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Monday, October 5th, 2009
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11:28 am - letter I did not send
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So, SWC is talking about cutting all full-time overloads to free up hours to assign to adjunct instructors. Some of the full-timers are throwing a fit, saying essentially that part-timers shouldn't be considered because we have lots of jobs and are better off than them (!!!!!!). I wrote this big reply and then realized that I wasn't adding anything substantial to the conversation so much as saying "You're wrong." But, it helped me get some of my thoughts about the situation out, so I'm putting it here:
Colleagues,
I know many full-time instructors count on overload and other ways of making a little additional money, just enough to fix the car or pay for the orthodontist or some other essential thing that doesn't fit in the fixed salary budget, and losing that is both a shock and a hardship. However, for those who think that adjunct instructors routinely have a fall-back income or even a financial advantage over their full-time colleagues, and therefore do not face a severe economic crisis, I offer my own experience as an example of how false this assumption is.
As a vested adjunct, I routinely get assigned a 46% load at Southwestern--just enough so that SWC doesn't have to offer me benefits. For years, I also taught at UCSD, which made for a combined income (teaching full-time) of about $15,000 less per year than a newly-hired full-time instructor makes in my discipline. This spring, I was laid off by UCSD for the same reason as we face here: (mismanaged) budget crisis. This fall, I found out that my other, preferred job, here at SWC, also faces the axe. Having saved aggressively with my partner for years, I was in the process of buying a condo. I now cannot risk the financial obligation of a mortgage when I face the likelihood of complete unemployment. I had benefits through UCSD. I now have 18 months of COBRA at more than four times what I was paying--and that's after a government subsidy. For years, I spent a lot of my life on the highway and at meetings designed to build a place for myself in the teaching communities I belonged to, but I had full-time work doing what I love. Now, I may have no job at all and all the hours of curriculum development and administrative work I did seem like so much unpaid overtime and wasted effort. I will definitely not have full-time work as a teacher, will not be able to make enough money to live on by working in my profession, unless one of the city's other colleges hires me on--which will not and cannot happen with everyone's budgets being cut, and those cuts being focused on instructors.
This is my situation. I know I am not alone. Like many of you, I am one voice among so many feeling powerless and anxious. Like all of you, I want the best for everyone but worry most about myself. There are no good answers here, not the way this has been decreed. We are, all of us who teach here, in a bad spot. The grass only looks greener from a distance.
Respectfully,
R---- S-L----
English Adjunct
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| Thursday, September 24th, 2009
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12:29 pm
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just got a mass email from Randy that the budget cuts to English at Southwestern are going to be even worse then anticipated: something like 50 courses are being cut entirely. This will likely mean that I'm completely out of a job in January.
On one hand, fuck! I really love teaching, and it sucks so much ass that this is going away, that California's budget and priorities are so fucked right now, and that I'm going to have to leave it for economic reasons.
On the other hand, if I can't find full-time employment teaching, it may be easier to find a single full-time job if I don't have partial employment. It likely means leaving the public sector all together, but I don't know. Habitat for Humanity was hiring an executive assistant recently. There's weird stuff out there. Maybe there's a job that's right for me, and that I'd feel good about.
I've never really had to do the job search, because I've always just found work, not looked for a career opportunity. So, that scares me. And my confidence has been distinctly negatively affected by the MCWP situation, and Carrie's b.s. way of doing things.
And money? That's just weird. I mean, we're fine. But, should we buy a home right now? I've never been without a job for more than a few weeks. I'm going to have a hard enough time not completely freaking out and taking whatever McJob I can start tomorrow, should I really add the pressure of a mortgage to what will already be a very anxiety-ridden time? And what about David? He's in a transitional place right now, and torn on the subjects of grad school and the future. This is going to manifest in a lot of money anxiety; I know it will.
And if we don't buy a place right now, then what? How do we manage this money to make it last, and so it will recover as quickly as David and I (and, fuck, California) get back on our feet?
Have to get the trip situation figured out with Mel. It's seeming like a hassle, and it shouldn't. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on a trip together, and it should be a joy. We just need to get together about it, and figure out what matters to us. The rest won't be that hard. Of course, this means I have to get her on the phone.
