*Adapted from "Birth of the Titans," a poem by Fake Andrew (Jim Cahalan, James Doyle, Timothy Otte and Clara Swanson)
I was conceived in an earthquake, mud sliding around that first
dodge colt, perched on some precarious peak.
Every time my parents went to Ecuador, they got pregnant.
I was conceived in a village in the Andes Mountains, a village plundered and ploughed by an oil company, in the aftermath of a devastating 1987 earthquake. I was conceived in a house riddled by bullet holes, whose walls shuddered through the violent domestic conflicts next door. Jungle cats prowled outside at night and my parents had the only car in the whole village. If anyone needed to leave the village, my parents had to take them. It was a tiny little car that needed to be pushed over the peak half the time, with pregnant ladies in the front seat and the backseat full of laborers looking for work or visiting their families.
I was born the product of two mountains,
In a leftover cloud of volcanic ash.
My mother was born in California, but her parents were missionaries in the tiny town of Jumla, Nepal, nestled back into the Himalaya Mountains. (Later, I took baths in a pot on the stove in that same tiny town.) The Himalayas boast the highest mountain above sea level, a mountain that has sent many challengers to their deaths. My father was born and raised in the Andes Mountains, in the country of the mountain whose peak is farthest from the center of the Earth. They met at Bethel College in Minnesota, USA, and took walks around the lake while they sorted out their cultural differences and identity crises and questions about their parents’ religions. They spent their college years with the other confused, disillusioned missionary kids, who gathered at a cabin on a lake to give sermons in made-up languages, which someone else would translate into another made-up language.
I was born in Quito’s Hospital Metropolitano while overhead Pichincha spat clouds of ash out onto the city. As my dad says, I took my time coming. As my aunt Judy says, “Kathy was having way too good of a time to stop and have a baby right then.” I was born five days late.
Then, where the sea crashed, pulverized
Tons of quartz, I hid my eyes beneath
My own personal sunny-colored honey color,
Blew like palm trees in little breezes.
Grammi said my hair was honey-colored. Not brown, not dirty blond. Not ordinary.
We went to the beach, my mom and dad and me, my dad’s older brother and sister, sister-in-law and brother-in-law, my two older cousins Alex and Angela. My parents, protective of their firstborn, stopped to buy a hat to shield my newborn skin from the equatorial sun. It was buttercup yellow and far too big for my tiny head, but I wore it anyway and lay in the hammock while my parents took pictures of me and listened to the huge waves crashing on the sand.
I spoke in darkness, the first words of poetry,
Moony eyes refusing to close
After ten days of sleeping.
Nothing escaped my watchful eyes,
And I, quiet, created the first tiny worlds
Out of iron fairy dust.
When my dad held me for the first time, his glasses slipped off his face and shattered on the floor. He didn’t even get to see what I looked like for three days until his new glasses came in.
They brought me home from the hospital and I fell asleep almost immediately. I slept for ten days straight, so soundly that they had to wake me up to eat, after which I would fall right back to sleep. Everyone worried, but the doctor said I was fine.
After ten days I woke up and refused to sleep. I wanted to be in the middle of the action. I wanted to see everything and meet everyone. My theme song was Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” and I did not.
When I was older, my parents put me to bed and I would lie there in my crib, with Snowball the wide-eyed teddy bear face-down next to me so I wouldn’t see his eyes glowing in the dark. I used to sing my own little lullabies: “My eyes are sunny, my eyes are moony, my eyes are dark, I cannot see!”
I was playing dress-up as soon as I could walk. Or dress-down, as it were, running around the house in my plastic diaper cover, my dad’s shoes and aviators. Sometimes I hid in cupboards wearing nothing at all. My favorite toy was the MagnaDoodle. I lay on the floor for hours while I learned to write my name, and drew pictures of my imaginary friends (Fingerbopper, Poony, and the gang), who all looked like blobs with sticks for arms and legs.
I still draw people like that sometimes, for old times’ sake.
I was raised in a field of flowers
With a lioness to tend our blazing thirst.
When I was little my mom worked a series of odd jobs, first with Billy Graham and then later as a caterer at the Holiday Inn. She used to come home late at night smelling like scalloped potatoes, after Papa had fed us and bathed us and (theoretically) put us to bed – but I remember still being awake when she came home at least once, after a Scandinavian banquet full of drunkards and carriers-on.
I remember once when I had just finished with the chicken pox and everyone else was in the throes of it. Thomas and Maria were still too young to go to school and Asha was a babe in arms. In this memory, which seems too crazy to be true, Mama took all four of us to the grocery store on the city bus in the middle of a sleet storm. The overhead emergency exit on the bus was stuck open and sleet was sneaking in and drenching everyone. I knew the WIC office all too well, but I aced all my classes at Mississippi Creative Arts Magnet School and it never occurred to me that I couldn’t have whatever I wanted out of life.
I grew up among the tribal dancers
Of many villages, threw wishes on the fire
To watch them curl up in smoke
To the gods.
My first passport photo features a huge disembodied hand coming in from the side to hold up my tiny head. My parents got hurried through the diplomat line at an Asian airport when officials saw their golden-haired, golden-eyed baby. Bus passengers passed me around in Nepal at three months old and when I was three my best friend was named Lulah, because my baby brother couldn’t pronounce Elizabeth. At Luther Seminary in St. Paul, I played in the sandbox with Lena, whose family was from Croatia. They disappeared suddenly when I was five or six years old, leaving all their Legos and Barbies in plastic bins outside their apartment.
We left Minnesota when I was seven so my dad could take a call at two churches in St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands. We lived on Peter’s Rest and tried to sell homemade perfumes on the front steps with our next-door neighbors Al and Shelly, and learned to rollerskate on the linoleum living room floor. After our car exploded on a cliff in the middle of the island, we moved across the hills to La Vallee, where we salted slugs on the steep slanted driveway and made fun of Jordan, the little boy whose parents took care of the sheep that ran around our rutted road and tripped us when we tried to ride borrowed bicycles out to the street. Last time I saw it, the road was still black at the site of the explosion. But that was eleven years ago.
I learned to swim in crashing waves, to race.
At seminary our toys mostly came out of the dumpster. People were always moving in and out and so we often found pretty cool things in there, like decent training bicycles, and there were always loads of cardboard boxes for building houses and time machines. We made epic forts out of couch cushions and staged the Olympics on the blue backing of my baby quilt, which made a perfect swimming pool AND gymnastics mat. We reenacted scenes from “The Lion King” on the back of the couch, and the hallway rugs saved us from the lava bubbling across the tiles. One Christmas, my dad got homesick for the mantel at his parents’ house in Quito, so he drew out a fireplace on a huge roll of brown paper and all of us kids helped paint it. We stuck it up on the wall so we would have something to hang our stockings on.
My dad always loved the sound of waves crashing on the beach. He loved the sparkling blue of the ocean and the thought of what lay submerged beneath it. He loved snorkeling and bought us all prescription snorkeling masks so we could enjoy it together. I learned how to swim freestyle with little crests breaking my stroke; I learned to time my breaths to the side with the troughs between waves.
Later, in a swimming pool in Upstate New York, I learned racing dives and streamlining my breaths and what it feels like to pull against the kicking of the person in front of me in the lane.
I fell in love with rhythms and with fire,
Would throw myself on any thrumming pyre,
And Achilles could have, would and had his way with me.
