Between my eyebrows; origin mysterious
On the right side of my nose; from crawling into a coffee table leg at four; requiring stitches
Right knee; from bike-racing alongside a friend who pulled too close; no treatment
Just under my sternum; from bathing one of our family cats who hated water; no treatment
Right wrist; from helping pick up pieces of a door window after a friend's parent slammed and shattered it; no treatment
Left forearm; from a medieval-style bleeding time test (for von Willebrand's disease) at New Britain General Hospital; no treatment
Left foot, inside; from stepping next to a concealed broken bottle in the woods; requiring stitches
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Recipe: Black Bean Dip
Black beans, dry (1 lb. bag)
Onion, chopped
Southwest-style salsa (black bean and corn)
Cumin
Cayenne pepper
Coriander
Onion powder (optional)
Salt
Pepper Jack cheese, grated (eliminate for veganized recipe)
1. Prepare the beans as instructed on bag. (Usually soak overnight in large pot with 6-8 c. water, rinse, boil for two minutes in 6 c. water, then simmer for an hour and a half to two hours.) Rinse beans in colander and return to pot with 1-2 c. water.
2. Over med-high heat, mash beans as much as you feel like it. Add chopped onion. Continue to stir and mash as desired.
3. After however long you feel like waiting, add cumin, cayenne pepper and coriander. Taste. Add salt. Taste. Add some more of whatever you want more of. Taste. Cook for awhile at a simmer.
4. Add some Southwest-style salsa -- approximately 1 c., or however much you think you'd want.
5. Stir for awhile.
6. Taste again.
7. Add pepper jack cheese, stirring constantly until melted. Taste. Remove from heat when satisfied, and serve hot -- or ladle into old glass jars (salsa jars are particularly good), close, and set aside until cool. Then refrigerate until ready to eat.
Serve with chips. Serves approximately six mediumly-hungry people.
Onion, chopped
Southwest-style salsa (black bean and corn)
Cumin
Cayenne pepper
Coriander
Onion powder (optional)
Salt
Pepper Jack cheese, grated (eliminate for veganized recipe)
1. Prepare the beans as instructed on bag. (Usually soak overnight in large pot with 6-8 c. water, rinse, boil for two minutes in 6 c. water, then simmer for an hour and a half to two hours.) Rinse beans in colander and return to pot with 1-2 c. water.
2. Over med-high heat, mash beans as much as you feel like it. Add chopped onion. Continue to stir and mash as desired.
3. After however long you feel like waiting, add cumin, cayenne pepper and coriander. Taste. Add salt. Taste. Add some more of whatever you want more of. Taste. Cook for awhile at a simmer.
4. Add some Southwest-style salsa -- approximately 1 c., or however much you think you'd want.
5. Stir for awhile.
6. Taste again.
7. Add pepper jack cheese, stirring constantly until melted. Taste. Remove from heat when satisfied, and serve hot -- or ladle into old glass jars (salsa jars are particularly good), close, and set aside until cool. Then refrigerate until ready to eat.
Serve with chips. Serves approximately six mediumly-hungry people.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
True patriot love
Sharon, Carl and I went to Canada on Sunday.
It was the first time for me, and as typically happens, I found myself in subculture rather than Culture: Quebec, in this case.
It was the first time I've driven in a foreign country. (From this, you may also derive that it was also the first time I've paid any attention to the km markings on my speedometer -- and a loose attention, even so.) I was surprised by how different it felt to see alternative street signs and line markings on the highway and Montreal roads; I was perhaps more surprised by my feeling of being a boorish American (with CT plates) as I realized -- with Sharon's constant help -- that I was two lanes right of the exit I wanted, or that 63 mph is a mentally difficult speed to maintain, resulting in stutter-passing cars to both sides.
Once we got into the city, though, we parked Betty and said good-bye, preferring to walk from our (lovely) hotel toward all that downtown Montreal had to offer us.
It turns out that on a Sunday afternoon, Montreal has approximately the same amount of stuff to offer as any other place that shuts down on Sunday afternoons.
To be fair, we were not demanding folk -- our focus was mainly to find good food, which we did(!) -- and the day was lovely. We just didn't happen across any poetry slams in Quebec-accented French, or improv comedy or jazz, or anything that was happening one time only! on April 13. Which was fine. We were there to see Montreal in all its quotidian glory.
We headed first down to the harbor, where the Montrealese keep a giant defunct factory consisting of silos that are now (apparently used) as a silo-phone (get it?). People can talk into their phones or whatever newfangled internet technology transmits sound, and hear the echo across one of the giant silos making up this enormous rusting hulk on the Montreal harbor. (Needless to say, I was totally enamored with this factory. I love looking at large and rusty things.)
Across the river were two interesting remnants of Montreal's shot at the World's Fair in 1967: a biosphere (looking like a fragile and halved Epcot ball), and one of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen, Habitat '67.
Go ahead and take a look at Habitat '67. Apparently, units can be rented or purchased; with the current condition of American real estate investment, you might want to consider buying abroad...and inviting me to visit.
Or live with you.
I'm just sayin'.
By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we began searching for a tea room we had seen on the way to the harbor.
The tea room was lovely. We each ordered a different tea and were presented -- really: a presentation was involved -- with separate pots, steeping cups and teacups, and extra water for refills. We also each ordered a vegetarian option from their minimal menu. My tofu wraps were just enough to dull my hunger until dinner.
We wandered the streets, noting Notre Dame, the town hall, the courts of Justice (including a monolithic structure that I described as "totally 2001-ing me"), and the various places we might stop for dinner. In the end, we went back to the Crepe Cafe, which had only been opened two weeks, but where clearly the staff knew what they were doing. I had a dinner crepe with eggplant and chicken, and a dessert crepe with bananas, strawberries, nuttella and whipped cream.
We returned to the hotel via bitterly cold and windy streets, foregoing the night lights of the city for the warmth of our hotel room and conversation.
I said, at one point in the conversation, "we'll have to think of something fun to do next time."
Sharon looked at me in horror. "What do you mean?"
"We'll have to think of something else to do, for next time."
"What sort of things are you talking about?"
"This, but again, and somewhere else, probably -- to have something else to look forward to."
Sharon, who had thought I was saying we should do something "exciting" -- like bar-hop, or enter ourselves in The Amazing Race, or try a new kind of bungee jumping or something -- was reassured by my insistence that I only wanted more of what we had already been doing. (Or, by some definitions, not doing.)
If this is what all of Canada is like -- the thrills limited to great food, friends, walks and talks -- then count me in. Or, rather, out: I'm expatriating.
It was the first time for me, and as typically happens, I found myself in subculture rather than Culture: Quebec, in this case.
It was the first time I've driven in a foreign country. (From this, you may also derive that it was also the first time I've paid any attention to the km markings on my speedometer -- and a loose attention, even so.) I was surprised by how different it felt to see alternative street signs and line markings on the highway and Montreal roads; I was perhaps more surprised by my feeling of being a boorish American (with CT plates) as I realized -- with Sharon's constant help -- that I was two lanes right of the exit I wanted, or that 63 mph is a mentally difficult speed to maintain, resulting in stutter-passing cars to both sides.
Once we got into the city, though, we parked Betty and said good-bye, preferring to walk from our (lovely) hotel toward all that downtown Montreal had to offer us.
It turns out that on a Sunday afternoon, Montreal has approximately the same amount of stuff to offer as any other place that shuts down on Sunday afternoons.
To be fair, we were not demanding folk -- our focus was mainly to find good food, which we did(!) -- and the day was lovely. We just didn't happen across any poetry slams in Quebec-accented French, or improv comedy or jazz, or anything that was happening one time only! on April 13. Which was fine. We were there to see Montreal in all its quotidian glory.
We headed first down to the harbor, where the Montrealese keep a giant defunct factory consisting of silos that are now (apparently used) as a silo-phone (get it?). People can talk into their phones or whatever newfangled internet technology transmits sound, and hear the echo across one of the giant silos making up this enormous rusting hulk on the Montreal harbor. (Needless to say, I was totally enamored with this factory. I love looking at large and rusty things.)
Across the river were two interesting remnants of Montreal's shot at the World's Fair in 1967: a biosphere (looking like a fragile and halved Epcot ball), and one of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen, Habitat '67.
Go ahead and take a look at Habitat '67. Apparently, units can be rented or purchased; with the current condition of American real estate investment, you might want to consider buying abroad...and inviting me to visit.
Or live with you.
I'm just sayin'.
By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we began searching for a tea room we had seen on the way to the harbor.
The tea room was lovely. We each ordered a different tea and were presented -- really: a presentation was involved -- with separate pots, steeping cups and teacups, and extra water for refills. We also each ordered a vegetarian option from their minimal menu. My tofu wraps were just enough to dull my hunger until dinner.
We wandered the streets, noting Notre Dame, the town hall, the courts of Justice (including a monolithic structure that I described as "totally 2001-ing me"), and the various places we might stop for dinner. In the end, we went back to the Crepe Cafe, which had only been opened two weeks, but where clearly the staff knew what they were doing. I had a dinner crepe with eggplant and chicken, and a dessert crepe with bananas, strawberries, nuttella and whipped cream.
We returned to the hotel via bitterly cold and windy streets, foregoing the night lights of the city for the warmth of our hotel room and conversation.
I said, at one point in the conversation, "we'll have to think of something fun to do next time."
Sharon looked at me in horror. "What do you mean?"
"We'll have to think of something else to do, for next time."
"What sort of things are you talking about?"
"This, but again, and somewhere else, probably -- to have something else to look forward to."
Sharon, who had thought I was saying we should do something "exciting" -- like bar-hop, or enter ourselves in The Amazing Race, or try a new kind of bungee jumping or something -- was reassured by my insistence that I only wanted more of what we had already been doing. (Or, by some definitions, not doing.)
If this is what all of Canada is like -- the thrills limited to great food, friends, walks and talks -- then count me in. Or, rather, out: I'm expatriating.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
New word: Antichrist Complex
(n.) The feeling that you could ruin the whole world, usually just by being your real self.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Canadians bring home the bacon
Going to Canada over the weekend -- about which there will be more to come, certainly -- after the Canadian dollar surpassed the U.S. dollar in value seemed a bit like visiting NYC for the first time, after the towers had fallen.
Jokes about Canadian dollars being the equivalent of Monopoly money, for instance, were out, or else became ironic.
Jokes about Canadian dollars being the equivalent of Monopoly money, for instance, were out, or else became ironic.
Monday, April 14, 2008
How we were held over the Styx
I can feel this weekend settling into me like a fine dust, covering and permeating every surface.
I've never cared for weddings -- never planned them as a little girl, never desired one as a straight-faced adult -- and I haven't felt connected to Tyler for years, now. When people said "Oh, that will be fun!" about my trip to see his Vermont wedding, I faked a smile and nodded, then changed the subject. It would be a fun weekend, I thought, but only because I had planned a side-trip with friends, to Canada.
It caught me off-guard, then, which is the only way I can be (truly) caught.
At the rehearsal dinner, at a tasteful and spacious house in the country, I saw Tyler as he is with friends instead of family. I watched him transform into an adult version of the tender, quick-to-laugh, open and vulnerable child I knew before (before hospitals and ambulances and screaming and police and sharp, consuming bitterness). I glimpsed in his speech of thanks to his best man and the maid of honor what sort of person he had secretly become -- secret to his family, because we would have crushed it. Even I would have.
He is a good man, my brother, and I am unspeakably relieved.
Spencer and I sat and laughed the entire dinner, on a corner of the wraparound couch, balancing plates on our knees and making jokes told by mothers, bearable. I asked what he had gotten them as a gift, and he shook his head. I shook mine in response; I hadn't gotten them anything, either. Raising his eyebrows in mock desperation, he reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pen and his wallet, then a twenty dollar bill. I burst out laughing.
"Are you going to put my name on it, too?" I asked Spencer, his pen poised above the old bill.
"Yes," he said, and laughed.
I pushed him away, palm flat on his shoulder, and he pretended to fall over on the couch and protested: "Hey! That's my Achilles...armpit..." I laughed so hard that I had to lean back on the couch to breathe.
I felt the connection like a tangible cord. He is so often distracted, with video games or girlfriend or movies or Mom, and I am so often guarded and only-sarcastic -- but laughter fed on itself until I had no choice: "You know, I don't know how our family ended up related," I said to him, "but this...this makes sense."
Spencer grinned and seemed sorry to leave me at the end of the night. I was sorry to leave him.
During the ceremony the next day, when I knew I would not cry though others would, I peered down the aisle as Sarah approached, then looked back at Tyler. His face, red and teary and terrifyingly grateful, moved something in me to understanding: Sarah is my sister.
At the reception, I remembered how Mom had fretted over the mother-son dance she and Tyler had spent only ten minutes discussing. He had joked that they should dance to The Spinners' "Rubber Band Man" -- a disco tune Tyler loves -- and she had been talking about it since, wondering if she should practice, wondering if he had been serious. She had asked me to drive her to the mall that morning to buy props: giant rubber bands like the ones the band used in concerts.
When Tyler and Mom got onto the dance floor, soft instrumental music began playing, and they clung to each other in the middle, swaying awkwardly. About a minute in, the DJ played a scratching sound, switching songs, and Mom and Tyler pulled out large elastic bands and began to dance. In sync, they stretched the bands up, down, over their necks, walked in circles, stepped through them -- Spencer and I gaped at each other in disbelief. This mother was different than the one we knew; this mother was young and ready for the discotech and happy. This mother was pliable and eager. I jumped up in my heels. I felt like an evangelist: Did you see? Did you see what they did? I was absurdly proud, absurdly ready to cry.
I have fought for years for these pieces of them -- some safe, small parts of us, vulnerable and good -- to see even the heels of my family members pass by still soft and untouched by the trauma and darkness of our pasts. These were answers.
