25-50-75: Day 3

25
No gym for me this morning as I woke up and my entire body was in revolt.  I, apparently, have abs, and they are very very angry with me.  Add that to the riot in my calves and total rebellion in my hamstrings and, well, no gym.  Plus I attended an all day training at our district office to learn how to create iBooks for our classroom, so my time was somewhat limited.  [for anyone thinking the training was lame, you're wrong: it was totally cool.  I'm going again tomorrow to build a book for my American Lit classes, and I am sort of beyond dorkily excited about it.]

Healthy breakfast, lunch out at La Familia where I didn't engage in rice and beans and took advantage of their hot salsa's ability to curb my appetite.  By the time I got home, I was super hungry, but I managed to forage healthily in my own fridge, so it's been a win win in the eating well column.  The hardest thing for me is missing the sun.  I love the pool, and I won't be back there til Friday.  Oh well.  Gym again tomorrow, no soreness as an excuse.

50
Finished Mantel's An Experiment in Love.  Eh.  The pace didn't pick up, though the darkness beneath the surface panned out.  A hidden pregnancy, the narrator wasting away as she denied herself food in an effort to save her limited funds while at boarding school, a couple of abortions.  You know, typical English school girl fodder.  It was alright, but unless you are a fan of watching flies narrowly escape getting stuck to slow drying paint, I wouldn't recommend it.  It's not so much that it was bad as that there was very little at stake ever, and that just drives me crazy in a novel.

Next, I'm going to hit a collection of short stories by Mary Clyde called Survival Rates.  I was completely intrigued by the cover (below) and the author's personal history.  She went to Brigham Young, is a Mormon (Mormons FASCINATE me, I think it's the whole tablets in the desert, magic underwear thing), and she has five kids with her husband, but the descriptions of the stories sounded dark enough that I bet there's a bit more to old Mary than meets the eye.  I'll keep you posted.

25-50-75: Day 2

25
Oh how I've missed the gym.  I can't always get the juice up to go, but when I do, I ALWAYS feel better.  Someone should remind me of this when I complain about feeling, well, anything negative.  Being there, my heart rate rising, my body pouring sweat as I push forward, makes me feel in control of this lump of a body I've been given.  [that is not a slam on myself: we're all given lumps, it's up to us to shape them as we choose] Of course, some of us get Charlize Theron lumps and some get Roseanne Barr lumps, but we can all make them into whatever we choose.  Thus, the gym.

To be truly motivated, I need a good playlist.  Today, I had an average heart rate of 124, I went 65 minutes on a Total Body Elliptical machine with a distance of 5.07 miles and 548 calories burned.  This basically means I burned off my breakfast.  Word.  How did I do it?  With this playlist:

The Believer--Common feat. John Legend (Warm Up)
God is a DJ--Pink
Umbrella (workout mix)--Power Music Workout
Independent Women, Pt. 1--Destiny's Child
Lapdance--N.E.R.D.
Womanizer--Britney Spears
Shake Ya Ass--Mystikal
Wind It Up--Gwen Stefani
Right Round--Flo Rida
Fergalicious--Fergie
Move Ya Body--Nina Sky
N**** What, N**** Who--Jay-Z
When I Grow Up--The Pussycat Dolls
Grown Woman--Mary J. Blige feat. Ludacris
Carry Out--Timbaland feat. Justin Timberlake
Everywhere I go--Lissie (Cool Down)
So Are You to Me--Eastmountainsouth (Cool Down)

Are some of these songs ruthlessly offensive?  Yes.  Does the feminist in me cringe at lines like "B**** ride a d*** like she's making a baby"?  Yes.  But I'm not really listening to the lyrics.  I'm pushing myself to the beat, and try as I might, I can't get myself motivated to workout while listening to Nickelback or Creed.  I need something dirty and pulsing and a little bit wrong, but I balance it with my lady-power anthems to feel a little less like a traitor to my gender.

Lunch out with the girls and then healthy dinner on deck--Healthy Choice, actually.  I'm going to add a salad and extra vegetables to it to make it more filling, but I'm not in the mood to cook today.  So thank you frozen food industry for supplying alternatives to bowls of Golden Grahams (my typical go to when I am too lazy to cook).

