I was raised to be on top of things, a go-getter who would get things done. I'm a vision of competence. A paragon of organization.
Yes, I've got a USA swimmer who has practice 30-minutes away 4 times a week. Yes, I've got a singer who twice a week shakes the rafters of a rehearsal hall 45 minutes away.
She is the dancer who practices for two hours once a week in another city.
He is the basketball player who practices once a week and has a game every Saturday afternoon.
There are car-pools and cat fights and homework problems and teacher conferences and books to read and papers to write and stains to get out in the laundry. The kitchen has a way of being in perennial need of cleaning, the laundry pile is perpetual -- a phenomenon that I'm sure might be useful to the good folks seeking alternative energy sources -- mealtimes seem to meld together creating a constant demand for prepared food, and for reasons unknown to me, our fridge has developed a black hole in the general vacinity of the milk container.
Phone calls are answered and often dialed as "I'm walking out the door". A chat with a seldom-seen friend has to be quick -- she's "Only got a minute."
"How are you?"
"Fine. Super."
"That's great. Listen, can you bring Brian home from school this afternoon?"
"Sure. Casey will be there anyway."
"Thanks. Bye."
"Bye."
I slog through the quick-step quagmire losing all semblance of real connection. And even on the days when I don't feel like I can go on, I get more phone calls asking me to volunteer.
"We really need another reading group leader."
or
"If only you could come serve hot dogs at the carnival. It's just an hour or two."
Or
"I know you could chair this committee. You have such good ideas!"
So I dole out little pieces of me, dealing cards of my hours. My time belongs to others.
Every face that I gaze into looks exactly the same as mine.
And I wonder when I gave that away along with everything else.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Ordinarily Average
While driving home from school this morning, I listened to a few minutes of talk radio. I was hoping for some weather. I got an interview with a guy who wrote a book about The Average American. The conversation was about our perceptions of "average" and "ordinary" in our society.
I thought: Yes, we are preened to be suffering, eccentric, colorful characters in our own stories. We scorn the everyday, the plodding, the sure and steady, the balanced, the humble. We trample the tortoise to fan-mob the hare. We hunger for the latest news of mindless starlettes, power-clicking our mouses past the political and economic machinery that dictates the details of our lives.
We don't want to know about that stuff. It's just too tough to wrap our brains around the three children who were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad while they were walking to school. We're too busy reading about Hollywood hotties...maybe we'll catch up on that Supreme Court appointment stuff later...or not.
When did life get distilled to the 15 freaking inches smack in front of each of our faces? Have we always been a completely self-absorbed, immature, ridiculously ignorant society -- or have I just opened my eyes to it?
Is this what it is to get old?
Yikes. That last one is personal and forces me to reflect on survival tactics. I can feel my usual optimism slipping away. The honeycombed structure of my bones slowly solidifies and the good things no longer outweigh the bad.
Rigidity threatens my days. Moronic reality shows and sensationalized *news* casts -- of battlefields littered with live-feed correspondents -- brings us the *real* world, but it serves only to further innure our sensibilities. Nothing seems real. Human suffering becomes merely artistry in film. O.K. people, I want the kid with the shrapnel in his leg turned slightly to the right. Kid, can you give me some tears? On three...
It would seem that we have lost the ability to celebrate the simplicities of everyday things. We are bombarded with messages -- a streaming network of sensory overload -- digital synapses plugged into every compatible USB port that bathes us in the notion that we all must be hyper-extra-freaking-ordinary. It doesn't seem to matter how we get there. The input is deafening, blinding, desensitizing narcotic.
Is it any wonder that so many of us are disenfranchized?
I thought: Yes, we are preened to be suffering, eccentric, colorful characters in our own stories. We scorn the everyday, the plodding, the sure and steady, the balanced, the humble. We trample the tortoise to fan-mob the hare. We hunger for the latest news of mindless starlettes, power-clicking our mouses past the political and economic machinery that dictates the details of our lives.
We don't want to know about that stuff. It's just too tough to wrap our brains around the three children who were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad while they were walking to school. We're too busy reading about Hollywood hotties...maybe we'll catch up on that Supreme Court appointment stuff later...or not.