I spent most of my life from the time I was eight until I started high school reading. I finished 100 books in a summer easily, blazed through half of every library and half of all available series and the Scholastic book catalogs they sent home with us every few months. I read the Arabian Nights when I was eight and grew up with Harry Potter, hoping for an owl every day after I closed the cover of The Sorcerer’s Stone. I imagined my lifelong romances with Madeleine L’Engle’s Adam, with Lee Jordan and Cedric Diggory, with Achilles and Sebastian and Duke Orsino. I watched Wishbone religiously until I discovered the Worldbooks in the living room. In tenth grade my friends and I started a book club and read A House Like a Lotus and Sophie’s World; we hosted Shakespeare readings and memorized sonnets. Our stint at Amsterdam High School was colored by characters and incidents from Romeo and Juliet reenactments, LOTF (Lord of the Flies), A Separate Peace, The Merchant of Venice, Mayor of Casterbridge, and Dorian Grey.
I believed in a life of adventure followed by happily ever after. Everyone always shook their heads at me, but I always knew I was going somewhere and while they called me a cloud-chaser, I think they secretly believed that somehow, in some way, I was right.
I fell asleep again,
Ten years later
And saw things in my dreams,
The ghosts of fairies
Rising from my palms.
I left the country alone for the first time when I was 15, and spent the next year at an international boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas, exploring my mother’s past. I built stage sets for her stories and staged my own stories in them, all over the hillside and the dorms and hallways of Woodstock School.
Two weeks after I graduated from high school, I passed my driver’s test, packed up my car (later named Cloudchaser in honor of its color and my dreams) and moved into my friend Deanna’s basement for the summer. At the end of August I packed up Cloudchaser again and drove halfway across the country with loaded memories, blind anticipation, and Subway sandwiches to keep me awake on the highway.
Back in Minnesota, I take new classes, look up old friends and family members. I uncover family histories and knit my past together with my present. My inventory of homes grows steadily larger. I go “home” for the summer to a house in India where someone else lived last time I visited, “home” the second summer to a brand new hotel in my country of birth. I go “home” for Christmas to an island off the coast of Canada, “home” for Christmas to a friend’s house in Amsterdam, New York, “home” with my roommate for Thanksgiving and Easter.
When I ended up at the gas station on top of the hill on Eustis St., I still could have walked the road between Luther Seminary and Peace Lutheran Church in a green velvet dress with lace on the cuffs and collars. I can get into my dorm after 8pm without even taking my ID out of my pocket. More than a few airports look intimately familiar to me, and all of them trigger different sets and combinations of images.
I die in peaces, my immortality, my loves and lucky charms
Live on in shreds and threads and photographs
Memoirs and breathing artifacts.
In class this summer Mario asked us what we hoped to leave as our legacies on earth after we die. I hoped to pass on my passion. There is a part of me, I said, that never needs to die. I live, and I try to make that life available to everyone I talk to and everyone I touch. It can be a pandemic.
My aunt Lisa bought me my first blank book when I was seven, but I started writing the story of my life long before that. I wrote it on the backs of pots and pans with spoons and spatulas and spelled it out in Legos and cardboard boxes. I started writing in my father’s three-day blindness and scrawled fragmented phrases on chalkboards for my wide-eyed siblings and playmates. I leave messages in my disappearing tracks across the globe, and I can only hope that they are legible and worthwhile.
In the beginning, all was void.
Then, from nothing, from the elements we rise
A race of titans strong and beautiful
To love the earth in all its chaos and turmoil
To love and hate and create each other
Our brothers, lovers and mothers
We rise!
29 December 2009
26 December 2009
in-flight entertainment
I can feel the momentum building in the huge jet engines, almost as though I’m moving even before the plane starts its taxi for takeoff. I can feel the potential energy of this massive mechanical beast before it becomes kinetic; it builds in my stomach like external anticipation.
We 300+ anonymous travelers become a single plane for the duration of the flight, until we reach our destination: Amsterdam-Schiphol International Airport. Since I am going almost to the exact other side of the globe, I could theoretically fly either way. But I always fly east, into the night. The afternoon dissipated, the sun set in a moment, and then the morning came too soon. Breakfast at Minnesota midnight?
***
I almost left Benginald in Mellby until February, but Spencer made me bring him along. He has been my travel buddy for the past 10 years and I thought he was getting old enough to stay at home by himself for a few weeks, but I was wrong. Spencer said he would get lonely, and that my leaving him behind showed that I didn’t care about him anymore.
When I passed through security, the officer checked my passport and boarding pass and nodded at Bengi. “Is this your boyfriend?” he asked. I laughed. “Sure is.”
The guard gave me a nice smile but looked surprised to see me. “Well hello there,” he said as though I was a fascinating but previously undiscovered species. “Thank you.” His eyes followed me out.
I saw Sarah Jacobson, whose parents live in Tanzania, shoving her carryon into the overhead compartment. I called out to her and she said how funny it was that she’d made it through MSP without seeing a single Ole, and then here I was two rows back. The people in the rows around us smiled too, and a few of them caught my eye.
I blame it on Benginald. He’s good news.
***
The Ericksons are interested in traditions. My family doesn’t have any.
I’m looking for traditions. Two years ago, almost to the day, I started making my own. I remember perching on the edge of the couch, feeling self-conscious about my cheap and unthoughtful Christmas gifts, because my mom told me that her family goes in for giving talents. “Give them poetry,” she suggested, so I didn’t spend any money on material things until I got to Cortes and saw the pile of nicely wrapped gifts under the tree.
So I did both. I spent some time copying poems out of my book with Sharpie onto brown paper bags and wrapped my mediocre presents with them. I remember perching on the edge of the couch and reading it out loud, duet, the first spoken-word piece I’d ever attempted.
Like everything else, it’s about being in love.
***
It’s Friday night. I’m standing in the doorway still wearing my coat, hat, scarf and boots, facing him wearing only his boxers. I’m just standing there scuffing my feet, watching him meticulously pull of each piece of tape so he doesn’t ruin the wrapping paper. Not one single word. He wants to read them later.
I tell him I won’t be offended if he rips it, but secretly I savor the fact that he wants to keep it. He wants to read it. He loves my wrapping paper probably as much or more than he will love his presents.
***
The woman at the end of my row is reading Twilight in paperback. I smile thinking about how many people I’ve seen reading it without the slipcover, trying to hide the fact that they are actually reading Twilight. It’s like a secret cult, with everyone who has read it knowing exactly what the uncovered cover looks like and exchanging looks that say, “I read them too – in a public place, without the dust jacket.” It’s like the early Christians who would draw half of a fish in the sand with their toe while they talked to someone new. If the other person drew the other half of the fish, both knew that the other was also a Christian, and they could worship together.
I laugh every time I reference Twilight in everyday conversation, but it’s actually been relevant multiple times. Vampires DO exist, and sex is immortal. To me it reinforces the fact that in order to live forever we must be cold and hard as marble… or eat the brains of the living and mortal.
If that’s immortality, I’m not interested.
***
In June, right after my junior year, I was sitting in the first row of business class on a flight from Munich to Paris with my friend Alisa and her father. Before economy class boarding, the flight attendants came around with a stack of free magazines. I didn’t speak German or French, so I tried to pick something with good pictures.
When the rest of the passengers started boarding, they all snickered at the two wide-eyed 16-year-old girls flipping through copies of Playboy, pretending to read the articles (which were all in German) and instead being visually assaulted by glossy full-page photos of enormous, unrealistic bosoms bouncing around on a muddy soccer field like skin-colored footballs.
