Progress

A good thing happened today.  I spent the day with my dad and his wife at the hospital and I learned something I needed to know.  For years now, I've had as little to do with my dad as possible.  There were a couple of years back in my mid-thirties when I literally wasn't speaking to him.  It wasn't because I was mad at him, although I was, it was because I needed a break.  He's so intense, and being around him was so difficult for me, that it would take days to recover my equilibrium after spending time with him.  I just wanted some time off.  I kept up with him through my mom and my sisters (this was before my parents divorced), but I didn't see him or speak to him for a couple of years.

But even once we were back in touch, I never spent more than a day or two around him.  We'd have dinner with him, or we'd be at some big family gathering. Once or twice we spent the night at his new house once he remarried.  I'd be around him just long enough to realize, "Yup, he's still the same old guy he's always been," and then I'd be glad I didn't have to be around him much anymore.  Times have changed now.  His wife needs our support, no matter how I feel about him.  So the visit I made here earlier this month, and now this one, are the first times in a dozen years I've been around him for any length of time.  And I'm discovering that I'm stronger than I think. I've grown up a lot.  Which is such a relief, because I'm frickin' 48 years old.  Thank GOD.

There was that moment yesterday, which was indeed painful.  It cut right through to the core of the little girl I once was, confused and hopeful and trying to please, but just never quite getting him to see me.  But today, I spent the entire day with him, and even though he's still the same guy, he still makes cracks about women that are borderline offensive, he still looks at me and sees someone who is not even remotely related to how I see myself-- even though all of that is still true, it was OK.  I sat there with them, and we chatted between the blood draws, or sat and read, or watched Wimbledon, and I was fine.  I could handle it.  I wasn't terrified that he would somehow be able to undermine who I am, which I think is what used to scare me to death about him.  He was such a strong person, and had such an influence over me, and the way he saw me and saw the world were not at all how I saw things. It seemed like the "real" me was erased whenever I spent time with him.  But he can't do that anymore, because there's too much of who I am for him to erase now.  Ha. I guess I have my own columnar self now.

Cuteness is as cuteness does

One of the things I disliked about growing up in the south is the cute thing.  There are many ways that women can be in the South, but one of the favorites is cute, in a way that would be entirely unacceptable if you lived in, say, New York City or Seattle.  Southerners love perky women, adorable women.  And they probably wouldn't use the word "women" in this context, but I'm so used to it that I can't imagine a different way to say it.  Maybe gals.  I remember the first time I moved out of the south, it was such a relief to be able to dump the whole cute thing.  I suppose everyone has their cute moments, but generally speaking, I am not cute.  I am definitely not perky.  In my natural state, I'm kind of grumpy and prickly.  And I'm not talking about looks here.  Although being physically adorable helps, cuteness is a State of Mind.

My dad has always loved women--ladies, gals-- who were cute and perky.  The cynical side of me wants to add: women who catered to him, buttered him up, flirted with him and teased with him.  He also liked women who were "tiny."  It was the adjective he used most often to describe women whom he found attractive.  But my mom, my sisters and I are not tiny.  We are not huge, and none of us is really overweight, but we are relatively tall-- all four of us within an inch of  5'7"-- and we are not reed thin.  We were never described as tiny.

My dad's second wife is tiny. She is funny, lovely both within and without, with a heart as big as all outdoors and a laugh that you can hear from the other side of the house.  I don't in any way mean to criticize her; her generosity of spirit and her utter zest for life come through in everything she does.  But she is about 5'2" and can't weight any more than 105 soaking weight.  She is tiny, and cute, and at times you could even call her perky.  She comes by it honestly; she is a naturally extroverted, bubbly person.  And my dad finally has what he always wanted.  He said to me today, "She gets her hair up in a ponytail and gets in her Jeep [convertible], and she's the cutest thing in town."

And on the one hand, while part of me can get angry about the absurdity of a man who is 78 years old who still wants his wife to be "the cutest thing in town," another part of me has to admit it hurts.  I'll even admit to being jealous.  I wish to hell I could say that I'm beyond all that, I have my own self-esteem, it doesn't matter what he thinks, but it would only be partially true.  All those years that I tried and tried to please him, tried to twist and mold myself into being the kind of woman that he would admire.  I didn't always know exactly what it was that would do it, but I tried.  And it turns out all he wanted was something my sisters and I could/can never be.  Someone tiny and cute and adorable.  Someone not us.  He is happy with her.  He was not happy with us.

I can rage about it and I can be mad about how unfair it is, but I can't change it.  And after I let myself feel the anger and the jealousy and the unfairness of it, I just have to let it go.  I've been in therapy, I've read Oprah Magazine and plenty of self-help books.  I know how this works.  He is who he is.  It is far too late to change him.  He is happy with his cute, adorable wife, whom I love very much.  And I'm so, so glad that pleasing my dad is no longer high on my priority list.

So I'm feeling the pain and letting it go.  Wish me luck.

I typed out my last two weeks so you could see why I haven't posted, but then I thought:  new low.  Not doing it.  So I highlighted it and backspaced (remember when you whited things out?) and you'll just have to trust me, I have had no time.  And now, I'm about to leave and go South for another week.  Then when I get back, I'll have one week to finish up plans for a week-long family reunion involving 35-ish people that will be here (although we're having it at a conference center so I don't have to cook!  yay!), and then a few days after that, we're heading to the east coast for a week with my husband's family.

So I guess I'm on hiatus until August.  See you then.

I just got back from a 6 day jaunt to the land of my youth.  It started out a couple of months ago as a chance to see my younger sister's kids, including my nephew who just graduated from high school, while she and her husband went off to celebrate their 25th anniversary.  Then my dad got sick, and the trip got extended to include a side trip to visit him for a couple of days.  Which ended up including a trip back to the Christian camp where I was either a camper or a summer staff member from the time I was 13 until I was 20.  It was exhausting and exhilarating and amazing and........ exhausting.  I just got off the treadmill (which included 25 minutes at 7% incline, which I only do when I really need to work off some steam) where I decided it was like being on a rollercoaster with a steamroller drum attached, so you are utterly flattened by the time you swoop through the nadir and start climbing back up, then you pop back up like a cartoon character and get ready for the next run.  Plenty of fodder for posts in there, but I don't know how much time I'll have to think it through in the next few days since I am now way behind in the class I'm auditing and will have the quite the time getting caught up.

A couple of brief impressions, though.  my almost-18-yr-old nephew was amazing.  Of course I didn't tell him any of the cartloads of past shit I could have if he was going to understand all of the implications of what was going on, and he is thankfully exactly like every other 18-year-old and didn't really want to know.  But he was utterly supportive in his own completely unknowing way.  We spent about 24 hours at my younger sister's house, then about 24 hours with my dad, then 24 hours with my older sister, then another 24 hours with my dad, and then drove back to my younger sister's house for the last day (I told you it was wild!).  After the first stretch at my dad's house, which was difficult to say the least, I got in the car and my nephew ran back in to get something he had forgotten.  by the time he came back out, I had the stereo blasting Sleigh Bells as loud as I could without blowing the speakers on my sister's car, and he took it right in stride.  When i told him I needed a dairy queen (because sometimes a blizzard is just what you have to have), he just laughed, got out the tomtom, and found me one.  How amazing is that?  How do you even find a dairy queen on a tomtom?  What would we do without these kids who know how to run all our technology?  He was so awesome.  I didn't get to see my younger sister on this trip because of the way our flights worked out, but she and her husband were there in the way they have raised him.

And my older sister, who is also amazing, who when I was sinking down into a mire of loss and regret and self-pity, reached in a hand and pulled me out in a matter of about twenty minutes with a late night conversation after we finally got all the kids in bed.  I'm so lucky to have the people I have in my life.

wow, that sounds really melodramatic, doesn't it?  Really, from the exterior, it was a very calm, lovely trip.  I'm pretty sure that other than my brief meltdown with my sister, I handled it pretty well.  But I'm going to be dealing with the fallout for awhile, I think.

feminism revisited, um, again

I remembered where I was going with yesterday's post before it got hijacked by my little rant.  (Can you hijack your own post?  probably not. but anyway, read yesterday's post first.)  With another day's perspective, I'm thinking maybe I should save this until we've gotten to the part of the semester where we're actually reading feminist and cultural studies stuff, so that I don't end up reacting to what I think they're saying instead of what they actually said.  But here's the gist of it.  I certainly don't disagree with either field (feminism or cultural studies).  But I resent that they've marginalized (*borrows their terminology with a glare*) what I loved about the study of literature.  I'm --of course-- more aware of this than the other students because the last time I was in the classroom, 25 years ago, we were still doing it the old way.  The professor would assign us something to read, and we would read it.  And then he/she would give us the historical, biographical, and critical ideas that he/she felt were relevant to understanding the text.  And then we would talk about our reaction to it and how the historical / bio / critical ideas changed or didn't change what we thought.  It was fascinating and wonderful and I loved it.  There were problems with it, of course.  You could start with what got assigned to read.  It was late enough in the twentieth century that we were no longer just reading "dead white males" as they say, but we were still either reading the traditional canon or reading something different in reaction to it.

