Titles For Poems Never Written

I'm not a poet but I do come up with these titles that I think would wonderful headline poems. I have actually tried a few times to write poems to go with the titles but they were awful.

Here's a couple of my favorites, complete with origin stories.

"Sean Meets the Devil in Old Port."

My friend...Sean....once told me this story about meeting someone he was determinded was Satan in Portland's Old Port. It was a great story, and I think would make a wonderful poem. And yeah I did try but I just couldn't do it.

"Drunk Mexican Archaleogists."

This story is amazingly convulted. It invovled H and I talking tonight about various things. First, H wanted to know if I remembered a movie where someone painted eyes on their eyelids so that it looked like they had thier eyes open when their eyes were closed. I couldnt' remember that but I did remember the girl in Indiana Jones who wrote "I love you" on her eyelids. This lead to a conversation about wanting to be an archelogists when we were little. H was trying to tell me a story about some hills around one of the places where he lived in Mexico. I kept interpretting with "Oh was there some digs going on? Was everyone drunk?" This came because one of my fav. undergrad profs. Dr. O always cracked jokes about drunk arachelogists. Not sure what this poem would look like.

If I think of some more, I'll throw them up.

Sundays Suck

This Sunday is worst than usual. Last night Piper and I created some kind of dominao effect which resulted in a big bottle of water being spilled on my laptop. Right now it is laying on the desk in the study. H turned it on this morning. It did come on but turned off immediately. We'll try again later this afternoon. Everything is on that laptop. All my thesis notes, the start of my Foucault paper. I really almost cried last night. Thank god I don't great soda.

Now if that wasn't bad enough I have to finish my Foucault paper which is, you guessed it, on the wet laptop. I told my professor I'd send it out Monday. Even if my laptop is working, I'll not have the paper ready. I think I can finish it today (if said laptop actually decided to work) and edit it tomorrow and Tuesday. No not much time to edit. I don't know what happened this semester. It really was like one minute I woke up and it was December. It took me so long to get into the rhytym of school. Normally I have all papers done at this point, and am editing. This semester all I had to write was thesis proposal and a ten page paper. And there is a price to pay. I will be writing my thesis over my winter break. So fun. So relaxing.

In other mundania type news, I reached my goal in WW. What this means is that once I maintain that weight for six weeks I get lifetime. Lifetime means that I don't have to pay for meetings if I keep my goal weight. And my goal weight isn't tiney I assure you but it's a lot smaller than I was two years. Since the moment when I could really feel my body falling apart two years ago, I've lost a totaly of 54 lbs. and 8 inches of my waist. My body feels better. I feel stronger. All of which does make feel more confident. I'm also a weight I feel I can maintain. I think if you set your mind on a weight that is too small you end up not being able to either get there or to maintain once you're there.

Coffee and Chocolate

Last night I had another random encounter with humanity. In the Starbucks line, waiting for my desperately needed Americano, and cookies for the beasties, I feel into joking with an older man. He had a box labeled "Coffee and Chocolate." "It just didn't get much better than that I told him." We ended up joking with his wife and the clerks. I know, cheesy, but I really feel warmed by those encounters during the "SEASON."

Coffee and chocolate are really true of the earth's loveliest delights. Right up there with sex. I was thinking about pleasure yesterday. In the class I'm TAing for, we had our final discussion for year on Neopaganism. The book we read is a wonderful book examining Pagan festivals. We were discussing why Neopagansim is one of the fastest growing religions in the U.S. (along with Pentecostalism). Several students kept pointing to how good people felt at these festivals. S, my professor, mentioned that this is not work that has been done in sociological/anthropological religious study work but that this question of pleasure seemed important. And this had me thinking all day, on the drive home, throughout the evening but yes pleasure! Why are we so scared too look at the pleasure religion provides? Would it make religion easier to dismiss for those of so "enlightened"? And I'm not talking pleasure in the Marx, opium way, but pleasure...the kind of pleasure we get from sex, a good glass of wine, fine music, etc. Does anyone have recommendations for books on pleasure? I'd great appreciate some call outs.

