-Katrina, down Pirates' Alley, behind the St. Louis Cathedral off Jackson Square there was a charming little cafe frequented by employed Goths who took their breaks from their shifts as tour guides for Haunted New Orleansor New Orleans After Dark. One evening I sat with a friend and watched a clearly-forty-year-old-plus Vampire hold court with an admiring androgynous pair of little Bat-kids while I sipped my green drink and thought seriously about a career change.

Supposedly a friend ordered the real thing, and his wife reported it arrived at their suburban pretty-princess- house in a box marked "Vase" and "Fragile." She reports also that the drink in fact, tasted like feet but soon they didn't care.

Well as Marilyn urges us on his Latest Album—"Drink Me!" Now with any major credit card we can!

Ah, when Art and Capitalism merge!

" . . . it's hard to believe it comes down to this"

2008-04-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

"WELCOME TO http://REMIX.NIN.COM.
Hello there, we've noticed you're using Internet Explorer 6. This site has not yet been optimized for IE6, so it's not going to look very good, and you may have problems using it. We highly recommend that you upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, or better yet, download Firefox - a far superior FREE web browser that will give you a better experience on this and almost every other website. Go to www.mozilla.com to download it, or continue here with IE6 at your own risk."

Sigh.

Trent I love you but all this techno geek stuff—hidden web sites aside--is exhausting me because I have a real job. Not saying that you don't of course because, well, you're a Highly Innovative Artist (TM).

I've been with nin (in the fan sense of course) since 1990. First time I saw them (Trent & hired guns of the moment) was at the Masquerade Club. A friend of mine was in grad school (weren't we all?) and living in the Atlanta & Album 88 was the source for the non-lame music of the day. This is where he discovered nin in late '89.

That’s how it started, via cassette tape on the way down to Gulf Shores--Spring Break at the Atlanta friend’s mom's condo. We were driving down together to meet the rest of the post-high school crew, when we hit Radio Deadland. Having exhausted our own tunes, we stopped at a mall in the last town of civilization before the long stretch of nothing to the shore.

Standing in Camelot Records, my pal comes up and hands me Pretty Hate Machine.

"You like Echo & the Bunnymen, Bauhaus, The Cure, right?"
"I like anything that isn't Jacko or Paula Abdul."
"Then you'll like this."

My friend was only 1/2 right.

Hearing it for the first time, windows rolled down, the prospect of no class, just beer, sand, and my best friends, hearing PHM for the first time was like. . .

Getting Ziggy Stardust because a friend in middle school's Dad had brought it to her from a business trip, but she didn't like it b/c it was "weird," so she passed it on to me.

When I discovered Welcome to my Nightmare was what KISS was ripping off.

When I first heard Let It Bleed, bought for 50 cents, marked down from a dollar at a garage sale, scratchy but powerful, “The Midnight Rambler” throbbing in my speakers.

Pretty Hate Machine wasn't a crush. Like these others, it was The Real Thing.

So flash forward to post-grad school, the tenure track job, bought a house, got more responsibilities at work, friends are getting married, having babies, I'm thinking about my 401K and resolving growing conflicts at work, and maybe these are all the reasons why I'm too damned exhausted at the moment to download MP3s and even new versions of Explorer or Firefox just to get to my music, find a tour date, that I suspect will hit my state, oh, yeah, right, smack in the middle of a week of work meetings in August.

I respect Trent's desire for evolution, innovation, and yes, relevance. And yes, I still believe, but it's tinged with sadness.

Now my best friend, she tells me something I don’t want to hear. She’s been my partner in nin concerts since that September '90 club date when maybe 150 people had come out to hear a skinny Trent with dreadlocks!

That night I asked a huge biker guy to get me to the front of the stage, one of the only times I have plied feminine wiles in a concert setting. And he did, shoving me though the crowd to the front, where I wrapped my arms around a wooden horse near the stage and gladly felt the spray of sweat off the band and got bruises from the crowd shoving against me. My best friend lost bracelets that night, and her shoes.

So when I emailed concert dates to her last week, she said she wasn't sure she cared anymore. I know she wasn’t a fan of Year Zero, despite my urging her to “give it another chance,” and she is skeptical of the just-released instrumental Ghosts I-IV, I know these things, but damn--a nin concert nearby, and we don't go?

Maybe her increasingly complicated life has gotten in the way too.

Maybe responsibilities do have a way of draining off our energy.

So this is what nostalgia feels like.

Mrs. Robinson Contemplates Roles She'll Never Play

2008-04-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

I would seriously contemplate a sex change if I could get a male role in Peter Shaffer’s Equus or Amadeus.