But apparently this is no longer allowed.  Or if you do it, you have to be somewhat sheepish about it, acknowledging that you know you aren't doing it right.  It seems that anything that you can come up with to say about how you want to discuss literature is going to get shot down as unacceptable.  You want to talk about the historical contexts?  New Critics say no.  You want to talk about Pope and Dryden?  feminists say that you're accepting patriarchal ideas about what is worth reading.  You want to talk about what Hemingway meant in "Hills Like White Elephants"?  well, there's any number of reasons you can't do that.  So at the end of the day, if you're going to keep all these theorists happy, you're just going to sit and glare at each other and not talk about literature at all.

I do understand that if we don't question our assumptions, we end up supporting classist, racist, sexist, homophobic, commodity-frenzied ideas that we don't really mean to support.  but good grief.  the pendulum swing seems to have gone a little too far the other way.

feminism revisited

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about feminism.  OK, I just went back and checked it was three months ago.  Where the hell does the time go?

Anyway. As I said, I wrote that post, and it was fine, and it said what I wanted to say on that day, but it didn't say nearly enough and it didn't feel right.  A week later, I wrote the comment that is attached to it, which helped, but it still just didn't seem right.  It's such a complicated issue.  But every time I re-read it, it sounded OK-- there isn't anything there that I disagree with.  I just couldn't figure out what was bugging me.  And then I forgot about it.  I've been busy.

But I'm taking this literary criticism class, where feminism is a major theme, and taking the class means driving and driving and driving, and finally a couple of days ago while I was in about my fourteenth hour of being behind the wheel this week, I figured out why that post had been bothering me so much.  Because I really am still a feminist.  The tools that feminism gave me are still a fundamental part of who I am.  But the circular reasoning that goes along with it drives me nuts.  I'm going to try to explain this but apologies in advance, because I'm having a hard time explaining it to myself let alone get it typed out.

I've heard it said that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out, but if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it, the frog will boil to death.  I have no idea whether or not that's true and there's no way I'm going to test it out, but it does illustrate a point.  Growing up as a female in the 60s and 70s was a bit like being a frog in that cold pot of water that gradually heats up as you move from childhood into puberty and adulthood so that you don't realize that the life has gone out of you until it's too late.  There were so many little things that were limiting for girls at the time:  dress codes and stated restrictions on what sports and activities you could be involved in and unstated restrictions on what career you could go into or what kinds of opinions and attitudes you could have.  Ways that men were allowed to intimidate and bully women to get what they wanted; ways that women bullied and intimidated other women to keep each other in line.  But for the most part it was all just background, it wasn't something you thought about as long as the men in your life were fairly nice.  It was just the way things were.  The women's movement of the 70s changed all that.  They made us see all the little things that had just been part of the background before.  It wasn't until feminism gave me the tools to recognize the ways I restricted myself to fit into someone else's mold that I became aware enough of those restrictions to learn to effectively manage my own life-- I figured out how to jump out of the pot.  Or at least became aware that I could jump out of the pot if I needed to.

And that still is the way that feminism is useful to me.  I use it all the time.  It's a major part of the lens through which I view life. (how many metaphors can I get going here? wait, maybe I can work in a mirror and an egg)(I've been reading Northrop Frye.)

But here are the things that still bug me about it.  Back in the day, you could really get off on seeing women as victims.  Here were poor, innocent, pure women, who were all about love and kindness, who had been held back and oppressed by evil power-hungry militaristic men.  But that isn't the way it was where I grew up--and maybe this is more obvious if you're from the South-- it was often women who were the ones enforcing all the restrictions and even making them stricter than the men in our lives cared about.  way stricter, for that matter.  I know that's a complicated topic, but because of that, I don't see the point of blaming men.  Both genders were there.  I think it took all of us to build the society we had/have, even if in many of the ways that feminists like to harp on, it was a society that benefited men.

Again, complicated topic.  I can think of twenty things I could say here on both sides of the argument, but it's a blog post, not a dissertation.  I can remember having this argument in college with the professor, who was a traditional 70s/80s feminist, vs. almost everyone in the class.  The professor wanted us to believe that women are practically always the innocent victims of a powerful patriarchy that is run by and benefits men, forced to go along with it because of their concern for the safety and welfare of their children.  And I, and most of the young women in that class, just didn't agree. If you're going to see women as purely victims in the creation of culture, it somehow makes them subhuman.  Women are HALF of the population.  either we're half-responsible for what we've created, or we're relegated to some sort of childlike status that excuses us from responsibility.  Not buying it.

Wow, that wasn't really what I was going to say, but there it is.  And now I can't remember what I was originally going to say.  so maybe this will get edited some more.  In fact, knowing the way I usually do this, it will probably get edited a lot.  work in progress.  Let me know if you have input.

As I said a couple of posts back, I've always avoided giving personal details in this blog.  I go on and on and on about what I'm thinking and what the antecedents for that are in my bleary past, but I don't tell you about selling our house or the fight I had with my husband.  I like it that way.  If you know me, you can read between the lines and pick up what you want, and of course you can always e-mail me or call me if you want more sordid details.  but for the most part, I like this blog the way it is.  Private in a neurotically public sort of way.

But the other night I was feeling a little blue (I guess in light of the previous post I should specify this was a VERY little blue, not depression), and I was sitting and drinking a Sierra Nevada and reading the comments in one of the blogs I follow.  And I got all teared up over some of the things other posters had said about life and love, and GO FIGURE, I typed out a pretty long, pretty personal comment and HIT THE SUBMIT BUTTON. I was OK with this for about ten minutes, and then I sank my head into my hands and practically moaned.  I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this is so pathetically small a crisis that I can't believe I'm even typing about it.  No one cares.  I didn't attach my full name or e-mail address.  It's a blog with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of followers, with several dozen who post long, detailed comments about their lives on a regular basis,

But I don't.  I don't do that kind of thing.  I almost sent the webmaster a frantic e-mail asking if my comment could be deleted, but then I decided that would just draw more attention to it.  I think most people who follow that blog read it at work, so it is mainly busy during the day, and my comment was late at night.  By the next day, they were on to other topics, and I'm pretty sure for the most part my little moment sank like a rock in a pond.  phew.

But typing it and posting it, and knowing that at least a few people read it (because there were two replies), and thinking about how it would sound to someone who didn't know my situation, has made me think quite a bit about what's going on around here.  And that's a good thing.  Although I hate hate hate it, the thing that has kept me sane the last couple of years is stepping out of my comfort zone, sometimes way out of my comfort zone, and letting myself fall flat on my face.  There seems to be something enormously reviving about that for me.  Damn it.  I wish I could learn and grow in some sort of smooth, elegant, unembarrassing way.  But that doesn't seem to work for me.

AB
prat falls welcome here, I guess

The Cymbalta Digression

I try not to whine in this blog.  And there are lots of days when that's all I'm capable of doing, which is one of the reasons a couple of weeks will go by with no posts.  (Of course, there's also the issue of not having one dang intelligent thing to say, but that's beside the point at the moment.)  This past winter was especially whine-worthy.  For a couple of years now, I've been dealing with a bad case of boredom.  My kids are old enough that they don't need constant vigilance (shout out to mad-eye). I don't have a job at the moment, and with 13% unemployment in our area, it's unlikely I'll find one soon.  And for some reason, housework just doesn't do it for me.  Oh, wait.  Maybe that's because I don't do housework.

And anyway, it's the kind of boredom that's specific to someone with a neurotically busy brain.  Just having a full to-do list isn't enough to solve the problem. I spent four years being the administrative assistant in a busy office in a busy school district, but once I mastered the details of the job, I was bored silly even though I was plenty busy.  (It would probably be more accurate to say I was bored bitchy than bored silly, as my kids and my poor husband will verify.)  And even unemployed, I have plenty of things to do.  It's just that my brain is bored.

So it was with a great deal of relief that I discovered when I went back to school last semester the specific kind of busy-ness that keeps me happy-- it seems to have something to do with intellectual challenge.  I was stressed and hyper-anxious about being back at school after 25 years, but I was happy.  Almost everyone I knew remarked on the change in me.

There were a variety of reasons I didn't take classes this spring (except for the writing class at our local community college).  It took about two months for the glow from last semester to wear off, and by the end of February, I was back in the dumps again.  And it was February.  Not a good combination.  The difference this time was that I knew what would solve the problem.  And once I got my acceptance into graduate school in April, I knew help was on the way.  I just needed to make it from April until September.