And today I was also thinking, as I prepare to send out the secondary materials to UNC (I'm sick to my stomach on this one) that I greatly appreciated all the encouragement from everyone. In particular, I wanted to mention a certain friend, from the lonely Isle, who asked important questions about my thesis proposal. Those questions really forced me to hone in what I was trying to say. I love that I get this kind of critical feed back here. I won't lie...sometimes it makes me grumpy but most of the time I get past that to see the spirit it was offered in. Critical discussions, not polemic discussions, are ways that only make us better thinkers. I appreciate that not only do I get encouragement but the pushes that I often need to just be better.

And yes, I will be finishing up editing my sample paper, then all this will be sent out to UNC. I am feeling a terrified. I have too much riding on this application. And deep down I know my chances are very very slim but I keep hoping that I'll slide in on that slim chance.

Depression...still there but I no longer feel like I'm drowning. Talking to someone earlier, I realized that writing about my dad all summer brought up some feelings I have about Christmas. Maybe I can find some time to write about those memories and feelings later.

Piper told me that when we got a cat, she wanted to name it Morrissey.

Sinking

Now closed in by a chilly night, with the sounds of the dishwasher and the Christmas cartoon on the TV, I am sinking. I do not know what I am sinking into but it feels like darkness. Not the warm comforting darkness of a clear night sky but a cold black hole. It's a darkness I know. A darkness I used to be intimate with.

But only now have I recognized it. I thought maybe I was pregnant (horrors). When that wasn't the case, I thought stress. But despite everything the stress isn't unmanagble this time around. Yet I walk around in tears all the time. I can't sleep. Food is totally uninteresting to the point where I don't want it or I want to just inhale everything in sight. I walked around feeling so disconnected from everything around me. Every move felt like I struggled against a heavy blanket to accomplish.

Then sitting here, I realized..."It's depression." Shit I haven't been depressed like this in a long, long time. I think the last time was post-partum with Camille. It's a scary feeling. But for me being able to look the darkness in the eye, embrace it, helps me in learning to live with it. And yes I will live with it. No drugs. Those who know me know this. Perhaps it's time to write these dark fantasies out.

Monday Mourning

Despite a life trying to consciously avoid stereotypes, I do hate Mondays. They slay me. Today was no exception. But there was good news...and for the most part I remained my happy chipper self. Bullets in the life of Ginger....who yes, John, is alive so very alive.

1. H and I think that being so in synch might not be a good thing. Yesterday I woke up with horrible pain in my left shoulder. I think I pulled a muscle while doing my free weights on Saturday. H came back from studying with intense back pain. We spent the rest of the day moaning and groaning unable to bend over, sit, or stand for too long. All this in the last weeks of classes--papers due, finals to grade. Yes, Ginger has a body!

2. I've been horribly bitchy lately. I got so pissed off at the dumbest thing yesterday. I feel a tad bad about my reaction. I mean, I don't feel bad about what I said but just that it bugged me so much. I suspect the recipent of my bitchiness thinks I'm a tad crazy. Sigh. I am crazy. But everyone has been the recipent of my nastiness. I think I need a hut to go when I'm unbearable. I really don't know how H stands it. Hell, I don't know how most of my friends stand it for that matter. I know what's wrong but there is no need to share everything with you, dear readers!

3. My shoulder still HURTS.

4. I found that I'm going to TA for one of my favorite professors. I'm very excited about this. He's teaching an intro. class on Christianity which is good experience for me. In addition, he wants me to teach a couple of classes.

5. I still have NOT written my Foucault paper. Not that I have any idea when it's due but I suspect soon;P Yes, I do need to write that and not work on my blog.

6. I overslept today and still managed to get a good parking spot. In fact, not only did I get a great spot, I managed to not get a ticket (I forgot my parking pass).

7. Had a great bitch session with fellow female TA. We're getting along well despite both being alpha females. I'm playing nice.

8. Did I mention I have a body?

I may erase the last post I wrote. It's too scattered and needs some work. I think there are like six stories buried in there.

