The past two Sundays, I've gone with the boss-man to a nearby shooting range and learned to handle a gun.
For those of you who know me fairly well, this isn't that surprising. As a cop's daughter, I've been wanting to learn to shoot for a long time. And as they say, what's bred in the bone will out in the blood, or something along those lines. I've been foaming-at-the-mouth-rabid about the Second Amendment for years. I love that Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop carries a beautifully animated Glock. Everyone else in my family can shoot.
So now it's my turn.
I got to experiment with all different calibers and all different kinds. I really like revolvers. Interestingly, since I'm ambidextrous (though trained since childhood to favor the right hand) and left-eyed, when it comes to shotguns and rifles, I'm a lefty.
I've had a lot of fun. I'd only been out shooting once in my life before, and that was seven years ago. My first shot since then, last Sunday, was just below the red circle in the center of the target. My boss was amazed, and happy to watch my progress. He's said the following:
1. I'm a natural;
2. I'm better than people who have been practicing for 8-10 years;
3. I'm the most adept girl he's seen;
4. I can go into competitions.
Since he and his wonderful wife (also my boss) have been trying to think of ways to marry me off, we all agree that might be a potential way to meet men. (As long as they know how to read.)
Anyway, I think I've discovered a new hobby. Now when I'm in a good mood, I smell the tang of gunpowder.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
the iron hills of Pittsburgh
Whenever I want to revitalize myself, I buy new music. A few months ago, Marianne introduced me to the group Hem, through our music guru Kelly, and so I purchased a few of their albums, and started out with Funnel Cloud. Track 12, titled "Reservoir," is so filled with that strange expatriate's longing for home, even while not longing to live there again, that it makes my insides swell with something close to tears.
For anyone who's been to Pittsburgh and knows those iron hills, how the sometimes beautiful, sometimes plain and downright ugly houses cling to the rocks, how the trees manage to grow where the houses can't and force liminalities of forest amongst the inner city spaces, how the rivers create the downtown and the hilltops make the parks, how the years of soot stain the old churches and factories like watermarks and the streets zigzag over and under and through and around each other like a tangle of gum bands, how the lights at night in the bowls of the hills under the overcast sky are softer than almost anywhere else, this song brings it all back. If you've never been there, go.
Late last night
I missed my train
Walked back to the car and drove home again
Just outside of Pittsburgh
It's really not that far
I saw a light come shining 'cross the reservoir
The sun in California
It drops right into the sea
I took a coupla pictures, they don't mean that much to me
Just outside of Pittsburgh
I saw it from my car
The light shines to the bottom of the reservoir
The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run
The moon hung on a hillside
In eastern Tennessee
With rows of honeysuckle blooming over me
But the iron hills of Pittsburgh
Where all my memories are
Gather in the light around the reservoir
The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run
Howsoever we may run
Incidentally, since all of my accompanists turn out to be tremendous disappointments, within the next year I have a new goal of buying, and learning to play, the guitar. The lead singer's voice is right in my range.
For anyone who's been to Pittsburgh and knows those iron hills, how the sometimes beautiful, sometimes plain and downright ugly houses cling to the rocks, how the trees manage to grow where the houses can't and force liminalities of forest amongst the inner city spaces, how the rivers create the downtown and the hilltops make the parks, how the years of soot stain the old churches and factories like watermarks and the streets zigzag over and under and through and around each other like a tangle of gum bands, how the lights at night in the bowls of the hills under the overcast sky are softer than almost anywhere else, this song brings it all back. If you've never been there, go.
Late last night
I missed my train
Walked back to the car and drove home again
Just outside of Pittsburgh
It's really not that far
I saw a light come shining 'cross the reservoir
The sun in California
It drops right into the sea
I took a coupla pictures, they don't mean that much to me
Just outside of Pittsburgh
I saw it from my car
The light shines to the bottom of the reservoir
The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run
The moon hung on a hillside
In eastern Tennessee
With rows of honeysuckle blooming over me
But the iron hills of Pittsburgh
Where all my memories are
Gather in the light around the reservoir
The starless night
come fall around me
Over all
we left undone
I know a light
that shines forever
Howsoever we may run
Howsoever we may run
Incidentally, since all of my accompanists turn out to be tremendous disappointments, within the next year I have a new goal of buying, and learning to play, the guitar. The lead singer's voice is right in my range.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
apologia
I've been thinking, the last day or two, about the choices I've made over the last four years, and why I made them.
From the first moment I set foot in my kindergarten class, I wanted to be a teacher. The shape of the teaching changed, evolved, as I grew, until I went to Grove City with a clear vision of myself as a high school English teacher. Without second thoughts I signed up for the double major in English and Secondary Education, and prepared myself to change the world. (This has always been the primary goal -- to change the world. Teaching was the vehicle to that destination.)
And then I hated the education part of my major. The academic aspect of studying literature appealed to me much more strongly than creating worksheets and grading tests. So I dropped education. Teaching took one more evolutionary step: I'd be a college professor, instead.
Until I didn't want to go to grad school.
That's where the conscious journey began, the knowledge of the wandering. Really it started when I signed off on the Education degree, and shut the door on fourteen years of certainty; but my senior year of undergrad, watching some of my friends apply for and achieve acceptances to graduate programs, stripped off the remnant insulation of adolescence and left me standing on some windswept plateau with no map but a voice in my head saying, Go to a land I will show you.
I think that was when my faith was strongest, and that due largely to idealism and inexperience. I'd had some pretty arduous tests, certainly -- watching the near-unraveling of my family, the near-death of my sister whom I loved best of anyone in the world -- but I'd seen God pull us "out of the mire and set us on a rock" and I had no question but that he would continue to care for me in my next blind step into the absolute unknown. I'd never had to manage on my own resources before; I'd never been in actual need. So even though I had no plans, very little money, and no prospects, I had faith and that voice in my head and with few qualms I helped my parents pack the U-Haul and I moved to Indiana.
I was excited as well as terrified. Within two weeks I had found two part-time retail jobs and worked those for nine months. I had no health insurance. I managed. I found cheap medical centers when I was sick. Looking back, I think I was insane. But God was as faithful as he'd promised, and when I couldn't cope with the hours and the drudgery anymore, I found a better job at the Center for the Homeless, working with infants and toddlers -- something I'd done a lot for my summer jobs, and, though having nothing to do with my degree, something I enjoyed.
I was terrifically blessed. I met Meg and Phillip through that job. I had a few harrowing experiences, and a lot of laughs. But the kids wore me out; and then I moved up to my job in Events, and then just under a year ago, my fellow coworkers in Development, whom I had grown to enjoy and trust, got rid of me.
That was the worst experience of my life to date. Then I was thrown back on my own resources, then I really had no promises, no guarantees, and then, for the first time, I experienced the frailty of the protection that being a good person affords. The Unsinkable Sarah Peters went under. I was alone, facing unemployment, and I couldn't understand why. (There's this great passage in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury -- gorgeous book -- that describes, perfectly, my reaction to the blows of life. I'm Will Halloway. Injustice always takes me by surprise, always hurts and confuses me, always wounds me, and I never come quite to grips with it, never quite understand.)
But now I'm working a great job with people who have become a part of my family, I've sorted out a lot of things that needed sorting, and life is on a steady upswing. I didn't have to tuck my tail and slink home. I didn't have to leave my apartment. I have fallen in love with the upper Midwest. I'm coming, increasingly, to be centered in who I am. I'm growing consistently, and rapidly, in my faith. I'm stronger. I have learned to separate some of the wheat from the chaff in my relationships. I still have a long, long way to go, and the journey is almost all uphill (cf. Christina Rossetti), but I'm moving.