When did life get distilled to the 15 freaking inches smack in front of each of our faces? Have we always been a completely self-absorbed, immature, ridiculously ignorant society -- or have I just opened my eyes to it?
Is this what it is to get old?
Yikes. That last one is personal and forces me to reflect on survival tactics. I can feel my usual optimism slipping away. The honeycombed structure of my bones slowly solidifies and the good things no longer outweigh the bad.
Rigidity threatens my days. Moronic reality shows and sensationalized *news* casts -- of battlefields littered with live-feed correspondents -- brings us the *real* world, but it serves only to further innure our sensibilities. Nothing seems real. Human suffering becomes merely artistry in film. O.K. people, I want the kid with the shrapnel in his leg turned slightly to the right. Kid, can you give me some tears? On three...
It would seem that we have lost the ability to celebrate the simplicities of everyday things. We are bombarded with messages -- a streaming network of sensory overload -- digital synapses plugged into every compatible USB port that bathes us in the notion that we all must be hyper-extra-freaking-ordinary. It doesn't seem to matter how we get there. The input is deafening, blinding, desensitizing narcotic.
Is it any wonder that so many of us are disenfranchized?
Friday, February 10, 2006
Teeming Humanity
In cyberspace, no one can see:
you cry, or squirt coffee out your nose because you're laughing so hard, or your bedhair sticking straight up over your left ear or the old jeans with a hole at the base of the zipper showing entirely too much flowered panty for polite society.
In cyberspace, you can be more than you ever dreamed you'd be, but mostly you become less. It's easier to make assumptions, jump to conclusions, misinterpret, wrap your arms around grudges. After all, you aren't bound to good behavior. What do you care?
You could be a corporate dragon lady posing as a gum-cracking stripper. Gum-cracking strippers could speak of Camus, cotillions or Camembert. The rules of engagement are different in here. You can break someone's spirit, insult them, berate them. You can accept someone's kindness -- maybe even for years -- before morphing into an ego-centric jerk, an abusive blow-hard, an indifferent bastard. *shrug*...it happens every day -- maybe tens of thousands of times.
Just because you CAN do a thing doesn't mean that you should. Is this a medium of extremes? Are we only welcome here -- interesting, compelling, engaging -- if we are beasts, demons, goddesses and saints? Is this brew made of con-artists, psychopathic scum, the terminally bored, the anguished needy?
No, of course not. But all of them are here. You have to adjust your thinking to emerge with thicker skin instead of having your skin peeled away from your bones. *whole* is never true here. We are ethers traveling cables, through fiber optics and wireless waves. We are suggestions of flesh.
Nowhere else can the immediacy of 12-point, Times New Roman whisper so evocatively in one's ear, tear the sense of worth from one's heart, put a queen's robes around one's shoulders, clench the chest out of fear.
It's a labyrinth of possibilities.
you cry, or squirt coffee out your nose because you're laughing so hard, or your bedhair sticking straight up over your left ear or the old jeans with a hole at the base of the zipper showing entirely too much flowered panty for polite society.
In cyberspace, you can be more than you ever dreamed you'd be, but mostly you become less. It's easier to make assumptions, jump to conclusions, misinterpret, wrap your arms around grudges. After all, you aren't bound to good behavior. What do you care?
You could be a corporate dragon lady posing as a gum-cracking stripper. Gum-cracking strippers could speak of Camus, cotillions or Camembert. The rules of engagement are different in here. You can break someone's spirit, insult them, berate them. You can accept someone's kindness -- maybe even for years -- before morphing into an ego-centric jerk, an abusive blow-hard, an indifferent bastard. *shrug*...it happens every day -- maybe tens of thousands of times.
Just because you CAN do a thing doesn't mean that you should. Is this a medium of extremes? Are we only welcome here -- interesting, compelling, engaging -- if we are beasts, demons, goddesses and saints? Is this brew made of con-artists, psychopathic scum, the terminally bored, the anguished needy?