Hamlet, Laertes, Lear, or any guy in Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs . . . .

Wow, suddenly I’ve identified what’s at the core of my Tarantino Ambivalence! His best roles, the real people in his films, not the supporting females or their iconic manifestations (maybe Jackie Brown aside) are, well men. Sorry Honey Bunny; Sorry Jean Louis. There it is.

I’m jealous.

Tarantino, Shakespeare, Shaffer, just to name a few men who nail up a "No Girlz Allowed" sign on the Boyz Only Club House of Art.

OK you may say, “Hey, Bitter Actress! That's pure hyperbole when it comes to the Old Bard-- Lady Macbeth, Ophelia (when Branagh isn't shtooping her)--those are great roles!”

OK lunchtime poll: if you are going crazy, on your way out of sanity’s door would you rather

A) Give some louse "posies for [his] thoughts,"

B) Manifest your madness in OCD hand-washing, or

C) Throw yourself into your dead sister's grave, scream you're going to slit a throat or two in the nearest church, then avenge yourself in a climactic sword fight in which you die by your own poisoned sword meant for your former BFF, but not before you give this great speech confessing your sins, re-bonding with your BFF, and damning the real bad guy?

That’s what I thought.

Speaking of theatre and sex of a different sort--on the cusp of Danny Boy's American debut of the Equus reprisal, A emails me a review that includes photos, with a link to more photos.

Both the reviewer and I are more than a little distracted from the gravity of Shaffer’s play and Art by Harry Potter without his wizard robes.

Have the tables turned on exploitation?

Am I helping to flip them?

Oh what would Dumbledore think?

Oh wait . . . there was already press on that!

Day Nine: The Freedom of Speculation

2008-03-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

Most of the time the random nature of the universe causes great tragedy or at least stupid inconvenience.

Sometimes random is funny. A chance snapshot turns into an accidental moment of delight, leaving us not to wonder in any significance, only laughing at the caught moment.

Occasionally, however, random elements collide and suddenly existence seems to make sense.

Of course it all may be illusion, but I have to believe the illusion is merely our perspective. Like a painting by Monet or Seurat. If we press our noses to the canvas we only see dots of color; if we step back, images begin to emerge: a flower petal, light against water, perhaps a face, the handle of a parasol, maybe a lake. Only by stepping even further away might we see a pond of lilies or a group of people enjoying a Sunday afternoon in a park.

Random chance has brought a twist in my life; how happy am I that I can look not for the shadows in it but the color, the light, and the humor.

Day Eight: Sober Since 2005

2008-02-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, after moving to Georgia and living alone a few months, I became addicted to television. Up until that point, I had always been fairly balanced in my TV viewing habits, carefully picking and choosing TV fare. And there was a lot of great TV in the 90s—The X-files, Seinfeld, American Gothic, Buffy.

I used to plan my clubbing around Twin Peaks. Sure I could have taped it, but no one went out before 10 PM and chances were I’d overhear someone at the club talking about the plot revelations of that night’s episodes. No, I had to see the episodes fresh. Besotted by Kyle McLaughlin, I’d sit in the floor with friends, pulling on fishnets, applying eye liner & white powder, sucking in each episode. Once that night's episode was over, only then could I go out. At the club I was then free to dish with the drag queens and art boys about “what a genius David Lynch is.”

What I really think is Good Television is not, well television. Sure it may appear weekly, like Twin Peaks, but Good Television is when each episode feels like a movie, not TV. Good Television defies the gruel on the other channels that is marketed for, as my mother would say in her lovely Southern lilt, The Masses.

But in 2003 when I moved to Georgia and lived alone for the first time in ten years, I got sucked into television. I would lie on the couch all weekend and soon every weeknight, becoming increasingly anesthetized at whatever came on VH1, HBO, or TBS. I almost missed a Christmas party after a day-long investment in an America’s Next Top Model marathon.

After a VH1 Behind the Music on Vanilla Ice, I called up my More Than Sister and recounted in what was probably a tedious amount of detail the faux rapper’s rise n’ fall n’ redemption. It was at that moment I began to wonder if I had a "problem."

“Can a person become addicted to television?” I asked her.

She paused. I could hear her over the phone thoughtfully inhaling her cigarette. “Well there have been studies that after hours of television viewing over a long period of time, the visual stimuli and editing techniques does something to the brains of lab rats and children, so yeah, I think it’s possible.”

A month later my cable company called to tell me they were upgrading my service.