***
At the beginning of that year, I sat in the Toronto airport with Ella and Katie, pretending to be engrossed in our crossword puzzles and conversation while in reality our eyes were peeled for our fellow travelers, especially a bushy-haired girl we’d never seen before. Her name was Nicole. According to her email, she would be wearing hot pink capris and looking confused.
On the plane, I sat next to her and we wrote notes back and forth to Gus and Paul, the two boys from Connecticut who sat diagonally behind us. Paul had a guitar and told us what Valium was, and why he fell asleep almost immediately. Gus carried on the conversation after that but we didn’t really know what to say to each other so the chat eventually petered out.
In the simulated evening, when the cabin lights went out, the woman in front of us (who had a very unhappy baby) turned around and asked the girl next to me to please shut off her reading light. She was engrossed in the newest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so I offered her my flashlight.
***
After the interminable boarding process at Amsterdam-Schiphol, I found my seat in the exit row, between a distinguished Sikh businessman and a distinguished Indian gentleman. They were engaged in conversation, and I blazed in wearing skinny jeans, high tops and a cutoff T-shirt, threw Benginald the Stuffed Moose down on my seat and hefted my backpack into the overhead compartment. They both looked at me and commented that my travel companion needed a seatbelt, and then continued their conversation behind my head.
The pilot came on to make an announcement that the flight was being held for several passengers on an incoming flight, and the gentleman on my right got up to take a turn about the cabin. While he was gone, a bright-eyed young English woman flew in and sat down in his seat. The Sikh, who introduced himself to me as Hipi, told her, “There is a gentleman sitting there already.” As soon as she got up to sort out the confusion, the gentleman came back, and then the British girl returned with a flight attendant who told the gentleman he had been moved up to first class.
It pays to be a frequent flyer.
***
The girl’s name is Amy. She had come straight in from London Heathrow and headed for Delhi to travel with her longtime boyfriend Seb. If they had missed this connection, they would be stuck in Amsterdam until after Christmas, so she and the nine other passengers from London are very grateful that KLM held the flight.
They have few plans but hope to visit Jaipur and Goa, hope for a Christmas dinner in Delhi, hope their mothers don’t worry too much about them while they update their travel page on getjealous.com. We enlighten each other on the British and American education systems, and she tells me about career life in the UK, about Seb and the adventures they have had together. She says that all the photos she’s seen of India feature cows, piles of trash, bright colors, and signs that don’t quite work in English. I laugh and say that seems pretty accurate.
My calculations put her at about 30 years of age, but her chic short red hair and huge blue eyes make her seem much younger. She is very talkative and a little nervous to sally forth into the world with only Lonely Planet to guide her. I gave her my phone number and told her to call if she runs into any trouble.
***
If it took everyone three days to get home, I wonder how many of us would still go home for Christmas on a regular basis. By the time I reach my house, I have been wearing the same clothes for four days. I am completely exhausted, covered in the dirt of countless cities, and have been en route for 36 hours (only six of which I have been asleep). The date is three days after the date my flight left MSP – 4:00pm on Christmas Eve. It is the second time in my life that I have gotten home at the last minute before Christmas, and the first time in three years that I have been “home” for Christmas at all.
The first time I barely made it home for Christmas, I was seven. I had been in the hospital with a raging chicken pox infection and my parents picked me up in the middle of a blizzard at 8:30pm on December 24. The home videos from that Christmas tried desperately to catch glimpses of my spotted face, while I tried desperately to hide it.
That was 1996, the year Tickle-Me-Elmo was the gift of choice. Alisa told me once that all she knew about the US, she learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie Jingle All the Way. “But I know people don’t actually fight over toys for Christmas…”
I told her how my nurse in 1996 had somehow managed to get hold of a Tickle-Me-Elmo, which she planned to give me for Christmas until someone stole it from her hospital locker. She was heartbroken, and even though I didn’t miss the actual Tickle-Me-Elmo very much, to this day I am struck by disbelief that someone would steal a toy from a nurse in a hospital on Christmas Eve.
***
Benginald managed to get through international security and onto the plane without a passport. Once we got settled in seat 9B, he started flirting with the flight attendants. Everyone wants to know if he has ever been to India before. I tell them yes. In fact, he has been my travel buddy for 10 years and has been to India twice before. He is getting old enough to stay at home alone, but I felt bad about leaving him there for Christmas. Besides, he sometimes gets into trouble with Kenyon’s stuffed unicorn.
No one suspects that such an adorable, charming character like Bengi would be capable of the kinds of shenanigans they cause together. He puts everyone in a good mood, and sits nicely in my lap while we watch movie after movie on our personal video screen. He is the only one who always knows what those movies make me think about, and the only one who knows my complete back story. I don’t even have to tell him, and he sees it far more clearly than I ever could.
But Bengi lets me figure it out on my own.
We 300+ anonymous travelers become a single plane for the duration of the flight, until we reach our destination: Amsterdam-Schiphol International Airport. Since I am going almost to the exact other side of the globe, I could theoretically fly either way. But I always fly east, into the night. The afternoon dissipated, the sun set in a moment, and then the morning came too soon. Breakfast at Minnesota midnight?
***
I almost left Benginald in Mellby until February, but Spencer made me bring him along. He has been my travel buddy for the past 10 years and I thought he was getting old enough to stay at home by himself for a few weeks, but I was wrong. Spencer said he would get lonely, and that my leaving him behind showed that I didn’t care about him anymore.
When I passed through security, the officer checked my passport and boarding pass and nodded at Bengi. “Is this your boyfriend?” he asked. I laughed. “Sure is.”
The guard gave me a nice smile but looked surprised to see me. “Well hello there,” he said as though I was a fascinating but previously undiscovered species. “Thank you.” His eyes followed me out.
I saw Sarah Jacobson, whose parents live in Tanzania, shoving her carryon into the overhead compartment. I called out to her and she said how funny it was that she’d made it through MSP without seeing a single Ole, and then here I was two rows back. The people in the rows around us smiled too, and a few of them caught my eye.
I blame it on Benginald. He’s good news.
***
The Ericksons are interested in traditions. My family doesn’t have any.
I’m looking for traditions. Two years ago, almost to the day, I started making my own. I remember perching on the edge of the couch, feeling self-conscious about my cheap and unthoughtful Christmas gifts, because my mom told me that her family goes in for giving talents. “Give them poetry,” she suggested, so I didn’t spend any money on material things until I got to Cortes and saw the pile of nicely wrapped gifts under the tree.
So I did both. I spent some time copying poems out of my book with Sharpie onto brown paper bags and wrapped my mediocre presents with them. I remember perching on the edge of the couch and reading it out loud, duet, the first spoken-word piece I’d ever attempted.
Like everything else, it’s about being in love.
***
It’s Friday night. I’m standing in the doorway still wearing my coat, hat, scarf and boots, facing him wearing only his boxers. I’m just standing there scuffing my feet, watching him meticulously pull of each piece of tape so he doesn’t ruin the wrapping paper. Not one single word. He wants to read them later.
I tell him I won’t be offended if he rips it, but secretly I savor the fact that he wants to keep it. He wants to read it. He loves my wrapping paper probably as much or more than he will love his presents.
***
The woman at the end of my row is reading Twilight in paperback. I smile thinking about how many people I’ve seen reading it without the slipcover, trying to hide the fact that they are actually reading Twilight. It’s like a secret cult, with everyone who has read it knowing exactly what the uncovered cover looks like and exchanging looks that say, “I read them too – in a public place, without the dust jacket.” It’s like the early Christians who would draw half of a fish in the sand with their toe while they talked to someone new. If the other person drew the other half of the fish, both knew that the other was also a Christian, and they could worship together.
