In the last entry, there was a little bit of a misprint. I just wanted to say that the Sheltie puppy is my plan for an apartment friendly dog to get sometime in the near future because I think it would actually be small enough to live happily in an apartment. If I was actually getting the ranch, I would want a golden retriever puppy, which is my favorite kind of dog, but not very apartment friendly.
Just wanted to clarify. It was really bothering me that I put down the wrong dog.
S.
P.S.-Leaving tomorrow for Buffalo. If you hear disturbing reports about a girl who was incarcerated for chopping her mother up and leaving the pieces throughout the Smokey Mountains, you'll know why. Too bad I don't look good in orange.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Decisions are Messy
Can it be true that I haven’t posted since the ballet? Oh, shameful, shameful. To tell you the truth, I post here often, in my head, anyway. No, seriously, I often think of things to write about, form lovely phrases in my head, make insightful and witty comments. The only problem is that I very seldom seem to actually put pen to paper as it were. Alas, alas. And wouldn’t you know that whenever I do manage to get around to writing stuff down, I can’t remember a blessed word that I meant to put down. Ah, the wicked mistress of writing. I am truly cursed.
But I digress. There is so much on a day to day basis that I would like to share that I think I am choked by the volume. I would love to talk about my reclamation of devotional life through the Book of Common Prayer, my acquisition of my very first honest-to-goodness icon and learning by doing, my contemplations on the gleaning of spiritual wisdom from many sources, particularly Judaism these days, or even just my anguished struggle over the additions I have just made to our landscaping and my fight to keep my tender little plants alive in this ridiculously stifling Texas heat. But generally what I find necessary is to just try to keep everyone on the same page as to my geographic vagaries and daily activities, as in this phase of my life these seem to be in constant flux. So, here is the bread and butter of my life at the moment.
Biggest news is, I am taking the plunge and moving up to Buffalo. I have realized of late how many of my decisions may look wildly spontaneous to folks on the outside when in reality they are carefully considered for months before I make up my mind, but I don’t really include anyone in the deliberations, so then when I just come out with the decision, it looks like I just randomly, on the spot, chose to do this. Not so. And this is the case with the big move. I have been thinking about doing this, really, in a whimsical way, ever since graduation, knowing that I have a big community of friends up there. But now that I have secured for myself a job up there, the decision is final. The job that I’ll be doing is with our good friends at Americorps, namely an organization called Compass House which is a resource for homeless and runaway youth. So it makes me very happy to have the prospect of meaningful work and work that I think would actually challenge me. And I’m very, very happy to be back with some college peeps again, which is honestly a huge factor in my decision. I have realized more and more and more and more in the past few months how very much I need a community around me. Not a transient community, not a community of people I admire who refuse to connect with me, not any of this Lone Ranger, American rugged individualism bullshit, just people: people who I love a whole lot and who I hope to be able to believe love me too. People who are actually willing to take care of me the same way I am willing to take care of them. People who can talk about problems and real issues and honest emotions and who aren’t just hiding from each other. I need it, I need it like oxygen, and I’m not going to continue to cheat myself out of it to pursue some kind of ascetic ideal or misguided notion of the will of God.
All the same, I have to admit to having some mixed feelings, still!, about going up to Buffalo. For one thing, I begin to wonder if it might have been a mistake to invite my family to drive up with me. My family, oh, they’re lovely people, but they have this bad habit of saying, “We’ll do this for you because we love you, but don’t expect us to be happy about it, and please don’t object when we bitch about it for hours on end, till you’re ready to beat your brains out just to escape the crushing guilt of forcing us to do what we volunteered for out of love for you.” (In case you haven’t picked up on it, things have been a tad bit tense around the old homestead these days.)
I love road trips and I’m excited because I’ve planned our route through what looks like some really beautiful country that I’ve never been through before. I think my sister is excited about this, especially as she has just recently gotten her license (yay her!) and is finally able to help out with the driving. My mom, unfortunately, hates to drive and can only seem to talk about how long the trip is going to be. And God help me, I will pack her in the trunk if it gets to be too much over the three days we’ll be traveling.