It's Not You, It's Your Body

Imagine if your body was you. Where would I hide? I've spent so long thinking that beneath my layers of fat there laid the true me, safe from the world. Periodically I'd let her out to play, shed the tower, and ended up wounded--bleeding on the side of the road. Then I'd imagine I could lock up her up, and hide her in the armor that fat seemed to bring. But it is lonely in exile. No one wants the fat girl, and sure that if safe but it's not a really happy life either.

There were days when I could convince myself that it was okay. I had lots of friends, and there was certainly satisfaction in those relationships. But at night, alone, there was no one to hold me, or to touch me intimately. No one to whisper "I love you" before sleep came. And it really did seem that as long as I was fat there wasn't going to be anyone to do those things. When I did fall in love, finally, the person rejected me because of my body. "It's not you, it's just your body." And again there was that idea that this body was somehow not the real me. And the pain...because supposedly I could do something about this body right? I could reshape it, change it, make it somehow more reflective of me?

And I was lucky. I meet someone who thought the fat was sexy. Well who though I was sexy. All of me. When we first dated people would say things like "It's good that he sees your mind." And what that really meant is that someone as hot as H must love brains over beauty because look at you girlfriend. It continues even now where people will say sort of incredulously "Why do you think he loves you." with that slight emphasis on the you. There are so many implications there: he was looking for a green card, he must see something in you the rest of us don't. It's funny because I kind of love that H at times loves me solely out of lust. There are times when I someone to see only my body...because maybe just maybe it's not just my body...maybe it's me.

I should end it there...what a great ending line but I can't. When I lost a large chunk of weight last time (40lbs), I gained 20 of it back very quickly. I freaked out to be honest. The thought of myself as this thinner version was very wacky. And WW really emphasises that this is supposed to be a lifetime thing. I was going from always being the fat girl to being the sort of in between girl (no one is likely to ever call me thin). And I felt like I was losing myself. In a way, I was....

Reading Foucault has made me rethink my attitudes towards my body. He claims in Discipline and Punish that the soul is the prison of the body. Maybe it wasn't the real me I was keeping trapped in those layers of fat. Maybe the real me were the layers of fat. And if Foucault is right in that we can stray afield of ourselves, then maybe me is also this person who's not wrapped layers in fat.

In my head over the last few days, I thought about those moments when I loved my body, when I felt proud of my body. I started to think of the things I love.

1. When I practiced S & M. You end up being incredibly intimate with your body. In order to keep this on a safe level you have to be able to read your body. I could take, initially, incredibly high amounts of pain but it was because i was able to disconnect from my body in ways most people can't. I'd wake up the next day, dying, aching, bruised, and barely able to move. If I was going to continue in this world, I had to learn to read my body better. S & M was a pleasure (and God, what a pleasure) that brought you center to yourself, your body.

2. Bearing children....not the pregnancy part, I hated that. That was like having my body possessed. But the actual pushing out, labor part. Yes, it hurt like hell but the strength it takes to do something like that is not something you realize you possess. It was powerful. It made me trust my body in ways i never had before. Afterward, I felt this quiet pride.

There seems to be a theme here...pain...maybe it's just me...But for me at least pain made me aware that the surface of my body was me. It was not something that didn't belong to me but it was me.

This time around I didn't freak out as much about losing weight. I didn't go into some kind of identity crisis or who I would be if I was fat. I think it's because, through reading Foucault, I am starting to see my body less as an object and more as a subject. As silly as this sounds, I am beginning to realize that my body is me. Maybe there is no duality. I don't even know how to begin with this new ethics but I do know that it involves having to respect and care for my body.

Riding in My Car...

This actually happened last night. As if it wasn't bad enough that I'm obessed with Morrissey...

We're in the car last night, and H has brought along a CD to play for the kids. Said kids are okay about the first song but as H starts another:

Piper: I want to sing Morrissey! (happy insistence because she's thinking "OF COURSE they have Morrissey in the car." We don't).

Horacio: This is Morrissey, hold on. (He's totally lying because we don't have any Morrissey in the car. It's Belle and Sebastian who sound NOTHING like Morrissey). Whispers to me: I can totally fool her. B

Belle and Sebastian fills the car.

Piper, screaming: "That is NOT Morrissey. I want Morrissey. (At this point, she begins to sob hsyterically because we don't have any Morrissey. We discover she would rather have silence than listen to anything else besides Morrissey).