So I decided to try going on anti-depressants.  This definitely was not full-blown depression.  I was up and about and getting things done.  It was just a low-level cloud of gloom.  I've done anti-depressants before.  About ten years ago, when I was suffering from near-chronic migraines, the first thing the neurologist tried was Prozac.  It made me so dopey and sleepy that I couldn't stay on it-- not to mention that it didn't seem to help with the headaches.  But I know several people now who are very happy with Cymbalta, which is a newer drug that is used to treat depression, fibromyalgia, and diabetic neuropathy.  Reading about it on the internet, I discovered that although it isn't approved for migraines (which I still have several days a month), there are a lot of people who are using it (successfully) for that.  So I was intrigued.  It sounded like a good idea at the time.

But it wasn't.  I managed to stay on it for two weeks.  I had every side effect on the list:  nausea (although that was only the first three days), drowsiness during the day and insomnia at night, cottonmouth, constipation, loss of libido.  And in the second week, the headaches started--not the worst ones I've ever had, but bad enough, and completely unresponsive to the migraine meds that usually take care of my headaches.  So after two weeks, I quit taking it.  I was still on the lowest dose, and it comes in capsules, so I couldn't really wean off it, I just stopped taking it on a Monday after having spent the entire weekend with a headache that just wouldn't go away.

And of course the headaches got worse.  I knew they would--withdrawal from a drug with neurologic consequences is a no-brainer as a trigger for migraines if you are migraine prone.  If you are the Headache Queen, you know that the price you pay for any number of activities is more headaches.  By Thursday, I was up at 4:15 a.m. "casting up my accounts," as they say in regency romance novels.  I love that phrase.  It makes something icky sound just a teeny bit elegant.

So now it is another two weeks later and I seem to finally have the cymbalta all the way out of my system. But you know, here is the good part:  in spite of all the side effects, it worked.  I was sleepy and in constant need of a drink of water, but my mood was considerably improved.  Not enough to make it worth the side effects in the end, but enough that I remembered what it was like to have energy, to be interested in what was going on around me again.   And oddly, although the side effects have gone away, the improvement in my mood is hanging on.  Or maybe that is just because it is finally truly spring and the weather has been great.  Even spectacular.

So I decided to solve my problem the old-fashioned way, and I signed up to audit a month-long intensive version of the semester-long Introduction to Literary Criticism.  So starting Monday I will be doing the two-hour commute again, and I don't think I've ever looked forward to anything more.

I'm feeling bad about posting this because it sounds a little bit too much like whining.  but that's what's been going on for me lately.

AB

Dad

My dad is dying. I guess we're all dying, if you want to look at it that way, but this is the real thing. The kind of dying where the doctor walks in to your hospital room and tells you that there's nothing they can do, the cancer (which was only discovered last Thursday) has already metastasized, chemo might make you more comfortable but there is no chance of a cure or even remission. He has a few months at best, a few weeks at worst. A month ago, he was a healthy 77-year-old. Now he could go at any time.

It's a strange feeling for me. My dad and I have never had an easy relationship, but he's always been there. I don't mean "he's always been there for me," I mean that he's always been somewhere on planet Earth, somewhere where I could find him if I wanted to, or call him, or he could call me. I could dread having to see him, or look forward to seeing him, or do my best to ignore him. But he was somewhere. Apparently that won't always be true. Quite soon, that won't be true.

Other than the occasional brief mention, I haven't written about my dad in this blog. I almost never write directly about the people in my life at all, because I don't know if they would choose to be here. It's my blog, told inescapably from my point of view, and it seems unfair to drag the people I love and live with into it. But if you know my dad and you know me, you will have seen that he is written into every post. His influence on me has been enormous, inescapable. The way I think about faith and theology, the way I read and analyze and dissect, the way I can't ever leave it alone-- it's all him. Every good thing I believe about Christianity has its roots in his teaching. And many of the angry, resentful thoughts I have about Christianity have their roots in the ways he couldn't live what he taught. Couldn't accept grace, couldn't forgive old hurts, couldn't allow himself to be vulnerable enough to admit to his own failings. And those flaws sound awfully familiar, because they are my own.

My Dad was and is an amazing man in many ways-- a brilliant teacher, an inspiring leader, a visionary who could be generous, thoughtful and kindhearted to those around him, even to people he barely knew. He spent hours talking to and counseling students, often at the expense of his own free time, his own sleep. He inspired awe and admiration in people because he was so good at what he did. But he wasn't easy to live with. You might say he was easy to worship, but difficult to love. Those of us who tried during his angry years have the scars to prove it. When his unhappiness was at its worst, he took it out on us by either withdrawing into cold, supercilious silence or scathing us with sarcastic, angry outbursts. But then at other times, he could be the best daddy in the world.

It's nothing new. It's the story of millions of parents with their children, and as I raise my own kids, I see firsthand how impossible it is to be the parent you wish you could be. The passage of time (and plenty of counseling) has helped me put my dad into perspective, to see his flaws and his brilliance as part of the whole of the complicated person that he is.

Proof of that complexity: my dad is happy now. For the last half dozen or so years, he's been the happiest I've ever known him to be. Some of it is just the passage of time. I remember after seeing him one time when I was in my early 30s, I told my husband it was like he had been de-clawed. He just wasn't so angry anymore. Maybe the idea of grace was finally sinking in.

But another reason for his happiness is his second wife. When we were growing up, he was doing a not-particularly-good job of surviving in a marriage that wasn't working. But when my mom finally had the courage to call an end to that about ten years ago, he remarried a woman who suited him to a T. She isn't really my stepmother-- she's only eight years older than I am, and I didn't meet her until I was in my late 30s-- but she is an amazing person. Not only in what she does and how she lives, but because she made my dad happy, something none of us who had lived in the same house with him thought was possible. I have come to love her dearly for that. I'm glad he's happy. I think if he had received this news fifteen years ago, it wouldn't really have bothered him much. But now you can hear in his voice how much he regrets the remaining years he might have had with her. And with his grandkids. He's a terrific, doting grandfather.

But unless he confounds medical science, those years are not to be. In spite of everything, because of everything, I'll miss him.

Oh! and finally!  I got accepted to grad school.  I start at the end of August.  Stay tuned for Aunt BeaN's excellent graduate school adventure.

feminism

Last fall when I went back to school at a relatively large university, I re-encountered feminism for the first time in more than 15 years. I'd sort of forgotten about it. We live in the Northern Rockies-- meaning Idaho, Montana, Wyoming-- where feminists don't exactly abound, and where feminist ideology-- even the good stuff-- is made to seem like shrieking shrewishness.

So it was with exasperation, amusement and (not the least, by any means) relief that I found that on campus, feminism is still alive and well. In many ways, feminism is an old friend of mine. I said in my early posts in this blog that it was bumping up against the inconsistencies in fundamentalist theology that led to my departure from evangelicalism, and that is true. But it would be no less true to say that it was feminism that gave me the strength to actually depart. A long-smoldering anger at the limited role allowed women in right-wing churches was definitely a major player. Women are relegated to roles where their prodigious talents are used for things like planning potlucks and redecorating the church parlor. Then the (male) establishment rolls their eyes when women get petty and catty over the only things they are allowed to take an interest in. They believe that the pettiness and cattiness prove their point-- that women are unsuited for leadership roles-- instead of seeing that maybe they have the cause and effect reversed. Having subsequently been involved in a number of churches that have women actively involved in all levels of leadership, I think it is clear that in the absence of arbitrarily defined gender roles, pettiness is pretty equally distributed between men and women. I don't know of a church with women in leadership roles that hasn't benefited from their strong, vibrant presence.

BUT. (You knew there would be a "but.") On the other hand, feminism, at least the way I understand it now, has reached a point where it seems blatantly self-defeating. This post has been kicking around in my head for several months now and the reason I've been avoiding writing it is because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to explain this. I'm so out of the loop on academic-speak that I probably won't be able to say it in a way that says what I want it to say. But I'm going to give it a shot because I've been thinking about this a lot recently (in fact, this train of thought is what led to the previous post about being a follower). So here goes.

Here is how I am still a feminist. We live in a culture that values masculinity over femininity. I'm not talking about valuing men over women, I'm talking about valuing strength over vulnerability, individualism over community, leading over following, power over subtlety. I'm a feminist because I think we are in desperate need of a better balance between the two gender poles, both within ourselves and in our culture. It is almost a cliche' to say we each must find within ourselves the point of balance between our masculine and feminine selves, but it's true. Are you really a strong person if you're afraid to be vulnerable? Are you really a good leader if you don't occasionally know when to shut up and follow? And conversely, if you always just go along with what other people want, never standing up for yourself, are you anything but a victim? and will anyone ever know the real you?

For each of us, within our own unique selves, the balance between masculinity and femininity is different. and I'm convinced that if we were each to find that point of balance within ourselves, our culture would become more balanced as well. And in that sense, I am still very strongly feminist. I value feminine values. They are often what makes life sweet, what makes it bearable to be around other people--nurturing, connection, acquiescence, gentleness, kindness.