And then there is the fact that, in spite of everything, part of me wants to be in Houston. Part of me is wondering like crazy why I ever felt like it was the will of God for me to come back and be with my family when this whole time it has seemed like the worst idea ever conceived. Was I just wrong? Was God wrong? Did God know it was going to suck and be pretty much pointless and still tell me to do it anyway? I don’t know if I’ll ever find out. But it is hard to get away from a lingering sense of failure, that I felt like I was asked to do something that I was simply unable to fulfill. And the reason that I was unable to fulfill it was because of my own fragility, something that I have an almost Spartan distaste for. So I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving with a sense of regret for duties left undone, for commissions unfulfilled. And I don’t even know where I went wrong.
Then there is the unavoidable sense of frustration that comes from being in such a weird place in my life which is so continually confusing and uncertain and not knowing where I’ll be in the future and feeling so far away from achieving the kind of life I want to build for myself. A great part of me just wants to get a Sheltie puppy, buy a ranch with lots of land around it, and marry some guy just for the sake of being able to settle down in my own place and stay there. The same great part wants to pack up every piece of everything I’ve accumulated in the last 23 years and take it all out of my mother’s house so I know that I won’t ever, ever be coming back except as a visitor. And yet even in the midst of the frustration, I know that the same circumstances that are causing the frustration now are going to be the ones that the lack of which will cause me frustration in the future. The uncertainty, the mystery, the sense of infinite possibility. I’m sure my future self would feel tied down by house and hub and just want to run away for the romantic instability of not knowing where I’ll be in six months. Well, I say screw you future self, because I think this really sucks!
This is the other reason that I don’t post more frequently, to give you all plenty of time to read the previous post before I burden you with another one. And because apparently there is so much unspoken bile in my life that I am reluctant to spill on strangers. Ah, screw it. I trust myself to the great, wide anonymity of the internet! At least now, you can’t complain that you’re not in the know.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Indescribable
I just wanted to let you all know that this past Friday, I got to go to the ballet! Yes, the ballet. Perhaps you are not as excited about this as I am, but you must understand, I love the ballet. Love. With deep, everlasting passion. I would go to every ballet that came down the pike if I could. As it was, this one was an extra special bonus because it was FREE! In Houston, we have this place called Miller Outdoor Theatre, which basically does only free shows for the edification of the good people of Houston. So we can just show up and watch the ballet for nothing. And, as such, they were the best seats I have ever had for the ballet.
Furthermore, in case you were wondering, you are right, Madame Butterfly was first an opera before it ever became a ballet. But I guess this fellow, artistic director, I should say, named Stanton Welch decided to take Puccini's score and choreograph to it for this ballet.
The story, in case you are not familiar with it, is as follows: Cio-Cio San, aka Madame Butterfly, is a young girl who was forced to become a geisha after her father commited ritual suicide. She meets Lieutenant Pinkerton, who is an official of the United States Army and is stationed in Nagasaki. They fall in love, and agree to marry, in spite of the fact that Pinkerton has a sweetheart to whom he is engaged waiting for him in the States. Butterfly converts to Christianity so that she can worship the same God as her husband. Butterfly's family interrupts the marriage ritual and disowns her because she renounced the faith of her family. They leave in a huff and Pinkerton comforts his weeping wife. And, as the synopsis puts it: "she gradually surrenders her innocence and they lie down beneath the stars." Racy. End of Act One.
In the second act, it is 10 years later, Butterfly is living in destitution in Nagasaki. Pinkerton has left her and gone back to the States and married his sweetheart Kate, although Butterfly doesn't know it. Another officer from the States brings her a letter from Pinkerton, the contents of which she can't read and he can't bear to relate to her, so he just doesn't tell her the bad news. He asks her what she would do if Pinkerton never returns. She is horrified by the idea and triumphantly shows the officer her son as proof of Pinkerton's inevitable return. She dreams of him coming back to take her and her son to a wonderful new life in America. Pinkerton returns to Nagasaki with his wife and visits the home of Butterfly, hoping to find her away and quietly convince her only servant to turn over her son to he and his American wife. Pinkerton can't bear the memories evoked by being back in her home, so he flees, just as Butterfly arrives. Kate convinces her to turn over her son to be raised as an American. After losing Pinkerton once and for all, Butterfly has no more resistance; she gives Kate her son and they leave. Desperate with grief and utterly hopeless, Butterfly turns to the only avenue available to her, and kills herself with the same sword that her father used. Pinkerton returns just in time to cradle her dying body in his arms as she breathes her last. (Hey, what do you want, it is based on an opera.)