At least I'm starting to listening to other things....

Corrupting Our Kids

We're in the car last night, and H has brought a long a CD to play for the kids. Said kids are okay about the first song but as H starts another:

Piper: I want to sing Morrissey! (happy insistence because she's thinking "OF COURSE they have Morrissey in the car." We don't).

Horacio: This is Morrissey, hold on. (He's totally lying because we don't have any Morrissey in the car. It's Belle and Sebastian who sound NOTHING like Morrissey). Whispers to me: I can totally fool her.

Belle and Sebastian fills the car.

Piper, screaming: "That is NOT Morrissey. I want Morrissey. (At this point, she begins to sob hsyterically because we don't have any Morrissey. We discover she would rather have silence than listen to anything else besides Morrissey).

Saturday Morning Musing

Randomness from Ginger's Saturday morning:

1. Why the hell am I up? I'm exhausted. I can FEEL the bags under my eyes. I laid awake last night for something like two hours. When I did sleep, it was a strange sleep that felt like being awake but because of the dreams I knew I was sleeping. All in all just not a restful night.

2. As if I needed something else to feel guilty about....now I feel guitly about losing weight. Sigh. Am I betraying my feminist self? Is this weight loss really all about self loathing? Should I just eat my fucking head off, and chalk it up to my principles? Hell, there is a part of me that would love to say "Fuck it" and go eat an entire big bag of Hershey kisses (the cherry coridal kind...god yum). But there is that part deep in me that says "You know that it's an excuse to eat until you barf." And I don't want to do that to myself to anymore. I abused my body for a long time...I abused it with food. But again...sigh.

3. I've kind of decided I'm done my SOP. I have heard nothing from said adviser who I know has some intense weekend plans. This means that I will not be seeing my SOP until next Wednesday. I need to get this stuff sent out, adn by next Wednesday I will be knee deep in TAing duties, and editing a Foucault paper. Plus I just feel that it's as good as it can get.

4. Not feeling as restless, or uncontent as I was a few days ago. I just need to accept the feelings I was having and move on. I'm moving on....

5. Had my monthly reading group yesterday. It was ok. Sometimes I'm not sure why the hell we're meeting so it's hard to critque who we read. There seems to be this kind of "Well this isn't the revolution I want" Mentality, as well as critques about academics not doing anything in general. Do acadmeics really do ANYTHING? I mean, we sit and write papers taht noone reads. And the prof. who seems the most upset by this is the one who really seems to think we can maintian soem kind of dsitance or neturality. All in all it was a fustrating session. I really think the group misread the reading, but no one was listening to me, and I didn't feel really capable of aruging why I thought this. On a nice for the body image level, the older phil/rel. prof who came actually chekced me out and not hte skinny TA who everyone else checks out;P I'd like to think it was my mind but I think it was my boobs. Ahh..well, he did listen to me, asked me good questions, and tried to talk me into taking his class.

Umberto Growing Up

There are these little things that let you know your child are growing up. For me it is often not the obvious things--like Umberto needing deodorant this summer (no joke). It's the smaller things, the gazes, the hand gestures, the consciousness of things.

Last year, I bought all the kids Santa hats in some kind of cheesy attempt to get decent xmas pictures. I never did get the pictures because it's nearly impossible to pose my kids. But the kids loved the hats. Last year, Umberto wore his everywhere--to the park, the store, the library. He was made fun of a few times but it didn't bother him. Last night, the kids wanted me to buy them Santa hats, and I remembered that I had these ones packed away. I pulled them out, and they all wore them with glee. Umberto had his on this morning as he played Gamecube. We were going to the park to meet some friends, and right before we leave, he pulls off the hat saying "Oh man, I almost forgot I had this on." He grabbed his Yankee hat and left the Santa hat home. It made me a bit sad that he's gotten to that point of feeling self conscious about what he wears.

