College

Posts from my rediscovery of this blog during college. Oh, the early-twenties wisdom I will share…

Senseless

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destitute or deprived of sensation; unconscious
lacking mental perception, appreciation, or comprehension
stupid or foolish, as persons or actions
nonsensical or meaningless, as words

We use this word a lot to describe horrific things.  “A senseless tragedy.”  “Senseless violence.”  And usually we take it to mean that there is no sense to this, that is it nonsense, this thing that has happened, we cannot make sense out of it because to any sensical person it is impossible to think this way.  Justifying it is meaningless.  You might as well try to argue that the world is flat.  We cannot make heads or tails of it.  Senseless.

But I think in the immediate aftermath of tragedies, we also mean that we are numb, that we are “destitute or deprived of sensation,” because sometimes the best way to handle such news is to shut down, at least for a moment.  Even worse, the hits just keep on coming.  Syria.  Beirut.  Paris.  After a while, the pain deadens the nerve endings rather than awakening them.  The sensation, the hopeless, helpless sensation, is there, but it is lessened with time and repetition.

Do we mean, perhaps, that our sense of outrage is limited?  That it is senseless to maintain a sense of anger because these things happen so often and the world is so dark?

I hope not.

I hope, instead, that we mean that we need to take a breath to ready ourselves for the feelings that accompany the confusion.

I hope we mean that we cannot make sense of these things because there is no sense behind them.  I hope we mean that it does not make sense to warp faith into violence, and that it does not make sense to blame the whole for the sins of one part.

And because we can recognize that, because we can say that we do not think that way and we will not think that way, we can do something.  We can change something.

It will be slow, and it will be hard, but we can make the world make sense again.

A Thought on Mailbox Disappointments

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I like getting mail – real mail, the kind with my name lovingly written in a familiar hand with a sticker on the back holding the flap down even though it has that special glue.  One of my favorite little moments of the day is checking our mailbox, jiggling the key back and forth until it relents and lets me open our tiny metal door.  The possibility of getting mail, even a postcard, is exciting.

But more often than not, all that tumbles out are circulars with fruits and vegetables printed on newspaper, proclaiming the grocery store’s LOW, LOW PRICES.  They don’t even have coupons to clip, just advertisements listing the products for sale.

Two things bother me about these fliers:

  1. They waste paper.  Each one uses at least two sheets of newspaper, and I see the other tenants’ copies tossed carelessly in the laundry room trash (because who wants to carry it all the way across the parking lot or back to one’s apartment to recycle it?).  No one is even opening them, much less reading or using them, so why waste the materials?
  2. There is no way to stop them coming.  On unwanted email advertisements, I can hit “unsubscribe.”  On magazines, I can cancel my account or simply wait until it runs out.  But these aren’t even addressed to me – they’re sent in bulk to “Resident” at each apartment number, and probably in every other apartment complex in town.  I don’t know how to stop them, except to write some strongly worded letter to the Grocery Store Powers That Be to explain that all they’re doing is wasting paper and no one (or at least no one at this address) wants their unsolicited circulars anymore.  But what good would that do?  They’d probably forget to take us off the list, and they wouldn’t stop printing them.  At best I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for only recycling my own copy anymore.

Something I ponder frequently on my way from the laundry room to the recycling bin.

Too Loud to Be Heard

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Walking down the mall to work this past week, I had to veer around a medium-sized clump of people ringed around a shouting man.  The man shouted about damnation, Jesus, and sin.  Sometimes he stood on a milk crate.  Sometimes people shouted back.  Mostly they just laughed.

But then I got to work and I heard the conversations inspired by this man and his shouting.

“Christians are so judgmental.”  “They’re all just a bunch of hypocrites.”  “This is why I hate religion.”

“Would you say I’m judgmental?” I wanted to ask.  “Would you assume that I condemn all those who don’t share my beliefs?”

In my fantasy, they answer, “Of course not.  You are tolerant and good.”

“Well,” my imaginary self responds, standing to make a dramatic exit, “I must not be a very good Christian then, since you say they’re all so awful.” The less charitable part of me wants to leave them spluttering, awkward, wishing they hadn’t made assumptions about their audience, ashamed of drawing such broad conclusions about a large group of people the same way they say Christians do.

But instead I bit my lip, because I had a shift in five minutes and not enough time to explain how they shouldn’t judge the whole from the part, viewing all of us in the same way as the yelling fundamentalist.

