Let’s just switch topics, okay?

If it wasn’t for the snow and subsequent snow day, I was to meet with my thesis adviser this morning. It turns out that I am quite thankful this meeting was cancelled. I know, it sets things back by a couple of days, but I still have plenty of other writing to do.

One portion of the meeting didn’t bother me. We were to go over my revision to “Red Butte Beauty.” It’s pretty tight, so it’s almost to where it needs to be. Yay! But we’ve been talking about this piece for months. No big deal.

Prose fiction has always been my focus within the heading of Creative Writing. I used to scorn poetry, but I have dabbled a little bit. The other portion of the cancelled meeting was to go over three villanelles I wrote. All three are very personal and emotional. Two of them I wrote this past summer and edited this fall, so there is enough distance between the events I was writing about, when they were written, and now. The third is an exception.

I wrote it and edited this past fall and the events it concerns are still at the front of my mind. For a while I was handling them well and getting over them. I was getting better. Something pulled the trip-line and I found I had to work through it all over again.

That’s why I’m glad my meeting was cancelled. I think if I had to discuss with my adviser the details of the poem, it wouldn’t have ended well. He may have had to retract his statement from the end of last semester: “You are not a fuck-up.”

Side-story: My thesis is a two semester course, so advisers can chose to do two 3-credit grades for each semester or do one 6-credit grade at the end of the process. At the end of last semester I asked my professor which he was planning on doing. He told me the 6-credit grade and then said “Don’t worry, you are not a fuck-up.” Uh, thanks, but that’s not what I was wondering about.

It’s like when you’re a kid and there’s a steep incline. You could walk round-about and find a gentler slope to go up. No, you decide to run straight up the hill. Almost, you almost reach the top. For a moment, you’re there, suspended in time, momentarily at your goal. Gravity brings you back down to the bottom and you have to build that momentum up again.

I’m at the bottom of the hill, trying to get my way back to the top. Now with the scrapes and bruises from the rocks I hit on my slide down. It’s painful, but I’ll get back up there.

 

From “Are You Listenin’?”, Roi Ottley on Don Redman

Speech comes from the scholarly looking Redman slowly and precisely as he blows clouds of circles from a strong cigar, which he smokes with an insistent devotion, contrary to all “No Smoking” signs. Don says he is not superstitious, therefore doesn’t believe in signs.

 

From Neil Gaiman:

I came to the conclusion that Lord of the Rings was, most probably, the best book that ever could be written, which put me in something of a quandary. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. (That’s not true: I wanted to be a writer then.) And I wanted to write The Lord of the Rings. The problem was that it had already been written.

 

From “A Boy Named Sue,” Johnny Cash

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen.

 

Peace. Love. Vaginas.

Yesterday I had to write my cast bio for The Vagina Monologues program. The directors made a list of a few suggestions, but we weren’t to by bound by them. There was the usual: name, major, year in school, how many years of participating in The Vagina Monologues. Within the play, there is a skit called “The List.” What do you know? It’s a list! But not just any list. Eve Ensler, the writer of the Monologues, went and asked women what their vaginas would wear and what their vaginas would say. “The List” is comprised of these answers. The directors of UMaine’s production of The Vagina Monologues suggested we answer these questions ourselves, if we were feeling bold.

So, what would my vagina wear?

As a whole, normal clothes. Sort of the same style I have. Jeans frequently. Nice blouses and sweaters. Dresses ever so often. The main difference is, my vagina would wear a classy, black and white, Kentucky Derby hat with a red lily tucked into the band. Fashion at the Ketucky Derby is about embodying the Southern belle. In other words: poise, class, charm, and a requirement of respect. While attributing some of those qualities to an anatomical feature, my vagina (and my entire person) deserves respect.

What would my vagina say?

Alis volat propriis. It is a Latin phrase translated to “She flies with her own wings.” It’s a quote I’ve embraced for about a year now. My secret motto, if you will. I’m not necessarily a normal person. I deviate from the standard. Some might even say insane. When it comes down to it, I am my own person. Especially now, I don’t live to serve and please other people. There comes a time in our lives, we have to do what makes us happy. I’m not saying not to do nice thins for other people, but you can’t spend all your time thinking about other’s needs when you have plenty of your own. To me, alis volat propriis is about individuality. My vagina can stand behind that. After all, no two vaginas are the same. I’m speaking from a strictly biological view, not experience. Self-reliance is another facet I see in the quote. Sure, there are other people in life that will help you along your way, but I’ve found the only person I can rely on 100% of the time is myself. Maybe my vagina is a bit of a cynic.