No, of course not. But all of them are here. You have to adjust your thinking to emerge with thicker skin instead of having your skin peeled away from your bones. *whole* is never true here. We are ethers traveling cables, through fiber optics and wireless waves. We are suggestions of flesh.
Nowhere else can the immediacy of 12-point, Times New Roman whisper so evocatively in one's ear, tear the sense of worth from one's heart, put a queen's robes around one's shoulders, clench the chest out of fear.
It's a labyrinth of possibilities.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Focus Groups
Today, I'm participating in a focus group for the company that takes all of the school pictures in our district. That's funny. Well, maybe not laugh out loud or audible chuckle kind of funny, but at least enough to crack a smile...focus group...photographer...oh never mind.
Sometimes I cling to my humor cause it's all I've got left.
Why oh why do my kids always look like somebody else in their school pictures? I'm looking at my son's recent photo. I've never seen him look this way and I've been hanging around with him for 9 years. It's like the photographer waited for the instant that his eye muscles were contracting to affect a blink. A drunken-eyed 3rd grader stares at me with his t-shirt askew, shifted toward the right shoulder and the tip of his tongue just visible in the corner of his mouth. His hair is toussled. That part looks exactly like him. Every day, all day. Every event or special occassion, despite numerous purchases of combs and brushes. In this regard, the photo is true to my son. I'm so proud.
My daughter channels the face of herself 5 years from the day the photo is taken. A few years back, she had a freakishly adult-looking, sultry expression for the photographer taking the swim team pictures. Back off, shutter boy. She's EIGHT! Every year, my husband cringes as I slowly slip my finger under the sealed envelope labeled, "Your Portraits are here!". Every year, we both gaze upon our daughter's picture and agree that we are SO not ready for her to be this old.
Surviving school pictures once a year was enough to torture any parent. In the infinite wisdom of this More Is Better age, however, schools have added Spring pictures in addition to the Fall photo shoots. The Spring pictures feature props and exotic backgrounds.
My son can go fishing in a place that puts one in mind of "A River Runs Through It" without ever leaving the relative comfort of the school gym. Ah yes, It's good to finally have a professional shot of his favorite passtime -- flyfishing.
My daughter's last Spring picture shows her reclining on a stark white platform that is draped with a stark white cloth in front of a stark white background. Puts me in mind of that futuristic Robert Duvall movie -- the one with the number as a title -- shoot, I forgot the name of it. He wanders around through an endless void of whiteness through most of the movie.
The photographer must be a sci-fi fan.
My daughter, perched in this sea of whiteness, looks like someone is branding her backside as she purses her lips in a Mona Lisa smile. It would be a perfect likeness of her if she was a depressed, angsty teen. She is a teen, but the word "bubbly" comes to mind. She told me later that the platform was wobbly and she was just hanging on, waiting for the flash.
Focus Group. I wonder what we will focus on. I wonder if we'll be asked our opinions about backgrounds and package prices. I think it would be groovy if they'd chuck the cutesy teddy bears, balls and wicker chair props. I'm thinking more exotic locales, costumes, maybe even offer COMBS for kids (edit: my son) to do the once-through on the hair. Next Spring, I'll be ordering an 8x10 of my son as a Sumo Wrestler. We'll get some wallet-sized prints of my daughter wearing a viking helmet and breastplate like she's a Valkyrie. When I gaze upon her image, I'll swear that I hear Wagner playing somewhere in the house.
Yeah, Grandma and Grandpa would love that. We might even have to place a reorder.
Sometimes I cling to my humor cause it's all I've got left.
Why oh why do my kids always look like somebody else in their school pictures? I'm looking at my son's recent photo. I've never seen him look this way and I've been hanging around with him for 9 years. It's like the photographer waited for the instant that his eye muscles were contracting to affect a blink. A drunken-eyed 3rd grader stares at me with his t-shirt askew, shifted toward the right shoulder and the tip of his tongue just visible in the corner of his mouth. His hair is toussled. That part looks exactly like him. Every day, all day. Every event or special occassion, despite numerous purchases of combs and brushes. In this regard, the photo is true to my son. I'm so proud.