Catholics, traditionally, shy away from street corner evangelism.  We are not comfortable with tabling in the student union, or even handing out candy in front of our own church door.  But I wear my cross necklace, and if someone notices and wants to have a respectful discussion of belief systems with me, I will gladly sit down with them.  I seek more to understand, and to allow the other person to understand my own beliefs, than to convert them.

And this is the problem I have with people who shout one the mall.  They are not fostering discussion.  They are not leaving their audiences musing to themselves that perhaps there’s something to this whole God thing after all.  There is nothing productive about the conversations stemming from seeing this shouting man because those conversations only reflect the judgment that people feel from him.  His content may be solid, but the method of transmission is off-putting to say the least.

So, if anyone cares, I’m open to discussion.  But please: no shouting.

Doodling Gives Me a Sense of Power

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I’m facilitating four 1-credit English classes this semester.  These are meant to be workshop times, a space for students to bring their writing in and get peer feedback, with a slightly more trained supervisory peer (me) keeping track of attendance and offering clarification along with the general class discussion.

Which means that when students are determined to remain taciturn, I struggle a little for something to fill our 50 minute sessions.

It doesn’t seem that hard to me to talk about writing for 50 minutes, but I recognize that not everyone is quite as obsessed enthusiastic with words as I am.

So I usually end up doodling on the board.

At the beginning of the summer, I bought a pack of Expo markers specifically for these classes.  I keep them separate from my workplace’s other, dried-up, capless, mismatched markers.  I encourage my students to write on the board, to color code, to use more visual representations of their ideas if words aren’t working for them.

“I don’t know about you guys,” I say, “but writing on whiteboards always gives me a feeling of power.”  They nod, smile a little, and sometimes it works.  Sometimes they write one word and then sit back down, but sometimes it works.

And sometimes I end up just writing on the board so they’ll see the fruits of their discussion, the growth of the list, the effects of the edits we recommend to each other.

Or I just doodle while they read.  (I’m a speed reader.)  And I end up with things like this:

2015-10-16 11.59.17

If I’m lucky, this leads to even more discussion, with everyone swapping organizational ideas and sharing how they get from prompt to polished paper.

Or, “Can we play Hangman?”

But even when I think class hasn’t been terribly productive, one of the students will toss out an absolute gem of a sentence, or just a quiet, “Thank you,” as they walk out the door.  That, even more than the chance to write on a whiteboard, makes it worth it.

A Truly Congenial Pen

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2015-10-20 20.43.34When you find a truly congenial pen, you don’t just let it go.  You mustn’t fling it around carelessly, let it ride barely held in by the mesh pockets of your backpack, allow it to sink to the bottom of the jumbled pile in your desk drawer.  You keep track of it, digging frantically through your room whenever it’s lost for a day.

But neither do you use it for just any purpose, like jotting down grocery lists – or maybe you do.  Maybe it’s that sort of pen, the sort that lends itself to making ordinary life flow a little smoother like ink from a perfectly poised ballpoint tip.  So its ink spreads over your life, through your planner and the torn-off bits of paper on which you write notes to yourself and your family, across the margins of newspapers where you doodle while you try to think of that last crossword answer.  Maybe it’s that sort of truly congenial pen.

Or perhaps it’s the kind that you store right next to your journal, because your thoughts just seem to write out better, even the tangled ones, when you have it in your hand.  It makes your darkest daydreams more palatable, your most confusing stressors more bearable.  Fond memories, written in its ink, become golden tinted.  It never runs out in the middle of a paragraph, never abandons you while you’re ranting to the page about your job or your crush or the people who live above you who stomp around like elephants in a Conga line.  Perhaps it’s that kind of pen.

Those who think this sort of attachment to a writing utensil is ridiculous have obviously not found a truly congenial pen of their own.  Those who agree with me know, as the Bard said, that pens are mightier than swords – so just the right one, in the right (or left) hand, is a formidable weapon indeed.

Hell on Heels (Apparently)

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My dad got married this weekend!  It was lovely; he cried adorably, my sister and I cried rather less adorably, and the whole thing was just wonderful.

But lovely and adorable and wonderful do not make for good stories.

What does make a good story?  A passive-aggressive bed and breakfast hostess cornering girls to make them take off their high heels.