But here is why I am no longer a feminist: the so-called "feminists" seem to value femininity least of all. To listen to some of them, you would think their goal is for all women and minorities to become top-of-the-food-chain, powerful, wealthy, driven WASPs. Their critique of culture only makes sense if you adopt the very values that represent what they're critiquing: that political power and materialist wealth are the criteria for success. Maybe you've heard a feminist go on and on about the statistics of "women's oppression": that even 40 years after the women's movement of the 70s, women lag behind in income and political power. But in order for that to be a problem, you have to buy that income and political power are the defining characteristics of success. And I don't buy that. Are women more free to do what they want to do today than they were 40 years ago? I think so. And even more importantly: is that true for women and men? If that's true (and I hope it is), that would be a better measure of the success of feminism. We're not there yet, and sometimes it seems like we're moving backwards, but progress is being made.

I thought about calling this post "Why I am no longer a feminist," but I could just as easily have called it "Why I am still a feminist." Both would be accurate.

AB

p.s. just for the record, I am still pro-choice. I've said that elsewhere in this blog but it seems worth repeating here.

This reading from Henri Nouwen's Sabbatical Journey was part of the lenten service at our church tonight. Nowen took a sabbatical year to write and reflect, and Sabbatical Journey is the result. His unexpected death occurred shortly after the year was over.

"Whereas for a long time the Spirit acted so clearly through my flesh, now I feel nothing. I have lived with the expectation that prayer would become easier as I grow older and closer to death. But the opposite seems to be happening. The words “darkness” and “dryness” seem to best describe my prayer today.

Maybe part of this darkness and dryness is the result of my overactivity. As I grow older I become busier and spend less and less time in prayer. But I probably should not blame myself in that way. The real questions are, “What are the darkness and the dryness about? What do they call me to?”…

Are the darkness and dryness of my prayer signs of God’s absence, or are they signs of a presence deeper and wider than my senses can contain? Is the death of my prayer the end of my intimacy with God or the beginning of a new communion, beyond words, emotions, and bodily sensations?…

The year ahead of me must be a year of prayer, even though I say that my prayer is as dead as a rock. My prayer surely is, but not necessarily the Spirit’s prayer in me. Maybe the time has come to let go of “my” prayer, “my” effort to be close to God, “my” way of being in communion with the Divine, and to allow the Spirit of God to blow freely in me."

--Henri Nouwen

reading report - Feb 2010

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson. It took me a long time to get past the first 50 pages of this book. There is a lot of setup, and a lot of the setup is boring. One wishes his editor had been a little more proactive. But once the story gets going, this is a fascinating book. There are really two entirely separate plots--one, the story of the protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who is convicted of libel as the novel opens; and two, the story of the Vanger family and the mysterious disappearance of young Harriet Vanger forty years earlier. The only connection between the two is that Blomkvist has been hired to write a history of the Vanger family in exchange for information that will help him clear his name in the libel suit. The second plot, the Vanger mystery, is handled brilliantly. At the beginning, it is unclear whether she has even been murdered--maybe she just ran away from her unbearable family. But as Blomkvist slowly unearths ancient clues, it becomes apparent that the truth is far more grisly than anyone's worst imaginings. The first plot-- why (or if) Blomkvist committed libel and how he makes things right-- is far less interesting. Possibly because you can't help but compare it with the more titillating second plot, which is really a murder mystery. But I still found this book well worth reading, and I'm looking forward to the sequel. The language is really awkward in places, but since it's a translation, it's difficult to tell if it's intentional on the part of the author, or if it's just difficulties in the translation.

Little Ray of Sunshine by Lani Diane Rich. I picked this up because I wanted a quick, easy read for a road trip. The "quick" part turned out to be accurate-- I read it in an afternoon and evening. The "easy" part was somewhat less true. It's the story of Emmy James, who left home in the middle of the night six years before, abandoning her boyfriend Luke and his family, to get away from her nightmare of a mother and her painful past. When she finally returns, she finds that her mother has been in therapy and turned herself around, and the witch she remembers no longer exists. This is the first novel I've read by Rich, and I was impressed with her skillful handling of the mother-daughter relationship. She gets it right. And although she manages to get them to a truce in the end, no punches are pulled. It was at times a difficult, emotionally wrenching read. Far less convincing was the way EJ repairs her relationship with Luke. So much attention is paid to EJ's mom that Luke never really comes off the page. But you don't really care, because Little Ray of Sunshine is far more the story of the reconciliation between a mother and daughter than it is a romance.

I'd recommend both of these. For some reason I'm having a hard time giving them a "grade" like I usually do. I have read quite a bit besides these two-- in fact, I had finished both of these by mid-month and I had to pull them back out to remember names. But I have three I'm reading right now and haven't finished them yet, so they'll have to wait for next month.

Going back to this post, here is a quote from Jennifer Crusie's blog (one of my favorite authors), from her New Year's Resolutions for 2009:

"I resolve . . . not to be negative. It isn’t so much that the glass is half full or half empty as it is that I’m just grateful I have a damn glass."

AB

the art of following

I'm not a leader. It took me awhile to figure that out when I was in my twenties and thirties, because back then, we all thought everyone could be whatever they wanted to be. In the 80s, I was all about feminism: women taking back their power and women being just the same as men. In my mind, not being a leader meant being weak and insignificant. In the 90s, I was in one of those women's spirituality groups where we were all supposed to share the leadership equally. Each week, we traded the leadership role. It went as you might predict-- when some women were leading, the meeting went well. When others were leading, the meeting ground down into pettiness. I think I was somewhere in the middle. I can do a decent job of leading a discussion, and I'm pretty good at reading group dynamics. But making decisions, taking responsibility for the direction of the group-- definitely not a skill of mine. And being able to inspire other people to follow, the most valuable leadership skill of all imo, is something I lack entirely. In that particular women's group, we were supposed to keep trading the leadership role around so that all of us could develop our leadership skills, and I do see the point of that. Some things get better with practice, and if that is one of the goals of the group, then it makes a lot of sense. But I also came out of that group thinking that there are some people who will always be better at it than others. And lucky for the rest of us, there are some people who are natural leaders, and we should all be damn grateful for that.

Even now that I understand that about myself, though, I still find myself taking leadership roles sometimes. I was on a committee a couple of years ago where even my limited leadership skills were more than anyone else had. I avoided taking over during our first several meetings because I didn't want to seem like I was... well, taking over, you know? And because I know I'm not the best at it. but eventually I stepped in and took charge, because the meetings were degenerating into pointless, meandering discussions that just went around in circles. We weren't exactly making waves with me in charge, but it was better than before.

So maybe since I've been on both sides of the fence, so to speak, I'm a little more aware of what it takes to be a good follower. There's an art to it, and it's one that is often ignored or devalued. A good follower listens, pays attention, tries to understand, and does his/her best to be supportive of the group and of the leader. You offer your opinion, and then you accept the decision of the group. And the most difficult follower skill of all: you have to be able to figure out for yourself when you need to speak up and when you need to just go along and be supportive, even if you don't agree.

OK, I'm waving my magic wand to come up with a simple example here. Let's say you're on a committee that's planning your child's senior class trip. There are twelve parents on the committee, and fortunately the one who is the chair of the committee is a good leader (which isn't always the case). There will be at least four or five opinions about the destination of the trip. Everyone, including you, expresses their opinion. Then you either vote or someone decides. If it's not the destination you wanted, you let it go and turn your attention to planning for the chosen place. That's easy. They can only go one place, they can't go to all of them.

But what if the group has chosen an activity for the trip that wouldn't be appropriate for all the students? Say, going to see a play that is about mature themes. Your child would be fine with it, but you know your child's best friend would be shocked and offended. So you speak up. We need an alternate activity for the kids who don't want to go to the play, or we need to choose a different play. The other parents downplay the problem and try to move on. Do you stick to your guns, or do you just give in, thinking (as the other parents do) that it will be good for the more sheltered kids to be exposed to some new and different experiences? It would depend-- on the play, the community values of the place where you live, the availability of other options, and how strongly you feel about it.

That to me is the hardest thing about being a good follower. I picked an innocuous example (and it's totally fictitious, by the way, my kids' high school doesn't do a senior trip). But it can actually be quite difficult to figure this out. When do I refuse to give in, because I know that either a) there will be consequences that aren't being taken into consideration, or b) I just won't be able to live with it as it stands? and how far do you push it? and when is it time to just throw in the towel and decide you can't participate anymore?

I'm a follower. I know how difficult it is to be a leader, to be the one that takes responsibility for decisions, and I don't like doing it. So I value someone that does. I admire and respect people who are willing to take that on their shoulders, and I'm willing to be supportive and encouraging. But you have to feel like the leader is understanding and respectful of his/her followers, too. That you're not just being ignored and shunted to the side. At least sometimes, the leader has to be willing to put his/her own interests aside in favor of the best interests of the group.