My daughter channels the face of herself 5 years from the day the photo is taken. A few years back, she had a freakishly adult-looking, sultry expression for the photographer taking the swim team pictures. Back off, shutter boy. She's EIGHT! Every year, my husband cringes as I slowly slip my finger under the sealed envelope labeled, "Your Portraits are here!". Every year, we both gaze upon our daughter's picture and agree that we are SO not ready for her to be this old.
Surviving school pictures once a year was enough to torture any parent. In the infinite wisdom of this More Is Better age, however, schools have added Spring pictures in addition to the Fall photo shoots. The Spring pictures feature props and exotic backgrounds.
My son can go fishing in a place that puts one in mind of "A River Runs Through It" without ever leaving the relative comfort of the school gym. Ah yes, It's good to finally have a professional shot of his favorite passtime -- flyfishing.
My daughter's last Spring picture shows her reclining on a stark white platform that is draped with a stark white cloth in front of a stark white background. Puts me in mind of that futuristic Robert Duvall movie -- the one with the number as a title -- shoot, I forgot the name of it. He wanders around through an endless void of whiteness through most of the movie.
The photographer must be a sci-fi fan.
My daughter, perched in this sea of whiteness, looks like someone is branding her backside as she purses her lips in a Mona Lisa smile. It would be a perfect likeness of her if she was a depressed, angsty teen. She is a teen, but the word "bubbly" comes to mind. She told me later that the platform was wobbly and she was just hanging on, waiting for the flash.
Focus Group. I wonder what we will focus on. I wonder if we'll be asked our opinions about backgrounds and package prices. I think it would be groovy if they'd chuck the cutesy teddy bears, balls and wicker chair props. I'm thinking more exotic locales, costumes, maybe even offer COMBS for kids (edit: my son) to do the once-through on the hair. Next Spring, I'll be ordering an 8x10 of my son as a Sumo Wrestler. We'll get some wallet-sized prints of my daughter wearing a viking helmet and breastplate like she's a Valkyrie. When I gaze upon her image, I'll swear that I hear Wagner playing somewhere in the house.
Yeah, Grandma and Grandpa would love that. We might even have to place a reorder.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Streaming -- #1
Stream of consciousness #1: 5-minute non-stop freewrite using these three words:
Stone
River
Eternity
Must use one of these as the first word of the freewrite. This exercise is a take-off on something Chase Hart brought to my attention (thanks, Chase).
Here goes:
Stone expressions were his dominion. His face, always slow to move and slow to change. His opinions hard as igneous, seemingly unyeilding in the rapids of her. She was always moving, ever dancing, dynamic as a river bursting down mountainsides, fragmenting through fields of pebbles, grass and trees. She converges and rushes headlong to him, around him in swales of lapping caresses; breaking upon him, over him, devouring.
They should not have loved one another. The impossibility of them staggered the imagination. Yet there they were, eternally engaged. Looking upon them reminded me that of her ever-changing nature and his stark stoicism. But when I looked closely, I finally saw that her movement was a hard mistress, dissolving him through eons, shaping, carving, changing. In the end it was she who would survive while he slowly melted into naked canyons and earthly scars.
-- AAG 2005
Stone
River
Eternity
Must use one of these as the first word of the freewrite. This exercise is a take-off on something Chase Hart brought to my attention (thanks, Chase).
Here goes:
Stone expressions were his dominion. His face, always slow to move and slow to change. His opinions hard as igneous, seemingly unyeilding in the rapids of her. She was always moving, ever dancing, dynamic as a river bursting down mountainsides, fragmenting through fields of pebbles, grass and trees. She converges and rushes headlong to him, around him in swales of lapping caresses; breaking upon him, over him, devouring.
They should not have loved one another. The impossibility of them staggered the imagination. Yet there they were, eternally engaged. Looking upon them reminded me that of her ever-changing nature and his stark stoicism. But when I looked closely, I finally saw that her movement was a hard mistress, dissolving him through eons, shaping, carving, changing. In the end it was she who would survive while he slowly melted into naked canyons and earthly scars.
-- AAG 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Veracity
I don't experience writer's block. I get life-blocked. Overwhelmed. I am rarely under-stimulated. Hey, I'm a Mom. Nuff said.