In all of those flux times, I still could have gone back to school. But it's only been a temptation when I've been backed into a corner and thought myself without options. The inclination to pursue a degree in English has waned so much since college that I don't think you could offer me a full ride and get me to go.
I'm happy where I am. I still don't know if it's where I'm supposed to stay, but for now, it's good, and it's where I'm meant to be. I knew that for certain, last night.
A long time ago, at the end of my junior year in high school, I was running neck and neck with a guy for Valedictorian of our class. Our high school offered weighted courses (so that, if a student elected to take every weighted class, s/he could graduate with as high as a 4.5 GPA), and he and I were just about tied (I was a teensy bit ahead). When it came time to sign up for our senior year schedules, I had a choice to make -- to take Organic/Biochemistry, which Nick was taking, and which was certainly weighted; or to take Publishing Seminar, our competitive yearbook course, which wasn't weighted at all, but which a lot of my friends were taking, and was ambitious in its own way, and from which I'd learn a lot.
I took Pub Seminar. I knew it would probably cost me my class rank. It did. Nick beat me out by one hundredth of a point. And it galled me, a little bit. He was popular (though not very nice; I had a lot of people come up to me that year and whisper viciously, "It should be you, you're nice, Sarah"); I was picked on and awkward and badly dressed and school was the only thing I cared about or did; but I loved Pub, and my classmates and my teacher, and they were a fantastic support system throughout the year, and I had a lot of freedoms to write articles and roam the halls during class hours without a hall pass and yank people out of class and ask them intrusive questions, and so I didn't regret my choice.
And a few weeks ago my mother called me to tell me that one of the kids in our home church, who is a senior in my high school this year, and who is taking honors English from my favorite teacher of all time, came home to tell his mother the following incident from his English class (his mother then passed it on to mine):
"All these girls in my class were crying about their class rank because they weren't as high as they wanted, and Mrs. C. stood up and said, 'You're looking at this entirely the wrong way. Eight years ago Sarah Peters made a choice. She could have taken an honors course and had the Valedictorianship, or she could have taken a course with no weighted grade that would have made her happy. She picked the one that made her happy, and she made the better choice, and I admire her for it.'"
And of course my jaw hit my chest when Mom told me this on the phone (having this woman's admiration is like having the admiration of Queen Elizabeth I, I wish there were a medal for it), but it also made me realize, since I'd been questioning my decisions, that these are the kinds of choices I've always made. I have a great mind. I would have done well in a graduate English program. But I didn't want it. It wouldn't have made me happy. Or satisfied. Or fulfilled.
Because I've always lived with an eye on the future. Someday I'll be great when --. My life is going to be perfect if--. When this finally happens then--. And I've had a hard time embracing the present. Embracing life. And what I chose to do, when I graduated college, was to build a life for myself, in the now. With nothing but my own hands and eyes of faith. Those eyes have failed from time to time, but God is faithful (as Scripture says, he cannot disown himself), and he's held his hands under mine when mine have shaken, and I'm building that life.
And I would rather have undergone all the heartache and uncertainty and suffering of the past three years than have read about it in a book. I would rather have faced what I've faced than written a paper on someone else's creative rendition of the same experience. It's not that study is meaningless, it's not that writing is bad (I would never in my life say that -- hello, writer!) , or that my friends who have gone on to study are wasting their time; no, they're fulfilling their own destinies and callings, as I'm fulfilling mine.
And in its way, this is my calling. I haven't wasted my time blundering around: Not all those who wander are lost. One of the things I believe in most strongly about life is the struggle, and I find it best in the field, where I am. Working a 9-5. Fighting with hospitals and insurance companies. Sitting in the animal ER with the cat. Pounding out my own taxes. Ulcerating over money. Loving and losing. Learning to stand up for myself. Battling depression. Switching meds. Bouncing from job to job till I find one that fits. Casting about for my ultimate purpose. Waiting for that word telling me I've found it. Listening hard. Hearing a voice that almost sounds like my mother's, early in the morning just as I'm coming out of sleep, saying my name.
Something amazing? This IS amazing. This is living on the edge, where the next wave might bring a shipwreck, or an enemy vessel, or an iceberg, or an island, or a strange country, or home. It's lonely as hell -- there are nights when I cry myself to sleep, wishing so hard for a warm body bigger than my ten-pound cat's in the bed next to me that my whole body aches -- but there are compensations of joy so intense it seems my skin's expanding with the pressure of my soul against it. Simple things -- the silhouettes of pine trees, irrigators and barns against the purple-blue wide-open Michigan skyline just after dusk. Daffodils "on a hillside like a wall of new TVs." The neighbors' lawn mower. Slips of the tongue when I'm arranging to visit Meg and Phillip and I tell Meg that "I'll probably get home right after you do." My boss's wife saying over dinner, "Sarah can do no wrong. Mess with her and you mess with us."
I wouldn't trade any of it for the most prestigious degree in the world. I'm looking at broadening my academic knowledge, though the field has changed to theology instead of English. But I'm still not sure, so I'd start slow. An evening class, next semester. Because I think the difference I can make, I can make outside of school. If school is where I belong, fine, I'll go. But for right now, I'm fine where I am.
It's been a long, hard pilgrimage thus far. But I've walked it myself, and I wouldn't go back and take any other path. Because it's brought me to where I am, and this is where I am supposed to be.
From the first moment I set foot in my kindergarten class, I wanted to be a teacher. The shape of the teaching changed, evolved, as I grew, until I went to Grove City with a clear vision of myself as a high school English teacher. Without second thoughts I signed up for the double major in English and Secondary Education, and prepared myself to change the world. (This has always been the primary goal -- to change the world. Teaching was the vehicle to that destination.)
And then I hated the education part of my major. The academic aspect of studying literature appealed to me much more strongly than creating worksheets and grading tests. So I dropped education. Teaching took one more evolutionary step: I'd be a college professor, instead.
Until I didn't want to go to grad school.
That's where the conscious journey began, the knowledge of the wandering. Really it started when I signed off on the Education degree, and shut the door on fourteen years of certainty; but my senior year of undergrad, watching some of my friends apply for and achieve acceptances to graduate programs, stripped off the remnant insulation of adolescence and left me standing on some windswept plateau with no map but a voice in my head saying, Go to a land I will show you.
I think that was when my faith was strongest, and that due largely to idealism and inexperience. I'd had some pretty arduous tests, certainly -- watching the near-unraveling of my family, the near-death of my sister whom I loved best of anyone in the world -- but I'd seen God pull us "out of the mire and set us on a rock" and I had no question but that he would continue to care for me in my next blind step into the absolute unknown. I'd never had to manage on my own resources before; I'd never been in actual need. So even though I had no plans, very little money, and no prospects, I had faith and that voice in my head and with few qualms I helped my parents pack the U-Haul and I moved to Indiana.
I was excited as well as terrified. Within two weeks I had found two part-time retail jobs and worked those for nine months. I had no health insurance. I managed. I found cheap medical centers when I was sick. Looking back, I think I was insane. But God was as faithful as he'd promised, and when I couldn't cope with the hours and the drudgery anymore, I found a better job at the Center for the Homeless, working with infants and toddlers -- something I'd done a lot for my summer jobs, and, though having nothing to do with my degree, something I enjoyed.
I was terrifically blessed. I met Meg and Phillip through that job. I had a few harrowing experiences, and a lot of laughs. But the kids wore me out; and then I moved up to my job in Events, and then just under a year ago, my fellow coworkers in Development, whom I had grown to enjoy and trust, got rid of me.