All this being a grown-up stuff is a pain in the ass.
current mood:  contemplative
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009
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9:35 pm - R.I.P, Good Boy
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Elvis had to be put down today. He was a great dog, the only one I've ever really loved.
He had a good life, and was much loved and appreciated for all of it. He lived long for a member of his breed: about 13 years. This does not make his passing less sad, but maybe makes it all the better and more fortunate for me that I got to know him.
I hope that my mother and sister are okay. I worry for my mother, for whom he was such a constant companion and comfort.
~
Finished boxing up the office today. Interesting to find out that KV still has, or again has, a job. While I don't begrudge her this, as she does have seniority, and it's clearly a last minute change, it does just make me feel all the more disposable.
~
I don't think I can read any more Naomi Klein today. Too dark in here already.
current mood:  sad
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9:31 pm
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sometimes I don't see any way not to be part of a vast, creeping evil.
the horror of this, of my complicity, of the immensity of human atrocity and contempt, sometimes makes me want to give up, because I don't see a way out.
giving up, too, is an evil, a crime of weakness, a desire for life to be easy or else to end, a failure to suffer as others do and must.
I am blessed to have love and curiosity. These things make me want to try harder, be better, find the elusive answer.
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| Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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2:21 am - I hate that feeling
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I swear I must have a sense for telling when I'm the subject of discussion. I hadn't been to RateMyProfessors for months, but I went there on a whim today, and sure enough the first eval of me since January was on there, and it's my first ever null set, a complete pan. The comment is "I got just 3 words about her...DON'T TAKE HER."
Someone in my class, a class I thought had actually gone very well, hates my guts in a blind and unreasoned manner. That is disturbing partly because I'm a child and I want to be liked, but also because I didn't see it coming and it makes me wonder who it is and whether they've been very good about masking it, or what. So, I've been guessing who it might be for a while, which is ultimately not helpful in any way, but is hard to avoid all the same.
Also, as a piece of text, it has its problems. As a piece of logic, it's a real bummer. I mean, why have you stayed if you wouldn't take my class? This does not compute. Why didn't you drop?
It bothers me, too, that this student didn't try to improve their experience of the class, or else find another section (of a widely available course) that better suited them. And if I have done something to alienate a student to this degree, I wish that I knew what it was, and so could examine my own actions to evaluate my choices with some context. The ambiguity of their complaint leaves little room for constructive interpretation. That makes it garbage, really--pure toxicity.
I stared at it for about ten minutes. Nobody's ever given me that kind of negative review. I've had a few lowballs over the years, but really very few, and none at Southwestern. Wrecked my night. Kinda wrecks my feeling about this whole term, really.
Leo's asleep right now. I know David is exhausted and at the brink, and I really feel for him. Reading his blurty makes me sad because he's struggling, but also it's nice for me that he's doing it, in a way, because it gives me the illusion of being close to him when I read it. I like the insight into where he is emotionally, because he's not the most emotionally open (except with anxiety, and even that is spotty) person when he's *not* under strain, and he's even tougher to draw out when he's struggling with something. I'll be glad when we can have more time together again, though. This chemistry schedule, plus work and training, really makes his days full and his evenings short or nonexistent.
In summation: we need a fucking vacation.
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| Saturday, July 4th, 2009
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6:00 pm
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"my guardian angel is a lazy fat-ass without the ability to hover."--Kathleen Madigan
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| Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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11:50 am - pick a little, talk a little
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I have about two hours of work to do, and only six hours in which to do it. So, I have been reading a few papers, then screwing around on the net or in the house for a while, then going back. Actually, I've been away for almost an hour this time, and so will have to go back and do a half dozen or so before I head out for groceries. It's kind of nice, and certainly a leisurely pace, but I feel like I'm not doing something. What?
Well, okay, took the day off of working out. But, I do that twice a week anyway, so that's not so weird.
David just called me, and we had a nice quick chat. I love him so much. Sometimes, talking to him on the phone for a minute or two is the high point of my day. The way I mean that is less sad than it reads. I think.
Read another four homework assignments. They're...fine. Actually, for work from week 2 of Summer school, they're pretty good. The ones sticking it out--about 20 of them--seem fairly motivated, and the discussions have been solid. Already, the class is dividing itself into two piles: the talkers and the hiders. I don't know yet how much I'm willing to chase the hiders. Self motivation matters.