I first caught her attention by walking a little loudly down the hall.  Swiftly taking in my peep toe heels, she stepped uncomfortably close to my face and asked, “Didn’t anyone tell you?”  Before I even had a chance to answer, she went on, “I had requested that there be no spiky or tall heels.”  I began to explain that no one had told me of any such request, and I was pretty sure my heels didn’t qualify as “spiky,” being only about 3 inches tall, but she barreled onward.  “So if you could just take them off after all the pictures are done,” she said, smiling sweetly, “that would be wonderful.  Everyone will just think you’re getting comfortable!  But they really do leave bullet holes in my floor.”

I was unaware that I had shotguns in my shoes.  Whoops.

Now, I was raised to respect both adults and old houses, and this mansion-turned-B&B was nearly 100 years old.  Of course I didn’t want to damage the floors, but I figured if I stuck to the rugs and refrained from flamenco or tap dancing, it would be fine. Besides, more than half the women there were wearing heels too, and I didn’t see the hostess whispering warnings of bullet holes to any of them.

What I did see was Bird and her friend coming back from the buffet with plates in one hand and shoes in the other.

“She cornered us!” Bird said.  Apparently the hostess hadn’t bothered with the sweet smile this time.  She just stood there and made them take their shoes off after asking if anyone “remembered” her original request at all.  While, like me, Bird and her friend certainly didn’t want to cause any damage to the floors, they felt somewhat attacked.

“I don’t see her going up to anyone else,” I mused, glancing at the still-shod feet around us.  Some of those could definitely be classified as spiky, and yet the hostess chose to continue targeting the three youngest women wearing high heeled shoes.

The last straw came when we made our way into the living room to watch our dad and his new bride cut the cake.  I noticed that the hostess had literally cornered my poor sister and was hovering, watching her remove her shoes again.  Bird told me later that she demanded, “Do you have a problem with removing your shoes?  Other people don’t mind taking off their shoes!” – and pointed to a pile of flipflops that did not belong to anyone in our party.

I can bite my tongue.  I can be civil with people being unfair toward me.  I can even brush it off, if it only affects me.  But if you make my little sister uncomfortable?  Watch out.

“Excuse me,” I cut her off, putting on my best Southern Belle smile, “with all due respect, if this is going to be a problem, you should probably make a general announcement or put a sign up, since I can’t help but notice you’ve only been talking to the three of us.”

“Well, yes, there should have been a sign up,” she said, “but the smaller heels don’t make as much of an impact, so really…I mean, it’s just that I had requested…”

Honestly, I was not going to miss my dad cutting the cake to listen to that woman repeat her line about bullet holes.  So I smiled just as sweetly as she had earlier and turned away.

Once the cake cutting and toasts were over, I turned to the Engineer.  “I have a physics question for you,” I said.  “Does the height of the heel on my shoe increase the force I am exerting on the floor?”

“No,” he said, “force has more to do with the surface area.”  (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember exactly what he said, but the explanation was very helpful, particularly since it proved me right.)

Our conversation had caught the attention of a family friend nearby.  Once we filled her in on the situation, she asked, “Is that her?” and sauntered straight over to the hostess.

We found out later that she had quite politely asked why the groom’s daughters, whom she knew to be two classy ladies, were not wearing shoes.  The hostess repeated her line about bullet holes and heels, to which our friend asked, “Oh, do I need to remove my shoes?”

“Oh, I didn’t even notice those!  No, no, you’re fine.”

Our heels were exactly the same height.

The family friend then politely pointed out that we were paying for the use of the venue and would be posting a review later on about the experience, so she was going to go ahead and tell Bird and me to put our shoes back on.

The hostess, in my opinion, had quickly crossed the line into unprofessional behavior.  She consistently made discriminatory judgment calls in her attempts to protect the floors, insisting that our heels were more damaging than anyone else’s.  It was pretty obvious that she was unwilling to treat the “adult” guests this way, as evidenced when our family friend asked if she needed to take her shoes off.  Even if Bird and I were not the daughters of the groom, we were still guests in a venue that was being used by paying customers.  Yet the hostess became hostile every time she approached us, particularly Bird and her friend.  Addressing us respectfully, regardless of our apparent age or connection to the bride and groom, would probably have yielded far more favorable results than attacking and scolding us for not immediately complying to her demands.

Still, this by no means ruined the evening, and I finally did kick off my shoes (when I damn well felt like it!) to swing dance a little with the Engineer.