I've never cared for weddings -- never planned them as a little girl, never desired one as a straight-faced adult -- and I haven't felt connected to Tyler for years, now. When people said "Oh, that will be fun!" about my trip to see his Vermont wedding, I faked a smile and nodded, then changed the subject. It would be a fun weekend, I thought, but only because I had planned a side-trip with friends, to Canada.
It caught me off-guard, then, which is the only way I can be (truly) caught.
At the rehearsal dinner, at a tasteful and spacious house in the country, I saw Tyler as he is with friends instead of family. I watched him transform into an adult version of the tender, quick-to-laugh, open and vulnerable child I knew before (before hospitals and ambulances and screaming and police and sharp, consuming bitterness). I glimpsed in his speech of thanks to his best man and the maid of honor what sort of person he had secretly become -- secret to his family, because we would have crushed it. Even I would have.
He is a good man, my brother, and I am unspeakably relieved.
Spencer and I sat and laughed the entire dinner, on a corner of the wraparound couch, balancing plates on our knees and making jokes told by mothers, bearable. I asked what he had gotten them as a gift, and he shook his head. I shook mine in response; I hadn't gotten them anything, either. Raising his eyebrows in mock desperation, he reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pen and his wallet, then a twenty dollar bill. I burst out laughing.
"Are you going to put my name on it, too?" I asked Spencer, his pen poised above the old bill.
"Yes," he said, and laughed.
I pushed him away, palm flat on his shoulder, and he pretended to fall over on the couch and protested: "Hey! That's my Achilles...armpit..." I laughed so hard that I had to lean back on the couch to breathe.
I felt the connection like a tangible cord. He is so often distracted, with video games or girlfriend or movies or Mom, and I am so often guarded and only-sarcastic -- but laughter fed on itself until I had no choice: "You know, I don't know how our family ended up related," I said to him, "but this...this makes sense."
Spencer grinned and seemed sorry to leave me at the end of the night. I was sorry to leave him.
During the ceremony the next day, when I knew I would not cry though others would, I peered down the aisle as Sarah approached, then looked back at Tyler. His face, red and teary and terrifyingly grateful, moved something in me to understanding: Sarah is my sister.
At the reception, I remembered how Mom had fretted over the mother-son dance she and Tyler had spent only ten minutes discussing. He had joked that they should dance to The Spinners' "Rubber Band Man" -- a disco tune Tyler loves -- and she had been talking about it since, wondering if she should practice, wondering if he had been serious. She had asked me to drive her to the mall that morning to buy props: giant rubber bands like the ones the band used in concerts.
When Tyler and Mom got onto the dance floor, soft instrumental music began playing, and they clung to each other in the middle, swaying awkwardly. About a minute in, the DJ played a scratching sound, switching songs, and Mom and Tyler pulled out large elastic bands and began to dance. In sync, they stretched the bands up, down, over their necks, walked in circles, stepped through them -- Spencer and I gaped at each other in disbelief. This mother was different than the one we knew; this mother was young and ready for the discotech and happy. This mother was pliable and eager. I jumped up in my heels. I felt like an evangelist: Did you see? Did you see what they did? I was absurdly proud, absurdly ready to cry.
I have fought for years for these pieces of them -- some safe, small parts of us, vulnerable and good -- to see even the heels of my family members pass by still soft and untouched by the trauma and darkness of our pasts. These were answers.
Yes, let's.
I think I've already warned friend Debbie that I was going to do this: After viewing her dirge version of Pink's "Let's Get This Party Started," I've decided its slowly building insanity (or yours, as you watch it) needs to be seen and heard by all.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
"We were on a break!"
(I feel sorry for anyone who can identify that reference, as I feel sorry for myself for using it.)
This weekend, friend Sharon and friend Carl and I are going on a road trip which, if all goes as planned, will remediate my never-having-been-to-Canada. I won't be blogging.
Try to carry on without me, brave readers!
(I'll be back next week.)
This weekend, friend Sharon and friend Carl and I are going on a road trip which, if all goes as planned, will remediate my never-having-been-to-Canada. I won't be blogging.
Try to carry on without me, brave readers!
(I'll be back next week.)
Why I don't #@%$ing swear
Those of you who knew me before or in college might be wondering what's become of me: Why am I such a potty-mouth on my blog, for instance?
Those who met me or knew me best after college might also be wondering: Why don't I curse more in person?
The answer is simple.
I don't see much wrong with using expletives in front of other people who don't care -- nor in front of certain people who do -- but as you know, if you've been reading, my life up to this point hasn't exactly been sunshine and cherry pie.
If I didn't swear then, it seems cheap to start now. Better to save it until everything sucks again and it has real impact.
Those who met me or knew me best after college might also be wondering: Why don't I curse more in person?
The answer is simple.
I don't see much wrong with using expletives in front of other people who don't care -- nor in front of certain people who do -- but as you know, if you've been reading, my life up to this point hasn't exactly been sunshine and cherry pie.
If I didn't swear then, it seems cheap to start now. Better to save it until everything sucks again and it has real impact.
Because "Isn't it exactly what you expected?" would have been too long.
I propose that Alanis was being ironic in her choice of the word "ironic" to describe the events of so-named song, possibly to see if we were paying attention.
Don't worry, 'Lani. We were.
Don't worry, 'Lani. We were.
Confessions, VIII
Due to lack of counter space, I often use the top of my washing machine for cooking prep.
I once ran my bike into a woman standing on a corner because I misjudged my speed and the sharp angle of the fenced corner; I lied as I sped away from her, saying I was going to get the brakes fixed "right now."
I am completely and utterly helpless when confronted with the words "adjusted gross income."
I once ran my bike into a woman standing on a corner because I misjudged my speed and the sharp angle of the fenced corner; I lied as I sped away from her, saying I was going to get the brakes fixed "right now."
I am completely and utterly helpless when confronted with the words "adjusted gross income."
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Local trivia: Three valves times five valves equals how much profit?
My elementary school had, as a "corporate partner," a local business: Skinner Valve.
Our school colors, green and white, were often combined with Skinner Valve's red and blue to represent our school.
I can remember changing the words to the (most-hated) song "Skinna-ma-rinki-dinki-dink" to "Skinner-ma...etc." in honor of Skinner Valve visitors. The lyrics go on to say "I love you."
Looking back, I have no idea why any of this was allowed, or even legal, or whether -- or how much -- money was involved.
It seems strange to me, but let me know, oh readers: did your elementary schools have corporate sponsors?
Our school colors, green and white, were often combined with Skinner Valve's red and blue to represent our school.
I can remember changing the words to the (most-hated) song "Skinna-ma-rinki-dinki-dink" to "Skinner-ma...etc." in honor of Skinner Valve visitors. The lyrics go on to say "I love you."
Looking back, I have no idea why any of this was allowed, or even legal, or whether -- or how much -- money was involved.
It seems strange to me, but let me know, oh readers: did your elementary schools have corporate sponsors?
Monday, April 7, 2008
I Kissed Dating Good-bye, and then gave it a bj
According to the NYTimes magazine article "Students of Virginity":
You can, for instance, get a sexually transmitted disease by engaging in oral sex. Even my condom-distributing public high school "life skills" class missed that one; what's the likelihood abstinence-only education deals with the topic of oral sex at all?
Six times less likely, I would guess.
"Six times more likely to engage in oral sex" is not as descriptive as one might like, statistics-wise; do pledging teens engage in it six times more often, for instance, or is the it the number of teens participating at all that's six times higher? Either way, it seems like a lot of blow jobs. (I would guess.)
Joshua Harris -- the author of I Kissed Dating Good-bye and its follow-up, Boy Meets Girl -- would be spinning in his grave, if he were dead.
These are, after all, Rev. Josh's audience: middle and high-schoolers who agree with each other and before God to wait until they're married...to date.
The Times article does not mention whether efforts to keep teens from dating at all has had an effect on abstinence rates. I suspect that research would find that teens who are "not dating" would be just as likely to engage in high-risk behavior as those who threw out the Harris with the pacifier. I'm not convinced that Harris-ophiles would be as likely to engage in regular-risk behavior, however.
Repression seems to tend toward explosive rather than gradual release, after all.
Groups such as Harris acolytes don't seem willing to acknowledge the danger in demanding the level of self-control involved in attempting to live a "lust-free" life while also educating poorly on the consequences of failure. The all-or-nothing approach seems to be all-guilt and to cede nothing to human nature. It's admirable, perhaps, to want people to treat each other decently -- as ends in themselves, rather than means to selfish ends -- but lust is a fact of life. Denying it means giving up all ability to actually deal with it, to the point of higher teen pregnancy rates and cases of STDs among abstinence-only-educated teens.
The fact that abstinence-only education is the result of religious influence, rather than science, is evident when groups advocating premarital abstinence also speak out -- in an awe-inspiring contradiction of what they say about the benefits and necessity of marriage, unless viewed from an Old-Testament literalist perspective -- against gay marriage. The Times points this out as well:
But don't worry, my gay friends.
Apparently, oral sex doesn't count.
"In a follow-up study to a 1995 national survey of close to 12,000 students in grades 7 through 12, two sociologists, Peter Bearman at Columbia University and Hannah Brückner at Yale, found that while those who took virginity pledges preserved their technical virginity about 18 months longer than teenagers who didn’t pledge, they were six times more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins who hadn’t taken a pledge."Uh, wow. It's possible that President Clinton's Oval Office hijinks led to this misunderstanding of what constitutes sexual activity, but I'm willing to bet that it's the result of abstinence-only education -- about which the article states that "11 of 13 abstinence curriculums that [Representative Henry Waxman's] government-reform committee examined were rife with scientific errors and false and misleading information about the risks of sexual activity."
You can, for instance, get a sexually transmitted disease by engaging in oral sex. Even my condom-distributing public high school "life skills" class missed that one; what's the likelihood abstinence-only education deals with the topic of oral sex at all?
Six times less likely, I would guess.
"Six times more likely to engage in oral sex" is not as descriptive as one might like, statistics-wise; do pledging teens engage in it six times more often, for instance, or is the it the number of teens participating at all that's six times higher? Either way, it seems like a lot of blow jobs. (I would guess.)
Joshua Harris -- the author of I Kissed Dating Good-bye and its follow-up, Boy Meets Girl -- would be spinning in his grave, if he were dead.
These are, after all, Rev. Josh's audience: middle and high-schoolers who agree with each other and before God to wait until they're married...to date.
The Times article does not mention whether efforts to keep teens from dating at all has had an effect on abstinence rates. I suspect that research would find that teens who are "not dating" would be just as likely to engage in high-risk behavior as those who threw out the Harris with the pacifier. I'm not convinced that Harris-ophiles would be as likely to engage in regular-risk behavior, however.
Repression seems to tend toward explosive rather than gradual release, after all.
Groups such as Harris acolytes don't seem willing to acknowledge the danger in demanding the level of self-control involved in attempting to live a "lust-free" life while also educating poorly on the consequences of failure. The all-or-nothing approach seems to be all-guilt and to cede nothing to human nature. It's admirable, perhaps, to want people to treat each other decently -- as ends in themselves, rather than means to selfish ends -- but lust is a fact of life. Denying it means giving up all ability to actually deal with it, to the point of higher teen pregnancy rates and cases of STDs among abstinence-only-educated teens.
The fact that abstinence-only education is the result of religious influence, rather than science, is evident when groups advocating premarital abstinence also speak out -- in an awe-inspiring contradiction of what they say about the benefits and necessity of marriage, unless viewed from an Old-Testament literalist perspective -- against gay marriage. The Times points this out as well:
"Perceiving a sexualized culture, members of True Love Revolution went to war. The group did not require an abstinence pledge, nor concern itself with drawing specific boundaries. Its one stated purpose was to discourage premarital intercourse, but by declining to endorse gay marriage, the group left gays, just as Princeton did, with no option but to abstain forever."Since most of the members of True Love Revolution at Harvard -- most of the dozen or so active members, anyway -- seem to be Catholic, this isn't very suprising. Abstaining forever is what priests do, anyway. (Or what they're supposed to do.)
But don't worry, my gay friends.
Apparently, oral sex doesn't count.
"Your money's no good here." --IRS
I didn't know it was possible, but my federal tax return has been rejected.
I'm poor, relatively speaking, but I have to pay taxes on the (federally-funded) Americorps disbursement I applied to my (federal consolidated) student loans last year, which doubled my 2007 income.
Except that my e-file has been marked "rejected" by the IRS.
I suspect they're holding out for the penalties and fees. Before I incur any, I'm going to have to find a way to force them to take my money...talk about adding insult to injury.
That Uncle Sam can be a real jerkface.
I'm poor, relatively speaking, but I have to pay taxes on the (federally-funded) Americorps disbursement I applied to my (federal consolidated) student loans last year, which doubled my 2007 income.
Except that my e-file has been marked "rejected" by the IRS.
I suspect they're holding out for the penalties and fees. Before I incur any, I'm going to have to find a way to force them to take my money...talk about adding insult to injury.
That Uncle Sam can be a real jerkface.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Hostages
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been holding Colombia's former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, for six years. A captive recently released by FARC reported that Betancourt has hepatitis B and a tropical skin ailment, and the Colombian news is reporting that she's close to death. French diplomats and doctors flew to Colombia to try to save her life, but Rodrigo Granda, a senior leader of FARC, said that prisoner exchange was the only option for freeing Betancourt.