Going to SJ to see my grandma this weekend. It will be good. She's almost 79, and not in the best health. Plus, she's a cool older lady and I really do enjoy her and rarely get to see her. Also, D & I will head over to Santa Cruz in the on season for the first time for me since I was a kid, and the first time ever for him. That should be great fun. As I recall, Santa Cruz is excellent people-watching, and a pretty good beach. So, much to look forward to this weekend.
In a couple of weeks, I will go to see my mother. I was really struggling with ideas for her for her birthday, when it occured to me that what she'd most like is some company, so I decided to get out there and see her for a few days just after her birthday. It will be the first time I saw her on or about her birthday in seven years, I think, and so that will be nice for us both. Also, I never get out to Flag in the summer, and it's very nice there at this time of year, and it will be cool to remember that. Doesn't hurt that I'll get to see Aaron at least a little bit as well, so there's trip multi-tasking all around.
Then, in August: Puerto Vallarta. Good times. I don't care if it is the "green" (read here: rainy as all get out) season. It's gorgeous and not at work or trying to buy a house or looking for new work during the worst economic times of my life or trying to find teaching gigs without a PhD while the market is flooded with professors and the education funding is non-existent. It's vacation. I love vacation.
I'm worried about Melissa. One person's heart and body can only take so much. She needs for things to get better again. She needs to be loved, not for her body or for what she can do for people, but just for herself. She deserves that. It's time.
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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8:32 am - malaise
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Not tired, don't feel stressed. Just don't want to do anything. I don't even want to sleep. Everything is about the same range of "meh" to annoying. I think about calling those "friends" who've dropped off the planet, but then it sounds like work and like it won't be worth it because they won't be bothered, or I make some other excuse. I don't want to answer the phone. I don't want to read. I don't want to run. Sex, drugs, music? All...nah. Must shake this off.
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| Saturday, June 13th, 2009
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3:17 pm - what do I need?
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So, I put the phrase "Renee needs" into google, and here are the first ten results. The ones in bold may be true.
1. Renee needs to gain weight.
2. Renee needs a man.
3. Renee needs to get back to the joy of just "being".
4. Renee needs to tell a very important reality-altering story
5. Renee needs a break.
6. Renee needs to take the stick out of her ass
7. Renee needs to mind her business and stop taking all of her stress and putting it on other people.
8. Renee needs her income to help provide for her family.
9. Renee needs a home.
10. Renee needs you to put a ring on it.
Not bad oracle work, Google.
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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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9:47 am - Provision
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This word has been stuck in my head. I get words stuck in my head when I'm trying to figure out who to be (meaning, usually, what decisions to make), and I think it's because I'm trying to trace meanings. Anyway, right now it's provision.
It's a great word when you consider it. (This isn't strictly speaking linguistic, though it has elements of it.) It connotes forward thinking: pro/pre + vision. It also suggests positivity: pro+vision. It implies a kind of readiness, in that PROvision=not amateurish, slapped-together vision. It's multiply possible and prepared for contingencies: provisional acceptance. In meaning, it refers to the bringing/supplying of needed goods. Connotatively, it's frequently food, as in "Do we have adequate provisions for the camping trip?"). Related words refer often to money--e.g. "He was a good provider"--but also to whatever's needed--"The Lord will provide." It's a position of great power and importance, as well, as the previous two examples suggest.
So, what does it mean? What does the vision of the future look like, how is it best achieved, and how much does it have to do with money, goods, and needs? Is providing the food the same as providing? Is provisional thinking preparedness for contingencies, or creating unnecessary hoops and thereby undercutting potential? If I got that money in the bank--not by dint of having earned it, but through association and accounting--have I provided it? Do I have to be breadwinning in the traditional sense to be providing? What does it require?
How do I provide for my and our future?
current mood: contemplative
current music: Panic Switch, Silversun Pickups
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| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
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6:29 pm - Chickens, roost, etc.
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Got the axe from UC--BY EMAIL--today.
Again. Some more. I knew this would happen, later if not sooner. Still, getting let go by email after ten years is like being dumped by text message--it's depressingly impersonal, and makes me feel about as important as...well, about as important as I clearly am, frankly.