50
Finished Tomato Red last night as predicted.  I don't want to give anything away for those of you who might want to read it.  Woodrell has a pattern, at least in the three I've read by him so far.  Set up a tragic situation with people who could not possibly be any more flawed, reveal something almost redeeming about them only to have that trait morph into something sinister/evil/just plain MESSED up, insert major tragedy (sometimes more than one), and then watch all the shit hit the spinning-so-slowly-it-barely-disturbs-a-fly-in-the-outhouse fan.  And all of this takes place in the deepest dankest dens of the Ozarks.  It's not pleasant, and it's not always easy to read, but I'll be damned if it isn't well written.

I started a novel last night that I picked up on the dollar clearance shelf at Half Price Books.  I cannot tell you how many gems I've discovered there solely based on an intriguing title or back cover blurb.  I'm not sure yet if this one falls into the gem category, but I'm going to stick with it.  The book, An Experiment in Love, by Hillary Mantel (Brit, raised Catholic, attended a convent, lost her faith and at 18 began studying law at the London School of Economics), focuses on the relationship between three young girls in school in England in 1970.  It's been alternately clever, descriptive, and slow thus far, btu there's something dark beneath the surface that's keeping me interested.  I will most likely finish it tonight, so look for more on it tomorrow.

25-50-75: Day 1

Though our last contract day at school was Friday, so technically this past weekend was the beginning of my summer break, it didn't really feel like break until today.  Why?  Because today, I went to the public pool for the first of many leisurely and sun-drenched afternoons to come.

I should start by saying I woke at seven, read for a bit, had breakfast, played with my dog, and then took myself to Half Price Books in Olathe where I purchased some of the materials I will need for that elusive number up there in the title of this post.  But, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I was a kid, we went to Kanopolis Lake a lot.  Enough that my brother and I looked like little brown loaves of bread with butter hair--we were both blondey blonde then.  As we aged, we darkened up. Well, our hair did.  While we both still get a little color in summer, it's nothing compared to the lake days.  And we went to the public pool in Salina, too.  I don't remember who we went with, it must have sometimes been a babysitter of some kind since our parents both worked, but there are times I know we went as a family because I remember thinking how beautiful my mom looked in what I think of now as her ultra-80s white one piece--oddly reminiscent of that famous one worn by Liz Taylor--and I remember watching my father execute picture perfect dives off the high board.  Not very many dads can do that.  Mine was a champion diver in high school, so he was skilled in that area, but at the time I didn't think about his training, I just thought he was infinitely cool.

In grade school I took private swimming lessons, lessons at the public pool, and lessons at the YWCA.  I lived for the water.  I was advanced enough to take lifeguard classes by the time I was 12, but you weren't allowed to take them til you were 14, and then we moved, so that whole guarding life thing never panned out for me.  

The point of all of this is that I love the water.  I LOVE the water.  Perhaps it's cliche to mention here that I am also a Cancer, a born water sign, but it's true no matter how silly it seems to say so.  When I am near water, all pressures of the world ease.  I float, I feel the sun, I hear people being obnoxiously loud, sure, but more than that, I hear the lapping of the waves, I smell the lake air or the thick huff of chlorine.  And, a couple of times, I've even been lucky enough to suck down giant lung-fulls of ocean air.  No matter what the water source, when I'm near it, I feel at home.  

Which is why today felt like the start of break: I was near the water.  I packed my bag, grabbed my summer pool pass (a steal during last week's per-season special--at only $60 for the whole summer, it means I'll basically be paying about a buck fifty for each trip versus the cash in had price of four dollars), and headed out.  

As I lay there reading Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, I got this idea.  Her project--to cook all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just 365 days--was daunting, irritating and times, but I have to admit it was also a bit inspiring.  I kept thinking about my summer break.  I will be working in my building to inventory and re-organize our department book room every morning in June, and most mornings in July I will be up there working up course packs, curriculum guides, and lesson plans for the classes I'll teach all year including a new on I'm really excited about, but I will have afternoons and evenings free.  No papers to grade, no school meetings, just me and time.  And me and time have never been good on our own.  We need a buffer.  A plan.  A helpful friendly routine to make one of us pass productively without the other one passing out.

So, I have devised the following plan.  From today, May 28th, through August 10th, I plan to lose 25 pounds and read 50 books in what works out to be 75 days.  Technically classes don't start back up till the 16th, but the 10th is the last free Friday of the summer, and I know I'll spend part of that last weekend up in my room getting ready, so the 8/10 is a good stopping day. 