The Colombian military says it's ready to help facilitate the French doctors' finding and treating Ingrid Betancourt, who in the AP photo looks emaciated and frail, sitting on a chair made of roughly-cut, small logs tied together in front of a practically empty plank table -- a glass of something sits on the far end, but its contents are unidentifiable. Her hands are clasped on her lap, and her clothes don't fit now, if they ever did. Her hair falls thick to her lap, emphasizing the anorexically thin look of her arms. Her eyes are cast to the floor. It is impossible to tell if she has any spirit left; if she looked up, we may see it, but this is no evidence either way.
I wondered, as I read the article and looked at the picture -- one of the most striking images I've seen in a newspaper -- whether she would want this, all of this struggle on her behalf. I wondered whether she would want to be saved. Would it be enough to have doctors lay kind hands on her for moments, or hours, and then to leave again? Would it give her strength and hope to see them, or would it finish her off? To be so close to freedom and then closed off from it again, what would that do to her?
Would she prefer to die, now, the unmoving, unsmiling martyr, or to have to fight her way back to life and health and hope and happiness -- and who knows when?
It's been six years.
But I guess it was longer for me. When I think about it, my captivity lasted at least seven.
It's true what they say about just not having another option, those heroes who jump into riptides or run into burning houses to save people. I never ran toward her, toward home, but I can see the mentality in my past -- the waiting and watching and the barely suppressed hope of escape were, themselves, inescapable. I could not have shaken them, even for easier things like drugs or boyfriends or whatever people use to make their lives seem easier.
I had books. I had school. I had church, and God. I had a few friends. I had an entrenched and inexplicable desire to be better. I still have this. I did not try to find other answers because for me there was no question. Life was simply not easy.
I asked my mom the other day, under the guise of applying for health insurance, what her biological mother had died of. (It was complications from a stroke.) I remember getting the call at college, Mom saying she was at the hospital with Uncle John and that they were about to pull the plug, but it never occurred to me to ask what they were pulling it for. Her mother was never enough of a person to me to warrant a cause of death, I suppose. Her body, when they did unplug the machines keeping it alive, was donated to science. My mom watched the monitor flatline -- I imagine a green screen suddenly sounding its one long, high tone as the hill-and-valley spikes indicating a heartbeat are driven off the screen by a plain, straight line -- from outside the hospital room. She was never good at facing death.
This, her mother's death, though, I think might have seemed a relief to her.
Grandma -- my grandma, who agreed at my birth to be a surrogate, and has always been my only and true grandmother -- has told me stories over the years, things she heard about my mom's growing up, before Mom ended up with Grandma and Grandpa at fifteen, for a year.
The stories are all the same: Mom wanders to her older siblings' school at three, naked, to find someone to care for her and to find food, and my aunt's teacher puts a smock on her and returns her at the end of the day, to her home; Mom sits on the kitchen table, stealing stale bread from the cats; Mom is abused by male relatives.
Mom tells stories every now and then, when she's caught off guard, and only ones she thinks are funny -- like the time her special birthday hat fell off into the toilet when she was sick on her birthday, at a group home, one year. She laughed and laughed when she told us this story, but it made me feel that strange sort of shuddering sickness I always feel when I hear about good being wasted. It made me want to gather up my child-Mom in my arms and hold her, hard, against me. It made me angrier than almost anything that had been done to me, the loss of her hat; it became all that I hated and raged against -- for her and for myself.
If I did not love my mother (my captor), it may have been easy to turn away from hope, but I do love her -- I have always loved her -- and I cannot forget the connection.
Mom was held hostage by her mother, her father, her abusive and reprehensible relatives, and then by foster homes and group homes and orphanages, and I was held hostage by her. She was held by their hatred and selfishness and vindictiveness, and I was held by hers. She became what they wanted her to be -- emotions turned on and off like water from the tap, manipulation like second nature, dissociated from the reality of her self -- and I became what she wanted: her good parent.
If my two brothers -- the youngest more than the middle -- were my charges as much as my mom's, she was mine, too. They three were like my children.
One of my team leaders my second year in China said once, explaining why she hadn't started having kids until her late thirties, that she had already raised one family: her siblings, growing up. I nodded slowly as she talked, not realizing I was doing it until she had stopped.
Maybe this is why I never thought about whether I wanted children or not, I thought. It wasn't that I had decided that I didn't want them, or did want them, or wanted them but not right now; wanting was beside the point, it seemed. The question was nonsensical and I dismissed it out of hand.
Maybe it's because I already had them.
Maybe this is the difference between my mom's captivity and my own. Maybe being held by these people, my family, the way a parent is held by her children, is what has saved me. Wanting the best for them, despite them, has saved me.
I am hoping, then, that my mother is less relieved than sad that her mother is dead, despite her mother's vindictive and flagrant abuse.
I am hoping that in the incomparably more extreme hostage-life of Ingrid Betancourt, in the photo with her eyes turned down, she is thinking kindly of the people she knew and knows, and wishing goodness on them, and I hope this is giving her strength.
The Colombian military says it's ready to help facilitate the French doctors' finding and treating Ingrid Betancourt, who in the AP photo looks emaciated and frail, sitting on a chair made of roughly-cut, small logs tied together in front of a practically empty plank table -- a glass of something sits on the far end, but its contents are unidentifiable. Her hands are clasped on her lap, and her clothes don't fit now, if they ever did. Her hair falls thick to her lap, emphasizing the anorexically thin look of her arms. Her eyes are cast to the floor. It is impossible to tell if she has any spirit left; if she looked up, we may see it, but this is no evidence either way.
I wondered, as I read the article and looked at the picture -- one of the most striking images I've seen in a newspaper -- whether she would want this, all of this struggle on her behalf. I wondered whether she would want to be saved. Would it be enough to have doctors lay kind hands on her for moments, or hours, and then to leave again? Would it give her strength and hope to see them, or would it finish her off? To be so close to freedom and then closed off from it again, what would that do to her?
Would she prefer to die, now, the unmoving, unsmiling martyr, or to have to fight her way back to life and health and hope and happiness -- and who knows when?
It's been six years.
But I guess it was longer for me. When I think about it, my captivity lasted at least seven.
It's true what they say about just not having another option, those heroes who jump into riptides or run into burning houses to save people. I never ran toward her, toward home, but I can see the mentality in my past -- the waiting and watching and the barely suppressed hope of escape were, themselves, inescapable. I could not have shaken them, even for easier things like drugs or boyfriends or whatever people use to make their lives seem easier.
I had books. I had school. I had church, and God. I had a few friends. I had an entrenched and inexplicable desire to be better. I still have this. I did not try to find other answers because for me there was no question. Life was simply not easy.
I asked my mom the other day, under the guise of applying for health insurance, what her biological mother had died of. (It was complications from a stroke.) I remember getting the call at college, Mom saying she was at the hospital with Uncle John and that they were about to pull the plug, but it never occurred to me to ask what they were pulling it for. Her mother was never enough of a person to me to warrant a cause of death, I suppose. Her body, when they did unplug the machines keeping it alive, was donated to science. My mom watched the monitor flatline -- I imagine a green screen suddenly sounding its one long, high tone as the hill-and-valley spikes indicating a heartbeat are driven off the screen by a plain, straight line -- from outside the hospital room. She was never good at facing death.
This, her mother's death, though, I think might have seemed a relief to her.
Grandma -- my grandma, who agreed at my birth to be a surrogate, and has always been my only and true grandmother -- has told me stories over the years, things she heard about my mom's growing up, before Mom ended up with Grandma and Grandpa at fifteen, for a year.
The stories are all the same: Mom wanders to her older siblings' school at three, naked, to find someone to care for her and to find food, and my aunt's teacher puts a smock on her and returns her at the end of the day, to her home; Mom sits on the kitchen table, stealing stale bread from the cats; Mom is abused by male relatives.
Mom tells stories every now and then, when she's caught off guard, and only ones she thinks are funny -- like the time her special birthday hat fell off into the toilet when she was sick on her birthday, at a group home, one year. She laughed and laughed when she told us this story, but it made me feel that strange sort of shuddering sickness I always feel when I hear about good being wasted. It made me want to gather up my child-Mom in my arms and hold her, hard, against me. It made me angrier than almost anything that had been done to me, the loss of her hat; it became all that I hated and raged against -- for her and for myself.
If I did not love my mother (my captor), it may have been easy to turn away from hope, but I do love her -- I have always loved her -- and I cannot forget the connection.
Mom was held hostage by her mother, her father, her abusive and reprehensible relatives, and then by foster homes and group homes and orphanages, and I was held hostage by her. She was held by their hatred and selfishness and vindictiveness, and I was held by hers. She became what they wanted her to be -- emotions turned on and off like water from the tap, manipulation like second nature, dissociated from the reality of her self -- and I became what she wanted: her good parent.
If my two brothers -- the youngest more than the middle -- were my charges as much as my mom's, she was mine, too. They three were like my children.
One of my team leaders my second year in China said once, explaining why she hadn't started having kids until her late thirties, that she had already raised one family: her siblings, growing up. I nodded slowly as she talked, not realizing I was doing it until she had stopped.
Maybe this is why I never thought about whether I wanted children or not, I thought. It wasn't that I had decided that I didn't want them, or did want them, or wanted them but not right now; wanting was beside the point, it seemed. The question was nonsensical and I dismissed it out of hand.
Maybe it's because I already had them.
Maybe this is the difference between my mom's captivity and my own. Maybe being held by these people, my family, the way a parent is held by her children, is what has saved me. Wanting the best for them, despite them, has saved me.
I am hoping, then, that my mother is less relieved than sad that her mother is dead, despite her mother's vindictive and flagrant abuse.
I am hoping that in the incomparably more extreme hostage-life of Ingrid Betancourt, in the photo with her eyes turned down, she is thinking kindly of the people she knew and knows, and wishing goodness on them, and I hope this is giving her strength.
Um...No...thanks.
Heard from adjacent changing room, one middle-aged woman to another waiting outside:
"You wouldn't believe what just came out of my you-know-what. Take a wild guess!"
"You wouldn't believe what just came out of my you-know-what. Take a wild guess!"
Friday, April 4, 2008
Local Trivia: DEAR ABBY
"Abigail Van Buren," aka Pauline Phillips, was replaced a few years ago by her daughter Jeanne Phillips (who has now taken the Abby name for her own). IMO, her standards are generally more lax than her mothers' were; for instance, she seems to select more sensational letters than her mother did -- including one discovered yesterday from a woman whose fiance still sleeps in the same bed as his 13-year-old daughter, and refuses to stop -- and she seems to allow readers to do her work for her more often. ("DEAR ABBY, regarding that time you told the man to stop sleeping with his daughter, there was this one time in my life when..." becomes an entire day's column.)
Today, however, the new Abby seemed to be feeling her oats, and the reader can almost detect a fresher, hipper vibe coming from this younger "Abigail."
She also printed two letters from Connecticut today, provided here for your enlightenment. The first letter does not include Abby's advice, but the second, I have left exactly as printed, and included Abby's response.
DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have a 20-year-old nephew I'll call "Adam," who sometimes lacks good judgment. We have told him that when he visits he should ask before drinking our milk. The price of milk has gone sky-high, and we have a 7-year-old who drinks a lot of it. We have had to tighten our purse strings and try to make a gallon last a week. When Adam comes over, he will drink two or three big glasses of it. Now, instead of asking, he sneaks it when we're not looking.
His mother, "Faye," is also my best friend. While she was visiting, Adam waited until we went into the family room, then consumed more than half of the gallon of milk we had just purchased. When we discovered what had happened, we called Adam on his cell phone and told him we weren't happy about it. Faye overheard the conversation.
When we saw her the next day, she didn't seem too upset about it. But now that she's back home in Florida, she hasn't returned any of my calls or e-mails. Could scolding Adam about the milk have anything to do with Faye's silence? -- SOURED IN CONNECTICUT"
[Ed. note: Abby's response, not included here, rightly dealt with the question asked by the woman who wrote in. The fact that the response was uninteresting is the woman's fault, as the obviously more interesting question in this scenario is "What the #@%$ is wrong with Adam?" Could it be a calcium deficiency or is it evidence of a real mental disorder that he sneaks milk, of all things? Now we'll never know. Thanks, lady.]
"DEAR ABBY: I have a very strict father. I respect what he has to say, but I don't like the fact that he won't let me have a boyfriend. He thinks all dudez are alike -- well, most dudez at least. I need that li'l bit of advice, pleeeezzz. Love always, BABI IN MILFORD, CONN.
DEAR BABI: Dadz can be that way sometimez. Perhaps yours is trying to prevent you from making an "S" of yourself."
Today, however, the new Abby seemed to be feeling her oats, and the reader can almost detect a fresher, hipper vibe coming from this younger "Abigail."
She also printed two letters from Connecticut today, provided here for your enlightenment. The first letter does not include Abby's advice, but the second, I have left exactly as printed, and included Abby's response.
DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have a 20-year-old nephew I'll call "Adam," who sometimes lacks good judgment. We have told him that when he visits he should ask before drinking our milk. The price of milk has gone sky-high, and we have a 7-year-old who drinks a lot of it. We have had to tighten our purse strings and try to make a gallon last a week. When Adam comes over, he will drink two or three big glasses of it. Now, instead of asking, he sneaks it when we're not looking.
His mother, "Faye," is also my best friend. While she was visiting, Adam waited until we went into the family room, then consumed more than half of the gallon of milk we had just purchased. When we discovered what had happened, we called Adam on his cell phone and told him we weren't happy about it. Faye overheard the conversation.
When we saw her the next day, she didn't seem too upset about it. But now that she's back home in Florida, she hasn't returned any of my calls or e-mails. Could scolding Adam about the milk have anything to do with Faye's silence? -- SOURED IN CONNECTICUT"
[Ed. note: Abby's response, not included here, rightly dealt with the question asked by the woman who wrote in. The fact that the response was uninteresting is the woman's fault, as the obviously more interesting question in this scenario is "What the #@%$ is wrong with Adam?" Could it be a calcium deficiency or is it evidence of a real mental disorder that he sneaks milk, of all things? Now we'll never know. Thanks, lady.]