Wow, I didn't mean for that synopsis to take up so much space. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty decent story, and in watching the ballet, I was just amazed at the way dance communicates. The different movements can portray so many different things, anger, grief, lust, timidity, mirth, it can all be writ large without anyone having to utter a word. It was also really interesting to try to understand a medium which baffles me, music, through one which I understand a little more, dance. It was interesting to watch how the choreography matched and intensified the emotion created by the music.
Oh, another thing that I have to mention is the INCREDIBLE scenery that was used in the ballet. One of the most amazing parts was the very first scene of the ballet, which is supposed to portray Butterfly dreaming of her future. It showed the dancer behind a huge screen which covered the entire stage and was painted with these huge, white, splashy flowers with deep blue centers. Through this you could see the dancer and four people who held these giant wings, like 25 ft. long, made of some kind of diaphanous fabric, and they were all coordinating the movement of the wings. Anyway, it was awesome.
But what none of that conveys, what I am struggling to get across, is the feeling of sitting in that audience, watching them dance. The thing that first comes to mind when I think about the ballet is perfection. It makes me ache inside, to see the way they dance, the perfect and impossible lines they make with their bodies, the effortless way that one dancer can leap and be caught and spun by another, the feather-light way they move through the air. The raw emotion that is displayed in a pas de deux. Oh, and this incredibly beautiful scene where Butterfly is waiting up all night for the return of Pinkerton and it showed her and her servant behind two screens, lighted from behind. It was referential, I think, to a style of Japanese theater, but it was incredible to see the sharpness of the lines and the variety of shapes they made, using just their bodies and a fan.
I don't know. Four years of studying writing, and I am absolutely at a loss to describe what it was like. Well, maybe not absolutely. It's not like I've been working on this for a month. Anyway, I've done a crap job trying to convey what it was like, but suffice it to say it was wonderful, and I love the ballet, and you should love the ballet too, and if you ever get a chance, you should go. Go now, in fact. The blog will still be here when you get back.
S.
Furthermore, in case you were wondering, you are right, Madame Butterfly was first an opera before it ever became a ballet. But I guess this fellow, artistic director, I should say, named Stanton Welch decided to take Puccini's score and choreograph to it for this ballet.
The story, in case you are not familiar with it, is as follows: Cio-Cio San, aka Madame Butterfly, is a young girl who was forced to become a geisha after her father commited ritual suicide. She meets Lieutenant Pinkerton, who is an official of the United States Army and is stationed in Nagasaki. They fall in love, and agree to marry, in spite of the fact that Pinkerton has a sweetheart to whom he is engaged waiting for him in the States. Butterfly converts to Christianity so that she can worship the same God as her husband. Butterfly's family interrupts the marriage ritual and disowns her because she renounced the faith of her family. They leave in a huff and Pinkerton comforts his weeping wife. And, as the synopsis puts it: "she gradually surrenders her innocence and they lie down beneath the stars." Racy. End of Act One.
In the second act, it is 10 years later, Butterfly is living in destitution in Nagasaki. Pinkerton has left her and gone back to the States and married his sweetheart Kate, although Butterfly doesn't know it. Another officer from the States brings her a letter from Pinkerton, the contents of which she can't read and he can't bear to relate to her, so he just doesn't tell her the bad news. He asks her what she would do if Pinkerton never returns. She is horrified by the idea and triumphantly shows the officer her son as proof of Pinkerton's inevitable return. She dreams of him coming back to take her and her son to a wonderful new life in America. Pinkerton returns to Nagasaki with his wife and visits the home of Butterfly, hoping to find her away and quietly convince her only servant to turn over her son to he and his American wife. Pinkerton can't bear the memories evoked by being back in her home, so he flees, just as Butterfly arrives. Kate convinces her to turn over her son to be raised as an American. After losing Pinkerton once and for all, Butterfly has no more resistance; she gives Kate her son and they leave. Desperate with grief and utterly hopeless, Butterfly turns to the only avenue available to her, and kills herself with the same sword that her father used. Pinkerton returns just in time to cradle her dying body in his arms as she breathes her last. (Hey, what do you want, it is based on an opera.)