Did I have a choice?

No.

So I acquiesced, knowing that my basic cable had only been the gateway drug for the crack heaven that they would happily deliver straight to my house and into my frontal lobe.

Luckily, living in a rural area became a blessing.

The company wasn’t local, and I had so many problems coordinating the installment time. Then there was the sizably increased bill, and my concern that this was more TV than what I had ordered. Over the course of many phone calls I made trying to sort my service out, I became increasingly pissed off. Eventually I called to cancel the service.

“You want to do what?” the service woman asked me over the phone.

“I want to cancel.”

“But that means you won’t have any television service! This package is your only option.”

“Oh yeah?”

At the time I thought I would just eventually get satellite or something when I had time to investigate my options. But I was busy. And the options were complicated and after a brief uncomfortable period of withdrawal, I gradually began not to mind the silence in my home, the books I read, and the really great movies I watched instead.

And if I want to watch Good Televison there are always episodes on DVD—whole seasons can be mine to binge on or I can parse them out over six months or a year—commercial free!

I have been TV-free since spring 2005. Only recently have I started to wonder, could the One-Eyed beast be allowed back into my home? After all there is BBC America, The History Channel, Turner Classics, and the ever-soothing Muzak-drenched Weather Channel.

But then can I be trusted? Can addicts ever be allowed to indulge, just a little?

Day Seven: February, Teflon Month of Love

2008-02-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

I have not had a Valentine’s-Day-boyfriend since 1982. My freshman-year high school steady, The Earnest Piano Player who wooed me with a pretty-good version of “Moonlight Sonata” in between games of Dungeons & Dragons, sent me an FTD bouquet with one red rose, in a planter shaped like a little white teddy bear.

Let the record reflect that the saccharine planter was not why we eventually broke up. Now that I see how rare Valentine’s Day boyfriends have been, if possible I would slip on leg warmers, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, and jump into a time machine, traveling back to 1982, and confront my 14-year-old self: “Hey Self! He is actually kinda thoughtful and sweet. Maybe you should keep him around for awhile.”

Freshman-year[oops! See author's footnote*] in college was the next boyfriend I happened to have during February. But there were no teddy bear planters from The Future Film Director. And no flowers, not even a card on Valentine’s Day . . . or Christmas . . . or my birthday. Future Film Director was also a Marxist, “and gift-giving holidays are a bourgeois conspiracy constructed by a capitalistic society.”

Translation: He was lazy, cheap, and self-centered.

After Future Film Director was fired by me, the Gods of Love (who must love Woody Allen, and therefore Future Film Director), cursed me for my hubris and turned February into The Teflon Month of Love, repelling boyfriends for that one month a year.

Living in Louisiana I had actually been fine with a cupid-free February. Besides the insane pressures of graduate school, early teaching jobs, and the distractions of friends, Mardi Gras often fell in February, or at least the Mardi Gras season began that month. February was usually festooned in tacky beads, buried in King Cakes, soaked in bourbon and beer.

Only if Mardi Gras came early, like this year, and the beads were swept up by Lent, would February begin to suck. Papers to grade, students to handle, bills from Christmas to pay, student loans, exams and the dissertation, all would become stark realities.

Eventually I moved to a Mardi-Gras-free-Georgia, and February, still Teflon-coated, became even bleaker. Mardi Gras was just another Tuesday, and, damnit, I had to go to work. While I was not exactly at Bridget-Jones-level depression, I became quite Blah! in February.

I would tell myself, “Self, wasn’t Future Film Director (kinda) right? Isn’t Valentine’s Day really just a Hallmark holiday? Isn’t it just a commercial excuse to sell over-priced roses, Jewelry from Kay, fattening chocolates, Kissy Bears, colored-condoms, schmaltzy cards, and tacky heart-shaped everything?”

Yes it is.

Except this year.

This year the clichés unraveled. His impulse and the roses were sincere and beautiful.

I had told him earlier this week what I thought of February, and he told me that maybe he could see if at least one day could be saved from the month.

It was. And maybe a few more days will be too.

[Author's note: My More-than-Sister commented on this entry that Future Film Director was actually sophomore year of college. She is correct. I had forgotten that freshman year was spent by me wallowing in angst over H.S. Senior Year Love-of-My-Life coming out of the closet. Right. Cheers. Thanks alot. But that's a future blog]

Day Five: I "Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans"

2008-02-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

Twice I was nudged by New Orleans today. In the middle of my busy day at work, an ex-boyfriend-ish person called me up to say he had gotten a free Southwestern Airline voucher and was going, on a whim, to New Orleans and wanted to know what to do, where to go. What I gave to him in part, I will give to you, dear readers, in full: my Top Twenty of What to Do in the Big Easy:

Stay in the French Quarter—The Hotel St. Marie, The Andrew Jackson, The Cornstalk Inn—three great hotels.