There is great beauty in the world -- a stream of vitality that can make us more than we are without it. Not everyone can see it. I hear it all the time. I am Polyanna, a dreamer, a starry-eyed poet. It's a matter of sight, I think. I can see that I am bathed in life's energy. I draw strength and pleasure from it. Some are up to their necks, but feel nothing. Just another choice. And who am I to pass judgement on other's perceptions?
Oh don't imagine that I'm talking about God or religion. As Edward said in Big Fish, "It's not polite to talk about religion. You never know who you're going to offend." Spirituality? Yes, that burning in one's belly. It's the thing that ignites us, drives us, raising anger and laughter and tears and all manner of abandon. It is our immersion, our participation in the human race.
I have gray times now and then. Nothing is sensual -- no sights move me, no food delights my tongue. The music is average and I withdraw from contact. Everything becomes laborious, dull, gray ideas pepper gray hours and blank pages. Life-block.
Perhaps the gray is a fragment of science -- miscreant cells that play havoc with my verve. Polyanna, flighty dreamer dreaming in primordial grays.
There is great beauty in the world -- a stream of vitality that can make us more than we are without it. Not everyone can see it. I hear it all the time. I am Polyanna, a dreamer, a starry-eyed poet. It's a matter of sight, I think. I can see that I am bathed in life's energy. I draw strength and pleasure from it. Some are up to their necks, but feel nothing. Just another choice. And who am I to pass judgement on other's perceptions?
Oh don't imagine that I'm talking about God or religion. As Edward said in Big Fish, "It's not polite to talk about religion. You never know who you're going to offend." Spirituality? Yes, that burning in one's belly. It's the thing that ignites us, drives us, raising anger and laughter and tears and all manner of abandon. It is our immersion, our participation in the human race.
I have gray times now and then. Nothing is sensual -- no sights move me, no food delights my tongue. The music is average and I withdraw from contact. Everything becomes laborious, dull, gray ideas pepper gray hours and blank pages. Life-block.
Perhaps the gray is a fragment of science -- miscreant cells that play havoc with my verve. Polyanna, flighty dreamer dreaming in primordial grays.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Wanting Spring
I watched the seasons. My desk is situated next to a bank of windows that face the front yard. I live on a wooded lot, stuffed with growing things that sleep all winter and little ribbons of flagstone walkways.
I stare at the trees, straining to see the burnished cast of new growth at the tips of the branches. Down the road, the willows have begun to suggest the classic chartruese that heralds their budding shoots. I have stubborn oaks -- scowling gray, limbs tightly closed in defiance of Spring. The maples are good-natured cynics. They will allow their sap to flow before they show their fleshy buds. The river birch in the front yard is used to the long winters will take its time, yawning to life.
Remnants of last year's leaf fall tumble over the pubescent grass. A pair of leaves flutter at the edge of the walkway. My eyes are deceived by my warm-weather longings. For a moment, I believe they are the wings of a moth as they twitch in patterns that suggest a hearbeat.
A gust of wind splits them apart, scattering them to the sidewalk and out of my sight. The breath I perceived never was. The warmth of recognition vacates my thoughts.
And I see the bones of last Autumn for what they are.
-- AAG
I stare at the trees, straining to see the burnished cast of new growth at the tips of the branches. Down the road, the willows have begun to suggest the classic chartruese that heralds their budding shoots. I have stubborn oaks -- scowling gray, limbs tightly closed in defiance of Spring. The maples are good-natured cynics. They will allow their sap to flow before they show their fleshy buds. The river birch in the front yard is used to the long winters will take its time, yawning to life.
Remnants of last year's leaf fall tumble over the pubescent grass. A pair of leaves flutter at the edge of the walkway. My eyes are deceived by my warm-weather longings. For a moment, I believe they are the wings of a moth as they twitch in patterns that suggest a hearbeat.
A gust of wind splits them apart, scattering them to the sidewalk and out of my sight. The breath I perceived never was. The warmth of recognition vacates my thoughts.
And I see the bones of last Autumn for what they are.
-- AAG
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