I laugh every time I reference Twilight in everyday conversation, but it’s actually been relevant multiple times. Vampires DO exist, and sex is immortal. To me it reinforces the fact that in order to live forever we must be cold and hard as marble… or eat the brains of the living and mortal.
If that’s immortality, I’m not interested.
***
In June, right after my junior year, I was sitting in the first row of business class on a flight from Munich to Paris with my friend Alisa and her father. Before economy class boarding, the flight attendants came around with a stack of free magazines. I didn’t speak German or French, so I tried to pick something with good pictures.
When the rest of the passengers started boarding, they all snickered at the two wide-eyed 16-year-old girls flipping through copies of Playboy, pretending to read the articles (which were all in German) and instead being visually assaulted by glossy full-page photos of enormous, unrealistic bosoms bouncing around on a muddy soccer field like skin-colored footballs.
***
At the beginning of that year, I sat in the Toronto airport with Ella and Katie, pretending to be engrossed in our crossword puzzles and conversation while in reality our eyes were peeled for our fellow travelers, especially a bushy-haired girl we’d never seen before. Her name was Nicole. According to her email, she would be wearing hot pink capris and looking confused.
On the plane, I sat next to her and we wrote notes back and forth to Gus and Paul, the two boys from Connecticut who sat diagonally behind us. Paul had a guitar and told us what Valium was, and why he fell asleep almost immediately. Gus carried on the conversation after that but we didn’t really know what to say to each other so the chat eventually petered out.
In the simulated evening, when the cabin lights went out, the woman in front of us (who had a very unhappy baby) turned around and asked the girl next to me to please shut off her reading light. She was engrossed in the newest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so I offered her my flashlight.
***
After the interminable boarding process at Amsterdam-Schiphol, I found my seat in the exit row, between a distinguished Sikh businessman and a distinguished Indian gentleman. They were engaged in conversation, and I blazed in wearing skinny jeans, high tops and a cutoff T-shirt, threw Benginald the Stuffed Moose down on my seat and hefted my backpack into the overhead compartment. They both looked at me and commented that my travel companion needed a seatbelt, and then continued their conversation behind my head.
The pilot came on to make an announcement that the flight was being held for several passengers on an incoming flight, and the gentleman on my right got up to take a turn about the cabin. While he was gone, a bright-eyed young English woman flew in and sat down in his seat. The Sikh, who introduced himself to me as Hipi, told her, “There is a gentleman sitting there already.” As soon as she got up to sort out the confusion, the gentleman came back, and then the British girl returned with a flight attendant who told the gentleman he had been moved up to first class.
It pays to be a frequent flyer.
***
The girl’s name is Amy. She had come straight in from London Heathrow and headed for Delhi to travel with her longtime boyfriend Seb. If they had missed this connection, they would be stuck in Amsterdam until after Christmas, so she and the nine other passengers from London are very grateful that KLM held the flight.
They have few plans but hope to visit Jaipur and Goa, hope for a Christmas dinner in Delhi, hope their mothers don’t worry too much about them while they update their travel page on getjealous.com. We enlighten each other on the British and American education systems, and she tells me about career life in the UK, about Seb and the adventures they have had together. She says that all the photos she’s seen of India feature cows, piles of trash, bright colors, and signs that don’t quite work in English. I laugh and say that seems pretty accurate.
My calculations put her at about 30 years of age, but her chic short red hair and huge blue eyes make her seem much younger. She is very talkative and a little nervous to sally forth into the world with only Lonely Planet to guide her. I gave her my phone number and told her to call if she runs into any trouble.
***
If it took everyone three days to get home, I wonder how many of us would still go home for Christmas on a regular basis. By the time I reach my house, I have been wearing the same clothes for four days. I am completely exhausted, covered in the dirt of countless cities, and have been en route for 36 hours (only six of which I have been asleep). The date is three days after the date my flight left MSP – 4:00pm on Christmas Eve. It is the second time in my life that I have gotten home at the last minute before Christmas, and the first time in three years that I have been “home” for Christmas at all.
The first time I barely made it home for Christmas, I was seven. I had been in the hospital with a raging chicken pox infection and my parents picked me up in the middle of a blizzard at 8:30pm on December 24. The home videos from that Christmas tried desperately to catch glimpses of my spotted face, while I tried desperately to hide it.
That was 1996, the year Tickle-Me-Elmo was the gift of choice. Alisa told me once that all she knew about the US, she learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie Jingle All the Way. “But I know people don’t actually fight over toys for Christmas…”
I told her how my nurse in 1996 had somehow managed to get hold of a Tickle-Me-Elmo, which she planned to give me for Christmas until someone stole it from her hospital locker. She was heartbroken, and even though I didn’t miss the actual Tickle-Me-Elmo very much, to this day I am struck by disbelief that someone would steal a toy from a nurse in a hospital on Christmas Eve.
***
Benginald managed to get through international security and onto the plane without a passport. Once we got settled in seat 9B, he started flirting with the flight attendants. Everyone wants to know if he has ever been to India before. I tell them yes. In fact, he has been my travel buddy for 10 years and has been to India twice before. He is getting old enough to stay at home alone, but I felt bad about leaving him there for Christmas. Besides, he sometimes gets into trouble with Kenyon’s stuffed unicorn.
No one suspects that such an adorable, charming character like Bengi would be capable of the kinds of shenanigans they cause together. He puts everyone in a good mood, and sits nicely in my lap while we watch movie after movie on our personal video screen. He is the only one who always knows what those movies make me think about, and the only one who knows my complete back story. I don’t even have to tell him, and he sees it far more clearly than I ever could.
ATTENTION: FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT WILL BE ENDING SHORTLY.
06 December 2009
have (no) fear?
I have developed an ear for fear.
It all started with a short reflection paper that ended up with more potential than kinetic energy... About how the language used to discuss fear and sex are similar and what that has to do with the fact that they are both forces used to control populations.
I didn't even know where to begin, so I sidled up to the front desk where Khashi was bent over a notebook and said, "Hey Khashi, can we just talk about fear real quick?" Hoping that he would say something I could easily apply to sex so I could just churn out those two pages before dinner.
What was I thinking? Suddenly as I tried to sort out my thoughts everything came flooding in from where I'd unthinkingly stashed it: inspirational quotes I had never truly understood until that moment. Stage fright. Worrying for my loved ones and dealing with them worrying about me. The fears that have kept me from doing things in my life, and the ways I have fought them and tried to escape their limitations. The way people use fear to control and manipulate each other. Terrorism. Feeling vulnerable in certain situations because of my gender or the color of my skin. The sheer terror of falling in love.
It was such a massive topic that I spent the whole two pages hacking a path through the tangled mess of background information, weighed down constantly by all the baggage that comes with it. So I started talking about it. And the more I talk about it, the more pervasive it seems. I had thought fear was too heavy and too loaded a topic for people to feel comfortable discussing it; but I've tallied a mention in almost every conversation I've had over the past few weeks. It's everywhere. There's no escaping it.
And as I'm coming to realize, I don't really want to anyway.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT?
The Discovery Channel and my Psych 125 textbook teamed up to tell me how some monkeys show fear toward snakelike objects, associating them with the poisonous cobras that have threatened their lives for centuries. The physiological fight-or-flight response prepares us to save ourselves -- and any member of our species who does not develop this reaction may try to befriend a man-o-war, an angry grizzly or a masked man with a gun. Evolution votes that guy off the island.