What do the 25 pounds and the 50 books have to do with the pool?  I'm glad you asked.  I have been planning to start going to the gym again this summer for awhile now.  I like myself, but I could feel better.  Less winded walking up stairs, more energy on long days, etc. and being at the public pool is one helluva motivator.  Every shade and shape of humanity graces that joint, from Skinny Mindy and her nearly concave stomach and abs to Too Tall Tessie with a backside twice the diameter of mine.  I made myself a promise to cut out my occasional fast food habit, to cook more, and to go to the gym at least once for every time I go to the pool.  Since I can't hit the water tomorrow, I've got a date with the elliptical at 7 a.m.  

As for the books, I read voraciously given the time, and there's nothing but time at the pool.  I want to prove to myself I can do, and I want to get at some of the stuff I bought last summer that never made it to my bedside table.

So, here we go world.  Day 1:

25 Pounds

Well, it's day one.  Healthy breakfast.  Last fast food for the next 75 days at lunch--you didn't expect me to not eat fries one last time did you?--dinner is in the works: angel hair with lemon, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, green onions, and goat cheese.  Lots of water all day, evening plan to make a new kick ass gym mix for the iPod.  Don't expect me to tell you how much I weigh today, I'll just give you the total loss at the end.  I may be interested in accountability, but all the hutzpah in the world wouldn't make me post my weight on the interwebs.  I am a lady after all.

50 Books

Started Julie & Julia last night before bed and finished it at the pool today.  It was a good read in that I wanted to see how she came out, but I found the narrator--and book's author as it is a memoir--to be insufferable at times.  If it's so hard to do x, y, or z, then please stop doing it and shut the hell up.  In the end though I did see her point: sometimes throwing yourself into something everyone else says is crazy is the only way you can keep yourself from going that way.

At the pool I started Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red which I'm sure I'll finish before bed.  It's good, less moving than Winter's Bone, but the voice is the same.  You can feel him working out the kinks in his Ozarkian landscapes that ready him for the bigger book.  He's the featured author for this fall's Read Across Lawrence, so I'm boning up on his work.  (Get it?)  

If you made it this far, stay tuned and wish me luck.  I plan to ride this sucker til the wheels fall off.

Mother's Day

Today isn't the only day I celebrate my mom, it's just the nationally set aside day to do so, so I'd better make this good.

My mom didn't have the career dreams that some young women have.  As a kid, she knew she wanted to be a mom--a huge job in an of it self and one she effortless done with grace and endless humor since 1976--but it isn't the kind of thing she's ever going to win public awards for or be given promotions, pay raises, or pats on the back.

My mom has worked my whole life, in a factory, at a make-up counter, and for the past twenty plus years, in an office at a pharmacy. The funny thing is, that's her work, it's how she makes a living, but it's not her passion.  Her passion is, and has always been, my brother and I.  Parenting us and loving us as though she were being evaluated by the great mom administration board in the sky, and she has never failed us.  Not once.

Did we have a perfect childhood?  No.  No one does.  Neither did she, neither did you, neither did anyone who has ever lived or will ever live.  Perfection doesn't exist.  But we always knew we were loved, we always knew she would hug us and tell us everything was going to be okay, when we were upset she would make us talk about it, she advocating literacy and rewarded us for helping her with chores by taking us to the library--the library!  It's still a place I revere because it was never punishment, it was reward.  And the being there wasn't the only reward, being there WITH HER was a huge part of it.

I get my love of reading from my mom, my desire to know more about things, my innate curiosity about the world, my appreciation of art and my passion for poetry.  She is the reason I can recognize beauty in the world--she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

My mom's heart is bigger than other people's.  She cares more, feels more, loves more than others, and i get that from her, too.  It means being a little more sensitive than the rest of the population, but I don't mind at all, I want to love and care and feel and give at least as much as she does.

And in the past two years, when I have struggled so much personally, she hasn't always said what I wanted to hear, but she has always been willing to talk and she has loved me through every single moment of it.  I know she loves me without hesitation or reservation, and that's a gift few of us ever get.    We've been talking a lot lately about things I've learned in therapy, about her childhood and how it affected her and in turn how it affected my brother and I--she is never afraid to talk about this stuff.  She wants to know me as much as I want to know her, she is fearless in her desire to be the best person she can be and that is, probably, the trait I admire most in her.

She knows we can all always be better, but that we are--right now--as perfect as we can be because we are trying, and that is the best any of us can do.

So Happy Birthday, Linda Kathleen Humbarger Draper.  I love you more every day.  This one's for you:

Grandma Olive

My grandmother Olive Caroline Habbart Draper passed away several years ago.  Today was her birthday.  I googled her name to see what I could see and came across this picture--it's from her high school graduation in 1930 in Beverly, KS.  She's the 3rd from the left in the front row--how great is her Mona Lisa smile?