Then at the park today, he was with his two friends, the Hs and a girl they sometimes hang out with, C. We, the mommies, were watching them, and wondering what they talked about. We were laughing about they never tell us. Today as we drove home, Umberto told me. C had heard a ghost in the woods, Umberto told me. It said "Get out now before something bad happens." C ran from the words, the boys following her because they hadn't heard the ghost. Umberto said when they went back in he saw a shadow of a person who wasn't there, and then heard someone say "ouch."

I remember as a child being fascinated with ghosts, and seeing, hearing them in the woods. But it does seem to happen at a certain older age. And Umberto is reaching that age in some many ways. It feels a bit like mourning but with a twinge of excitement about what comes next.

Camille the Sculptor

These are not the best pictures but...Camille is pretty good at scuplting. These are her first two figures (after having played with Play-Doh in a long while).

Thesis Update

Monday...was despondent. Or should I say Monday found me despondent. Mondays are usually like this anyway, right? I don't know why but I just felt weary of school. There are times when I feel like all the hoop jumping might not be worth it. As I said to a friend that day "Why do we have to do what we hate to do what we love?" And that really sums up my feelings when I got back yet another critique of my thesis proposal. I just felt so done with it. It had been helpful at first but had reached the point where it was no longer helpful. It was just busy work I had to do in order to please other people.

I came home rather down. IMed with a friend, well, I bitched and moaned to a friend over IM. H came back from his study time, and pep talked me. Normally this would really piss me off. Monday, however, it worked. I went into school today, finished the 8th draft of my thesis proposal and the eighth draft of my SOP. My advisor had told me on Tuesday that the SOP was getting really good. And this afternoon I got back the thesis proposal draft with the comment "VERY good, and very concise. I think you're done." Hurrah.

Piper also cheered me up last night. We had a few minute of Piper craziness. She ran from the bedroom to the living room while we were getting ready for bed. I followed her to find her doing some kind of odd walk. She had her legs spread and was taking these big steps rather like a sumo wrestler. It was so random.

I laughed for a bit, and felt better.

My dreams have been very intense lately, and unsettling. There are emotions in them that I'd rather not think about right now. I wake feeling this intense longing. It makes me sad as if I can't be fully content with my life. Why is there always that desire for more? It bothers me when I have so much already. And I'm not even sure if I can put a name to that which I long for. I suspect that what I long for in my dreams is something that I would not want if I were to grasp it. I know this makes no sense but it's not something I fully want to disclose, nor something that I can fully articulate. Sometimes my life just gets complicated in unexpected, and unwelcome ways.

But mostly I'm happy. My thesis is ready to be written. The books are read, the notes taken, the proposal nearly complete. My kids are joyful (most of the time) and funny. My husband is beautiful, smart, funny, and kind. I am not forgetful of my blessings.

Writing

"I would like to write in such a way that people feel a kind of physical pleasure in reading me. I would almost say that that this is the writer's sense of courtesy."--Michel Foucault--

Can I write words that touch, lick, nipple a long your skin across distances made of megabytes and electronic components? What ghostly hands rises from the grave to move along the length of spine? On my bookshelf sits hundreds of lovers. They are patient, waiting, waiting for me to feel their words to embrace me, move me. Are there orgasms in the these words? Orgasms in any words? What is this new pleasure? Is it something beyond the law of sex? Or is it sex? Sex with words?

Perhaps I can touch you. Can you feel it? Do you feel the hand that types this line. Imagine: the hand streched out towards you in your distance, one finger outlines your face, your lips. If you can close your eyes long enough you may just feel my breath against your ear. Listen.

Pleasure and Learning--The Umberto Verison

Certainly, learning can be made an erotic, highly pleasurable activity. Now, that a teach should be incapable of revealing this, that his job should virtually consist of showing how unpleasant, sad, dull and unerotic learning is--to me, this is an incredible achievement. But it is an achievement that certainly has its raison d'etre. We need to know why our society considers it so important to show that learning is something sad; maybe it's because of the number of people who are excluded from it. Imagine what it would be like if people were crazy about learning the way they are about sex. They would knock each other over in a rush to get into school.
Michel Foucault

When I read this morning, I smiled, and thought about in many ways this is what I want learning to be for Umberto. I take great pleasure in my own learning. I want Umberto to feel this pleasure. Right now he does. He's so excited to learn new things. You can see him quiver sometimes. I love coming home from school or work and having him rush up to me, thrilled at a new bug discovery. Right now he's passionate and open to knowledge. I watched this being sucked from him in school. He started to tell us that he hated books. He said he was stupid. He knew that he was getting left out of something. There was even a moment when I started to worry that he wasn't smart. I'm ashamed to say that now but I started to get anxious because the school was anxious. I got caught up in the game.