Eat at Cafe du Monde for breakfast, Commander’s Palace for Lunch, and Irene’s for dinner.

Go to Pat O’Brien’s and sit out on the patio and have a Hurricane. Go inside to the piano bar & drink whatever a soldier buys you (that goes for you guys too!).

Take the streetcar into the Garden District and go see where Anne Rice and Trent Reznor used to live. Go back into the French Quarter to Royal & see where Nicholas Cage bought and will probably never live. Ignore where Brad and Angelina live.

Stop at Court of Two Sisters for a Mint Julep.

Go to various voodoo shops—you’ll probably bump into people who claim to know Angelina.

Go to Peligro on Decatur Street to look at the expensive "folk" art. Window shop the Blue Dogs back on Royal.

Stop at the Napolean House for the delightfully snotty waiters and a Pimm's Cup.

Go to Jackson Square for the street theater. Talk to the fortune tellers and artists.

Stop in Pirate's Alley for faux Absinthe and a first edition at The Faulkner House bookstore, then find cheaper books in a used store on Dumaine.

Take a street car to City Park and go to the New Orleans museum to see the permanent collection.

Take a picture of the dueling oaks in City Park.

Take the street car back to Canal. Avoid Harrah’s and cross back into the Quarter. Stop
at the Monteleone Hotel bar. Sit at the rotating bar and drink with the spirit of Tennessee Williams.

Go to The House of Blues if Marilyn Manson or Peter Murphy are playing. Tell people you are a teacher and get free drinks.

Go to Snug Harbor for jazz if anyone is playing.

Take a Haunted History tour.

After tour, follow street kids to a goth club.

End the evening on the Moon walk.

Have hang-over breakfast at "That Breakfast Place" with the Lace Balconies.

Walk everywhere and absorb the humid and fetid atmosphere.

My second New Orleans nudge came at tonight’s poetry reading. Stephen Bluestone read a poem about the 9th Ward, the 1924 flood, and Katrina. At the end of the poem, Bluestone tells us the river will always win.

Perhaps it has already won. I give you this list constructed from memory and hearsay; I haven’t been back since Katrina, but several of my friends either still live in Louisiana or have ventured back for brief visit. Some say New Orleans is a resurrected city, some say she is slipping into further decay. But isn’t that the beautiful and terrible paradox of New Orleans?

Day Four: "Empires Crumble"--Dance Number!

2008-02-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

I admit I have a phobia of intrusive people in restaurants. Not loud drunks at the next table or the bickering couple in the booth behind me, but specifically wandering mariachi bands, waiters who slide into the booth next to me when they take my order, and belly dancers. I just want to eat my food, drink my adult beverage, and indulge in conversation with my dinner companions. Unfortunately I love exotic food, and with that love, I often pay the price of a little dinner theater that can cut into or completely halt conversation. I particularly love Middle Eastern food and have learned not to go on a Friday or Saturday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.

I went this past Friday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.

It was Belly Dancer Night.

The dancer was beautiful--Middle Eastern Barbie--not exactly normal entertainment when one is on a date.

And the music was loud.

Really loud.

Lean-forward-and-shout-at-your date loud.

But it was hilarious--a techno-traditional fusion with a little Arabic rap thrown in for occasional street cred, and who knew that Evanescence was traditional belly dance fare?

But my date kept smiling and laughing and so did I. He said that he loved it when a film director halts the action and throws in a dance number, like the director feels that the characters and audience should have a little fun--Goddard's little line dance in Band of Outsiders or Tarantino's jack rabbit twist in Pulp Fiction.

The belly dancer somehow fit into the milieu, and in the midst of the evening, I remained strangely phobia-free. I had this wonderful feeling that if my life was a movie, this was the musical interlude--weird, surreal, loud, fun--what should have been uncomfortable was somehow not.

Maybe it was the company.

Day Three: Playing House

2008-02-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'm having a party tomorrow so naturally I tried to buy new furniture today, actually this afternoon. I had bought a new couch last month, but it has yet to arrive despite the fact that the credit card charge got here two weeks ago. So people are coming over and they will see the Striped-and-stained Monstrosity that clashes with everything, the couch I dragged from Grad school in Louisiana to Adulthood in Georgia.