Advice?

As a part of my job--that I love--I am on a committee that helps consider and draft curriculum changes for our district.  Teachers in my discipline from both area high schools serve on this committee under a coordinator who-despite being well intentioned and a genuinely nice person--is a bit out of her element having never been a high school English teacher.  This means the committee members function with an overseer of sorts, but no real person of authority guiding our meetings.  To her credit, our coordinator has acknowledged she knows less than we do and is willing to learn.  I applaud her for that effort.

The other people on the committee are all seasoned teachers with years in the discipline and a vested interest in the curriculum.  The members from my school, including myself, are rabid readers and constantly revise what we do in our own classrooms, excited by the possibility and thrill of change in a profession that can--due to bureaucracy--often feel sadly flat and lackluster.  Our colleagues from the other school, though I have never taught with them, represent themselves as more comfortable with the status quo than with any concept of change.  I understand this stance, it is easy and requires far less effort and has always worked before.  I do not begrudge them their position though I disagree with it.  We all bring something different to the table, and that is the point of a group of people making decision vs. on person: all perspectives must be represented.

The issue of late, however, has been in the way my enthusiasm and passion for my job has been perceived.  I fear my other school colleagues see me as some sort of power hungry strategist intent on pushing my own agenda to the detriment of their positions and/or feelings.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet on four separate occasions someone from that side has chastised, corrected when no correction as needed, or verbally attacked me for what I can only describe as the way I communicate.  I become impassioned.  I may speak quickly and loudly, but in a room full of educated adults participating in the conversation with me, I feel this kind of reverence for what we do is warranted and certainly not something that should be condemned.  But, the negativity pours out.

I do not want to change the way I work or present myself, but I do not wish to be attacked either.  I believe wholeheartedly that none of these people would have made similar statements to my male counterparts from my own school which saddens me to no end, that even in a professional setting men are allowed to voice their opinions passionately and women aren't.  My basis for this assumption is that I have seen my male counterparts worked up, near incensed, and no hostility has been directed their way.  I, on the other hand, can't seem to attend a meeting without being attacked.

If you have advice about how to handle this situation, I would appreciate.  I truly respect my colleagues and believe their opinions matter, I do not wish to upset or undermine them in any way, but I simply cannot tolerate their ill treatment any longer nor do I wish to compromise my integrity by being someone I am not.  So,  I guess what I'm saying is...help.

Nicole Krauss

If you haven't read Nicole Krauss, go learn all about her.  This is from her novel, The History of Love:

“The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.


During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me."

"If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.”

This Too Shall Pass

I didn't intend to stop blogging after last month's post, but here it's five weeks later and I finally have something to say, though it isn't much.

My house is on the market and the school year is almost over. I will spend the summer readying for the classes I'll teach in the fall, revamping lesson plans, putting together things for the new course I am picking up, and if I am lucky I will find a part time job to make some extra money as I wait for the house to sells waaaaay below what I paid for it.

Ging through this process, all these endings, is making me think more and more about my divorce and how hard it still is to be alone. I love that man, but we were not meant to be married. We have talked about it, about how strong our friendship is, how much we love one another, how this was the right decision for us both. But even now, nearly two years since it ws finalized, I find myself aching for the security of someone to rely on. We had our communication problems, big ones if the truth be told, but if I was sad or scared, he was in the house and I could ask him to listen. Now, I can call my friends, I can even call him, but I don't have someone who, no matter what time of day or where they are, they can come running to me. That may seem like a silly thing to want, childish even, but I want to give that to someone, that constant and unwavering attention, and so it is what I hope for in return.

I know every thing is going to work out. The sun will rise tomorrow morning and set tomorrow night as it has for centuries before and as it will continue to do so for centuries after. We will all move forward, and this middle time, sad and lonely as it has been, will fade and I won't even really remember how hard it was, the joyful always trumping the tragic with time.

I didn't mean for this to be a maudlin post. It's just a hard time right now, so much to do on my own. I know there are people built to be alone, who relish that independence, never needing or wanting to rely on someone else. I appreciate that in others, and I respect it. It's just not for me.

So, universe, tonight I ask for the strength to see beyond this moment, to dwell possibility, and to know this too shall pass.

