Cycle
I’d decided to shut down my blog as it’s not serving a purpose for me. I don’t seem to write anything pertinent or helpful to others, so these words aren’t fulfilling their function. It’s entirely selfish; all about me. Yet look- I am here.
I started a new job last December, and with that came the demand to attain a new certification for the position. So, my break from school and studying didn’t last very long. Out of a guilty level of dedication, I stopped writing, and it’s really hitting me now. Withdrawal sucks. I read my last entry and it’s much the same, so I’m not going to elaborate. Know that I am just not feeling good at this point by denying myself that release.
How do you find a balance between the responsibilities you can’t neglect, and the voice inside you you also can’t neglect?
I just finished watching Who Does She Think She Is? on WTTW and it was so reassuring, even if they didn’t portray similarly struggling writers (some amazing painters and sculptors, an inspiring drummer, and a beautiful singer/actress). All the women were mothers who cited the very thin line between being considered a good mother/woman and being true to your artistic need to create something else. Sadly, and interestingly, all the women were divorced as the men in their lives could not handle them doing something for themselves in a personal, creative capacity. My writing was such a source of contention with my ex, and the last man I dated also immediately began to dictate that my computer would soon be going as it won’t be necessary for me to have (as my duty in life would be to wait and serve him and tend to his son). And so I am still single.
Maybe much more interesting is the fact that the women on the show- as well as myself- are mothers of sons. Is this how we change the view of what women’s true roles are? That we are not made to wait on and serve the men in our lives? That wasn’t expressed during the show, but still.
(Big happy breath).
I got some words out. I don’t care that it’s not much of anything. I feel a tiny bit less pressurized. This week, I have to start writing again. I haven’t worked a full 40 hour work week in a long time. My last real job was 36 hours, in four days, which was so perfect. The last job before this new one was 18, which allowed for school and writing, but made the whole concept of having money really troublesome. Needing public aid brought me to my lowest feelings of self-worth and capability.
How do you balance? This new job provides the financial security I really need for the boys and me, but it’s eliminated my ability to pursue my degree, the nine hour days and the three hour daily commute really cuts into my time at home and with my boys, so that when free time arises, guilt takes over and I force myself to stay away from my computer and the one thing that keeps me grounded.
This show was poetic- it showed the beauty and the tragedy of women trying to balance all these varying inner voices and needs as well as social and familial responsibilities. Something always suffers, in addition to them. How do you balance?
Taking a Breath
I didn’t do my homework this week. Well, I procrastinated most of the week and as I was bound by duty to take my children Trick ‘r Treating last Monday, I ‘had to’ skip class and therefore got a momentary break from that day’s short story. I also splurged and rented two movies last weekend AND-AND!- gasp- sat on my butt and watched them. Double gasp! (Unfortunately they weren’t very impressive) Regardless, my brain and entire psyche had thrown a heated mutiny and told me it was shutting down indefinitely until I took a couple steps back and gave it some space. Time to shift through my priorities again and take a much needed breath.
I will be so thankful when this semester ends! My skull can’t take much more expansion of my brain. With every flow of words from Dostoevski and Garcia Marquez and Gogol and Hawthorne, it’s just imploding! Then there’s Aristotle and Kant and Hume and I want to go into a temporary hibernation to just absorb it all. It’s so extremely awesome yet so extremely tiring! And of course my insatiable need to write my own words has hit me. There’s times when I HAVE to absorb the words and stories of others, and times when I HAVE to release my own. A bit of a traffic jam occurs when one is forced against the other.
Therefore, mutiny of the brain occurs, where it forces me to mindless TV and movies and repose until I recollect myself. Well, until I satisfy some writing before bombarding my head with more cool info. Must make space!
I made myself sit down and complete some philosophy after English class today.
Yea, there went my ‘Breath’. Quick as it came. Constant dilemma.
I’m at a good point in my English research paper where I can choose to not stress about it this week. I’ll stress about Philosophy. I had to write my journal entry of the week, Is Abortion Immoral? I know, everyone’s wincing. Standard is one page, this one went on for three before I finally stopped. I thought the philosophers on both sides did a lousy job of reasoning their case, and I wasn’t so happy with my classmates’ debate on the topic, either, but it’s such a touchy subject.