The next morning, as we were saying goodbye, the hostess bustled up to shake hands and say how nice it was to meet us, and, turning to me, added, “And weren’t you so much more comfortable after you took off your shoes?”

I blinked, withdrew my hand, and went to hug my dad goodbye.  There were just too many comebacks to choose from.

Things I’m Trying to Be Better About

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Praying.

Calling home.

Making healthy dinners.

Awareness of how much I’m spending on coffee.

Awareness of how much I’m drinking coffee.

Posting on this blog.

Posting on Changeling Scribbles (actually no don’t go read it because I haven’t posted anything in weeks).

Reading for pleasure.

Working on my own writing.

Doing laundry before the basket overflows.

Not overscheduling myself.

Eating a real breakfast, not just a protein bar on the way out the door.

Leaving the Engineer’s at a reasonable hour because he gets grumpy when he doesn’t get to bed before 11.

Leaving the Engineer’s at a reasonable hour because I cannot actually replace sleep with coffee.

Pulling myself out of stress spirals about what to do with my life post-graduation.

Going out and doing things occasionally.

Loving myself.

Don’t Scare Me Like That, or Why I Hate Halloween

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I hate Halloween.  I hate the stress of trying to figure out a suitably clever (and appropriate – why is it impossible to find a female costume consisting of more than a square yard of fabric?) costume for the church party, and I hate the creepy hunchbacked butlers with shriveled green skin that spring up at the ends of Safeway aisles, and I hate the sheer number of decorations with motion sensors cackling every time someone walks past, and I hate people trying to get me to go to haunted houses, and I hate that there’s an entire holiday centered around scaring other people because it’s “fun.” It is not fun.  Not to me.

Okay, I don’t really hate Halloween that much.  But living on a college campus means my general indifference gradually hardens into spite over the course of October as I come up against invitations to haunted houses and scary movie marathons, not to mention the fact that everything I buy suddenly has to be black and orange in honor of All Hallows’ Eve.  (How many of the scare enthusiasts and costume shoppers even know that’s where Halloween came from?)  It’s just such an aggressive holiday, from the costumes to the ABC Family marathons to the people who think it’s okay to practice their scares on random passersby.

I’ve never liked being scared.  I don’t think it’s fun, and I don’t understand how, exactly, it is supposed to change my mind on this score to go into scary places and “see that it’s not that bad.” I have been scared before, in fun and in earnest, and I do not enjoy the feeling.  The rest of you can go creep through darkened rooms while employees in creepy masks lurk to jump out at you.  As I keep pointing out to my friends, if I’m not having fun, you won’t have fun.  No one will enjoy having to physically carry me back to the car as I sob because I barely made it two steps into the creepy house before I decided it was too much.

Sidebar: I also dislike rollercoasters.  Once, when my friends and I went to Wild Waves, they got me all the way up to where you get into the seats – and then they let go of my arm and I ran down the wheelchair ramp.

And then there’s the fact, as my mother has points out, that this is the one day of the year when we actually encourage children to take candy from strangers.  Who decided that was a good idea?  I prefer to buy my own candy and consume it at home, on the couch, watching something cute and not at all scary, without having to put on some kind of costume.

But then again, it was after the church Halloween party freshman year, watching drunken bumblebees and sexy nurses and a few vampires stumble by, that the Engineer and I started dating.  And it was a friend’s Halloween party the next night that became our first activity as a couple.  (I, nerd that I am, was Schrodinger’s cat in a sparkly black dress and mask.  We arrived separately and grinned like idiots at each other all evening until he walked me home and put his arm around me.)

So maybe there are a few good things about Halloween.

After all, all the dark chocolate goes on super sale the first day of November!

Want

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to wish, need, crave, demand, or desire

to be without or be deficient in

“Tell me, right now, what you want.”

I sat in a springy armchair in a slightly musty room in a retreat center, twisted sideways to face my friend in the tweed armchair on the other side of the end table.  I had asked her advice, or her listening, I suppose, because she is my peer, in a similar place in life, and because it was a retreat.  You do things like this on retreats, I thought, even if you’re leading them.  You have these conversations with yourself.  It’s inherent.  Walking away for a weekend, leaving behind homework, shedding those surface attachments, it all leaves room.  Quiet, quiet room in my mind for those wonderings.

What I want?

There have been too many voices contributing to that conversation; my own was drowned out long ago.  I don’t remember anymore, without any outside influences, what I want.