The Better-half of the Volleyball Couple told me that home ownership does not make one fully an adult. No, one cannot truly be an adult until one has bought a brand new couch, she declared! Used couches do not count, even if they are purchased.

Two summers ago I was forced to buy a house because the rental I was living in went on the market--when I was out of the country for a month. Being that the rental market is tight in this small town and that I was staring at 40, I decided to buy a house.

Last February my writer friend, who also happens to be a great decorator, declared that it was time for me to embrace being a Homeowner, an Adult, no longer a Grad Student, a Child. She said I needed to mark that passage by having my friends come to my home and paint at least one room in my house. So paint we did. This summer I got carpet to cover up the particle board that was exposed when I had taken the carpet up off the supposedly "all wood" floors.

Still there is much to be done. But the procrastination comes not because I am overwhelmed at the number of task, rather, I can’t believe I’m doing this, buying stuff, fixing stuff, like a real grown-up.

Furniture just adds to the complications.

I sometimes hate furniture stores because they are the realm of couples all whispering and exchanging secret couple code about what they can afford, cannot afford, what they both like, or one half of the couple likes and the other does not. When I have shopped for furniture with a boyfriend in tow or alone, I’m often surprised at the weirdness I begin to feel, like I'm playing house or I've escaped from a novel by Sartre.

So I never make purchases until I have to: a house, the washing machine, new paint, chairs, I never buy for the joy, but rather out of my American definition of necessity.

Couches, beds, end tables, area rugs, all form a psychic map pointing at the weird choices I have made in my life that led me to that moment, standing in Haverty's staring at a $1,500* couch wondering at such a thing that could cost that much that I'd even think of buying alone.

*[Author's update: Since several of my friends have commented on the price of the couch, let the record reflect I only contemplated the $1500 couch; I ended up buying a $579 couch--no tax & free delivery. The couch may be new but the budget is still grad school!]

Day Two: "The Donkey"

2008-02-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

"The Donkey"

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tatter'd outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will
Starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb
I keep my secret still.
Fools!For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet

--G.K. Chesterton

I have more than my share of pride. I'm learning this. Oh, I'm a progressive academic. I strive to be color-blind, non-gender judgmental, and open minded to all orientations; it’s part of the job description.

What a lie.

I have pride in a multi-pack: Pride in my intellect, pride in my accomplishments, pride in my social class, what I’ve achieved. I write this not boasting, but with an edge of nausea. I fool myself that I'm a nice person. What a shock when I realize that’s not always true.

Tonight after work I went to a charity meeting. I hadn’t wanted to go. I only went out of obligation, a promise made in a moment of weakness.

Once there I sat off to the side, sighing with my date book open on my lap, feeling far too busy for all this, far too important. I looked around at all the "salt of the earth" people and thought, “I am not like them.”

As the meeting progressed, and I heard what many of these people had accomplished for this charity and how they interacted with each other, I realized I'm the one who is lacking here. Not them. I felt my pride deflate, and I felt ashamed.

In “The Donkey,” G.K Chesterton shows us that at our most significant moments the most insignificant amongst us may hold true power. Paul tells us that each of us carries both the death and life of Christ inside us, and that gives us all a great power, but he warns us against pride, telling us we carry this power in "clay jars." By accepting that we are only fragile clay, we learn what grace really is: Not booming spectacle but the still small voice. And if we can quiet the din of our pride, we just might hear it.

Ash Wednesday

2008-02-06T18:25:00.000-08:00

I went to the grocery store to buy beer after attending Ash Wednesday services at the local Episcopal church. I stood in the checkout line, knowing that the kids working behind the counter were actively ignoring the fact that I had a black cross smudged across my forehead. I could be a crazy lady who doesn't know she ran out the house with dirt on her face, so desperate she is to buy alcohol! English teachers! In Louisiana the cross and the beer wouldn't raise an eyebrow. In this small southern Protestant town, both raise eyebrows, and combined I lose all eye contact from the good teens working at the local Harvey's.

I'm not Episcopal. I'm not Catholic, but I have attended various Methodist churches that indulged in ashes, or at least a beautifully dour Ash Wednesday service. But First Methodist in this small town only has a Wednesday night fellowship, just like every Wednesday night that I don't attend. I'm usually hanging out at my friends' house. With a Wednesday after-work beer in hand, I watch as my friends (AKA the Man Candy) wind down their weekly volleyball scrimmage, and I gossip with the "better half" of the host volleyball couple and the other women there about work, shoes, who's hotter--Alan Rickman in Diehard or Alan Rickman in the Harry Potter films (an issue still not completely resolved to date).