"DEAR ABBY: I have a very strict father. I respect what he has to say, but I don't like the fact that he won't let me have a boyfriend. He thinks all dudez are alike -- well, most dudez at least. I need that li'l bit of advice, pleeeezzz. Love always, BABI IN MILFORD, CONN.
DEAR BABI: Dadz can be that way sometimez. Perhaps yours is trying to prevent you from making an "S" of yourself."
Confessions, VII
I like to wear things with sparkles in them.
I like to watch oxen pulls.
I don't know how to play chess.
I like to watch oxen pulls.
I don't know how to play chess.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Cobain in pain
If, like me, you've spent a lifetime total of thirty seconds considering the premise that Kurt Cobain's death may have been a conspiracy, prepare yourself to spend at least twice that time mulling over this one: Kurt may have been lactose intolerant.
I encountered this theory -- that Kurt was driven to heroin by "unexplained stomach pains," which were, statistically speaking, likely caused by adult-onset lactose intolerance, and thereby developed the addiction that ultimately resulted in his early demise -- in an independent 'zine written by Kelli Williams.
According to at least one source, the 'zine is well-presented enough to merit some serious thought.
I didn't get a chance to read the 'zine in its entirety as I leafed through it at the Papercut Zine Library in Cambridge, MA, but it did seem to present a pretty solid case. In addition to citing statistics on adult-onset lactose intolerance, Williams shows on one page how Kurt's name (also spelled Kurdt) in just two single-letter substitutions, becomes "curds."
She also applied scansion to the problem, pointing out that "Kurt Cobain" scans exactly the same as "curds and whey," the syllables falling in a stressed-unstressed-stressed pattern:
KURT co-BAIN = CURDS and WHEY
This was the point at which I was convinced, and let it hereby be known: Any conspiracy theorist willing to apply scansion to prove their madcap theories' viability can rely on my credulous recounting of said theory to all.
This post will serve as my proof of sincerity.
I encountered this theory -- that Kurt was driven to heroin by "unexplained stomach pains," which were, statistically speaking, likely caused by adult-onset lactose intolerance, and thereby developed the addiction that ultimately resulted in his early demise -- in an independent 'zine written by Kelli Williams.
According to at least one source, the 'zine is well-presented enough to merit some serious thought.
I didn't get a chance to read the 'zine in its entirety as I leafed through it at the Papercut Zine Library in Cambridge, MA, but it did seem to present a pretty solid case. In addition to citing statistics on adult-onset lactose intolerance, Williams shows on one page how Kurt's name (also spelled Kurdt) in just two single-letter substitutions, becomes "curds."
She also applied scansion to the problem, pointing out that "Kurt Cobain" scans exactly the same as "curds and whey," the syllables falling in a stressed-unstressed-stressed pattern:
KURT co-BAIN = CURDS and WHEY
This was the point at which I was convinced, and let it hereby be known: Any conspiracy theorist willing to apply scansion to prove their madcap theories' viability can rely on my credulous recounting of said theory to all.
This post will serve as my proof of sincerity.
Mmm...Wings.
If you've ever seen entire pigeon wings lying slightly bloodied on the sidewalk -- or tufts of feathers comprising partial wings -- and wondered how they got there, wonder no more: Rats eat pigeons.
And have the sort of table manners one would expect from rats, apparently.
And have the sort of table manners one would expect from rats, apparently.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Increase Your Will Power
The Times has an article in the op-ed section today -- one that, by all accounts, actually belongs in the science section -- about people's capacity for self-control. Apparently, in the short term, people have only limited willpower available to them. The amount of willpower available at any given moment may be, at least in part, a function of blood-sugar levels; the brain needs blood sugar to function, and it takes quite a bit of energy to resist something tempting (or not resist something repellant). People asked to do two self-control-intensive activities in a row had more difficulty with the second task when given diet lemonade (no sugar) between tasks, but did equally well on the two tasks when given regular lemonade (lots of sugar). In the short term, sugar seems to actually increase self-control.
The article does not discuss the implication that this will revolutionize modern parenting methods. ("Pixie stix before homework, kids! You know the rule!")
Despite the quick pick-me-up available in glucose-rich foods, the authors caution readers to save their willpower for things that really need doing; let the housework go, they say, if you've got a test to study for.
I don't doubt the results of the studies cited by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, but my approach is usually the opposite: If I've got a test to study for, the first thing I do is start cleaning. Procrastination is as good a study method as last-minute panic is a reliable motivator. But maybe they're right; maybe I should have been spending my time eating Oreos and watching Simpsons reruns instead of stacking papers and vacuuming. My test scores may have suffered as a result of my diligence.
Aamodt and Wang also say that over time, people can build up their overall capacity for self-control, and practicing self-control in one area of life seems to help other areas, too. The article notes that people committing to a two-month exercise regimen also experience a reduction in "impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework." Willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened, they say.
In addition to the tasks given to study participants, who were asked to eat radishes or stare at an unchanging video of a table and chair, "other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone."
"Trying to impress someone" seems like a strange addition to this list, until you take a moment to consider what it really means: suppressing the impulse to act like an idiot. (For some reason, this impulse is highly correlated with being around someone you want to impress.)
Aamodt and Wang conclude that any activity that requires self-control will increase willpower -- "and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life."
Well in that case, bring it on, life.
I'm ready to resist all you have to offer.
The article does not discuss the implication that this will revolutionize modern parenting methods. ("Pixie stix before homework, kids! You know the rule!")
Despite the quick pick-me-up available in glucose-rich foods, the authors caution readers to save their willpower for things that really need doing; let the housework go, they say, if you've got a test to study for.
I don't doubt the results of the studies cited by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, but my approach is usually the opposite: If I've got a test to study for, the first thing I do is start cleaning. Procrastination is as good a study method as last-minute panic is a reliable motivator. But maybe they're right; maybe I should have been spending my time eating Oreos and watching Simpsons reruns instead of stacking papers and vacuuming. My test scores may have suffered as a result of my diligence.
Aamodt and Wang also say that over time, people can build up their overall capacity for self-control, and practicing self-control in one area of life seems to help other areas, too. The article notes that people committing to a two-month exercise regimen also experience a reduction in "impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework." Willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened, they say.
In addition to the tasks given to study participants, who were asked to eat radishes or stare at an unchanging video of a table and chair, "other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone."
"Trying to impress someone" seems like a strange addition to this list, until you take a moment to consider what it really means: suppressing the impulse to act like an idiot. (For some reason, this impulse is highly correlated with being around someone you want to impress.)
Aamodt and Wang conclude that any activity that requires self-control will increase willpower -- "and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life."
Well in that case, bring it on, life.
I'm ready to resist all you have to offer.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
I'm a mad, mad, mad, mad girl.
Since I started working as a job coach six months ago, the job has changed an infinite number of times. I got the call about my application two weeks after I put it in -- when, as I left, they said "You'll hear from us tomorrow" -- but was slow to pick up hours. I had been hired to work with a girl in her home, four or five days a week. Three weeks into the job, I had shadowed with just about every possible client, but the girl I was meant to work with was still sick, and no one knew when she was likely to get better.
I was assigned, in the meantime, to a male client two days a week, whose three-days-a-week job coach did an excellent job preparing me.
"He will suck out your soul," Josh, the job coach, said to me. "He will take whatever you give and take more. If you tell him anything about yourself or your family or anything, he will use it to manipulate you. Don't give him anything."
I believed Josh. He spoke so seriously and emphatically that I couldn't do otherwise.
I worked well with this client for three months, until the day we went with my supervisor and the girl I work with now, to Pizza Hut.
We should have known things were going to go wrong. This client has social anxiety, so it was difficult for him to spend time with others; having an outing with my supervisor and another client was probably enough stress for one day. But both clients said they wanted Pizza Hut for lunch, and my supervisor said she would drive, so we piled into the car and went.
It might still have turned out alright if Pizza Hut hadn't been hosting a four-year-old's birthday party that day.
As I talked with my supervisor about work-related issues, I watched as my client grew increasingly strange -- muttering to himself, gesturing, seeming to speak in tongues -- and when it was time to leave, I tried to get us out the door quickly while he pretended to confront Pizza Hut staff, thrusting his chest forward and putting his hands out as though to say "you want a piece of me?" I was the only one watching.
On the ride back, he refused to put on his seatbelt. He had admitted to me two days before that he sometimes didn't wear it when he wanted to get attention; I told him this was completely unacceptable, that it was unsafe, and that he knew he could get attention by asking for it instead of engaging in these behaviors. He had agreed and indicated that he wouldn't pull that again.
I spoke to him on that ride back, in my supervisor's car, as sternly as I ever had -- as sternly as I ever will, in fact.
When I got him home, he was silent and restrained. I left.
After I left, he had a meltdown and was restrained -- physically, by staff at his group home.
Later, another one of the guys from the home saw me in the library and began talking about my former client.
"He was sayin all this stuff about you," the boy said. "He said he would rape you."
I got myself out of the conversation, I think able to conceal the instant, all-consuming rage I felt at hearing this.
This client had no history of violence or physical confrontation, and I had spent hundreds of hours with him over the three months I was working with him. I don't believe that his statement was anything more than an empty threat. That didn't make me less angry; it made me more angry.
I went to work with the girl I had been hired for, having been told that after having her gall bladder removed, she should no longer be getting sick every hour.
In the hour and a half that I was there, she threw up five times, announcing with an evil-looking grin each time that she was "going to puke" -- teasing, or threatening, I couldn't tell which, but following through every time. I left for the day feeling nauseous and never went back.
My supervisor assigned me to the girl I work with now right after Christmas. It's been a tough couple of months, at times, as my girl is challenging and doesn't always cooperate. But I've come to appreciate her sense of humor and ability to stand up for herself and her sporadic affability. I like her and we generally work well together.
So when my supervisor told me that due to staff losses, she'd like me to double-up this Wednesday -- that is, take two clients at once, though I'll only be paid for one -- I accepted it without complaint. My girl and the male client who will be with us get along well, and she and I were already excited about our plans for the day: a community movie at the library.
If my girl does well at work each week and spends part of Mondays looking for jobs, she is rewarded by movie Wednesdays. When there aren't community movies, we watch a movie on my laptop, which is less impressive and does not have the advantage of getting her out into the community. (It also has the disadvantage of requiring movie selection; while she would love to sit and watch Chucky movies all day, she's not allowed to -- for good reason. As an alternative, she often picks such family-friendly drivel as Zeus and Roxanne -- a movie about an unlikely friendship between a mongrel dog and a dolphin, starring Steve Gutenberg.)
We prefer community movie days and look forward to them all month.
Today, though, my supervisor calls and tells me that the second client I'll be taking tomorrow -- who I don't normally work with at all -- has a job interview in a place twenty minutes' drive from the community movie library, in the middle of the day. Which wrecks the movie plan.
It's probably stupid that I'm as angry about this wrecking of my girl's Wednesday plans as I was about being threatened with rape, but I am.
It's not my fault that the organization hasn't hired anyone to handle the amount of work they've taken on. It's not my fault that the guy's other job coach didn't tell anyone until today that this job interview existed. It's not my fault there's no one else to take him. More importantly, it's not my girl's fault, and she's the one who would be most put out by the alteration. I had carefully prepared her on Monday for the likelihood that we would be taking along the male client, knowing that the unpredictable can derail even the most wonderful plans. These clients thrive on routine and are wrecked by the unexpected.
"She's been doing well lately," I told my supervisor. "It bothers me that her plans should be changed like this. What is she supposed to do during the interview?"
My supervisor, who often refers to me as one of her best job coaches -- "like an assistant to me," she says -- seemed to sense my barely concealed hostility, and she didn't have many answers to mitigate it. She didn't know the name of the contact person, or even of the company at which the client was to interview. She didn't know what I was supposed to do with two line-of-sight clients (job coaches should always be able to see them) if one was interviewing while the other waited outside. She didn't know of any other job coaches who could take him.
By the end of the conversation, she said I should just go ahead with my original plans. She said she would have dealt with this issue earlier in the day if another client -- the one I worked with as a sub last week -- had not needed to be removed from Walmart for getting into a confrontation. She would see what she could do, she said.
I guess now I know what I can do: slightly less than this.
I was assigned, in the meantime, to a male client two days a week, whose three-days-a-week job coach did an excellent job preparing me.
"He will suck out your soul," Josh, the job coach, said to me. "He will take whatever you give and take more. If you tell him anything about yourself or your family or anything, he will use it to manipulate you. Don't give him anything."
I believed Josh. He spoke so seriously and emphatically that I couldn't do otherwise.
I worked well with this client for three months, until the day we went with my supervisor and the girl I work with now, to Pizza Hut.
We should have known things were going to go wrong. This client has social anxiety, so it was difficult for him to spend time with others; having an outing with my supervisor and another client was probably enough stress for one day. But both clients said they wanted Pizza Hut for lunch, and my supervisor said she would drive, so we piled into the car and went.
It might still have turned out alright if Pizza Hut hadn't been hosting a four-year-old's birthday party that day.
As I talked with my supervisor about work-related issues, I watched as my client grew increasingly strange -- muttering to himself, gesturing, seeming to speak in tongues -- and when it was time to leave, I tried to get us out the door quickly while he pretended to confront Pizza Hut staff, thrusting his chest forward and putting his hands out as though to say "you want a piece of me?" I was the only one watching.
On the ride back, he refused to put on his seatbelt. He had admitted to me two days before that he sometimes didn't wear it when he wanted to get attention; I told him this was completely unacceptable, that it was unsafe, and that he knew he could get attention by asking for it instead of engaging in these behaviors. He had agreed and indicated that he wouldn't pull that again.