Breath

Remembering to breathe, to take a moment to recenter in the middle of chaos is the most singularly fascinating trick I've ever seen.  Most days our bodies, subconsciously, take in breath, keep us upright, maintain the balance of inhalation and exhalation as simply as trees swaying, no effort, without thought.  And yet, I find myself short of breath, shallow chested, lungs half full of fear and air as I am constricted by the mounting woes that surround me.

Is my life more difficult than countless others?  Certainly not, but this is my one and only life and I must acknowledge the trials so that I can learn from and move through them. 

Fortunately, a dear relative provided some financial assistance that will make the next few months less terrifying.  Asking the universe for help can, in ways you never imagined, yield blessed and beautiful results. 

But now I need to turn my head and heart inward and work on my own reactions, learn to receive and accept the most scary moments, moving through them, rather than exhausting myself on the resistance of them.  It's all happening either way, better to let go and experience it all than to fight and miss what might be breahtaking.

Help

I have a really hard time asking for help. I was raised to be strong and independent, confident and sure of myself, and while those were great lessons, as an adult I find it difficult to say I can't handle something on my own, that I need more than I can give myself.

I believe in turning everything over to God, in asking him to take my fear and make me strong, I believe in the power of prayer and in doing good deeds so that those deeds may come back to me, but I have a helluva hard time asking people to help me. I have this idea that needing help is somehow weak, that if I were stronger/better I could handle everything on my own.

But, I can't. I have to sell my house and my student loan debt is out of control and my personal life is locked in a necessary but painful stasis and I feel like I have about as much control over my life as I do the weather which I guess is true but also scares the living hell out of me.

So, this is my plea to the universe: send me strength. Send me the power to ask for help. Send me the wisdom to know it when it arrives. Send me the ability to receive it with grace. Send me help. I need it.

News

I learned on Wednesday that my little girl dream of being a published writer is coming true.  Blood Lotus, an online journal, accepted my poem "Resurrection" for its May issue. 

As I look into publishing more and more it appears putting poems on blogs is a bad idea for would-be published writers, so I've taken all my poems off this blog and won't be posting new ones.  Which stinks because I love this forum and the feedback I occasionally get, but I want so very much to do this for real, so I am committing to the rules set forth by the industry.

I have a notebook from when I was eleven that says, in hot pink ink, that I will one day be a published writer.  It took 24 years--admittedly I was not dogged in my attempts that entire time--but the day has come.  And I freaked out.  Did you see the video of Kristen Bell losing it on her birthday when her boyfriend arranges for her to meet a sloth--an animal she has loved her whole life?  Her reaction was part joy, part shock, part full blown crazy town panic attack, and I love her for it because that sums up Wednesday for me.

When you want something so much, pray for it, work toward it, convince yourself it probably isn't going to happen, then have renewed hope, then give up again, etc. etc. etc., when the day comes that you get what you want, it can be way. too. much. to. process.  I was wildly excited, proud, scared, anxious, panicky, feeling sorry for myself that all my loved ones were busy so we couldn't rush out and celebrate, afraid to celebrate because then I might jinkx it, and on and on on.

I never really thought it would happen, that I'd be able to say I'm a published writer, but it had and I am still, a couple of days later, reveling.  I probably shouldn't be by most people standards.  I should just sit back, play it cool, pretend like I expected it all along, but that isn't me.  I have wanted this for so long that I am going to allow myself a couple of more days to really enjoy it.  After all, being published for the first time only happens once, and this once belongs to me.

First Love

Tomorrow may be a Hallmark holiday for many, but to me, it's always been proof real love exists.  It's my parents' anniversary, and though their road hasn't always been easy, it has been real, and so have they.


I am learning about real love every day, and trying to understand its myriad twists and turns.  One part of that includes this piece, which I wrote today, as a Definition essay example for my seniors.  Here's to first love, new love, old love, all love.  Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

First Love

First love, or puppy love as it is often called, is usually defined as an infatuation, a passing attraction, nothing serious.  It is our first experience, as human beings, of being more interested in someone else than we are in ourselves, and those first feelings can be overwhelming.  The first time Allan Gurganus fell in love, it was with a married woman who, at twenty years older than he, seemed exotic and full of promise.  Of course, at eight years old, everything feels exotic and full of promise.  Gurganus, an American novelist from North Carolina, didn’t need to have hit puberty to understand the kind of total obsession associated with first love.  He was in third grade, a smart kid with a beautiful teacher who gave him extra attention, and he knew—all year long—that he was in love. He did not think it was fleeting, something that would pass away with time, and in fact, forty year later, he is still writing about it.  The truth is, no matter how much we pretend it does not matter, our first love shapes our concept of love for the rest of our lives.