These days we surround ourselves with alarm systems, seatbelts and safety features -- but we still find plenty to be afraid of. The world can be a terrifying place, and we walk a fine line between a healthy fear of snakelike objects and an unreasonable fear that locks us in and keeps us from finding beauty in the thrill of being alive.
CONQUER YOUR FEAR!
"Only those who risk going too far ever find out how far they can go." (That was on our fridge, holding up grocery lists and Christmas cards from people we hadn't seen in ten years.) Push your limits. The next step might be impossible, but you won't know until you try it. And then you'll know it's time to take the other road.
But that can get dangerous: what happens if you go too far? What if the next step is the last one you ever take?
The idea is: most people are capable of much more than they think they are. Most people never live up to their full potential and end up feeling unfulfilled because they were too scared to do what they really wanted to do -- too scared to ask out someone who could have been the love of their lives, too scared to leave their little towns, too scared to compete for a really good job.
My Grampi is 82 years old and every time he has a birthday he tries to do something he's never done before. When he turned 80, he traveled to India for the first time. Just this past summer I convinced him to climb up almost to the very top of Quito's Basilica, to cross a catwalk in the ceiling of the cathedral and climb up a wrought-iron ladder to look out over the entire old city. He has stepped into the unknown over and over and over again throughout his life, and he still hasn't gone "too far."
But in this phrase lies an assumption that fear is negative. It limits us and shows our vulnerabilities. We don't like weakness. We don't like being vincible.
COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG
Cartoon Network more of less made me want to choke, this show included, but it tapped into an unusual truth.
In my days of filling my AIM info with inspirational quotes about making the most out of life and not caring what anybody else thinks, I came across this:
Last spring Fake Andrew, my poetry group, put on a show with real advertising and even an opener: the illustrious Triple Threat. I have not been a performer -- I get shaky reading someone else's poetry to ten people at Open Mic Night. So as the show approached, my apprehension built to almost unbearable levels.
Finally, I blurted out, "You guys, I'm really nervous."
All three of them stopped and stared at me. "No reason to be nervous," James laughed. From Jim: "You got this, babymomma, you know this."
After a pause, Tim said, "That's fine." We locked eyes.
And while my nervousness by no means dissipated (I still spoke too fast and stood too stiffly in the stage lights), I looked it in the eye and acknowledged it. It settled in my stomach instead of clenching in my chest.
When I told this story to Khashi at the desk, I realized that my fear helped me connect to my audience. They understood it and they understood me; they saw me shaking and heard me stumbling, and they still clapped and cheered. Perhaps more than they would have if I was calm and flawless.
Patrick Swayze's cameo in Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights is justified, if for no other reason, by his advice to Katey when she stubbornly declares that she is not afraid of Javier's sensuality. "That's too bad," he says. "If you can't move through your fear and connect with yourself, there's absolutely no way you are going to connect with your partner."
Partners and audiences: people who receive our invitation to judge, to whom we make available some intimate art and a part of ourselves. Performance can be like rolling over to show off our soft underbelly without knowing if it's about to be stroked or stabbed. Thus stage fright, performance anxiety, and the popular glossophobia: fear of public speaking.
A Woodstock teacher once did a meditation about his fear of public speaking. He loved it when he was young, he said, giving speeches, making people laugh, presenting an idea or representing a group. When a good friend died, he was the natural first choice to speak at the funeral, and he struggled through his grief to find a way to do justice to his friend's memory. When the day came, he couldn't do it. He couldn't speak. He just stood there, tears streaming down his face, until someone took the microphone away from him and pushed the ceremony forward.
From that day on, the mere thought of public speaking sent him into a cold sweat. And as he stood there in front of us, the whole school, he cried.
MEDITATION ON MEDITATION
Khashi introduced me to the intensely cool Ian, sophomore psych major, diver and Buddhist. Ian once spoke publicly about his fear of public speaking and how he deals with it. As he described the meditative process of breathing deep into his chest and his stomach, he breathed deeply into his chest and his stomach. As he explained how focusing on his breath slows down his racing thoughts and fears and makes the anxiety fall away, his thoughts slowed down and his anxiety fell away. Essentially, he lassoed the physiological fight-or-flight response and transformed it into a positive mental force and energy he could use in his speech. By getting in touch with his body's responses to fear he connected with the fear itself, started learning why it is there and how he can use it to be more real.
When we try to eliminate or conquer our fear, we deny an important part of ourselves. That denial pushes the fear in front of us; it becomes a wall separating us from our purpose and our audience. The fear intensifies, builds up. It separates us from things we love or things we could love but are too afraid to discover.
THE DATING REVOLUTION
Last winter someone I'd met three or four times asked me on a date. Suddenly terrified, I tentatively accepted. Sensing my worry, he responded, "Let me define date. A date is when two adults go to a specific place or function with the intention of getting to know each other better and finding out whether they are better suited for friendship or for a romantic relationship."
I was instantly more comfortable with the idea, and I understood the Caf Date in the context of the dates I used to have with my dad, with ex-boyfriends and old friends. I started to see a date as a time I set aside to focus on one person, to really get to know him or her and how we fit together in the overall scheme of things, and to enjoy one another's company without distraction.
The catch? My newfound definition of a date is an atypical one. If I were to ask random people on dates, they would surely misinterpret my intentions. Would I have to clarify what I meant every single time I asked an interesting person to join me for a meal? The prospect was daunting. Exhausting.
I finally started being hilariously up-front: "Hey, I think you're really interesting. We should get a meal sometime. It would be cool to get to know you more." I have yet to be turned down, and I have no doubt that all parties now have a few more really enriching experiences under our belts.
Ian uses his meditative tactics to talk to girls. "It sounds selfish," he said, "but when I'm talking to someone I'm interested in, I try not to focus on what she's saying. I just focus on my breathing. Then my thoughts slow down and I find that what she's saying just falls into my mind and I can communicate with her much better." Otherwise, he worries about what she thinks of him and fudges to make her like him better. In the end, he feels as though he's betrayed himself; she never met the real him and he suspects that she didn't open up in return. They never get over that awkward first-meeting superficiality and never know for sure how well they could actually get along.
A lot of people respond really well to our honesty and openness. They pick up on it and feel more comfortable with being honest and open in return, less worried about whether we are judging them, and more certain that we are exactly as we present ourselves. And yet it is a difficult habit to start.
AFRAID TO OFFEND
Some people pray. They find solace in the idea that God will give them the strength they need to face their fear and deal with the situation. Some people talk to pets, who neither judge nor respond. Talking to other people is sometimes harder because we think and respond and make judgments. We hold the capability to offend and hurt each other, and none of us wants to hurt or be hurt. We might sound stupid or make somebody else feel stupid, and we might open ourselves to betrayal by offering confessions. We might be wrong. So it can be very hard to express ourselves honestly to another human being.
Over dinner Khashi explained to me the Baha'i ideals for positive communication. First, both parties must find complete unity, "absolute love and harmony." They must ask for divine assistance, because humans are fallible and frail and we cannot do it alone. Then they must both strive to be completely frank with the other person and say exactly what they mean without worrying about offending the other person. And in turn, they must be willing to forgive any offenses spoken in honesty.
Being afraid to speak the truth only drives a wedge into the pair. Give it up to God. Say what needs to be said, fix what needs to be fixed, do it out of love and don't be afraid to do so.
LOVE & FEAR
"Love is always accompanied by fear," Khashi says, quoting the Ruhi workbooks.