About two hours later, I got offered a class to teach at National in August, but alas I cannot teach it as it conflicts with my One. True. Job. So, I don't know what comes next. I'm thinking that I might actually go to school in the fall, and try to get back on with the co-op after the new year (and a trip with Mel & D) and just focus on economizing in the fall term. Really, I'm only going to lose two paychecks this year, so I have the time, and we have the money. In real terms, we have more money than ever, actually.
Also, I found out today that I'll have the money this week from the estate. That also opens up my options a lot. Really, there isn't likely to be a better time for me to get out of UC and on to ... whatever comes next. Now, if only I knew what that was... and whether to buy a house in the meantime.
current mood: disappointed
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| Monday, April 6th, 2009
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2:04 pm - Carlsbad 5000 & other running jazz
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We came, we ran, we set personal records. D came in at 23:03, which is a slight but real improvement, I think, over his previous best. And, he did it coming back from injury, after training for this particular race not at all, so well done there.
I came in at 36:13, which is hardly setting the world on fire, but it does improve upon my previous best in-race performance of 36:22 from back in October. Plus, it was DAMN HOT by the time my heat started, at 10:20. Coming around the final bend nearing 11 a.m., I was thinking to myself "I will never again bitch about how early in the day these things are usually held, because this is ridiculous." I actually dumped water over my head, a totally cornball move I've never made before, not to mention several steps more wet t-shirt contest than I like my life to venture, if that suggests how hot it was growing. So, all told, I'll take the 9 seconds worth of improvement and like it. That's approaching an 11:30 pace, which is lovely. Someday, I'm going to get that time down to 31 minutes. But that day remains quite a bit in the future for now.
Went for a run with D this morning, for the first time ever. He's trying to come back from this foot problem slowly, and I am just getting up to a speed that makes it possible for us to share the road, so we gave it a shot. The first half just flew by: conversation was good, the views are pretty, and it was a fun novelty to have someone else along. Also, of course, I just enjoy D's company immensely. I did struggle not to apologize constantly for slowing him down, especially in the second half, when I had to take a few walk breaks as we made our way back up the hills toward home. But, it was overall a quite enjoyable exerience and I hope to do it again. Not to mention, this changes our options as a couple a great deal, the idea of being able to really do active things truly together. I love that we can go out and run 5 miles together in the morning.
And now, work. But this is the last one before I'm off on vacation, so yay for that, too.
current music: Better, Guns 'n' Roses
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| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
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12:15 pm - 20 albums
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Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life--music that affected you. Then when you finish, tag 20 others (or more), including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part.
1. Tapestry, Carole King. I grew up on this album. It was one of my mother's favorites to sing to, and I know every word of it. The song "Tapestry" still gets to me, and "You've Got a Friend" is a gorgeous song. It's crunchy and 70s in that rare good way.
2. Black Celebration, Depeche Mode. Oh, the bitter bitter hate. This is my official album of St. Johns, adolescence, and the certainty that nothing has ever sucked so raw as what the Drama Queen self currently experiences. Still love it, too. "Black Celebration" and "Fly on the Windscreen" will always do it for me. Also, "A Question of Lust" rules; the whole album is great scene music.
3. Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails. What person my age doesn't love Trent Reznor? "Sin" still makes me want to dance, and "Down In It" makes so much more sense now that I'm in my resigned 30s. This is an all-the-way-through listen, and it continues to be an angry that feels just like home.
4. Purple Rain, Prince & The Revolution. So, it's the mid-80s, and I'm living in NorCal. Everything about home life basically sucks--Dad's drunk, Mom's on meth, beatings are fairly regular...it's not the best. But, you know what was? Listening to this cassette, in Nanny's basement, with Lena, Melissa, and Frankie, and just being kids. Of course, we didn't get most of what was going on in the music, and so now it's got a lot more--and dirtier--layers. But, the love endures.
5. The Gambler, Kenny Rogers. Okay, I usually am not a fan of the country, and the late seventies and early eighties were a particularly big-haired, shiny-suited, twangy-voiced period of C&W music. And, yet. I know every second of this album. It's fun, it's occasionally and quite embarassingly "funky," and it features the heyday of Kenny, whom I used to fantasize was my real dad. The song "King of Oak Street" still, and will always, remind me of the life lesson that my dad was, despite his god-like status in my child's mind, just an ordinary man.