I spoke to him on that ride back, in my supervisor's car, as sternly as I ever had -- as sternly as I ever will, in fact.
When I got him home, he was silent and restrained. I left.
After I left, he had a meltdown and was restrained -- physically, by staff at his group home.
Later, another one of the guys from the home saw me in the library and began talking about my former client.
"He was sayin all this stuff about you," the boy said. "He said he would rape you."
I got myself out of the conversation, I think able to conceal the instant, all-consuming rage I felt at hearing this.
This client had no history of violence or physical confrontation, and I had spent hundreds of hours with him over the three months I was working with him. I don't believe that his statement was anything more than an empty threat. That didn't make me less angry; it made me more angry.
I went to work with the girl I had been hired for, having been told that after having her gall bladder removed, she should no longer be getting sick every hour.
In the hour and a half that I was there, she threw up five times, announcing with an evil-looking grin each time that she was "going to puke" -- teasing, or threatening, I couldn't tell which, but following through every time. I left for the day feeling nauseous and never went back.
My supervisor assigned me to the girl I work with now right after Christmas. It's been a tough couple of months, at times, as my girl is challenging and doesn't always cooperate. But I've come to appreciate her sense of humor and ability to stand up for herself and her sporadic affability. I like her and we generally work well together.
So when my supervisor told me that due to staff losses, she'd like me to double-up this Wednesday -- that is, take two clients at once, though I'll only be paid for one -- I accepted it without complaint. My girl and the male client who will be with us get along well, and she and I were already excited about our plans for the day: a community movie at the library.
If my girl does well at work each week and spends part of Mondays looking for jobs, she is rewarded by movie Wednesdays. When there aren't community movies, we watch a movie on my laptop, which is less impressive and does not have the advantage of getting her out into the community. (It also has the disadvantage of requiring movie selection; while she would love to sit and watch Chucky movies all day, she's not allowed to -- for good reason. As an alternative, she often picks such family-friendly drivel as Zeus and Roxanne -- a movie about an unlikely friendship between a mongrel dog and a dolphin, starring Steve Gutenberg.)
We prefer community movie days and look forward to them all month.
Today, though, my supervisor calls and tells me that the second client I'll be taking tomorrow -- who I don't normally work with at all -- has a job interview in a place twenty minutes' drive from the community movie library, in the middle of the day. Which wrecks the movie plan.
It's probably stupid that I'm as angry about this wrecking of my girl's Wednesday plans as I was about being threatened with rape, but I am.
It's not my fault that the organization hasn't hired anyone to handle the amount of work they've taken on. It's not my fault that the guy's other job coach didn't tell anyone until today that this job interview existed. It's not my fault there's no one else to take him. More importantly, it's not my girl's fault, and she's the one who would be most put out by the alteration. I had carefully prepared her on Monday for the likelihood that we would be taking along the male client, knowing that the unpredictable can derail even the most wonderful plans. These clients thrive on routine and are wrecked by the unexpected.
"She's been doing well lately," I told my supervisor. "It bothers me that her plans should be changed like this. What is she supposed to do during the interview?"
My supervisor, who often refers to me as one of her best job coaches -- "like an assistant to me," she says -- seemed to sense my barely concealed hostility, and she didn't have many answers to mitigate it. She didn't know the name of the contact person, or even of the company at which the client was to interview. She didn't know what I was supposed to do with two line-of-sight clients (job coaches should always be able to see them) if one was interviewing while the other waited outside. She didn't know of any other job coaches who could take him.
By the end of the conversation, she said I should just go ahead with my original plans. She said she would have dealt with this issue earlier in the day if another client -- the one I worked with as a sub last week -- had not needed to be removed from Walmart for getting into a confrontation. She would see what she could do, she said.
I guess now I know what I can do: slightly less than this.
APRIL FOOL
Rob Brezany, of the oxymoronically named "Free Will Astrology" in the Hartford Advocate, showed a sense of humor -- an inane, annoying one -- by writing the opposite of his weekly predictions, then inserting "APRIL FOOL!" into the middle of each horoscope. He finished them up by contradicting his previously stated predictions.
Good one, Rob. You're a real winner.
Good one, Rob. You're a real winner.
NOW we know: We're in this forever.
According to the AP, the Army has begun letting husbands and wives live and sleep together in Iraq. Instead of returning to single-sex barracks at night, married couples are allowed to live in small trailers with "two pushed-together single beds," according to Staff Sgt. Marvin Frazier as quoted in the article.
This isn't exactly a report of canopy beds with his-and-hers monogrammed towels, but it does seem to be a concession to the probable continuation of the war; setting up house in a foreign country usually means you're going to be there for awhile. And it's been going on since May 2006, meaning that the Army has known for awhile that victory was not one or two skirmishes away.
The reason for the change is morale. Tours of duty running 12 and 15 months, and soldiers being re-enlisted and redeployed without signing on any "I'm happy to extend" dotted lines, mean that marriages are suffering, even marriages between two people in the military who have been assigned to the same location. The concession is unprecedented, partly (as the article points out) because the Gulf War was too short to necessitate major policy changes such as this one, and partly (I would guess) because women have only recently been sent into war zones as active military personnel.
This represents, I think, a further shift in Army mentality -- marked by their ads, in recent years, celebrating the individual as "an Army of One" and emphasizing the personal (often financial) benefits of joining up -- which used to be a "break 'em down and build 'em up again as good, unquestioning, loyal soldiers" sort of organization. This seems to be a philosophical break with their past -- with their entire raison d'etre, in fact.
The other major question this raises, at least in my mind, is "Trailers? Where'd they get those?" (Hurricane Katrina aftermath?)
And where are they keeping them? I understand that much of Iraq is desert, which seems like free space just waiting to be trailered, but aren't the troops stationed mainly near populated areas? Doesn't the profusion of trailers present some sort of tactical liability? Wouldn't the trailers increase the area requiring guard? There are probably more places to hide around and under small trailers than barracks, right? At what point do they become indefensible?
But these issues are only relevant in the case of a glut of trailers; if we're talking two or three per base, they're hardly worth mentioning.
So how many soldiers are taking advantage of the policy?
The Army, bizarrely, claims not to know how many married couples are living together; it says it "doesn't keep track."
Doesn't keep track at all of how many trailers it's required to defend? The Army doesn't have statistics on this? Seriously?
This indicates either that the Army is lying and expects us not to notice -- taking its cues from the president, one can only imagine -- or else that the situation within the military is much, much worse than even the most pessimistic of us thought.
At least some of the soldiers, who I imagine hanging curtains in trailer windows and adopting pets over the next few years, will likely be able to translate between the second generation of American military and the people of the land we occupy. That's something.
This isn't exactly a report of canopy beds with his-and-hers monogrammed towels, but it does seem to be a concession to the probable continuation of the war; setting up house in a foreign country usually means you're going to be there for awhile. And it's been going on since May 2006, meaning that the Army has known for awhile that victory was not one or two skirmishes away.
The reason for the change is morale. Tours of duty running 12 and 15 months, and soldiers being re-enlisted and redeployed without signing on any "I'm happy to extend" dotted lines, mean that marriages are suffering, even marriages between two people in the military who have been assigned to the same location. The concession is unprecedented, partly (as the article points out) because the Gulf War was too short to necessitate major policy changes such as this one, and partly (I would guess) because women have only recently been sent into war zones as active military personnel.
This represents, I think, a further shift in Army mentality -- marked by their ads, in recent years, celebrating the individual as "an Army of One" and emphasizing the personal (often financial) benefits of joining up -- which used to be a "break 'em down and build 'em up again as good, unquestioning, loyal soldiers" sort of organization. This seems to be a philosophical break with their past -- with their entire raison d'etre, in fact.
The other major question this raises, at least in my mind, is "Trailers? Where'd they get those?" (Hurricane Katrina aftermath?)
And where are they keeping them? I understand that much of Iraq is desert, which seems like free space just waiting to be trailered, but aren't the troops stationed mainly near populated areas? Doesn't the profusion of trailers present some sort of tactical liability? Wouldn't the trailers increase the area requiring guard? There are probably more places to hide around and under small trailers than barracks, right? At what point do they become indefensible?
But these issues are only relevant in the case of a glut of trailers; if we're talking two or three per base, they're hardly worth mentioning.
So how many soldiers are taking advantage of the policy?
The Army, bizarrely, claims not to know how many married couples are living together; it says it "doesn't keep track."
Doesn't keep track at all of how many trailers it's required to defend? The Army doesn't have statistics on this? Seriously?
This indicates either that the Army is lying and expects us not to notice -- taking its cues from the president, one can only imagine -- or else that the situation within the military is much, much worse than even the most pessimistic of us thought.
At least some of the soldiers, who I imagine hanging curtains in trailer windows and adopting pets over the next few years, will likely be able to translate between the second generation of American military and the people of the land we occupy. That's something.
Monday, March 31, 2008
"Saint Andrew, I've been true."
I have believed in story arcs: conflict, climax, resolution. I have believed that life is secretly like The Wonder Years, needing only a voice-over narrator to balance the story and smooth over the edges. I have not believed in chaos.
This certainty, this reliance on a grand-design narrative, is the hallmark of a True Believer, and I have been one. I have attributed actions and events variously to God or to the devil, to testing or trials or punishments or sin or saintliness. I have been reassured by identification of causes, and their effects.
I have repented and been washed of my doubts.
I have turned from repentance, and embraced them.
If God had allowed me to go to Vietnam when I most wanted to – when I had wanted to for ten years – I might have forgiven him. But he sent me to China instead.
If God had not broken apart the plans to live together, with friends, after college, I might have forgiven him that – or if God had not so drastically altered the school at which I taught in DC, I might have been merciful.
If God had allowed me to move to York and start a community, I may have been at peace. But I could not, and so I wasn’t.
If God had not included so many stories of these breaks and alterations and disappointments in the Bible, I might have had the strength to leave him – but they anticipate my complaints, my accusations, my enraged confusion, so I cannot. I cannot purge my body of this understanding that God, some God, exists.
It has been slowly coming into me that God, some God, is not causes and not effects, but something else. This God may be mystery; this God may be the strange harmony of coming into a new place and recognizing, and being recognized. This God may not care what I do or who or why I am the way I am. This God may happen to everyone, regardless. This God may want to love choice and complexity instead of steadfast, earnest purity. This God -- capricious and strange and real -- may allow me, out.
I cannot prevent myself believing in God -- I only don’t know which God is true -- but I am departing the first to be received by the second. I only need to come to terms with chaos, with my id-love for it. I need to embrace mystery and harmony and no-explanations.
At the crux of my soul, I am as I have always been. I believe, and I protect my belief, my innocence from fatal, soul-killing error, with walls and walls and walls -- the same walls, and the same beliefs. Only the walls are changing.
The center still holds.
This certainty, this reliance on a grand-design narrative, is the hallmark of a True Believer, and I have been one. I have attributed actions and events variously to God or to the devil, to testing or trials or punishments or sin or saintliness. I have been reassured by identification of causes, and their effects.
I have repented and been washed of my doubts.
I have turned from repentance, and embraced them.
If God had allowed me to go to Vietnam when I most wanted to – when I had wanted to for ten years – I might have forgiven him. But he sent me to China instead.
If God had not broken apart the plans to live together, with friends, after college, I might have forgiven him that – or if God had not so drastically altered the school at which I taught in DC, I might have been merciful.
If God had allowed me to move to York and start a community, I may have been at peace. But I could not, and so I wasn’t.
If God had not included so many stories of these breaks and alterations and disappointments in the Bible, I might have had the strength to leave him – but they anticipate my complaints, my accusations, my enraged confusion, so I cannot. I cannot purge my body of this understanding that God, some God, exists.
It has been slowly coming into me that God, some God, is not causes and not effects, but something else. This God may be mystery; this God may be the strange harmony of coming into a new place and recognizing, and being recognized. This God may not care what I do or who or why I am the way I am. This God may happen to everyone, regardless. This God may want to love choice and complexity instead of steadfast, earnest purity. This God -- capricious and strange and real -- may allow me, out.
I cannot prevent myself believing in God -- I only don’t know which God is true -- but I am departing the first to be received by the second. I only need to come to terms with chaos, with my id-love for it. I need to embrace mystery and harmony and no-explanations.
At the crux of my soul, I am as I have always been. I believe, and I protect my belief, my innocence from fatal, soul-killing error, with walls and walls and walls -- the same walls, and the same beliefs. Only the walls are changing.
The center still holds.
Fair Warning
I remember standing near the window seat in my first room at our old, old, old house on Buell St. (three houses ago, from when we stopped adding "olds" to indicate how many had come since), with Tyler. We moved out of that house when I was nine; I would guess I was about seven on this day, which would have made Tyler four.
I remember the solemnity with which I addressed him -- that seriousness that only children can pull off unselfconsciously.
"Tyler," I said to him, and made sure he was listening, "I want to bite your finger."
He considered this for a few seconds.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "I'm going to bite it very hard."
He paused again, longer this time.
"Okay," he said. He held up his hand as though offering a sacrifice to the gods, and I took it in mine, selected his smallest finger, put it in my mouth, and bit it. Hard.
(True story.)
I just wanted to feel what it was like to bite something, a person, as hard as I wanted. I thought for sure -- I guess the last time I had injured my brother, I had lied about it afterward or something -- that if I were honest, I couldn't get in trouble. Unfortunately, Tyler, though he believed what I said when I told him it would hurt, cried out and Mom came into the room, and I was punished for hurting him, despite my warning him in advance.
"But I told the truth," I protested. I remember thinking that this was all that should have mattered; of course, it wasn't.
The reality is that there's no such thing as fair warning.