Imagine you are a six year old girl.  You come home from school one day and discover a puppy has been adopted by your family.  The puppy is a Golden Retriever, a soft yellow ball of fur and love.  She licks your face when you come home, sleeps curled up in a ball at the foot of your bed, and accompanies you on the walks you take around your block.  As you get older, you start to play sports and train to be a runner.  Your puppy, Goldie, is now a four year old, fully grown dog who wags her tail and smiles at you every time you walk in a room.  There is no one and nothing who loves you as she does.  In high school, you date, you get your heartbroken, but Goldie is always there for you.  You go away to college and miss her so much, it is as though one of your arms has been amputated.  And then, without much fanfare or warning, Goldie dies.  Your first love passes away and with it all of your hopes and dreams for a love that can last forever.

Did you always know Goldie would die?  Of course.  Did you understand she would not live your whole life with you, side by side, laughing and wagging?  Of course.  But the loss of Goldie, the end of your time together, makes you leery of love, and you learn not to give your heart away so completely because it can only end in pain. 

While we do not all grow up with a pet, the scenario outlined above is common.  Be it animal or human, when we attach ourselves to something or someone and then lose them, it can be devastating.  Children learn this lesson and it sticks with us, impacting our future relationships even when we don’t realize it.

Perhaps your first encounter with love was a fairy tale.  There is a common misconception that women are the only ones who buy into the dreams of true love living happily ever after, but many young men ache for that same kind of connection and security.  So what happens when a young man, kind and considerate, compassionate and loving, gives his heart to a girl who throws it in the trash only to stomp it like garbage beneath her slutty boot heels?  Well, that young man is going to be disillusioned and afraid to love again, closing himself off from future love in an effort of self-preservation.

Not all of the examples are negative, of course.  Many of us have happy experiences with our first loves, two people who care deeply for one another, share good moments and make loving memories together only to grow apart, maturely and without any of the drama and pain associated with angsty teenage breakups.  But, the reason there are so many sad stories to tell is that first love can be rough, full of the kind of weepy, angry and devastated moments that make up some of our best love songs.

When we lose the person or object of our affection, we can beat ourselves up, thinking we do not deserve love or that it will never come our way.  We can shut down emotionally and decide never to let anyone in again, or we can decide that our experiences so far have been so bad that they simply have to get better the next time, right?  So we take another shot.

First love, no matter how we encounter it, has an impact that ripples far beyond those initials pangs of joy so sweet it is almost pain.  When you see the person you first fall for and your heart stops, your breath catches in your throat, and you know if you could only get the chance to make that person happy, you would never ask for anything else in this world.

Our world is divided into parts and pieces than any one person could ever list.  We separate ourselves by our race, our gender, our sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, our political affiliations, whether we like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, if we prefer winter or summer, the list goes on and on.  But the thing that unites us, if we can only take a moment to remember it, is love.  So, this Valentine’s Day, think about your first love and how it affects you even now.  And remember people all over the world are thinking about it, too.  In fact, somewhere, someone may even be remembering you.

Steve Earle. 'Nuff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ2V9w9W6aY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Lines

There's a fine line between who I want to be and who I am.  Some days, these two ladies meet up and it's like a party you wish you'd been invited to--good music, laughter, delicious food that won't make you fat--but others days it's the sad ass party you threw as a kid that no one, not even your stuffed animals wanted to attend.  The one where everyone was supposed to speak in a foreign accent and sip tea like they liked it even though no one really discovers tea until their twenties.

That line is fine, hard to see, but it trips me again and again.  Just when I think I have a handle on how to be a friend and teacher, a daughter and sister, a woman and still--deep inside where very few people get to look--a little girl, something happens and I am tripping all the hell over that line, mixing those women up into a cocktail of doubt and anxiety and swirling purple strains of sadness.

I read recently, in Nicholson Baker's "The Anthologist", that old lilac wood, deep in its center, has streaks of deep purple in it.  I've been obsessed with that image, that heart of color beating inside something that seems outwardly dead, something royal buried in something forgotten.  I feel like there is that in me ("I know not what it is, but I know it is in me"): that same richness is here, but I have to be cracked open to get to it and I'll be damned if I'm not tired of cracking. 