Anyway, Yay! Accomplished something. I edited some during the beginning of the week- felt so good! Opening up that file is like looking through a window into someplace marvelous and then reaching out and trully touching it, and your story feels like your favorite really really thick and soft fleece blanket. That’s how comforting it is to see your words written in front of you. I have to rewrite a couple chapters and I’m brewing how that should be handled. One of the characters from the previous book becomes more prominent in this one, and I have to give him what he’s earned. However, I will spend tomorrow cramming for Friday’s Philosophy class (two debates this time), and the weekend writing my papers and seriously researching my own upcoming debate on the ethics of Greenpeace. Why did I pick that one again?
Crap, I still have to read Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun. I did not know it was 400 pages when I picked that one, either. I so deserved that brief mutiny.
There may be absolutely no correlation here to the outside eye, but it’ll so make me feel better just the same: As my former boss use to say, “Breathe in, breathe out: Peace flows through me like a f’n river.”
Magic Spells & Dragons’ Wings
I’m not nearly as finished as I’d hoped I’d be, but here’s my Witch’s House!
October
October is my absolutely favorite month. The colors! I was driving down a new road last weekend and it took me through a forest preserve that made me gasp- reds and golds and oranges everywhere. You can reach out and touch magic. I think that’s it, there’s just something magical about Fall’s transition, a repose from the passion of summer, a pride of the earth that flames up into the trees. My favorite word, remember, is metamorphosis.
I got up not so bright but early this morning to move my car (construction on my street, alledgedly, and we’re not allowed to park from 7am till 4pm during the week, for at least a month, though nothing’s begun, three weeks into the ‘start’). I completely forgot to move it last night, and parking is not easy to find around here. But it was early, and super quiet, with an almost eerie, silent calm and I couldn’t tell if it’s seasonal reasons or trully Halloween’s influence, but the Something in the air was breathtaking. Again, I reached out and felt some magic still lingering from long-past days. I passed a child-sized zombie on my way back to the house, which helped the mood some, while pushing me into a cheerier present.
My theme for the year is Reflection. I’ve been taking a long look at choices I’ve made and where I want to be in the near future, and am in the process of adjusting my road. This period of October always makes me feel this acutely, regardless, as though the whole northern part of American Nature is doing exactly the same thing. Rest, reflect, begin to change so that Spring finds you refreshed and new.
Then I walked into the house and reality set in, somewhat. The monsters needed school-appropriate costumes to wear, because as their costumes this year both have masks, they can’t wear them. The youngest is a werewolf, so I gave him some jeans and a plaid shirt and mussed up his hair with some gel and told him he’s a were who hasn’t changed yet, as it’s too early for a full moon. Scrounged through last year’s collection and found a black shredded robe with a hood and a belt, and looped up the robe into a shirt, put on the hood, applied some black shadow and the oldest is an executioner. Well, he won’t remember that. And that’s maybe not school-appropriate, anyway. He’s something dark and strange. Had 15 minutes left, so grabbed some clay and made the non-changed were a full moon gliterring necklace with some black clouds, to show I did put some thought into his attire.
I feel like putting on a witchy skirt and some tall black boots and taking a stroll. Today’s the day where it feels like that would be normal.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Family Feud of the 21st Century
I think that the influx of technology has debilitated the
art and need of verbal communication. My sister was flabbergasted this summer
when her son couldn’t figure out how to tell a friend of his their address for
a party, because the other boy did not have a text-enabled phone. My sister
yelled ‘CALL him!’. Text language has also apparently killed proper English,
and it gets so frustrating dealing with the generation that has grown up with
texting before writing letters, especially when reviewing resumes or even emails.
The humanness and the contact of others is just gone.
Granted, it really comes in handy- I’m not a phone person, so email was a great
invention for me when I was 17 and living 1000 miles away from everyone I knew.
Texting and instant messaging do make it so much easier to send quick messages
when too busy to call for something brief, while still maintaining
important human-human bonds. It does enable me to become more of a hermit, I think, and avoid the unpleasantness of long awkward silences. I do miss talking to
people, hearing their voices, and, more importantly, sorting out issues and
coming to an understanding by verbal communication.