I remember the solemnity with which I addressed him -- that seriousness that only children can pull off unselfconsciously.
"Tyler," I said to him, and made sure he was listening, "I want to bite your finger."
He considered this for a few seconds.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "I'm going to bite it very hard."
He paused again, longer this time.
"Okay," he said. He held up his hand as though offering a sacrifice to the gods, and I took it in mine, selected his smallest finger, put it in my mouth, and bit it. Hard.
(True story.)
I just wanted to feel what it was like to bite something, a person, as hard as I wanted. I thought for sure -- I guess the last time I had injured my brother, I had lied about it afterward or something -- that if I were honest, I couldn't get in trouble. Unfortunately, Tyler, though he believed what I said when I told him it would hurt, cried out and Mom came into the room, and I was punished for hurting him, despite my warning him in advance.
"But I told the truth," I protested. I remember thinking that this was all that should have mattered; of course, it wasn't.
The reality is that there's no such thing as fair warning.
Confessions, VI
I’ve lost a minimum of 15 lbs. in the past 6 weeks.
When I was little, I gave Tyler pink Silly Putty and told him it was gum.
I’ve never been to Rhode Island, Maine or Canada, and had never been to New York City before the towers fell, despite living the first eighteen years of my life in Connecticut.
When I was little, I gave Tyler pink Silly Putty and told him it was gum.
I’ve never been to Rhode Island, Maine or Canada, and had never been to New York City before the towers fell, despite living the first eighteen years of my life in Connecticut.
CDs I got on the basis of one song, hoping for the best
And was horribly, horribly disappointed:
Fuel – Best of Fuel (turns out it should have been a single)
Gary Jules – trading snakeoil for wolftickets
Go Fish – infectious
Jojo – The High Road
Nickelback – Silver Side Up
And felt neutral about:
3 Doors Down – Away from the Sun
All American Rejects – Move Along
Annie Lennox – Medusa
Blind Melon – Blind Melon
Eagle Eye Cherry – Desireless
Indigo Girls – Retrospective
Maxwell – Now
Natalie Merchant – Tigerlily
Spandau Ballet – Gold: Best of Spandau Ballet
The Fray – How to Save a Life
Train – Train
And was justified completely:
Alan Parsons Project – Ultimate Alan Parsons Project
Barenaked Ladies – Stunt, Maroon
Blues Traveler – four
Collective Soul – Dosage
Counting Crows – August and Everything After
Damien Rice – O
Dido – No Angel
Interpol – Our Love to Admire
Killers – Hot Fuss
Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
Live – Throwing Copper
Mr. Mister – Best of Mr. Mister
Nelly Furtado – Loose
Nirvana – Nevermind
Pet Shop Boys – Discography
Peter Gabriel – So, Car
Radiohead – OK Computer
Sarah McLachlan – afterglow
Talking Heads – Best of Talking Heads
Toad the Wet Sprocket – PS: A Toad Retrospective
Various – Felicity soundtrack
White Stripes – Icky Thump
Fuel – Best of Fuel (turns out it should have been a single)
Gary Jules – trading snakeoil for wolftickets
Go Fish – infectious
Jojo – The High Road
Nickelback – Silver Side Up
And felt neutral about:
3 Doors Down – Away from the Sun
All American Rejects – Move Along
Annie Lennox – Medusa
Blind Melon – Blind Melon
Eagle Eye Cherry – Desireless
Indigo Girls – Retrospective
Maxwell – Now
Natalie Merchant – Tigerlily
Spandau Ballet – Gold: Best of Spandau Ballet
The Fray – How to Save a Life
Train – Train
And was justified completely:
Alan Parsons Project – Ultimate Alan Parsons Project
Barenaked Ladies – Stunt, Maroon
Blues Traveler – four
Collective Soul – Dosage
Counting Crows – August and Everything After
Damien Rice – O
Dido – No Angel
Interpol – Our Love to Admire
Killers – Hot Fuss
Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
Live – Throwing Copper
Mr. Mister – Best of Mr. Mister
Nelly Furtado – Loose
Nirvana – Nevermind
Pet Shop Boys – Discography
Peter Gabriel – So, Car
Radiohead – OK Computer
Sarah McLachlan – afterglow
Talking Heads – Best of Talking Heads
Toad the Wet Sprocket – PS: A Toad Retrospective
Various – Felicity soundtrack
White Stripes – Icky Thump
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Old Men I Would Gladly Pay to See in a Movie
Jim Broadbent
Michael Caine
Morgan Freeman
Anthony Hopkins
Mandy Patinkin
James Spader (not really old yet, but I like ’im.)
Michael Caine
Morgan Freeman
Anthony Hopkins
Mandy Patinkin
James Spader (not really old yet, but I like ’im.)
"He's much older than you."
I’ve been subbing recently for a male client whose job is to collect carts from the parking lot of a Walmart. We walk the parking lot two or three times, collecting six or seven carts at a time, when there are any, and then walk the circle inside the store looking for strays left by shoppers who have decided against buying anything.
As we walked the inner circle the other day, weaving around palettes of diapers and DVDs, my client informed me that there would be no black people left in America by the year 2050. (He’s African-American.)
“Oh?” I said, trying to be neutral. “Where’d you hear that?”
“It’s true,” he said.
“Yeah, but where did you hear it?”
“I heard it. It was on TV.”
“Well, sometimes the news predicts things that they think might be true, but they can’t really know what’s going to happen in 2050, because it’s not 2050 yet.”
He took on a condescending air: “My father says it’s true. You know, he’s much older than you. He’s wise. He’s wisdom. He was in the Army for 26 years.”
I bristled. There were too many things wrong with this set of statements: the misunderstanding of predicting the future based on current statistics, versus fact; the idea that age naturally confers wisdom; the grammar; the appeal to my faith in the Army as a source of wisdom (as a pacifist, I would argue that the Armed Services do all they can to NOT make people wise; as a Navy brat, I snort derisively at the idea that the ARMY, of all services, could do it. Not bloody likely).
“But I’m just saying I hope it’s not true,” I said. “I hope there are still African-Americans in 2050. These things could change.”
“You don’t understand what I’m saying,” he said. “I’m smart. I’m very smart.”
I stared straight ahead to keep from rolling my eyes.
“Yes, of course you are,” I said, not sarcastically.
He’s one of the only clients we have who lives on his own, with full-time staff, and who has received a high school diploma. He is smart; unfortunately, that wasn’t the point. It’s that he’s not teachable. He refuses to receive instruction.
It’s rare that my teaching instincts are at odds with my professional responsibility as a job coach. I wanted to set him straight, but saw that we would probably have an issue if I tried. I let it go. We spend most of the rest of the day discussing his workout routine and how impressed several of his staff were at how “cut” he was.
“Sometimes I wear a muscle shirt,” he confided in me, looking at me sideways. “I look really good.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied. “It’s important to be healthy. What about that cart over there?”
The next time I was with him, a few days later, we were coming in from the parking lot when a man in one of the complimentary automatic-riding carts – provided for people who have trouble walking through the store – rode out. He saw us coming in and waved his arm up and down, shouting “Hi-ho, Bingo! Away!” as though spurring on his cart the way a cowboy would spur his horse. I laughed. My client glowered.
As we continued into the store, my client turned to me.
“Did you see what that man did?” he said, almost sputtering in anger.
“Yeah, he was pretending his cart was a horse,” I said, trying to cut off whatever interpretation he had of the customer’s joke.
“He was so rude!” my client said, still fuming.
We went outside for more carts.
“I’m going to find him,” my client said, beginning to head off in the direction the disabled man had gone, a menacing look on his face. (This was not an idle threat; he has physically confronted customers in the past.) I said the man had probably already left, that we needed to get more carts in, that the customer almost certainly hadn’t meant it as an insult but as a joke. It must be hard to be in a cart that can’t go very fast, I said. A person has to be able to joke about that kind of thing. My client was beginning to calm down and attend to errant carts again.
“Sometimes, I imagine what it would be like to not be able to walk,” I said. “I think it would be really hard. Do you ever imagine that?”
“What?”
“If you couldn’t walk?”
“What are you saying? Don’t be rude!” he responded.
I thought he meant the customer, but a few sentences later he made it clear that he had meant me.
“You know I’m ignoring you right now, don’t you?” he said, facing me and waiting for me to respond.
“No, I didn’t, actually,” I said, and pulled the magazine out of my coat pocket. “Well, just let me know when you’re ready to talk it through, and we can do that.”
It took about ten minutes of my following him around – which, after all, is my job – and reading my magazine before he started to talk to me again. He had thought I was accusing him of not being able to walk and had taken my attempt at modeling empathy as an insult. (He probably should have, but not as this kind of insult.) I explained that I had just been telling him what I sometimes do – imagining myself in other people’s shoes – that might help explain why some people did what they did, and that most of the time, people probably weren’t meaning to be rude. He seemed to accept this, but couldn’t imagine the customer’s actions as anything but a personal insult. I dropped it and changed the subject.
We went the rest of the day without incident, even joking, but I knew that I would never really bond with this client.
As we left the store at the end of his shift, he waved his hand in front of his face to indicate a bad smell. There was a nail salon right next to a Subway just inside the Walmart, and I didn’t know which he was referring to. Somehow, there was a smell of fish lingering in the air.
“Smells like fish in there,” I said as we headed out to my car.
“No, the opposite of fish,” he said.
I was interested to hear this.
“What’s the opposite of fish?” I asked.
“Woman fish,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to embarrass you,” he replied, and laughed to himself.
“Alright,” I said.
Whatever, I thought.
And I drove him home.
As we walked the inner circle the other day, weaving around palettes of diapers and DVDs, my client informed me that there would be no black people left in America by the year 2050. (He’s African-American.)
“Oh?” I said, trying to be neutral. “Where’d you hear that?”
“It’s true,” he said.
“Yeah, but where did you hear it?”
“I heard it. It was on TV.”
“Well, sometimes the news predicts things that they think might be true, but they can’t really know what’s going to happen in 2050, because it’s not 2050 yet.”
He took on a condescending air: “My father says it’s true. You know, he’s much older than you. He’s wise. He’s wisdom. He was in the Army for 26 years.”
I bristled. There were too many things wrong with this set of statements: the misunderstanding of predicting the future based on current statistics, versus fact; the idea that age naturally confers wisdom; the grammar; the appeal to my faith in the Army as a source of wisdom (as a pacifist, I would argue that the Armed Services do all they can to NOT make people wise; as a Navy brat, I snort derisively at the idea that the ARMY, of all services, could do it. Not bloody likely).
“But I’m just saying I hope it’s not true,” I said. “I hope there are still African-Americans in 2050. These things could change.”
“You don’t understand what I’m saying,” he said. “I’m smart. I’m very smart.”
I stared straight ahead to keep from rolling my eyes.
“Yes, of course you are,” I said, not sarcastically.
He’s one of the only clients we have who lives on his own, with full-time staff, and who has received a high school diploma. He is smart; unfortunately, that wasn’t the point. It’s that he’s not teachable. He refuses to receive instruction.
It’s rare that my teaching instincts are at odds with my professional responsibility as a job coach. I wanted to set him straight, but saw that we would probably have an issue if I tried. I let it go. We spend most of the rest of the day discussing his workout routine and how impressed several of his staff were at how “cut” he was.
“Sometimes I wear a muscle shirt,” he confided in me, looking at me sideways. “I look really good.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied. “It’s important to be healthy. What about that cart over there?”
The next time I was with him, a few days later, we were coming in from the parking lot when a man in one of the complimentary automatic-riding carts – provided for people who have trouble walking through the store – rode out. He saw us coming in and waved his arm up and down, shouting “Hi-ho, Bingo! Away!” as though spurring on his cart the way a cowboy would spur his horse. I laughed. My client glowered.
As we continued into the store, my client turned to me.
“Did you see what that man did?” he said, almost sputtering in anger.
“Yeah, he was pretending his cart was a horse,” I said, trying to cut off whatever interpretation he had of the customer’s joke.
“He was so rude!” my client said, still fuming.
We went outside for more carts.
“I’m going to find him,” my client said, beginning to head off in the direction the disabled man had gone, a menacing look on his face. (This was not an idle threat; he has physically confronted customers in the past.) I said the man had probably already left, that we needed to get more carts in, that the customer almost certainly hadn’t meant it as an insult but as a joke. It must be hard to be in a cart that can’t go very fast, I said. A person has to be able to joke about that kind of thing. My client was beginning to calm down and attend to errant carts again.
“Sometimes, I imagine what it would be like to not be able to walk,” I said. “I think it would be really hard. Do you ever imagine that?”
“What?”
“If you couldn’t walk?”
“What are you saying? Don’t be rude!” he responded.
I thought he meant the customer, but a few sentences later he made it clear that he had meant me.
“You know I’m ignoring you right now, don’t you?” he said, facing me and waiting for me to respond.
“No, I didn’t, actually,” I said, and pulled the magazine out of my coat pocket. “Well, just let me know when you’re ready to talk it through, and we can do that.”
It took about ten minutes of my following him around – which, after all, is my job – and reading my magazine before he started to talk to me again. He had thought I was accusing him of not being able to walk and had taken my attempt at modeling empathy as an insult. (He probably should have, but not as this kind of insult.) I explained that I had just been telling him what I sometimes do – imagining myself in other people’s shoes – that might help explain why some people did what they did, and that most of the time, people probably weren’t meaning to be rude. He seemed to accept this, but couldn’t imagine the customer’s actions as anything but a personal insult. I dropped it and changed the subject.
We went the rest of the day without incident, even joking, but I knew that I would never really bond with this client.
As we left the store at the end of his shift, he waved his hand in front of his face to indicate a bad smell. There was a nail salon right next to a Subway just inside the Walmart, and I didn’t know which he was referring to. Somehow, there was a smell of fish lingering in the air.