That one threw us for a loop. Love? Frightening? Ha. What an uncomfortable idea.
We'd already talked about how scary approaching someone can be, but how could love, once you've found it and discovered it, still be scary? If love is supposed to be unconditional, you can't lose it, right?
There is something definitely scary about falling in love. Something terrifying in the realization that someone depends on you, someone has expectations for you, and that someone might actually live up to your expectations. Or, for the first time ever, it doesn't matter if he does or not (live up to your expectations), because for some reason you don't actually care. There is something terrifying in the apprehensive idea that you might, someday, have to hurt this person you are starting to care for so much.
And who really believes it is unconditional? What if this next confession you make is the one condition? How do you know it really is unconditional, when in fact it is only unconditional until you get fat and wrinkles and you lose your job or get kicked out of your apartment? You don't. It's all about faith.
And what is faith but realizing there is something to be afraid of and deciding despite your fear that it (whatever IT is) is true, real, or worthwhile anyway, hoping all along that you don't get thrown into the mud?
BULLETPROOF
It's amazing and frustrating to me that fearing physical or mental disorder oftentimes brings on the very symptoms we worry about. We fear death and the dark and the unknown. We fear falling victim to crime and we fear our loved ones falling victim. We fear regretting things and dying unfulfilled. We are afraid that we will always be alone. We are afraid of bees, spiders, snakes and bears; ghosts, zombies and vampires. We are afraid of conspiracy and terrorism (which, incidentally, is called terrorism for a reason -- and exploitation of fear). We are afraid to love and afraid to never love, afraid to die and afraid to never die, afraid to fail and to succeed, afraid to be... or not to be.
I could go on forever. I could come to conclusion after conclusion; I could talk about any of these topics for five pages, and a whole slew of other topics I didn't even touch on yet. Maybe I am just 20 and indomitable -- maybe I am just "being free, being wild, being bulletproof," as Bomshel puts it in their country song 19 & Crazy. Maybe I will be shoved yet into oblivion and uncertainty.
But for now, I'll leave the last word to Holiday (Mathis). On November 10 she wrote in the Star Tribune:
It all started with a short reflection paper that ended up with more potential than kinetic energy... About how the language used to discuss fear and sex are similar and what that has to do with the fact that they are both forces used to control populations.
I didn't even know where to begin, so I sidled up to the front desk where Khashi was bent over a notebook and said, "Hey Khashi, can we just talk about fear real quick?" Hoping that he would say something I could easily apply to sex so I could just churn out those two pages before dinner.
What was I thinking? Suddenly as I tried to sort out my thoughts everything came flooding in from where I'd unthinkingly stashed it: inspirational quotes I had never truly understood until that moment. Stage fright. Worrying for my loved ones and dealing with them worrying about me. The fears that have kept me from doing things in my life, and the ways I have fought them and tried to escape their limitations. The way people use fear to control and manipulate each other. Terrorism. Feeling vulnerable in certain situations because of my gender or the color of my skin. The sheer terror of falling in love.
It was such a massive topic that I spent the whole two pages hacking a path through the tangled mess of background information, weighed down constantly by all the baggage that comes with it. So I started talking about it. And the more I talk about it, the more pervasive it seems. I had thought fear was too heavy and too loaded a topic for people to feel comfortable discussing it; but I've tallied a mention in almost every conversation I've had over the past few weeks. It's everywhere. There's no escaping it.
And as I'm coming to realize, I don't really want to anyway.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT?
The Discovery Channel and my Psych 125 textbook teamed up to tell me how some monkeys show fear toward snakelike objects, associating them with the poisonous cobras that have threatened their lives for centuries. The physiological fight-or-flight response prepares us to save ourselves -- and any member of our species who does not develop this reaction may try to befriend a man-o-war, an angry grizzly or a masked man with a gun. Evolution votes that guy off the island.
These days we surround ourselves with alarm systems, seatbelts and safety features -- but we still find plenty to be afraid of. The world can be a terrifying place, and we walk a fine line between a healthy fear of snakelike objects and an unreasonable fear that locks us in and keeps us from finding beauty in the thrill of being alive.
CONQUER YOUR FEAR!
"Only those who risk going too far ever find out how far they can go." (That was on our fridge, holding up grocery lists and Christmas cards from people we hadn't seen in ten years.) Push your limits. The next step might be impossible, but you won't know until you try it. And then you'll know it's time to take the other road.
But that can get dangerous: what happens if you go too far? What if the next step is the last one you ever take?
The idea is: most people are capable of much more than they think they are. Most people never live up to their full potential and end up feeling unfulfilled because they were too scared to do what they really wanted to do -- too scared to ask out someone who could have been the love of their lives, too scared to leave their little towns, too scared to compete for a really good job.
My Grampi is 82 years old and every time he has a birthday he tries to do something he's never done before. When he turned 80, he traveled to India for the first time. Just this past summer I convinced him to climb up almost to the very top of Quito's Basilica, to cross a catwalk in the ceiling of the cathedral and climb up a wrought-iron ladder to look out over the entire old city. He has stepped into the unknown over and over and over again throughout his life, and he still hasn't gone "too far."
But in this phrase lies an assumption that fear is negative. It limits us and shows our vulnerabilities. We don't like weakness. We don't like being vincible.
COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG
Cartoon Network more of less made me want to choke, this show included, but it tapped into an unusual truth.
In my days of filling my AIM info with inspirational quotes about making the most out of life and not caring what anybody else thinks, I came across this:
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is taking action in spite of your fear.I didn't understand it completely, stored it away but passed over it in favor of "Live like you're going to die today"... Until I talked to Khashi, and suddenly it clicked into place for me.
Last spring Fake Andrew, my poetry group, put on a show with real advertising and even an opener: the illustrious Triple Threat. I have not been a performer -- I get shaky reading someone else's poetry to ten people at Open Mic Night. So as the show approached, my apprehension built to almost unbearable levels.
Finally, I blurted out, "You guys, I'm really nervous."
All three of them stopped and stared at me. "No reason to be nervous," James laughed. From Jim: "You got this, babymomma, you know this."
After a pause, Tim said, "That's fine." We locked eyes.
And while my nervousness by no means dissipated (I still spoke too fast and stood too stiffly in the stage lights), I looked it in the eye and acknowledged it. It settled in my stomach instead of clenching in my chest.
When I told this story to Khashi at the desk, I realized that my fear helped me connect to my audience. They understood it and they understood me; they saw me shaking and heard me stumbling, and they still clapped and cheered. Perhaps more than they would have if I was calm and flawless.
Patrick Swayze's cameo in Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights is justified, if for no other reason, by his advice to Katey when she stubbornly declares that she is not afraid of Javier's sensuality. "That's too bad," he says. "If you can't move through your fear and connect with yourself, there's absolutely no way you are going to connect with your partner."
Partners and audiences: people who receive our invitation to judge, to whom we make available some intimate art and a part of ourselves. Performance can be like rolling over to show off our soft underbelly without knowing if it's about to be stroked or stabbed. Thus stage fright, performance anxiety, and the popular glossophobia: fear of public speaking.
A Woodstock teacher once did a meditation about his fear of public speaking. He loved it when he was young, he said, giving speeches, making people laugh, presenting an idea or representing a group. When a good friend died, he was the natural first choice to speak at the funeral, and he struggled through his grief to find a way to do justice to his friend's memory. When the day came, he couldn't do it. He couldn't speak. He just stood there, tears streaming down his face, until someone took the microphone away from him and pushed the ceremony forward.