This came up this weekend- though maybe honestly has been
snaking along for several years as my sister has also become a sort of verbal,
physical recluse. It appears that she’s addicted to the new technology, and has
thrown the rest of us (our other two sisters, mom, my children- the only other
children aside from hers on our side of the tree) aside in favor of that. Phone
calls use to be often, and lengthy, and in the last four years have receded
swiftly down to never. Whenever I go over to her house, she’s playing games on either a laptop, her phone, ipod, or ipad.
This has been upsetting to the rest of us. We have been watching her
separate herself from the family, with no way to stop it. This all came to a gigantic head last weekend over something pretty petty, in which she accused us of shunning her. This, of course, was done via email and not in person when the nonsense
occurred, with all of us there, in her house, again there, to spend time with her. I should also mention that at the time she wrote her angry email, my children were in her house for their first ever sleep over with her since we moved back (it was planned well before this whole blow out, and I couldn’t see saying no all of a unexplainable-sudden because she was throwing one of her tantrums), however, in the morning, she told them they’d probably never see her again, even at Halloween, which they’d been counting on as a new family tradition. Knowing she’d never pick up the phone, we all responded to her in kind, via email. I mentioned sitting down and talking things out, as that’s typically the adult thing to do (guess my sarcasm didn’t help matters), and her rationale was then to delete each of us as her Facebook ‘friends’, and to go even further and block us from seeing or accessing her profile at all.
I really wanted to continue the issue and email her back: “There is no Delete Button for family! You are stuck with us and us with you until we all die!” It’s just so frustrating and hurtful. This is her since we were children, however. The self-ordained matriarch. Everyone must watch her tv programs, must play her games, wear the clothes she’s decided we must wear (no sister of hers is going to go out in a dress!), wear our hair how she wants us to. You do not deviate from her decisions- except for me, as I’ve been out of her control for the entirety of my adult life. I think in her mind it’s: I return, and then everyone has the audacity of willfully going against her plans: because we are broke and couldn’t afford it. Her way of dealing with this was to first storm out of her house, leaving us inside, and by the next day, after being told exactly how poor we all are (one of us is on public aid, another lost one of her three jobs, and the third is expecting her first baby), she disowned us completely.
No, obviously modern technology isn’t the sole culprit, but
it probably hasn’t helped given her propensity for verbal distance. But you
cannot hide from issues or misunderstandings, because in any group where more
than one person is involved, you are going to piss someone off, and then you
have to get over it and find a way to return to a better normal. It’s part of
daily life.
I’d love to know of other people’s family communication issues, and how you have, or could not, work through them.
A Little Much
Image via Wikipedia
I walked into my room and looked at my desk the other day, and was able to laugh for a moment before heaving a great big sigh and plopping down into my broken, teetering chair. One glance at my overflowing glass desk and you could easily read my life as it fragilly stands right now: my English notes and still-blank index cards on Nathaniel Hawthorne for my 10 page reflective paper on why he’s a great author, due soon, as well as a collection of his novels (on my list to read) and my Kindle (on which I’m re-reading The Scarlet Letter, cause I can’t remember it enough from when I read it 18 years ago); my Philosophy stuff- midterm this week, debate on Greenpeace coming up, and a research paper on the rightness of judging another culture’s traditions (specifically, Female Genital Mutilation, as performed in Africa and many other countries), plus two extra credit reports (one on the ability to escape society, based upon the movie Into the Wild); the most recent Writer’s Digest magazine (agent profile issue) as well as the 2012 Guide to Literary Agents, as I was also researching and writing up my new first query for a literary agent (sent out the beginning of this month, yay!); scattered notes for book two’s current read through and edit, as book one is DONE!; and spread throughout all these intellectual and literary pursuits are paints and clays and other odds and ends for the Halloween project(s) I decided now would be a great time to undertake (for my grip on sanity)- a large papier-mache house I am theming ‘Magic Spells and Dragons’ Wings’ (based on a lullaby I wrote), a crystal ball gazing witch made of clay waiting to be baked and painted and haired and dressed, and a papier-mache frog also somewhat painted (it was $0.20, so I felt compelled to add it to my pile, as I’m already painting. What’s one more?)