I want my colorful planner to be already laid out for the next five years, the way it has been all my life, but it isn’t.

What I want?

I want to work on my writing, to be near those I love, to simply go to work and come home and have time to do what I love and maybe enjoy my job as well, small things, really, when I list them like this, but I cannot want them, because they are not what I have said I wanted, what I claimed for myself, what others want for me.

I want not to be found wanting.  I desire things of my own, but worry that by fulfilling my own wishes I will become deficient in outsiders’ eyes.

What I want?

I’d like to know that too.  Or be able to admit that I know it, and that I want it at all.  That I think it’s what God wants for me, too, because I wouldn’t still feel this way otherwise.

I sat in a springy armchair in a slightly musty room in a retreat center, twisted sideways to face my friend.  She wanted to know what I wanted.

And somehow, I told her.

My Life in Books, Part 3: Writing Guides

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I love books, and I love writing.  It follows that I would have several books about writing.

1. Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine

writing_magicMy parents bought this for me at a Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school and I had read it by the time we got home.  So I promptly read it again.  Already a fan of Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, and The Princess Tales series, I wanted to learn how one of my favorite authors made her books come alive.  It might be written for 4th graders, but I’ve revisited the prompts and advice in this book time after time, even now that I’m in college.  This was the book that instructed me never to get rid of anything I write – and, cringe-worthy as some of my early “stories” are, I’ve followed that mandate ever since I read it.

I think reading this was also a step in taking ownership of my writing process.  At one point, Levine writes that to her, revision is a relief: “When I’m working on a first draft, I feel like a prisoner…I notice a bit of moisture condensing on the walls, four or five beads of water.  Each bead is an idea. I scrape them off and write feverishly till I use them up.  Then I wait for more moisture.  But when I finish my first draft, the walls come down…No more waiting for condensation.  All I have to do is make the book better.”  I feel the opposite way.  I hate revising.  It feels like I’m penned in, cut off from the excitement of finding out where the story goes.  But that, Levine acknowledges, is just as legitimate a process as her own.

2. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

download (5)Part memoir, part writing advice book, part general life advice book, this is another one I reread over and over.  I just love the way Lamott writes, the anecdotes she tells, and the brutal honesty she displays about writing.  It sucks sometimes, trying to be a writer.  Lamott doesn’t romanticize it, but she also understands that it’s not about fun (or at least, not entirely).  It’s that you have to write, or go crazy.  Or maybe a little bit of both.

Lamott gives advice more episodically than anything else, but that makes her relatable as another writer.  When I discovered Levine’s writing guide, I was looking up to an idol; this was my introduction to Lamott’s writing, so I took the advice differently.

Best of all, the stories she tells and the people she quotes send me running to look them up.  I actually bought another book on this list purely because Lamott quotes from it a few times.

3. Do Story by Bobette Buster

do storyThis one has a bit of a back story.  I found it originally in a bookshop down an alley in Nottingham, UK, but didn’t have enough cash on hand.  When I went back, the last copy had been sold – a trial run of only 5 copies, the proprietor said.  But if I emailed him, he’d let me know when he got another order in.  Which turned out to be the day I went home.  So instead he put me directly in touch with the publisher so I could order my book, regardless of whether he ever saw a penny.  I think I love the book more for the story of obtaining than for any advice it gave me.  (So by the way, if you’re ever in Nottingham, go find Ideas On Paper down an alley from Market Square – it’s worth it!)  Although this little book is more about storytelling in general than writing specifically, I liked what it had to say.  It emphasizes the idea that everyone has a story to tell, and everyone’s story is valuable.  It also plucks examples from history, showing how our ever-shifting global culture depends on stories like ours, and on telling those stories well.  “And, why should you do this?  Risk your vulnerability?  Because…someone is telling a story all the time…it is necessary for us to harness our own stories, and tell them well.  If not, then someone else will come in and wallpaper our culture with their stories…In the end, all you have is your story.  Tell us your story.  Do.”

4. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

writing down the bonesAfter reading excerpts from various bits and pieces of this book in numerous creative writing classes, I figured I might as well go ahead and read the whole thing.  Specifically, I loved the chapter/section/essay on living twice.  I loved the idea that being a writer makes you experience the world differently, and not always at the same pace as everyone else.  This is also a book that can be read in fits and starts, depending on how much time one has.  I haven’t read all of it, but I read the sections I need when I need them.