That was the worst experience of my life to date. Then I was thrown back on my own resources, then I really had no promises, no guarantees, and then, for the first time, I experienced the frailty of the protection that being a good person affords. The Unsinkable Sarah Peters went under. I was alone, facing unemployment, and I couldn't understand why. (There's this great passage in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury -- gorgeous book -- that describes, perfectly, my reaction to the blows of life. I'm Will Halloway. Injustice always takes me by surprise, always hurts and confuses me, always wounds me, and I never come quite to grips with it, never quite understand.)
But now I'm working a great job with people who have become a part of my family, I've sorted out a lot of things that needed sorting, and life is on a steady upswing. I didn't have to tuck my tail and slink home. I didn't have to leave my apartment. I have fallen in love with the upper Midwest. I'm coming, increasingly, to be centered in who I am. I'm growing consistently, and rapidly, in my faith. I'm stronger. I have learned to separate some of the wheat from the chaff in my relationships. I still have a long, long way to go, and the journey is almost all uphill (cf. Christina Rossetti), but I'm moving.
In all of those flux times, I still could have gone back to school. But it's only been a temptation when I've been backed into a corner and thought myself without options. The inclination to pursue a degree in English has waned so much since college that I don't think you could offer me a full ride and get me to go.
I'm happy where I am. I still don't know if it's where I'm supposed to stay, but for now, it's good, and it's where I'm meant to be. I knew that for certain, last night.
A long time ago, at the end of my junior year in high school, I was running neck and neck with a guy for Valedictorian of our class. Our high school offered weighted courses (so that, if a student elected to take every weighted class, s/he could graduate with as high as a 4.5 GPA), and he and I were just about tied (I was a teensy bit ahead). When it came time to sign up for our senior year schedules, I had a choice to make -- to take Organic/Biochemistry, which Nick was taking, and which was certainly weighted; or to take Publishing Seminar, our competitive yearbook course, which wasn't weighted at all, but which a lot of my friends were taking, and was ambitious in its own way, and from which I'd learn a lot.
I took Pub Seminar. I knew it would probably cost me my class rank. It did. Nick beat me out by one hundredth of a point. And it galled me, a little bit. He was popular (though not very nice; I had a lot of people come up to me that year and whisper viciously, "It should be you, you're nice, Sarah"); I was picked on and awkward and badly dressed and school was the only thing I cared about or did; but I loved Pub, and my classmates and my teacher, and they were a fantastic support system throughout the year, and I had a lot of freedoms to write articles and roam the halls during class hours without a hall pass and yank people out of class and ask them intrusive questions, and so I didn't regret my choice.
And a few weeks ago my mother called me to tell me that one of the kids in our home church, who is a senior in my high school this year, and who is taking honors English from my favorite teacher of all time, came home to tell his mother the following incident from his English class (his mother then passed it on to mine):
"All these girls in my class were crying about their class rank because they weren't as high as they wanted, and Mrs. C. stood up and said, 'You're looking at this entirely the wrong way. Eight years ago Sarah Peters made a choice. She could have taken an honors course and had the Valedictorianship, or she could have taken a course with no weighted grade that would have made her happy. She picked the one that made her happy, and she made the better choice, and I admire her for it.'"
And of course my jaw hit my chest when Mom told me this on the phone (having this woman's admiration is like having the admiration of Queen Elizabeth I, I wish there were a medal for it), but it also made me realize, since I'd been questioning my decisions, that these are the kinds of choices I've always made. I have a great mind. I would have done well in a graduate English program. But I didn't want it. It wouldn't have made me happy. Or satisfied. Or fulfilled.
Because I've always lived with an eye on the future. Someday I'll be great when --. My life is going to be perfect if--. When this finally happens then--. And I've had a hard time embracing the present. Embracing life. And what I chose to do, when I graduated college, was to build a life for myself, in the now. With nothing but my own hands and eyes of faith. Those eyes have failed from time to time, but God is faithful (as Scripture says, he cannot disown himself), and he's held his hands under mine when mine have shaken, and I'm building that life.
And I would rather have undergone all the heartache and uncertainty and suffering of the past three years than have read about it in a book. I would rather have faced what I've faced than written a paper on someone else's creative rendition of the same experience. It's not that study is meaningless, it's not that writing is bad (I would never in my life say that -- hello, writer!) , or that my friends who have gone on to study are wasting their time; no, they're fulfilling their own destinies and callings, as I'm fulfilling mine.
And in its way, this is my calling. I haven't wasted my time blundering around: Not all those who wander are lost. One of the things I believe in most strongly about life is the struggle, and I find it best in the field, where I am. Working a 9-5. Fighting with hospitals and insurance companies. Sitting in the animal ER with the cat. Pounding out my own taxes. Ulcerating over money. Loving and losing. Learning to stand up for myself. Battling depression. Switching meds. Bouncing from job to job till I find one that fits. Casting about for my ultimate purpose. Waiting for that word telling me I've found it. Listening hard. Hearing a voice that almost sounds like my mother's, early in the morning just as I'm coming out of sleep, saying my name.
Something amazing? This IS amazing. This is living on the edge, where the next wave might bring a shipwreck, or an enemy vessel, or an iceberg, or an island, or a strange country, or home. It's lonely as hell -- there are nights when I cry myself to sleep, wishing so hard for a warm body bigger than my ten-pound cat's in the bed next to me that my whole body aches -- but there are compensations of joy so intense it seems my skin's expanding with the pressure of my soul against it. Simple things -- the silhouettes of pine trees, irrigators and barns against the purple-blue wide-open Michigan skyline just after dusk. Daffodils "on a hillside like a wall of new TVs." The neighbors' lawn mower. Slips of the tongue when I'm arranging to visit Meg and Phillip and I tell Meg that "I'll probably get home right after you do." My boss's wife saying over dinner, "Sarah can do no wrong. Mess with her and you mess with us."
I wouldn't trade any of it for the most prestigious degree in the world. I'm looking at broadening my academic knowledge, though the field has changed to theology instead of English. But I'm still not sure, so I'd start slow. An evening class, next semester. Because I think the difference I can make, I can make outside of school. If school is where I belong, fine, I'll go. But for right now, I'm fine where I am.
It's been a long, hard pilgrimage thus far. But I've walked it myself, and I wouldn't go back and take any other path. Because it's brought me to where I am, and this is where I am supposed to be.
Friday, April 20, 2007
it's a boy! no, it's a girl! no, it's a...well, it's fun, anyway.
This fun little site, which I found on a friend's blog, swallows paste-ins of texts and tells you, based apparently on an algorithm (which works best on exerpts over 500 words), whether it thinks the author is male or female:
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
Have fun! I found out, to my interest, that while my fiction declares me to be overwhelmingly female, my blog posts and essays tip the scale decidedly in a masculine direction. All I can say is, Dr. Price would be proud. So this one's for him.
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.php
Have fun! I found out, to my interest, that while my fiction declares me to be overwhelmingly female, my blog posts and essays tip the scale decidedly in a masculine direction. All I can say is, Dr. Price would be proud. So this one's for him.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
fresh(er) starts
X
Mold mouths the rims of the dishes
in the sink.
I should do the housecleaning.
Angels come in unexpected forms sometimes. This week the form of choice was my loud, energetic friend Jess. She has a degree in chemistry. She seldom speaks below a shout. She's always exuberant. And when, a week ago, she heard me mumble that I haven't been able to wash my dishes in about three weeks, she sat up straight and said, "What night are you free? I'll come over and wash them."
And she did. I threw a chuck roast (marinated in oil/red wine/garlic/carrot/onion/bay leaf/thyme/parsley) in the slow cooker with carrots, diced tomatoes, garlic, bacon, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and black olives for dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Bones Season One, and she washed all my dishes. We folded my clothes. We chattered. It was nice not to sit alone in my apartment all evening. It was amazing to see my countertop. And I was distractedly, exhaustedly grateful.