I don't want to have to trace these lines or watch out for them or fill them in with expensive products or color within them.  I want to acknowledge their existence and move the hell on but who ever gets to do that?  It feels like an impossibility, most days, that moving on.  But I'm trying.  I am, forver it seems, trying.

Fishers of Men/The Strength of Fields

Some days, the right words come along and stun me into silence.  I'm headed out to read at church this morning, Psalm 62:5-12 and Mark 1:14-20.  The latter has always been one of my favorite passages--that we can become fishers of men.  I am not one for proselytizing or preaching on street corners; a person's road to God is his or her own personal business.  But I've always loved the notion that behind the fishers of men line, that if we are passionate and honest enough, we can unite people to our cause, give them a sense of their own power, infuse them with the light that shines in us.  I don't think that infusion has to be relegated to faith, though it's clear that was Mark's intention.  I think we can light ourselves as we light others, filling and refilling our own depleted souls through the sharing and telling of stories that brings people always always together.

And that sharing can give us purpose.  Today, James L. Dickey says it better than I ever could.

The Strength of Fields

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

... a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power and a life-enhancing return ... 

Van Gennep: Rites de Passage 

Moth-force a small town always has,   

          Given the night.

                                           What field-forms can be,

         Outlying the small civic light-decisions over

               A man walking near home?

                                                         Men are not where he is   

      Exactly now, but they are around him    around him like the strength

Of fields.    The solar system floats on

    Above him in town-moths.

                                             Tell me, train-sound,

    With all your long-lost grief,

                                             what I can give.   

    Dear Lord of all the fields

                                             what am I going to do?

                                        Street-lights, blue-force and frail

As the homes of men, tell me how to do it    how

    To withdraw    how to penetrate and find the source   

      Of the power you always had

                                             light as a moth, and rising

       With the level and moonlit expansion

    Of the fields around, and the sleep of hoping men.

       You?    I?    What difference is there?    We can all be saved

       By a secret blooming. Now as I walk

The night    and you walk with me    we know simplicity   

   Is close to the source that sleeping men

       Search for in their home-deep beds.

       We know that the sun is away    we know that the sun can be conquered   

   By moths, in blue home-town air.

          The stars splinter, pointed and wild. The dead lie under

The pastures.    They look on and help.    Tell me, freight-train,

                            When there is no one else

   To hear. Tell me in a voice the sea

         Would have, if it had not a better one: as it lifts,

          Hundreds of miles away, its fumbling, deep-structured roar

               Like the profound, unstoppable craving

            Of nations for their wish.

                                                      Hunger, time and the moon:

         The moon lying on the brain

                                                    as on the excited sea    as on

          The strength of fields. Lord, let me shake   

         With purpose.    Wild hope can always spring   

         From tended strength.    Everything is in that.

            That and nothing but kindness.    More kindness, dear Lord

Of the renewing green.    That is where it all has to start:

         With the simplest things. More kindness will do nothing less

             Than save every sleeping one

             And night-walking one

         Of us.

                   My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can.

3 Things Worth Watching

Justin Townes Earle, Trailer for "Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now" 3.27.12

L.P., "Into the Wild"

Melody Gardot, "If the Stars Were Mine"

Good Reads

If you are a bibliophile and you're not using Good Reads, you're missing out.

You can review books you've read, build a digital library, read reviews of things you're interested in reading, connected with other book loving like minded friends, win books in random giveaways (I just received my first--a hardcover copy of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn West--it won the National Book Award), and you may be solicited by Good Reads editors to submit questions to your favorite writers for upcoming features on their site.  Today, I wrote three questions for Anne Lamott.  Anne Lamott.  As in Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, etc.  I love her, and because I read constantly and use this site, she may answer a question I wrote.  So cool.

So, anyway, Good Reads.  I cannot recommend it enough.  Join it, find me, let's read together in 2012.

Who's in?

Let Go

When I was in high school, I was pretty.  I didn't know it then.  I look at pictures of myself from that time and think, man, I had a good figure, great hair, but I thought I was overweight and strange looking.  That my hair was too big, too blonde, my hips too wide, body too...developed.  The girls who were sought after played sports, had flat chests and wore size two jeans. I was bookish, curvy, and a size twelve.  I wasn't big, I just felt that way--conspicuous--like all eyes were on me.