I wish I could quit my job, to give myself more time! But there’s that minor irritation called money, which apparently is essential to maintaining the basic semblance of living. If it wasn’t for my kids, I think I’d forget to eat and sleep and that money really is important. I then begrudgingly decided I needed to organize and clean the desk up a little to help my flow of extreme multitasking, and now I don’t like it. Ever see the 2005 Yours, Mine and Ours,with Renee Russo? Apparently, that’s me, the scene where the kids completely clean up her craft studio and she flips out because it’s so organized that she can’t find anything. There’s some sort of organization and comprehension with chaos and clatter, as well as a stronger sense of purpose and a calmness of having things to devote myself to and challenge myself with.
That’s where I am right now, so I don’t think my once a week blogs may pan out quite the way I’d intended for the next few weeks. But, when as I finish, I’ll at least post the pictures of my craft projects (the witch and the witch house), and maybe a brief of my papers, and very hopefully good news from my hopeful new agent (???)!
Religion- immoral for children?
Yes, we had another debate in English class tonight. Yep, a debate about religion in English class. It began as a statement of religion being integral to Puritans during the time of the witch-hunts (as we were supposed to be discussing Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne- which I loved). It somewhere turned into someone’s statement that it is wrong of parents to force their children to believe in their religion. Instead, parents should teach their children a life based on morals and what is good and bad, and let them decide for themselves about religion.
Now, how can that be done with children? True children, like, up to 12 years old? Here, two-, seven-, ten-, year old, you go figure out God all by yourself. They can’t if they’ve been taught or told absolutely nothing from which they can then draw their own conclusions.
Naturally, this became quite heated. Interestingly, the one woman whom I thought would blow more said nothing, and the woman who’d proclaimed herself as an atheist raised by atheists at the beginning of the term said nothing. Just as interesting, the ones who did speak- myself included- did not speak so much in defense of religion, but in offense of what she said. Being that I am consecutively taking Philosophy, and that last week we had to debate the theory of morals handed down by ‘God’, and therefore the existence of God, this was pretty darn interesting. But I’ll save the Philosophy lecture, cause that’s tedious.
Many others also brought that question, “Where do morals come from, if not from your religion?”, anyway. My first thought, though, was: God, to be twenty and feel so in control and so powerful and so RIGHT! She kept saying how she has more common sense than her parents. It was so cute, it really was. I wish I was twenty again, and be so idealistic! But I’m not, sadly. The older I get, the less I feel I know or can be certain of. Anyway, common sense is another thing Philosophy brought up: What is common sense? It was once ‘common sense’ that some people were born to be slaves, and others to be massacred; that women were feeble idiots not fit to speak or act or do anything without the permission and control of a husband; that the world is flat; and that the sun won’t come up again on the winter solstice unless people stay up all night and beat on drums. Common sense is never something that should be boasted about. What is common thought is usually neither sensical nor, hey, moral.
How could you say that it is wrong of parents to raise their children in what they believe in, with what gives them comfort, and with what should guide their children’s behaviors regarding right and wrong? (To keep things simple, I’m only talking about religion, and only in the basic, uncorrupted way) How can you say that parents must teach their children what they don’t know, or don’t believe, or don’t feel comfortable with, so as not to offend someone who thinks negatively on religion? And how can you think that the children will hate them later?
Like another woman in class, I was raised Catholic, put through Catholic elementary school, while also conversely put through my father’s Protestant/Evangelical (I have no idea which) church as well. I disagreed with both, but I can’t say I absolutely hated either. Like my English teacher said about herself, I doubted everything told to me, and I got into angry debates with one of the pastors at my dad’s church quite often (if I tried so with the nuns, I’d have been whipped and drawn and burned at the stake, so I kept my mouth tightly shut for eight very long years). As soon as I was allowed to, I stopped going to church. I felt so much more at peace with myself and with religion in general, though as I got older, that peace was questioned further and I looked into other forms of religion. Point is, I do not hate my parents for teaching me their religions. It’s where I learned to question and doubt and want to know more. This girl herself stated that her family rarely went to church, and weren’t really religiously-minded, which is confusing in regards to how she became so vehement about it. Someone else, according to their religion and their religion’s morals could say that it was completely wrong of her parents to not be more forceful. It could be a vicious, vicious unending debate. It’s why I typically taboo this subject.