6. eponymous debut, Melissa Etheridge. I would argue that Brave & Crazy is a better album, musically, but this is the one that changed me. It came into my life a few years after it had hit, and at a perfect moment to wrestle with some ambiguous feelings in high school...and I think I'll leave it there. But, "Similar Features" and "Bring Me Some Water" are still completely searing songs that deserve to be all but screamed, they have such energy and angst.
7. White Trash Beautiful, Everlast. While I have affection for all of his solo work, this album came along during a particularly difficult period, and I listened to the song "Pain" near-continually for about three months. The title song is an excellent retread of some old C&W territory, but in a much updated style, and the album works together very well; I have great love for it, though it now makes me sad to hear it.
8. Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park. Did this album change me? No. What it did was give voice to exactly what I couldn't: how much everything I'd spent my whole life working toward had ceased to matter. The song "In the End" will always remind me of grad school, and the so many ways in which things fall apart. Also, at their concert in 2003 was the first time I ever felt old, when some 15 year old told me she thought it was really great that older people like me could appreciate their music. Older People? I was 28, but felt about 1000.
9.Wild!, Erasure. It's such fun, unapologetic pop music, and it reminds me of Candace at her most fun and funny, and of that fleeting feeling of the possibility for escape that would come upon me every once in a while during my teen years. Also, I must never get angry at the stupid people, though I go crazy at the dullness of my life.
10. Synchronicity, The Police. It was the first music I ever bought for myself (cassette, yes), and the only music I owned for about two years. I've heard it so many times it probably plays in my sub-conscious all the time. "Walking in your Footsteps" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" hold up every bit as well as the better known tracks, twoo.
11. Gordon, Barenaked Ladies. This somehow escaped my mind the first time, and it's funny like that, in that it's so much a part of my life that it doesn't even stand out in my memory as a record so much as just the music that's always there. It makes it all the way from the sublimely ridiculous ("If I Had a Million Dollars" or "Enid") to the quiet poetic and even touching ("What a Good Boy" and "The Flag"). Besides, it's forever tied to Aaron and his supremely offbeat sensibilities for music.
12. A Wild and Crazy Guy, Steve Martin. This was the first comedy album I ever heard, and my parents had it on vinyl, so I heard it a lot, especially during really lean times and in St. Johns, where there was little to do other than read and lay low in the bunker. I still recite the non-conformist's oath to myself on occasion in celebration of the consummate stupid irony that is willful subcultural construction.
13. Class Clown, George Carlin. Before he became the angry (but still, always, funny) guy I remember best, he was such a goofy counter-cultural dude. And this record's just funny. Besides, it takes the piss out of religion so well, and I'm always a fan of that.
14. Live at San Quentin, B.B. King. There are probably a dozen BB albums that I could put on here, but this is the one I grew up on, and so the one that goes all the way through me. I could listen to these recordings of "The Thrill is Gone" and "Rock Me, Baby" once an hour on the hour for the rest of my life, I think.
15. The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem. Yes, it's virulently offensive to women, gays, various of his family members, suburban parents, and a whole host of other people, many of whom I share at least some allegiance with. It's also a brilliant album, a crystalline encapsulation of impotent class rage and futile industrial-era codes of masculinity in a world moved on, as well as a lot of damn fun to listen--and rage--to. Besides, I had been listening to hip-hop and rap for over a decade, and it took that long for a white kid to make the crossover really happen, so I have to love it. As a white kid who grew up loving a style of music that didn't much want me as a listener, Em made me happy from the moment "Guilty Conscience" broke on Slim Shady. This was just the one that made it real.
16. New Miserable Experience, Gin Blossoms. An Arizona band had a huge hit record (which managed, against both odds and musical style) to ride the grunge wave during the year I graduated high school. In Arizona. I've got this record inscribed on my DNA, I have listened to it so many times. I think I'm on my third copy.
17. No Rest for the Wicked, Ozzy Osbourne. My sister went through about a ten year obsession with Ozzy, so I've heard most of his stuff a great deal...this is the one that stuck. So, in the same way that Mel will probably always associate Depeche Mode 101 with me, this is forever attached to my memory of her as a kid and adolescent. Also, "Demon Alcohol" is totally on the mark, and "Crazy Babies" is just a damn lot of fun.