From that day on, the mere thought of public speaking sent him into a cold sweat. And as he stood there in front of us, the whole school, he cried.
MEDITATION ON MEDITATION
Khashi introduced me to the intensely cool Ian, sophomore psych major, diver and Buddhist. Ian once spoke publicly about his fear of public speaking and how he deals with it. As he described the meditative process of breathing deep into his chest and his stomach, he breathed deeply into his chest and his stomach. As he explained how focusing on his breath slows down his racing thoughts and fears and makes the anxiety fall away, his thoughts slowed down and his anxiety fell away. Essentially, he lassoed the physiological fight-or-flight response and transformed it into a positive mental force and energy he could use in his speech. By getting in touch with his body's responses to fear he connected with the fear itself, started learning why it is there and how he can use it to be more real.
When we try to eliminate or conquer our fear, we deny an important part of ourselves. That denial pushes the fear in front of us; it becomes a wall separating us from our purpose and our audience. The fear intensifies, builds up. It separates us from things we love or things we could love but are too afraid to discover.
THE DATING REVOLUTION
Last winter someone I'd met three or four times asked me on a date. Suddenly terrified, I tentatively accepted. Sensing my worry, he responded, "Let me define date. A date is when two adults go to a specific place or function with the intention of getting to know each other better and finding out whether they are better suited for friendship or for a romantic relationship."
I was instantly more comfortable with the idea, and I understood the Caf Date in the context of the dates I used to have with my dad, with ex-boyfriends and old friends. I started to see a date as a time I set aside to focus on one person, to really get to know him or her and how we fit together in the overall scheme of things, and to enjoy one another's company without distraction.
The catch? My newfound definition of a date is an atypical one. If I were to ask random people on dates, they would surely misinterpret my intentions. Would I have to clarify what I meant every single time I asked an interesting person to join me for a meal? The prospect was daunting. Exhausting.
I finally started being hilariously up-front: "Hey, I think you're really interesting. We should get a meal sometime. It would be cool to get to know you more." I have yet to be turned down, and I have no doubt that all parties now have a few more really enriching experiences under our belts.
Ian uses his meditative tactics to talk to girls. "It sounds selfish," he said, "but when I'm talking to someone I'm interested in, I try not to focus on what she's saying. I just focus on my breathing. Then my thoughts slow down and I find that what she's saying just falls into my mind and I can communicate with her much better." Otherwise, he worries about what she thinks of him and fudges to make her like him better. In the end, he feels as though he's betrayed himself; she never met the real him and he suspects that she didn't open up in return. They never get over that awkward first-meeting superficiality and never know for sure how well they could actually get along.
A lot of people respond really well to our honesty and openness. They pick up on it and feel more comfortable with being honest and open in return, less worried about whether we are judging them, and more certain that we are exactly as we present ourselves. And yet it is a difficult habit to start.
AFRAID TO OFFEND
Some people pray. They find solace in the idea that God will give them the strength they need to face their fear and deal with the situation. Some people talk to pets, who neither judge nor respond. Talking to other people is sometimes harder because we think and respond and make judgments. We hold the capability to offend and hurt each other, and none of us wants to hurt or be hurt. We might sound stupid or make somebody else feel stupid, and we might open ourselves to betrayal by offering confessions. We might be wrong. So it can be very hard to express ourselves honestly to another human being.
Over dinner Khashi explained to me the Baha'i ideals for positive communication. First, both parties must find complete unity, "absolute love and harmony." They must ask for divine assistance, because humans are fallible and frail and we cannot do it alone. Then they must both strive to be completely frank with the other person and say exactly what they mean without worrying about offending the other person. And in turn, they must be willing to forgive any offenses spoken in honesty.
Being afraid to speak the truth only drives a wedge into the pair. Give it up to God. Say what needs to be said, fix what needs to be fixed, do it out of love and don't be afraid to do so.
LOVE & FEAR
"Love is always accompanied by fear," Khashi says, quoting the Ruhi workbooks.
That one threw us for a loop. Love? Frightening? Ha. What an uncomfortable idea.
We'd already talked about how scary approaching someone can be, but how could love, once you've found it and discovered it, still be scary? If love is supposed to be unconditional, you can't lose it, right?
There is something definitely scary about falling in love. Something terrifying in the realization that someone depends on you, someone has expectations for you, and that someone might actually live up to your expectations. Or, for the first time ever, it doesn't matter if he does or not (live up to your expectations), because for some reason you don't actually care. There is something terrifying in the apprehensive idea that you might, someday, have to hurt this person you are starting to care for so much.
And who really believes it is unconditional? What if this next confession you make is the one condition? How do you know it really is unconditional, when in fact it is only unconditional until you get fat and wrinkles and you lose your job or get kicked out of your apartment? You don't. It's all about faith.
And what is faith but realizing there is something to be afraid of and deciding despite your fear that it (whatever IT is) is true, real, or worthwhile anyway, hoping all along that you don't get thrown into the mud?
BULLETPROOF
It's amazing and frustrating to me that fearing physical or mental disorder oftentimes brings on the very symptoms we worry about. We fear death and the dark and the unknown. We fear falling victim to crime and we fear our loved ones falling victim. We fear regretting things and dying unfulfilled. We are afraid that we will always be alone. We are afraid of bees, spiders, snakes and bears; ghosts, zombies and vampires. We are afraid of conspiracy and terrorism (which, incidentally, is called terrorism for a reason -- and exploitation of fear). We are afraid to love and afraid to never love, afraid to die and afraid to never die, afraid to fail and to succeed, afraid to be... or not to be.
I could go on forever. I could come to conclusion after conclusion; I could talk about any of these topics for five pages, and a whole slew of other topics I didn't even touch on yet. Maybe I am just 20 and indomitable -- maybe I am just "being free, being wild, being bulletproof," as Bomshel puts it in their country song 19 & Crazy. Maybe I will be shoved yet into oblivion and uncertainty.
But for now, I'll leave the last word to Holiday (Mathis). On November 10 she wrote in the Star Tribune:
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You can sleep easy. Your fears are unfounded. Your friends won't betray you, your children won't disappoint you. Create a mantra for yourself along these lines: "I am safe and my relationships support me."
03 December 2009
i
Handwriting analysts draw conclusions about their subjects' self-image just by examining the way they form their I's. Embellished cursive I's with lots of curlicues and decoration indicate a pompous writer, or one who feels the need to overcompensate for low self-esteem. The writer of a single-stroke I is likely independent, efficient, and down-to-earth. No self-respecting writer can get lower than a lowercase i, which means low self-esteem. The same goes for an uncapitalized signature. And, even in emails, an uncapitalized greeting signifies disrespect or disregard for the addressee.
Like every other element of graphology, these cues must be taken in the context of other cues and of the setting of the writing itself. Still, for a single letter to bear the weight of such consequential judgments about a personality...
In 7th grade English class with the illustrious Mrs. Morse, we learned The Rules. Always capitalize those I's, names, and salutations. Even on instant messenger, because otherwise you will get into the habit of writing with that horrible jargon and it will ruin your writing 4eva--forever. And from that moment you can give up all hope of ever being respected by anyone. Ever.
About the same time, I was burning through Madeleine L'Engle's tower of writings. I was collecting the material that I needed to form my own identity -- to this day my atomic personality structure contains a lot of L'Engle quotes as bonds and atoms. One of those bond-atoms went like this: "You have to learn the rules before you can break them." Not surprisingly, this put my cocky little 12-year-old self somewhat at odds with Mrs. Morse. (Madeleine L'Engle also went to a British boarding school, where they don't use periods after the title abbreviations. I still run into conflict when I try to leave out my abbreviation punctuation.)