From a parent’s standpoint, it is confusing to figure out how to teach what you believe. And then, when your beliefs are greatly contrasting the majority around you, what then? I do envy the people with such steady faiths, because there does exist a beauty in such beliefs- of a God or a Higher Being who created the word and watches over us and will hold open gates to a Heaven when we die. It is beautiful, it is magical and comforting. But there’s beauty in my own beliefs, too, and I hope my children embrace them.
My conclusion toward how to pass my beliefs down to my children has been to address their questions as they come up (shrug, here), to also explain to them what others believe and why, and then what I believe and why. I hope this serves two purposes, the second one being that they know to honor and respect other people’s views and beliefs.
An appropriate close, I think, is Namaste: “The divine in me honors and blesses the divine in you.” And leave it at that.
If you want to read Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, please click here:
Metamorphosis
I passed by the tadpole’s tank during the week and did my customary visual check, and- yay!- he’s got some bumps on his sides which mean that front legs are coming! 
His hind legs are looking like a frog’s now, and he’s even discovering how to use them. He’s grasping onto the floating plant roots, and today, for the first time, he was using them to sit on top of a rock. This had my oldest really concerned, because he’s never done that before. My son thought he was dead. The last week, every night, I have been hearing him splash and jump about out of the water. It’s just so cool. I love frogs! Can’t wait till he becomes one! We went to the Shedd Aquariam today and I showed the boogers what an adult bullfrog looks- and sounds- like, and they were chearing. Largest of the American frogs! We are merging into the realm of cool, I guess.
(I just hope the bird doesn’t start to curse him out when he becomes vocal. He started swearing at the turtle when they had to share a room together. Never adopt a bird who’d lived with a guy during his college years.)
Backtrack, though. When I discovered those bumps, I stared at him (I think the boys named him Nightwolf or SomethingStalker) in awe and lots of respect and even more wonder. He’s almost changing his species, from a fish-like tadpole into something that needs air and can jump six feet in length and eat anything that will fit into his soon-to-be huge frog mouth. All this hype about fictitious werewolves lately, yet we live with shape-shifters in our own backyards and rarely give them proper consideration. 
I think the word ‘Metamorphosis‘ is by far my most favorite word. It has such a magical resonance to it, as though it’s a cavern loaded with innumerable possibilities. A great big cauldron of magic. And it exists in some of our most fragile and most common creatures: butterflies (and pretty much every other insect), and yep, some amphibians, like frogs. Technically though, frogs don’t undergo complete metamorphosis, but that’s besides the point! I’m talking about the word in general.
We are bombarded with the insane notion that humans are the more evolved ones, yet nature keeps me humbled and amazed. I think it’s something we all strive for, though, to become something or someone better, to continually try to reinvent ourselves or make ourselves into a more evolved version.
I love that word! I watch the tadpole and it makes me believe that it is absolutely possible for us humans to evolve into something better. Or maybe that’s why we put so much effort and hope into our children; they are our metamorphosis.
Are There Child-Appropriate Tales for Children?
I had a small debate with my English Professor last week about a story we were assigned to read: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale For Children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The debate was whether it trully was appropriate for children or whether he was being sarcastic. I loved the tale, and said yes, I would say it would be good for children to read because of the message it relays. She thought it was a good story but a horrible, graphic thing for children.
To read the story (which is short) please go here: http://salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html
Our debate kept bothering me on the way home from class. If you think about what is considered appropriate for children, it’s a little frightening. Hansel And Gretel- a witch who throws children into an oven and cooks and eats them. Little Red Riding Hood- a wolf who eats the girl’s grandmother. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves….I just saw a pretty erotic book of Goldilocks in a threesome, which kinda explains both of those.
Then there’s everyone’s favorite, Disney- our declared children’s movie maker. Why do we automatically accept them as appropriate? Have parents been paying any attention? Have mothers been paying any attention? The bad guys die some pretty graphic deaths, which make me cringe! In Tarzan, you see him hung to his death in some sinister looking shadows. Lion King, he’s trampled to death. Princess and the Frog- need I describe that? In Tangled, villian falls several stories to her death. Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid? Graphic. Then there’s the comment Disney consistently makes on mothers .