But we didn't have our weekly game. The couple took off to visit family out-of-state. So I went to church instead.

Lent has historically been that downer post-Mardi Gras time in cold February or early March where everyone I know spends too much money in an attempt to fight seasonal depression (I include myself on that list of offenders). Or more piously, it is the season awaiting Christ's resurrection when believers work on personal penance. At tonight's services, however, I was reminded it is also a time when one may prepare to join the church or even more fitting for me, it is the time when she who has fallen away from the church works her way back.

Am I a prodigal daughter?

How cliché.

When I first moved to Georgia, to a town that is seriously the smallest place I had ever lived or even thought I would live, I was lonely. I would call my best friend who still, at the time, lived in Louisiana, and I would joke, "Jesus is my roommate. I just wish he'd pay rent."

Years later I have many friends, some who have become family, people I choose to love and not because of the accident of birth.

The first step of this return began about two weeks ago with an experience that I still can't interpret. Out of town for a meeting and alone in hotel room, I spent almost three hours one night trying to download my email on the slow hotel wireless while I also absorbed Celebrity Rehab on a marathon run. Because I don't have cable at home--only PBS--and thus no resistance, I was sucked into the prurient human multi-car interpersonal pile-up that is this kind of realty television. I then topped off my binge with a bonus episode of Plastic Surgery Obsession. When I cut off the TV and brushed my teeth, I started thinking about what depressing toilets we have made of ourselves and of the world. But I wasn't even depressed by this; I just felt it like gravity. Then I got in bed, cut off the light, and stared into the darkness.

That's when I felt something. A presence. Something or a Someone who said, "It's OK. I'm here."

I didn't actually hear those words BTW. I just had a feeling that I can only loosely translate into those words.

Since then I have been slowly trying to figure out what that experience meant. I've had a feeling that something more must be with us, but it was never that . . . personal.

But what did that experience mean that night? What does it mean now? I suppose the Lenten season is as good a time as any to try and figure it out.

At least I might learn why I have always loved John Donne's "Batter My Heart Three-Person'd God." http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonnet14.php

"A city so nice, they named it twice!"

2008-01-30T20:06:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine is visiting NY and sent me this picture from his hotel window:

In the spirit of the city where one of my top 5 favorite films takes place, this picture made me make the "Sally Noise," when it opened in my email. And I wasn't faking.

Thank you for the gift A!

What is the point of honesty?

2008-01-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

“But hidden drawers, lockable diaries, and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. [. . .] Nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull underneath her bed, but no one wanted to know. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only on retrospect, once a solution had been found.” —Ian McEwan, Atonement Like most of us with the writing impulse, I fear total exposure and hope for nano-flashes of profundity, but if I did confess my deepest secrets here, like Briony's squirrel skull hidden under her bed, I doubt anyone would care. Yet here I am. What, however, is the point, anyway of all this honesty, as a much-older Briony asks at the end of Atonement? Who does it benefit? Why do it at all?

Never a Bridesmaid!

2008-01-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was asked to be a bridesmaid. Keep in mind she is not close friends with The Bride. Then The Bride asked her if I could be a bridesmaid too. I have met The Bride maybe three times and have never had one moment of extended life-affirming-sharing interaction with her.

WTF?

Is the wedding a Cecil B. DeMille production and she needs extras? Does she not have friends?

See the dress:
http://www.davidsbridal.com/bridesmaids_detail.jsp?stid=1575&prodgroup=110

Now that you looked, aren't Brides crazy? Normal rational people are turned insane by wedding planners, mothers, Bride Magazine. It's a conspiracy that many a liberated woman has fallen and will fall prey to.

All except my best friend who got married on the volleyball court @ a friend's house (the epicenter of the burgeoning lust/love). The owner of the v-ball court became a minister through the Internet just to perform the ceremony. (The newly-minted padre has taken to wearing a Roman collar at some formal occasions but that's a subject for another entry.) The Bride wore a corset, the groom--leather pants! They were rock stars!

We drank before the ceremony, there were no bridesmaids' dresses, and the party at a nearby restaurant ended with a bar tab that was the most expensive thing bought for the wedding! But before you assume that my friend's wedding was all gloss & no substance, they wrote their vows and had their close friends and family there. Every moment was planned and considered for its spiritual and communal significance.

So . . . why the need in most "conventional" weddings for bridesmaids, and especially those in ugly dresses? So The Bride can be the prettiest woman standing up there? Are we still in high school where "getting the guy," or better getting The Dress, then finding the guy (or some guy) to take us out in Said Dress should also involve metaphorically elbowing other women out of the way?