There were a couple of sticky moments -- not just sticky in the coffee-residue-at-the-bottom-of-the-twenty-first-mug sense. Like when she told me to put in some "upbeat" music. I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and stared at her. "Umm...I uhh....I don't have any." I mean, my music isn't all depressing and glum -- not all of it -- it's just...indie. The best I could do was music that was happy in a sad kind of way. The other sticky moment was folding my clothes when she found this hoodie in my laundry pile:
which she declared she hated, and which, to be fair, I don't wear at all when I'm actually feeling that way. Otherwise I just think it's funny.
But we had a good time, and last night I kept out of the house and talked on the phone for awhile with my childhood best friend Hill and ate out with Megster and Phillip.
So things are looking up. A little headachey today (hm, maybe it was the sangria at Don Pablo's), but the sun's out, and it's almost Friday.
Oh, and according to Phillip, Baliwood's most popular soap take place in a call center. Every week features a call from The Irate American. I find this hilarious.
Mold mouths the rims of the dishes
in the sink.
I should do the housecleaning.
Angels come in unexpected forms sometimes. This week the form of choice was my loud, energetic friend Jess. She has a degree in chemistry. She seldom speaks below a shout. She's always exuberant. And when, a week ago, she heard me mumble that I haven't been able to wash my dishes in about three weeks, she sat up straight and said, "What night are you free? I'll come over and wash them."
And she did. I threw a chuck roast (marinated in oil/red wine/garlic/carrot/onion/bay leaf/thyme/parsley) in the slow cooker with carrots, diced tomatoes, garlic, bacon, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and black olives for dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Bones Season One, and she washed all my dishes. We folded my clothes. We chattered. It was nice not to sit alone in my apartment all evening. It was amazing to see my countertop. And I was distractedly, exhaustedly grateful.
There were a couple of sticky moments -- not just sticky in the coffee-residue-at-the-bottom-of-the-twenty-first-mug sense. Like when she told me to put in some "upbeat" music. I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and stared at her. "Umm...I uhh....I don't have any." I mean, my music isn't all depressing and glum -- not all of it -- it's just...indie. The best I could do was music that was happy in a sad kind of way. The other sticky moment was folding my clothes when she found this hoodie in my laundry pile:
which she declared she hated, and which, to be fair, I don't wear at all when I'm actually feeling that way. Otherwise I just think it's funny.
But we had a good time, and last night I kept out of the house and talked on the phone for awhile with my childhood best friend Hill and ate out with Megster and Phillip.
So things are looking up. A little headachey today (hm, maybe it was the sangria at Don Pablo's), but the sun's out, and it's almost Friday.
Oh, and according to Phillip, Baliwood's most popular soap take place in a call center. Every week features a call from The Irate American. I find this hilarious.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
but joy cometh...
Another sunshiny day in South Bend.
I had a follow-up appointment with my new doctor in Granger. He took one look at me, quickly addressed the headache question, and said, "Are you ready to change your antidepressant?"
I was a little taken aback. I'm used to having to walk into a doctor's office with my own diagnosis, and I've been paying poor attention to myself lately. And my old doctor wouldn't have noticed a problem with my antidepressant if I'd walked into his office with a knife in my hand.
So we're trying something new; I'm a little trepidacious, but hopeful: This guy knows his meds. And he wants to see me back in another week and a half, so he's keeping close tabs. We'll see.
AND I talked to my boss's wife's tax man, who assured me that the Indiana Department of Revenue isn't coming to take me away (haha), and I actually have a ton more money to call my own than I thought, thanks to some strangely lucky breaks. So after a month of hyperventilating money stress, I'm getting a decent-sized check back from the government, and have a nicely padded bank account.
Now I just have to bark at the insurance company.
I had a follow-up appointment with my new doctor in Granger. He took one look at me, quickly addressed the headache question, and said, "Are you ready to change your antidepressant?"
I was a little taken aback. I'm used to having to walk into a doctor's office with my own diagnosis, and I've been paying poor attention to myself lately. And my old doctor wouldn't have noticed a problem with my antidepressant if I'd walked into his office with a knife in my hand.
So we're trying something new; I'm a little trepidacious, but hopeful: This guy knows his meds. And he wants to see me back in another week and a half, so he's keeping close tabs. We'll see.
AND I talked to my boss's wife's tax man, who assured me that the Indiana Department of Revenue isn't coming to take me away (haha), and I actually have a ton more money to call my own than I thought, thanks to some strangely lucky breaks. So after a month of hyperventilating money stress, I'm getting a decent-sized check back from the government, and have a nicely padded bank account.
Now I just have to bark at the insurance company.
Monday, April 16, 2007
but not in nottingham
Well, I guess Prince John won't be evicting me anytime soon for nonpayment of taxes. In fact, he'll be paying ME something, which is nice.
Baaaahhhh I hate dealing with the frigging taxes. Fortunately I don't make enough money and don't own enough valuables or any property for it to take more than three or four hours to get through.
The problem with taxes in general is that -- well, that first of all, the government takes your money away from you and then makes you tell them how they did it; explain THAT one -- is that it's all so complicated. I'm becoming a fan of the flat tax. Anything to avoid the foul 1040s. Sure, you'd have to pay almost half again as much for anything you bought, but at least it would all be paid in one lump sum. Or something. I hate dealing with anything pertaining to accounts, so I don't pretend to understand the particulars. But people, this system SUCKS. Especially because, if you're doing your own taxes, and you aren't sure of one piece of information, or you got a wrong piece of information from an employer, you start to worry if they're going to hurl you in prison and strip you of your citizenship if you turn out to be wrong.
But, on a more positive note, YAY, they're e-filed and just waiting for confirmation.
Now if I could just slink out from under the nagging suspicion that the axe is about to fall somehow. TurboTax doesn't make mistakes, does it? And I told them everything I had in front of me, everything I knew...
It's worse than finals.
Baaaahhhh I hate dealing with the frigging taxes. Fortunately I don't make enough money and don't own enough valuables or any property for it to take more than three or four hours to get through.
The problem with taxes in general is that -- well, that first of all, the government takes your money away from you and then makes you tell them how they did it; explain THAT one -- is that it's all so complicated. I'm becoming a fan of the flat tax. Anything to avoid the foul 1040s. Sure, you'd have to pay almost half again as much for anything you bought, but at least it would all be paid in one lump sum. Or something. I hate dealing with anything pertaining to accounts, so I don't pretend to understand the particulars. But people, this system SUCKS. Especially because, if you're doing your own taxes, and you aren't sure of one piece of information, or you got a wrong piece of information from an employer, you start to worry if they're going to hurl you in prison and strip you of your citizenship if you turn out to be wrong.
But, on a more positive note, YAY, they're e-filed and just waiting for confirmation.
Now if I could just slink out from under the nagging suspicion that the axe is about to fall somehow. TurboTax doesn't make mistakes, does it? And I told them everything I had in front of me, everything I knew...
It's worse than finals.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
changes
There are a few, so I'm feeling listy.
1. Pslightly Psycho Kevin is moving out in May, to be replaced by the Absent Landlord and his family, inclusive of a wife, one small (and adorable) toddler, and one or two foster kids. This should be interesting. Good, I think, because things like broken basement doors and wonky electrical wiring will be fixed more quickly. Bad, potentially, because the living room is located directly beneath my bedroom, and I can imagine evenings complete with loud TVs and screaming children. Also I have to come up with a new acronym; AL won't fit anymore. I'm considering the Live-In Landlord (Yikes!), or LILY for short.