My cast bio was much shorter than this. They were only looking for a few sentences after all. Aside from the usual, I only mentioned what my vagina would wear. What it would say would take too much of an explanation.

There are only a couple more weeks until the performance!

!!!

Rehearsals are going well. I have my part mostly memorized, though the cues still elude me somewhat. I know what to say, just not exactly when to say it. Not being a person who speaks in groups (I’m more on an individual basis), I’ve found that I am starting to have a bit of a voice. I don’t feel ostracized and people listen when I speak. Yeah, a lot of what I have to say is just my lines for the skit (I’m in a skit, not a monologue), but still! Progress!

And I have finally found a place where I can just say “vagina.” My mother thinks it’s horrendous that I say “vagina” instead of some euphemism. Euphemisms are generally not my style. Lance and I talked about this once. I told him “I wouldn’t know what else to call it besides vagina!” He rattled off a whole list. And I just shook my head. Slang terms are not for me.

Anyway, I think this is enough about vaginas for now. Have to pace myself, you know? You can’t just go all in at once. To quote one of the monologues: “That’s what foreplay’s about.”

 

Times of yore (Part One)

In one of my last posts, I brought up a message from one of my exes, in which he made a list of good memories. I snickered at this list. Not because they weren’t good memories, but more that they had some parts to them that weren’t that good.

The first on this list was prom.

My high school was so small that prom wasn’t limited to the juniors and seniors. However, lack of interest prevented me from going all four years. But in my senior year, I had a boyfriend and I thought “Oh, alright.”

Somehow, I was responsible for much of the planning. My dress, of course, and a boutineer. But I got to pick out TJB’s tuxedo and design my own corsage. Not gonna lie, it was pretty fun. He wanted a bow-tie and he is not at all a bow-tie type of guy. But it’s so James Bond that he wanted one. Uh-uh. Beside the bow-tie discrepancy, the tuxedo came together really well. As did my corsage. Not to brag.

There was a glitch in the planning, which lead to us (me, TJB, my friend Anita and her boyfriend, who I call Sunshine) rolling up in a mini-van.

I think Olive Garden is conspiring against me. Of the few times I’ve eaten there, I never feel well after. One of these occasions was right before I left for my freshman year of college. A group of us went out to dinner for one final hurrah, TJB included. I ended up expelling the contents of my stomach on his front lawn. Prom was another such occasion, sans vomit. About halfway through my stomach was really bothering me.

That was one of the reasons when I read prom as one of TJB’s good memories, I thought “What the hell?” and laughed. Another involved some dramatics and calling a person a slut. Not one of my finer moments. That’s why in the Class Will, I bequeathed an olive branch to this person. We had many verbal spars and very poor interactions that reflect badly on the pair of us.

Sure, now I think fondly of prom, but at the time, it had fractions of time that weren’t very good.

Anita, Sunshine, TJB, myself

 

Myself and TJB

My parents were like, "Rachel, go stand in front of Spartan in your dress!"

 

Simple things that make me happy (a continued list)

• well aligned tires
• “until one of us dies”
• a bed with clean sheets
• having my own lab goggles
• flashcards
• loose-leaf tea
• chocolate coins
• finding a poem that fits my mood
• silly texts from my mother

 

Beautiful Losers

Whew! What a contrast to the previous Leonard Cohen book I read (The Favorite Game). Not all contrasts are good. It is a good book and there’s no denying it’s content is interesting. However, the language and stylistic choices… The best word to describe them is crude.

With my readings of Leonard Cohen, I’ve found them to be quite sexualized. I’m not a prude by any means, but in Beautiful Losers, this sexual content is abrupt and abrasive. In The Favorite Game and the selected poems I’ve read, it’s general, it’s esoteric, it’s all imagery and metaphoric language. It’s flowers and bows and sunshine compared to Beautiful Losers. And The Favorite Game was “sexy for the 1960s and it’s sexy for Canada,” as my professor put it. Beautiful Losers transcends that and then some.

Today in class I was talking to two of my peers. One of them said she put down the book and decided not to continue reading it because she was offended. I told her it lessens up further in, or I just got desensitized. At the start of class, the professor apologized on behalf of the book.

What interested me was the reliability of the narrator’s friend, F. His identification is shrouded. We aren’t even granted the knowledge of a name, just the initial. I was skeptical of the truth in his stories of an affair with the narrator’s wife, Edith. He was awfully cavalier in the details, which were constantly changing. Further research on the book has revealed the theory that F. doesn’t exist, except for in the mind of the narrator.