I'm being vague here and it's intentional. sorry about that. :-) but I still think it's an interesting topic.

AB

I've said before that it's much harder for me to write about the resolution of a conflict than it is to write about the conflict itself. There are a lot of reasons for that. A large part of it is because that's just the way my brain works. I'm better at picking things apart than putting them together. And also, when I do resolve something, once I get there, it seems so obvious that when I write it out it sounds kind of dumb and corny. But to skip over writing out the moments of insight is to come down on the side of despair, and I don't want to do that either.

So I'm behind a bit. Because the stuff I wrote back in --I just looked, and it was November, and I can't believe it's been that long-- has worked itself out for now. As more than one wise person has noted, the spiritual path is never a straight line. It has meanders and dead ends and side steps, but it shakes out roughly into a spiral. You work your way through some difficult places, and then a few months/years/decades later you find yourself circling back to work through the same things again, but in a different place with a different perspective and a different set of experiences to feed into it. So I don't think I'm done with this. But the dissonance I was talking about in November, the dialogue going on between the part of me that believes and the part of me that doesn't, seems to have worked itself out for now. And the seeds of the resolution are in those posts, which is why it seems so obvious now. I needed to let go of my worn-out expectations of what God is like to make room for something bigger and more expansive. You might call it another round of forgiving God for not being what I expected God to be.

When I was in junior high I heard a Christian speaker talk about the meaning of commitment: giving all that you know about yourself to all that you know about God. So that as you find out more about yourself, and as you find out more about God, you have to update your commitment. I might word it a little bit differently now, but I still think about that.

That's probably not very clear, but it's the best I can do at the moment. And as always, interpret the use of the word "God" in this post to mean "what I think of as God."

AB

I almost deleted this whole thing last week. Then over the weekend I was considering just deleting back until last fall sometime. Too much angst in my life right now. But, hey, lighten up, right? To delete it in a fit of self-disgust would only give it more importance than it's worth. Or that's what I'm telling myself anyway.

So I'm fighting a losing battle here on the literary vs. genre fiction and I know it. I just don't want to admit it. but honestly. Here is the last sentence of the Book Shop: "As the train drew out of the station she sat with her head bowed in shame, because the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop." What is that? Is Fitzgerald making fun of her character? It very nearly sounds like it. Or is she really convinced that the actions of a courageous, sensitive person are bound to end in shame and humiliation? Do the turkeys always get us down? I wish I could ignore the whole thing and just work on finding, reading, and writing some sort of hybrid where the whole of human experience is acknowledged and not just the sordid depressing bits. But unfortunately I've chosen to re-enter the academic arena and ignoring it is not exactly possible in an academic setting. Or at least not ignoring it in the way that I mean. They would certainly allow ignoring genre fiction.

And truth be told, I can't entirely blame them. I came up with a list of a dozen genre books worth reading from the ones I read last year, but that leaves out the DOZENS of books that I read that weren't worth reading at all-- more than a few were downright awful. I'd read 20-50 pages and throw them back in the bag to go to the thrift store. Some of them were so bad that you just are embarrassed at the waste of paper and ink.

So I'm done with this topic. I think. I hope. :)

hope is the thing with the feathers. --Emily Dickinson
not exactly related, but I love that line.

AB

prayer

I'm feeling the need to explain how I think about prayer. Twice in the past week, I've told someone that I would pray for them, or keep them in my prayers. And I feel somewhat guilty about this, but not for the reason you might think. Even though I don't really believe in God, I still believe in prayer. I can't explain how it works. But I believe that praying for someone helps them in some way. Is it just that you've told them you're praying for them, so that in itself offers moral support and they feel buoyed? Is it some sort of mental intention, a focusing of attention, that actually does give them a boost of some sort? Is there an actual exchange of personal energy that goes on? Is there a being, supreme or otherwise, that we address when we pray that can distribute help from a vast supply of spiritual/emotional resources? What I think is some sort of combination of those, but I have no idea how it actually works, and certainly no way to prove it. I just know that I don't feel hypocritical when I tell someone that I will pray for them. (And I do pray for them.) The thing that makes me feel a little guilty is that I know when I say it, often it means something to them that it doesn't mean to me, leads them to think that I'm doing something that I'm not.

I know I can't control how other people interpret my words. It would be silly to explain in depth precisely what I mean every time I use words in a way that is different than what other people expect. Silly and unwelcome. But there is a fine line to walk here in terms of personal integrity. I'm OK with this one, after having given it a great deal of thought, because it's a common enough phrase that people use it lightly all the time. I've even heard people with no particular religious views at all say something of the same sort. But obviously there's something that doesn't sit quite right because here I am typing this out.

AB

I've found two new blogs in the last couple of weeks and I am addicted. I don't check them every day (who has time?) but when I do check them, I keep reading till I'm caught up. I'm afraid these are y-chromosome-limited (ie, you're probably not going to enjoy them if you're male). There's this one, because it makes me laugh (sometimes to the point of tears), and then this one, because it makes me think.

Sorry guys. If I come up with some good not-gender-specific ones, I'll let you know.

You know, for reasons that are already escaping me, I signed up for a creative writing class this semester. I think I already mentioned (didn't I?) that I'm not driving to the state unversity this semester, so this is just at our local community college. It (the writing class) is making me a little crazy. Nothing makes me as neurotic as trying to write fiction.

Well, OK, I admit my spouse might be able to come up with a few things that make me more neurotic than that. But we're not going there right now.

So, anyway, I am feeling the need to apologize for obsessing about this genre fiction vs. literary fiction argument that I keep coming back to, because I know that I'm the only one that's interested in it (well, and maybe cheery-O occasionally). But I can't help it. Because I have to hash it out to figure out how to write. My writing style isn't like genre fiction writing. And I don't necessarily mean that my writing style is "better"-- I can only dream of being able to write like P.D. James, for example. I just don't write that way. But I really really don't want to write boring depressing stuff, which is what literary fiction often is. So I'm having to duke this out in my own brain, which is why I keep writing about it here. And I guess that tells you everything you need to know about me: that my brain considers the distinction between literary and genre fiction something that needs to be duked out.

The good news is that I'm discovering that the distinction between the two is less prominent in reality than as it exists in my head. The class I'm taking has a definite bias toward literary fiction, and we read a story last week that could have been a sort of off-beat romance story if it had had a happily ever after ending. And I read bits of an article about Raymond Carver that said his editor had to be always on the watch to make sure he didn't succumb to creeping sentimentalism. RAYMOND CARVER. That practically made my jaw drop--it's like saying Picasso had to watch to make sure he wasn't letting photorealism into his work.

the bad news is that in the academic world, it has become almost an article of religious faith to eschew genre fiction. It seems far more pronounced to me than it did twenty years ago, when it was bad enough. From my limited viewpoint, anyway.

so. unfortunately I don't think I'm done with this, but I'll try to post about other stuff, too.

AB

reading report - Jan 2010

I'm only about ten pages into the book I'm reading right now, so it will have to wait till next month. So I might as well go ahead and post this.

My Life In France, Julia Child. I'll admit I never would have read this if I hadn't seen the movie Julie and Julia. The movie was good, but I thought the Meryl Streep bit was way more interesting than the Amy Adams bit. So I decided to read My Life in France, which was the basis for much of the Julia Child thread of the movie. The book is fascinating, and kept me absorbed all the way to the end. It is based in large part on letters that Child wrote while she was living in France. It must have been a hoot to get her letters, she is so infectiously enthusiastic (is infectiously a word?). I was so interested in the proess of writing their famous cookbook that I subsequently ordered it, too (Mastering the Art of French Cooking), but I don't think I'm a dedicated enough cook to use it much. It is interesting reading, though. A-

Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher. I've read a couple of Fisher's novels, and while they weren't great lit, they were witty and entertaining. This one, a memoir, is not only not great lit, it is almost never witty and only occasionally entertaining. It reads like a transcript of her talking off-the-cuff into a tape recorder, which is possibly what it is. There is one really funny story for those of us who are Star Wars fanatics (the original trilogy), and if you're a fan of Fisher's anyway (which I am), there's some interesting bits about her life, but otherwise I'd say don't bother. C

The Book Shop, Penelope Fitzgerald. The college where I took classes last semester is offering a seminar this semester on Penelope Fitzgerald. I'd never heard of her before, so I thought I'd try reading one of her books since I can't take the class. The Book Shop is the story of a widow who takes her life's savings and invests it in opening a book shop in a small town in rural England. It is initially successful, but eventually it fails. The story is beautifully written, and it's very British. So if you're an Anglophile, as I am, you will enjoy it. But it has that quality of literary fiction that has almost completely turned me off of reading literary fiction, which is an underlying sense of dark despair. In the world of literary fiction, the best intentions of the brave, intelligent few will always be undermined by the small-minded, petty majority. I knew about two-thirds of the way through that it was going to end in misery, but there was this tiny little part of me that was hoping, hoping, that the characters that you love in this story would not necessarily live happily ever after, but might at least find a comfortable niche for themselves. But it was not to be. Predictably enough, it ends in almost complete ruin for the widow, who is a lovely character, a thoughtful and courageous woman. If you like literary fiction, or if you haven't read enough of it to find it monotonous, you'll love it. A+. But somewhat to my surprise, I find that I am not quite that much of a pessimist. It just seemed like another in a long line of beautifully written, self-pitying literary novels to me. Oh, us poor intelligent, sensitive people are always being railroaded by the ignorant masses. But it still gets a B for the lovely prose and meticulous plotting, and a great cast of characters who deserved a better end.