18. True Blue, Madonna. I like Madonna. Actually, she's grown on me a great deal, and I quite love the woman. But, this is not her best album. However, it's the one that made the biggest impression on me. I'd already gotten used to her because Like a Virgin had been so big, but I was in maybe 6th or 7th grade and just starting to notice the larger world and how stupid it is at the same time this record hit, so I was really marked by the flap over the "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart" videos. At the time, I didn't get it, but it lingers for me as the time she proved how easily manipulated we the public are, how bipolar on the subject of sex--and how easy and profitable controversy is to generate.
19. Norman Rockwell is Bleeding, Christopher Titus. It's fall-down funny, and for once I get to feel like other people have families as jacked up as mine. His stories of trying to be the adult, and the kid, in a family where you have to be grateful for the addict raising you because the other parent's a lot worse speaks directly to me. I can laugh until I cry listening to this one.
20. Crossroads, Tracy Chapman. One of the most spiritually searching recordings I have ever owned. Seriously. I have listened to "Bridges" and "All that You Have is Your Soul" dozens of times while fighting the war inside for my soul. And "Born to Fight" still gets me fired up when necessary.
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| Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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8:48 am - PAMLA proposal
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Panel: Thinking Through Food: Culture, Identity and Symbolism in Literature and Film
Proposal: While many texts have examined the relationship between recent U.S. American domestic narratives and the public pressures for women to conform to the limited identities represented within them, few attempt to unpack the ways in which female authors have, in recent years, adapted the domestic narrative in order to express the contradictions of female identity, romantic attachment, and domestic labor. In the 1990s novels *Like Water for Chocolate* by Laura Esquivel and *Blue Jelly* by Debby Bull, female protagonists struggle to find coherent self-understanding in the face of romantic relationship failures, family upheaval, and even dangerous political strife, a struggle expressed through tales of food preparation. By locating both femininity and feminism in the kitchen, the authors claim a nurturant "female space" while also contesting the limitations imposed by the domestic labor expected of women up to the present day. This paper explores the ways in which the kitchen serves similar roles in the two novels, while also digging into the ways in which the authors' positioning, as well as the textual frame, changes the narrative uses of the kitchen as a space, and recipes as a motif. For Esquivel's main character, a Mexican woman at the time of the Mexican Revolution, cooking and caretaking are the main activities of her life, and the author uses a magical realist style in order to express the complex processes of identity formation and multiple transformations undergone by the protagonist, as well as others surrounding her. In this sense, cooking is not just domestic labor nor even caretaking; cooking expresses art, possibility, magic, and humanity. In Bull's novel, however, a contemporary white woman uses the lessons of cooking and canning as a means to nurture herself after a painful romantic failure. The rhetorical construction of the domestic labor is figured as extraneous, as hobby-craft, and as self-nurturance. A close reading of the two novels will allow an exploration of the different ways in which the authors use the kitchen as a locus of female identity and self-expression, as well as what these differences might indicate about the social realities they encode.
50 word abstract: Laura Esquivel's *Like Water for Chocolate* and Debby Bull's *Blue Jelly* claim kitchens as "female space" but contest the limitations imposed by domestic labor. In them, the kitchen serves as space for forming and expressing female identity, while author positioning and textual framing change the representations of kitchens and recipes.
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| Monday, March 9th, 2009
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1:53 pm - I win, I win!
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588 R----- S------- F 33 SAN DIEGO
Finishing time: 1:50:07
Pace: 11:49
Holy cow; I beat a 12 minute pace for 9.3 miles!!!
No wonder I'm so tired.
current mood:  impressed
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| Saturday, March 7th, 2009
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11:46 am - Yay for me!
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I made it. I ran the 15K this morning, and I not only finished, I beat my goal time and came in well under 2 hours--something like 1:55. When the official stats are up, I'll put them here, so I can remember later.
But, I finished the first 5 miles in under an hour. I cannot believe I ran 9.3 miles before 9 a.m.
My life is different than it was.