2. I've finally gotten mad enough at my insurance company to call and bawl them out tomorrow. I sat down with a pen and piece of scrap paper today and calculated that my medical bills from last December, which, thanks to my own suffocating poverty (until now) and the overwhelming nonsympathy of multiple hospital billing departments, have been threatening my credit (but not actually damaging it -- I do work for a lawyer), have skyrocketed about four hundred dollars beyond my deductible. Unforfuckinggiveable. I looked over my various hospital/doctor's bills and found very little insurance coverage on most of them. This could lead to a tirade about the state of American health plans, but won't; I'm just going to call a few places tomorrow to straighten out some payment plans and then give the insurance company a stern talking-to. (These are things I have been dealing with all year, which have definitely contributed to poor sleep, tight muscles, depression, and headache. But I haven't talked about them until a light at the end of the tunnel appeared. What was the point?)
3. Consternation and much mental wrestling with thoughts of the future have still produced nothing definitive. I have a few embryonic ideas, which are far better than the nothing I'd come up with so far (I've spent the last three years in a limbo of What-the-Bleep-Do-I-Do-Now?, working six different jobs and sorting through my changing passions and constant gifts), but again, no "go here, do this"; just a "wait here, do this," so I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, with a twist: buckle my bootie down and start taking my writing seriously. I did pretty well for awhile during Lent with the getting up at five a.m. thing, but that really petered out, and it's time to get back on the horse. There are a lot of things to write about -- some fiction, the church, Christianity, the Bible, etc. -- a lot of things I love, and a lot of raw blog material waiting to be harvested and threshed. Now I need to set down some concrete goals, but I've been sitting on this talent for way too long, and it's collecting no interest.
4. I have a new goal of regular church attendance. Nothing beyond that for the time being; I just want to go every Sunday on a regular basis through the end of the summer, before I look at ways to get more involved. Church is one of my bigger problems. I'm afraid of it, even when I enjoy it and want to go. I'm always sure that at some point it's going to turn out to be terrible, that the people will ostracize me, that I won't fit in, that it will be high school all over again, but in a worse way, because these are supposed to be my spiritual family. When it comes to other Christians, I've tended to feel like the little latchkey kid looking in the candy shop window at everybody else eating jelly beans and having fun. Maybe I'll meet another urchin like me, another Charlie Bucket or Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn or Little Arliss or Caddie Woodlawn or whatever, and we'll watch for awhile and rub our grubby noses against the glass and stick our tongues out and laugh about it and then go running off looking for frogs in the creek, but my "place" has always been on the margins. Sure, wah, get over it; so I've been trying to attend, and wanting to get into the swing, but I'm still afraid it's going to collapse on me and I'll be worse off, more hurt and more disillusioned than I was before. So I'm taking it slow. Baby steps. Regular attendance first. Not counting on finding friends. Then praying a lot and at the end of the summer seeing if maybe there's something more there I could be doing, and particularly some small group or Bible study I could join.
5. Grrr, taxes. (And where did I put the W-2? Where? I remember when it was handed to me. Now where did I put it? And why do I do this? Why?) But yay, later filing date. (Procrastination, hm, that's not a change at all. BUT, I'm doing my taxes all on my own this year, with no help, so that's a change.)
6. More hot baths. Fewer sore muscles. Candles. Book. Mm.
7. Spring.
1. Pslightly Psycho Kevin is moving out in May, to be replaced by the Absent Landlord and his family, inclusive of a wife, one small (and adorable) toddler, and one or two foster kids. This should be interesting. Good, I think, because things like broken basement doors and wonky electrical wiring will be fixed more quickly. Bad, potentially, because the living room is located directly beneath my bedroom, and I can imagine evenings complete with loud TVs and screaming children. Also I have to come up with a new acronym; AL won't fit anymore. I'm considering the Live-In Landlord (Yikes!), or LILY for short.
2. I've finally gotten mad enough at my insurance company to call and bawl them out tomorrow. I sat down with a pen and piece of scrap paper today and calculated that my medical bills from last December, which, thanks to my own suffocating poverty (until now) and the overwhelming nonsympathy of multiple hospital billing departments, have been threatening my credit (but not actually damaging it -- I do work for a lawyer), have skyrocketed about four hundred dollars beyond my deductible. Unforfuckinggiveable. I looked over my various hospital/doctor's bills and found very little insurance coverage on most of them. This could lead to a tirade about the state of American health plans, but won't; I'm just going to call a few places tomorrow to straighten out some payment plans and then give the insurance company a stern talking-to. (These are things I have been dealing with all year, which have definitely contributed to poor sleep, tight muscles, depression, and headache. But I haven't talked about them until a light at the end of the tunnel appeared. What was the point?)
3. Consternation and much mental wrestling with thoughts of the future have still produced nothing definitive. I have a few embryonic ideas, which are far better than the nothing I'd come up with so far (I've spent the last three years in a limbo of What-the-Bleep-Do-I-Do-Now?, working six different jobs and sorting through my changing passions and constant gifts), but again, no "go here, do this"; just a "wait here, do this," so I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, with a twist: buckle my bootie down and start taking my writing seriously. I did pretty well for awhile during Lent with the getting up at five a.m. thing, but that really petered out, and it's time to get back on the horse. There are a lot of things to write about -- some fiction, the church, Christianity, the Bible, etc. -- a lot of things I love, and a lot of raw blog material waiting to be harvested and threshed. Now I need to set down some concrete goals, but I've been sitting on this talent for way too long, and it's collecting no interest.
4. I have a new goal of regular church attendance. Nothing beyond that for the time being; I just want to go every Sunday on a regular basis through the end of the summer, before I look at ways to get more involved. Church is one of my bigger problems. I'm afraid of it, even when I enjoy it and want to go. I'm always sure that at some point it's going to turn out to be terrible, that the people will ostracize me, that I won't fit in, that it will be high school all over again, but in a worse way, because these are supposed to be my spiritual family. When it comes to other Christians, I've tended to feel like the little latchkey kid looking in the candy shop window at everybody else eating jelly beans and having fun. Maybe I'll meet another urchin like me, another Charlie Bucket or Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn or Little Arliss or Caddie Woodlawn or whatever, and we'll watch for awhile and rub our grubby noses against the glass and stick our tongues out and laugh about it and then go running off looking for frogs in the creek, but my "place" has always been on the margins. Sure, wah, get over it; so I've been trying to attend, and wanting to get into the swing, but I'm still afraid it's going to collapse on me and I'll be worse off, more hurt and more disillusioned than I was before. So I'm taking it slow. Baby steps. Regular attendance first. Not counting on finding friends. Then praying a lot and at the end of the summer seeing if maybe there's something more there I could be doing, and particularly some small group or Bible study I could join.
5. Grrr, taxes. (And where did I put the W-2? Where? I remember when it was handed to me. Now where did I put it? And why do I do this? Why?) But yay, later filing date. (Procrastination, hm, that's not a change at all. BUT, I'm doing my taxes all on my own this year, with no help, so that's a change.)
6. More hot baths. Fewer sore muscles. Candles. Book. Mm.
7. Spring.
break
Yeah, a day off, a lot of sleep, a lot of doing nothing, and a deposited paycheck all help. A lot.
So do the Harry Potter movies. I can't seem to get enough HP lately. I've reread Book 6 all the way through this week, with smatterings of Book 5, and now I need to rummage around in the basement to where I think I may have left Book 3 (which was the first HP I read all the way through, and the first to hook me on the story, and will always hold a special niche in my story-obsessed heart).