Now we're out, and last year, I got caught up again. He was behind, he wasn't reading, he wasn't doing such and such. I realized at some point that this anxiety was driving us both nuts. I wasn't stopping to see that he got pleasure from learning new things. I wasn't helping him to discover that pleasure in greater ways. I wasn't sharing with him my own pleasure in learning.

This year, I've opened up to him. I've learned to let go of my own inhibitions, and to let my own joy out. I've started to laugh more, and to let his joy infect me as I let mine infect him. If I'm getting frustrated or impatience, I let go of our plans and follow something new. No we don't always get through my lesson plans but it's okay because we always learn something and we usually have fun doing it. I remember once thinking that fun wasn't what it was all about. And then I realized that this is exactly what it should be about. We've divided the world into fun and unfun things. Why? Why does it have to be this way? I have FUN at school and I have FUN learning. Why shouldn't Umberto? Why does he have to learn that the world is about work that is not fun? And why in the hell do we think fun is such a bad thing anyway?

I say yes to pleasure! Onward to fun!

Learning and Pleasure

Certainly, learning can be made an erotic, highly pleasurable activity. Now, that a teach should be incapable of revealing this, that his job should virtually consist of showing how unpleasant, sad, dull and unerotic learning is--to me, this is an incredible achievement. But it is an achievement that certainly has its raison d'etre. We need to know why our society considers it so important to show that learning is something sad; maybe it's because of the number of people who are excluded from it. Imagine what it would be like if people were crazy about learning the way they are about sex. They would knock each other over in a rush to get into school. Michel Foucault

Foucault's answer to an interviewers question made me smile this morning. What a wonderful image...people pushing, shoving, fighting to learn something. But no, my students never rushed to school eager for learning. They trudged in, heads down, tired, grumpy, bored before anything even got started. They were definitely much more excited about sex then they were about learning. For golden year, I got them excited. I was excited. It was contagious. But then the higher powers forced me back to drudgery. Excitement, pleasure is dangerous when you're trying to hold people down. And that's really why I had to stop teaching. I couldn't be a part of that kind of system anymore.

And I think Foucault is right on with this assessment.No one is going to continue on when they find learning so dull and boring. And not only that but what happens if learning becomes pleasurable. What kinds of discourses will be unmasked? In my experience, many. Discovering that learning was an exciting, pleasurable, freeing was a shock to me. I didn't know that learning could move me in such a physical way. But even with this knowledge there is a sense of loss always on the horizon. I still have to play within a system based on keeping people out. And yes I understand all the crap about standards but what is a standard when it excludes those who don't get a high enough fucking number on a test? Excludes someone who finds learning to be one of the finest pleasure?

In the same interview, Foucault says

"The degree simply serves to create a kind of market value for knowledge, to make those who don't have degrees feel they have no right to knowledge, are not capable of knowledge. Everyone who gets a degree knows perfectly well it's useless, it has no content, it's empty. But those who don't have degrees are the ones who set great store by them. Degrees are precisely for those that don't have them."

He acknowledges that his degrees have gotten him to where he is now but I think he offers a point to be taken here. All too often we assume that those who hold degrees hold knowledge. Is this necessarily true? And does this knowledge constitute all knowledge? I think too often, and I am guilty of this, I make these kind of assumptions about knowledge. It reminds me in a way of the video E posted earlier today. I see the degree as the carrot on the stick. Sometimes it gets in the way of the pleasure. I'm going to write that first quote and hang it up in my office as a reminder.

Knowledge as pleasure. Like sex. Something I look forward to each day. Something I savor. Something that rocks my world, shatters my universe, fragments my being. This is the way I want to know.