It's nice to feel proud of myself. I feel proud and pleased in ways that are totally unfamiliar to me. Running may be the first thing in my life I've really had to struggle for, and fight uphill the whole way, and it feels like such an accomplishment. It makes me feel like I could do anything, can still do anything. And that feeling is beyond words, and valuable beyond measure.
current mood:  accomplished
current music: I Love Myself Today, Bif Naked
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| Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
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10:32 am - raining buckets
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I need barrels in which to collect the emotional shit which has been raining down for the last I don't even know how long.
D has it no better.
Today is my sister's 30th birthday, though, so happy day to her.
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
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2:26 pm - goodbye, A1
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After ten years here, A1 goes back to Flagstaff this weekend. In part, it is due to a lack of money. In part, that is due to incipient diabetes, and an unwillingness to seek professional medical help based on a wildly uncontained fear of medicine.
I can't help but feel like I've failed him somehow. We've been friends for the better part of twenty years, and I've seen him drowning for some time, even repeatedly. I've tried to help, or to keep my peace and let him be himself, and I just don't know how to make it any better. Not to mention, our friendship has long been based on the guy code of not talking about things, but doing things together. So, there's no way to broach many of these things, and when I try I just alienate and hurt him, and put distance between us by violating his hermetically-sealed self.
And yet...Ten years is too long to stay holding down the pause button on your life.
And even this is making his life, his choices, and his struggles about me, which they aren't--no matter what D says when angry or unsettled. They're his own choices. I'm glad that we could be there for him, to keep him alive when I honestly believe he would have simply curled up and died after the loss of Anwen and all he went through with and for her. But, I wish we could have helped him to turn the tide. I wish I knew how to save a life.
How to Save a Life by The Fray
Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
How to save a life
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
current mood: pensive
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| Thursday, February 5th, 2009
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11:00 pm - wow, that's dirty...
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I want to hate it, because damn it's devoid of subtlety. But, also...hot.
Sometimes, it really just takes the right guitar riff and a nice. driving. beat.
Pony by Far
I'm just a bachelor, looking for a partner
Someone who knows how to ride
Without even falling off
Gotta be compatible takes me to my limits
Girl when I break you off
I promise that you won't want to get off
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddle's waiting
Come and jump on it
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddle's waiting
Come and jump on it
Sitting here posing
Peepin' your steelo
Just once if I have the chance
The things I would do to you
You and your body, every single portion
Send chills up and down your spine
Juices flowing down your thigh
(Repeat 1)
If we're gonna get nasty baby
First we'll show and tell
'Till I reach your pony tail, oh
Lurk all over and through you baby
Until we reach the stream
You'll be on my jockey team, oh
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddle's waiting
Come and jump on it
If you're horny lets do it
Ride it my pony
My saddle's waiting
Come and jump on it
current music: Light Up the Night, by Recover
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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8:52 pm - Inauguration Day; or, why my liberal friends accuse me of being anti-Obama
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I am not an Obamaniac. As a liberal Californian, this marks me as strange and unusual, indeed. I am nearly censured for this at every academic crossing, even more than I was chided for liking Clinton in the primaries. Recently, a good friend asked me what it would take for me to "admit" that Obama is a good president--more than a month before the man was even to take office! In this climate, it has seemed to me that to express any reservations about the future world to be found under Obama's administration has been treated as conservatism at best, cynicism at neutral, and sneakily hidden racism at worst. So, I have simply watched the events unfold, the rhetoric grow more florid and untenably worshipful, and the expectations mounts well past any hope of their being met by any one man. But, contrary to the suppositions of my peers, I have also been quietly rooting for Obama and his big-tent administration. It is, in fact, part of my support for the aims of the administration that I refrain from the hyperbolic rhetoric and the grandiose self-congratulation (at personal and national levels) circulating around the installation of our 44th President. Let me see if I can explain what I mean.
At the gym today, I watched on CNN and MSNBC as some of the inaugural events unfolded. The most remarkable thing, to me, was the spirit of the crowd. The 2000 ceremony was filled with bile, picketers lining the streets of the motorcade, hissing and booing to be heard in the crowd during appointee-Bush's speech. The mood was divided, dour, at most resigned. Today, the mood was light, expectant, almost jubilant. Celebrants lined the streets. People wept in hopes of their dreams for the U.S. being embodied, realized and even elevated by one man, Barack Obama.