Standing up for my friend at her wedding didn't involve me donning an ugly/expensive dress (my friend was too kind for that), although for her I would have. Once again I owe her for getting me out of this latest expensive dress and allowing me an escape from standing up for someone I don't even know.

Maybe that's the real kicker. Homophobics & Bible-thumpers aside, overall many straight people still oppose gay marriage, and they use the "sanctity" argument.

Yeah us straight people have done such a bang-up job on protecting that "sanctity." No, it's all about The Dress and not about the commitment or the community. How else can someone ask a near stranger to support her and bear witness on the day she is making a pledge before God?

It's all about The Production, Baby. No sweat; Maybe it's her "starter marriage": http://www.startermarriage.com/

Pamela Paul writes that this trend of the trial or starter marriage is a bellwether for the end of the traditional concept of marriage, and it comes from our "matrimania culture," [where] weddings, marriage, and family are clearly goals to which most young Americans aspire. Why are today’s twenty- and thirtysomethings—the first children-of-divorce generation—so eager to get married, and so prone to failure? Are Americans today destined to jump in and out of marriage? At a time when marriage at age twenty-five can mean a sixty-year active commitment, could 'serial marriages' be the wave of the future? "

Matrimania. So there you have it: This Bridesmaid's dress isn't just an expensive and irritating costume; it is a sign of the cultural breakdown. If the Beast is slouching toward Bethlehem, I'm sure it is wearing an ugly dress.

Luddite Confessions of a Post-vinyl Gal

2008-01-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

When I bought Sting's Nothing Like the Sun, how was I to know that would be my last album I would buy? When I got an Ipod this past June I surely didn't know it would still be in the packaging come mid-January.

For someone who loves music, why this hesitation? Why not the next step?

In part it's my clinging fondness for vinyl. There are albums in my collection I have never been able to bring myself to replace. The CD version of Welcome to the Pleasure Dome leaves off songs from the original album, and that just ticked me off. First you change the format and then you change the album. Thanks. But the experience was changed even if the original songs remained; they became more sterile. Gone are the snaps and pops that formed part of the soundscapes of Sgt. Pepper's and The White Album. And now with each technological advancement the covers are becoming smaller and even virtual. No more can I have an experience akin to the initial pleasure of seeing and holding the bold pop art of Remain in Light or unfolding The Wall.

Gone also is the experience of standing in an honest-to-God independent record store and discovering at eighteen that there was this sub-culture, this "bohemian" place where people spoke and traded in the language of music--what they were listening to & what they wanted to share with me, who influenced whom & if I like this I'd love that.

Oh, there have been some great used CD stores in my time. One in Knoxville practically saved my life during the year-I-do-no-count when lived in a small East Tennessee town, and taught at a private Baptist school that didn't have "dances" but "foot functions." (Raise your hand if you know why all you Southerners!)

And now there are online message boards, web sites, MP3 files, all these new means of sharing music. Now the musical world can be my oyster, as Frankie say. But the brick-and-mortar independent record store, the one that most mid-size and even some small towns had is the place that I miss. Now I have to travel to far places for a good (or any) record store, and vinyl aficionados have become their own elite club (thus warranting the label "aficionados") and as I said I don't even own a turntable anymore, so my nostalgia is really not for the store, or the vinyl, it's for that time in my life when my music and my lifestyle were inextricably intertwined.

I thought all these feelings were because I was tired of learning yet another new technology and having yet another music collection become obsolete.

But it signals something more, I realized today. A concert I want to see is this coming Tuesday night in a city over 2-hours away. I have to be at work the next day at 8AM. Time was the lies I'd have to tell, the sleep I'd have to miss, came easily. Now? I'm afraid this coming Tuesday evening Mr. Manson will be short at least one office drone hoping to recapture her feeling of being eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-five, immersed in the tribal abandonment of yelling lyrics that for at least two-hours are truth.

With that off my chest, maybe now I can open that iPod and that big heavy box, and find myself a turntable.

Love, American Style

2008-01-12T09:38:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday as I was pulling out of my driveway on my way back to work, just after the Best Buy truck had left my house, I had an epiphany.

A real epiphany.

I like nice things.

This epiphany was not fleeting, and it was quickly followed by a second bit of insight: I may be domestic.

Best Buy didn’t deliver and install a sexy new 48” screen HDTV or a Bose surround-sound system; they delivered and installed a washing machine.