“Smells like fish in there,” I said as we headed out to my car.
“No, the opposite of fish,” he said.
I was interested to hear this.
“What’s the opposite of fish?” I asked.
“Woman fish,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to embarrass you,” he replied, and laughed to himself.
“Alright,” I said.
Whatever, I thought.
And I drove him home.
Friday, March 28, 2008
(Really, really) Personals
Hartford Advocate, March 6 edition, "Man seeking woman" personal ad section:
PLEASE HELP ME
SWM, 39, very lonely on disability for depression, expert on 60s rock music, reaching out for companionship, please respond. Hamden
PLEASE HELP ME
SWM, 39, very lonely on disability for depression, expert on 60s rock music, reaching out for companionship, please respond. Hamden
Maxime
One of my greatest accomplishments in China, in teaching, and possibly in life, was teaching Maxime to speak English.
The first half of my first year in China was rough. In addition to the anorectic phase, there was a severe learning curve in figuring out how to teach. I had fourth, ninth, and tenth through twelfth grades, and my fourth graders were the “B” group, so they were more like second-grade-level English speakers. I spent almost all of my class time on classroom management.
Maxime, the French student I was assigned to tutor, was no exception. I spent much more time than necessary trying to get this wiggly nine-year-old to sit still and read a book aloud during the first half of the year, and he resented me for it. He was in a class of his own, literally, in a small room at the back of the school library, and was also learning subjects from French-national teachers, and Chinese from a Chinese teacher. I taught him twice a week at 8 a.m.
At some point, likely around the same time I began to understand what Chinese people were saying, I began to sense that there was a better way.
So when I came back from Spring Festival holiday and a somewhat traumatic conference-vacation in Thailand, I threw out the books.
(I mean, not literally. I love books.)
I had my fourth-graders put away their texts. I had the ninth-graders forget about business English. I tossed the curriculum I had created for the high schoolers. And I asked Maxime to tell me a story.
Fourth grade became a set of weekly units structured around occupations (and relevant vocabulary), with an activity mid-week and a quiz on Fridays. Ninth grade became a series of discussions on American culture, and later a furniture-making art class. High school became a bunch of independent studies.
Maxime’s story became an adventure.
When I asked him to tell me a story, Maxime began immediately to describe a hero – himself – warding off first a thief (who tried to steal his bow), and shooting a wolf. The story was about a paragraph long. But we could work with that, I thought.
And we did work with it. We typed it up, then looked at published plays for formatting. We talked about a cast of characters and wrote a dramatis personae. We wrote dialogue. We perfected his scenario. Then we got to work on production.
Everything we built was made up of a combination of string, tape, paperboard and bamboo, which we sawed down ourselves. (I broke two saws.) My teacher’s office became a forest of real bamboo stalks, stripped of their leaves, and drawn bushes – half drawn by Maxime, who took them home for homework, and half by me – and a paperboard “thief’s house” from which the offender would creep in the attempt to steal the bow. (I suggested that we write “Thief’s House” on the house, but Maxime wisely explained that no, we shouldn’t, “because you don’t know who is a thief. They look normal,” and then proceeded to draw an alarm box on the front door – showing another keen insight into thief mindset, I feel.)
We made a bow and several arrows, and practiced with them during class time. We assembled costumes for the characters, including a farmer’s hat for Maxime-the-hero, and a mask for the soon-to-be-slain wolf. We cast the parts.
We were almost ready to present Maxime’s play, which would be done in the library during a break and to a very small crowd, when Maxime came in one day and announced that his grandmother was coming from France. She wanted to see the play. She would arrive in two weeks.
So we came up with two more weeks of activities: We wrote up cast bios and got photos of each cast member, and mounted them on a foam-board. We wrote up a description of the play. We rehearsed. We watched Shrek II. (That last one was a reward for all the hard work.)
When play-day came, Maxime was all aflutter. He hopped around the library and chastised the boy he had cast as the thief, for goofing off. He solemnly greeted his father, mother and grandmother as they came and took their seats in child-sized library chairs. He prepared himself for his debut.
The play went very well. After being duped by the thief, Maxime recovered his bow and shot his arrow straight and true, almost into the wolf’s – that is, his French teacher’s – eye, then swiftly dispatched the wolf carcass with a cardboard knife. When the play was over, the three cast members stepped on stage to take a bow.
Later, Maxime’s father asked “Is that it?” The play had taken almost exactly two minutes.
I handed him a copy of the typed-up script, all of one page, and described some of the work we had done to produce this completely original performance. I described how Maxime had been taciturn and unwilling to respond when we first started the project, and how now his face lit up and he cavorted around the classroom, library, and school grounds cheerfully chattering away – in English – and imitating funny things he had seen in Shrek II.
“I just wanted him to be able to dare,” his father said. “I want him, if we’re on a plane, to ask for apple juice.”
And that is what he learned.
The first half of my first year in China was rough. In addition to the anorectic phase, there was a severe learning curve in figuring out how to teach. I had fourth, ninth, and tenth through twelfth grades, and my fourth graders were the “B” group, so they were more like second-grade-level English speakers. I spent almost all of my class time on classroom management.
Maxime, the French student I was assigned to tutor, was no exception. I spent much more time than necessary trying to get this wiggly nine-year-old to sit still and read a book aloud during the first half of the year, and he resented me for it. He was in a class of his own, literally, in a small room at the back of the school library, and was also learning subjects from French-national teachers, and Chinese from a Chinese teacher. I taught him twice a week at 8 a.m.
At some point, likely around the same time I began to understand what Chinese people were saying, I began to sense that there was a better way.
So when I came back from Spring Festival holiday and a somewhat traumatic conference-vacation in Thailand, I threw out the books.
(I mean, not literally. I love books.)
I had my fourth-graders put away their texts. I had the ninth-graders forget about business English. I tossed the curriculum I had created for the high schoolers. And I asked Maxime to tell me a story.
Fourth grade became a set of weekly units structured around occupations (and relevant vocabulary), with an activity mid-week and a quiz on Fridays. Ninth grade became a series of discussions on American culture, and later a furniture-making art class. High school became a bunch of independent studies.
Maxime’s story became an adventure.
When I asked him to tell me a story, Maxime began immediately to describe a hero – himself – warding off first a thief (who tried to steal his bow), and shooting a wolf. The story was about a paragraph long. But we could work with that, I thought.
And we did work with it. We typed it up, then looked at published plays for formatting. We talked about a cast of characters and wrote a dramatis personae. We wrote dialogue. We perfected his scenario. Then we got to work on production.
Everything we built was made up of a combination of string, tape, paperboard and bamboo, which we sawed down ourselves. (I broke two saws.) My teacher’s office became a forest of real bamboo stalks, stripped of their leaves, and drawn bushes – half drawn by Maxime, who took them home for homework, and half by me – and a paperboard “thief’s house” from which the offender would creep in the attempt to steal the bow. (I suggested that we write “Thief’s House” on the house, but Maxime wisely explained that no, we shouldn’t, “because you don’t know who is a thief. They look normal,” and then proceeded to draw an alarm box on the front door – showing another keen insight into thief mindset, I feel.)
We made a bow and several arrows, and practiced with them during class time. We assembled costumes for the characters, including a farmer’s hat for Maxime-the-hero, and a mask for the soon-to-be-slain wolf. We cast the parts.
We were almost ready to present Maxime’s play, which would be done in the library during a break and to a very small crowd, when Maxime came in one day and announced that his grandmother was coming from France. She wanted to see the play. She would arrive in two weeks.
So we came up with two more weeks of activities: We wrote up cast bios and got photos of each cast member, and mounted them on a foam-board. We wrote up a description of the play. We rehearsed. We watched Shrek II. (That last one was a reward for all the hard work.)
When play-day came, Maxime was all aflutter. He hopped around the library and chastised the boy he had cast as the thief, for goofing off. He solemnly greeted his father, mother and grandmother as they came and took their seats in child-sized library chairs. He prepared himself for his debut.
The play went very well. After being duped by the thief, Maxime recovered his bow and shot his arrow straight and true, almost into the wolf’s – that is, his French teacher’s – eye, then swiftly dispatched the wolf carcass with a cardboard knife. When the play was over, the three cast members stepped on stage to take a bow.
Later, Maxime’s father asked “Is that it?” The play had taken almost exactly two minutes.
I handed him a copy of the typed-up script, all of one page, and described some of the work we had done to produce this completely original performance. I described how Maxime had been taciturn and unwilling to respond when we first started the project, and how now his face lit up and he cavorted around the classroom, library, and school grounds cheerfully chattering away – in English – and imitating funny things he had seen in Shrek II.
“I just wanted him to be able to dare,” his father said. “I want him, if we’re on a plane, to ask for apple juice.”
And that is what he learned.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Local Trivia
The traffic out of Plainville was really heavy today; traffic in was light. It was as though everyone in Plainville had suddenly woken up to the truth of their lives: "What are we doing here?? Pack the car!"
FM 104.1 out of Waterbury/Hartford is running a contest to win Dave Matthews Band tickets; when listeners hear two Dave Matthews Band songs in a row, they are to call in and name the songs they heard. For me, this means being forced to listen to more Dave Matthews than should be required of anyone, and certainly hearing the "two songs in a row," despite that I will never call in for tickets.
Javapalooza!, an independent coffee shop in Middletown, is closed on Sundays. Probably because the owner never liked the coffee business that much, anyways.
FM 104.1 out of Waterbury/Hartford is running a contest to win Dave Matthews Band tickets; when listeners hear two Dave Matthews Band songs in a row, they are to call in and name the songs they heard. For me, this means being forced to listen to more Dave Matthews than should be required of anyone, and certainly hearing the "two songs in a row," despite that I will never call in for tickets.
Javapalooza!, an independent coffee shop in Middletown, is closed on Sundays. Probably because the owner never liked the coffee business that much, anyways.
Accusations
(To balance out Confessions, I accuse:)
People who leave used diapers in public parking lots after changing their children in the car: That's disgusting.
The manufacturers of "Colgate toothpaste" -- apt term for it, as it has the consistency of grade-school paste. Now if only they could make it taste half as good.
The driver of the Honda Element with the fire prevention ad covering the entire rear window, who drove up on my bumper through the entire I-84 to 691 ramp and then pulled angrily around me, only to cut me off, re-entering my lane for the first exit, less than a mile away: Your evil trifecta of Element, full-window ad and terrible driving habits has been noted. When the apocalypse comes, I expect the "four horsemen" to be taking lessons from you.
People who leave used diapers in public parking lots after changing their children in the car: That's disgusting.
The manufacturers of "Colgate toothpaste" -- apt term for it, as it has the consistency of grade-school paste. Now if only they could make it taste half as good.
The driver of the Honda Element with the fire prevention ad covering the entire rear window, who drove up on my bumper through the entire I-84 to 691 ramp and then pulled angrily around me, only to cut me off, re-entering my lane for the first exit, less than a mile away: Your evil trifecta of Element, full-window ad and terrible driving habits has been noted. When the apocalypse comes, I expect the "four horsemen" to be taking lessons from you.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
West of Chengdu, phantom pain
The New York Times reports today that all roads west of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China, have been closed to nonmilitary vehicles. The area surrounding the temple of Wuhouci (woo-hoe-tsih) in Chengdu has experienced unrest -- fallout from the protests and crackdown in Tibet.
Dujiangyan -- the Duj, to foreigners -- is west of Chengdu.
Dujiangyan, where I spent my first year in China, where the school I taught at sits, where the Qingcheng mountain and the famous irrigation canals begin, is at the foot of what used to be the independent nation of Tibet. Many of my students -- some of my favorite students, like Andy and Tommy -- were Tibetan minority. They were taller and darker and proud of their culture, but they often kept it to themselves, like a secret.
Dujiangyan is the home of my Chinese heart, the geography of my Chinese childhood. It was in Dujiangyan that I learned to speak, first, where I gained the accented dialect of the Sichuanren. It was Dujiangyan's streets that I wandered day and night, where I walked home with grocery bags balanced on a sugarcane pole and ate tangcu bai cai, and Dujiangyan's markets where I bought fruit and spices and vegetables and haggled over mao per jin. Dujiangyan, the place I learned the ballad of the Tibetan lovers, is the only place I think of when I hear the sweet and desperate songs of laojia -- hometown.
Wuhouci, to me, means Catherine. She was not Dujiangyan people; I met her in Camp China in the south -- Nanning, Guangxi -- but she is not nanren, either. She is Heilongjiang people, from the bitter north, near Korea. She is big, for the south. She is pale and has freckles and straight black hair. She speaks a different Chinese.
I met Catherine when she was assigned to the Number 8 Middle School attached to Guangxi University for Nationalities in Nanning in 2001. She took an immediate liking to me, though I could not understand why. She made me uncomfortable at first, the way a person who knows you too well from the beginning, makes you uncomfortable.
She was and is different, Catherine. She was bolder, more outspoken. She challenged authority. She did not fit in, in the south. We talked, sometimes, and she said she wanted to improve her English -- her major at the university -- but we became friends on a warm, wet night, at a waterfight, where I snapped my towel at her until she ran from me, shrieking. We bent over, hands on our knees and grinned at each other, and became family.
Catherine's mother, who taught me to move to the side of the road on command, to not get run over by bicycles, is my Chinese mother. Her father is my benevolent, absent-minded professor Chinese father. On my last day in Nanning, Catherine and her father brought me the most beautiful present I've ever been given: a Chinese caligraphy scroll of a poem by Li Bai, about connections between far-apart friends. I could not find its equal in two years of searching even the most expensive scroll shops.