Wow, I didn't mean for that synopsis to take up so much space. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty decent story, and in watching the ballet, I was just amazed at the way dance communicates. The different movements can portray so many different things, anger, grief, lust, timidity, mirth, it can all be writ large without anyone having to utter a word. It was also really interesting to try to understand a medium which baffles me, music, through one which I understand a little more, dance. It was interesting to watch how the choreography matched and intensified the emotion created by the music.
Oh, another thing that I have to mention is the INCREDIBLE scenery that was used in the ballet. One of the most amazing parts was the very first scene of the ballet, which is supposed to portray Butterfly dreaming of her future. It showed the dancer behind a huge screen which covered the entire stage and was painted with these huge, white, splashy flowers with deep blue centers. Through this you could see the dancer and four people who held these giant wings, like 25 ft. long, made of some kind of diaphanous fabric, and they were all coordinating the movement of the wings. Anyway, it was awesome.
But what none of that conveys, what I am struggling to get across, is the feeling of sitting in that audience, watching them dance. The thing that first comes to mind when I think about the ballet is perfection. It makes me ache inside, to see the way they dance, the perfect and impossible lines they make with their bodies, the effortless way that one dancer can leap and be caught and spun by another, the feather-light way they move through the air. The raw emotion that is displayed in a pas de deux. Oh, and this incredibly beautiful scene where Butterfly is waiting up all night for the return of Pinkerton and it showed her and her servant behind two screens, lighted from behind. It was referential, I think, to a style of Japanese theater, but it was incredible to see the sharpness of the lines and the variety of shapes they made, using just their bodies and a fan.
I don't know. Four years of studying writing, and I am absolutely at a loss to describe what it was like. Well, maybe not absolutely. It's not like I've been working on this for a month. Anyway, I've done a crap job trying to convey what it was like, but suffice it to say it was wonderful, and I love the ballet, and you should love the ballet too, and if you ever get a chance, you should go. Go now, in fact. The blog will still be here when you get back.
S.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Bone Deep Weary
I am...tired. And, unfortunately, I hate being tired. I feel guilty for being tired. I don't deserve to be tired. Other people can be tired. Other people with important jobs, doing important things for the world, taking care of other people, those people can be tired. Not me.
Of course, I don't mean the same old "I never get enough sleep" kind of weariness. No, this is a very different sort. I think this kind of tiredness come from the rhetoric of the sort that you can find in the last paragraph. I am tired because I can't rest. Because I feel guilty for resting. Resting means that I must be lazy, means that I have no more value, since, inexplicably, somewhere along the line, value got all tied up with dollar signs and one of my least favorite words, "productivity." So I feel like I have a constant low-grade fever of chattering voices that keeps me from resting.
"What will you do when you can't afford gas for your car? Why don't you make better use of your time? You should read more poetry, write more poetry, create more art, spend more time outside, the house should be cleaner, you should put more effort into studying. Just think, you'll never have this much time at your disposal again. And what have you done? Wasted it! Absolutely shameful! You'll never get anywhere with so little discipline. Not that anything you could do really matters anyway. Who gives a damn about all the books you've read! Reading books won't pay for grad school, now will it?"
And on, and on, and on...
It makes me angry, because once again, I think this past season was supposed to be one of rest for me. I was SUPPOSED to not do anything, to take it easy, to not work or even play too hard, to take a sabbatical before starting on the next phase of my life. It went well for about two weeks, when I first got back from L'Abri and busied myself, or not, doing whatever I wanted to do and hang what anybody else had to say about it. Then somehow the voices of self-doubt and guilt returned and I haven't had a minute's peace since, even when I do have many minute's which could have been peaceful.
And now, once again, this season is drawing to a close and I am full of regret, that I couldn't relax, that I couldn't explore my creative side more just because I wanted to instead of out of a hounding sense of obligation, that I am ending this season once again tired and God only knows when I'll have another chance like this one to step back and rest.