But what a sexy machine.

Just before I went to visit my family this past Christmas, the night before I left town in fact, the agitator in my old machine wouldn’t, well, agitate. I stood there disbelieving that this workhorse I had since graduate school, no longer would, well, work.

A month earlier it had been leaking, and I had feared like Old Yeller, it was a sign it might have to be put down, but the local repairman, Russell, promised all it needed was a new pump. “Seen it before on these Kenmores. Twenty-seven dollar part. No problem.” he said. Of course he failed to tell me until the work was done that the twelve-minute installation visit would be another $60. Ah small town life, where the nearest Sears is 40 miles away.

Now the night before the-Christmas-drive-to-the-parents, I was faced with a second sign that Old Yeller may not last. Fearing that the agitator may be connected to broken belts and thus another much more expensive repair visit from Russell, I consulted my eco-friends, my fiscally responsible parents, and the Bible of all big-ticket purchases, The Consumer Report, and made the decision to buy a new machine.

After I found what I wanted and where to get it, since I live in the middle of almost-nowhere, I decided to order it online, saving the drive. Was this the first step into an exotic, dare I say kinky, new experience? Weird as it was, without going to a store, through computer, phone & fax, I ordered and had delivered and installed my new machine, and my old machine was taken away.

It was love at first sight.

Three days later I have completely fetishized it. While not a designer color (I didn’t get too crazy), it’s a white LG Tromm, Consumer Report-endorsed, front-loading, dual-drive, silent motor, energy/water efficient baby, and since its delivery on Thursday I have done maybe 7 or 8 loads of laundry. I can’t seem to stop! The promise of something different, the early blush of infatuation is turning into something more. For the last three days I have become like one of those actress/models in a 1950’s Maytag commercial, lavishing attention, even stroking my new state-of-the-art-machine. Worse, I even tell friends how great it is:

“You just won’t believe how quiet it is. It even has this cute little chiming beeper to let you know when a load is done. The length of the cycles depends on the washing cycle I select & the weight of the load!”

Luckily I made most of these comments over the phone so I couldn’t see my friends rolling their eyes. I can’t believe it myself.

But love is often irrational.

I had a step stool stored in my laundry room that I often used to rest my laundry basket. Now I can sit on it if my back is bothering me from bending over, as I unload the washing machine and load the drier. The real pleasure, however, has been sitting on the stool this morning with my coffee, watching my laundry as it quietly tumbles.

This is, at the moment, better than TV.

The pleasure of the item itself is magnified by my surprise at this discovery about myself. I’m an educator; I like books. If I wanted to make money, I would’ve gone on to law school or gotten a corporate job. My mom still has the same drier that my parents bought—before I was born. I don’t like to spend money, think of myself as materialistic, or particularly girly-domestic.

What illusions we hold of ourselves, right? Through the consumer mirror darkly of the first luxury household item I have ever bought, I’ve discovered what the big deal really is when it comes to owning “nice things.” Maybe I’ve always known this and have repressed it. Maybe that’s why my love for this washing machine has sprung forth as a 9 & ½ Weeks orgy of laundry and domestic bliss.

For now, I will fix another cup of coffee, take a deep cleansing breath, and think about what my best friend told me: “Repeat after me; It’s OK to like nice things.”

The List

2008-01-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

Yes:

Philip Seymour Hoffman (even in Boogie Nights . . . I think, OK maybe, no)
David Duchovny
James Spader
Adam “Not being Billy Madison” Sandler
Billy Crystal (City Slickers & When Harry Met Sally)
Paul Bettany
Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind, not bashing people with telephones)
Clive Owens (especially mid-season Second Sight)
Sean Connery (OK cliché, I realize)

Maybe:

1. Jude Law
2. Christian Bale
3. Jonathan Rhys Meyers
4. Jared Leto
5. Russell Crowe (Gladiator—OK that’s an almost-gimme)
6. Woody Allen (only a consideration as of yesterday)

No:

Brad Pitt
Tom Cruise
Without the Legolas weave--Orlando Bloom (only one word for hell: Elizabethtown)
Harrison Ford (after the third Indiana Jones)
George Clooney
Probably anyone named People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”

Resolution Redux

2007-12-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

"Nothing is miserable unless you think it is so. " Or so Boethius claimed in Consolation of Philosophy, or some similarly named weighty tome. I suppose in the spirit of New Year's I "resolve" to see if this is stoic wisdom or a load of crap. Happy Holidays! :)

Avatar online--

2007-12-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

I used to dance in clubs; now i only dance online--