There are many different tales occurring among the pages of the book. The narrator, Edith, F., F. and Edith’s relationship, the relationship between the narrator and F. Blanketing and tying together these different strains is a concern with the historical personage, Kateri Tekakwitha (whose name is spelled a number of ways in the book). This story is interesting on it’s own, although confusing withing Beautiful Losers.

I’m greatly interested in what the rest of the class may have to say about this text on Thursday.

 

If laughing at this is wrong…

… Then I sincerely do not want to be right.

I don’t care if we only send messages back and forth until one of us dies…

A couple of weeks ago, one of my ex-boyfriends sent me a message on Facebook informing me he had something important to say. I didn’t respond right away. He was my first boyfriend. There were a lot of good memories, but he also did many unforgivable things. I wasn’t perfect by any means, but I was also young and naive. There is a difference between that and acting in a way that is wrong on any level and from all perspectives.

When I first read his message, I was all “Awww, Hell naw!” After the initial shock and outrage simmered away, I considered replying. Over the past, oh, what is it now? Almost three years since we broke up? He’s been fairly insistent. It got the the point that my mother and I would have to do recon work in Hannaford to make sure he wasn’t working in the produce section. Jeesh! I just wanted to purchase some fruit and vegetables. I don’t need to be accosted. Again and again: “I have something important to tell you.”

We had tried to be friends. It would be going along great and suddenly there would be these massive bouts of anger on his part. Self-righteousness. Spite. Unwarranted attacks on my character. It’s no wonder that for almost three years I ignored his requests for me to listen to him.

I also questioned just how important it was. I mean, we would bump into each other every now and then. Those would have been good opportunities to tell me. Or, right before Christmas when I was helping decorate the church. I was at the front, spatially designing a display of fake poinsettia. The door opens, I turn. He’s standing like a deer in the headlights. Then he disappears! Vanished! Okaaay….

When I got his message, I thought back to church. You know, church says to be forgiving. “As we forgive those who trespass against us” and all of that. But, but. I’ve already said he did things that were unforgivable. Where would religion stand on what he did? Worse yet, I didn’t have anyone with religious knowledge to go to so that I may have gathered insight. So it was very conflicting and I didn’t know what to do.

I posted a plea on my other blog. Respond: yes or no? I may have only gotten one response, but the person essentially said, “Yeah. Hear him out.”

I had already been leaning toward answering his message, but I had major reservations (see: unforgivable acts). Just having one person encourage me gave me a green light.

The above italicized, indented portion is a direct quote from his return message, in which he explained what it was that was so important. The rest of the message was quite sincere and touching, but that string of words is hilarious to me. I think it’s the “until one of us dies” part. I can just picture us being crotchety old people sending each other messages via Facebook. But not having seen each other for 50+ years.

He apologized for some of the unforgivables. No, it doesn’t dismiss them or make them all better, but it is a step in the right direction. It does help. This is the first time he had apologized in earnest.

And he made a list of happier times and moments. And I really want to do a series of entries here of my take on those. Because it’s absolutely hilarious. Uh, prom? Really? I think we might be remembering things differently. Of course, I just spent ten minutes laughing about a slight confusion between eating at Olive Garden pre-prom and then eating there prior to leaving for college. 

To sum it up, he’s really sorry and wants me back in his life. Not in a relationship, but as a friend. Well I should hope so! Haha. He has himself a pretty lady-friend with quite the talent for singing. What would he need me for as a partner? Psh.

I’m still undecided about the whole forgiving/accepting thing. The moral high ground and what not. I could, and have, and will, run circles with logic about that. But I’m not completely enraged by what he had to say. A nice change. I’ll give it a try. I’ll try sending messages back and forth until one of us dies.

 

A Fond Memory

It was a chilly winter morning last year. I was on my way out of the house at school to skip off to class and truly start my day. While it was cold, it wasn’t cold enough to warrant starting my car, Susan, to warm up ahead of time.

I reach the driver’s door, keys in hand. I pull the handle only to find the door wouldn’t open. Panic ensues. The door must have frozen shut. How was I to get into my car? What about the other doors? Did I have time enough to sort the fiasco out and get to class on time?

In a last-ditch effort of hope, I put my keys in the door-lock. Guess what?

Yeah. That’s right.

It turns out the door wasn’t iced shut. It was locked.