Sometimes it's hard to watch movies alone. TV on DVD, no problem. I have all of Buffy and all of Angel and a whole bunch of other TV shows and that's always fine. But I have a tonne of movies I'd love to watch but never get around to...some of them are just tough to watch alone. Harry Potter, though, I can do. Readily. Besides, with HP I have this habit of rewinding to catch certain facial expressions or vocal inflections of the characters over and over to help my own interpretations, which would probably annoy a companion.
Can't can't can't can't can't wait for the HP5 movie and the HP7 Book to come out. O.M.G.
Bed.
So do the Harry Potter movies. I can't seem to get enough HP lately. I've reread Book 6 all the way through this week, with smatterings of Book 5, and now I need to rummage around in the basement to where I think I may have left Book 3 (which was the first HP I read all the way through, and the first to hook me on the story, and will always hold a special niche in my story-obsessed heart).
Sometimes it's hard to watch movies alone. TV on DVD, no problem. I have all of Buffy and all of Angel and a whole bunch of other TV shows and that's always fine. But I have a tonne of movies I'd love to watch but never get around to...some of them are just tough to watch alone. Harry Potter, though, I can do. Readily. Besides, with HP I have this habit of rewinding to catch certain facial expressions or vocal inflections of the characters over and over to help my own interpretations, which would probably annoy a companion.
Can't can't can't can't can't wait for the HP5 movie and the HP7 Book to come out. O.M.G.
Bed.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
obliviate
If I throw myself hard enough into my job, nothing else will matter. So I've thrown myself into my job.
And I've been doing it fantastically well. So well, in fact, that I feel like I'm earning my extraordinary raise. So well that I'm managing, with creative ideas, to overhaul a few of the office systems. So well that the front office is becoming, well and truly, my domain. So well that my boss's son, himself going to law school and looking to join his dad in the practice in two years' time, gets panicky at the thought that I might have moved on by the time he becomes a partner.
So well that come day's end I'm too exhausted to process anything but my exhaustion. Which is, after all the goal. I'm becoming terribly efficient.
But there's a catch. It only works when I'm alone. I spent some time with friends last night, and things I thought weren't bothering me had me close to tears, and I realized, it's been a Bad Head Month. A long one.
There are reasons. It's not just the depression. That factors in, of course, but even "normal" (har) people have bad weeks and months. The "understood boundaries of my self" have undergone continuous strain the past four weeks. There's my own health. There are the usual What To Do with My Life and When Do I Do It crises. There's the I'm Always Alone Factor. But those are constants. The headaches wear me down, true. But still -- business as usual.
The burdens that made the harness straps creak were mostly the cat, and money. I'm an Introvert. I receive my replenishment from solitude (yes, I was just mourning my aloneness. But I mean, I need companionship. You can have solitude and still have companionship), and to have solitude, I need a sanctuary, a safe place, a refuge, a hiding place, a hobbit hole, a cave, a hermitage. That's my home. And Simon's sickness shattered the peace, serenity, and safety of my home. Instead of a place where I could retreat from stress and relax, home became my primary source of stress. And after awhile I couldn't deal.
Not to mention that the cat's bills maxed out my credit card and the last of my health savings account. I'm on my own, kids. Without that raise, I wouldn't be able to do it. Which makes me feel both enormously grateful and absolutely terrified. My parents help where they can, but when it comes down to it, I'm my own support system, and I can't count on another human being to bail me out. It's just me.
So all of that makes the Aloneness worse. I don't have anyone around to give me a hug, or to say, Sarah, calm down, you're making this way bigger of a deal than it is, or, simply, cool it, it's going to be fine and you know it, or, I'm here. Because I know I freak out over nothing when I'm tired and stressed, and that when I have a Bad Head phase I keep bad hours and don't sleep enough and don't eat enough (six or seven or maybe more pounds have mysteriously vanished from my person) and imagine the worst possible catastrophes in order to "prepare myself" (except what a ridiculous thing to do, you can't prepare yourself for that kind of stuff anyway) and stop cleaning the house and lose all my energy and stop cooking and that the only things I have the energy for are working, reading, listening to Sufjan and watching movies or TV on DVD and don't feel like talking to anyone or writing or blogging and wish I could have a week off so that I could do nothing but lie curled on my bed and sleep and do nothing and just heal.
Yeah, it's bad, friends. I know it's bad because of everything in the above paragraph, and because at the bottom of it all I don't feel all that sad, I just don't feel much of anything, and that's when it's bad bad. But I get up and I do my job and I distract myself and I'll pull through it. Because God's love is still there, it's the one thing besides the nothing that's coming through still clear. And the weather is bound to improve someday, that will help.
When the night falls
I carry myself to the fortress
Of your glorious cost
Oh how I may seek your fortress
When the night falls,
We see the star of wonder
Wonderful night falls,
We see you, we see you there
I see the stars coming down there,
Coming down there to the yard
I see the stars coming down there
Coming down there to my heart
[Those days, days, days run away
like horses over the hills...]
And I've been doing it fantastically well. So well, in fact, that I feel like I'm earning my extraordinary raise. So well that I'm managing, with creative ideas, to overhaul a few of the office systems. So well that the front office is becoming, well and truly, my domain. So well that my boss's son, himself going to law school and looking to join his dad in the practice in two years' time, gets panicky at the thought that I might have moved on by the time he becomes a partner.
So well that come day's end I'm too exhausted to process anything but my exhaustion. Which is, after all the goal. I'm becoming terribly efficient.
But there's a catch. It only works when I'm alone. I spent some time with friends last night, and things I thought weren't bothering me had me close to tears, and I realized, it's been a Bad Head Month. A long one.
There are reasons. It's not just the depression. That factors in, of course, but even "normal" (har) people have bad weeks and months. The "understood boundaries of my self" have undergone continuous strain the past four weeks. There's my own health. There are the usual What To Do with My Life and When Do I Do It crises. There's the I'm Always Alone Factor. But those are constants. The headaches wear me down, true. But still -- business as usual.
The burdens that made the harness straps creak were mostly the cat, and money. I'm an Introvert. I receive my replenishment from solitude (yes, I was just mourning my aloneness. But I mean, I need companionship. You can have solitude and still have companionship), and to have solitude, I need a sanctuary, a safe place, a refuge, a hiding place, a hobbit hole, a cave, a hermitage. That's my home. And Simon's sickness shattered the peace, serenity, and safety of my home. Instead of a place where I could retreat from stress and relax, home became my primary source of stress. And after awhile I couldn't deal.
Not to mention that the cat's bills maxed out my credit card and the last of my health savings account. I'm on my own, kids. Without that raise, I wouldn't be able to do it. Which makes me feel both enormously grateful and absolutely terrified. My parents help where they can, but when it comes down to it, I'm my own support system, and I can't count on another human being to bail me out. It's just me.
So all of that makes the Aloneness worse. I don't have anyone around to give me a hug, or to say, Sarah, calm down, you're making this way bigger of a deal than it is, or, simply, cool it, it's going to be fine and you know it, or, I'm here. Because I know I freak out over nothing when I'm tired and stressed, and that when I have a Bad Head phase I keep bad hours and don't sleep enough and don't eat enough (six or seven or maybe more pounds have mysteriously vanished from my person) and imagine the worst possible catastrophes in order to "prepare myself" (except what a ridiculous thing to do, you can't prepare yourself for that kind of stuff anyway) and stop cleaning the house and lose all my energy and stop cooking and that the only things I have the energy for are working, reading, listening to Sufjan and watching movies or TV on DVD and don't feel like talking to anyone or writing or blogging and wish I could have a week off so that I could do nothing but lie curled on my bed and sleep and do nothing and just heal.
Yeah, it's bad, friends. I know it's bad because of everything in the above paragraph, and because at the bottom of it all I don't feel all that sad, I just don't feel much of anything, and that's when it's bad bad. But I get up and I do my job and I distract myself and I'll pull through it. Because God's love is still there, it's the one thing besides the nothing that's coming through still clear. And the weather is bound to improve someday, that will help.