So who dares to break that rule? Who dares to risk their self-respect for such a mundane artistic choice as arbitrary lowercasing?
In the most recent reading for my Theology and Sexuality class, Marvin Ellison quoted a feminist writer named bell hooks. I was immediately flooded with rage, and corrected the typo that made her (very important) name into a couple of insignificant words. When it came up again a few pages later, I remembered the brief section of high school history or English where we talked about some famous feminists, and sheepishly flipped back to erase my correction. bell hooks was christened Gloria Jean Watson and used the pen name bell hooks when she played her part in changing the world. The beauty of that choice is that it does melt into the rhythm and fabric of the writing. "What are those two random nouns doing in the middle of this sentence?" we wonder, and do not realize until later that they are a name. The bell rings and the hooks reel us in, and yet you remain unaware until it's too late. You think you've been reading common knowledge until that point. And far from damning her to disrespect, bell hooks gives a whole other dimension to the point that Gloria Jean Watson made throughout her life. She is beautiful, belle, but the missing e sharpens the edge of the ell.
Edward Estlin Cummings' popular name has become a tribute to his contribution to the reformation of word-ing in the early 20th century. (Why we don't rearrange his now-name to become e. cummings e. I don't know; if it was lowercased in order to reflect his famously unique style, why not take it the extra mile?) Although my friends do not see his influence in my own work, I consider him a great gift to wordsmiths of our time. I have always loved the look of his lack of caps, how every of his books in libraries worldwide has at least one kind of tape on the spine holding it together (and yes, I have looked). Poetry is one place the grammatical rule-breakers of the world can openly rebel, and e.e. cummings was a king in that movement. (Or a comrade?) He played with the very tinker toys of our language, not only grammar, capitalization and punctuation but the words themselves, and sentence structure. This has been a very valuable lesson to me: play. And take that very seriously.
On one hand, I just get lazy. I am particularly unmotivated to capitalize my I's in text messages, and I rarely do so in instant message conversations. It takes a fraction of a second longer to hit the shift key. I don't have time for that!
I recently asked someone why he capitalizes his I's, without fail, even when he doesn't capitalize the first word of his responses or even use punctuation half the time. I don't remember his exact response, but basically he said it was important. It was strange that I asked him, because it comes so automatically.
I am inclined to defend myself.
I am not lazy all the time, and since I apparently spend so much time thinking about this stuff you'd think I might put in a bit more effort to make a point. I remember consciously avoiding capitals in my poetry for a period of time, and that included my i's. At that time it was an exercise; my work then probably resembled e.e. cummings' more than at any other time. Later on it became a statement: yes, I was humble! What of it?
Now? I definitely discriminate. Sometimes within the same poem I am both capital and lowercase. Sometimes I am humble and sometimes self-important. I decide (often subconsciously) what is important for a certain image or statement. Sometimes I must dominate the image as The Subject. Sometimes every element needs equal weight, when the scale must be absolutely balanced. "I" am no more or less important than every other piece of the picture, every other letter in the line. I love the consistency and subtlety of the little i slipping in between the other short stout letters, the little dot floating above the line (even when it's spoken) like a little red balloon. It looks pretty.
On a very basic level, the big I's are much less cute.
Like every other element of graphology, these cues must be taken in the context of other cues and of the setting of the writing itself. Still, for a single letter to bear the weight of such consequential judgments about a personality...
In 7th grade English class with the illustrious Mrs. Morse, we learned The Rules. Always capitalize those I's, names, and salutations. Even on instant messenger, because otherwise you will get into the habit of writing with that horrible jargon and it will ruin your writing 4eva--forever. And from that moment you can give up all hope of ever being respected by anyone. Ever.
About the same time, I was burning through Madeleine L'Engle's tower of writings. I was collecting the material that I needed to form my own identity -- to this day my atomic personality structure contains a lot of L'Engle quotes as bonds and atoms. One of those bond-atoms went like this: "You have to learn the rules before you can break them." Not surprisingly, this put my cocky little 12-year-old self somewhat at odds with Mrs. Morse. (Madeleine L'Engle also went to a British boarding school, where they don't use periods after the title abbreviations. I still run into conflict when I try to leave out my abbreviation punctuation.)
So who dares to break that rule? Who dares to risk their self-respect for such a mundane artistic choice as arbitrary lowercasing?
In the most recent reading for my Theology and Sexuality class, Marvin Ellison quoted a feminist writer named bell hooks. I was immediately flooded with rage, and corrected the typo that made her (very important) name into a couple of insignificant words. When it came up again a few pages later, I remembered the brief section of high school history or English where we talked about some famous feminists, and sheepishly flipped back to erase my correction. bell hooks was christened Gloria Jean Watson and used the pen name bell hooks when she played her part in changing the world. The beauty of that choice is that it does melt into the rhythm and fabric of the writing. "What are those two random nouns doing in the middle of this sentence?" we wonder, and do not realize until later that they are a name. The bell rings and the hooks reel us in, and yet you remain unaware until it's too late. You think you've been reading common knowledge until that point. And far from damning her to disrespect, bell hooks gives a whole other dimension to the point that Gloria Jean Watson made throughout her life. She is beautiful, belle, but the missing e sharpens the edge of the ell.
Edward Estlin Cummings' popular name has become a tribute to his contribution to the reformation of word-ing in the early 20th century. (Why we don't rearrange his now-name to become e. cummings e. I don't know; if it was lowercased in order to reflect his famously unique style, why not take it the extra mile?) Although my friends do not see his influence in my own work, I consider him a great gift to wordsmiths of our time. I have always loved the look of his lack of caps, how every of his books in libraries worldwide has at least one kind of tape on the spine holding it together (and yes, I have looked). Poetry is one place the grammatical rule-breakers of the world can openly rebel, and e.e. cummings was a king in that movement. (Or a comrade?) He played with the very tinker toys of our language, not only grammar, capitalization and punctuation but the words themselves, and sentence structure. This has been a very valuable lesson to me: play. And take that very seriously.
On one hand, I just get lazy. I am particularly unmotivated to capitalize my I's in text messages, and I rarely do so in instant message conversations. It takes a fraction of a second longer to hit the shift key. I don't have time for that!
I recently asked someone why he capitalizes his I's, without fail, even when he doesn't capitalize the first word of his responses or even use punctuation half the time. I don't remember his exact response, but basically he said it was important. It was strange that I asked him, because it comes so automatically.
I am inclined to defend myself.
I am not lazy all the time, and since I apparently spend so much time thinking about this stuff you'd think I might put in a bit more effort to make a point. I remember consciously avoiding capitals in my poetry for a period of time, and that included my i's. At that time it was an exercise; my work then probably resembled e.e. cummings' more than at any other time. Later on it became a statement: yes, I was humble! What of it?
Now? I definitely discriminate. Sometimes within the same poem I am both capital and lowercase. Sometimes I am humble and sometimes self-important. I decide (often subconsciously) what is important for a certain image or statement. Sometimes I must dominate the image as The Subject. Sometimes every element needs equal weight, when the scale must be absolutely balanced. "I" am no more or less important than every other piece of the picture, every other letter in the line. I love the consistency and subtlety of the little i slipping in between the other short stout letters, the little dot floating above the line (even when it's spoken) like a little red balloon. It looks pretty.
On a very basic level, the big I's are much less cute.
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