Another Link

To why we homeschool. E posted this video from YouTube, and I just thought it was so true, and so important. It's expresses one of the many reasons why we homeschool. Here it is.

Missing the Goose

Umberto is in Maine with my mom. I miss him dreadfully. He's gone with her before, and I know it's okay to let him go. But oh I miss him still. I miss his funny little ways. I even miss his tantrums, and sobbing "YOU HATE ME!" Having him absent...well it makes the house emptier. There's something missing.

And the girls have been awful without him. Really awful. They've hit, clawed, and screamed at each other since we dropped him off my mom's on Monday night. It's been a nonstop bitch fight. I never knew how much Umberto buffered between the two of them. I think they miss him too.

But he's having a great time. So much so that he wouldn't even talk to me on the phone tonight. He's playing in the snow, having fun with his cousins (who adore him as we all do), and getting spoiled by his aba.

Distance...funny how it makes love more known. I know I love Umberto but sometimes when he's driving me nuts, it's not the think I think of the most. But when he's gone, I realize how much he's a part of my life, how much he's a part of my soul. I don't know how parents who lose children do it. And I don't know how in 7.5 years this little person has laid such a claim on me.

My Nose

My nose...well, what can I say. It works. It's boasted a few piercings over the years. Oh yeah, it was the bane of my existence when I was a child. I was called "Pig nose" from most of Kindergarten on until high school. I hate my nose. Oh the hate isn't as bad as when I was a teenanger. I suspect if I had the money I would have had a nose job as soon as I turned eighteen. But alas I was poor so I just got used to it. I won't say that I developed a love of my nose because I didn't. I grew used to, I guess...or perhaps resigned is the better word.

When I see pictures, my nose is the first thing I see. And the picture usually gets delted.

I've always figured my nose was something Native, or African-American. I became a tad obessessed with finding out where the hated nose came from. My family is a bit sketchy on the whole family tree. I know that there's a lot of Scottish and some Native American. But my nose didn't really look like any of that ancestory. Yes, I admit it, I observed people. Looked at pictures--trying to find my nose. I think that I thought if I could locate my nose is some kind of history maybe I could come to love it.

H has been telling me that it's a French nose. But there couldn't be French in my family. Could there? Tonight we're watching Paris, Je T'Aime. It's a movie...sort of. It's shorts of different directors filming love and loss in the great city. And there's a short with Juliet Binoche. And holy shit, she has my nose. H has commented on this before...I always thought he was trying to be complimentary. I mean, what woman would not like to be compared with Juliet Binoche? But no, she does indeed have my nose. Maybe not so large but it's still there...the wide nostrils, the slight uplift at the top. So my nose is French. There's something my family isn't telling me...

Word Invention

Umberto likes to come up with new words. Our
budding Shakespeare. His newest is "cooshi." I think it's a combo of crowded and squishy. He uses this word whenever there is a crowd of bodies in a small place. So the other day I swear we were all in the bathroom which is not big (for those of you who do not have kids once you have them you will NEVER go to the bathroom alone again), and Umberto yells "It's getting cooshi in here!" And he's right, it was.

Words and Violence

This is the first paragraph of my new SOP.

Veena Das begins her book with a question “What it is to pick up the pieces and to live in this very place of devastation?”[1] From my work with a Latino Pentecostal church to my work on a woman who left a Mormon Fundamentalist group, this question haunts me. The people in these studies have survived various violent experiences both physical and emotional. And always this experience comes to me, the audience and scholar in the form of words. Das argues that violence returns and remains in the presence of everyday expressions. This suggests that violence is not something one can leave behind. Words in this descent become animated through voice, and it is this relationship, the relationship between words and voice, that can provide both the means to expression and the silencing of certain stories. Words provide a means of telling but what they tell are not always the stories one expects. Violence becomes something that in Das’s book that is not separate from how people conduct their lives. It is not something that happens and ends. Rather it is something that becomes entwined in life, and in the rebuilding of lives from violence. But the violence does not ever go away. It is always there, always waiting to emerge in words not expected, and in the silences forced upon people who created new tales for the violence. How does religion fit into this equation? How does religion both offer words and create silences around stories of violence?


[1] Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007, 6.