When the night falls
I carry myself to the fortress
Of your glorious cost
Oh how I may seek your fortress
When the night falls,
We see the star of wonder
Wonderful night falls,
We see you, we see you there
I see the stars coming down there,
Coming down there to the yard
I see the stars coming down there
Coming down there to my heart
[Those days, days, days run away
like horses over the hills...]
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
odds and ends
I had a lovely Easter -- spent it with my boss's family -- my boss, his wife and son Rob and son's fiancee, my friend Stacy -- at the family home in Michigan. We enjoyed heated conversations on the present state of social affairs, an excellent lamb roast (I've never had lamb for Easter, but does anything make more sense?), and a good, relaxed time all around.
I've always been hard-pressed to choose a favorite between Christmas and Easter; I love them both, and the one that's in season is always my favorite. Christmas embraces the joys of everything sacred and secular, as perfectly noted in Sufjan Stevens' "Christmas Tube Socks" essay accompanying his "Songs for Christmas" album released last November. It's a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a fantastic revelry in the holy and the hilarious, and the lines are finely blurred.
Easter, on the other hand, is different. The juxtaposition between sacred and profane is clumsier, the rift between Christian and pagan wider, more easily identified (cf. Eddie Izzard's commentary in "Dress to Kill"). And Easter, preceded as it is by Lent, and followed by Pentecost, is surrounded by a starkness, an austerity, that throws its clearest meaning into sharp relief against the backdrop of bunnies, eggs, plastic grass and marshmallows. Christmas is entirely a celebration of a beautiful mystery: Incarnation. Easter comemmorates three days that encompassed the most terrible despair, and the most terrible joy, of earth's history. Seventy-two hours of gut-wrenching spiritual whiplash.
Bit dramatic if you don't go for the whole faith thing. But there it is, for those who do. Nietzsche got his moment on Good Friday, Saturday, and that very early Sunday: God is dead. Even we couldn't argue with that, if he'd said it then. The disciples didn't. (Well, whether or not they really KNEW Jesus was God, at that moment, is up for debate.) There was a stone in front of God's tomb. And then...there wasn't. Something incredible happened. In seventy-two hours everything turned around. Violently. Darkness fell over the earth in the middle of the day, the temple curtain was ripped in two, there were earthquakes and some of the holy dead came walking out of their tombs, alive, and Jesus was back. And nothing's been the same ever since.
I love Easter best because everything hinges on it. I love it because it's so simple, because thousands of years of orchestration, hundreds of prophecies, nine months of gestation, thirty-three years of life, and three years of ministry contracted to three days...contracted to that one moment, that one second, when the walls of Jesus' heart shuddered with blood and the walls of the tomb whispered with the echo of a breath. When the glory of God that left the temple in Isaiah chapter 6 looked through the newly opened eyes of the once-dead Christ (Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days). And I love it because it foreshadows the fulfillment of his promise when he said, Because I live, you also shall live...
Anyway. Yay Easter!
So work is going well -- it's been kind of consuming my life. I have trouble with balance. My life inner ear tends to go all wonky and I fixate on one aspect and let the other ones go to pot. So right now my house is a disaster zone and I think they might be calling in the Health Inspectors about my dirty dishes, but the office is about to become a phoenix of order and cleanliness. I've been working massive overtime, battling the ongoing sinus problem & headaches, and struggling to pay my medical bills (damn you, medical bills!), but the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing, and this time I'm confident that it's really the light of the summer sun and not the headlight of an oncoming train.
I've always been hard-pressed to choose a favorite between Christmas and Easter; I love them both, and the one that's in season is always my favorite. Christmas embraces the joys of everything sacred and secular, as perfectly noted in Sufjan Stevens' "Christmas Tube Socks" essay accompanying his "Songs for Christmas" album released last November. It's a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a fantastic revelry in the holy and the hilarious, and the lines are finely blurred.
Easter, on the other hand, is different. The juxtaposition between sacred and profane is clumsier, the rift between Christian and pagan wider, more easily identified (cf. Eddie Izzard's commentary in "Dress to Kill"). And Easter, preceded as it is by Lent, and followed by Pentecost, is surrounded by a starkness, an austerity, that throws its clearest meaning into sharp relief against the backdrop of bunnies, eggs, plastic grass and marshmallows. Christmas is entirely a celebration of a beautiful mystery: Incarnation. Easter comemmorates three days that encompassed the most terrible despair, and the most terrible joy, of earth's history. Seventy-two hours of gut-wrenching spiritual whiplash.
Bit dramatic if you don't go for the whole faith thing. But there it is, for those who do. Nietzsche got his moment on Good Friday, Saturday, and that very early Sunday: God is dead. Even we couldn't argue with that, if he'd said it then. The disciples didn't. (Well, whether or not they really KNEW Jesus was God, at that moment, is up for debate.) There was a stone in front of God's tomb. And then...there wasn't. Something incredible happened. In seventy-two hours everything turned around. Violently. Darkness fell over the earth in the middle of the day, the temple curtain was ripped in two, there were earthquakes and some of the holy dead came walking out of their tombs, alive, and Jesus was back. And nothing's been the same ever since.
I love Easter best because everything hinges on it. I love it because it's so simple, because thousands of years of orchestration, hundreds of prophecies, nine months of gestation, thirty-three years of life, and three years of ministry contracted to three days...contracted to that one moment, that one second, when the walls of Jesus' heart shuddered with blood and the walls of the tomb whispered with the echo of a breath. When the glory of God that left the temple in Isaiah chapter 6 looked through the newly opened eyes of the once-dead Christ (Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days). And I love it because it foreshadows the fulfillment of his promise when he said, Because I live, you also shall live...
Anyway. Yay Easter!
So work is going well -- it's been kind of consuming my life. I have trouble with balance. My life inner ear tends to go all wonky and I fixate on one aspect and let the other ones go to pot. So right now my house is a disaster zone and I think they might be calling in the Health Inspectors about my dirty dishes, but the office is about to become a phoenix of order and cleanliness. I've been working massive overtime, battling the ongoing sinus problem & headaches, and struggling to pay my medical bills (damn you, medical bills!), but the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing, and this time I'm confident that it's really the light of the summer sun and not the headlight of an oncoming train.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
an exerpt from East Coker, in honor of Good Friday
IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
accountability: a survey: take 2
Okay, scrap that last, it was way too specific; I couldn't even answer the questions. Can we try it free association style? Please? (I'm pretending you just gave me a pitying/resigned/I'm-your-friend-and-you're-looking-so-cute-and-beseeching-so-I'll-say-yes-but-I-secretly-hate-you look.) Goody!
Right, so I say, "accountability," and you say whatever comes into your head.
Ready?
Accountability.
Go.
Right, so I say, "accountability," and you say whatever comes into your head.
Ready?
Accountability.
Go.
to a recalcitrant friend
Dear Mr. Cold Front:
I really must protest your untimely re-arrival in my neighborhood. I understand that you make your circuits throughout most regions of the world on a semi-regular basis, namely, during the late autumn, winter, and early spring seasons, when I find you a most welcome companion. I further understand that you do not actually violate any law of nature in visiting me at the beginning of April; however, your persistent company, this late into the spring season, is becoming increasingly unwelcome.
You must understand that I have many responsibilities and obligations to fulfill which your sudden presence is rendering difficult. As an unmarried individual with gainful employment, I dedicate the majority of my waking hours to my job. This, naturally, requires a great deal of energy and mental focus, which necessitates copious and regular amounts of rest.