So when two years later, I had been in China a month, during October holiday, Catherine came to visit me in Dujiangyan. She knew all the places to go -- so many places are "very famous" in China -- and she brought her Aussie boyfriend, Ian. We visited the irrigation canals, the Qingcheng mountain, the people's square in Chengdu, and Wuhouci. Catherine had her picture taken at every place, in every famous spot, without smiling; this is the Chinese way.
I remember riding the bus with Catherine to the outskirts of Dujiangyan, listening to her explain to me how to ask the cost of something in local dialect; I remember her in bed next to me, at night, whispering questions I couldn't answer about her relationship with Ian; I remember her laughing.
Wuhouci was beautiful, and the people who went to light incense and pray for guidance were solemn and composed. The fish in the lotus pond were bright oranges, whites, yellows and blacks, and their fins and tails broke the surface when children threw crumbs into the water. The character-carved walls, and the stones, were unintelligible to me, but polished to mirrors and smooth to the touch. In my mind, my hand lingers over golden words set deep into black marble, dragging across them as though they can be gathered and saved.
I have trouble imagining this place spoiled, unrestful. Like the people of Tibet, it resonated peace; it was a sanctuary, even for tourists. And Dujiangyan, the small agrarian city of one million, was my home. Parts of me were born there. To have the city cut off, left with only the military to defend it -- not the free and healing ingress of warm, generous Sichuan people -- feels like a personal amputation.
Dujiangyan -- the Duj, to foreigners -- is west of Chengdu.
Dujiangyan, where I spent my first year in China, where the school I taught at sits, where the Qingcheng mountain and the famous irrigation canals begin, is at the foot of what used to be the independent nation of Tibet. Many of my students -- some of my favorite students, like Andy and Tommy -- were Tibetan minority. They were taller and darker and proud of their culture, but they often kept it to themselves, like a secret.
Dujiangyan is the home of my Chinese heart, the geography of my Chinese childhood. It was in Dujiangyan that I learned to speak, first, where I gained the accented dialect of the Sichuanren. It was Dujiangyan's streets that I wandered day and night, where I walked home with grocery bags balanced on a sugarcane pole and ate tangcu bai cai, and Dujiangyan's markets where I bought fruit and spices and vegetables and haggled over mao per jin. Dujiangyan, the place I learned the ballad of the Tibetan lovers, is the only place I think of when I hear the sweet and desperate songs of laojia -- hometown.
Wuhouci, to me, means Catherine. She was not Dujiangyan people; I met her in Camp China in the south -- Nanning, Guangxi -- but she is not nanren, either. She is Heilongjiang people, from the bitter north, near Korea. She is big, for the south. She is pale and has freckles and straight black hair. She speaks a different Chinese.
I met Catherine when she was assigned to the Number 8 Middle School attached to Guangxi University for Nationalities in Nanning in 2001. She took an immediate liking to me, though I could not understand why. She made me uncomfortable at first, the way a person who knows you too well from the beginning, makes you uncomfortable.
She was and is different, Catherine. She was bolder, more outspoken. She challenged authority. She did not fit in, in the south. We talked, sometimes, and she said she wanted to improve her English -- her major at the university -- but we became friends on a warm, wet night, at a waterfight, where I snapped my towel at her until she ran from me, shrieking. We bent over, hands on our knees and grinned at each other, and became family.
Catherine's mother, who taught me to move to the side of the road on command, to not get run over by bicycles, is my Chinese mother. Her father is my benevolent, absent-minded professor Chinese father. On my last day in Nanning, Catherine and her father brought me the most beautiful present I've ever been given: a Chinese caligraphy scroll of a poem by Li Bai, about connections between far-apart friends. I could not find its equal in two years of searching even the most expensive scroll shops.
So when two years later, I had been in China a month, during October holiday, Catherine came to visit me in Dujiangyan. She knew all the places to go -- so many places are "very famous" in China -- and she brought her Aussie boyfriend, Ian. We visited the irrigation canals, the Qingcheng mountain, the people's square in Chengdu, and Wuhouci. Catherine had her picture taken at every place, in every famous spot, without smiling; this is the Chinese way.
I remember riding the bus with Catherine to the outskirts of Dujiangyan, listening to her explain to me how to ask the cost of something in local dialect; I remember her in bed next to me, at night, whispering questions I couldn't answer about her relationship with Ian; I remember her laughing.
Wuhouci was beautiful, and the people who went to light incense and pray for guidance were solemn and composed. The fish in the lotus pond were bright oranges, whites, yellows and blacks, and their fins and tails broke the surface when children threw crumbs into the water. The character-carved walls, and the stones, were unintelligible to me, but polished to mirrors and smooth to the touch. In my mind, my hand lingers over golden words set deep into black marble, dragging across them as though they can be gathered and saved.
I have trouble imagining this place spoiled, unrestful. Like the people of Tibet, it resonated peace; it was a sanctuary, even for tourists. And Dujiangyan, the small agrarian city of one million, was my home. Parts of me were born there. To have the city cut off, left with only the military to defend it -- not the free and healing ingress of warm, generous Sichuan people -- feels like a personal amputation.
Subversion of BS: perverse and often baffling
I was reminded of the "Subversion of BS" course that I took/created in college, yesterday, when I was informed of a story Malcolm Gladwell had told, of how he had inserted first the phrase "raises new and troubling questions" and then "perverse and often baffling" into health and science articles at the Washington Post.
His story is, unfortunately, fiction -- but mine is not.
As English majors in college, many of my friends and I were subjected to class after class of discussing theories -- reading theory, writing theory, critical theory, literary theory -- on how to read, write and use English. These theories also sometimes took over classes that might otherwise have been spent discussing the contents of books or poems, which was fine: Far be it from me, an intellectual, to begrudge anyone a bit of "meta"-level thinking.
But by senior year, I was ready for action -- just when my courseload was ready for me to begin my real, serious work in theory.
So I took Writing Theory and Literary Criticism, and went slowly insane.
Well, that's not strictly true: I went quickly insane, and then did something about it.
I don't want to take full credit for something for which the origins have become fuzzy in my memory (help me out here, Deb), but at some relatively early point in LitCrit, it seemed clear to me that the only way to survive the class -- taught by a professor born under a star so different from mine that we seemed to be speaking mutually unintelligible languages, and full to the brim with "English ed" majors, most of whom are not, by nature, theorists -- was to create our own meta-class.
Thus was born the "Subversion of BS 101."
The mission, accepted by myself and classmate/roommate/friend Debbie, was to subvert the bullshit of literary theory (which should be openly acknowledged by even its most stanch defenders) by inserting absurd words, phrases or concepts so seamlessly into our essays that they would be indistinguishable from a real, actual point, thus proving the bullshit nature of literary theory as a whole. We would get to giggle at the unsuspecting readers of our sabotaged essays, and I, for one, would get to feel that I was doing my part in both accomplishing something (writing a LitCrit essay) and in acknowledging the inherent ridiculousness of having accomplished it (LitCrit having pitifully little real-world application, certainly in comparison to, say, eliminating starvation or AIDS).
The Subversion of BS course awarded credits for insertion of the designated words, phrases or concepts, which were broken down into "normal credit" and "mad credit" depending on the difficulty of including the word/phrase/concept. The list was added to as the term went on and Deb or I thought up another worthy SoBS candidate. There was a final requirement, which both of us met, and at the end of the term, in a baffling act of hubris, we stapled the "syllabus" (SoBS list) to our final essays for the edification of the professor.
Here, below, then, is the list as it stood (I believe) at the end of class:
Alicia and Debbie’s Course in the Subversion of B.S., or “If she says she hates ya, that can also mean she loves ya”*
Normals:
Absynthe
“Body and Soul”
breakfast in a can
Craptacular
(the concept of) croquet
feist/dandle
fizzy-lifting (drinks)
Gidget
Harem
“It’s a Small World”
“just the ticket”
little bunny Foo-foo
mad scientist
“Ocean Lotion Potion”/Enya (form follows content)
reference to the flag of Wales
reference to VIP
“shut your face/mouth”
Spaghetti-Os
Spinal Tap
Strong Bad/Homestar
the heck
traditional grease-toast
“Union Jack” (no explanation)
warp and woof
Weasel words
“whatever”
Mad Credit:
Combination of any three “Normals”
Full paragraph on croquet
Full paragraph of the word “phallus”
Improved lyrics from “OLP”
Lyrics from “Gidget Goes to Rome”
“shut your word/pie/cake-hole”
Quotation of Spinal Tap lyrics
VIP—Keith reaching into cow (up to armpit/bare-chested=extra credit)
Final: (required)
apotheosis
*Some additional context: The title of the course includes a quote from a "Gidget" movie song; I was writing a paper on Freudian analysis of the unconscious in literature (hence the "phallus" references); "OLP" stands for an Enya song known colloq. as "the Ocean Lotion Potion" song, for reasons that become obvious to any listener; "Body and Soul" refers to an out of print black-and-white silent melodrama shown by LitCrit professor in another class; VIP refers to the British TV show "Vets in Practice," as does the reference to Keith putting his arm into the side of a cow; the final, involving the inclusion of the word "apotheosis" came as a result of my having a laughing fit in the middle of class when the professor used this word, as though the class had any idea what he was talking about.
His story is, unfortunately, fiction -- but mine is not.
As English majors in college, many of my friends and I were subjected to class after class of discussing theories -- reading theory, writing theory, critical theory, literary theory -- on how to read, write and use English. These theories also sometimes took over classes that might otherwise have been spent discussing the contents of books or poems, which was fine: Far be it from me, an intellectual, to begrudge anyone a bit of "meta"-level thinking.
But by senior year, I was ready for action -- just when my courseload was ready for me to begin my real, serious work in theory.
So I took Writing Theory and Literary Criticism, and went slowly insane.
Well, that's not strictly true: I went quickly insane, and then did something about it.
I don't want to take full credit for something for which the origins have become fuzzy in my memory (help me out here, Deb), but at some relatively early point in LitCrit, it seemed clear to me that the only way to survive the class -- taught by a professor born under a star so different from mine that we seemed to be speaking mutually unintelligible languages, and full to the brim with "English ed" majors, most of whom are not, by nature, theorists -- was to create our own meta-class.
Thus was born the "Subversion of BS 101."
The mission, accepted by myself and classmate/roommate/friend Debbie, was to subvert the bullshit of literary theory (which should be openly acknowledged by even its most stanch defenders) by inserting absurd words, phrases or concepts so seamlessly into our essays that they would be indistinguishable from a real, actual point, thus proving the bullshit nature of literary theory as a whole. We would get to giggle at the unsuspecting readers of our sabotaged essays, and I, for one, would get to feel that I was doing my part in both accomplishing something (writing a LitCrit essay) and in acknowledging the inherent ridiculousness of having accomplished it (LitCrit having pitifully little real-world application, certainly in comparison to, say, eliminating starvation or AIDS).
The Subversion of BS course awarded credits for insertion of the designated words, phrases or concepts, which were broken down into "normal credit" and "mad credit" depending on the difficulty of including the word/phrase/concept. The list was added to as the term went on and Deb or I thought up another worthy SoBS candidate. There was a final requirement, which both of us met, and at the end of the term, in a baffling act of hubris, we stapled the "syllabus" (SoBS list) to our final essays for the edification of the professor.
Here, below, then, is the list as it stood (I believe) at the end of class:
Alicia and Debbie’s Course in the Subversion of B.S., or “If she says she hates ya, that can also mean she loves ya”*
Normals:
Absynthe
“Body and Soul”
breakfast in a can
Craptacular
(the concept of) croquet
feist/dandle
fizzy-lifting (drinks)
Gidget
Harem
“It’s a Small World”
“just the ticket”
little bunny Foo-foo
mad scientist
“Ocean Lotion Potion”/Enya (form follows content)
reference to the flag of Wales
reference to VIP
“shut your face/mouth”
Spaghetti-Os
Spinal Tap
Strong Bad/Homestar
the heck
traditional grease-toast
“Union Jack” (no explanation)
warp and woof
Weasel words
“whatever”
Mad Credit:
Combination of any three “Normals”
Full paragraph on croquet
Full paragraph of the word “phallus”
Improved lyrics from “OLP”
Lyrics from “Gidget Goes to Rome”
“shut your word/pie/cake-hole”
Quotation of Spinal Tap lyrics
VIP—Keith reaching into cow (up to armpit/bare-chested=extra credit)
Final: (required)
apotheosis
*Some additional context: The title of the course includes a quote from a "Gidget" movie song; I was writing a paper on Freudian analysis of the unconscious in literature (hence the "phallus" references); "OLP" stands for an Enya song known colloq. as "the Ocean Lotion Potion" song, for reasons that become obvious to any listener; "Body and Soul" refers to an out of print black-and-white silent melodrama shown by LitCrit professor in another class; VIP refers to the British TV show "Vets in Practice," as does the reference to Keith putting his arm into the side of a cow; the final, involving the inclusion of the word "apotheosis" came as a result of my having a laughing fit in the middle of class when the professor used this word, as though the class had any idea what he was talking about.
PSA: Artists
Our good incoherent-artist friend Sol Le Wit has shown up in the most unlikely of places: the New Britain Public Library. His painting "Horizontal Brushstrokes," which is gouache on paper and was painted in "(More or Less) 2002," hangs in a corner outside the computer room.
In other, delightful artist-related news, Sam McKinniss has set up a website where we lucky interneters can view (some of) his art. Go see it! See it now! (Sam loves hits.) Then congratulate me for knowing someone as talented and articulate as Sam; I consider it a sign of excellent taste on my part.
In other, delightful artist-related news, Sam McKinniss has set up a website where we lucky interneters can view (some of) his art. Go see it! See it now! (Sam loves hits.) Then congratulate me for knowing someone as talented and articulate as Sam; I consider it a sign of excellent taste on my part.
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