And, because I was self-conscious, I didn't date much.  I also thought most boys my own age were stupid--which admittedly, may of them were--I'd been reading since I was three and made it through the entire College Prep List by the time I graduated simply because I wanted to prove I could.  That wasn't sexy or alluring, it was just weird.  I had friends, I even had a couple of odd relationships that you might call boyfriend-girlfriend, one junior and one senior year.  They each ended tragically--the former when he paid $5 to enter a building I was in watching a friends band play just so he could break up with me, the latter about three weeks after I had sex with him (my first time) so he could take someone else to prom.  Winners, those guys.

In retrospect, and I can only say this in retrospect, I was probably a lot to handle.  Emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved.  But still, they were pretty dickish, right?

And I had male friends.  Lots of them.  I was the girl they all wanted to talk to about their relationships, the one they told their problems to, problems with parents and teachers, friends and girlfriends.  And, when we were at parties, after a couple of drinks (almost always them, not me), they wanted to kiss me.  To tell me how pretty I was, how they wished they could meet a girl like me, how they would so date me if it weren't for some girl whose name ended in an 'i' or an 'ee' or a 'y'.  And I, emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved, let them kiss me, kissed them back, always thinking on Monday morning they'd see me at school, remember our fumbling liplock from Saturday night and know, in that hazy moment in the SVHS hallway, that I was the one they really wanted.

But, as these stories always go, that didn't happen.  Instead, there was awkward avoidance (theirs) and hurt sulking (mine) that had to smell like sulphur on a hot day, the slow smoking pain of adolescent rejection rising like so much smoke off the burnt orange carpet.

That feeling of rejection, of being someone's secret, of not being good enough to like in public has haunted me for twenty years.  I've felt less than, humiliated, unwanted, and plain old shitty about myself for so long that now, at an age when I finally feel ready to embark on a real relationship, I'm scared to death that I'll wreck it because I can't quiet that fifteen year old girl in my head who says not to trust, that it's too good to be true, that--come Monday--none of this will matter.  But in my heart, I know it does matter.  That love can exist, that something good can be true, I know it can, I just need to let myself live in that knowledge.

So, I need to let go of that voice.  I need to let go of that girl.

Here's hoping I can.

I Would Prefer Not To...

In this crush to resolve, well, everything, I find myself oddly uninterested in resolutions--making them, achieving them, working towards them--in large part because I don't think we ever really resolve anything inyour lives, we just learn how to move through or beyond it. So, when it comes to making resolutions this year, I would prefer not to.

Like Bartleby, I find it profoundly depressing to scuttle through the same slog day in day out with little to no variation, I don't like doing things simply because it is expected of me, and I certainly don't want to live a small life (see Mojo, etc. for an excellent post about this fear). And making resolutions, saying I resolve to do this or that, seems to feed in to all of the three things above. Every year, I--and millions of others--make resolutions that we break within days or weeks simply because our resolve to be resolute is leto than our desire to remain exactly who we are. It's easier to stay static. Change is a bitch in four inch heels with better hair and a more expensive wardrobe than I could ever afford. So screw her.

But, even though I would prefer not to make any resolutions, I find myself fixating on the what ifs. What if I did work harder to save more money, what could I accomplish? Travel? Paying off some of my debt? That elusive beast known as financial security? What if I did lose some weight, not because I need to look better (I really truly do dig how I look, it took awhile, but i'm there), but because I'd like to feel better. A little less back pain, sleeping better because my body was exercised and healthier. And what if I really could let go of all the past hurts and insecurities and live, truly joyously, presently live I this day, this moment, and in the radiant light of a hopeful future? What if what if what it.

So, this year, though I prefer not to make resolutions, I have decided to make myself a few promises about trying. No absolutes, just suggestions for myself ppthat, unlike resolutions, won't leavening me buried in a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk when I slip up.

This year, I will try to be more forgiving of myself first so that I am more capable of forgiving others.

This year, I will try to place physical health and well being on my list of priorities.

This year, I will try to attend church more not because I need to perform my faith for it to be meaningful but because that space centers me and guides my feet for the week ahead.

This year, I will try to think first before I react to situations that threaten or scare me.

This year, I will try to love myself as unconditionally as I love others.

This year, I will try.

End. Begin. End. Begin.

" For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice."
--T.S. Eliot


Last night, made up, readying for a night on the town.

This morning, no make-up, cleaning the house, laundry, taking down the tree.

I am happy to report that finally, at 35, I don't have a preference when it comes to these two photographs.  Time was, I would have died before showing myself without make-up, but now...this is who I am.  And I think she's pretty okay.  


So here's to 2012.  It's just has to be better that last year.  It just has to be.