The general depression (marked by a decline in productivity) caused by unseasonable weather would, I think, be reason enough in itself for you to vacate the premises, should you pause to consider your effect on those around you. Also, it is beginning to seem that you need a map to direct you to your next stop, which I would think you would find embarrassing. The Canada geese are enough of a laughingstock across the entirety of the North American continent, without lumping you into the mix.
Furthermore, for the past three weeks, all of the aforementioned requirements for a fully productive life have suffered significant depletions due to the poor health of my cat, who has required continual and watchful care, and also due to my chronic headaches.
It is these last for which I hold you most responsible, Mr. Cold Front. Your accompanying frigid winds have often, in my short trips between the door and the car, reduced me to tears due to intense sinus pain. Said pain persists throughout the day, perceived as tight bands wound along my cheekbones and across my temples, and pressing inside my nose. As a result, my concentration has been sharply limited, as well as my energy levels and enjoyment of life.
It is my hope that you will reconsider your venue in this neighborhood and migrate, in a VERY timely fashion, to a more suitable region of the globe. Antarctica, I believe, is looking for residents such as yourself this time of year. I'm sure your particular characteristics would enjoy a more popular status in that climate.
I have appreciated your presence throughout the duration of February, and I look forward to your return in December. (You were a bit late, in 2006. Please feel free to arrive and unpack your bags somewhat closer to December first this year; I'll always have a mug of hot cocoa waiting for you around that time.) But "for all things there is a season," etc. & etc., and it is my understanding that now is the time for fledgling birds, flowers, and sinus drainage.
Wishing you well on your way, and thanking you for your cooperation and understanding,
Sincerely yours,
Sarah
I really must protest your untimely re-arrival in my neighborhood. I understand that you make your circuits throughout most regions of the world on a semi-regular basis, namely, during the late autumn, winter, and early spring seasons, when I find you a most welcome companion. I further understand that you do not actually violate any law of nature in visiting me at the beginning of April; however, your persistent company, this late into the spring season, is becoming increasingly unwelcome.
You must understand that I have many responsibilities and obligations to fulfill which your sudden presence is rendering difficult. As an unmarried individual with gainful employment, I dedicate the majority of my waking hours to my job. This, naturally, requires a great deal of energy and mental focus, which necessitates copious and regular amounts of rest.
The general depression (marked by a decline in productivity) caused by unseasonable weather would, I think, be reason enough in itself for you to vacate the premises, should you pause to consider your effect on those around you. Also, it is beginning to seem that you need a map to direct you to your next stop, which I would think you would find embarrassing. The Canada geese are enough of a laughingstock across the entirety of the North American continent, without lumping you into the mix.
Furthermore, for the past three weeks, all of the aforementioned requirements for a fully productive life have suffered significant depletions due to the poor health of my cat, who has required continual and watchful care, and also due to my chronic headaches.
It is these last for which I hold you most responsible, Mr. Cold Front. Your accompanying frigid winds have often, in my short trips between the door and the car, reduced me to tears due to intense sinus pain. Said pain persists throughout the day, perceived as tight bands wound along my cheekbones and across my temples, and pressing inside my nose. As a result, my concentration has been sharply limited, as well as my energy levels and enjoyment of life.
It is my hope that you will reconsider your venue in this neighborhood and migrate, in a VERY timely fashion, to a more suitable region of the globe. Antarctica, I believe, is looking for residents such as yourself this time of year. I'm sure your particular characteristics would enjoy a more popular status in that climate.
I have appreciated your presence throughout the duration of February, and I look forward to your return in December. (You were a bit late, in 2006. Please feel free to arrive and unpack your bags somewhat closer to December first this year; I'll always have a mug of hot cocoa waiting for you around that time.) But "for all things there is a season," etc. & etc., and it is my understanding that now is the time for fledgling birds, flowers, and sinus drainage.
Wishing you well on your way, and thanking you for your cooperation and understanding,
Sincerely yours,
Sarah
Monday, April 02, 2007
accountability: a survey
So I was talking with my mom yesterday, and the subject of accountability came up. I was surprised to discover that her experience was vastly different from mine.
So I thought I would ask you, friends, Grovers, random readers: If you have had any experience in the church, or in a "churched" environment such as a Christian high school or college campus, with the idea of "accountability partners," what was it like for you?
I have several particular questions in mind:
(1) Did you ever have an accountability partner yourself, or even a series of accountability partners? If so:
a.) Was it a deliberate arrangement, with both parties agreeing to meet on a regular basis to "be accountable to each other," or did it arise naturally out of a mutually supportive friendship?
b.) How did you select your accountability partners?
c.) Did you share similar struggles, or were your personalities, backgrounds and challenges widely different?
d.) How long did each accountability relationship, particularly of the contractual variety, last?
(2) If you didn't participate in this phenomenon, did you observe it in others? What are/were your observations?
(3) Did you find the "accountability partnership" to be a source of encouragement, support, and joy, or a source of discomfort, discouragement, self-judgment, and despair? Did you look forward to your weekly/biweekly/monthly/whatever meetings as a chance to share joys and progress, or dread them as a time of tallying the good against the bad, with the bad usually winning out?
(4) Do you, if you have some experience with the "accountability partnership," fall into the 12-20-year age group, the 21-30, the 31-40, or the 41+?
(5) What was your predominant religious, or, if Christian (as I'm supposing respondents will generally be), denominational background? Was "accountability" widely practiced, taught, or encouraged by your denomination and/or church, or did you experience it from another source?
(6) Was the idea of accountability important in your family life as a child/teenager?
I'll keep my own experiences and opinions, for the moment, to myself, and follow them up after I've heard from a few people. I do hope to hear from some of my fellow GCCers, since this practice seemed pretty widespread there, and I know a lot of us Grovers came from surprisingly variant denominational backgrounds. But I'm also looking for input from as wide a selection of sources as possible, so if you have something to say, please, chime in!
So I thought I would ask you, friends, Grovers, random readers: If you have had any experience in the church, or in a "churched" environment such as a Christian high school or college campus, with the idea of "accountability partners," what was it like for you?
I have several particular questions in mind:
(1) Did you ever have an accountability partner yourself, or even a series of accountability partners? If so:
a.) Was it a deliberate arrangement, with both parties agreeing to meet on a regular basis to "be accountable to each other," or did it arise naturally out of a mutually supportive friendship?
b.) How did you select your accountability partners?
c.) Did you share similar struggles, or were your personalities, backgrounds and challenges widely different?
d.) How long did each accountability relationship, particularly of the contractual variety, last?
(2) If you didn't participate in this phenomenon, did you observe it in others? What are/were your observations?
(3) Did you find the "accountability partnership" to be a source of encouragement, support, and joy, or a source of discomfort, discouragement, self-judgment, and despair? Did you look forward to your weekly/biweekly/monthly/whatever meetings as a chance to share joys and progress, or dread them as a time of tallying the good against the bad, with the bad usually winning out?
(4) Do you, if you have some experience with the "accountability partnership," fall into the 12-20-year age group, the 21-30, the 31-40, or the 41+?
(5) What was your predominant religious, or, if Christian (as I'm supposing respondents will generally be), denominational background? Was "accountability" widely practiced, taught, or encouraged by your denomination and/or church, or did you experience it from another source?
(6) Was the idea of accountability important in your family life as a child/teenager?
I'll keep my own experiences and opinions, for the moment, to myself, and follow them up after I've heard from a few people. I do hope to hear from some of my fellow GCCers, since this practice seemed pretty widespread there, and I know a lot of us Grovers came from surprisingly variant denominational backgrounds. But I'm also looking for input from as wide a selection of sources as possible, so if you have something to say, please, chime in!
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