Tell No One, Harlan Coben (suspense). This one is hard to categorize. It's a one-off, not part of his Myron Bolitar series. Its best characteristic is that you can't put it down. It ends, practically on the very last page, with a bombshell of a plot twist, which is kind of fun. It is perfect for a day of travel when you will be sitting in airports and airplanes with nothing to do. But the more you think about it after you put it down, the less sure you are that it's a good book. There are several improbable happenings, to put it mildly. It stretches credulity to the limits, although it's completely within the bounds of similar books. So if you can read a thriller and not think about it much, I'd give it an A-. But if you, like me, start wondering after you've put it down, "Well, what are they going to do now? how are they going to live, knowing that?" it will sort of leave a bad taste in your mouth. And in that case, it gets a B-.

Since I'm on the subject of Harlan Coben here, I'll say something about Fade Away, which is the third book in his Myron Bolitar series. It was on my list of books worth reading for 2009, and I'll tell you why. The first two books in the series are just fun, especially if you're a bit of a sports fan. Myron is an agent for professional athletes, but since he has some past ties to some investigative agency (the FBI? I can't remember), he sometimes is asked to investigate various unsavory situations involving sports stars. He (Myron) is the king of roll-your-eyes lame jokes, but after you get used to it, they start being pretty funny. (I love books that make me laugh.) And there is the usual cast of interesting sidekicks. It's a typical wise-cracking PI-type series, although better written than many.

So when you start Fade Away, that's all you're expecting. And for the first half of the book, that's all you get. But then about halfway through, the story takes a 90-degree left turn and adds a whole new level of interest. Instead of the usual clues and plot twists that lead quickly to the denouement, you figure out that Coben is dealing with some pretty serious stuff: loss and regret, missed chances, revenge and forgiveness. I kept thinking about it for days after I finished it. I still think about one particular scene, which I can't describe without spoiling it. It's a great example of what genre fiction can be. No one's going to mistake it for literary fiction (and maybe you won't be surprised to hear that I'm grateful for that), but it goes well beyond the expected conventions of a thriller. And that's why it was on the "worth reading" list for last year.

AB

I'm reading Pema Chodron again. Her thoughts on the idea of renunciation, an important Buddhist concept:

[Renunciation] has to do with letting go of holding back. What one is renouncing is closing down and shutting off from life. ... renunciation is seeing clearly how we hold back, how we pull away, how we shut down, how we close off, and then learning how to open. It's about saying yes to whatever is put on your plate, whatever knocks on your door, whatever calls you up on your telephone. ....The journey of awakening--the classical journey of the mythical hero or heroine--is one of continually coming up against big challenges [the things that make you freeze up] and then learning how to soften and open. In other words, the paralyzed quality seems to be hardening and refusing, and the letting go or the renunciation of that attitude is simply feeling the whole thing in your heart, letting it touch your heart. You soften and feel compassion for your predicament and for the whole human condition.
(from The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 51-53)

AB

Well, I'm posting more, but at the same time having a horrible crisis of confidence about it. I try to avoid posting ad naseum about my neuroses about writing, and about writing publicly, even though those are things I deal with all the time. So enough already. It's a problem, but it's a boring problem.

You might have noticed that I got a little obsessed with Michael Chabon last year (here and here, for example). I spent about a month late last spring reading his stuff and his website (which for someone so verbose is a model of understatement), and his wife's stuff and her blog. Also read some criticism and many reviews. Enough to take the shine off, honestly. One of my least favorite qualities is a penchant for controversy, and the two of them don't seem to feel any need to avoid it, I must say. And I'm even on the same side of the political fence as they are (more or less). I imagine if you were on the other side you would find them unbearable in the extreme.

But I still love his writing. I've already talked about Maps and Legends, and Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was probably the best book I read last year (wait, what am I saying? with the list of books I read last year, that's not even a compliment). I didn't talk about Wonder Boys, which I also read, which was also wonderful, although it didn't make the list of books worth reading.... well, now that I think of it, maybe it should have. It was definitely worth reading, if only to see how Chabon pulls it off. The protagonist is so awful that the only reason I kept going was to see if he was going to be able to make this total ass into a sympathetic character. And he does. It's a remarkable feat. But it's a difficult book to recommend because it's so unpleasant to read, at least at times.

An aside. There was one thing about the book that fascinated me. But I still haven't had a theory class, so I'm afraid I won't be able to talk about it intelligently, which I hate. (those neuroses, remember? one of them is a complete panic at the thought of sounding stupid.) But I'm trying to learn to throw caution to the wind at least once a day--lighten up--so I'll say this anyway. The thing that fascinated me about Wonder Boys was the tuba. The main character is a washed-up writer named Grady. He's made such a thorough mess of his life that you can hardly stand to read it--he's been working on the same novel for years (and if you know a bit of the history of Chabon's second novel, it's worth the read just for some of the snidely hilarious commentary that goes on there); his answer to most problems is pot; his marriage is a mess; he's having an affair with a woman who gets pregnant and he basically blows her off because he doesn't know what to do. He's a mess. But through an odd combination of events, he ends up with someone else's tuba, and it sort of follows him around--not in an animated way, it just happens that wherever he is, the tuba shows up.

The way the narrative is structured, I think Chabon wants you to think that Grady is saved by the love of a good woman. Literally--she gives him CPR at one point--and figuratively. But it seemed to me that what saves him is the tuba: the tuba as a representative of the absurdity of life, the weird, off-beat strangeness that pervades our existence and that is essentially and exuberantly unpredictable. Grady keeps spiraling down further and further into black despair. But in real life there is always something random going on, and the randomness can just as easily be positive as negative. When the tuba appears in one of the final scenes, you can't help but burst out laughing, and isn't that the way life is? Sometimes the absurdity of it, the flat-out weirdness, is what lets you know you're alive. I want to be able to say something intelligent about what the author intends vs. what the reader experiences, but that's where I'll stop for now. Maybe after I've taken the class I will have more to say.

Well, that was going to be an aside, but it got so long that now my original point will sound like an aside. I was going to say that even though sadly I've gotten past the point of hero worship with Mr. Chabon, I still love his writing. When we went on vacation last summer, I had his 3rd book with me (Kavalier and Clay), and I was utterly spellbound by the first ten pages. Then my husband stole it from me and read it, and by the time he finished it, I had moved on to other things. But now my husband is also a fan, so I got him Chabon's new book of essays for Christmas. I stole it from him this morning, which was only just, and read three essays picked at random. Chabon is still amazing. The one on being his younger brother's hero moved me nearly to tears. And I'm not even a brother. Heck, I'm not even a guy, and the name of the book is Manhood for Amateurs.

So, I'm still a fan. He can be as out-there as he wants in his regular life if he'll just keep on writing. I still haven't read Kavelier and Clay, but it's not very far down on my stack, so maybe soon.

AB

One of the best things about being back in class last semester was not necessarily the subject matter (although that was pretty excellent), but the asides: the offhand remarks, the meanders, and the digressions that probably drove some students nuts, but for me were like tossing Godiva chocolates to someone who's been on the Atkins diet. My Bible as Lit professor was particularly good at this. One day he brought in a poem by A. R. Ammons, of whom I was unaware, that was essentially fifteen lines of subordinate clause that eventually turn on the final phrase: "...fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise." It's a wonderful poem-- "City Limits" -- which you can find by googling if you are so inclined.

Which led me to further reading of Ammons, which led to these lines, which are my new epigraph for this blog:

...well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much

revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the ocean, multiple to a blinding
oneness and realize that only total expression

expresses hiding: I'll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and withdrawal of the deep dark:
less than total is a bucketful of radiant toys.

from "Cut the Grass" - A. R. Ammons

AB

new year's not-resolution

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, mostly because I never keep them, which can be depressing. I've tried variations on the theme recommended by friends, but I've never found something that worked. But every year I think about resolutions because everyone else is talking about theirs. This year when I was thinking about what my new year's resolutions would be if I did them, which I don't, an odd thought came to mind, which was: "lighten up." And it keeps coming back. Here it is the 18th of January, and I'm still thinking about all the different ways that phrase resonates for me. So I guess I do have a new year's resolution this year, and that's it. Except it's not really a resolution, so it's my new year's not-resolution.