And, he played to just that mood. He appeared hopeful, relaxed, ready for anything. His wife and family were proud, elated, but controlled, aware of the eyes of the world. His speech was, as his speeches tend to be, stirring, patriotic, concilliatory, and steeped in references to those values (and the historical figures most symbolically associated with them) closest to the heart of our national pride and truest to our best ambitions as humans and as a nation. It was, in short, an Event. This Inauguration, on the heels of a more widely-celebrated than usual MLK day, conspicuously featuring our then-President-Elect, will be the stuff of national mythology--a "where were you when?" day, one of the few positive such events to occur in my memory.
It works on me, too. I am hardly immune to nationalism, nor to the effects of a brilliant orator. I, like so many Americans and world citizens, root for Barack Obama. I think he faces enormous challenges, more than most presidents have faced, and enough to mire an entire administration in endless policy debates and moral quagmires. He will be at more risk than most presidents, in all likelihood, due to the U.S.'s eroded position in the world theater, particularly in the Middle East, due to the sweeping nature of his policy plans and the very real consequences they might mete out for those who've most raped the system in recent years, and due to the enduring legacy of racism.
He seems like a relatively good guy, all told. His heart seems to be in the right place, he's got a good head on his shoulders, a lively and challenging partner to keep him on track in his private moments, and a team of outstandingly well qualified and seasoned policy-makers and diplomats behind him. I hope that all of these things are enough help to make the next few years tenable for a man who just became the most scrutinized and pressurized human being on the planet. I hope he has the vision, the talent, and indefatiguable optimism, and the support system to survive the scrutiny without compromising himself into oblivion; I hope he can weather the storm, and that he deserves to do so. For me, though, all this remains to be seen; unlike seemingly millions of others, I will not give him or any other leader carte-blanche purely on anyone's say-so.
And that's still a sticking point for me...the hero-worship, the full-court press idolization of the man in the media and amongst the rank-and-file. It's not that he's not worthy of respect and admiration, not at all. It's that he's an untested leader, in part. More, it's that no one man can "save" a nation, any more than one man can "break" a nation; much as we'd like to pretend that Dubya put us where we are and that Obama can rescue us from that fate, neither is true.
Politicians are ultimately more a measure of their people than a shaping force upon them; Obama will succeed to exactly the extent that he can stir us, the commoners, to action. Dubya succeeded; his words and actions (both his own and those of his inner circle), true or untrue, justified or not, shaped the decisions we as individuals made and therefore that we as a nation endorsed, directly or not. The same will be true of Obama. This makes it doubly important that we keep a critical eye on our leaders, that we examine their rhetoric, that we not simply take on blind faith their words, their plans, or their actions. It is because I hope that Obama's sweeping vision of a fairer, more peaceful, and more worthy nation proves accurate that I treat him with skepticism; my own understanding of politics and its real dangers and contributions leads me to believe that a good leader can take the scrutiny and a bad leader will always be outed by it.
So, I guess what I mean by this is: celebrate, certainly. Enjoy a historic moment, and the promise of a better nation and a better world that it implies. Use that enjoyment, that inspiration, to fuel some real work toward lasting change, even seeminlgy minor change, in yourself and your world. But don't think the work is done, nor that a single symbolic moment makes for a changed world. Racism has not vanished because we elected a black man to high office; the world and its many problems are not fixed because a conciliatory liberal has replaced an anti-diplomacy authoritarian. Remember that inspiration is easier to generate than is follow-through. And when the bill comes due for the real changes needed, remember that it takes more than pretty words to remake the world: it takes real work, real time, and real sacrifice. We will all have to contribute those things. All Obama can do is lead us, in equine fashion, to the waters of high-minded reform. All of us must choose, individually and collectively, to drink--even when the brew is bitter indeed.
So here's to you, Mr. President. May you withstand the trials you will face, may you continue to inspire others in word and deed, and most importantly, may we all prove willing and able to unite in the face of adversity in the pursuit of the admirable goal of bettering conditions for all people. I, for one, will be watching. I hope you make us proud not of you, but of ourselves and what we accomplished with your motivation and guidance.
current mood: contemplative
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