So back to basics again: Where do I find worth if it's not in what I've accomplished or produced? How can I truly enter into rest, not just cease from activity, when the opportunity arises? How can I silence all those wicked voices that are constantly telling me that whatever I'm doing, it isn't right, and it isn't good enough?
I can't give up, because I feel like I'll just keep returning to this place of non-productivity and guilt until the lesson finally sinks in. So I'm off, to do laundry and go grocery shopping with as much abandon and satisfaction as I can muster, and to try with might and main to convince myself that IT IS ENOUGH!
Of course, I don't mean the same old "I never get enough sleep" kind of weariness. No, this is a very different sort. I think this kind of tiredness come from the rhetoric of the sort that you can find in the last paragraph. I am tired because I can't rest. Because I feel guilty for resting. Resting means that I must be lazy, means that I have no more value, since, inexplicably, somewhere along the line, value got all tied up with dollar signs and one of my least favorite words, "productivity." So I feel like I have a constant low-grade fever of chattering voices that keeps me from resting.
"What will you do when you can't afford gas for your car? Why don't you make better use of your time? You should read more poetry, write more poetry, create more art, spend more time outside, the house should be cleaner, you should put more effort into studying. Just think, you'll never have this much time at your disposal again. And what have you done? Wasted it! Absolutely shameful! You'll never get anywhere with so little discipline. Not that anything you could do really matters anyway. Who gives a damn about all the books you've read! Reading books won't pay for grad school, now will it?"
And on, and on, and on...
It makes me angry, because once again, I think this past season was supposed to be one of rest for me. I was SUPPOSED to not do anything, to take it easy, to not work or even play too hard, to take a sabbatical before starting on the next phase of my life. It went well for about two weeks, when I first got back from L'Abri and busied myself, or not, doing whatever I wanted to do and hang what anybody else had to say about it. Then somehow the voices of self-doubt and guilt returned and I haven't had a minute's peace since, even when I do have many minute's which could have been peaceful.
And now, once again, this season is drawing to a close and I am full of regret, that I couldn't relax, that I couldn't explore my creative side more just because I wanted to instead of out of a hounding sense of obligation, that I am ending this season once again tired and God only knows when I'll have another chance like this one to step back and rest.
So back to basics again: Where do I find worth if it's not in what I've accomplished or produced? How can I truly enter into rest, not just cease from activity, when the opportunity arises? How can I silence all those wicked voices that are constantly telling me that whatever I'm doing, it isn't right, and it isn't good enough?
I can't give up, because I feel like I'll just keep returning to this place of non-productivity and guilt until the lesson finally sinks in. So I'm off, to do laundry and go grocery shopping with as much abandon and satisfaction as I can muster, and to try with might and main to convince myself that IT IS ENOUGH!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Creative Me
Suffice it to say, I have a very lucky sister. You'll have to forgive the long blog silence, but you have to understand, I have been very busy working on this:
Kind of an art piece/collage/mixed media coolness, a gift for her 16th birthday festivities which took place this past weekend. Had to photograph it in pieces so you could see the detail. I photographed it from left to right, so hopefully you can use your imagination about how the pieces fit together. And I also made this:
How about this cake? So, here's a question: Do you think anyone would pay to have a cake like this for a birthday, anniversary, or holiday instead of one from a grocery store? Do you think someone could support themselves making cakes, muffins, breads, cupcakes and the like instead of working some desk job? Not a plan for the immediate future, but maybe someday...?
Seriously, I am going to post a long, thoughtful post soon, very soon. Super-soon. Just you wait.
S.
Kind of an art piece/collage/mixed media coolness, a gift for her 16th birthday festivities which took place this past weekend. Had to photograph it in pieces so you could see the detail. I photographed it from left to right, so hopefully you can use your imagination about how the pieces fit together. And I also made this:
How about this cake? So, here's a question: Do you think anyone would pay to have a cake like this for a birthday, anniversary, or holiday instead of one from a grocery store? Do you think someone could support themselves making cakes, muffins, breads, cupcakes and the like instead of working some desk job? Not a plan for the immediate future, but maybe someday...?
Seriously, I am going to post a long, thoughtful post soon, very soon. Super-soon. Just you wait.
S.
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