Years ago a therapist told me something that has had a pretty profound influence on me. It keeps popping up in different contexts and different layers of meaning, although the idea is a simple one. She told me that I tend to take responsibilty for things I'm not responsible for (my children's happiness, world peace) and then not take responsibility for the things I AM responsible for (my own happiness, my own thoughts, my own little realm of chaos).

That little gem has had so many different ways of playing out since I heard it that I think maybe I should have it tattooed on the back of my hand to remind myself. I've been known to worry about what other people think more than making sure I'm comfortable with who I am. Or worrying about the number on the scale more than taking responsibility for eating healthy food. Or thinking about the grade instead of the paper.

"Lighten up" seems to me to be one more layer of this same idea. I think I've been taking myself a little too seriously-- hence, "lighten up." While in other ways, I've not taken myself seriously enough. If that makes any sense. I'm not sure I can explain it any better than that. At first it seemed mainly to apply to a couple of projects I'm taking on (about one of which: more later), but in another way it applies to this blog. When I was really wrestling with my religious upbringing, I needed to write about it. I mean "needed" literally. I seem to work things out by writing about them. I post my writings publicly here for some reason that makes almost no sense to me, but the reason I write it is for me. But now even though I'm not wrestling day-to-day with that stuff anymore, I still have this lingering sense that that's what I should post about. As if posts on other, less serious issues don't belong here. It hasn't always been that way-- I used to have a much wider range of topics. So, who knows what I will post about, but I think I'm going to broaden the field again.

Lighten up, Aunt BeaN.

Here's to a 2010 full of light.

AB

For the past couple of years I've posted a list of books I read during the previous year that were worth reading. I almost didn't do it this year because, as you probably already know, 2009 was my year of reading genre fiction, and it doesn't do much for my reputation as an intelligent person to post a list of genre books. But what the heck. It's what I read, and some of them really were good reads. I did, of course, read a few literary fiction books and a few non-fiction, but when I went over the list, other than the Michael Chabon books, I couldn't really remember them. So why bother?

I've discovered that with genre fiction it is often pointless to recommend particular books, since people (including me) can be turned off by some little thing that another reader won't even notice (like Charlie All-Night has a weird bit about medical marijuana in it that didn't bother me a bit but thoroughly turned off one of my friends). So I usually just recommend authors. But what is the point of a "books worth reading" list if you're not going to list books? So I've picked books, but in some cases it was really tempting to say "anything by this author."

here 'tis, books I read in 2009 that were worth reading (in no particular order):

The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan (Young Adult)
Fade Away, Harlan Coben (Mystery/Thriller)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (Young Adult)
Miss Wonderful, Loretta Chase (Romance)
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman (SciFi/Fantasy)
Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon (non-fiction)
Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon (literary fiction)
The Serpent Prince, Elizabeth Hoyt (Historical Romance)
Charlie All-Night, Jennifer Crusie (Romance)
Fast Women, Crusie (Romance)
Unnatural Causes, P.D. James (Mystery)
The Devil Went Down to Austin, Rick Riordan (Mystery)

An even dozen. Honorable mention to Crazy Wild by Tara Janzen, whose "Crazy" series I have decided is the the female equivalent of a guy pouring over the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue-- pure female fantasy.

AB

So of course I am feeling ambivalent about posting that bit about atheism. For one thing, I only have about a dozen regular readers and I don't want to lose any of you. But also because it has caused a fair amount of dissonance within me. I've come very close to deleting it several times, not because I didn't mean it, but because I don't think I quite said what I meant to say. So here is a brief second attempt.

In some way that I can't quite articulate, at this particular moment in my life, acknowledging my atheist thoughts has become a necessary part of being a believer. The tension between the two of ways of thinking (believing and not) feels like two sides of the same coin. They arise organically out of each other. I find some comfort in various OT stories: Jacob is blessed by God after wrestling with him all night; David is perhaps more beloved by God than any other character, yet he sins egregiously and repents from the bottom of his heart (Ps 51); Job shouts defiance at heaven, and yet in the end, God is pleased with him and blesses him. It occurs to me that all of those times in the prophets where God says (through the prophet) that it isn't empty sacrifices that he wants, it is human beings' hearts-- all of those times may be a reflection of something very simple: God wants honesty from us, even if that honestly involves speaking thoughts that aren't orthodox.

This is coming very close to me sounding like I'm patting myself on the back for having heretical thoughts and that's not what I mean to do at all. So maybe I should just stop. It's just that some days it feels like an act of faith to stand before God, courage in both hands, and say "I don't believe in you."

AB

fear redux

of course I'm still dealing with fear. That should be obvious from the end of that last one. I've talked about fear before (here and here that I can remember, there are probably more, too), and it still comes up. The classes I'm taking this semester haven't helped any. There's nothing to bring up the fear of eternal damnation like reading a 3,500-line poem about a journey through Hell (Dante's Inferno). And then in my other class, we were reading the Old Testament, with all those rules to follow, and the God who is occasionally quite wrathful when the rules are not followed. The thing that strikes me about fear this time is how irrational it is. Because even at the height of my Evangelicalism, those are not things that I should have been afraid of. The Inferno is Catholic, not protestant, and even my most conservative relatives would be able to brush it off on that basis. The Old Testament is the "old law." Paul, in his letters to the early church, spends a great deal of energy explaining why Christians are no longer required to keep the law. Therefore, even based on my history as an Evangelical, there is no rational reason why either of those readings should bother me. But they did. Proving (to me, anyway) that my fears are more about what is going on in my own head than about anything real.

But even irrational fears are still scary. (wait. are all fears irrational? no, of course not. But probably the scariest ones are.) All of this reminds me of an experience from childhood, when I was probably about ten. We were at a bible conference that was being held at a university, and my family and I were staying in one of the dorms. I took a nap one afternoon. When I went to sleep, the door to our room was open, and there were lots of people around, walking up and down the hallways, talking, etc. When I woke up, there was no one and it was utterly silent. Our room was deserted, the hallway was deserted. I remember walking down the hall and then down the stairs and not seeing anyone anywhere. I finally decided that the Rapture must have occurred and I'd been left behind. I was one part terrified, but another part resigned. I had finally been called to account, I figured; I had always suspected I wasn't quite good enough to qualify for salvation. But then my parents came back from wherever they were, and everybody else showed up, and life went on. I forgot about it for years, but it came to mind recently. I still remember that stark feeling: this is it.

The Rapture, for those of you who weren't raised with it, is the apocalyptic moment when Christ returns with a blast of trumpets, and those who are saved will be caught up in the air to be with Him and taken to Heaven forever, while those who are unsaved are left behind-- what happens to them is a matter of great theological debate, which I will spare you. Just let it be said that depending on whether you are pre-mill, post-mill, or a-mill, you will have a different opinion.

Oh, the joys of theology.

AB
(who is feeling a bit queasy at the moment)

I've been trying off and on for a year and a half now to write a post about letting go of expectations about what God "should" be like. It's a difficult task for those of us who were raised with very specific ideas. It was going to be called "forgiving God," because in spite of the blasphemous sound of that phrase, that is often what it feels like. But that post isn't going anywhere, in spite of my long-term efforts. So maybe that's all I need to say about it, or maybe more will come up later. So... moving on.

What I've been thinking about recently is atheism. The word has such a slanted, loaded meaning in our culture, especially because of the very vocal appearance of a number of prominent atheists in the last few years (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc). In some circles it seems to mean the same thing as being un-American, immoral, and a devil worshipper, which is absurd, of course.

But honestly, their take on it is not particularly appealing to me-- in part because while their stated ideas are provocative and often convincing, their motivation on a personal level often seems to be something like an inability to forgive God for not being what they expect him to be, and perhaps more obviously, an inability to forgive believers for believing in God anyway. I'll confess that's a pretty biased statement about their work that is based on a very limited reading of their books, and hearing a few interviews. But read the first chapter of God is Not Great and see if you don't find that the prevailing sentiment is not so much the freedom of letting go of religious ideas but anger--even bitterness--at the (perceived) stupidity of people who complacently accept meaningless ideas about God. They seem both angry and gleeful to point out the ways in which God cannot possibly be like what is advertised by the religious establishment, but at the same time they are unwilling to acknowledge that God might be something entirely other than that. In the end, I find them unconvincing. Trumpeting that the God of Sunday School piety doesn't exist is so self-evident as to be boring, if you ask me.

But it doesn't change the fact that atheism has become a viable alternative for me in the past few months. I don't think I mean the term in the same way that they do, because when they use it, it seems to have an automatic pejorative meaning toward religion and spirituality, and I don't feel that. I still can't deny my own experiences with spirituality-- both in the past and present. But neither can I deny the part of me that just doesn't think there's anything out there, and certainly not anyone.