Absolutely no Disney movie has a good, strongly present and influential mother. They are all evil (stepmothers), or completely absent, where the heros/heroines are raised by single fathers. Or, as in the case with Dumbo, his was made out to be insane, and Bambi‘s mom was shot and killed very early on. What does this tell our daughters who may become mothers? What does this tell our sons about us, or about how to regard the future mothers of their children?
Then there’s our nursery rhymes: Ring Around The Rosey was about the plague. And I absolutely refused to sing Rock A Bye Baby to my children after paying close attention to the lyrics, which couldn’t lull adults into sound sleep and peaceful dreams: “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all”. Ahh! I wrote and sang my own.
Nothing in Garcia Marquez’s story was graphic, it showed a side to human nature that children would see through more than adults do, or at the very least, need to see through early on, and I liked its moral. My biggest fear was that I would have children who’d have a lack of compassion. How do you teach that? By stories like these. Absolutely not Disney.
Cowboys versus Aliens……Hmmm
I finally saw True Grit today. There was a man standing behind me at Redbox, and when he saw me choose that, he stepped closer and said that he had to know, did I actually rent this for myself? His eyes about popped when I told him that yes I’m renting for me because I loved John Wayne movies and especially this one’s original. I think he was expecting me to say ‘Ug, my husband/boyfriend is making me get this’. Course, I was wearing my glasses and still had my hair in braided pigtails from biking, so who knows what he’d been anticipating! His eyes popped and he shook his head and laughed, saying he was pretty impressed. We already know I was never a normal child- add black and white pirate movies and John Wayne westerns to the list of reasons why. Think I saw almost every one of John Wayne’s (except for his really early stuff) over and over and over again.
Come on, though, how can you remake John Wayne? Which is a concern I voiced to Redbox man. As a J.W. fan himself, he’d assured me it was good, and actually it almost surpassed the original. The way they revamped Mattie’s wit and banter was hysterical. Thank god for closed captioning, cause I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her. Wish there was more of Josh Brolin, who I know from Young Riders, a family Western series I’d watched obsessively when I was young. But I gave the movie a try because you can never argue against Matt Damon (except that other Coen movie, The Informant? which I just couldn’t keep on). Gotta say, though, that the signature John Wayne riding into battle with the reins in his teeth needed to not be redone. Some things should remain attributable only to the original person, with no tribute attempted. Jeff Bridges did great otherwise, though.
However, watching this movie, and enjoying it, made me think about how many westerns I watched as a child and how many I’ve seen as an adult. Come to think of it, the last one I saw was The Missing, another John Wayne revamp (from his The Searchers), which was also pretty amazing. Can never argue Tommy Lee Jones, either- I did watch and read Lonesome Dove. Many times. But, the other thing that struck me is that my kids have never watched a western. The other western out now is Cowboys and Aliens, and I don’t really know if that counts. Aliens? Fighting cowboys in a western with high-tech alien weapons? I just dunno. These days, everything must have aliens involved. My boys know Mr. Jones from Men in Black. Yes, aliens.
Big sigh.
That’s the way of things, though. Every generation has it trademark theme. Pirates of the ’40′s. Westerns of the ’60′s. Rambo and I think Vietnam in general of the ’80′s. Now we are into aliens: Transformers 1 through 3, Cowboys vs Aliens, Aliens in the Attic, and the upcoming game board adaptation of Battleship. Yes, navy v. aliens. What’s 2020 have in store?
Is this good, though, the bad guys now aliens? Should we mourn the loss of westerns? Or maybe it’s good. Maybe it is more acceptable to portray that only aliens could cause such cold, uncaring death and destruction. Maybe this will build in our children a better sense of all-human unity. It’s nice to see that current global struggles aren’t being continually over-dramatized in movies- after the Cold War, all the villains were Russian. Japanese after WWII? After the Gulf War, Middle Eastern. But now, entering the second decade of the 2000′s, let’s make it completely neutral and claim aliens as universal, globally affecting villains. I guess it could be good. Maybe it is way too late and I am over thinking this 