It's almost like two separate compartments in my brain: the part of me that believes implicitly in the spiritual experiences I've had, and the part of me that thinks it's all utter nonsense. I'm going to assign this to right brain and left brain, respectively, just because I need something to assign it to, not because I have any proof that's really what it is. It's just what it feels like. When I'm thinking with my right brain, spirituality and connectedness and a wholistic approach to my experience feels completely and utterly right and natural. When I'm thinking with my left brain, that right brain thinking seems absurd. Even silly. Which is one of the reasons I've had a hard time posting recently. It is becoming more and more difficult to overcome that "This is DUMB" feeling.

But I wrote a paper a couple of weeks ago for my Bible as Lit class about the Book of Job. I argued that the reason why God approves of Job at the end of the story is because Job refused to stop asking questions until he was satisfied. He held onto the contradictions until he felt them resolve. Like a Zen koan. And God was pleased with him.

So I'm trying to do the same, and my right brain is trying to trust that God (or What I Think of as God) will be OK with that, because he/she/it was OK with it when Job did it. while my left brain wrestles this out.

AB
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being... (Psalm 51.6, NASV)

link to shane claiborne column

just like riding a bicycle, right?

It's been so long since I posted that I'm feeling a little intimidated by sitting here in front of a blank screen. But I'm by myself in a hotel room, and I purposely didn't bring a book to read so that I would have to study, so I don't have anything else to do. But I don't want to study. So this is a good excuse, right? Usually I love staying in a hotel room by myself. It feels so decadent-- a whole room to myself, all clean and shiny, and I don't have to make the bed or do any laundry or feel compelled to do any of the dozens of things I feel guilty about not doing when I'm at home. But for some reason, it's not quite working tonight. I'm feeling a bit blue and lonely and wishing someone else was here. And I really, really don't want to work on the paper I should be working on.

So I've got my i-Pod plugged in and I'm listening to mellow music and thinking of all the things I've halfway wanted to blog about in the past couple of months but just never quite got around to posting. I know I have two new readers this week, so I'll say one thing that I've been meaning to say: please don't subscribe to this blog. Not because I don't want anyone to read it, but because of my really nasty habit of editing posts over and over again, sometimes a dozen times or more. If you subscribe, you'll get each and every version of each and every post--and sometimes it's just a matter of fixing typos or re-wording a sentence. Yuck. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not someone who is kind enough to want to read my blog.

So... let's see, what else. I guess there is something I could get out of the way and that is to fill in the background of what's been going on since school started. (start up cheesy elevator music and cue voice-over: "When last we saw our plucky heroine...."). Well, OK, I'm not plucky. but anyway. So you knew I was headed back to school. They still haven't admitted me to grad school, but they're letting me take a couple of classes, I think just because I was so obnoxious that they didn't know how else to get rid of me. But by the time I got all that worked out, the classes that I wanted to take were full. So I ended up taking two classes that I would never have dreamed of taking otherwise: "Dante" (yup, the 14th century Italian guy), and "The Bible as Literature." Can you believe it? But I have to admit, they are both fascinating, with interesting professors whom I like very much. And even better, they are fascinating to take together. The overlap is amazing, and sometimes a little eerie. For example. In the Dante class, we started the semester reading 13th century Provencal and Italian troubadour love poetry. Today, the Bible as Lit prof went off on a digression about 13C Italian love poetry and its influence on the Western idea of romantic love. Another time they both talked about Zoroastrianism on the same day.  So I'm happy. It has been a great experience, except for writing papers, which I always hated and probably always will. Let me just say for the record, though, that when you haven't written a paper in 25 years and you were and are a bit of a perfectionist about them, it is not a pretty picture. If you haven't done it, I don't think it's possible to describe how absolutely terrifying it is to turn in a paper when you haven't written one in more than two decades.

OK, so now I'm caught up, I think, so maybe now I will start posting again and maybe the next one will be more interesting. Because (of course) both these classes have brought up lots of things to think about. The lack of posts has definitely not been due to a lack of things to post about!

AB

As has happened before, I typed a setup post and then found myself with nothing to say. Maybe later.

WITOAG

Before I go off on my next idea, here's a bit of housekeeping, a defining of terms. I want to be able to use the word "God," but of course, when I use that word it may mean something entirely different to me than what it means to you, leading to some confusion. It certainly means something different to me now than it did when I blithely told a young Jewish man I met at an icebreaker in college how happy I was that God was my best friend. (Yes, I really did do that and it gives me shudders down to my toes to think about it now).

I didn’t use the word “God” at all for a long time—I avoided it even in my head when I was just thinking. What the heck does it mean? I’ve said this before, but is “God” some kind of sentient, all-knowing, all-seeing Being in the Sky? Is it a cluster of ideas shared by a community that takes on a life of its own in the collective mind of the group? Is it something individual to each one of us? Is God, as the new age folks used to tell me, within me? And what the heck would that mean? Is God a Higher Self, a Divine Source, a Deity Within? I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. Further, I don't think it's possible to know. But I sort of tentatively decided about a year ago that I had been at this long enough that I could go back to using the word God to describe a certain force in my life for which I have no other name. I don’t really understand what that force is, (ouch, I just remembered Star Wars and The Force and that’s not what I mean here, but how else am I going to say it?) but it is convenient to have a name for it whatever it is, and God works as well as anything else and also conveniently fits into a number of other ideas. It also enables me to have conversations with other believers without endlessly saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Although in that instance, it may unfortunately give them the idea that I agree with them about the nature of God when in fact I probably don’t. How could I, since I don’t really know what God is?

The point that I’m so convolutedly trying to make here is that when I use the word “God,” what I really mean is “What-I-think-of-as-God.” But it would be entirely tiresome to type that out every time I want to refer to “What-I-think-of-as-God.” I did briefly consider using a cutesy acronym (WITOAG) but thankfully I gave that up quickly. So, that’s all I'm saying. Just don’t take the word “God” too literally-- here, or anywhere else, come to think of it. And I'm still capitalizing it. I considered not doing that, but it just didn't seem right.

AB

prepping for school

Lo these many years ago when I was in graduate school—we’re not saying how many years, but over twenty anyway—you had a choice of taking “History of Literary Criticism” (LitCrit) or linguistics. I had taken linguistics my senior year of undergrad, and the syllabus was so nearly identical to the class that was being taught at my grad school that they waived the requirement. I didn’t get any credit hours for it, but they checked off the box that said I had taken either linguistics or LitCrit. So I have no idea what was covered in LitCrit. My impression was that we were going to read Aristotle, Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, all of which I had read in courses covering the relevant era, so I didn’t think it was a big deal to skip it.

But it appears in the years intervening that either the study of literary criticism has entirely changed, or I was dead wrong about what it was. Literary Theory, as it is now called (and apparently it is more accurately called simply “Theory” since it is a multidisciplinary approach), is a complex and nearly infinite field of study which involves calling into question every assumption you ever had about opening the pages of a book. Does it matter what the author intended? Does it matter what kind of attention the reader pays to the work? (which reminds one vaguely of Schrodinger's poor cat, alas.) Does the historical context matter? Can you assume certain things about the nature of gender, race, or social class, and/or is it even possible to speak objectively about these topics? What exactly is literature, and how is it different than any other printed matter? All this and more awaits if you enter the exciting world of Theory. I started with a brief 130-page introduction aptly called “A Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory” by Jonathan Culler and all I can tell you so far is: it's a mind bender. I’ve always thought of myself as an intelligent reader, but apparently I’m just one of the masses of the literary ignorant. I love it when I learn new stuff that totally turns my previous ideas on their oblivious little heads, but I have to say I’m a little worried this time. If I keep reading this stuff, will I get to the point that I can’t just sit down and enjoy reading a novel? Will my head be so filled with reader response theory and intertextuality and foregrounding that I can’t get sucked in to the latest Tres Navarre? Because that would be a real problem for me. I’m not sure I want to go there, but if I’m off to grad school (they still haven’t let me in), that’s what’s ahead.

We were on a long hike this past weekend, and there was plenty of time to talk about all kinds of things. I mentioned that I was re-reading the sixth Harry Potter (which does get considerably better after the first 100 pages, btw), and as it turns out, everyone who was in earshot--none of whom were under the age of 18--had read them. It quickly became apparent that I was the only one who had been disappointed with the seventh book. So, since I haven't read it in two years, I am eating my hat. I'll reserve judgment until I've read it again-- but since my summer reading list is chock full and I'm only about a third of the way through it, that will be at least a month or so.

I thought about some good stuff while hiking (one of the best reasons to hike is that it provides excellent thinking time), but my son and I are leaving to go out of town in a couple of days so I doubt I'll get to type it out before I leave. Maybe later.

AB
(who dearly loves summer)